Most strategy games these days have been totally dumbed down to appeal to the average gamer. I sincerely hope it wont be that way with this game. Hoping for even more complexity than GAL CIV 2. Does anyone know in what ways this game will be either more complex or dumbed down compared to the previous game?
Thanks for the hint, never researched them long enough.
Hmm, Star Citizen raised how much, 34? Daniel Vavra and his game (Kingdom come or what's the name?).
Besides, wasn't it Brad who told Ironclad made SoaSE for 750K? My point is that if you need too much money, in comparison with your competitors, then, probably, your team is too big and/or inefficient, or you live in the area with high burn rate. Compare Witchers budgets with, I don't know, their "western competitors'" budgets.
Star Citizen is the World of Warcraft equivalent on Kickstarter. It's highly unusual. The success rate for games on Kickstarter is something like 44%, and few of the ones that succeed are raising multi million dollar budgets.
It's possible, but it's pretty unlikely.
Since Kickstarter is part of our society, I guess it falls under all statistical data for our society, including success/failure rate. Still, I think good concept and presentation would provide. Look at Early Access on Steam - for some time Top5 was comprised from 4 early-access games there, even now Rust and DayZ are still there, no?
https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats
Kickstarter is pretty open about their stats. Games actually fall below the 'average' of 44% of successfully funded projects at 35%.
Though weirdly the games category has the most entries of over $1 million funded games at 30! The next closest is Technology which is only 12.
Games are very expensive. Look at ShadowRun Returns. The original $400,000 was basically a "lets take our existing engine, tweak and re-skin it and turn it around quickly". Once they hit 1.8 million, they effectively had to re-architect the entire game and they needed more money than they raised to do that.
Personally I find Early Access to be a better way to go than Kickstarter. kickstarter you're really really going on blind faith. At least with Early Access you can see people playing it and make a fairly informed decision. Which is why it's so blatantly idoitic when people complain about issues on Early Access games.
Kickstarter is somewhat new. When they get more time and funded projects, statistic will be there. Of course we can argue about margins, but do we really need to do that?
How come their desire to remake something is somehow related to games being expensive? I think it's somehow related with planning. Since I work in consturction industry, this behavior of gamedev is not quite understandable. I understand programming isn't solid as concrete, but maybe you shouldn't create something you can't maintain, at least if there is a chance you won't have money to finish it? As much as I like Shadowrun, I can't say Spiderwebs games are worse just because their engine is bad.
Could be wrong, but I'd prefer to receive something smaller that is work, than something bigger that isn't. Best comparison - simcitystreet and Banished. Since I don't pay much of attention to all that "game-related movement", I simply do not remember or even know of studios which successfully sold prototype of their project on their site and raised money through that. Minecraft/Prison Architect, maybe? Since you definitely has more experience in these things, probably you could remember more. What precluded Shadowrun devs offer us first part that was working, and then polish it? Larian do that with their Divinity series, and they are in business for... hell if I know how long, late 90s?
Agree. On Kickstarter they sell us ideas, while in Early Access they sell us something we can "touch" (to an extent:)). Of course, some KS projects had something more to offer, I think those were FTL and Frozen Synapse. I could be wrong, guess I need to "call a friend" and ask Stardock representatives to confirm or deny that, but KS generally is something similar to old negotiations between developer and publisher, only in this case public is the "publisher".
There's a few problems when it comes to making software (and especially games):
1. Getting time estimates right for software is hard.
2. Most of the games industry sucks at planning.
3. Stuff changes frequently. You originally plan to do X, then someone decides you need Y as well (likely because enough fans are screaming for it, which is why I tend to be against so many big ideas that get posted here). Oh, and the console manufacturer says you have to do Z to publish on their platform, and your engine doesn't do Z. Also, new hardware came out and nobody learned in school how to use the new functions on it, because it didn't exist at the time. Have fun!
4. Staff skill matters insanely. One star developer is worth three mediocre ones. If you're a new developer, you may not know just how good your people are because they're all new.
5. Games are fundamentally creative endeavours for the most part, and sometimes creative things just don't work out as planned. Maybe you did the writing and afterward you decide that it sucks, so you have to change it. That has impacts in a lot of other people's work. You can't plan for this stuff when it goes wrong.
6. If you don't have experience doing something, you can run into unexpected problems. Look at what happened with Demigod's multiplayer at launch. Nobody expected that. Concrete is a known, fixed thing. It behaves a certain way. Unless you're building Call of Duty 82, games don't have that type of stability in how they work.
In the case of something like Shadowrun, they originally wanted to do something small. Then they got enough money to do something bigger, and discovered their engine couldn't do bigger. So now they need to update or replace the engine, which is even more money. That kind of thing happens all the time. It's one of the reasons why big publishers love franchise games. They have a much simpler time planning for a sequel because having already built a bunch of games in the series, they know what to expect and a lot of the foundation work is already done. Making Assassins Creed 4 is significantly easier than making Assassins Creed 1.
Minecraft was sold directly in its early days. Prison Architect is doing the preview model.
Shadowrun could only do that if they had enough money to produce the content first, and once they had to update the engine to do new stuff most likely that content had to be changed to deal with the new engine anyway. Trying to polish the old stuff enough to put out would have just been a waste of money, since that work would get thrown away.
Star Citizen is kind of the same thing. They orignally wanted to build a game for $2 million, and now they are building a game for $30 million. The scale of those things is so different that it really changes the development process and scope of the tools required.
FTL was mostly done, and just needed some money to finish. It's a real success story.
5. I know that from experience. It's the worst problem stated IMHO. And its also the best reason to do anything like this. Mr. Wardell overcame the issues listed above though his creativity and will to see his ideas though. and the reward is worth it to see your ideas come to life. (5. Is really accurate Tridus.)
DARCA
That is good news, But I would say Stardock games have never really been mass market based. which is a good thing. there are hundreds of game company's going after the 80% of the market. How much of that market do you really get since it is being split so many different ways? Go after the unservied portion of the market and you will do better. unless you can make Diablo better then blizzard, or Madden better then EA.
This is exactly what happened with GGG making Path of exile
Well, PoE is much more Complex than diablo was so maybe it is not exactly aimed at the ''80%'' Nonetheless the game is doing very well and many of the hardcore D2 fans who were very let down by D3 say that PoE is what D3 should have been.
3. Stuff changes frequently.
Estimate for more, aim for less.
Ah, yes, they are "artist", and "art comes from the heart and very soul", as we, simple peasants do.
Yeah, sure, construction workers are all born equal and each and everyone has "character list" stamped on his face with all skills, features, traits, and ability scores present. And good welder or crane operator could do wonders!
Why not aim for lowest possible performance? Should time and money be saved, they could be used for additional bug fixes and polishing, or creating new content. Or I'm wrong and gamedevs aren't builders and they don't work this way?
I think I've heard some studio did that made... Hmm, Torchlight 2, no? They remade whole beginning because it wasn't that good, or I confusing them with something?
Mhm. When out of blue materials you used (and paid for) considered to be flawed or dangerous outright, and you already used a lot of them (and insurance refuse to cover the expenses), say, reinforced concrete slabs, or metal girders, or other components, or that fireproofing was "found wanting toxic and flammable"...
You can't contact someone who has experience and ask him for guidance? You don't need to hire him for full time, 1/month physical contact, 1/week remote contact to guide process? I doubt these expenses would be enormously big for small studio. Besides, I've heard indie are quite friendly towards each other, so maybe some old guard could lend a hand, no?
Even if I have this game, I have no idea what you're talking about, sorry. Guess it happened before I got more or less good Internet connection.
Use existing concrete. Or create your own concrete, or, better, brick. Make sure it works. Put two bricks together. See how they're doing. Add more, one at a time. Don't aim for Burg Kreuzenstein, aim for small cabin instead.
Probably they should do something small, yet well-made, without any backfire. Now people remember all problems they had. I could be wrong, but I prefer something smaller, working piece that could be improved later, than something bug, new, and not working one. Banished over simstreet anyday.
But they were/are sold in early stages, right? Far from being final.
I never seen early prototype, nor do I have enough skills to determine whether or not what could, or could not be used in upgraded engine, so I'll refrain from suggestion like "they should release first version on old engine, and then use money and experience for second one", even if it worked for Witcher and I think that way.
That bloating is what rubs me wrong way - when I saw it in "known, fixed things" I tend to be quite sceptical towards projects like this. Especially after you said that gamedev is even more "fluid" and "floating" (as opponent to solid and fixed) process.
Sure, if you're EA and have a very fat wallet to work with.
Most of the game development studios on the planet are on razor thin budgets. Estimating for more and aiming for less means estimating for more money than they have. They are literally one poor selling game from shutting down. All the time. In an industry where the buyers are quick to move on to new things (and there's always new things going on).
Under-selling is a great way to get a lack of hype, which makes it harder to sell that game that you need to sell in order to survive.
Or a more basic "this game has four years of work to do it properly, but marketing said it's coming out in October 2015."
Guess who wins that battle?
Concrete can only be poured so fast, it only hardens so fast, you can only dig holes so fast, and so on. There are a lot of external constraints on construction that limit what a single all-star worker can do.
Depending on where you put someone in development, those constraints don't exist. A top tier engine developer will deliver you better performing code with fewer bugs in less time than multiple average developers will. That then impacts everything else along development.
Aiming for lowest possible performance means you're planning on the assumption that you don't actually have the talent required to build the thing, most likely. Most developers aren't making Call of Duty 82. They need to deliver experiences that are new and interesting to stay in business.
Failures in this industry are extremely common. That doesn't leave room to spend millions making a game where you do everything hyper-conservatively because you assume that your entire staff are fresh grads with no experience.
(It's a bit different in the enterprise software market, where "it's reliable and secure" is more important than "it's available today." Particularly for established players. Brad has talked about his experience selling games at Stardock, where Walmart basically says "we want it by this date or you forefit your shelf space and have to pay us a penalty.")
Maybe, I don't know about that one. But it's happened a lot. It happened to Starcraft. Originally that was built on the Warcraft 2 engine and was derisively called "Orcs in space" when it first was unveiled. Blizzard heard the criticism and restarted the whole thing. What they eventually came out with (years late) was the most successful RTS of all time.
Of course, Blizzard had multiple successful properties and that point, so they had the cash (and management foresight) to be able to do something like that. With something like Sword of the Stars 2, they literally had to release it when they did or go bankrupt.
Yep, same thing.
You can, for certain things, in certain cases. But one day/month on site isn't much of anything when you need help with something like multiplayer NAT issues, or server scaling, or things like that. Hell, look at EA. They're huge, have an entire network operations team, and still managed to totally screw up the server side of the Simcity launch.
If they were just running websites, there would have been people to bring in to figure out the proper load balancing. But nobody has any experience provisioning servers for Simcity's backend, because it's never existed before. Nobody knows just what is going to happen when you put 100,000 simultaneous players on it.
Or Blizzard, who had the same problem with Diablo 3. Blizzard has been running Battle.net since the 1990s, and has extensive experience with the biggest MMO on the planet. They *still* didn't get it right for the first week.
There's lots of reasons for that, but none of them are "they didn't bother to hire a consultant."
Someone broke the street date, so it got onto pirate sites before launch. That meant that at launch, there was a huge flood of pirate traffic. On top of that, there were problems in the networking code that made gmaes with more players highly unreliable.
I flat out couldn't play it for the first several days it was out without using Hamachi to create a private LAN. A ton of people had the same problem. It was a real shame, because the gameplay was really strong.
That's just now how game development works, unless you're making Call of Duty 82. Then it kind of is, which is why those games get released like clockwork.
For someone making GalCiv 3, there's no "gameplay" bricks they can just use. They have to build that stuff, along with the art, music, writing, and the UI. The pieces they can get are things like physics libraries, but there is no gameplay library.
Hindsight suggests that, yeah. But at the time, they suddenly had way more money than expected and a chance to do a better game with it. It made sense at the time.
Correct. In both cases they had some core gameplay working, and they were pretty fun. You can sell a game early successfully if you have something that works and is fun, even if it's basic. You can add more stuff later. Godus is an example of a game that's being sold early only without the "fun" part working, and it's been something of a fiasco. (Of course, that's Peter Molyneux, so people should have known better.)
Witcher sold a complete game, then used the sales from that to build a new engine for a better game. That's not the same thing as polishing up a prototype for one game, only to then throw it away and redo everything for the same game.
Polygon is doing an incredible five part feature on the inside story of developing Defense Grid 2. (edit - link to a list of all five parts) This type of thing gets talked about in there. They spent time and money polishing up a version o the game to demo at PAX, and none of that work is actually in the game anymore. So it was wasted time in terms of developing the game.
Star Citizen deserves some skepticism. They've promised a LOT and even with $30 million it will be hard to deliver it. (In the realm of AAA game development, $30 million isn't as much as it sounds like. Skyrim was something like $85 million, and GTA V was over $100 million in development costs alone.)
And I say that as a backer that really, REALLY wants it to succeed. TIE Fighter is my favorite game of all time, and I'm starved for entries in the genre.
I backed Elite Dangerous on kickstarter, and not regretting s second of it so far. They are hard at work trying not to dumb down the galaxy.
Something that most would do, in order to preserve sanity.
Judging by the state of their recent releases I'd say that's exactly the thing they don't do.
Eh... We have different meaning of word "estimate"? You estimate project cost, time, etc, based on data provided. Or you estimate what could be done for budget presented, and how fast, because there is threshold after which increasing the number of workers has no positive impact on schedule, and impact could be even negative, simply because working ground will be overcrowded.
So I really do not understand why devs cannot estimate their budget or development time. For example, "basic" development time" for project like this is 2 years. Add 1 year on top for all possible hiccups, caused by the fact that team is small, new, lacks experience, and has no cohesion between members. Then add 6 month more for unforeseen problems and/or "final" polishing. Here we have 42 months, this is best (shortest) result.
Money wise it's a bit similar. First you calculate one-time expenses, like software and hardware. Since there are far more of them than I could possibly imagine, say 50K per employee. Then calculate regular, unavoidable expenses, like rent and utility bills, food, transport costs (if they are not living in the place where they work), salary, if they pay them to external workers, or for freelancers. Don't forget to add possible inflation, and add some emergency fund, either flat value, or in percentage from regular payments.
Let's say team has 4 constant members, they rent a flat, they are single, so they do not need to feed their families (yeah, "ideal conditions" for calculations, but like I said, I have little knowledge on development). Rent could be 1K/month, food 1.5K, utility 1K, tranport fees 0.5K. They bought 4 new PCs with software for 50K each. So we have 200K budget spent there. Then monthly costs, 4K. Say, inflation is 10%, meaning these costs will result in sum under 190K for 42 months. Add 6% of monthly expenses as emergency fund, for 42 months it will be equal to 11.5K. Round sum of those up to 200K.
Additional expenses include hiring freelancers or external employees, buying assets from stores, if this is more effective (faster/cheaper) than letting one of team members to perform this task. Since I'm not from devs, I have no idea how much it will cost, but if we assume 1K/months totally, it will result in 46K for 42 months. So, for 42 months, this small team of four would need 450K. Of course, it is very simple layout, I didn't included legal advisor, PR, some other stuff I never heard of, but that's about principle. Reverse process - determation of for how long they could sustain themselves with sum present is quite similar, as well as productivity rate (probably for everyone but programmers, go figure their mumbo-jumbo of "ultimate code"). Is it that difficult, even if development is not so much "concrete" process? IMHO it's better to have unfavorable estimate and finish ahead of schedule (unless you're drivers, working with tachograph:)), than to have positive estimate and be delayed.
Yeah, sure, and construction industry workers are swimming in banknotes like Scrooge McDuck. They don't have problems with "muse absense", they have problems with broken equipment (like, "wanna have a real sex?"). Like trucks. With "broken part being so rarely braking", so no dealership having these spare parts, and logistic expenses, in terms of forced downtime, are about week (or more). And you can't just buy another truck "just in case": it costs more than 100000€. Good luck finding money to buy one, good luck finding truck at dealership, especially with manufacturer's backlog being about several weeks. You bought it? Oh, crap, bad paperwork, police require trucks relocation for re-registration (two more weeks). Trucks finally arrived? Lucky you - board computer shows "Stop, Service". Just for the record - newly purchased truck, driven by official drivers only. Several days more (and several thousands of Euros less) problem was found: disconnected wire. Not enough? "Incorrect antifreeze" replaced during service visitation. Official service, by the way. Wow, so quality, much assurance, very service.
Or how would you like lack of materials caused by various reasons? "We don't have wires, because there is deficit of firearms ammunition and our metal suppliers cannot provide necessary materials because of deficit, and Americans invading another country, so oil price increase caused decline of chemical components supply, and plants can't provide enough source materials for insulation". Not exact quote, but leifmotif...
Nobody.
Though Ubisoft finally understood something and withheld South Park release, saving us from more "why obsidian games are so buggy" queries in Google.
Yes, and you can calculate of all them, starting from climate, environment (clothing/equipment, hindering movement), cramped surroundings, different materials, different tools, logistic, etc.
Houston, we have a problem, two in fact: first, go find that top tier developer (buying third-party engine isn't a solution?), second, there is no official table grading developers by their skills. Another reason why I like military - short glance on someone and you know exactly what that person in front of you is capable of. Developers look murky waters in this aspect: "I participated in development of "Go kick that nasty rabbit with a shovel while riding on pink elephant's radar dish: absolute droolage", and I was senior assistant of junior lead on "funky fishes chunks". Well, maybe someone could understand that, I don't know. I can't.
If we talk about new team, without experience, cohesion, organized working order, and teamwork habits, wouldn't it be presumptuously dangerous to assume they could beat maitres in that area? Of course, maybe that particular team is super talented, but... have you seen many of those? It's not gods who make pots, but the "average Joe", honestly doing his drudgery. No need to go all Yoda on me.
Seeing massive migration of developers first into MMO, then into social, then into mobile, I tend to believe they actually do Call of Battlefield 84. Or, currently, happy candy airportville 7, or whatever. Definitely new experience.
Yet it doesn't save us from tonnes of shovelware "because it's safe to release another sequel". Alas, that shovelware is far from being stellar.
I never worked with Walmart, but tight schedules are fairly common in construction. That's why everything is calculated, and calculated a lot. Including soil load bearing capacity and behavior during different seasons, and meteo history for this area to approximate what will happen during building time, and which risks there are. Nobody wants to see 50 tonnes road train with expensive equipment stuck in the mud that resembles mixture of clay and glue so even high pressure washer can't remove it. It's getting even more fun when it comes to oversized cargo haulage.
Not exactly.
Planning issues?
No thanks. That bloated piece of substance that incapable of sinking... Don't let me started. They may have a MASSIVE support, but when it comes to actual support they... I don't know English that well to find proper civil replacement. "They useless" is simply not reflecting the whole uselessness of them. Three (yes, just three) guys from Warszawa (I mean GoG support) work better and faster. And they help. I don't know how many employees Stardock support has, but they work fast, and helping too (should I be wearing a hat, I'd tipped it off for you, guys). Steam is slow, indeed, but they help in the end. And Valve has less than three hundred employers everywhere. I wonder if EA has more in just support stuff.
Can less be more? Yes. See above. Many members in team is not equals increased performance. First Eador may be ugly (enough for me), yet it worked, despite being made by one guy. Second Eador, basically remake, looked prettier, but was it bugridden!
Blizzard had infamous problem with Diablo 3 before EA. EA itself had problems with BF3 at start. And they still never tested peak load with simstreet accordingly, or attempted to mitigate it with additional servers, when problem arised. Saved few grands on server rent? Remind me one SUV owner I know. Meaning, EA either greedy, lazy, just stupid outright, or all of above. They barge in like they own the place and know everything, yet it doesn't match results of their actions. I don't even mention their lies about mandatory online "because potato calculations".
Sure, they didn't bothered to listen to that consultant. Apparently he told them they can eat shi should increase number of active servers, but they considered that to be unnecessary expenses. /pokerface
Cells, turns, moves, races (with their abilities), techs, mechanics - all that doesn't count?
They make UI for a living (by the way, one more happy guy with start button on Win8 (why people buy it is beyond me, but world is full of perversions) asked to say "thanks"), so I guess it's a bit easier for them. Though other components needs to be made, it's not "naked start", they already have foundation of overall design, rather large and well thought background history. So it's not like it's totally new project, made by totally new people.
My point exactly. From my, non-dev perspective, creating such "prototype" should be less expensive than creating of "more complete" project, thus allowing releasing it to public earlier, hence allowing testing it, and proving concept principles to be working (or not). I'd rather see you dead, little girl small part of map that works, rather than huge, yet empty map with occassional "T-pose" people walking sideways or backwards and random trees or tombstones flying around.
To an extent Telltales release their "episodes" similarly, in the meantime adjusting problematic areas. At least I've heard they did with with Sam and Max, I think - haven't played their recent "games".
Isn't that just a different scale of exactly the same thing? Replace W1 with Early Access prototype (I don't know, current state of DayZ? Early builds of Space Engineers?), replace revenue from sales with, heh, revenues from sales of Early Access version, replace W2 with "same game on different engine". IMHO the same, no? Of course, there was time, 3.5 years or what? Don't forget, they used around 9 months (hm!) each time to roll out "enhanced editions", which were like 100 times better than "extended cut" (that took 4 months) for one particular 75 times perfectly scored game.
I think I've heard/read that before. If in construction that usually been decided during design/planning/approval phase ("before anyone grabs their shovel"), gamedev, apparently, does that during "live prototype" stage, not early prototype, basically with paper and dices.
In addition, thank for the links, I'll read them later, if you don't mind.
They don't, they got experience. I do not remember where I've heard or read about that, but I think there was interview with one developer, who told they've started to add stuff to their prototype and that new stuff ruined gameplay flow, therefore ruining game itself - first demo was accepted very warm, yet second one was met with less enthusiasm. They still decided to retain new features in final version of game, but they never had time to polish them properly, basically turning them into features for features sake. Things I never understood IRL too, like those "ruche thingies" interior designers so like to add, saying "this demonstrates youth!" Really, old broken bottle poured with eye-gouging pink paint? Gah, if I got 1 dollar for understanding every single interior design idea I saw I could finance non-Steam version of GC3.
Is Game dev tycoon supports this statement?
On serious side, if they perfectly knew their expenses rate, productivity rate, they know what they already created, and they are sure in their model of gameplay, they probably sure on new content additions. If it worked with dices, it probably will work with real (virtual of course:)) models. I never paid much attention to their milestones, but if they use a lot of templates in certain areas of production, that could save a lot of time and money. Don't forget outsource somewhere to poorer areas of the world where 100K$ is huge sum of money.
I'm not backer, but I don't mind them succeeding. Getting more good games is always win-win, even if games are from genre I don't particularly interested in. That's not true with space sims, I found a lot of amusement and entertainment in X-series, even in X-rebirth (still better than supreme commander 2 and ParagonRenegade, do not, I say again, DO NOT read nex text! mass effect 3:D). To an extent, of course, I'm not fun of what they did with X-R, and, apparently, they would need a truckload of time to fix that.
And just to make it clear: I do not hate developers (unless they decide to move the foundations and remove start button, ahem:)). I like them, I appreciate their work, because they do something I like. I do not like developers who, instead of standing up and admitting their failure, prefer to chicken away, hide behind "art" and you not appreciating art. I do appreciate art, but games are not art, even best of them (no Todd Howard, please). Games are games. Art is art. van Gogh is art. van Ruisdael is art. Someone's paint sneeze on the wall is not an art. So I'm pretty friendly guy, who have problems understanding some aspects of gamedev.
Having a fat wallet and using it correctly aren't the same thing. Besides, in the case of Simcity specifically, the problem was bad design choices early on. They wanted to do a simulation model that required massive computing resources, then decided to make it work on single processor 32 bit systems.
Then they decided to give us tiny postage stamp neighborhoods as cities, and... you know what, I better not get started.
Lets just say that for North American developers, those numbers are very, very low.
I don't know how it is on that side of the Pacific, but over here construction firms have been around a while and have a lot of ongoing projects. While one going south is certainly bad, it won't bankrupt the entire firm, short of them doing something like causing an explosion that kills 50 people.
They're a lot more stable than your average game developer. (Stardock in this case is not "average", as they have another revenue generating division to fall back on if they have a bad game.)
If it was that easy, the industry would probably be doing a better job of it.
Hell, look at Galciv 3. The dates for alpha have moved around a few times, and hotseat disappeared from the "we'd like to do this" section of the FAQ. They have an experienced team being led by an experienced project manager, and stuff is still moving around. (That's not a complaint, just an observation, before anybody takes it the wrong way. )
Why? Because that's just how game development is. The key difference is that unlike a building, you don't really know what you're building when you start. You have an idea, but it's more of a skeleton and things can (and will) change as development goes on.
When you do construction, you're not pouring a foundation and putting up a frame before deciding how many rooms the house is going to have. But that's pretty much exactly how game development goes most of the time.
(It's actually also how my day job goes, and I do corporate software, where it probably shouldn't. But we learned that trying to spec things out in too much detail gets us into trouble when management changes their mind... which being government, can happen pretty much anytime an election does.)
Often, buying an engine isn't an option. There's a reason Stardock has their own engine for Galciv 3 and is also backing the Nitrous engine: there simply isn't something suitable available on the market.
In cases where there is, that's the way to go. If you only need what Unity offers, it's a fantastic platform.
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. Games are no exception. Not everything is going to be Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
(And hey, sometimes sequels are fine. This is a sequel, and I'm excited for it. I loved Assassins Creed 4, and if they want to deliver more of that in say the rumored Feudal Japan setting, I'd certainly be up for it. The trick with sequels is to deliver value in a new version.)
Yep. Game development isn't at that stage of being able to plan things so well yet. Maybe one day it will be, but humanity has been doing construction of one sort or another for millenia. We've had a long time to figure out how to do it correctly. We're still figuring it out with games, and the landscape keeps changing so fast that nobody can quite get it right.
Actually, EA *did* try to mitigate Simcity with more servers. They added entire extra regions to the server list. It didn't solve the problem, because the problem wasn't that they went cheap on the hardware. The problem was actually in backend optimization, which has to be done specifically for that game because there wasn't anything else that ran quite the same way. All these server backend infrastructures and server processes are just different enough that optimization has to be done again every time.
One of the reasons why MMOs have stress test weekends is to try and get the servers to fall over so they can see where those bottlenecks are and fix them before the game goes live, but it's pretty hard to simulate load in the 7 figures.
Not true, see above. In general, there's lots of performance problems where "throw more servers at it" won't actually help. I've seen specific cases where doing that actually makes it *slower*.
No, there's no library you can plug in that just gives you that stuff working how you want.
That they make UI for a living suggest the UI should be good, not that they can just take something and throw it in. They still have to build it.
No, it's not. A complete game can be sold in stores, get a marketing campaign, reviews, and so on. Early access being mainstream is a pretty new thing, and it's really not for everyone. Even then, Stardock wouldn't want to build a partial Galciv 3 using the Galciv 2 engine, and then throw it away to start again.
You can't test fun in game development until you have something to play, and tower defense isn't something that works well on paper.
Actually, Arcen games is going through the exact same thing with their upcoming game - The Last Federation. They did prototyping, development, got an alpha ready... then the testers told them it wasn't fun. They tried tweaking the design, but while they liked it internally it just fell flat with the wider audience.
So they went back, scrapped a bunch of it, and are now doing something else. Early results are considerably more positive. There was no way to know that before building enough to get the testers to play it, though.
It's numbers are pretty low since you have a team of 6 in that game, and real AAA games have much, much larger ones. Like, triple digits.
I could never get into the X games. They're a great example of "more is less". They do so much stuff that none of it is done to my satisfaction.
An older game like TIE Fighter is more my thing. It does one thing - space dogfighting. It does that extremely well. There's nothing but the occasional mission briefing and cutscene between me and shooting enemy ships.
I like both of you. But what are you two SAYING! I can't read all that, I don't think anyone did. Lol haha this is a bit funny.
I will try to read all this, and l will say what I think in a short response. Lol. Now all I have to do is find my time machine to get it all back once I'm done. Lol this is funny.
Can I join in.
For the most part software development is closer to give them only as much as they want and none thing else. I could never agree with this logic. I always felt that soa ftware designers should make it as good as possible.
This also happens with software development for the most part it is not an improvement unless the next version is at least 15% slower than the current version, so users will think there hardware is not good enough, and buy new computers. This did not come from an article, but someone involoved in major software development. This is a secret that they don't want us to know. Quoting Tridus, reply 562. Most of the games industry sucks at planning.Ah, yes, they are "artist", and "art comes from the heart and very soul", as we, simple peasants do.
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Until a vendor is threatening to sue you when you are not ready to come out with a software on time.Quoting Tridus, reply 564. Staff skill matters insanely. One star developer is worth three mediocre ones. If you're a new developer, you may not know just how good your people are because they're all new.Why not aim for lowest possible performance? Should time and money be saved, they could be used for additional bug fixes and polishing, or creating new content.
If I still had my CeleronD computer I would think this was a good idea now that I have a Dell Inspireon I want a software that utilizes my new hardware. I'm still dreaming of a game where I have 83 factions to pick from. Multiple leaders. Let's not forgetting that they are competing against other games.
Quoting Tridus, reply 56You can't plan for this stuff when it goes wrong.
Strange thing they sometimes do.
Interesting analogy comparison between programming and construction. Just for starters you use a tape measure in construction; while you use a more complicated pixel system in programming. In programming you kind of have to be bilingual.
Well a foundation is sort of like a game engine.
0Quoting Tridus, reply 56Minecraft was sold directly in its early days. Prison Architect is doing the preview model.But they were/are sold in early stages, right? Far from being final.
Minecaft is a boring game. Galactic civilizations really kicks its but.
Why ih why couldn't they do this with Spore. What they did was just mean. To much stradegy blood in me. Not enough graphics blood in me.
Do you remember those Mcdonalds comercials that said where's the beef. This is like where Spore is like "where's the game. If they have all that cash why couldn't they spend that on the game.
My question is why does this seems not to affect how good the game is.
Ah, yes, they are "artist", and "art comes from the heart and very soul",
Can't say that about all games, but we can say that about this game; because we know that Brad was the original designer of the game.
This remark is based on construction workers being born equal, but there is no equal way to make up physically to that worker that their parents started giving them hard labor at 4 or 5. There are people who are more skilled at this than other people. Lets not forget about the person with bad eyes.
There is someone you can contact when you need help he is called a foreman. His years of experience should supplement for this.
Well I never seen this, but this is most likely caused from too many people online at once when there is a limited speed that was probably being divided instead of being run simultaneously. Or maybe the aces part of game was being put across the web by sending to much data at once. Or maybe the game was to much for the average hardware prople were using at the time. Or maybe when the game was programmed they forgot to make their game a priority when sending data on the web.
Maybe not bricks, but a game engine could be considered a foundation.
Our thoughts are coherent.
Even if this sum is in Euros or British Pounds? Even if stationed in Canada with their welcoming economical background for developers? If Ironclad made SoaSE for around 750K, smaller team couldn't make smaller game for smaller sum of money?
Yeah, I've seen how you build things - wood and drywall.
But they have interesting jobs! Entertainment! They doing what they love!
I'll believe it when I see proper estimate released by developer. Not post-release balance report of expenses, but initial estimation. Just for comparison. Have you seen one? Well, I never.
Oh, great:
- What is that?!
- Our cows porn simulator.
- But you working on space exploration game!
Star Teatizen, available for only 99,99. Only on origin!
You actually do, because certain constructions allow modifications of internal space, should the inner walls have no load bearing capacity.
If we talk about small, new team, probably it would be only wise to plan to do something they could handle. Creating all new engine, from my perspective, is not from this category.
Besides, what I really do not understand in gamedev is how they handle assets.
Tell that to EA, ok?
Doesn't mean they shouldn't try. They could exchange their experience, oponion, simply to teach each other without waltzing on rakes. I understand their artistic motivation, but I think falling in same pits isn't something everyone should do just because "it's everyone's learning curve". "Achievement unlocked".
With whole two of them?
Sometimes I wish there be smiley holding "Sarcasm" sign overhead.
They still have to build it.
Of course, but they already have something they can implement. Moreover, they have experience. So it should be easier for them that for someone without that experience and other "baggage" they accumulated over the years.
Extrapolate early access for being here for long, what would change then?
Games are generally not for everyone, some will embrace turn based strategy, while others will hate it with passion. Same goes for distribution platform. Some hate Steam, some Origin, some (everyone?) Uplay.
Basic prototype with minimal graphics, cubes and prisms, a-la cubemen?
And does increased numbers of devs actually help? I just try to remember so called "AAA", can't remember anything worthy past DE:HR. If DE:HR is AAA.
To each his own - veriety is the spice of life. Hmm, don't you think that just coined a name for a game?
As much as I like story-driven games, like, I don't know, "Wing Commander", I also like this series for free roaming. More or less free.
And when I was thinking about whether you going to jump in...
Turn common sense on and compare certain software. Two versions - they've done it on purpose, or they had rare dysfunction - hands growing from buttocks.
That's why the killed retail.
Oh, trust me, you had to be bilingual in construction too: "you, smelly [beep] [beep] [beep] of [beep] [beep] [beep], grab your [beep] [beep] together and haul your [beep] right over there, you [beep]!"
Yeah, some people do not understand how I enjoy those city builders.
Well, Tridus said 90% are "less than stellar".
Yep. Lets look at Canada since you mentioned it and I happen to live there. You forgot a few things the employer has to pay for:
- Payroll taxes: Those include the employer contribution to EI, CPP, Workers Compensation, and depending on which province you're in possibly some others
- Benefits: If the employer offers supplimental health coverage, pension/matching RRSP contributions, or other benefits, those are costly
- Tools: Work has an MSDN subscription for me, and that runs four digits per developer. It's not the most expensive one we've had, either.
There's no way for me to give you the true number of what it costs to employ someone here (it depends on the job), but factoring all that and expenses like buildings, property taxes, and so on in, it's been said that a rule of thumb is that you're going to actually pay double whatever the persons salary is in order to employ them. So you're paying $50k each for five developers? Great! That's half a million a year.
What ends up happening is that startups will cut that down somewhat by using free or cheaper tools, and not having the same kind of benefits package that my job does. They compensate for that in other ways, but it tends to make it harder to attract more experienced developers. I mean, would I give up a job with pension, dental coverage, and solid work weeks in exchange to work at a startup with 30 hours of unpaid overtime and no dental/pension?
Maybe when I was in my 20s I would have, but I have a family now.
(Course, the upside of getting not experienced developers is that nobody is set in their ways. There's a reason why the most disruptive changes tend to come from small companies and not big ones.)
Google "EA Spouse" sometime and get back to me.
My best friend works for an AAA studio. Every once in a while he'll disappear for a few months at a time. They call that "crunch", and it means that he's now working 7 day/100 hour weeks, and not getting paid for all that extra time. New people get into games development because it's "what they love." Experienced people get out of it at a shocking rate because they want to see their families occasionally.
Yes, I have. Then Sony published a new set of rules for putting games on their system and stuff had to change real fast.
Adding two servers in a dropdown is not adding two servers on the backend. The servers you see in the front end are actually clusters of servers. You'd have to have someone inside the network ops team to know exactly how many it was, but it was more than two.
Yes. Two people are not going to build something the size of World of Warcraft. It's impossible.
Watch the credits for something like Skyrim sometime. The teams are huge, and development is only a piece of that.
Interesting debate here.
I think that given the size and scale of GC3, we're talking about a medium-sized project here. It's not Blizzard WoW-sized, but it isn't quite Indie studio sized either. Stardrive is an example of a 1-2 person show. This is a team of people.
In general, I support the concept of "Valve time". That is - release quality software when its ready to be released, not in a rush. Software forecasting is hard and it means that deadlines often are pushed back.
I have finally read it all! And I want my time back! Your having a two person Q and A? About nothing in particular! This could have been over a while ago, instead of just talking you guys chose to break down every quote into one sentence and respond slowly for over two days!
I think Rudy_102 will be a better game tester now. Tridus has Vented his anger from work sufficiently now so he should be less grumpy when talking about software.
How they made it then? I mean Ironclad and SoaSE.
I haven't forgot. I simply excluded/combined them for sake of simplicity. Numbers I used were taken from serial number on my new shoelaces.
Now I even more interested how's Ironclad managed.
We really need that "sarcasm" smiley I mentioned earlier.
But your friend still working there... Hmm.
Oh, well, I know of guy who left bioware because he didn't want to die young, regardless of all benefits. I'm afraid I can't express his explanation, not because it's secret, but because it would be something like Jon Stewart's on IRS...
Any chance I could see it?
Ah, sweet monopolists... Reminds me why I'm PC gamer.
Now we absolutely need that "sarcasm" smiley.
And where is that border when relations between number of workers and their productivity changes from direct direct proportion to something "more flat"? I've heard the number is under ten. After than you won't see significant progress after increasing number of workers. Even if you'll split the teams into ten men clusters (hmm, almost like military section - again, human brain bandwidth limitation?) and close their communications only to their subgroups.
I'm aware of that, even if I'm not dev. That's why certain kickstarter projects (or not just kickstarter) looks.. hmm... "questionnable".
Of course, they need janitors, janitors juniors, janitors senior managers, janitors senior managers supervisors...
Isn't "indie" is someone working without publisher? Valve, to an extent, is indie.
Of course, there is "hardcore" or "original" indie, meaning "garage devs" or small teams like Introversion, but Ok.
As long as "Valve time" haven't turned into "Duke Nukem Forever" time, I'm fine with that. IMHO people will remember game's quality, not the fact it has been delayed for several months. Compare Obsidians games (basically every one) vs South Park.
Doesn't mean you shouldn't try to "forecast" (yikes, that's smell "weather" (Al Sleet, the Hippy Dippy Weatherman)) them or try to keep up with schedule. Within reason, of course.
BWAHAHA! MY PLAN IS WORKING!
Now you know what I felt after completing mass defekt 3.
If you don't like it - don't read it. It's not like you had to pay for it to avoid sunk cost fallacy or something.
The Muses' service brooks no vanity.
I'm not Shepard (that's for sure). Tridus probably also not Shepard. So we are not saving galaxy here, we're just chatting.
Nobody complained before.
Fump you poopy_102!!!!!! Mass Effect was perfect and all you've done is give vague reasons why you hate it. I think you want to be different! I don't know how a fully voiced and choiced RPG could ever suck, not with Miranda Lawson to look at. And the only reason I read all this was because I saw your names.
And... My real name is Shepard...yea...that right I am...Shepard, so don't disrespect people with my name!
Hey Tridus are you a game developer.
My best friend works for an AAA studio.
What does AAA stand for.
Every once in a while he'll disappear for a few months at a time. They call that "crunch", and it means that he's now working 7 day/100 hour weeks, and not getting paid for all that extra time. New people get into games development because it's "what they love
Wish I could say that. I dream of the day that Stardock either wants to give me a job working on Galactic civilizations, or wants me to work with a new side department.
I can kind of feel this debugging takes a long time when the department head can't go on without your program when the problem is you can't make it work because you forgot a bracket somewhere when the debugger isn't clear when there are umteen brackets.
I would think with proper organization, and an understanding of how your program will respond to all the other programs it will respond. Assuming that this person is only allowed to work on one program at a time, and is not allowed to add anything to the idea.
Yes, but if you have the money to spend there is a lot of things you can buy to build this game you can do more.
Yes as much as the wait for this game is very stressful I would want the game done as much as possible the first time.
Where can I sign up.
Technically as long as there is Xbox, as long as Linux has games, or as long as there is computer gaming Sony does not have a monopoly.
Are you talking about Serenity or Firefly. The first is a scify movie about the second.
Casuals have more money, because they are 99% of the world. But good long term business practice would be to cater to your core market (i.e. hardcore, intellectual PC types) while trying to make the explanation/tutorials of the games systems more easily understandable for casuals. I think we can safely say the devs are making a game for the core audience as they made the move to 64 bit only.
Well anyway, I'm fairly sure 4x games are pretty niche, and space themed 4x games are even more niche so it's not likely this game is getting "dumbed down" as I highly doubt the publishers are expecting this to shift 20mill units or anything
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