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[Harmful Mechanic]

Also, the first thing that gets thrown out in crunch is balance and polish. If you just have to crank out *something* by a deadline, getting the features all working is going to take precedence over feel testing and refinement. The market rewards sloppiness like that and consumers on the whole don't seem to mind.

Starsector is good because of the way it's being developed; slowly and methodically. We're probably past the point where adding manpower would be helpful and have been since 0.72a or so. We've seen, time and again, that Alex consistently does what he says he's going to do; the game has never at any point been sold except as 'you're paying for what's here now and getting access to whatever comes next', it's clear that while development has taken a long time, it's active, and beyond a certain point, you're the one responsible for managing your own expectations.

If you want to walk away or demand a refund, you can. If you want to decry every development cycle that isn't shoveling out something monthly, you can. But you get the end results you deserve from demanding those things, because speed is paid for with quality.

[red_rust]

because speed is paid for with quality.

I disagree with this statement, devs should try to set a deadline for their work, there are plenty of examples where development took ages and the resulting product was not worth the expectation.

Games like Daikatana where John Romero promised it would be done in 7 month, which then took 3 years, I think the reviews of the game will tell you how much "quality" that game had.

On the indie side, we have the yandere simulator, the guy has been working on it for 6-7 years now, those people crowd funding him were not happy at the rate the game was being developed, the releases he had was referred to as "if/else" the game, I mean in 6 years you'd think he might improve on his coding, whats worse now is that someone else has taken it upon themself to produce a competing game with the same premise titled "love sick" which caught up to the most contemporary build of yandere simulator in just a few weeks.

Finally we have the biggest crowdfunded elephant in the games industry, Star Citizen. A game that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars, that also sells ships that costs tens of thousands of dollars, is still no where near complete, the development time has taken so long people have joked that we would probably have real space travel before people got to play the finished game.

I think what it comes down to is attitude, are the devs serious about games development, or is it just their hobby, do they want to build more franchises, or just work on a single game for their entire existence.

[Locklave]

because speed is paid for with quality.

This statement is true in regards to nearly everything in life.

I disagree with this statement, devs should try to set a deadline for their work, there are plenty of examples where development took ages and the resulting product was not worth the expectation.

Who cares about other examples. We are dealing with Starsector, not a case studies of what others did someplace in the industry.

If someone is putting in a solid effort to produce a quality product then how does that person magically produce faster? They can't.

Because your statement implies they are being lazy or they are incompetent, as resolving those kind of issue could reasonably increase speed. That is clearly not the case here. If you didn't mean to imply that then you are arguing the semantics of faster work in general in a specific situation for no reason.

[Flying Dice]

This is an even better troll than the recurring "Conquest is better than Onslaught" thread. Congrats, OP.

Are you attempting to start a flame war?

Because OP's concerns are legit.

Only to someone who didn't bother checking over the development blog or forum activity at all. There's a pretty decent gap between updates, but they've been coming consistently for seven-ish years.

And for what it's worth, I think it's pretty much impossible to justify calling Starsector in its current state a "demo". It's got more content than a lot of completed games. The last time I think I could justify calling it a demo was when I bought it, when it was literally just a few tactical scenarios. Maybe the early days of the single-system campaign where you just flew around blowing up Hegemony/Tri-tach fleets until you got bored. But any point past the name change, no way.

All that aside, it's a $15 game with no DRM and is one of the standout examples of how one dude with a dream can make a better game than hundreds of people with a AAA budget.

e: Oddly enough, I can't remember ever seeing anything I'd classify as a bug in vanilla. The closest was the unintended behavior waaaay back in an early version of AI retreat/surrender mechanics when you could hit-and-run a Hegemony capital fleet with a single Tempest, tapping their shields while avoiding return fire for a few minutes, and they'd all run away and surrender the entire fleet intact.

[red_rust]

Who cares about other examples. We are dealing with Starsector, not a case studies of what others did someplace in the industry.

If someone is putting in a solid effort to produce a quality product then how does that person magically produce faster? They can't.

Because your statement implies they are being lazy or they are incompetent, as resolving those kind of issue could reasonably increase speed. That is clearly not the case here. If you didn't mean to imply that then you are arguing the semantics of faster work in general in a specific situation for no reason.

What challenges the Starsector devs are facing, only they know themselves, the three games I'v mentioned have failed, or is failing due to different reasons.

The point I am making is, if the devs are really genuinely serious about game development as a business, rather than a personal hobby, they can definitely come up with solutions to their problem, maybe it's an issue with lack of staff? hire more, lacking in funding? try crowdfunding.

It might seem difficult, but there are solutions and the true test is the attitude.

Look if the devs came out and said the game was just a personal hobby, and released it for free for everyone to play around with, I doubt most people would complain about development time.

[Grievous69]

they can definitely come up with solutions to their problem, maybe it's an issue with lack of staff? hire more, lacking in funding? try crowdfunding.

You're homeless? Find a house. Have a deadly disease? Just cure yourself.

Surely you don't suggest hiring more people at this point, when the game is 90% done. Just try to imagine the work you'd have to go through just to explain new folks what is it that you're exactly doing and what's the goal. Having to step in constantly because the new guy doesn't understand something in the code. You'd spend more time that way and the 1.0 would came later than if nothing ever changed and the current devs just kept doing their thing.

Ah yes the ol' method of throwing money at something because that will surely make impossible things possible. If you think having sufficient cash makes everything perfect just look at the "games" Amazon is trying to make. Or in fact, any big wholesome AAA company that has piles of money, and their attempts to make it before the deadline.

Of course developing something for 20 years is a bit ridiculous but at least it's better than torturing people to work 24/7 just so they can release something before the deadline so the internet keyboard warriors don't harass them to death. Having a hard set deadline on a specific date is never a good idea, either say Q2 2021 or something, or don't bother making promises at all.

EDIT: Although in defence of the people who are disappointed / angry, I guess the extra long pauses between blog posts made them a bit more worried than usual. From what I remember we used to get blog posts almost every month or two before 0.9.1. This version was like 4 months of silence > blog post of a system rework > long pause again and so on. I mean most of us here know that new stuff is mostly content and fleshing out the game (also lots of spoiler stuff) so realistically you can't make a blog post every month with just that. But people who don't religiously follow the development can't know all of that. Or maybe it's just new folks from the Ssethwave who aren't used to the long waits between updates idk.

[intrinsic_parity]

Lmao I'm sure a big reason Alex is not hiring more people to work on the game is that he would have to pay them out of his own pocket. If people are are so desperate for the game to release, maybe they are willing to pay 80k/year to hire a competent dev? Seriously... you pay only 15 dollars for this entire game with similar scale and content to 60 dollar games.

I only have issues with developers who make claims about release dates/features and then don't meet them. Making promises is dumb IMO, because no one can see the future and things never work out perfectly as intended. I don't have an issue with Starsector in that regard because Alex doesn't make those claims, he's honest about the state of the game and its progress. I have no issue with waiting, only with setting unrealistic expectations (presumably to attract early access funding like star citizen), but I don't think Starsector falls into that category at all. Slower development is not a bad thing, announcing deadlines that can't be met is a bad thing.

Also, I think people who frequent the forums have seen Alex say on many occasions that he is working on content that would be spoiled if he shared it, which explains the changes in the rate of blog posts IMO, but people who haven't seen those comments might get a different impression.

[Tartiflette]

pay 80k/year to hire a competent dev?

That's not what a competent dev cost. Not by a long shot. Especially when you start to account for overhead costs and taxes.

[Psycho Society]

Pretty sure starsector has been developed the same way, and with the same consistency, since before I started following it. Almost a decade ago now :b

It's very not dead, but most games that were in development in 2011 are. So if you're a fan of this game, you're pretty lucky.

[intrinsic_parity]

@Tartiflette
I just googled game developer salary and picked a number in the middle of the range of values. Probably depends a lot on where you're living and such, and it definitely doesn't account for overhead/taxes/benefits etc. on the side of the employer. The point was that getting more people to work on a game is very expensive, which I think is clear enough regardless of the details.

[devurandom]

This is an even better troll than the recurring "Conquest is better than Onslaught" thread. Congrats, OP.

Are you attempting to start a flame war?

Because OP's concerns are legit.

Only to someone who didn't bother checking over the development blog or forum activity at all. There's a pretty decent gap between updates, but they've been coming consistently for seven-ish years.

And for what it's worth, I think it's pretty much impossible to justify calling Starsector in its current state a "demo". It's got more content than a lot of completed games. The last time I think I could justify calling it a demo was when I bought it, when it was literally just a few tactical scenarios. Maybe the early days of the single-system campaign where you just flew around blowing up Hegemony/Tri-tach fleets until you got bored. But any point past the name change, no way.

All that aside, it's a $15 game with no DRM and is one of the standout examples of how one dude with a dream can make a better game than hundreds of people with a AAA budget.

e: Oddly enough, I can't remember ever seeing anything I'd classify as a bug in vanilla. The closest was the unintended behavior waaaay back in an early version of AI retreat/surrender mechanics when you could hit-and-run a Hegemony capital fleet with a single Tempest, tapping their shields while avoiding return fire for a few minutes, and they'd all run away and surrender the entire fleet intact.

Starsector bugs tend to subtle things like the Luddic Path bug or the decivilized subpop bug. Doing good testing and QA takes time, but the benefits can clearly be seen.

@Tartiflette
I just googled game developer salary and picked a number in the middle of the range of values. Probably depends a lot on where you're living and such, and it definitely doesn't account for overhead/taxes/benefits etc. on the side of the employer. The point was that getting more people to work on a game is very expensive, which I think is clear enough regardless of the details.

"game dev" is a very wide category. There is a big difference between a junior dev making 60-80k, and a senior dev. Given that Alex probably doesn't want to spend a lot of time and money on training, Tartiflette is probably thinking of a mid-level or higher.

[red_rust]

they can definitely come up with solutions to their problem, maybe it's an issue with lack of staff? hire more, lacking in funding? try crowdfunding.

You're homeless? Find a house. Have a deadly disease? Just cure yourself.

Yeah nice, quote this specific part of my post without the context of my first paragraph, but just to entertain this dumb comparison, you're homeless? go on welfare. have a deadly disease? If it is curable then your life should be worth more than any amount of money and effort to find the cure, if not curable then cherish what time you still have and not squander it.

Surely you don't suggest hiring more people at this point, when the game is 90% done. Just try to imagine the work you'd have to go through just to explain new folks what is it that you're exactly doing and what's the goal. Having to step in constantly because the new guy doesn't understand something in the code. You'd spend more time that way and the 1.0 would came later than if nothing ever changed and the current devs just kept doing their thing.

Like I said, I don't know what the specific issue is causing the dev to work so slowly, hiring more people was just an example, of the three games I mentioned, Daikatana, Yandere Simulator, Star Citizen, was there really nothing more or different any of them could have done?

Ah yes the ol' method of throwing money at something because that will surely make impossible things possible. If you think having sufficient cash makes everything perfect just look at the "games" Amazon is trying to make. Or in fact, any big wholesome AAA company that has piles of money, and their attempts to make it before the deadline.

No, that was not what I was saying, Star Citizen is a prime example of why mountains of money doesn't make a project go any faster, following on from my previous question, is it completely out of Chris Roberts hands to speed up development of his game? Or is there something he could do to improve the development process?

[Flying Dice]

e: Oddly enough, I can't remember ever seeing anything I'd classify as a bug in vanilla. The closest was the unintended behavior waaaay back in an early version of AI retreat/surrender mechanics when you could hit-and-run a Hegemony capital fleet with a single Tempest, tapping their shields while avoiding return fire for a few minutes, and they'd all run away and surrender the entire fleet intact.

Starsector bugs tend to subtle things like the Luddic Path bug or the decivilized subpop bug. Doing good testing and QA takes time, but the benefits can clearly be seen.

Oh yeah, now that you mention it I do remember the decivilized issue. But yeah -- case in point where long dev cycles spent on making sure the game works is good. A one-man project that's engaging and fun is impressive enough. A one-man project that also runs smoothly, is largely bug-free, and has a decent UI?

[Morrokain]

The point I am making is, if the devs are really genuinely serious about game development as a business, rather than a personal hobby, they can definitely come up with solutions to their problem, maybe it's an issue with lack of staff? hire more, lacking in funding? try crowdfunding.

It might seem difficult, but there are solutions and the true test is the attitude.

Look if the devs came out and said the game was just a personal hobby, and released it for free for everyone to play around with, I doubt most people would complain about development time.

While I understand the point you are making and it is a valid one, I would like to point out that the perspective you are taking is one of the consumer who does not understand the industry (which is understandable and shouldn't be expected don't get me wrong) vs the actual reality of the industry. This isn't just a game design issue but generally an "any technical undertaking" issue. The real truth is that over 60% of all technical projects fail even at billion dollar companies or government funded projects with top talent and huge budgets. That's only in the last decade or so too. Before then it was more like 80%. There are very good reasons for this.

This stat should not be taken as a reflection of a poor attitude or a lack of trying by the devs involved in those projects. (Though there certainly are plenty of technical managers who feel this way - the best ones understand because they once were down in the code/design trenches themselves. The worst tech managers are business managers with no experience in the tech industry taking this same opinion: "Why can't we just make this happen??")

It's not that laziness or discontent doesn't happen, trust me it does. (Though I don't believe that is the case for Starsector by any means.) But that is rarely the cause of project failure. Most of the time, the reason for failure is:

Spoiler

A) Most common reason: Changing requirements or poor or rushed early design foundations causing the scale of the project to get out of control and become unmanageable even when making simple changes. The cost of training and acquiring new talent becomes overwhelming because the project complexity requires months or years of specialized knowledge before any new features can be added or, even, any bug can be fixed. Seriously. It happens to the best of companies throwing millions at projects and willing to hire industry experts at the top of their respective fields.

B) Changing technology thresholds or competing projects obsoleting the original project.

C) Management wanting or promising a feature before they have spoken with their experts - and then when they do and realize the cost or time to implement the feature is more than the project sponsor is willing or able to tolerate yet the feature is required. Project terminated as a result.

D) The project relies on 3rd party software or hardware - and that 3rd party discontinues support or makes changes that are incompatible with the project's implementation of the 3rd party component.

[close]

Many people are used to other industries that are more standardized and therefore its easier to "make things happen" by hiring an expert or throwing more money at the project. If a pizza company wants to increase their output they can expand their kitchen and add more staff and ovens. That is fairly simple if probably expensive. The only way that can backfire is if they don't have the actual customer input to support the additional output and can't ever return their initial investment. It is so, so so much more complex than that with a technical project.

Technical projects (including games) just don't work that way. Even though there are some standards, code is often flexible enough (it needs to be) to allow someone to really dig themselves into a hole that they can't get out of.

Ever heard of ? The more you rush a tech project the more you will find yourselves in this kind of situation. And a developers worst nightmare is stumbling upon a "Rube Goldberg Machine" kind of design and being asked to change the final result or to change a component of the machine into something else while preserving the final result. For example from the video: "Can we change the result to soda from lemonade?" or "Can we just skip the bathroom altogether and still get lemonade?"

Sorry if this is a long explanation, but I hope it helps explain some of the considerations being made by any dev and why it can be confusing for the end user to make heads or tails out of some projects' ability to succeed or their propensity to fail. Hopefully it also pointedly explains why long dev cycles tend to pay off a lot more than short ones.

[Albreo]

D) The project relies on 3rd party software or hardware - and that 3rd party discontinues support or makes changes that are incompatible with the project's implementation of the 3rd party component.

This, one of my Kickstarter games went down with it with the entire saving of the dev and his house.