 By December 1987 , the game had sold over 100 @,@ 000 copies , and it eventually went on to sell over a million copies . Ybarra said at the time that the game had created a " beachhead in the arena of sci @-@ fi " for Electronic Arts . Lee said in 2010 , " I knew it was a classic while we were building it " . Starflight was one of the earliest games to use procedurally generated content for its planets and everything on them . The techniques used created a type of roguelike environment on each planet , with the contents randomly distributed . The story network was also one of the earliest examples of a sandbox game design . 
