Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Around the Verse - Eclipsing the Competition - Star Citizen Videos - MMORPG.com
System
Member UncommonPosts: 12,599
Around the Verse - Eclipsing the Competition - Star Citizen Videos - MMORPG.com
Sean Tracy and Josh Herman host this week’s Around the Verse, which features an update from our German office and a Ship Shape segment focused on the Aegis Eclipse.
Comments
Just IMO but common sense feels right.
I agree. I'm a backer since way back in the early days, but I haven't logged into the "demo" in years. To me it seems like Chris is more interested in playing some kind of Mark Zuckerberg emulator than actually producing a game. The focus isn't on the game anymore. The focus is on talking about focus and appearing organized. How much time are the developers spending on these weekly update reports? It feels like they spend far too much time talking about getting things done and goals, than actually doing anything productive to reach those goals.
As much time as necessary to satisfy the SC voluntary subscribers like me who pay extra for these videos to be made. No development money from the crowdfunding is used for these reports or the Jump Point magazine. This subscriber money also pays for the camera man and the JP editor. There is no definite number of subscribers known, but it is estimated to be in the high tenthousands.
Have fun
Hope this helps:
One face to face get together of all the managers a year for a couple of days - was there about 8 people around the table (I didn't actually count) - the one talked about being in Germany.
The value of meetings should always be questioned and if the get together was every week or month or two then that would raise alarm bells. One a year though - even twice - doesn't seem excessive.
At the end of the day it all cones down to does it add value. Does it help for senior staff to understand the vision in detail? For the likes of CR to have face in the "autonomous" managers? Etc.
What are the alternatives?
1. Not hold the face-to-face meetings.
All industries deem face-to-face meetings valuable. Its hard to check out what goes on inside most companies but something like Game of Thrones is well covered say - and Dan and Dave travel to most sets - a lot. Do they need to? Couldn't they just sit at a desk and use a phone?
2. Relocate all the staff - those who would move anyway - to a single country (UK, Germany or US).
Having lived in the US and EU countries - having been involved in managing multi-country projects I can say with absolute confidence that relocating 1 person will cost more than 1 of these meetings. (Probably several - relocating staff across the Atlantic is very expensive)
3. Only hire staff in one country.
This was a non starter obviously. It has its own issues as well - check out some of the CU interviews that Mark Jacobs gives. Getting staff is hard.
Anyway hope the above helps.
2. Adding to that. Do the employees want to move across the world for their job?
I know enough examples where ppl are told to move from the EU to the USA or some other EU country for that matter, and they say "no f-ing way". As soon as they are told, they are looking for a new job and they are gone within 2 months.
Many ppl work for the money, and are not -emotionally- tied to some project. If they work on Software A or Game B, they do not care, as long as it earns them money.
In many countries in the EU ppl are tied to their home soil because they were born and raised there, got their families over there, and they might very well experience home sickness being separated from their close family. Their partners wants to be with their family. This is often the case in the richer EU countries, where ppl do not have to move to get money. (I am not including work migrants from some poor EU countries though)
Unlike the US, where ppl move across the country for a new job.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
CIG has multiple studios across the world for the development of SC for the same reason all other companies have multiple studios across the world.
Talent is known to be hard to hire, and even if with 4 studios in 3 countries still took them years until the team reached the scale it has today, and even so the development team behind the game is still not on the scale of one AAA title (usually +500 devs).
As you say moving is a big deal - nor is it "easy" - many things you encounter are different. Culture shock - and reverse culture shock - is real.
Moving within states in the US is certainly easier; moving countries in the EU less so but people do; moving continents however is much less common - and the problems grow.
Forget the paperwork issues (visas, work permits) consider something trivial like electrical goods. Do you: ship them (fridge, TV etc.) - expensive and it will take several weeks (they probably won't work btw). Buy new - if so you are going to expect a very good wage indeed. Hire them - pity you will have no credit history (no utility bills either etc.) Its expensive. It is right to question the value of meetings but they do have a value - and a once a year get together for senior management is not excessive.
As a 90s era Wing Commander player I bought one ship 3 years ago. I don;t even download/install it anymore. I know several people that have dropped thousands into this game. They work at a call center.
A creative person is motivated by the desire to achieve, not the desire to beat others.
One other big example is Bioware, was known to sit 800 employees, with the main title in-dev after Dragon Age being that Mass Effect Andromeda.
Linking to an article that use's a couple of example's of large dev team's making poor games to make their small dev team look better, does not back up your statement.
You really need to look at what the word "usually" means.
A creative person is motivated by the desire to achieve, not the desire to beat others.
"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
There are complex large dev teams making great games, like Rockstar, as claimed way more than 1000 people making GTA V alone. Put Witcher 3, over 1,500 people worked on the title (outsourcing several times the entire size of their company).
So what these videos really look like to me is they are just taking bits and pieces of stuff long worked on likely since the early days and just forming videos with sections of the work.
I do NOT feel these are updates as well i do not see much in way of information outside of what is normal game design.
The best example is they claim they are just now working on making better the combat and making sure targets/aiming all hit properly within what i could see are hit boxes.I am sorry but it either targets or it does not,coding does not just aim where ever it feels like nor does the program do it's own thing.This would have been worked out years ago and not just something that needs to be bettered 4-5 years later...sigh.Yes i understanding about ghosting images and how aiming actually works over networking.
This is why i believe they are just fabricating all of this to formulate videos.I get a real sense of a long drawn out waste of time.Shaders,create them and that's it,textures weather animated or not,that is STANDARD work for any developer and would have been started from day 1 and not something that makes it's way into a video 5 years later as being something NEW.
So for these and other reasons i saw,they are not making me a believer of their EFFORT towards finishing the product.Instead i feel all of this is to reinforce "we need more time" "to make the game better" "please keep sending money" and oh...Did we mention right at the beginning,we have something new to sell you?
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
When i see changes and honesty in this business,i will again begin to see the better side of gaming.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
This was the zone demoed last year, set to release within 3.0 this summer, it is the first landing zone to release on the PU.
In an interview that Bungee gave to Gamasutra after finishing Destiny they said they had finished with over 540 staff and had no plans to let any go.
EA talked about huge numbers for SWTOR - although I assume many will not have been full time.
Then there are games that have less - 250 for AoC say according to Funcom statements to investors. And Legion only had 250 as well - although Blizzard were not building core tech of course.
Numbers alone though never tell the full story since it is also a function of time. In general 10 people will not be 10 times as fast as 1 but they will be a lot faster.
Edit: re. Bioware: EA have followed Ubisoft in developing their own engine which is now being used by most of the company. As a result it is possible for both EA and Ubisoft to put "huge" resources onto a project - if required - and then redeploy them onto another game. This seems to happen when they want to "crunch" a project - get it finished quicker or make up lost time.
There's also something titles rarely report on, the absolute colossus of outsourcing, Witcher 3 was developed by CD Projekt RED when the company had 300 employees, yet 1500 people worked on its creation.
A creative person is motivated by the desire to achieve, not the desire to beat others.
In reality Witcher 3 cost $81 million to develop and market, so Star Citizen is already bigger
Source: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/this-is-how-much-the-witcher-3-cost-to-make/1100-6430409/
Cloud Imperium Games also beats developers like Bethesda Game Studios (180 employees) and Firaxis Games (180 employees).
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethesda_Game_Studios
http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-firaxis-expansion-20151208-story.html
1) Having more money is not what develops the game, the development team is. That shows is they had more developers and less money.
2) You can give examples of those who were indeed by smaller teams, but I can counter it (on the AAA sphere) with:
Have in mind the majority of AAA titles share no/little info on this matter. Even when we know the employee count of a company rarely ever get to know things like how many people were working on it from within outsourcing.
And obviously, CIG never had the size of the team it has today, it has grown from 8 to 400 over almost 5 years instead, literally from Indie. SC has deff one AAA budget, but in terms of it being one MMO and what they are trying to achieve I don't think they have one team big enough, only the creation of assets like landing zones and their planets at the quality shown are on colossus undertaking.
Also, do you realize that we don't know the number of people who have worked for Star Citizen. We've never had the total of people working in house + people who have worked but moved on + people who have worked outsourced at some point in time + voice actors + mocap actors.
That's why I was trying to present you with Witcher 3's budget: We're now comparing the number of people who did things like 2 days of voice-acting for Japanese translation of Witcher 3 to the number of people who are currently working full-time on CIG.
On the plus side, the pictures they show us every month sure are nice!