[Akalabeth Angel]

Releasing a "finished" product restricts further game development because you have to keep in mind to not break the game for the players and to support the product. It is not a good thing! It is a modern fad. You risk ending up like Elite or Minecraft or multitude of other modern games with open development model that are perpetually stuck in mediocrity. A game that is "finished", stable, yet shallow and the devs are afraid to touch it.

A thousand games would gladly risk ending up like Minecraft, if by ending up like Minecraft you mean ludicrously popular and successful.

[Jeff Vader]

SC has already been a source of much entertainment to me. I don't care if there will ever be a game. The journey there seems to be better.

[karajorma]

maslo, the people in this forum have worked on games, as amateurs and professionals in some cases, or on software projects, or on similar endeavours. Some of us have even had the misfortune of having experienced SC-style mismanagement ourselves, or have through inexperience caused these issues ourselves. You keep claiming this is a case of us being impatient. No. This is us seeing parallels to projects that have failed, in some cases spectacularly so, and us being exasperated about the true believers like you who seem willfully ignorant of what is going on.

It's worse than that though. Without people like Maslo, CIG would be feeling pressure to actually get something released that was playable. They would have to cut back on their dreams and release something that wasn't attempting to be the most perfectly realistic space sim ever, but instead was a good space combat game.

But with all their cult members shouting down anyone who points out that they are doing things wrong, they can continue doing what they are doing. And the result is that SC will almost certainly spectacularly fail to be what they want if it ever comes out at all. They're basically their own worst enemies.

[Firesteel]

As the project lead on a bullet hell/6DOF game, feature creep is something I've already had to begin to clamp down on, even after just coming out of prototyping. As one of my software engineering professors says, new features are shiny and designers like shiny objects. In my experience, producers (and leads at times) need to be able to say no to features and that hasn't happened with CR and SC.

maslo, the people in this forum have worked on games, as amateurs and professionals in some cases, or on software projects, or on similar endeavours. Some of us have even had the misfortune of having experienced SC-style mismanagement ourselves, or have through inexperience caused these issues ourselves. You keep claiming this is a case of us being impatient. No. This is us seeing parallels to projects that have failed, in some cases spectacularly so, and us being exasperated about the true believers like you who seem willfully ignorant of what is going on.

It's worse than that though. Without people like Maslo, CIG would be feeling pressure to actually get something released that was playable. They would have to cut back on their dreams and release something that wasn't attempting to be the most perfectly realistic space sim ever, but instead was a good space combat game.

But with all their cult members shouting down anyone who points out that they are doing things wrong, they can continue doing what they are doing. And the result is that SC will almost certainly spectacularly fail to be what they want if it ever comes out at all. They're basically their own worst enemies.

I agree. Instead of having a strict timetable (as in my case) or investors/companies worried about bleeding money, CIG has a legion of people throwing money and blind belief at them, allowing them to drink their own koolaid. As nice as dreams are, there needs to be something tethering them to reality, be it time and money or limits placed on a project through collaboration and CIG seems to have none of these limiting factors present.

[Rheyah]

I should note:  the Vapourware Citizen debacle has taught me a lot about development that I probably should have known before getting started on my own Freespace 2 campaign.

It reeks of my own crappy development style.  As such, I never bought into it.  By direct comparison, Elite Dangerous is a technically less promising game, but has delivered vastly more content and as such has had plenty of play from me.

[Bryan See]

Me too. I got Elite Dangerous during my last birthday.

As for the Vapourware Citizen debacle, I just hope that this will be a lesson for game developers and modders alike.

[The E]

I'm curious, what lessons are you drawing from it, Bryan? Considering that you're planning to make "the biggest modpack ever"?

[headdie]

"the biggest mod pack ever" is in itself not a bad thing so long as there are clear project goals and feature creep is kept in check.  SC was always going to be a pretty ambitious project but because of the previous mentioned reasons the feature creep has gotten out of control which is the lesson Bryan See can take from this.

[Polpolion]

Mods are different. People make mods because they enjoy making mods, not because they're trying to earn a living or need to give their customers a product they paid for. If you care about people playing your mod, sure, but that's not the whole story.

[Kszyhu]

I hope it's not too off-topic. Scott Manley has released a KSP homage to (or an attempt to take the piss out of) CIGs planet video:

[Akalabeth Angel]

Hahaha

[Aesaar]

Scott Manley has gone from being super-excited about SC to posting in the SA thread.  It's great.

[Phantom Hoover]

The cultists turned on him really, really fast when he chipped in with a measured opinion after the Smart Heresy. It was pretty sad.

[AdmiralRalwood]

checkmate nerds

[That Man]

<snip>

checkmate nerds

 

[Spoon]

This thread continues to amuse

[Aesaar]

The point at which SC is fully released as a ground breaking space simulation game, offering top quality dog-fighting with realistic Newtonian physics, full planetary exploration of high quality procedurally generated planets, all previously mentioned professions and character development implemented in a fun way, a fully functioning and balanced economy where piracy, mining, trading, passenger transportation, news reporting, auditing, exploration and all other gameplay types are fully viable and fun. Functional and enjoyable ship boarding mechanics, with FPS mechanics rivalling the latest generation of dedicated FPS games. All of the PU features fully supported in an offline mode as well as an online one. A lengthy and deep single player campaign. Every other promised feature that I have no doubt forgotten about, fully implemented in a fun and enjoyable way. All of this providing lasting enjoyment of at least 6 months to everyone, from those who have $30,000 invested to those who have just $30 without any feeling of pay to win advantage being given to those who paid more while at the same time ensuring that they do not feel as if they have been ripped off, in a universe of over a million concurrent players with battles involving 200 individuals or more.

SC's scope is so absurd.  If I hadn't been following this trainwreck since its inception, I wouldn't believe it was real.

[Phantom Hoover]

An enterprising redditor demonstrates why you shouldn't design a game by making up numbers for JPEG sales brochures. tl;dr: CIG are selling superfreighters which will be able to undermine the planned economy of the game (and the revenue stream keeping the servers online) by 4 orders of magnitude. Bonus: watch fanboys try to fabricate new mechanics to work around the laws of economics!

[Aesaar]

This email exchange between Sandi (and other CS people at CIG) and Beer4TheBeerGod is amazing.  Long, but so worth it.

Best quotes (word-for-word):

"[...] for more than 3 years I have done the work of at least 6 people and I am a shrewd businesswoman with a lot of experience in business.  This project would not be here without me."

"I am one of the best saleswomen in the world beyond a shadow of a doubt and always have been since I was a very small girl."

"You want a **** game or do you want to wait?"

"You seemingly cooperated with [Derek Smart] to spread secret information gained by questionable means.  This could be construed as aiding and abetting corporate espionage."


You can tell it's a very professional company when the #2 person in charge is arguing with you over email, talking about how an amazing worker she is, saying the game as originally pitched would have been ****, and accusing nonbelievers of being 'butt-hurt'. 

Also accidentally confirming that things like the David Jennison letter are real.

[Sushi]

CIG / Sandi really should have avoided talking about everything outside the refund & support issues. I suppose offering a full refund is OK too, but asking "why not?"and then engaging with the response was a waste of time.

Real dick move to post the conversation without explicit permission though.