[Megathread] Star Citizen

[Thestrawman]

The same reason why you build a family house despite not having kids yet. It's called thinking ahead.

Except this would be buying a family house without any land to put it on. Until there is any indication that the server tech they've been working on exists this entire dick measuring contest is pointless.

[MrAnderson]

Speculation is fine, but you have no hard numbers to verify what you're saying is true.

Even this was 100% true, Star Citizen will surpass it relatively soon.

Your own source is based on spectulation remember?

You can't accept your speculation and reject the other because it dismantles your argument.

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/articl...on-2-interview

A couple of weeks after meeting Houser, I find myself on a tour of Rockstar North, based in the heart of Edinburgh, in a beautiful, 75,000 sq ft building that's all steel and glass; a cavernous central atrium flanked by various teams all combining on the game-making process. I'm one of the only journalists to ever see inside the most famous of Rockstar’s nine studios – the one specifically responsible for every Grand Theft Auto game. It’s quiet here, but you can hear the nattering of designers in the corridors. I walk past dozens of screens and see designers, animators, artists and coders beavering away on game material for Red Dead Redemption 2, including teams dedicated to other parts of the project, such as the upcoming and as-yet-unseen Red Dead Online.

I'm here to speak with Rob Nelson, North’s studio director and one of the men chiefly responsible for converting concepts into playable games. Nelson started as a coder on Rockstar's The Warriors in 2003; now he's in an apartment-sized office on the studio’s top floor, overlooking Arthur’s Seat, running a 650-strong team on the most ambitious project in the company’s history.

The toughest thing, Nelson suggests, is making the game's progression – both from the original Red Dead Redemption, and from Grand Theft Auto V – immediately obvious to the player. Sure, Redemption 2 is bigger and more beautiful – I’d argue it’s the best looking game ever made – but that's what you'd expect from a more recent product.

You have reports of both games development time and staff involved. RDR2 categorically surpasses GTA5 in everything and it's budget has to reflect that. Besides, it was developed after GTA which means inflation is also a thing. GTA5 was made by Rockstar North, RDR2 involved ALL the studios.

There's a key difference though between the games you're comparing. Star Citizen isn't released yet and is still in development.

There's many key differences:

Closed Development VS Open Development
Established company VS No Company
Tailor Built Engine VS New Engine
Sequel VS New IP
1 Game VS 2 Games
Secured Funding VS Crowdfunding
Etc

Money people give to WoW and other RELEASED MMO's is intended to go towards both maintenance and development of new content. All the money being given to CIG is intended for the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42. Any money they're spending on maintenance is money actively taking away from development.

To crowdfund games you need to keep your community engaged to maintain funding, you actively need to spend money to keep generating money. Having a playable build instils confidence and showcases the work to your community while keeping them engaged with your game.

And to develop games you need to have a studio, hire developers, learn your engine, tailor your engine to your needs, create toolsets, assets and production pipelines to optimize production, all the things that Rockstar had been doing and refining for 10+ years while it made every single GTA before making GTA5. All that prior experience allowed for GTA5 creation, so that time and funding should also be taken into account.

I didn't know it was that small, but did not they started basically from sratch.
The point is, they had some equipment and resources to do that. They didn't just pull it out of their ass from nothing.

Making prototypes for pitch videos is not the same thing has developing the actual game development. Everything made before is thrown out, it's only used to showcase your vision.

That's their headcount along the years:


All GTA's were made by the guys at a studio founded back in 87 now known as Rockstar North (They also did the Lemmings game).

How old is that footage though? I mean recent stuff...

From 2 months ago:

Take it as you will, but I'm not really inclined to believe much of the stuff CIG/RSI publishes on their website....things move around and change WAY too much for me to take it as a "reliable" source.

That's called negative bias.

Admittedly, the extent of my following Star Citizen and Squadron 42 is this thread, the sources linked within it and the stuff I look up while putting together my posts. I don't care enough about the game itself to want to look it up outside of these instances. My interest is not in the game, but the arguments and discussion in this thread.

It's when die hard zealot fans like you defend this game to the death and spout about it being able to do no wrong, when it clearly has issues, that just gets me irritated for some reason.

Thing is that me showing facts and pointing out flaws in your arguments is not defending Star Citizen or "spouting about it being able to do no wrong". That's just your take on it because, like you said yourself, your only have a superficial knowledge of the subject.

See? More people - more time.

- More Money.

[Elim Garak]

- More Money.

Obviously! People don't work for free for that long.
Do you see the managerial problem here already? How it all feeds in on the general idea that "we just need more people"?

[MrAnderson]

Obviously! People don't work for free for that long.
Do you see the managerial problem here already? How it all feeds in on the general idea that "we just need more people"?

There's no managerial problem, the bigger the game you're making the bigger staff you'll need to create it the longer the time. Open world games and specially MMO's require the massive amounts of developers. CIG is building a Open World (space) game and a space MMO at the same time. That's why they keep opening new studios and hiring more developers to create their game. Just like every other big company did/does.

Check the list of developers in any big production game in the end credits:




It goes on and on....

[1001]

There's no managerial problem...

Of course there is. There has been a managerial problem since day 1 and it has been widely documented via interviews, letters etc. It does not take a genius to see it.

Miss every single deadline, no matter how tentative and it's clear that there is bad organization somewhere along the chain, except in this case people know where the buck stops.

[MrAnderson]

Of course there is. There has been a managerial problem since day 1 and it has been widely documented via interviews, letters etc. It does not take a genius to see it.

Miss every single deadline, no matter how tentative and it's clear that there is bad organization somewhere along the chain, except in this case people know where the buck stops.

Except that there's prooven reports those same things happening with many other big production games from the very best studios (Rockstar, Blizzard, Bungie, Naughty Dog, Ubisoft, CDPR, Valve) AND multiple crowdfunded studios developing mmos. It's an inevitable consequence of the nature of developing these kind of games.

"Game development is incredibly complicated, and fans see only a few pieces of the puzzle. Games are often headless monsters; moved in different directions by technological, design, or financial limitations, instead of by anyone in the studio. Game development is sustained improvisation, and if this book can hold your attention long enough, maybe you’ll walk away understanding how many pieces it takes to build a massively multiplayer online game (MMO).

Development is often random and iterative. There are failures and discoveries, and the process zigzags until someone says, “Ship it!” Even some developers wouldn’t know what was happening on their own project until they got out of their seat and talked to the devs who had been in the room, in the meeting, and directly asked questions about what was going on. That’s basically what I did for four years—I got out of my seat and asked, “Whatcha working on?”

Quote from the Blizzard developer who wrote a diary about WoW's development. You can find it on Amazon: The WoW Diary: A Journal of Computer Game Development

This is not negating there are issues during game development. It's aknowledging that they are unavoidable and part of the process for every studio.

[1001]

Except that there's prooven reports those same things happening with many other big production games from the very best studios (Rockstar, Blizzard, Bungie, Naughty Dog, Ubisoft, CDPR, Valve) AND multiple crowdfunded studios developing mmos. It's an inevitable consequence of the nature of developing these kind of games.

There's 2 issues here. The 1st is that you said there was no managerial problem at all with CIG and now you are essentially saying it doesn't matter because it happens everywhere. When you are crowdfunded it makes sense to be even more careful to avoid pitfalls due to the source of your funding.

The 2nd issue is that CIG has repeatedly has managerial problems. Yes, issues are expected in complex projects but to the degree that CIG encounter them? I think not. Where else would this sort of mismanagement or perhaps even incompetency be accepted?

It's one thing for Arena Commander to arrive 6 months late as the new team gets their workflow in order. But things like

Dave Jennison's character team mass resigning due to micromanagement leading to only 5 characters being created in 17 months instead of the expected 6 months.
Illfonic's Star Marine being incompatible due to mismanagement.
Patch 3.0 arriving 1 year late.
Squadron 42 missing every yearly date it was given.
Squadron 42's beta date missed.
Theatre of War MIA 1 year later
etc

[kenn9530]

The more staff the more problems. Due to the lowering of the average competence of the employees, the increased demand for more incompetent managers, not to mention that there's a sweet spot for the number of people after which it is ALWAYS detrimental to add more.

You cannot give birth to a child in less than ~9 months no matter how many women you throw at it.

So it is you who is talking complete nonsense - with no sense of how businesses work.

If their problem is that they are hiring and there are not enough people to hire - they are TERRIBLE managers. You also can be pretty sure they have already lowered their hiring standards - oh sweet incompetence.

Unless you work at the company you dont have any knowledge on how the actual management is for the company so everything you say is just your own opinion.

Non of what you say follows any sort of logic, you can always be hiring but to say your a terrible manager because there is either not enough skilled applicants or applicants as a whole is just plain stupid as it has nothing to do with the company.

[MrAnderson]

There's 2 issues here. The 1st is that you said there was no managerial problem at all with CIG and now you are essentially saying it doesn't matter because it happens everywhere. When you are crowdfunded it makes sense to be even more careful to avoid pitfalls due to the source of your funding.

The 2nd issue is that CIG has repeatedly has managerial problems. Yes, issues are expected in complex projects but to the degree that CIG encounter them? I think not.

You are implying that it is an exclusive problem of CIG and it's developers professionalism in particular when it's been worldwide reported in first hand by several developers from the best studios in the world that it happens to the best games from the best and most experienced gaming studios which supposedly have the best and most competent managers and developers.

These pitfalls as you call them can be mitigated to some extent but never completely avoided if you're main objective is making a fresh game that stands out in the market. That requires tons of factors to pull off as shown by Google & Amazon giants game development adventure.

If the big studios with decades of experience haven't learned how to avoid them (and you can bet your ass they would love to avoid them so that their budgets wouldn't skyrocket) how could you expect brand new crowdfunded studios that literally have to lay down the tracks as the train is moving to do so?

[Katchii]

Thing is that me showing facts and pointing out flaws in your arguments is not defending Star Citizen or "spouting about it being able to do no wrong". That's just your take on it because, like you said yourself, your only have a superficial knowledge of the subject.

Fair point, but that's all I need to know in all honesty. If I have to spend countless hours and energy figuring out what's true, accurate, or not bullshit...it's not worth it. Not for this nearly 9 year old $350 million dollar Alpha game with no completion date in sight for either the actual finished game or the core piece of technology that's going to magically make it work.

[1001]

If the big studios with decades of experience haven't learned how to avoid them (and you can bet your ass they would love to avoid them so that their budgets wouldn't skyrocket) how could you expect brand new crowdfunded studios that literally have to lay down the tracks as the train is moving to do so?

The only project I have read about which was mismanaged like Star Citizen is Duke Nukem Forever. Read any article about Broussard's mismanagement and you'll see so many parallels in Chris's handling of Star Citizen.

But lets pretend that pitfall after pitfall to this degree is normal and totally to be expected and despite Chris and his fellow managers also having decades of experience in the industry and an obvious awareness of these problems that all studios, new or old, face, why would he then claim he could make "The Best Damn Space Sim Ever" in just 2 years with no studio, no premises, no money etc?
Why would one game with all the problems one should expect to encounter not be enough? Why would he then go even further and claim he could make 2 AAA games in that time with the MMO becoming "The Best Damn First Person Universe Sim Ever" and the single player rivalling studios with decades of experience under their belt all for less money, less time, less staff etc?

Promises and expectations were mismanaged from the get go.

[Elim Garak]

There's no managerial problem, the bigger the game you're making the bigger staff you'll need to create it the longer the time.

There's always a managerial problem.

A singular person can make ANY game. It will just take him TOO long.
So he hires help - what for? To make the game faster. Spending money instead of time.

So it doesn't make sense that hiring more people to create a bigger game leads to LONGER DEVELOPMENT.

Unless there's another factor.

Also about credits - the majority of people in there are OUTSOURCED. Also, there are all sorts of publishing, marketing, localization, and pr in there. Not to mention testers.

[DarkAmbient]

Just looking at their progress tracker. It has a bunch of 'deliverables' that stretch into January 2022. Am I to take it that this is the absolute earliest possible time for a release? Or just when the current set of goals ought to be completed?

[MrAnderson]

There's always a managerial problem.
A singular person can make ANY game. It will just take him TOO long.
So he hires help - what for? To make the game faster. Spending money instead of time.
So it doesn't make sense that hiring more people to create a bigger game leads to LONGER DEVELOPMENT.
Unless there's another factor.
Also about credits - the majority of people in there are OUTSOURCED. Also, there are all sorts of publishing, marketing, localization, and pr in there. Not to mention testers.

Do you really believe what you are writing? One person can make ANY game?

We're talking about AAA game development, you really think that one single person could accumulate the knowledge and expertise needed to make a AAA game?
Do you have any idea of the amount of individual craftsmanship and skill that goes into making these kind of games?

Here, have a look:

Leadership

Executive Producer (aka Game Director) - The mastermind in charge of the entire project. Makes all of the high level decisions, including major features, story, world building, budgeting, scheduling, team composition, marketing, contracts, etc. The final decision maker. Also the one who answers to the publishing executives. Spends most of her time in meetings and assigning/prioritizing tasks for others.

Creative Director - Design lead. All designers and content creators answer to him. His job is initially to work with the executive producer come up with core designs and ideas that will drive the gameplay, then gradually shift to managing the design team as they join up and keep them all tasked out and productive. Keeps a high level view of the game’s content and systems to make decisions to direct the different design subteams during development towards the ultimate goal.

Art Director - Art lead. All artists report to him. Works with the executive producer to establish the game’s visual style and reference materials for the art team, then gradually shifts to managing all of the artists and keeping them tasked out and productive. Keeps tabs on all of the incoming art assets to make sure they adhere to style and meet requirements.

Technical Director - Engineering lead. All engineers report to her. Works with the executive producer to establish the game’s technical specs and scope. Architects the game’s major technical features and framework, then gradually shifts to managing the engineers that join the team and keeping them tasked out and productive. Often writes the least code overall among the engineers, but the code she writes is also the most mission critical because she has the best understanding of how everything fits together.
image
Art

Concept Artist: [Iterator Extreme]. Given a description, then comes up with different visual concepts that could meet that description. The description is refined, and the process repeats. A lot.

Technical Artist: [The hybrid artist/programmer]. Writes shaders, writes scripts, works with code. Is often responsible for the art tools and keeping other artists’ work performant.

Rigger: [The skeleton master]. Builds, adjusts, and maintains animation skeletons for animators to make motions with. Sometimes called “technical animator”.

Animator: [Sculptor of time]. Takes the rigs built by the riggers and manipulates them so they can convey believable motion over time.

VFX Artist: Maker of particles, explosions, dust poofs, blood spatter, lightning bolts, fireballs, speed lines, motion blur, depth of field, god rays, and all sorts of stuff.

Storyboard Artist: Maps out how cinematics should look. Lays out general shot to shot progression and framing of cinematics to show the player what’s going on.

UI Artist: Maker of buttons, widgets, fonts, and more icons than you could imagine you’d ever need. Specializes in converting concepts into self-contained images.

Character Artist: Creates the wire frames that form the shape of living things and house the skeletons the riggers create.

Prop Artist: Creates the wire frames that form the shape of not living things.

Texture Artist: 3D wire frames need skins that make them look right in various lighting situations. They need lots of skins - diffuse, specular, normal, AO, etc.

Environment Artist: Models, textures, and places the stuff in the game levels.

Lighting Artist: Places, colors, and adjusts lights in a space to make sure that the environment’s mood is met and properly visible.
image
Design

Systems Designer: [Creates and tunes the various rules of gameplay]. Works a lot with math and formulas. Often responsible for things like leveling up, crafting, itemization, etc. Subspecies: [Combat Designer]

Level Designer: [Creates interesting spaces and places for the player to engage with and explore]. Places the objects and interesting things there for you to find.

Cinematic Designer: [Takes the storyboards and transforms them into the animations, shots, and dialogue of the actual game].

UI/UX Designer: Puts things where you expect them to be, so you don’t have to get annoyed trying to make it do what you want. Also creates the descriptions of things so you know what they actually do.

Scripter: [Hybrid designer/programmer]. Sometimes something needs more complex behavior - conditions to check, branching outcomes, etc. She writes that stuff.

Technical Designer: Even more hybrid designer/programmer. Builds tools for other designers need to create the content.

Writer/Narrative Designer: Somebody built an ice dungeon and you need a reason why the player needs to go there. [She can convince them in one tweet’s worth of words].

Engineering

Engine Programmer: The closest to the hardware - how does the hardware work? What does our code need to do to make the hardware do what we want? She writes that interstitial code.

Server Programmer: Somebody needs to write the code that pulls the data from the database, manipulates it into something the client cares about, and adjudicate the rules of the game.

Gameplay Programmer: [Somebody has to take the rules and systems the designers come up with and make the game actually enforce them].

Graphics Programmer: We’ve got all this data about what objects are where and what they should look like. [How do we turn all that data into an image?] How do we do it faster? Even faster than that? No, even more faster than that!

UI Programmer: All of the buttons, sliders, widgets, health bars, chat bubbles, auction houses, etc. you see have to actually do what you think they should. Who makes them work? She does.

Animation Programmer:When you need to allow a character to shoot to the right while running at full speed, getting smacked in the face, and singing “Uptown Funk” all at the same time, [somebody has to create a system know when and how to play the different animation assets].

Tools Programmer: There are a lot of tasks the team needs to do all the time, and automating those tasks makes a lot of sense. She builds the tools that handle those tasks for the designers, engineers, artists, etc.

Build Engineer: Nobody can work if the game doesn’t run. She makes sure that the dev team has access to the most up-to-date version of the game that is stable.
image
Production

Producer: Sometimes also known as development director. Like a miniature version of the Executive Producer, keeps track of scheduling and tasks for smaller parts of the team. This may be as broad as all of engineering, or as small as just the cinematic design subteam. Most duties include scheduling meetings, making sure developers aren’t blocked by talking to people involved, and keeping everyone productive. This also includes practical duties like ordering food and procuring dev kits/cables/monitors/etc.

Quality Assurance

Tester: Tests assigned parts of the game (e.g. the crafting system, the leveling system, the ice dungeon), writing up bug reports, and reproducing the problems for the developers to look at.

Test Engineer: QA/Programmer hybrid. Instead of testing manually, she writes automated tools that test parts of the game for her.
image

Source: https://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/...t-question-for

[Katchii]

Just looking at their progress tracker. It has a bunch of 'deliverables' that stretch into January 2022. Am I to take it that this is the absolute earliest possible time for a release? Or just when the current set of goals ought to be completed?

That's just when they think that set of deliverables will be completed. Extremely doubtful the game will be releasing in a little less than a year.

[MrAnderson]

Fair point, but that's all I need to know in all honesty. If I have to spend countless hours and energy figuring out what's true, accurate, or not bullshit...it's not worth it. Not for this nearly 9 year old $350 million dollar Alpha game with no completion date in sight for either the actual finished game or the core piece of technology that's going to magically make it work.

And that's fine, following a game development exhaustively for years can be exhausting when you only care about the 3 main things most gamers care:

- Is it my kind of game?
- When is the release Date?
- What Platform/Specs do I need?

You're better off forgetting it completely but that's a hard task when the games development keeps being reported and it's game threads are constantly active.

[Katchii]

Do you really believe what you are writing? One person can make ANY game?

Are you saying it's absolutely impossible?

All Elim was saying is that it would take a lot of time if that's how they did it, but it IS plausible.

The likelihood of a single person making a AAA game in a timely enough manner for it to still be relevant when it was done, wasn't the point. It's just that it technically could be done. It's just absolutely not feasible to do for any serious project. By the time it was done, the hardware they were designing it for would be completely obsolete.

The point is more people = less work for each person = more people working on more things = faster development time. That's WHY you hire more people, so that you can get the whole thing done in a reasonable amount of time.

[Cracked]

snip

Ok, I have a weird question, but how does this company have 90 people in publishing / marketing / community / events? Like the community communication has been a shitshow of
1) We fuck up
2) "Sorry community, we will do better"
3) Silence for 6 months
4) go to 1.

since forever. No real marketing to speak of. I just don't understand what those people are doing as their everyday job.

[Elim Garak]

since forever. No real marketing to speak of. I just don't understand what those people are doing as their everyday job.

Waiting for a paycheck while arguing on forums

[Kyanion]

Waiting for a paycheck while arguing on forums

That sounds about right. I know I laughed at this one.