Eight-month investigation reveals the troubled development of Star Citizen

[SuB]

No, but there is literally no good reason why project management practices, which are very specifically designed to be transferable across industries, aren't applicable to the games industry. In fact it's my personal belief that a lot of games are very poor quality nowadays because the developers (as in the company) are stuck in the dark ages when it comes to both project management and modern IT practices.

Well while I respect that, unfortunately as CIG are constantly proving, believing something doesn't necessarily just magic it into life or make it true. Game dev and game dev management are *very* different to even just regular software dev, without having experience in both I'm just not sure you really know what you're talking about.

And please don't take that as me trying to dismiss you, but from the stuff I've read in here, and my own actual experience, plainly dismissing all of the stuff in the articles and thinking it's just regular project management issues and problems is, in this particular case, incorrect.

 

[NeverBackDown]

....And anyone who has worked on similar projects will tell you that a lot of that e.g. slipping deadlines/delays and scope creep is entirely normal, therefore it's ridiculous for the customer to become "fed up" with it.

Doesn't change anything. They haven't met a single deadline. It's been what 4 years now? It's entirely understandable for people to be upset.

 

[mazty]

Well while I respect that, unfortunately as CIG are constantly proving, believing something doesn't necessarily just magic it into life or make it true. Game dev and game dev management are *very* different to even just regular software dev, without having experience in both I'm just not sure you really know what you're talking about.

And please don't take that as me trying to dismiss you, but from the stuff I've read in here, and my own actual experience, plainly dismissing all of the stuff in the articles and thinking it's just regular project management issues and problems is, in this particular case, incorrect.

Fair enough, but should game dev and game dev management be different to regular software development? It may currently be different, but is that due to bad practices? From what I can see, there's no reason that game development has to be different - you have a product that can be broken down into smaller workloads and from that create a minimum viable product. This is a good approach for modern IT developer to take and I can't see a good reason why game devs shouldn't do the same thing.

Doesn't change anything. They haven't met a single deadline. It's been what 4 years now? It's entirely understandable for people to be upset.

It's been 4 years since the start of development, and stretch goals continued until the end of 2014. If people are upset, they really should have done better at managing their expectations.

 

[NeverBackDown]

No they shouldn't. It's not consumers job to be happy with delays, delays in this case being multiple features over a very long time. The fact is as I have said multiple times to you, they have delayed everything and added all the promised work from stretch goals while NONE of it has even been delivered. You still can't even fly all the ships yet. Yet they introduce more and more to be purchased just to sit there in the hangar collecting dust(artificially of course). 4 years of development and only few months ago they released a module for people to play.
Sure your "expertise" counts for something in many fields, no one is arguing that. However it doesn't override the facts nor 100% apply to this particular case. You can say whatever you want about your experience and what your knowledge about it lets you. However again it doesn't change what has happened over 4 years and the fact that 2 different actual Game Developers here on this forum have said regular Software Devlopment and Game Development are very different, which I would agree with as a person studying in this field. There experience in the field and who have shipped released games, mean more than yours. No hard feelings here and nothing aimed at you. Just putting the facts out there.

I'll stop posting here though, i'm just repeating myself now sooo i'd rather not spam the thread

 

[mazty]

No they shouldn't. It's not consumers job to be happy with delays, delays in this case being multiple features over a very long time. The fact is as I have said multiple times to you, they have delayed everything and added all the promised work from stretch goals while NONE of it has even been delivered. You still can't even fly all the ships yet. Yet they introduce more and more to be purchased just to sit there in the hangar collecting dust(artificially of course). 4 years of development and only few months ago they released a module for people to play.
Sure your "expertise" counts for something in many fields, no one is arguing that. However it doesn't override the facts nor 100% apply to this particular case. You can say whatever you want about your experience and what your knowledge about it lets you. However again it doesn't change what has happened over 4 years and the fact that 2 different actual Game Developers here on this forum have said regular Software Devlopment and Game Development are very different, which I would agree with as a person studying in this field. There experience in the field and who have shipped released games, mean more than yours. No hard feelings here and nothing aimed at you. Just putting the facts out there.

I'll stop posting here though, i'm just repeating myself now sooo i'd rather not spam the thread

Saying none if it has been delivered is undeniably, categorically false:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals

The whole list hasn't been ticked off, but claiming nothing that was promised has been delivered is simply a lie. Also I think you don't actually know what the SC timeline has been as on June 4th 2014 Arena Commander was released...Maybe taking the time to understand what's on offer would be better than bashing a game you seem not to know much about.

No one has ever stated why software development and game development are different. Considering the former pays phenomenally more money, I'm sticking to my guns that it's due to an archaic approach by current game companies - if you're not going to pay good salaries, you're not going to get a high calibre of staff. No, their experience doesn't mean more - that's a very, very naive view of software development and project management, with the latter being entirely transferable across industries making any "but that's X, not Y" argument redundant.

 

[SPS]

No one has ever stated why software development and game development are different.

Unfortunately a lot of information is under NDA.
But what I can say is that you have many disciplines to manage for the same project, artists, tech artists, physics programmers, network programmers, graphics programmers, gameplay programmers, audio programmers, engine programmers, 3D artists, 2D artists, concept artists, sound designers, composers, contractors, level designers, gameplay designers, etc, etc. Planning for each discipline under a few producers can be taxing.

Secondly, the product has to be fun and enjoyable to play. This requires a lot of iteration.

 

[mazty]

Unfortunately a lot of information is under NDA.
But what I can say is that you have many disciplines to manage for the same project, artists, tech artists, physics programmers, network programmers, graphics programmers, gameplay programmers, audio programmers, engine programmers, 3D artists, 2D artists, concept artists, sound designers, composers, contractors, level designers, gameplay designers, etc, etc. Planning for each discipline under a few producers can be taxing.

Secondly, the product has to be fun and enjoyable to play. This requires a lot of iteration.

That's not too different to any middle sized project where you have to bring in numerous different components, and is still fairly small compared to large ones e.g. any government project, or large business undertaking.

In light of what you say, with so many different departments, having a competent Project Management structure should be seen as an absolute necessity, otherwise communication across the entire business is going to be abysmal. Also iteration is a normal process (iterative development), so shouldn't be seen as a problem - in fact techniques such as rapid prototyping are based on being highly iterative.

Something having to be fun and enjoyable isn't all too unique. Anything customer facing should go through a rigorous UX cycle, and for games I actually think that UX cycle is pretty poor considering some of the decisions game companies make e.g. in GTA V, the map is a nightmare to read, the phone contact list is a mess, and having the phone and a context menu is ridiculous. It's hard to imagine R*have any sort of decent UX team if the above is what they decided was okay to give to the customer.

 

[Jbo1234]

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.

^^-- You are here

Denial about what?
As the articles have shown, nothings afoot....so what am in denial about?
Plus as I and other have mentioned, its ran like most other large companies. Would you disagree and say you know of tech workplaces like that which are ran better?

No they shouldn't. It's not consumers job to be happy with delays, delays in this case being multiple features over a very long time. The fact is as I have said multiple times to you, they have delayed everything and added all the promised work from stretch goals while NONE of it has even been delivered. You still can't even fly all the ships yet. Yet they introduce more and more to be purchased just to sit there in the hangar collecting dust(artificially of course). 4 years of development and only few months ago they released a module for people to play.
Sure your "expertise" counts for something in many fields, no one is arguing that. However it doesn't override the facts nor 100% apply to this particular case. You can say whatever you want about your experience and what your knowledge about it lets you. However again it doesn't change what has happened over 4 years and the fact that 2 different actual Game Developers here on this forum have said regular Software Devlopment and Game Development are very different, which I would agree with as a person studying in this field. There experience in the field and who have shipped released games, mean more than yours. No hard feelings here and nothing aimed at you. Just putting the facts out there.

I'll stop posting here though, i'm just repeating myself now sooo i'd rather not spam the thread

Yet you go through the forums and 99% of every is happy with delays because;
a) we're getting so much more then when the idea was put forward
b) the quality is astonishing.
c) they're fixing all the bugs...rather than launching a buggy mess

Why would anyone not want a-c?

Plus with flying "all the ships"? They have constantly added in since development and the latest coming out only a few weeks ago. I would, and pretty much every other backer would rather have dozens of ships then a game with just a handful.

A lot of the SC bashing is from folks who have not much idea of the project and what has happened since it started, nor appreciate the CONSTANT (yup, caps lock for that bit) communication with the backers.

 

[SPS]

That's not too different to any middle sized project where you have to bring in numerous different components, and is still fairly small compared to large ones e.g. any government project, or large business undertaking.

In light of what you say, with so many different departments, having a competent Project Management structure should be seen as an absolute necessity, otherwise communication across the entire business is going to be abysmal. Also iteration is a normal process (iterative development), so shouldn't be seen as a problem - in fact techniques such as rapid prototyping are based on being highly iterative.

Something having to be fun and enjoyable isn't all too unique. Anything customer facing should go through a rigorous UX cycle, and for games I actually think that UX cycle is pretty poor considering some of the decisions game companies make e.g. in GTA V, the map is a nightmare to read, the phone contact list is a mess, and having the phone and a context menu is ridiculous. It's hard to imagine R*have any sort of decent UX team if the above is what they decided was okay to give to the customer.

I agree that the structure needs to be there - and it is. I'm not saying that. Iterative development isn't a problem, again this isn't what I meant. A lot of development in games is R&D, unsolved problems, unknown timeframes, this can be tricky and something SC has fallen to quite badly.

I think you'd be surprised how much time goes into UX of games. Remember that games are aimed at basically everyone and it needs to be self-explanatory with very little guidance, but also fast because it's real-time.

 

[NeverBackDown]

Just to prove my point about constant delays and always failing on time frames..http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...game-squadron-42-will-not-be-released-in-2016

No new date has been given and still plenty of months work to do. Proof is in the putting. 1 module released that's not even fully done in this many years of work is sad. They really need toget it together. Just seems like they aren't organized. So much potential, but it's being wasted

Edit: pudding* lol didn't realize that typo

 

[Dicehunter]

Just to prove my point about constant delays and always failing on time frames..http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...game-squadron-42-will-not-be-released-in-2016

No new date has been given and still plenty of months work to do. Proof is in the putting. 1 module released that's not even fully done in this many years of work is sad. They really need toget it together. Just seems like they aren't organized. So much potential, but it's being wasted

The size and scope that this game is meant to have it'll be a wonder if it's out before 2018 at the very earliest.

 

[NeverBackDown]

At this rate that's what it seems like. If that tbh
If they can get it together and focus better, late 2017 seems plausible. At the very least a fully working campaign in 2017 would be a massive step forward and would really accelerate the rest of the game with more resources to devote to it

 

[Warchild]

You know there is still the chance it just outright gets cancelled.

they are not obligated to return kickstarter funds since they are donations after all.
Look at blizzard with their project Titan, they spent millions behind closed doors without announcing the true project and finally canned it all after not being able to design it as they wanted. There was too much to do remaining.

There have been many projects where funding went sky high and after years of development were just binned.

From what I see this game "looks" good, but there are way too many limitations right now. Too many features announced with none of them polished.