Slightly Civil War - Is Early Access a Good Trend in Game Development?

[BrawlMan]

So I think 5 years is still extreme even for indies, and most indie devs are not just one dude like the examples I gave above.

It happens indie devs some times. The TakeOver took 5 years, because it was just one guy doing the progamming. It did not get help until about the 3rd year in to development. You can thank Matt McMuscles for that. Little V & Yuzo Koshiro chipped in to do the soundtrack and the voice actors for the characters. Development started in 2014 and the early access ended at November, 2019. Shit happens, man.

 

[CriticalGaming]

It might depend heavily on circumstances. A solo dev with nothing else to do can work on it 8+h a day. A solo dev with a day job might be down to ~3-4h a day. A solo dev with a day job and a family to pay attention to even less. Although the latter two should have the sense to be working on something extremely simple.

well sure circumstances are different for everyone, that doesn't mean you need to have a five year cycle on early access though. because you already should have done a good portion of the work on the game before it even hits early access, you should never need an extra year years on top of that.

 

[Dalisclock]

Kinda surprised nobody has made a Star Citizen joke yet. 7 years, hundreds of millions of dollars and still in Alpha.

 

[Agema]

Kinda surprised nobody has made a Star Citizen joke yet. 7 years, hundreds of millions of dollars and still in Alpha.

Star Citizen is the stupidity of over-funding a game.

Sometimes, I suspect the worry is that developers might be brilliant in their vision for a game, but if they are weak at management, the project's in trouble right from the start. One might note people like Richard Garriott: he's got his great successes, but also a series of poor or failed projects I suspect because he didn't properly plan to fit his vision into the time and resources available. I suspect Chris Roberts is another visionary with poor project management, except that with Star Citizen he got too many resources, which left him to indulge his vision at the expense of making a product.

 

[09philj]

Yes, with some caveats. At this point it's possible for indie studios to create projects much larger than they can afford to QA themselves, so releasing a core experience to the public and using their feedback to help polish it and identify how it should be expanded is a good idea. It can also help developers of multiplayer games get a much larger sample of players to test how balanced the game is. However, it's often abused by devs who release games that aren't even in an alpha state and expect to be paid as much as they would for the finished game.

 

[Dalisclock]

Star Citizen is the stupidity of over-funding a game.

Sometimes, I suspect the worry is that developers might be brilliant in their vision for a game, but if they are weak at management, the project's in trouble right from the start. One might note people like Richard Garriott: he's got his great successes, but also a series of poor or failed projects I suspect because he didn't properly plan to fit his vision into the time and resources available. I suspect Chris Roberts is another visionary with poor project management, except that with Star Citizen he got too many resources, which left him to indulge his vision at the expense of making a product.

Yeah, it feels like scope creep is a definite problem with that game. Apparently they also switched engines at one point as well. This is all reminding me of the stories I heard about the Development Hell of Duke Nukem Forever.

The fact the fans keep giving them money so they effectively infinite budget, at least for the moment, is not helping this problem.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Star Citizen is the stupidity of over-funding a game.

Star Citizen's #1 problem is that its design document is an ever-growing list of "wouldn't it be cool if".

 

[Agema]

Yeah, it feels like scope creep is a definite problem with that game. Apparently they also switched engines at one point as well. This is all reminding me of the stories I heard about the Development Hell of Duke Nukem Forever.

Yeah, they were using the CryEngine, then ditched it and got sued in a legal squabble that lasted something like 2 years.

Personally, I think changing the engine is just about the biggest warning sign of major project management problems you can have. It's going to require massive coding changes. I suspect a major reason is they sat working on the game for so long they decided the engine was out of date, or added so much in that they realised it wasn't fit for task.

This reminds me of a friend I used to play strategy games with. He'd never build a military, because he always wanted that extra tech which would make his military better. And in every (literally) game he'd be crushed midgame by someone who, you know, built a military. We'd do multiplayer co-op Starcraft and have to secure him a new base, because he'd turtle around his start point and run out of minerals before he'd built an army to expand with. Le sigh.

Star Citizen's #1 problem is that its design document is an ever-growing list of "wouldn't it be cool if".

They do apparently have a roadmap up now. It's just (having taken a quick look) I still can't see anything that looks remotely like a release date or something that gives an idea of when a likely release date might even be. Sure, it's nice to know they're improving the throwing objects mechanics... but is that what really what you care about?

 

[Dalisclock]

Yeah, they were using the CryEngine, then ditched it and got sued in a legal squabble that lasted something like 2 years.

Personally, I think changing the engine is just about the biggest warning sign of major project management problems you can have. It's going to require massive coding changes. I suspect a major reason is they sat working on the game for so long they decided the engine was out of date, or added so much in that they realised it wasn't fit for task

I can't remember where I read it, but apparently a lot of stuff just wasn't meshing. Remember, this is the game that wants realistic physics in space + fully realized ship interiors you can walk around in and presumably manipulate controls and such + planetside on-foot missions + the ability to board other ships and take them over, etc, etc.

That would be a tall order in single player game. In an MMO......yeah.

They do apparently have a roadmap up now. It's just (having taken a quick look) I still can't see anything that looks remotely like a release date or something that gives an idea of when a likely release date might even be. Sure, it's nice to know they're improving the throwing objects mechanics... but is that what really what you care about?

But there's a bartender now. A BARTENDER!

Star Citizen's #1 problem is that its design document is an ever-growing list of "wouldn't it be cool if".

We've got a plan but first we need more money. Please buy these pictures of spaceships for hundreds of dollars.

 

[Agema]

But there's a bartender now. A BARTENDER!

Hold my drink, I gotta check that out.


Actually, this was a bit how I felt upon hearing the next big expansion of Elite: Dangerous is supposed to let you get out and walk around space stations and planets. Sure, because when I've got an entire galaxy to explore and ships to mess around with, what I really want to do is walk up barren hills and through corridors.

 

[Dalisclock]

Hold my drink, I gotta check that out.


Actually, this was a bit how I felt upon hearing the next big expansion of Elite: Dangerous is supposed to let you get out and walk around space stations and planets. Sure, because when I've got an entire galaxy to explore and ships to mess around with, what I really want to do is walk up barren hills and through corridors.

While it is a little bit of a bummer to be confined to the ship the whole time, even when at the space station, you still have to make the places you get out and walk around worth looking at. A chill couple of rooms to unwind for a few minutes between runs is great, but pointless travel just to sell some stuff isn't.