Star Citizen's Squadron 42 Report Points to Progress for Story Development | MMORPG.com

HeadHunterX2

Gdemami said:

kitarad said:

No, the problem is the lack of accountability in crowdfunding. 

No one forces you to throw money on crowdfunding, startups or w/e. You know the terms so take your responsibility.

Besides, one can still be prosecuted for fraud and some even did.

The difference tho is in what some self-entitled dimwits falsely consider a fraud - just because the game takes longer than they "think" it should or the game fails to deliver at all does not make it a fraud.

Star Citizen is not fraudulent. But its most definitely mismanaged. I bet the PR team is overpaid while the development team is full of mostly underpaid juniors. While scope creep is looked at as prolonging income from gullible backers.

Gdemami

HeadHunterX2 said

Star Citizen is not fraudulent. But its most definitely mismanaged. 

...it isn't mismanaged for the same reasons it isn't frauduelent.

Your "bet" does not make it mismanaged.

lahnmir

Gdemami said:

HeadHunterX2 said

Star Citizen is not fraudulent. But its most definitely mismanaged. 

...it isn't mismanaged for the same reasons it isn't frauduelent.

Your "bet" does not make it mismanaged.

Constantly MISSING dates because you can’t properly MANAGE realistic timelines and/or setbacks really doesn’t mean mismanaged no. 

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Babuinix

Gdemami said: 

Your "bet" does not make it mismanaged.

Ability to comprehend reality loses footing: Spawn another Unicorn with no legs  

Gdemami

lahnmir said:

Constantly MISSING dates because you can’t properly MANAGE realistic timelines and/or setbacks really doesn’t mean mismanaged no. 

Hey look! Another illitarete "bet"!

*hands the poor sob a cookie"

Babuinix

DEVELOPMENT CAVEATS in the games official site: 

Feature Driven

While the Persistent Universe has shifted to a milestone driven schedule of quarterly installments and we are happy to showcase “work in progress” to our community, the focus for Squadron 42 is to deliver an experience that contains both the narrative and feature scope we envision in one final game. As such, Squadron 42 will only be released when we have achieved our final, polished, creative vision. If there is any slip in our quarterly goals, this will push out for the project’s end date.

Quality will always be our number one goal.

When we initially set out on this journey we looked out at the gaming landscape and asked: can we do better? We continue to ask that question about everything we do. As a result, we will ALWAYS extend timelines or re-do features and content if we do not feel they are up to our standards. The freedom to fight for a new level of quality in game development is what crowd funding has allowed us to do, and we will continue to fight to make sure Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are the best possible games they can be.

Future work estimates are just that: estimates.

All estimates are based on our knowledge and experience but there are many aspects of game development that are impossible to predict because they literally cover uncharted territory. You will see the same estimates we use in our internal planning, but it is important to understand that in many cases (especially with groundbreaking engineering tasks) these estimates are often subject to change due to unforeseen complexity in implementing features.

Internal schedules, the ones you will now be privy to, tend to have aggressive dates.

This helps to help the team focus and scope their tasks, especially in the case of tech development. Every team needs target dates, so you may see dates adjust when we get more accurate information and understanding of what’s needed to be completed.

The polish phase is always hard to estimate, increasingly so in online and multiplayer situations.

The complexity and the difficulty in testing at a large scale make it harder to reproduce and isolate bugs to fix them. We base our estimates, again, on our experience, but we also know that it’s possible for a single bug to cause a delay of days or weeks when a hundred others might be fixed instantly.

Almost everything above aplies to other games in development in some way or another, traditional or crowdfunded.

The only exception beeing the possibility to extend development for the sake of quality simply because most studios will not have that luxury. CIG has and, imo, uses it rightfully so.

lahnmir

Gdemami said:

lahnmir said:

Constantly MISSING dates because you can’t properly MANAGE realistic timelines and/or setbacks really doesn’t mean mismanaged no. 

Hey look! Another illitarete "bet"!

*hands the poor sob a cookie"

Hey look, its mother troll protecting her cub.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

botrytis

Babuinix said:

DEVELOPMENT CAVEATS in the games official site: 

Feature Driven

While the Persistent Universe has shifted to a milestone driven schedule of quarterly installments and we are happy to showcase “work in progress” to our community, the focus for Squadron 42 is to deliver an experience that contains both the narrative and feature scope we envision in one final game. As such, Squadron 42 will only be released when we have achieved our final, polished, creative vision. If there is any slip in our quarterly goals, this will push out for the project’s end date.

Quality will always be our number one goal.

When we initially set out on this journey we looked out at the gaming landscape and asked: can we do better? We continue to ask that question about everything we do. As a result, we will ALWAYS extend timelines or re-do features and content if we do not feel they are up to our standards. The freedom to fight for a new level of quality in game development is what crowd funding has allowed us to do, and we will continue to fight to make sure Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are the best possible games they can be.

Future work estimates are just that: estimates.

All estimates are based on our knowledge and experience but there are many aspects of game development that are impossible to predict because they literally cover uncharted territory. You will see the same estimates we use in our internal planning, but it is important to understand that in many cases (especially with groundbreaking engineering tasks) these estimates are often subject to change due to unforeseen complexity in implementing features.

Internal schedules, the ones you will now be privy to, tend to have aggressive dates.

This helps to help the team focus and scope their tasks, especially in the case of tech development. Every team needs target dates, so you may see dates adjust when we get more accurate information and understanding of what’s needed to be completed.

The polish phase is always hard to estimate, increasingly so in online and multiplayer situations.

The complexity and the difficulty in testing at a large scale make it harder to reproduce and isolate bugs to fix them. We base our estimates, again, on our experience, but we also know that it’s possible for a single bug to cause a delay of days or weeks when a hundred others might be fixed instantly.

Almost everything above aplies to other games in development in some way or another, traditional or crowdfunded.

The only exception beeing the possibility to extend development for the sake of quality simply because most studios will not have that luxury. CIG has and, imo, uses it rightfully so.

Putting out a post does not mean they actually follow this. It is just more see, this is the reason we can't get a game finished - we are clueless wonders.

This is like Trump saying he won the election. It is not true but  he thinks if he says it loud enough it will happen. Nothing is farther from the truth.

A mismanaged project is just that, mismanaged. A developer who can't see, objectively, they are in the mud and stuck, needs to be fired. CR needs to be fired. Because it is his boondoggle and arrogance that is causing these issues.

Gdemami

lahnmir said:

Hey look, its mother troll protecting her cub.

...as much as you are desperate for attention I am not your mum, nor I am gonna be.

*hands poor pathethic thing a cookie*

HeadHunterX2

Gdemami said:

lahnmir said:

Constantly MISSING dates because you can’t properly MANAGE realistic timelines and/or setbacks really doesn’t mean mismanaged no. 

Hey look! Another illitarete "bet"!

*hands the poor sob a cookie"

I bet Star Citizen doesn't release when initially promised or even close to that date... oh wait, oops I'm 5 years too late on that bet. 

botrytis

Gdemami said:

lahnmir said:

Hey look, its mother troll protecting her cub.

...as much as you are desperate for attention I am not your mum, nor I am gonna be.

*hands poor pathethic thing a cookie*

Well, in SC case it is, Here is a cookie for you. Wait, you need to pay for the sugar, the flour, the leavening argent and eggs all separately. Then you have to pay for the oven, the baking sheet, and the power separately, also. Sorry it will take 5 more years for the cookie to bake, since we don't know what we are doing.

OOPS we forgot the chocolate chips in those cookies.

Babuinix

Game gets delayed: FiRe MaNaGmEnT! aLL InCoMpEtEnT.
Game rushed to release in incomplete and buggy state:
FiRe MaNaGmEnT! aLL InCoMpEtEnT.

Dev's can't win against those who've became so jaded that their mindset is hardwired to be negative. Which is actually good for the games they hate because they filter themselves out from gaming communities, the downfall is that we have to endure their unicorns on gaming forums 

xpsync

Oh Hey! Yea never mind me, i'm just here for some comic relief.

Slapshot1188

Babuinix said:

Slapshot1188 said:

See this is just demonstrating your utter and total disconnect from reality.  I, and most people had PLENTY of tolerance for setbacks.  Understood in 2014, 2015, 2016...

Its now 6+ YEARS of setbacks.  

The difference between you and the rest of humanity is that we understand that tolerance is not an unending resource.

Nah, this is just you going back to square one with lying to youself by venting frustrations on a thread about the development of game while saying you only care about the release date.

People who only trully care about releases dates don't really crowdfund. They wait until something formal, steady and reviewed which they feel worthy of their time and money is available. Which is the sensible way to go btw.

People like us, dumb enough to risk early investments for the sake of trying to get new games/ideas we enjoy come to fruiton, games and genres that have been forgotten, neglected or just pushed asside by market margins, shareholders, political correctness or whatever.

Games which conventional studios cannot risk to make because they aren't viable

We backed a Chris Roberts epic space opera game with all the bells & whistles, which, by all footage and info released about it already, is exactly what the man is doing and some more. Wing Commander on steroids. No compromises.

See many games like that around after all these years? 

So why be frustrated or lash out at development news about a game you so eagerly want when you can apreciate it's making? Because the truth is, if you hadn't backed or even realised it was being developed you'd still be eagerly waiting for a game like SQ42 anyway. Might as well enjoy the fact of knowing it's actually being made 

Here is what you are totally missing.  This has nothing to do with Crowdfunding.  If this was a movie that was supposed to come out in 2014 and they were still working on it 6 years later I'd be disappointed.  Even if I hadn't paid money.   

When you tell customers, or even potential ones that your product will launch in 2014 and it's now 2020, they are going to be frustrated.   When you tell them it will be in Beta by Sept of this year and it turns out that was not even remotely possible, they will be frustrated.

This has zero to do with being "dumb enough to risk early investment".  This is simp0ly frustration with people who continually give unrealistic dates and fail to deliver. 

Again, nobody has played SQ42 after 8 years.  Nobody has played SQ42 despite being told it would be in Beta a few months ago.  People have every valid reason to vent their frustration over that.

If you cannot understand this, the issue is on your side.

Babuinix

Well it's up to gamers to manage expectations accordingly. Specially those who venture in crowdfunding.

It's not like delays in the game development industry are some kind of secluded secret by now...

https://kotaku.com/why-video-games-are-delayed-so-often-1795473828

Anyone paying minimal attention to the market in the last decade and all the other crowdfunded mmo's development could have noticed the patern by now. Maybe they should start by aknowledging it, even if doing so breaks the unicorn's legs

botrytis

Babuinix said:

If at this point anyone still equals crowdfunding with pre-ordering and/or mistakingly assume that estimates are promises You're the problem.

Actually, just like Trump supporters, reality and what they want are two different things. Reality is, this game is so mis-managed that there is no way it will ever be published. This game is the new Duke Nukem Forever.

lahnmir

Gdemami said:

lahnmir said:

Hey look, its mother troll protecting her cub.

...as much as you are desperate for attention I am not your mum, nor I am gonna be.

*hands poor pathethic thing a cookie*

I gave you a compliment, don’t ruin the moment now.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

botrytis

Babuinix said:

Game gets delayed: FiRe MaNaGmEnT! aLL InCoMpEtEnT.
Game rushed to release in incomplete and buggy state:
FiRe MaNaGmEnT! aLL InCoMpEtEnT.

Dev's can't win against those who've became so jaded that their mindset is hardwired to be negative. Which is actually good for the games they hate because they filter themselves out from gaming communities, the downfall is that we have to endure their unicorns on gaming forums 

Developers like this win, when clueless people sit there like this....

laserit

Babuinix said:

Well it's up to gamers to manage expectations accordingly. Specially those who venture in crowdfunding.

It's not like delays in the game development industry are some kind of secluded secret by now...

https://kotaku.com/why-video-games-are-delayed-so-often-1795473828

Anyone paying minimal attention to the market in the last decade and all the other crowdfunded mmo's development could have noticed the patern by now. Maybe they should start by aknowledging it, even if doing so breaks the unicorn's legs

Where do you draw the line?

Do you believe that it's ok for crowdfunded software to be perpetually delayed?

In the SQ42 context we're talking about a single player game.

Slapshot1188

Babuinix said:

Well it's up to gamers to manage expectations accordingly. Specially those who venture in crowdfunding.

It's not like delays in the game development industry are some kind of secluded secret by now...

https://kotaku.com/why-video-games-are-delayed-so-often-1795473828

Anyone paying minimal attention to the market in the last decade and all the other crowdfunded mmo's development could have noticed the patern by now. Maybe they should start by aknowledging it, even if doing so breaks the unicorn's legs

Maybe you should acknowledge that you are using hindsight.  Nobody in 2012 would have believed that it would be about to turn 2021 and we have not gotten SQ42.  And if you are saying that most people would have realized it at the time then you are lying to us and to yourself.

Babuinix

Nah I'm stating that in a business as fickle and unpredictable as game development, gamers ,specially those who invest in crowdfunded games, need to be prepared to adjust their expectations accordingly.

Holding grudges and nurturing frustrations because of missing estimates in a video-game showcases lack of maturity and knowledge to deal with crowdfunding and game development.

Which is why big studios are so adamant of developing in secrecy.

Tiller

Babuinix said:

Game gets delayed: FiRe MaNaGmEnT! aLL InCoMpEtEnT.
Game rushed to release in incomplete and buggy state:
FiRe MaNaGmEnT! aLL InCoMpEtEnT.

Dev's can't win against those who've became so jaded that their mindset is hardwired to be negative. Which is actually good for the games they hate because they filter themselves out from gaming communities, the downfall is that we have to endure their unicorns on gaming forums 

I remember a time when a development team relegated people complaining on forums as just a "vocal minority" and not really reflective of the majority of people who would play their game.

In all their infinite wisdom they thought they had created a absolute masterpiece, and a few shouty people on some game forum had no effect on their standing with "average gamers".

As the game suffered more over time, and obvious flaws became obvious, their small community began to turn on them as well, once they saw true POS that they subjected themselves to; and the lack of real concern for fixing design flaws and bugs from the dev team.

These devs then accused those same vocal folks as being a cabal against them for the lack of success they had with current and potential players. Until one day it finally shut down to everyone leaving a very very small community confused as to what had just happened. I mean, why wouldn't people enjoy their buggy POS? It's easy to blame others for your lack of success, isn't it? 

Fast forward to today and it took a group hobbyists to rebuild and kinda  fix the mess those developers tried to create, and still to a very very small and dwindling audience.

You sire would be part of that very very small community. While you're spending time over here sharpening your pitchfork against us daily; a majority of people outside this site consider the game joke as well. But you wouldn't know that because you are worried about us. You will be one of the few shocked at the eventual failure of SC.

CIG has already failed in the positive messaging regard out the gate, and the developers have made it worse over time. Not to forget the fans such as yourself who think the best defense is offense. You aren't doing them any favors and I've been here long enough to see how that eventually worked out <negative_messaging>.

No mater how hard you try, this money pit of a game will always carry the stain and rancid stench of ongoing abject failure and will be forever marred with terrible management, bugs and never ending stretch goals that extend into infinity due to their kitchen sink; or should I say "toilet in the center of a living room" development mentality.

You are literally the first and last man standing in room at party no one will show up to. 

Have Fun!

olepi

I'll state up front that I hope SC and SQ42 are a success. I loved the Wing Commander games.

However, it is obvious that they have no competent senior management. They completely underestimated what it would take to make a game. Even with massive funding and a decade of development, they have produced no products.

In any normal setting, this fiasco would have been canceled long ago, or the senior management would have been replaced.

The only excuse seems to be that the people in charge just didn't know how hard it was to produce a game, even though they had done many games before. Or that "crowdfunding" means that there is no accountability, unlike other development projects.

There have been many large failures before, some much larger than this. The Motorola Irridium project comes to mind. That project lost over $2 BILLION before it was canceled.

The senior management needs to be replaced with competent managers who know how to set an end date, and then manage the project to achieve that date. So far, SC and SQ42 have no end dates, even after a decade of development.

Amazing.

Gdemami

coretex666 said:

I guess your bet does not make it well managed either.

....where did I claim it is well managed or anything of such sort?

Gdemami

olepi said:

In any normal setting, this fiasco would have been canceled long ago, or the senior management would have been replaced.

...yeah, let's fire senior staff that managed to raise +300M in funding!

Such incompetence and failure!

Amazing, indeed. You guys are truly special.