You have claimed there are 'lots of scope change' My claim 'people try to associate Star Citizen with scope change constantly, I think it is horse poop'
All I have done is try to clarify what constitutes as scope change then asked for the list of what you believe amounts to scope change in regards to Star Citizen that merits this viewpoint of 'lots of scope change'.
Finally you have provided a list....
farming inside ships modules for ships (edit: this was the 65 million stetch goal) land claiming base building,
I have not included the ships, as I have explained all ready they are part of the initial design. CIG will certainly have had a range of ships in mind eg. We will need around 5 snub ships, 5 interceptors, 5 light fighters, 5 medium and 5 heavy fighters - total around 25 fighters. we need around 15 medium ships and 10 large ships and roughly the same for enemy ships to flesh out the universe and sq42
I can see around 86 ships in Freelancer, this game does not have variants of the same ship like Star Citizen which is a cheap easy way to pretty much triple the base amount of ships turning that reasonable list of 50 ships I guessed at into around 150 ships. Now going forward in design I won't outright dismiss that some vehicles will be new and were not expected or included in the original scope due to new unforeseen needs arising from the fully exploarable planets.
So in closing to the ship statement, just because one of the ships from a category is now going to be developed does not in anyway mean that it was not accounted for in the original scope, pretty much mostly 100% the opposite and to suggest otherwise is to pretend that they are making all this stuff up as they go, that this is not built on the universe and experience that Chris Roberts has been bringing around with him since an early age and aided in design by a group of heavily talented and experienced group of people.
Land claiming and base building are certainly scope creep but are only very recent. Prior to this, in the last 3 years of this currently $170,000,000 game, the entire list for scope creep here is 'Farming'.
It's odd that such a small list has had so many people screaming forums down with the words scope creep for so long don't you think? Certainly does not look like 'lots of scope creep' to me.
(and no Argle, 2 friends who once worked under CR 20 years ago who got upset and bad mouthed him to you is not good enough evidence to say 'there will ALWAYS be scope creep'.)
So the scope was basically defined 3 years ago with a projected budget of $65M yet today the budget is at $170M and growing, with no real delivery date in sight.
What this is actually called is "gold plating," a form of undesirable scope creep.
Wikipedia has an interesting take on it, "Continuing to work on a project or task well past the point where the extra effort is worth the value it adds (if any). After having met the requirements, the developer works on further enhancing the product, thinking the customer would be delighted to see additional or more polished features, rather than what was asked for or expected. The customer might be disappointed in the results, and the extra effort by the developer might be futile." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_plating_(software_engineering)
It is very easy to make a case SC is suffering from some of the negative effects of gold plating, which Gourab also shared,
"Consequences of Gold Plating
There are many potential (mostly negative) consequences of gold plating, including:
Increasing the cost of the project. Gold plating takes precious time, and is usually done by top resources. Of course, the customer will not be paying for those extra hours.
Scope Inflation. Sometimes gold plating may result in changing some of the underlying infrastructure that was originally defined and agreed upon just to accommodate the features that the client did not ask for. Again, such changes are usually done by top resources.
Increasing risks. On average there are 20 errors for every 1000 lines of codes. Gold plating is mostly about adding code, and consequently, bugs.
Raising the expectations of the over-satisfied customer. Customers with a gold plated product will grow accustomed to getting more than what they originally bargained for, for free. The next time the same company delivers a project to this customer, there’d better be gold plating…
Customer backlash. As stated above, gold plating is giving the customer something that he may not want. Sometimes the customer will be ungrateful (as viewed from the team’s perspective) and will request to remove all the bells and the whistles that were added without his approval. This will cost the company time and money."
Arguably SC is suffering from most of these negatives to some degree even if one does not consider this as "scope creep" but I feel that is being disingenuous to do so.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Gold Plating, interesting. I can see some of those fitting in with what has occurred with Star Citizen. I would put this down to the fact that people are backing Chris Roberts vision and for him to push that vision as far as he can. It is certainly how I felt when I backed and from what I can tell it is how CR perceives that funding. When I think about it, it might even be hard to avoid 'Gold Plating' when your fundraising starts pouring in way beyond what was expected. Surely there is even pressure and expectation to over deliver.
The only way I can think to avoid that would be to avoid letting your backers know how much you have raised beyond the kickstarter goals, but that seems like a complete own goal.
I have not included the ships, as I have explained all ready they are part of the initial design. CIG will certainly have had a range of ships in mind eg.
Sorry but you have zero proof this is the case. It is pure conjecture. Using the existence of ships in Freelancer to support your argument does not work because it has no bearing on what they can afford to do in Star Citizen. And that is what it comes down to, money. The reason they have been introducing concept ships is to keep the money flowing in, not because they wanted X of this and Y of that or because Freelancer had 86 ships and Star Citizen needs to have more.
Another example of scope increase is the Hull range of ships, look at the extra work needed for the largest of the range, specialised "dry" docks, gantrys for loading and unloading, the additional asset work and mechanics involved for their cargo system etc.
Anyway, I think we have exhausted this argument and every one will be glad if we just shut up about it
So the scope was basically defined 3 years ago with a projected budget of $65M yet today the budget is at $170M and growing, with no real delivery date in sight.
What this is actually called is "gold plating," a form of undesirable scope creep.
Wikipedia has an interesting take on it, "Continuing to work on a project or task well past the point where the extra effort is worth the value it adds (if any). After having met the requirements, the developer works on further enhancing the product, thinking the customer would be delighted to see additional or more polished features, rather than what was asked for or expected. The customer might be disappointed in the results, and the extra effort by the developer might be futile." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_plating_(software_engineering)
It is very easy to make a case SC is suffering from some of the negative effects of gold plating, which Gourab also shared,
"Consequences of Gold Plating
There are many potential (mostly negative) consequences of gold plating, including:
Increasing the cost of the project. Gold plating takes precious time, and is usually done by top resources. Of course, the customer will not be paying for those extra hours.
Scope Inflation. Sometimes gold plating may result in changing some of the underlying infrastructure that was originally defined and agreed upon just to accommodate the features that the client did not ask for. Again, such changes are usually done by top resources.
Increasing risks. On average there are 20 errors for every 1000 lines of codes. Gold plating is mostly about adding code, and consequently, bugs.
Raising the expectations of the over-satisfied customer. Customers with a gold plated product will grow accustomed to getting more than what they originally bargained for, for free. The next time the same company delivers a project to this customer, there’d better be gold plating…
Customer backlash. As stated above, gold plating is giving the customer something that he may not want. Sometimes the customer will be ungrateful (as viewed from the team’s perspective) and will request to remove all the bells and the whistles that were added without his approval. This will cost the company time and money."
Arguably SC is suffering from most of these negatives to some degree even if one does not consider this as "scope creep" but I feel that is being disingenuous to do so.
That's very interesting. I had not heard the term gold-plating being used with games before but it sounds very apt for this situation.
Anyway, I think we have exhausted this argument and every one will be glad if we just shut up about it
Well you started it.
rpm shows an olive branch Ori knocks it to the ground...
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
So the scope was basically defined 3 years ago with a projected budget of $65M yet today the budget is at $170M and growing, with no real delivery date in sight.
What this is actually called is "gold plating," a form of undesirable scope creep.
Wikipedia has an interesting take on it, "Continuing to work on a project or task well past the point where the extra effort is worth the value it adds (if any). After having met the requirements, the developer works on further enhancing the product, thinking the customer would be delighted to see additional or more polished features, rather than what was asked for or expected. The customer might be disappointed in the results, and the extra effort by the developer might be futile." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_plating_(software_engineering)
It is very easy to make a case SC is suffering from some of the negative effects of gold plating, which Gourab also shared,
"Consequences of Gold Plating
There are many potential (mostly negative) consequences of gold plating, including:
Increasing the cost of the project. Gold plating takes precious time, and is usually done by top resources. Of course, the customer will not be paying for those extra hours.
Scope Inflation. Sometimes gold plating may result in changing some of the underlying infrastructure that was originally defined and agreed upon just to accommodate the features that the client did not ask for. Again, such changes are usually done by top resources.
Increasing risks. On average there are 20 errors for every 1000 lines of codes. Gold plating is mostly about adding code, and consequently, bugs.
Raising the expectations of the over-satisfied customer. Customers with a gold plated product will grow accustomed to getting more than what they originally bargained for, for free. The next time the same company delivers a project to this customer, there’d better be gold plating…
Customer backlash. As stated above, gold plating is giving the customer something that he may not want. Sometimes the customer will be ungrateful (as viewed from the team’s perspective) and will request to remove all the bells and the whistles that were added without his approval. This will cost the company time and money."
Arguably SC is suffering from most of these negatives to some degree even if one does not consider this as "scope creep" but I feel that is being disingenuous to do so.
You would need to have an actual game first to do gold plating wouldn't you?
Christ Roberts never lacked vision but he absolutely sucks at running game companies.
Comments
My claim 'people try to associate Star Citizen with scope change constantly, I think it is horse poop'
All I have done is try to clarify what constitutes as scope change then asked for the list of what you believe amounts to scope change in regards to Star Citizen that merits this viewpoint of 'lots of scope change'.
Finally you have provided a list....
farming inside ships
modules for ships (edit: this was the 65 million stetch goal)
land claiming
base building,
I have not included the ships, as I have explained all ready they are part of the initial design. CIG will certainly have had a range of ships in mind eg. We will need around 5 snub ships, 5 interceptors, 5 light fighters, 5 medium and 5 heavy fighters - total around 25 fighters. we need around 15 medium ships and 10 large ships and roughly the same for enemy ships to flesh out the universe and sq42
I can see around 86 ships in Freelancer, this game does not have variants of the same ship like Star Citizen which is a cheap easy way to pretty much triple the base amount of ships turning that reasonable list of 50 ships I guessed at into around 150 ships. Now going forward in design I won't outright dismiss that some vehicles will be new and were not expected or included in the original scope due to new unforeseen needs arising from the fully exploarable planets.
So in closing to the ship statement, just because one of the ships from a category is now going to be developed does not in anyway mean that it was not accounted for in the original scope, pretty much mostly 100% the opposite and to suggest otherwise is to pretend that they are making all this stuff up as they go, that this is not built on the universe and experience that Chris Roberts has been bringing around with him since an early age and aided in design by a group of heavily talented and experienced group of people.
Land claiming and base building are certainly scope creep but are only very recent. Prior to this, in the last 3 years of this currently $170,000,000 game, the entire list for scope creep here is 'Farming'.
It's odd that such a small list has had so many people screaming forums down with the words scope creep for so long don't you think? Certainly does not look like 'lots of scope creep' to me.
(and no Argle, 2 friends who once worked under CR 20 years ago who got upset and bad mouthed him to you is not good enough evidence to say 'there will ALWAYS be scope creep'.)
Have fun
What this is actually called is "gold plating," a form of undesirable scope creep.
"Gold plating is giving the customer something that he did not ask for, something that wasn’t scoped, and often something that they may not want." - Gourab Mitra https://m.bayt.com/en/specialties/q/115936/what-is-gold-plating-in-project-management-how-to-avoid-this/
Wikipedia has an interesting take on it,
"Continuing to work on a project or task well past the point where the extra effort is worth the value it adds (if any). After having met the requirements, the developer works on further enhancing the product, thinking the customer would be delighted to see additional or more polished features, rather than what was asked for or expected. The customer might be disappointed in the results, and the extra effort by the developer might be futile."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_plating_(software_engineering)
It is very easy to make a case SC is suffering from some of the negative effects of gold plating, which Gourab also shared,
"Consequences of Gold Plating
There are many potential (mostly negative) consequences of gold plating, including:
Increasing the cost of the project. Gold plating takes precious time, and is usually done by top resources. Of course, the customer will not be paying for those extra hours.
Scope Inflation. Sometimes gold plating may result in changing some of the underlying infrastructure that was originally defined and agreed upon just to accommodate the features that the client did not ask for. Again, such changes are usually done by top resources.
Increasing risks. On average there are 20 errors for every 1000 lines of codes. Gold plating is mostly about adding code, and consequently, bugs.
Raising the expectations of the over-satisfied customer. Customers with a gold plated product will grow accustomed to getting more than what they originally bargained for, for free. The next time the same company delivers a project to this customer, there’d better be gold plating…
Customer backlash. As stated above, gold plating is giving the customer something that he may not want. Sometimes the customer will be ungrateful (as viewed from the team’s perspective) and will request to remove all the bells and the whistles that were added without his approval. This will cost the company time and money."
Arguably SC is suffering from most of these negatives to some degree even if one does not consider this as "scope creep" but I feel that is being disingenuous to do so.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The only way I can think to avoid that would be to avoid letting your backers know how much you have raised beyond the kickstarter goals, but that seems like a complete own goal.
Sorry but you have zero proof this is the case. It is pure conjecture. Using the existence of ships in Freelancer to support your argument does not work because it has no bearing on what they can afford to do in Star Citizen. And that is what it comes down to, money. The reason they have been introducing concept ships is to keep the money flowing in, not because they wanted X of this and Y of that or because Freelancer had 86 ships and Star Citizen needs to have more.
Another example of scope increase is the Hull range of ships, look at the extra work needed for the largest of the range, specialised "dry" docks, gantrys for loading and unloading, the additional asset work and mechanics involved for their cargo system etc.
Anyway, I think we have exhausted this argument and every one will be glad if we just shut up about it
That's very interesting. I had not heard the term gold-plating being used with games before but it sounds very apt for this situation.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Isn't that just a wonderful sign of your maturity, I'm scratching my head wondering why you want to inform people of that
Christ Roberts never lacked vision but he absolutely sucks at running game companies.