Eight-month investigation reveals the troubled development of Star Citizen

[WYP]

An Eight-month investigation has revealed that Star Citizen has had a very troubled development, with a lot of bad design decisions and hosting stressful work environment for employees.



Read more on Star Citizen's Development troubles.

 

[Dark NighT]

Smells like another clickbait attempt, the studio isn't even in full development for 4 years, heck we not even at the 4 year mark for its original crowdfund campaign, and it took them a long time to get rolling on actual development.

either way, every studio has its issues, but because this game has such a crowdfunding and a few very bitter people attached to it, its suddenly super important?

Not being overly defensive, yeah they made some dumb decisions as well, but i still believe they can make one hell of a game here.

 

[NeverBackDown]

Not being overly defensive, yeah they made some dumb decisions as well, but i still believe they can make one hell of a game here.

That's the point though. Dumb decisions. It's delayed the game. No one doubts it'll be great, it's just taking an obscene amount of time and probably more money than it should

 

[SeekaX]

Smells like another clickbait attempt, the studio isn't even in full development for 4 years, heck we not even at the 4 year mark for its original crowdfund campaign, and it took them a long time to get rolling on actual development.

either way, every studio has its issues, but because this game has such a crowdfunding and a few very bitter people attached to it, its suddenly super important?

Not being overly defensive, yeah they made some dumb decisions as well, but i still believe they can make one hell of a game here.

Four years isn't a short time span, not even with a project like this one, especially with the funding they have. ED started around the same time.
Personally i lost all faith in the project years ago, simply because they focus on the wrong things. The dev team is incredibly cringy and the community unreasonable, just a matter of time till it all comes crashing down.

 

[mdavidat]

Four years isn't a short time span, not even with a project like this one, especially with the funding they have. ED started around the same time.
Personally i lost all faith in the project years ago, simply because they focus on the wrong things. The dev team is incredibly cringy and the community unreasonable, just a matter of time till it all comes crashing down.

Let me compare it to Mass Effect: Andromeda which is in development since about the same time as Star Citizen. ME:A is scheduled for Q1 2017 after it got delayed. SC does not have a date yet and that is no shocker to me. Bioware has had 2 big studios in Edmonton and Montreal working almost exclusively on it since 2012. Star Citizen at that time had a development team of about 15 people and it took them more than 2 years to get to a number where it can be compared to other AAA studios. Just think about that for a moment and don't just compare what kind of financial support they have received.

I understand that people think it's in development for an eternity when we are used to publishers talking about a game maybe 1 year, maybe 1 1/2 years before they release but when they where actually in development for 2 to 4 years before that.

 

[SeekaX]

Let me compare it to Mass Effect: Andromeda which is in development since about the same time as Star Citizen. ME:A is scheduled for Q1 2017 after it got delayed. SC does not have a date yet and that is no shocker to me. Bioware has had 2 big studios in Edmonton and Montreal working almost exclusively on it since 2012. Star Citizen at that time had a development team of about 15 people and it took them more than 2 years to get to a number where it can be compared to other AAA studios. Just think about that for a moment and don't just compare what kind of financial support they have received.

I understand that people think it's in development for an eternity when we are used to publishers talking about a game maybe 1 year, maybe 1 1/2 years before they release but when they where actually in development for 2 to 4 years before that.

Your justification for how long Star Citizen is taking is comparing it to another game which was delayed? It's a completely different genre as well, Mass Effect needs far more art development than SC and that takes time. If i remember correctly the release date was originally scheduled for 2015, then moved to 2016 and now it's looking like 2017 is unlikely, despite their funding constantly increasing. If they can't stick with a schedule with $120m in funding they created with ~$15m in funding that makes me wonder what the original plan was or if there even was one. I've compared it to Elite Dangerous which is at least in the same genre. It has less funding, started slightly later, to be fair a little less ambitious maybe, but that game had proper builds out for two years now. Star Citizen also got funded in 2012, in 2013 they definitely had far more than 15 developers. I'm very well aware that games are considerably longer in development than they get advertised, but SC is definitely off pace. Their planning is a mess which is why they haven't been able to meet a single planned release date since the hangar, i don't know why anyone would deny that.

 

[Dicehunter]

Considering they've gotten $124 Million donated to them from over 1.5 Million people since this project started I don't really have any faith that this game will properly release as all I ever see is "Buy our new $300 ship which you can fly around in a small part of space".

 

[NeverBackDown]

While I don't play/own/follow them, it's a pretty well known fact that SC while extremely ambitious and has immense potential, is terribly organized. If they had a more clear plan from the beginning and stopped adding additional stuff before setting up timelines like features/ships/ etc from every fund milestone, they probably would be releasing already.

 

[KTM_RULZ]

What this game promised was not technically possible from the start. There is no way that people from Australia can dogfight with people in China, Europe and the US in one consistent universe. First of all there are latency issues. Then they would need one kick ass data center to monitor the actions of millions of people world wide. I remember Aion EU on its good days. As soon as a few hundred players would gather on a fort for siege, servers would lag out and players would disconnect. And there were more than one regional servers. They want to do it on a world wide scale?

 

[TheF34RChannel]

I'm considering getting into this game shortly, but at the same time I have issues paying a lot of money for an alpha with everything subject to change. Good posts everyone, they give me food for thought so thanks!

 

[mazty]

These "investigative pieces" are all just laughably stupid, coming from a bunch of kids who have no idea what they are talking about. If they had actually worked for a company and been involved in project management, it is absolutely no surprise that a project which is technically pushing the boundaries is running into a few issues and is over schedule. That is completely normal. Optimal? No, but again, absolutely normal.

Your justification for how long Star Citizen is taking is comparing it to another game which was delayed? It's a completely different genre as well, Mass Effect needs far more art development than SC and that takes time. If i remember correctly the release date was originally scheduled for 2015, then moved to 2016 and now it's looking like 2017 is unlikely, despite their funding constantly increasing. If they can't stick with a schedule with $120m in funding they created with ~$15m in funding that makes me wonder what the original plan was or if there even was one. I've compared it to Elite Dangerous which is at least in the same genre. It has less funding, started slightly later, to be fair a little less ambitious maybe, but that game had proper builds out for two years now. Star Citizen also got funded in 2012, in 2013 they definitely had far more than 15 developers. I'm very well aware that games are considerably longer in development than they get advertised, but SC is definitely off pace. Their planning is a mess which is why they haven't been able to meet a single planned release date since the hangar, i don't know why anyone would deny that.

ME:A and Elite Dangerous may look similar to what SC is doing, but they are not similar at all. First of all, SC took a very long time to create dynamic physic grid transitions, something no developer has ever even tried to tackle. Now they are working on getting the network up to scratch which is a challenge due to CryEngine being too detailed with the info it transfers to client. Due to the scope of the project, they are having to make practically everything from the ground up. That is going to take a lot more time than making something that's been done before, or is merely utilising what a game engine already offers.

Anyone with experience with project management would see SC and realise that it's running as would be expected for a project of it's size and scope. Nothing to be worried about.

 

[SeekaX]

These "investigative pieces" are all just laughably stupid, coming from a bunch of kids who have no idea what they are talking about. If they had actually worked for a company and been involved in project management, it is absolutely no surprise that a project which is technically pushing the boundaries is running into a few issues and is over schedule. That is completely normal. Optimal? No, but again, absolutely normal.


ME:A and Elite Dangerous may look similar to what SC is doing, but they are not similar at all. First of all, SC took a very long time to create dynamic physic grid transitions, something no developer has ever even tried to tackle. Now they are working on getting the network up to scratch which is a challenge due to CryEngine being too detailed with the info it transfers to client. Due to the scope of the project, they are having to make practically everything from the ground up. That is going to take a lot more time than making something that's been done before, or is merely utilising what a game engine already offers.

Anyone with experience with project management would see SC and realise that it's running as would be expected for a project of it's size and scope. Nothing to be worried about.

Elite Dangerous has been made from scratch as well, even the engine has been made from scratch, which is what SC should have done as well because cryengine is not suited for this type of game or any game in general. There are loads of issues they could've avoided with a custom engine but they didn't because their planning is a mess and they are in over their head. You can't just attribute all of their shortcomings to them pushing the boundaries of what is possible, that's a poor excuse for bad planning.
Bringing Mass Effect into the discussion was all you mate, don't backpedal on that. ED is about as similar to SC as it gets, some gimmicky physics effects don't change much about that, it's certainly not integral to the game and hence shouldn't have been a priority, but they still spent a lot of time on it because of poor planning and prioritization. There are delays caused by unforseen issues and there are delays caused by incompetence, i can fully understand the former but for the latter they deserve to be put on blast.

 

[mazty]

Elite Dangerous has been made from scratch as well, even the engine has been made from scratch, which is what SC should have done as well because cryengine is not suited for this type of game or any game in general. There are loads of issues they could've avoided with a custom engine but they didn't because their planning is a mess and they are in over their head. You can't just attribute all of their shortcomings to them pushing the boundaries of what is possible, that's a poor excuse for bad planning.
Bringing Mass Effect into the discussion was all you mate, don't backpedal on that. ED is about as similar to SC as it gets, some gimmicky physics effects don't change much about that, it's certainly not integral to the game and hence shouldn't have been a priority, but they still spent a lot of time on it because of poor planning and prioritization. There are delays caused by unforseen issues and there are delays caused by incompetence, i can fully understand the former but for the latter they deserve to be put on blast.

That's just not true - Elite Dangerous uses the COBRA engine, something that has been around since 1988:
http://www.frontier.co.uk/our_technology/

Making an engine from scratch would not make business sense as you couldn't quickly prototype anything, you would have to create every single backend system, and you would have to train every programmer from scratch. Taking something that is already there and modifying it has it's fair share of headaches, but tends to be better overall.

Also different person - I didn't bring in ME:A. Gimmicky physics effects? That just shows how little you know, and if you're not willing to recognise massive technological barriers, how on earth can you then judge if a project is performing well or not? Also the physics grids are absolutely essential to the game...Nice to see you clearly don't understand what you're criticising.

Do you have any experience with either partaking in, or managing large projects?

 

[SeekaX]

That's just not true - Elite Dangerous uses the COBRA engine, something that has been around since 1988:
http://www.frontier.co.uk/our_technology/

Making an engine from scratch would not make business sense as you couldn't quickly prototype anything, you would have to create every single backend system, and you would have to train every programmer from scratch. Taking something that is already there and modifying it has it's fair share of headaches, but tends to be better overall.

Also different person - I didn't bring in ME:A. Gimmicky physics effects? That just shows how little you know, and if you're not willing to recognise massive technological barriers, how on earth can you then judge if a project is performing well or not? Also the physics grids are absolutely essential to the game...Nice to see you clearly don't understand what you're criticising.

Do you have any experience with either partaking in, or managing large projects?

Sorry, i typed that reply up on my phone and didn't pay much attention to the username.
The point about the engine was that it is their own in house engine, they have full control over it and hence could mold it for one purpose, CryEngine has to work for a large variety of games and is usually not chosen for large open world games because it doesn't perform particularly well for that. Repurposing it for a game like Star Citizen means that you have to do extensive modifications to make it work at all and the final product is still not going to be great, they'll have to make an awful lot of backend systems from scratch anyways. Yes, for a lot of games it makes sense to just rely on a third party engine but when you make a game which has very specific requirements it tends to pay off going the extra mile. I absolutely recognize the technological barrier, i just don't consider it a barrier worth conquering at this point because a more basic solution would've allowed the game to progress quicker and a more advanced solution could've been implemented later without much hassle. ED got the basics done first and then started adding stuff like planetary landings while the game already had some value for the people who purchased it. Two years after the Kickstarter there was already a fairly basic but solid game.
I don't partake or manage large projects, but that certainly doesn't stop me from understanding poor decision making. I don't even see how that's relevant either, when a developer is off pace by years then that's poor planning because he clearly couldn't grasp the scale of the project when he started it, why should i have faith in his planning abilities now just because the magnitude of what he's trying to achieve has hit him? When you don't know how long it takes to finish a project you give yourself ample amounts of time to do so or you put yourself in a position where a delay doesn't mean the entire project is on halt.

 

[mazty]

Sorry, i typed that reply up on my phone and didn't pay much attention to the username.
The point about the engine was that it is their own in house engine, they have full control over it and hence could mold it for one purpose, CryEngine has to work for a large variety of games and is usually not chosen for large open world games because it doesn't perform particularly well for that. Repurposing it for a game like Star Citizen means that you have to do extensive modifications to make it work at all and the final product is still not going to be great, they'll have to make an awful lot of backend systems from scratch anyways. Yes, for a lot of games it makes sense to just rely on a third party engine but when you make a game which has very specific requirements it tends to pay off going the extra mile. I absolutely recognize the technological barrier, i just don't consider it a barrier worth conquering at this point because a more basic solution would've allowed the game to progress quicker and a more advanced solution could've been implemented later without much hassle. ED got the basics done first and then started adding stuff like planetary landings while the game already had some value for the people who purchased it. Two years after the Kickstarter there was already a fairly basic but solid game.
I don't partake or manage large projects, but that certainly doesn't stop me from understanding poor decision making. I don't even see how that's relevant either, when a developer is off pace by years then that's poor planning because he clearly couldn't grasp the scale of the project when he started it, why should i have faith in his planning abilities now just because the magnitude of what he's trying to achieve has hit him? When you don't know how long it takes to finish a project you give yourself ample amounts of time to do so or you put yourself in a position where a delay doesn't mean the entire project is on halt.

Where are you getting your "facts" from?? CryEngine is absolutely fine for large open worlds, as proven by Entropia Universe. With Star Citizen, no engine, even a custom one, would be able to readily, or easily, handle the game due to the scale and scope of it.

What are you basing your claim on that the final product won't be great? Do you have some in depth knowledge of customising CryEngine? Also you've ignored the point that using a custom engine would require training all staff how to use it, whereas Cloud Imperium was able to get a ton of CryEngine devs (mainly based in Frankfurt office). Making something from scratch would unquestionably have been much, much slower.

Also you clearly have no idea what the physics grid issue is. Removing it means you couldn't walk around ships mid-flight. That would be a complete game-breaker. Also how on earth can you make the statement "a move advanced solution could be implemented later without much hassle"?? That is absolute guess work from you based on nothing.

It's very obvious you don't work with projects because you've made one of the rookie mistakes of thinking assumptions are facts. They're not. You can't just presume that replacing one system with another later down the road will be easy. That's poor decision making. Choosing to let release dates slip but keep quality high and content intact is a completely acceptable and well known project management choice. Also they are not "off pace" by years. The project massively expanded its scope beyond what was initially offered, so of course the release date was going to massively change...Also project roadblocks are a well known issue in tech companies. Trying to claim that a project won't suffer from them when it's this ambitious is just not realistic...

 

[SeekaX]

Where are you getting your "facts" from?? CryEngine is absolutely fine for large open worlds, as proven by Entropia Universe. With Star Citizen, no engine, even a custom one, would be able to readily, or easily, handle the game due to the scale and scope of it.

CryEngine is terrible for absolutely everything except screenshots and cutscenes. It's an engine made to be licensed, hence it's not really optimized for anything in particular.

What are you basing your claim on that the final product won't be great? Do you have some in depth knowledge of customising CryEngine? Also you've ignored the point that using a custom engine would require training all staff how to use it, whereas Cloud Imperium was able to get a ton of CryEngine devs (mainly based in Frankfurt office). Making something from scratch would unquestionably have been much, much slower.

The end result won't be as good as it could be with an in house engine, i made no remarks regarding the quality of the game in general. They have $120m in funding, maybe they shouldn't take shortcuts which impact the quality of the game even though they can afford to do a better job, having to learn how to work with a new engine would've been worth it and programmers need to adapt to new environments all the time anyways, considering that you are totally fine with them spending years on developing gimmicks i'm surprised that asking for a solid basis is just too expensive and takes too long.

Also you clearly have no idea what the physics grid issue is. Removing it means you couldn't walk around ships mid-flight. That would be a complete game-breaker. Also how on earth can you make the statement "a move advanced solution could be implemented later without much hassle"?? That is absolute guess work from you based on nothing.

Oh yea, completely unplayable, the game would basically not exist without the gimmick of being able to walk around the ship, that needs to be there on launch, absolutely essential.
Engines and programming projects in general are made modular, when you put in a placeholder solution with a more advanced solution already in mind it's unlikely to be struggle to swap them out later. If implementing turns out to be problematic, it wouldn't interfere with players being able to play the game until they figure it out, hence it's not much of a hassle. There's far less pressure to deliver when you already have a working solution in place.

You can't just presume that replacing one system with another later down the road will be easy. That's poor decision making. Choosing to let release dates slip but keep quality high and content intact is a completely acceptable and well known project management choice. Also they are not "off pace" by years. The project massively expanded its scope beyond what was initially offered, so of course the release date was going to massively change...Also project roadblocks are a well known issue in tech companies. Trying to claim that a project won't suffer from them when it's this ambitious is just not realistic...

I can presume that replacing a working system later down the road with a different one is going to have less of an impact on the progress of the project than getting hung up on the advanced solution first, which considering that the game is crowdfunded and hence has players waiting on results would've been a smart decision. With the scope of the project expanding they also got considerably more funding, which if planned correctly would've meant that the release date would've remained roughly the same with added content based on how much more the far larger workforce can handle and then increased post launch support. Just because ambitious projects are expected to have delays doesn't mean that the way they handled the project so far is flawless.

It's very obvious you don't work with projects because you've made one of the rookie mistakes of thinking assumptions are facts. They're not.

Where's the connection between working on large projects and thinking assumptions are facts? That's just an ad hominem argument to discredit me. Where am i even assuming that assumptions are facts except for the instances where you conveniently overinterpret what i say?

 

[Dicehunter]

I like cheese.

 

[NeverBackDown]

Just wondering here, but Mazty, do you even have working experience for game companies let alone a degree in at least the Computer Science field? If not, i'd just stop making excuses and defending. Because while you are claiming Seeka has no clue what he's talking about, if you have neither the credentials or experience, then it's also clear you don't know either and have no argumentative position against him besides opinion vs opinion. Which is pretty clear so far in this "no i'm right, you're wrong" thread.

 

[Dicehunter]

Just wondering here, but Mazty, do you even have working experience for game companies let alone a degree in at least the Computer Science field? If not, i'd just stop making excuses and defending. Because while you are claiming Seeka has no clue what he's talking about, if you have neither the credentials or experience, then it's also clear you don't know either and have no argumentative position against him besides opinion vs opinion. Which is pretty clear so far in this "no i'm right, you're wrong" thread.

From what I've played so far it seems like they have a very very long way to go before they have a complete game.

I also think they should have used something more inhouse as opposed to Cryengine which runs like a dog to begin with, Suffers from horrendous input lag and as Seekax said outside of screenshots and cutscenes really isn't all that.

 

[NeverBackDown]

From what I've played so far it seems like they have a very very long way to go before they have a complete game.

I also think they should have used something more inhouse as opposed to Cryengine which runs like a dog to begin with, Suffers from horrendous input lag and as Seekax said outside of screenshots and cutscenes really isn't all that.

Cryengine is a strong engine that has downfalls, like everything else. However any project or game will always benefit from a custom built one. That doesn't mean it's always needed, but for a game like SC, an in house is definitely one of the few situations where it's really the only option. UE4 wouldn't do this game justice either. Really nothing would tbh, no engine is designed to do everything they are asking, and they are asking for perfection on top if that