[Megathread] Star Citizen

[Elim Garak]

You didn't explained anything. You just assumed, wrongly, that adding more developers automatically speeds things up when it's proven and mentioned in the video that it depends on the task. Complex tasks (like programming for example) don't benefit from many extra heads but few specialized heads while tasks like Art and Modelling/Rigging do.

Ah, so you didn't understand anything

Let's go over it once more then:
1. A single person can make ANY game, but it will take him a LOT of time
2. He then partners with some other people - and now they can make the game in a reasonable amount of time
3. The general idea of hiring more people is to SPEED UP production
4. There's a sweet spot after which adding more people won't speed up the production and in fact will slow it down
5. Hiring enough people at the start of production is a good manager strategy
6. Hiring more people when deadlines are busted - is a bad manager strategy, well, the fact that deadlines are busted is also a bad manager symptom
7. The perpetual deadline busting due to feature creep covered by hiring more people to do it all - that's Star Citizen.
8. The video explains why SC is a managerial disaster.

[MrAnderson]

Ah, so you didn't understand anything

Let's go over it once more then:
1. A single person can make ANY game, but it will take him a LOT of time

It can't and we've been through that already:

Completely and utterly inefficient and stupid to do, yes. Literally impossible? No.

Yes, it's literally impossible a person to learn all the skills at the needed level of expertise and quality of AAA budget games in a lifetime.

The list of AAA game development roles above should have been self explanatory.

Unless you're not talking about the big ambitious AAA productions (WOW, RDR2, GTA, AC, Cyberpunk) but smaller scope games with little complexity or innovation.

Hiring more people is supposed to speed things up, not slow things down. At least in the long run, as there is a learning curve for new employees. It should also allow for them to actually accomplish more things, rather than end up with features being removed or pushed back.

That's why you hire more people when you already have the core team needed for each of the roles. To do more than you could before, faster.

It's not that linear and doesn't necessarily apply to the main core of game development or else giants like Google & Amazon wouldn't be having trouble developing their own games.



Conception/Programming doesn't benefit from throwing more heads into the problem. You can't add more engine programmers to add features to your game engine faster like you can't add more server programmers to code your server network faster. That 9 woman can't have a baby in 1 month thing. That is why these developers are the most sought after in the industry and earn the big bucks. It's not about quantity but about quality (experience, know-how, ingenuity).

In many cases adding more people to a task delays it's conclusion instead of speeding it up.

This has been documented in the book The Mythical Man-Month:

Complex programming projects cannot be perfectly partitioned into discrete tasks that can be worked on without communication between the workers and without establishing a set of complex interrelationships between tasks and the workers performing them.

Therefore, assigning more programmers to a project running behind schedule will make it even later. This is because the time required for the new programmers to learn about the project and the increased communication overhead will consume an ever-increasing quantity of the calendar time available. When n people have to communicate among themselves, as n increases, their output decreases and when it becomes negative the project is delayed further with every person added.

Where hiring more people speeds things up is usually in the visual department (art, 2d-3d modelling asset production).

Big AAA productions require a huge number of assets to create their open worlds/mmo's in a believable way. Their games are expected to be novelty's and feel fresh and innovative enough to be worth the 60$ price tag so buying 3d Assets from engine stores are out of the question, everything has to be unique and tailor made for that world to feel cohesive, believable and immersive.

Which is why a lot of the big studios are outsourcing their Art/Modelling asset production to cheaper markets (Asia, India, South America, Easter Europe).
These artists have no creative or artistic input and are merely robots following step by step guidelines of production that were established by the contracting company. They get a briefing and sometimes classes showing the workflow of making such assets in the way the contractor wants and then they "mass produce" them. You can't do that with programming. The less people meddling with the core engine the better.

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More quotes by Dev's on game development:

- “We always like to have a plan,” said Wyatt Cheng, a veteran Blizzard designer who worked on Diablo III. “But we’re flexible on that plan if we have to be. So we have a target, and we try to hit our dates when we can, but we’re also willing to change in light of new evidence, or new discoveries.”

- “The quality of the game should be dictating what you’re doing, not a date you agreed to 15 months before,” said Blizzard producer Rob Foote, who also worked on Diablo III.

“Things just always take longer than you think they’re going to,” said Sean Velasco, the director of Shovel Knight.

- "With very few exceptions—namely, annualized series like Madden and Call of Duty—it’s hard to find a video game that hasn’t been delayed. Even games that appear to come out on time have usually seen at least one internal delay before their release dates were publicly announced."

[Cyclone Jack]

It can't and we've been through that already:

All the roles you listed out can be performed by a single person, it'll just take more time and money as the scope increases. Additionally, many of those roles you listed become redundant the smaller the team is. For example, one artist can do everything you listed under art, and is not uncommon. All of those leadership roles can easily be one guy in charge of a small team, or it can be the one guy making the game by himself. There are a good number of one-man teams making games, the only thing making it prohibitive for a single person to create a AAA game is time and money (since AAA is typically determined by the size of the marketing budget, not the scope/quality of the game). I do not think it implausible for a single person to make a Call of Duty, Dragon Age, or Souls game, especially if they are licensing the engine (which is not uncommon for either Indie or AAA development), it's just not practical.

[Elim Garak]

It can't and we've been through that already:

Did too!

More quotes by Dev's on game development:

And we all know how Diablo 3 turned out at release. They had to redo the economy and balance, and itemization. You know the whole late game. That's why you must release the playable as soon as possible.

If things take longer than you think they do - that's either a lack of competence (don't know how to assess the work required) or bad management (don't account for the extra time that might be needed).

And it is true with very few exceptions - it's hard to find a video game that hasn't been delayed. Because of incompetence and bad management. And anyone who excuses the delay by "that's how it always is" - is incompetent and a bad manager.

[kenn9530]

A small percentage? The game is currently PvP-focused, with the only real emergent content being PvP. With combat balance as off as it is, ToW is a very much needed tool for a game that is in perpetual Alpha, and whose primary focus is on selling more ships and vehicles; all of which need constant rebalancing as new weapons and, eventually (hopefully?), as new ship systems are enabled. To ignore this is to ignore the core problem with CIG; then again, look at that I'm responding to.

Its not currently PvP focused, i rarely ever encounter another player that is engaging in PvP, ToWs only purpose is balancing which thats what the devs use it for, it might be fun for a short while but it will get old just as games like CoD get boring fast, it will probably make PvP in the PU even less likely so can be a good or bad thing.

Balancing is subjective as there are ships that are meant for combat and ones of which are not.

[Henako]

just as games like CoD get boring fast

Fuckin' ... what? CoD is incredibly popular because of its fast, intense PvP gameplay.

What? Kenn, you're wild, man.

[MrAnderson]

Did too!

And we all know how Diablo 3 turned out at release. They had to redo the economy and balance, and itemization. You know the whole late game. That's why you must release the playable as soon as possible.

If things take longer than you think they do - that's either a lack of competence (don't know how to assess the work required) or bad management (don't account for the extra time that might be needed).

And it is true with very few exceptions - it's hard to find a video game that hasn't been delayed. Because of incompetence and bad management. And anyone who excuses the delay by "that's how it always is" - is incompetent and a bad manager.

Every single Blizzard game was "late". For years they've developed with the mantra of "when it's ready" in all their games. WoW and Diablo are not exceptions they are rules that Blizzard thrived for. Quality above all. And there isin't one single quality and game worth talking about that didn't faced development hurdles like delays, changes of scope and re-doings and over budgeting.

To get really quality titles in game development or any creative medium there isn't one single "formula" that will automatically make you a great amazing game. If that was so Google and Amazon would have hired ALL the DEV's they wanted and followed that "formula" and could be pumping out success hit after success hit and make bank. But reality has shown us that it doesn't work like that.

All the roles you listed out can be performed by a single person, it'll just take more time and money as the scope increases. Additionally, many of those roles you listed become redundant the smaller the team is. For example, one artist can do everything you listed under art, and is not uncommon. All of those leadership roles can easily be one guy in charge of a small team, or it can be the one guy making the game by himself. There are a good number of one-man teams making games, the only thing making it prohibitive for a single person to create a AAA game is time and money (since AAA is typically determined by the size of the marketing budget, not the scope/quality of the game). I do not think it implausible for a single person to make a Call of Duty, Dragon Age, or Souls game, especially if they are licensing the engine (which is not uncommon for either Indie or AAA development), it's just not practical.

They can't, for the simple fact that one human can't learn all the skills needed to make at the quality expected for a AAA production.
You're underestimation of the skill and work needed to pull of a big AAA production just shows that you have no clue about what you're talking bout.
We're not talking about making clones, were talking about creating something from the ground-up.

There's been some SOLO projects that succeeded like Stardew Valley but many fizzle out like Limit Theory did but they're always small productions with indie expectations and nothing close to AAA production quality or expectations.

[masterblaster0]

TOW's purpose was not just for balancing. That is nonsense. It was going to be an alternative game module like Arena Commander and Star Marine.

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Fuckin' ... what? CoD is incredibly popular because of its fast, intense PvP gameplay.

What? Kenn, you're wild, man.

Yes. The fun is in the gameplay. Unfortunately Star Marine lacks that fun and people get bored fast.

[Kyanion]

Xenothreat event is going in full swing.

40 person server cap. Full swing you say? Sure if you count removing content and lowering an already comically low server cap. 40. Lol.

[Elim Garak]

Every single Blizzard game was "late".

For the unintentionally obtuse - I am saying that Blizzard has lots of incompetent devs and bad managers. Like any other business with that many employees.

[kenn9530]

I'm not a server tech so maybe I'm wrong but feel free to correct me, this is just what others have told me: the issue with scaling up large pvp battles like this is that the server load grows exponentially.

Let's say you have 10 players hitting one ability per second. That means, each second, the server gets 10 inputs and it needs to send to each of the 10 players, so 100 outputs.

Now if you have 100 players each hitting 1 ability, that's 100 messages that need to be sent out to 100 people - 10,000 outputs. So 10X as many people means 100X the server capability.

Again, I know this is probably grossly oversimplified and there's all sorts of optimization that can be done, but it's my understand that this is still an exponential growth problem.

Massive battles would be spread out across multiple servers and ships would constantly be switching between those servers depending on distance, the current version of the game if it was only loading ships should have no issues with 100-200 ship battles atm, the main problem the servers have currently is they have the whole stanton system to operate along with the players on 1 single server.

A 200 ship battle would be split up into lets say 4 servers so each server is only handling 50 ships, tech does have limits and we will find out what those are when the server techs are being implemented.

Fuckin' ... what? CoD is incredibly popular because of its fast, intense PvP gameplay.

What? Kenn, you're wild, man.

CoD and other BR type games are boring to me, its not my type of gameplay its just plain boring and only something i do on the odd occasion, SC is game with an option to PvP not based on it but gives you options to choose what you want to do.

I didnt say it wasnt popular because some ppl enjoy mindless gameplay of repeating the same thing over and over, but as a shooting game that mindless gameplay is bland.

[Kyanion]

Massive battles would be spread out across multiple servers and ships would constantly be switching between those servers depending on distance, the current version of the game if it was only loading ships should have no issues with 100-200 ship battles atm, the main problem the servers have currently is they have the whole stanton system to operate along with the players on 1 single server.

Nice futurespeak there about what the game might be able to do some day but hasn't been able to do for 9 years. Doesn't matter, the game can't have more than 40 people playing it now. No 100-200 ship battles happening. You love to talk about what the game might be able to do, never about the limitations it has now.

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A 200 ship battle would be split up into lets say 4 servers so each server is only handling 50 ships, tech does have limits and we will find out what those are when the server techs are being implemented.

We know what the limits are now, 40 people down from 50. Woo. Such MMO.

[Cyclone Jack]

They can't, for the simple fact that one human can't learn all the skills needed to make at the quality expected for a AAA production.
You're underestimation of the skill and work needed to pull of a big AAA production just shows that you have no clue about what you're talking bout.
We're not talking about making clones, were talking about creating something from the ground-up.

There's been some SOLO projects that succeeded like Stardew Valley but many fizzle out like Limit Theory did but they're always small productions with indie expectations and nothing close to AAA production quality or expectations.

First off, AAA does not mean quality; let's get that out of the way right now. Second, if we're eliminating "clones", then we're eliminating a ton of AAA games right off the bat. One person can make a FPS on the level of Call of Duty or Halo, it just takes more time. One person can make a 3D RPG like Dragon Age or a Souls game, it just takes more time. If we say that clones don't count, then we're eliminating games like Diablo 3, Half Life 2, GTA V, World of Warcraft, all of which are "clones". If we say that the game needs to be created "from the ground up", then that eliminates even more games like Fortnite (Unreal), World of Warcraft (Warcraft III), and even Star Citizen/SQ42 (CryEngine), because they're all using pre-existing engines that were not created specifically for the game being made.

As for my experience, I've worked in the industry (3d modeling, character and environmental texturing, character rigging and animation, level design, lighting, UI, scripting, testing, and, sadly, voice acting ) and know exactly what goes into making a AAA game (Our team was a mere 6 people total but was funded by a large publisher with a large budget; thus AAA). And yes, one person can learn the skills required to make a "AAA quality" game, it just takes time. I did all of the art stuff in my 20s, in my 30s I designed and implemented network security, today I'm a programmer. It may take one person 40 years to release their game, instead of the 4 it takes for a team of developers, but it is possible; it's just not practical.

[kenn9530]

Nice futurespeak there about what the game might be able to do some day but hasn't been able to do for 9 years. Doesn't matter, the game can't have more than 40 people playing it now. No 100-200 ship battles happening. You love to talk about what the game might be able to do, never about the limitations it has now.

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We know what the limits are now, 40 people down from 50. Woo. Such MMO.

And as usualy your being as ignorant as possible, you like to ignore the server is handling several hundred AI, operating AI ships, stations and a million other processes so not just what the players are using, if a server can do all that currently and have the occasional 100 ships currently active on the server right now then it will have no issues with the performance of just handling a fleet of ships on its own when the server is sharded on multiple servers spreading the loads around.

The MMO part of the game has not even been implemented yet so try again, as usual you have no idea what your talking about, its not really any less of an MMO than whats currently around anyway as most of the time your not playing with more than 20-30 ppl.

[Kyanion]

And as usualy your being as ignorant as possible, you like to ignore the server is handling several hundred AI, operating AI ships, stations and a million other processes so not just what the players are using, if a server can do all that currently and have the occasional 100 ships currently active on the server right now then it will have no issues with the performance of just handling a fleet of ships on its own when the server is sharded on multiple servers spreading the loads around.

The MMO part of the game has not even been implemented yet so try again, as usual you have no idea what your talking about, its not really any less of an MMO than whats currently around anyway as most of the time your not playing with more than 20-30 ppl.

Ah yes calling someone ignorant, classy. I don't care how many AI are in the fucking game. Reduce the number of AI and let more PLAYERS play the damn game. 40 people for a MMO is PATHETIC. Period. Bullshit the mmo part has not been implemented. It is not a solo player game and is a supposed MMO, just has a server cap that is a joke. Even searching for "is star citizen a mmo" brings up their own site which labels it as a mmo. I'll take their word on defining the game over yours.

[kenn9530]

Ah yes calling someone ignorant, classy. I don't care how many AI are in the fucking game. Reduce the number of AI and let more PLAYERS play the damn game. 40 people for a MMO is PATHETIC. Period. Bullshit the mmo part has not been implemented. It is not a solo player game and is a supposed MMO, just has a server cap that is a joke. Even searching for "is star citizen a mmo" brings up their own site which labels it as a mmo. I'll take their word on defining the game over yours.

More ppl in a server wouldnt change anything anyway, players would still be doing the same as they are doing in a 40 player server as they would do in a 120 player server and you still might not see other players that often, the game is going to be mostly populated by npcs which will also generate missions for the players, so AI is really important for the game.

The game is being developed simple as that, until they have everything inplace they have no need to increase the server capacity, smoother gameplay is much more important than more players on a server.

[Kyanion]

More ppl in a server wouldnt change anything anyway, players would still be doing the same as they are doing in a 40 player server as they would do in a 120 player server and you still might not see other players that often, the game is going to be mostly populated by npcs which will also generate missions for the players, so AI is really important for the game.

Oh so you know what the players would do as well? You mean people wouldn't form up to try and do some ship combats? People wouldn't try and fight other players and cause some problems? Nah they'd just do the same thing if there was 40 people as if there was oh wait you put a cap as well, 120 now? Such MMO. This 9+ year game cannot handle players because it has too much room for AI's that love to T-Pose. Got it.

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The game is being developed simple as that, until they have everything inplace they have no need to increase the server capacity, smoother gameplay is much more important than more players on a server.

I notice you quickly dropped the 'mmo part of the game has not even been implemented' comment once I provided proof that what you said was wrong.

That game is being developed is as true now as it was 9 years ago. You think there is no need to increase server capacity and I strongly disagree. Your opinion means as much an anyone's else but you try to push yours as truth or facts. Big difference.

[Henako]

I notice you quickly dropped the 'mmo part of the game has not even been implemented' comment once I provided proof that what you said was wrong.

Whoa, be fair. This is actually a big improvement for him. Usually he just fabricates some bullshit and talks over you.

[Kyanion]

Whoa, be fair. This is actually a big improvement for him. Usually he just fabricates some bullshit and talks over you.

Hah you're right, silly of me to expect a "Yeah, you are right" from him.

[Cracked]

I'm not a server tech so maybe I'm wrong but feel free to correct me, this is just what others have told me: the issue with scaling up large pvp battles like this is that the server load grows exponentially.

Let's say you have 10 players hitting one ability per second. That means, each second, the server gets 10 inputs and it needs to send to each of the 10 players, so 100 outputs.

Now if you have 100 players each hitting 1 ability, that's 100 messages that need to be sent out to 100 people - 10,000 outputs. So 10X as many people means 100X the server capability.

Again, I know this is probably grossly oversimplified and there's all sorts of optimization that can be done, but it's my understand that this is still an exponential growth problem.

It is, but it can be overcome. It was actually one of the selling points of Stadia-exclusive games (which has fallen apart).

In your 100 example, consider the server only sends the outputs to 10 selected players, that is 1000 messages. Each of those 10 players then send the messages to 10 another players, making it 100x10 messages for any single bottleneck at most, but now all 100 players have the updated state. You trade latency for scale. It might not be practical today (and worse yet, with cheaters, it's unlikely to ever be implemented successfully), but there are ways to do it. The stadia games promised this and could effectively deliver, because their servers shouldn't be able to be tampered by players (so the middlemen couldn't change the messages and redundancy would be unnecessary) and because their servers are physically collocated, so latency is minimal, making the tradeoff a no-brainer.