CIG - The Challenges Of Making Game Demos

rpmcmurphy

Take from this video what you will

MaxBacon

edit, for who is interested into SQ42's cut footage, check bellow

I really liked this video and their attitude, know why?

It shows something from CIG's part we never really saw before; they failed to show SQ42 at Citizencon and here it is a plain direct view at even their conferences and reunions up until the decision of cut it out of the Demo; this transparency towards the issues that lead to it, even showing the bugs themselves happening is just...  Something I never seen before on any other company in terms of communication. Have you?

This was pretty much the best communication and open development to its full meaning, both the good and the bad; that is the right direction, even if some will just find things to attack them with... they aren't doing it for them anyway!

Seems the demo was 1h long? They were really going ambitious there. End of the day I hope they fix and polish it so we possibly see SQ42 on the next livestreams (Nov & Dec).

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craftseeker

MaxBacon said:

I really liked this video and their attitude, know why?

It shows something from CIG's part we never really saw before; they failed to show SQ42 at Citizencon and here it is a plain direct view at even their conferences and reunions up until the decision of cut it out of the Demo; this transparency towards the issues that lead to it, even showing the bugs themselves happening is just...  Something I never seen before on any other company in terms of communication. Have you?

This was pretty much the best communication and open development to its full meaning, both the good and the bad; that is the right direction, even if some will just find things to attack them with... they aren't doing it for them anyway!

Seems the demo was 1h long? They were really going ambitious there. End of the day I hope they fix and polish it so we possibly see SQ42 on the next livestreams (Nov & Dec).

I really liked this video too. It shows their commitment and dedication. It shows they are genuinely working on delivery.

However it also shows poor project management, unrealistic goal setting, failure to manage resource conflicts and a much lower level of project completion than you and @Erillion have been suggesting.

Passion is good, good management is better.

rpmcmurphy

This quote, while rather strong, does seems rather appropriate

When they talk about "getting things in", "getting things polished", "getting things looking good", "getting features in there", "getting things to work" etc. they are not referring to the actual game but the demo.
When they talk about "it's challenging, we have a lot of challenges" they are not referring to the actual game but a bloody demo.
I fell off my chair. I just can't believe it!
So it is clear to me that even this buggy demo does not in any way represent what the game can currently do. The game and the demo are mostly separate development worlds.

I think it's good that they've put this video out but for me it is a form of damage control. There was a lot of complaints with how piss poor Citizencon was, how much they'd talked it all up before-hand and this video is just a show of crocodile tears "You're hurting our feelings, look how hard we worked to bring something totally different to you...."

MaxBacon

craftseeker said:

However it also shows poor project management, unrealistic goal setting, failure to manage resource conflicts and a much lower level of project completion than you and @Erillion have been suggesting.

It's as a dev on the video points out, as they were doing not one but two big pushes on 2 different areas of the game; being the engineering side under pressure to work through all they needed to get it out in time. Possibly unrealistic on attempting to push that much at once.


@rpmcmurphy You actually see the contrary statement from them; by the end as they said were going for "fix it for the demo and not for the game" what lead to the decision to cut it out. Shows the direction wasn't that and how truthful is that comment. But hey that's just whatever person you quoted opinion.

bartoni33

I agree that this years event was very underwhelming. I'm sure CIG knew it would be going into it. At this point it's obvious that if they don't get on the ball soon and get something, ANYTHING, even close to an actual working game soon next years 'con (pun intended?) may be cancelled for lack of interest and/or funds.

craftseeker

MaxBacon said:

craftseeker said:

However it also shows poor project management, unrealistic goal setting, failure to manage resource conflicts and a much lower level of project completion than you and @Erillion have been suggesting.

It's as a dev on the video points out, as they were doing not one but two big pushes on 2 different areas of the game; being the engineering side under pressure to work through all they needed to get it out in time. Possibly unrealistic on attempting to push that much at once.


@rpmcmurphy You actually see the contrary statement from them; by the end as they said were going for "fix it for the demo and not for the game" what lead to the decision to cut it out. Shows the direction wasn't that and how truthful is that comment. But hey that's just whatever person you quoted opinion.

The thing is Max, they should not have been working on either demo 14 days out from the con. They should have been in the 'can' or cancelled by then. The only thing happening with the demos should have been practicing the presentation. Rehearsal not development.

MaxBacon

Here's an actual quote from Erin Roberts on that:
"The good thing about it is actually a huge amount of of work went into Squadron 42. We really moved it forward, we actually answered a lot of issues and solved a lot of technological issues which means that actually it really pushed us very close to getting something that we can show the community and that’s basically where we are now."

And I don't think Erin is lying when he said that.


@bartoni33 I'd say it's a matter that falls upon SQ42, with the delay there's one obvious pressure on their side to show something that is worth waiting for, and they know it.

@craftseeker the way I see it the demos are not any isolated development from the game; and it's kinda shown there how "we need to fix the constellation door", "fix the delayed use interaction", "fix the physics issues preventing the rover vehicle inside a ship", and overall tech development, improvement and blockers are all things that go towards the game and are not wasted development on a demo.

craftseeker

MaxBacon said:

Here's an actual quote from Erin Roberts on that:
"The good thing about it is actually a huge amount of of work went into Squadron 42. We really moved it forward, we actually answered a lot of issues and solved a lot of technological issues which means that actually it really pushed us very close to getting something that we can show the community and that’s basically where we are now."

And I don't think Erin is lying when he said that.


@bartoni33 I'd say it's a matter that falls upon SQ42, with the delay there's one obvious pressure on their side to show something that is worth waiting for, and they know it.

@craftseeker the way I see it the demos are not any isolated development from the game; and it's kinda shown there how "we need to fix the constellation door", "fix the delayed use interaction", "fix the physics issues preventing the rover vehicle inside a ship", and overall tech development, improvement and blockers are all things that go towards the game and are not wasted development on a demo.

I was not saying it was wasted development, nor that development of the game should cease while the demo for the con is being rehearsed.

What I did say was that the version of the code you are going to demo needs to be frozen well out from the demonstration. That it was not and that people were working long hours to complete code for the demo right up until a couple of days out is piss poor management.

Not knowing that the development target for the demo was not going to be met 30 days out was a total failure of management. It should have be known and contingencies implemented.

goboygo

Citizen Con looks to be a very important part of the development cycle as it really forces everyone to stop making new content focus solely on how to bring it together.  But holy crap this part of the game is simply amazing.

MaxBacon

craftseeker said:

What I did say was that the version of the code you are going to demo needs to be frozen well out from the demonstration. That it was not and that people were working long hours to complete code for the demo right up until a couple of days out is piss poor management.

You're talking about the code-base to be frozen for the sake of it? Wouldn't take also cause 2 dev streams that end up going on different directions that they then'd have to merge fixes on one for the other and vice-versa?

But I'd agree that the goals were very pushed to the last minute where it is 2 days before the presentation until the Animation Director says "I can’t guarantee that we can get to all fixing all the retargeting problems with everything else we are trying to do at the same time."; if it was done before they'd have a margin of error to work out those issues.

craftseeker

MaxBacon said:

craftseeker said:

What I did say was that the version of the code you are going to demo needs to be frozen well out from the demonstration. That it was not and that people were working long hours to complete code for the demo right up until a couple of days out is piss poor management.

You're talking about the code-base to be frozen for the sake of it? Wouldn't take also cause 2 dev streams that end up going on different directions that they then'd have to merge fixes on one for the other and vice-versa?

But I'd agree that the goals were very pushed to the last minute where it is 2 days before the presentation until the Animation Director says "I can’t guarantee that we can get to all fixing all the retargeting problems with everything else we are trying to do at the same time."; if it was done before they'd have a margin of error to work out those issues.

Nope, there is usually a live version, a test version, and at least one development version. Development continues in the development version, but in either the test version or a new and temporary copy (the demo version) changes are not applied. This is called good practice. Once you are finished with the demo version you delete it.

Elsabolts

Just make the game already, Ive been waiting several years now on the Reclaimer and Orion ! And ya wonder why the public gets pissed.

Frammshamm

months to create a whopping 1 hour of content. LOL.. i just LOL'd irl .. omg this game is a joke

Oriphus

Everything about this must fall on the shoulders of Chris Roberts. This was his failure. For me there was no need to force unrealistic goals on his dev team that could have nothing but a poor outcome of many thousands of really disappointed backers and people who paid to go to an event who must have felt robbed. To see that his dev team was not even getting proper sleep due to stress for the best part of 8 weeks is disgraceful, all to fulfil CR's desire to have his glory moments at an event. Seriously, what was the point of promising to show SQ42 when they were so far from the end goal, when balancing the pros and cons of such a gamble this was just such a poor judgement call from CR.

I do not care if the game is late, I do not care if it is delayed for years due to trying to make it the best they can, I still have total faith that this game will reach its destination and will be a huge positive milestone in gaming. However I abhor the treatment of the staff in this decision, not only must they have felt completely exhausted but totally devastated to have all their efforts miss the mark while simultaneously leaving the community feel cheated and upset.

I understand that part of the reason SC is so ambitious is down to the personality and drive of CR and we must take the good with the bad, but he MUST learn from this, to say that this was anything short of a disaster would be wrong and it was 100% easily avoidable, no one forced this to happen besides CR himself, even if early on it seemed like a reasonable goal it should have been communicated to everyone how tight and difficult making the deadline was becoming and the same hour that they decided to cut the demo it should have been passed on to the community, it would have avoided almost everything beyond a few "well that sucks" and the usual trolls saying "told you it was a con". I hope now he does not stomp around blaming everyone else for his own shortcomings.

MaxBacon

craftseeker said:

Nope, there is usually a live version, a test version, and at least one development version. Development continues in the development version, but in either the test version or a new and temporary copy (the demo version) changes are not applied. This is called good practice. Once you are finished with the demo version you delete it.

That can still be the case. But even like that...

...if you need "hey I need this X issue with animations or physics fixed"; I believe that should still be done on the dev builds, and then pushed to the specific build that'd be the one where they're going for the demo. That way it is fixed for the game as well.

And end of the day this is development, not sure if you'd be involved with any of it but sometimes you're just confident things will work out just fine, to just fix a minor bug that triggers a bunch of other mad issues; so I can imagine they doing some changes, or fixes that triggered big issues on the Animation front.

Acterius said:

So am the only one that notices they have wasted months of development on the games by concentrating on CitizenCon?

It's unfortunate to see people like you do not understand how development works here, to claim wasted development like what they do towards getting features and tech necessary for that demo to happen, will not go towards the game.

Erin's example with how much the demo pushed SQ42 forward is just that.

Elsabolts

This sums up the statement above " If ya can't take the Heat, Get out of the Kitchen " fire they lazy bastards.

Theocritus

Is it just me or of all the Kickstarter games does this one seem to be the most greedy and wasteful?

craftseeker

@MaxBacon said:

"And end of the day this is development, not sure if you'd be involved with any of it but sometimes you're just confident things will work out just fine, to just fix a minor bug that triggers a bunch of other mad issues; so I can imagine they doing some changes, or fixes that triggered big issues on the Animation front."

Have I been involved in software development? Well yes actually for more years than I like to count, from projects with a handful of people to teams of more than two hundred. From analogue computers and mainframes, all the way down to data loggers the size of a matchbox.

But to return to the point, yes you might apply a patch or two to a demo environment, but not major fixes right up to the end. You cut your losses, abandon the demo and move on to something else. Maybe you make a convincing video about how hard you tried instead.

Not going to carry on with this to and fro. You watched that video and got excited, I watched it and saw all the problems. Neither of us is going to shift so further discussion is pointless.

Erillion

Theocritus said:

Is it just me or of all the Kickstarter games does this one seem to be the most greedy and wasteful?

As compared to those crowdfunding games that were PROVEN scams and have already ended in desaster?

Where the money was spend on building a house for one of the founders instead of doing ANY work on the game? Or even spend on hookers and coke in another case? Or were stuff was put together with an existing build-your-own-world-toolset and then sold as genuine work ?

THAT is greedy.


Have fun

MaxBacon

@craftseeker one point there, I wasn't excited, I saw the problems and so on, what I give them props for is being this upfront and direct with the community about it, showing the good and the bad is a good direction for their communication, something that we never saw before like this from them. And they should continue doing so.

Erillion

rpmcmurphy said:

Take from this video what you will

For me that was one of the most important videos ever done and published by CIG.

"Character building" is the phrase that comes to my mind in that context.

I liked what Lando said towards the end. I also concur with the sentence "Delayed game eventually evolves into a good game, but a bad released game always stays bad" (have seen that too many times).


Have fun

botrytis

Erillion said:

Theocritus said:

Is it just me or of all the Kickstarter games does this one seem to be the most greedy and wasteful?

As compared to those crowdfunding games that were PROVEN scams and have already ended in desaster?

Where the money was spend on building a house for one of the founders instead of doing ANY work on the game? Or even spend on hookers and coke in another case? Or were stuff was put together with an existing build-your-own-world-toolset and then sold as genuine work ?

THAT is greedy.


Have fun

Kickstarter IS CROWDFUNDING - jeez people are stupid.

rpmcmurphy

Theocritus said:

Is it just me or of all the Kickstarter games does this one seem to be the most greedy and wasteful?

There's definitely an element of that. I guess when you recieve this much money up front and you have fans enabling these decisions then it must be very easy to get carried away (compared to your strict budget / time project).

Erillion said:

rpmcmurphy said:

Take from this video what you will

For me that was one of the most important videos ever done and published by CIG.

"Character building" is the phrase that comes to my mind in that context.

I liked what Lando said towards the end. I also concur with the sentence "Delayed game eventually evolves into a good game, but a bad released game always stays bad" (have seen that too many times).


Have fun

I also thought it was quite good. I'm not sold on their reasons for doing it but it does expose quite a few things one way or the other.
I do think the "delayed game" phrase is thrown around a bit too easily, it should lead to a good game, atleast a better one than the version without the extra time but it's not assured that it'll lead to a great game.

Erillion

botrytis said:

Kickstarter IS CROWDFUNDING - jeez people are stupid.

Everyone knows that. What is your point ?


Have fun