The article looks like they're trying to say how awesome their game is.
Any TECHNICAL difference between that and, say, a decent rogue-like algorithm? I have a feeling that it's scaled-up rather than technical up.
Also, couldn't see a GitHub link, so I'm assuming this is proprietary and therefore have no reason to trust whatever they say.
An example of a technical move forward would be a game world that is so large it must be procedurally generated, that also has the two properties that it is massively multiplayer, and that players can arbitrarily alter the environment.
You'd get the technical challenge of reconciling player-made alterations to the environment with the "untouched" version of the environment according to your generative algorithm. Then you'd get the additional challenge of sharing those changes across lots of different players in real time.
I don't get the sense that...
"In one sense, because of the game’s procedural design, the entire universe exists at the moment of its creation. In another sense, because the game only renders a player’s immediate surroundings, nothing exists unless there is a human there to witness it."
"Through the use of procedural generation, No Man’s Sky ensures that each planet will be a surprise, even to the programmers. Every creature, AI-guided alien spacecraft, or landscape is a pseudo-random product of the computer program itself. The universe is essentially as unknown to the people who made it as it is to the people who play in it—and ultimately, it is destined to remain that way."
More at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/artificial-universe-no-mans-sky/463308/