you mean star wars galaxies? ea destroyed it as its publisher.
Does CIG need to bring in a publisher? (video)
- Thread starter Montoya
- Start date
Pretty much Project Management in a nutshell. Stuff keeps getting added, until it doesn't and all the things that matter are done.
Last edited:
you can keep adding features, but you need to eventually say...yeah, this is a feature for a future expansion.
Unfortunately, they have already told us that is will have "all this stuff" and it will be VERY hard to roll back any of those expectations.
Fixt that for you lol - luckily my projects are not neverending scope creep mess's.
Not going to completely disagree, but I am not going to completely agree either. Unless you have a well-defined formula, say for retail product development, there are always unforeseen issues that crop up during the course of a project. My statement is perfectly accurate; while bad project management can certainly lead to death by a thousand cuts, even a well defined project at the core is merely experienced, educated guesswork. Hopefully made with pertinent data.
Scope Creep is NOT a project management (dys)function, although a bad PM can certainly complicate the shit out of getting things done. Typically Scope Creep, which SC has had in abundance (and worthy of it's own full discussion because it became creep to us, not to CR) comes from whatever form of leadership/influence is in play for that project.
For Star Citizen, that leadership is CR at the top, and he is not known to take the easy way. He also surrounded himself with people who were willing to dive down the rabbit hole with him, and since the entire project is a social experiment as much as a technical endeavor there has been a ridiculous amount of 'making it up as we go'. So normal patterns of project management need to adapt to an environment that is decidedly less corporate and much more akin to expeditionary planning.
Let me put this another way; does a painter consider adding more color or lines to bring the image in their mind to reality as scope creep?
They don't need a publisher all they need is an actual management team that sets goals to accomplish, plain and simple.
Richard Bong
Space Marshal
Given the history of missed self imposed goals, even the simple ones, this project has missed so far, and the lack of accountability, do you really think that's even possible here?
It is if someone actually starts to hold them accountable. Set a goal, follow the progress and deliver. If unable to deliver then communicate to us (the investors, not backers) what, when and why. Pretty simple process that most companies follow with proper management.
Last edited:
Richard Bong
Space Marshal
Absolutely, that is the way it should be done. That hasn't been how CIG has been operating. They don't count us as investors.
As long as people keep giving them money, they have no reason to change.
On the flip side, if the money starts to slack off, they aren't in a position to do the work or be accountable, so the project is more likely to fail than be completed.
Catch 22.
Radegast74
Space Marshal
Dumbasses gotta dumbass...
But 3.2 million subscribers? My concern about humanity intensifies...
But 3.2 million subscribers? My concern about humanity intensifies...
KuruptU4Fun
Vice Admiral
With the trend of bringing features in that do not have to go thru a stabilization period (Jared called them side streets), the incoming mission modules and now the SM/AC videos I think they're on an upward trend to garner more attention towards that end goal. No publisher is needed.
The issue doesn't lie with the very talented dev team, it lies with those controlling the company. Chris Roberts will never relinquish any amount of control of his company or submit to a team of subordinates telling him what to do or what not to. If he wanted that, he'd be working for a publisher.
What SC needs isn't a Publisher but some sort of time dilation messaging system to tell CR just one thing:
For the sake of everything you hold dear or love, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES interact with Crytek/CryEngine for Star Citizen!!!
For the sake of everything you hold dear or love, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES interact with Crytek/CryEngine for Star Citizen!!!
I backed initially because they said a pro to this game's development is that they won't be beholden to publishers. Its why it went to Kickstarter in the first place. I don't think they need a publisher but as it's been said here it would be nice to have someone light a fire under someone's ass, but I don't know if they're already doing that. Maybe managing this project is much harder than we really understand, or maybe its simpler than that and they're just incompetent. I believe it's the former.
ThunderKraken
Space Marshal
Only thing that keeps me holding on and I feel most people too was the golden age of mmos in the early 2000s. Something special in gaming those years before everything turned into WoW clones, and that's been the status quo. It's all about level and end game.
I dunno mmos back then people had second lives online and it was imperative to network and build communities. Was just different.
I dunno mmos back then people had second lives online and it was imperative to network and build communities. Was just different.
I think I spent more time on Ultima Online than school and Dark Age of Camelot than Uni.
Explains why I am a loser wasting my money on non existent ship pixel promises lol.
As it has been said many times, they don't need a publisher, they need self control. They need to say "this is the END goal for this feature until we release" and do just that, and only that. Keep the first version of the feature you came up with, make that work reliably, bug free, and move on to the next one.
Instead they keep reinventing basic features like fps movement... it's never gonna end this way. They gotta call features finished (for now) and that's it.
Publishers would actually make things much worse in that they would require them to add in features "popular with the kids"... Like I dunno, wall jumps, or crate drops, cos that's what's hot in CoD. You can be a 100% sure they would make them add in a teleport to ship option, so when you wake up in the hab you could get into the action asap...
Meanwhile they would require them to cut all depth and "added for immersion" feature cos it's not min-maxed to be as bland and generic as possible. We would end up with yet another shallow generic sci fi themed shooter. So no, no publisher could save this, rather they would absolutely ruin it.
@BUTUZ ah yes, the golden years of uni... it was WoW for me (and streaming TV shows like House and BSG from random websites, always trying to find the best Wifi spot with my cheapo laptop), like for so many at the time. Nothing else feels like that, no matter what I tried since then, I always find my way back to WoW. It just feels like home at this point.
I was hoping SC could bring that back and to a certain degree it does.
Instead they keep reinventing basic features like fps movement... it's never gonna end this way. They gotta call features finished (for now) and that's it.
Publishers would actually make things much worse in that they would require them to add in features "popular with the kids"... Like I dunno, wall jumps, or crate drops, cos that's what's hot in CoD. You can be a 100% sure they would make them add in a teleport to ship option, so when you wake up in the hab you could get into the action asap...
Meanwhile they would require them to cut all depth and "added for immersion" feature cos it's not min-maxed to be as bland and generic as possible. We would end up with yet another shallow generic sci fi themed shooter. So no, no publisher could save this, rather they would absolutely ruin it.
@BUTUZ ah yes, the golden years of uni... it was WoW for me (and streaming TV shows like House and BSG from random websites, always trying to find the best Wifi spot with my cheapo laptop), like for so many at the time. Nothing else feels like that, no matter what I tried since then, I always find my way back to WoW. It just feels like home at this point.
I was hoping SC could bring that back and to a certain degree it does.
That’s the thing. A publisher can enforce discipline when it is needed. Unfortunately, CIG needed it 6 years ago. I would have loved the game CIG came up with prior to fully physicalized planets. It wok.d have been populated with creatures, people, plants, and all of it would have worked and worked well.
now we have barren planets devoid of almost all life, and what life is there tends to stand around on furniture.
But..Quantum will solve it all and make it better, right? Unfortunately, it won’t. If you want worlds to be alive and “thriving”, you need to have a good population density of creatures per square km. That means as people travel over the world, they need to be phasing the life in and out in a wide range. It’s not just 20-30 bad buys, but hundreds of creatures spread out over a 16 sq km area minimum per ship on that moon or planet. That’s at least several hundred life forms, if not a thousand or more. All being spawned in/out as the person overflys the area at 200 m/s.
Just how many servers does a game like WoW need for the eastern kingdoms on “one” server? I suspect it’s not “one”, but actually many, with each realm having 10-20 servers each, if not more, and that land area is a fraction of a single moon in SC.
i get his vision, but there also needs to be a plan and he seems to change that plan when his vision changes. Holy Grail tech usually isn’t. After all, we have been promised it before and look where we still are.
Last edited:
I think the thing is it's the people your playing with too which is where I think test can help recreate the magic somewhat.
Ultima - my guild was amazing felt like actual family we had so many countless good times. Sadly we've all drifted apart changed phones emails ICQ gone MIRC gone so drifted away. I still miss them to this day.
Planetside was the same - awesome team able to field large units (platoons) and really have an actual effect on the whole game world.
Elite dangerous even - no real content but we made it with the clan so tight, and when powerplay was cared about before the devs killed it - it was great being able to go out in multiple groups of 4 and have an effect on the game world.
SC has the potential to have all of the above in spades with you guys especially but the out of control project creep means it's at high risk of just neverendingly doing the same as now and just eventually fading out as more and more people get fed up/bored of being in a nevernding alpha.