For as long as open-world games have been a subgenre, developers have been specifically trying to outdo each other with the size of in-game maps: Whether this be the size of the battle royale maps in games like Fortnite and PUBG, or in RPG games like The Elder Scrolls and the newer Assassin's Creed games. Over the last couple decades, open-world games have created some huge maps, but none so awe-inspiring as Minecraft and No Man's Sky. While other genres have tried to take the trophy, none have been as big as survival games.
What makes these games comparable, besides their sheer size, is that they are both open-world survival and crafting games. In both, players have to find resources to craft and make better equipment in order to get better resources and so on. Both No Man's Sky and Minecraft also thrive on the feeling of exploration it gives players as they traverse across the unknown land, unaware of what dangers they may encounter. Although that's pretty much where the similarities end, and even if both are large, the two games' maps aren't even comparable themselves.
Minecraft's World
Minecraft released in 2011 and quickly rose to fame due to its relaxing gameplay and the accessibility of the game on most hardware. Whether alone or with friends, completely mapping out an entire Minecraft world would be a seriously time consuming undertaking. It would be an interesting journey, thanks to the series of updates the game has received, diversifying biomes and adding new structures. Each new Minecraft world on PC can theoretically go for a very long time, although it will likely break the game somewhere alone the way.
If the player can get far enough out, they'll reach a portion of the map where the game will begin to experience issues such as lag and crashes. Some content creators, like AntVenom above, have claimed to find new limits for how far they can travel once they start a Minecraft world. The furthest is currently 1.8 x 10^308 blocks, which is just as many meters, before the XYZ coordinate counter reaches "infinity." However, it isn't limitless and the game stops functioning as playable on its own way before that point.
No Man's Sky's Universe
No Man's Sky has come quite a long way since its initial debut in 2016. While it initially released with less of the features than promised, developer Hello Games has continued to release content to take the game beyond what was thought possible, and all for free. One initial promise that was followed through on was the sheer size of the universe inside No Man's Sky. As stated by the developer from the beginning, it would be impossible to visit a whole fraction of all the planets inside No Man's Sky's universe.
No Man's Sky is made up of roughly 255 unique galaxies that can contain three to four billion regions. The regions contain hundreds of star systems and so on. This all goes on to say that if humanity wanted to discover every planet in No Man's Sky for just a second, it would take nearly 500 billion years to set foot on them all.
It's always exciting for game developers and the community to push these games as far as they can go. In the case of Minecraft, it shows how far the fanbase has been willing to experiment. In No Man's Sky, it's the result of a genius concept and delayed, but exceptional, execution. In the case of the latter, there is also something to be said about a game so large it will never be completed. However, as with all games that pose an impossible challenge, players will try to rise to it.
No Man's Sky is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.