I am going to resist impulse buying Watchdogs and the new AssCreed, which might have been likely especially with this damned delay. I end up buying those things and I never come close to finishing them and end up berating myself for thinking that "this is the one I'll enjoy playing" and getting burned by the same formulaic rubbish again.
Game Discussions Cyberpunk 2077 - official gameplay
- Thread starter rootsrat
- Start date
I guess we're all sat here hoping that CP 2077 isn't the same formulaic rubbish again. Neither of those games appeal to me at all. FM2021 might, but that's another story...
If CP turns out to be formulaic rubbish I think that will be the death knell for me and single player gaming to a large extent.
There are so very very few decent developers making great single player games for my taste. People like Arkane, Larian, and CDproject make games I can spend time inside. I'd give it up if those sorts of developers started releasing the usual market tripe.
There are so very very few decent developers making great single player games for my taste. People like Arkane, Larian, and CDproject make games I can spend time inside. I'd give it up if those sorts of developers started releasing the usual market tripe.
FM2021 will be my entertainment until CP2077. I've been playing thgis since the early 90;s, when it was still called Championship Manager and the whole game was just large green buttons and lists.
Many times I play it together with ED, alt-tab out of ED when starting supercruise, then alt-tab out of FM when starting the first half of a match
Funny thing I no longer care much about football in real life, but still love developing youngsters into stars, and managing the team, finding bargains, negotiating contracts, purchases and sales etc.
<insert Anticipation>
I've never understood why game development don't include extra time for those inevitable delays in their estimates. Given that consumers can practically set their clocks to those delays, you'd think it would be industry standard.
Both gaming and general software development do include extra time for all sorts of things in their schedules and good project managers usually double that. In my opinion the problem is that software developers are in generally optimists, they believe it can be done and done in software, even when it turns out it cannot
. Even the most pessimistic developer tend to underestimate the complexity of the development task. I have worked in sites where estimation was required in a range from most likely to worst case and from experience I can tell you they were all wide of the mark. Even when the project manager doubled the duration estimate it was still wrong and I am talking multi year time lines with 10+ software engineers alone excluding all the others required to release a new product. A great deal has been written about estimation, lots of different techniques have been created and tried yet here we are today and still lots of games, comercial software developement still runs late or worse never completes, gets cancelled and/or ends up in litigation.
Yep, stupid idea. Companies should only announce when they have something to release. Worked fine throughout the 80s and 90s. This stupidity is a recent phenomena related to hyping sales and "modern marketing".
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
I hear you, I think I m getting old for games
at least for some!
Dizzy is completely correct about estimates - I would also add that some of the issues are psychological:
1) devs are people, they want to please - and nothing pleases a boss like a short estimate (nothing displeases a boss like missing that estimate!)
2) devs are people - if you give them a week for a task it will probably take a week (you may get a very pretty piece of software if it only actually needed a day!)
This is why most projects will now set an end-date and work to that - throwing stuff overboard once it becomes clear you cannot complete it in time. Cyberpunk has had stuff cut - either for that reason or because it just wasn't very good.
Which brings us to the other reason software is hard to estimate - writing software is a creative process. So you might write something like, for instance, Wall Running, and get to the end of developing it - then decide it's not great and needs pulling out. Or re-writing. Obviously pulling it out takes hardly any time, but re-writing it might take weeks or months - and until you reach that point you don't know which will happen (or maybe it's great and stays in). So any estimate before you make that decision will be wildly pessimistic / optimistic / correct.
Software processes are fun
1) devs are people, they want to please - and nothing pleases a boss like a short estimate (nothing displeases a boss like missing that estimate!)
2) devs are people - if you give them a week for a task it will probably take a week (you may get a very pretty piece of software if it only actually needed a day!)
This is why most projects will now set an end-date and work to that - throwing stuff overboard once it becomes clear you cannot complete it in time. Cyberpunk has had stuff cut - either for that reason or because it just wasn't very good.
Which brings us to the other reason software is hard to estimate - writing software is a creative process. So you might write something like, for instance, Wall Running, and get to the end of developing it - then decide it's not great and needs pulling out. Or re-writing. Obviously pulling it out takes hardly any time, but re-writing it might take weeks or months - and until you reach that point you don't know which will happen (or maybe it's great and stays in). So any estimate before you make that decision will be wildly pessimistic / optimistic / correct.
Software processes are fun
I've been a commercial software dev since I was 16 years old (48 now). I can only give you my experience.
During that time, software development hasn't really changed all that much. Sure, the technologies we use have evolved and changed etc, but the actual processes remain much the same... and they're "borrowed" from hardware engineering principles. Games development a bit less so - as that tends to be more ad-hoc and agile in nature.
What tends to happen at the start of a project is you define your product in three basic areas -
1) the core functionality (the stuff that the product has to have & has to work, no arguments).
2) the nice to have (what sets your product apart from the competition and what you can market as a selling point).
3) the dreaded WIBNIFs (wouldn't it be nice if?).
WIBNIFs tend to come from random thoughts that get shouted out during brainstorming sessions, and you want to capture, so they go into the plan. They're not crucial for the product to work - but they're "cool" and could be elevated to "nice to haves" if done well. They can also turn your project into something truly special.
So a developer might get a single sprint (say 2 weeks) to work on the WIBNIF, but if it's not done, or doesn't work well enough, it gets thrown away. This is absolutely normal and OK. I've had arguments with project managers before now who say that is a waste of money - and I get that, however even if you end up throwing all that code and effort away, you learn from the experience and carry that over into the next unit of work... which might be a piece of core functionality. The experience of "failure" stands you in better stead for that.
A good project manager not only doubles a developer's estimate (because we are, on the whole, really bad at it), but keeps their eye on the ball in terms of those three areas. The worst thing that can happen to a project is that it gets overtaken by WIBNIFs (see Star Citizen) because it will likely never be released. You'll always come up with new WIBNIFs to add to the pile. Scope creep is the enemy of all software, regardless of what it is. But you also have to balance that with being agile and flexible as needs change.
This is why I think something like Red Dead Redemption 2 is a modern software engineering masterpiece (I'll die on this hill). They not only captured the first two criteria well, but were able to put enough WIBNIFs in that makes it something special. So few games (or even pieces of software generally) are able to do this.
It worries me a bit that CDPR have delayed the game by another three weeks, because the only thing that should really do that is if the core functionality is broken on some platforms. That's a bit concerning to me.
During that time, software development hasn't really changed all that much. Sure, the technologies we use have evolved and changed etc, but the actual processes remain much the same... and they're "borrowed" from hardware engineering principles. Games development a bit less so - as that tends to be more ad-hoc and agile in nature.
What tends to happen at the start of a project is you define your product in three basic areas -
1) the core functionality (the stuff that the product has to have & has to work, no arguments).
2) the nice to have (what sets your product apart from the competition and what you can market as a selling point).
3) the dreaded WIBNIFs (wouldn't it be nice if?).
WIBNIFs tend to come from random thoughts that get shouted out during brainstorming sessions, and you want to capture, so they go into the plan. They're not crucial for the product to work - but they're "cool" and could be elevated to "nice to haves" if done well. They can also turn your project into something truly special.
So a developer might get a single sprint (say 2 weeks) to work on the WIBNIF, but if it's not done, or doesn't work well enough, it gets thrown away. This is absolutely normal and OK. I've had arguments with project managers before now who say that is a waste of money - and I get that, however even if you end up throwing all that code and effort away, you learn from the experience and carry that over into the next unit of work... which might be a piece of core functionality. The experience of "failure" stands you in better stead for that.
A good project manager not only doubles a developer's estimate (because we are, on the whole, really bad at it), but keeps their eye on the ball in terms of those three areas. The worst thing that can happen to a project is that it gets overtaken by WIBNIFs (see Star Citizen) because it will likely never be released. You'll always come up with new WIBNIFs to add to the pile. Scope creep is the enemy of all software, regardless of what it is. But you also have to balance that with being agile and flexible as needs change.
This is why I think something like Red Dead Redemption 2 is a modern software engineering masterpiece (I'll die on this hill). They not only captured the first two criteria well, but were able to put enough WIBNIFs in that makes it something special. So few games (or even pieces of software generally) are able to do this.
It worries me a bit that CDPR have delayed the game by another three weeks, because the only thing that should really do that is if the core functionality is broken on some platforms. That's a bit concerning to me.
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yeah, it sounds like it's mainly theIt worries me a bit that CDPR have delayed the game by another three weeks, because the only thing that should really do that is if the core functionality is broken on some platforms. That's a bit concerning to me.
Source: https://twitter.com/pcgamer/status/1321728492514455552?s=20
though if that's the case I don't know why they don't just delay those ... but hey, that's a management-level decision
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yeah, it sounds like it's mainly thenextcurrent-gen consoles need some tweaks
Source: https://twitter.com/pcgamer/status/1321728492514455552?s=20
though if that's the case I don't know why they don't just delay those ... but hey, that's a management-level decision
Aye, I read the statement and saw some of the tweetstorm afterwards, but that's what concerns me.
They've had this hardware for a good number of months now... unless the retail hardware/software has changed significantly from the dev kit, why is this only being picked up on now?
I'm assuming they want some time off post-release for Christmas etc, so want everything "perfect" as much as it can be before then so people aren't left angry and frustrated while the devs are tucking into their well-earned turkey, but even so...
I was thinking they meant the next-gen as well - but they seem to more be talking about current gen - which is more surprising as surely they've been out for years? The linked article has quotes from CDPR that get increasingly worrying - starting at 'we're polishing current-gen consoles' and ending with 'we hope to have it out in December' ...
I never finish the typical Ubisoft Icon hunt games either. these days I wait till I can get them under a tenner in a sale, so at least I don't feel ripped off. I'm currently back on RDR2. That is open world done right. There is tons of interesting stuff to find and it isn't all signposted. Last night I caught the serial killer for the first time. It's not even obvious there is a serial killer if you don't explore and find the clues!
You hit the nail on the head with "Open world done right". That's what I loved about games like Witcher series and such. Large game areas that drew you in to explore. The ubi method of plonking down dozens of different types of icons which all led to doing the same type of gameplay got very boring for me. Yet damnit I still bought the stupid things because I always felt this was the one that will break the pattern.
Wrong.
Wrong.
[OldPersonAlert]
I've been playing for longer than that... think the original on the C64 by Kevin Toms. You could press CTRL+RESTORE in the game, and it would break out and you could study / change the actual source code of the game (written in BASIC!). Played almost every iteration since then - think I skipped a few years with the whole Championship Manager debacle on PC/Amiga, but I always try and get the mighty Arbroath to the top of the Premier League at some point.
[/OldPersonAlert]
Many times I play it together with ED, alt-tab out of ED when starting supercruise, then alt-tab out of FM when starting the first half of a match
It's really good as a "background game" - since it's almost permanently in "pause" mode, and takes up very few resources when running in the background, you can do that.
I think between this, and MFS, I'll cope with not being able to play CP 2077 during my week off.
Random fun fact: We don't eat turkey for Xmas. And turkey isn't even special in Poland. It is viewed below pork or beef, and certainly there isn't many trying to cook whole turkeys (chicken is a different kind of beast though). Traditionally it is a meat-free feast on the Christmas Eve, we usually eat traditional red beet borscht (in some homes like mine it's different - sour soup + mushroom based broth) with mushroom stuffed ravioli, and a fish as a second course. If someone's really traditional then there's twelve courses (ya, rly). Then it's one to two days of feasting on kinda "Swedish table" of cold cuts, salads etc. (because usually the persons cooking the 12 dishes eve want to rest on Xmas too, you know). Lunch on the first day of Xmas is rather uncommon, at least where I come from. On second day things usually go back to normal, although the breakfast and dinner are probably still the cold-cuts and salads prepared for Xmas.
As for the game, I think they try hard to get it out before Christmas because it's Christmas gifts season ;-)
That's also too late as we open the presents on 24th in the evening ;-)))Wouldnt surprise me now if this got pushed back to the 25th just in time for Christmas