The Star Citizen Thread v 4
- Thread starter Yaffle
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Well the best comparisons is with Steam Early Access games, that are a system very similar to SC's crowdfund (only without any obligations!), do still have massive peaks of sales after release, even after being more than 1 year playable as alpha/beta, it shows a large chunk of people who wants to play a finished game. As for CIG, does not a marketing share, that as you exemplified, is a huge slice of a game's budget, i don't think at all SC has reached the audience it can reach, being currently mostly "word of the mouth" by a backer number that is discussed to not be that big.
But all of this is on the future, right now is still early, many people ask me if they should get SC i just have to say not yet if you want to play it now as one early alpha that it is, the Persistent Universe needs to arrive, at least the whole system fleshed out, the first signs of economy, at least far said the first activity to be delivered is to be Cargo, and so on.
We'll get there!
Sorry to sound .. .. hmm less positive, but in my world he just sound like a guy who doesn't know where his own project are in the development process, and what road blocks are ahead, and what he need to do to remove them.
He sound like our sales department, always creating problems LOL
I think on a project the size of SC, it is quite hard for one person to always have an up-to-date view of everything, even if it's CR.
That, combined with the sheer quantity of places that new issues can appear from on a project of this scale, makes me somewhat forgiving of delays - but only up to a point.
I'm not a fan of their strategy of going completely silent over dates as a result, though; if you don't hit milestones, you learn from the error and make the plan more forgiving for the next stage. The fact that - if they have done this at all - it's now purely internal I think is unfortunate. It leads to the view we see a lot around the 'net which is "they're not doing anything, they can't even give us any dates for future releases" even if a lot is actually happening.
It also gives them scope to slip those internal dates as far and as often as they like with zero repercussions (other than the aforementioned complaining).
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He could just do what normal companies do: Silence. That is, Soon, and give info on releases when such is near one, instead of give their internal estimates, release dates and so on, as he usually did and things kept dragging.
However, some backers will scream Open Development! Hear by, it's a double edged sword, the last time something had "Soon" put on it, some people panicked it was cancelled.
However, some backers will scream Open Development! Hear by, it's a double edged sword, the last time something had "Soon" put on it, some people panicked it was cancelled.
He could just do what normal companies do: Silence. That is, Soon, and give info on releases when such is near one, instead of give their internal estimates, release dates and so on, as he usually did and things kept dragging.
However, some backers will scream Open Development! Hear by, it's a double edged sword, the last time something had "Soon" put on it, some people panicked it was cancelled.
Working to a deadline is very common, giving yourself no wiggle room to go wrong is where people get it wrong. It's best to give a mid range estimate for example :
You think you can deliver on "imaginary project x" in 6 months if nothing goes wrong, 12 months if things go badly.
Tell everyone 9 months, if it goes badly wrong you only delay by 3 months (no biggie as long as you tell people in advance as soon as you know) if it goes well you deliver 3 months early and look really good. Probably you do it in 9 months and there's no issue at all.
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Exactly, their biggest problem is communicating these type of things with the community.
I agree, but there are repercussions, more and more of backers get tired of waiting for updates, even on internal features.
I'm talking about the internal dates, thing they do give the backers and shouldn't. Those dates, are the ones that are constantly changing, being pinned and also changing priorities. That deadline any studio works on, is simply not revealed to the public until it's meant, that's why when one game is announced its development, if we're talking about AAA titles, it's usually already going for years.
The margin of error is not being present here and it should. At least recently the behavior changed when it comes to releases, date-driven not feature driven, and he already put expectations in place for SQ42 and what to expect of PU by the end of the year.
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If your internal dates and priorities are constantly changing then you have a problem, it is not normal in software development, no matter what Croberts and his followers say. Dates can change but constant change is a huge red flag for mis-management and waste.
Yaffle
Volunteer Moderator
I think the other point to make is that the project won't go late on the day before the deadline. It is already late by then. Communicating delays as they become apparent, together with reasons and solutions to the client is the key thing. Stakeholder management is a truly massive part of project management.
Jenner
I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
You really should give 2.0 a try now. It's much improved. Still not all the way there yet in terms of stability and performance (not to mention features naturally), but the experience is really very fun now. Being able to actually fly around a star system, do random missions, and team up with people on the same ship is quite satisfying.
I'm sorry but if one studio's internal dates and priorities keep changing then it's game development. It isn't a constant stream, specially on big projects. As they recently approached the Universe 2.0 release they decided to change some priorities to speed up development and efficiency, that is, focus on the Universe and not on AC / SM specific features currently, yet on the same mechanics present on both on the universe release (avoids to . That is the project adapting to reality and does a different approach that ends up being better than the original planned approach.
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Nope, if they keep changing then you have problems, it's not "game development". The last 10 for developers actually is quite chilling, they say their priorities can change HOURLY. That's complete madness, successful software dev projects don't work like that. You plan for releases, you plan for contingencies, you have a roadmap. If things change, you revisit the plan and then stick to it again, you don't change things on a whim as it usually create more problems than it solves. Shifting constantly focus is one of the best ways to have a project fail. The most fun part about SC is all the people who talk about software development based on what CIG says, it's surreal.
They changed the priority from release SM and AC to the Universe (PU) is that a problem and not a good choice? They are now maintain a single release, developing its features first instead of doing separate releases and need to maintain all of them at once. Is one example of game development. In here as well, they are doing this that also require much experiments and things that may or not work out, also causes this outcome.
The original plan wasn't that, but they realized it wouldn't be efficient to do so. I mean when i worked on such kind of work, things changed constantly, specially when almost every month as they reviewed all the work being done, that included every X months layoffs and positions moving internally to increase efficiency, they were very tight on the teams productivity goals. It's nothing new to me at least.
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Except that you don't know this. Can you actually track the project's progress? Can you see what is targeted in the next release, milestone? What is the roadmap? I can do that for many companies that keep their JIRA tracking public, you can see down to single feature and bug what's happening and what is coming.
The truth is the much vaunted CIGs open development is just a buzzword for people who can't or don't want to compare with others.
Layoffs, hires and internal changes btw are always disruptive, they are hardly positive on any project, at least in my experience.
Anyway, what matters is now that they seem to be concentrating on SQ42, with the PU probably getting breadcrumbs. This could be positive but only if they manage to keep CR from interfering too much or he will run this into the ground, as with his past projects.
Yes, and for sure he can't know everything, however he should have the grand picture, explained to him by those who do know what they are working with. It's like some one building a house. Do you want the electricians to come before of after the brickies? ok that was an easy one, but that is why you have building meetings, so that the main responsible receive the information needed to push the project forward.
I mean warning signs and red lights should go off much much sooner if there are an issue. CR is probably a nice guy, he's maybe also a great game developer, what he is not is a great PM, or business manager.
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Nope, sorry it's poor management period!
I'm actually worried you don't realize how wrong this comment is ;/
But that's up to the producers, they have to do all of that when it comes to tasking. A bit of everything happens, on my experience was really once something falling back, the tasking goes up-side down because a team is not delivering, then their tasks start becoming spread towards the other teams that can take it to reduce the impact, other times the whole thing priority is changed and it stays on hold awaiting new team assignment. I don't remember much of projects that wen't smoothly, as teams always depend on each other and even with all communicated and organized all it needs is one to fall back on something to the whole thing start to not working at all.
I know what my experience was. I don't see why you think development is such one pretty and constant stream that as long production and organization is well set, no problems arrive... I can't see it! Just depending on several teams, or external outsourced offices is problematic enough, i can't imagine what 4 studios with outsourced studios on hundreds of employees is to be set as, in the challenge it is to make it work as best as it can.
Things that can and do happen on game development, due several reasons!
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dayrth
Volunteer Moderator
I think you must have had a bad experience. Although unexpected things crop up and deadlines change, this should be the exception rather than the rule. Dates should definitely not keep changing and I'm basing this on my experience in over 20 years of software development. I am not a project manager though so I showed this statement: 'I'm sorry but if one studio's internal dates and priorities keep changing then it's game development.' to my project manager to see what he thought.
He laughed and walked away.
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