ChrisShourai

Buddy, I love your optimism, but the way all of this was handled since 7 years ago shows you how much the developers/publishers care about us. They’d wipe their ass with the petition if we hand delivered a printed copy to them to save $ on toilet paper. Make no mistake.

Buddy. Are you aware today is May 4th? Like… not April anymore. A lot can happen in the last four minutes of a football game much less the last ten days on Earth.

For clarity, the added Take-Two's super late statement about 20 minutes ago.

First, let me say I am emotional. So this post is likely inflected with emotions, less rationality. That said, I gotta say, the way Take Two, IG, and KSP team handle any and all communications, from the lack of any good ongoing dev updates for KSP development all the way to this absolute chaotic mess of Take Two's "rationalizing it's pipeline" but failing to prep their studios to provide a proper parallel the announcement absolutely still leaves me skeptical about any possible good future communication from these companies. It blows my MIND that marketing and execs couldn't prep their studio heads for these announcements so that the moment they broke, KSP would already have something ready to go to tell us it's still in development. What an absolute joke. The irreparable harm that has been done in the last 24 hours due to bad communication is staggering. Also to be VERY clear, it is NOT the communities fault that the company failed to advise us all. ANY community for any EA game with these issues would have reacted the same way, and has. Anyways, let me know if you agree/disagree.

Yes I forgot it isn’t the executives and the profit/loss statements that determine if a studio keeps going, it’s the upvote counts and uninformed squabbling between a handful of customers that cancelled the game. I forgot that major entertainment companies make decisions based on hurt-feelings reports and not on the $ that comes in or not. Definitely our fault, FOR SURE.

Nate is ultimately responsible for the entire team. If a company goes bankrupt the CEO is ultimately responsible. Unless Nate is wearing earmuffs and a blindfold for the past 5 years and pretending everything is okay and everyone top to bottom let him get away with that, it’s on him. If a creative director can’t control the development of the game, tech side, art side, and everything in between, that person shouldn’t be in that position. Regardless of the battle to define the position of creative director, I’ll certainly eat my words if KSP2 is unaffected by the closure-led-layoffs and the game is chugging along. I’ll have humility. I’ll apologize.

Guys. Please. This is straight from Wikipedia video game sub-cat for the job title Creative Director. Let’s not slice and dice too much, Nate chose this role and ultimately he’s the most responsible person whatever happens, if the game launches or not. ”With the increased team sizes and more specialized disciplines in the games industry, certain game designers are titled as "creative director", "executive designer", or "game director".[citation needed] A creative director in a video game company is usually responsible for product development across a number of titles and is generally regarded as the prime design authority across the company's product range. Some examples are Peter Molyneux, Sam Lake, Hidetaka Miyazaki, or Shigeru Miyamoto whose influence extends across more than one project.[3]” Also if you think design authority is just art… ”A design authority is a body put in place to manage, track, and fulfill project progress more holistically. The design authority evaluates all elements of a project—cost, skill and resource requirements, potential security concerns, feasibility, and more—from every angle.”

It’s been an ongoing failure already… though that’s an opinion. Also I think you are considering their rolls too literally. The creative director is absolutely all hands in on marketing and managing the team working on the game. The publishers marketing team wouldn’t have a clue what the heck KSP even is without Nate explaining it all, or those on his team. Not trying to argue with you, but I do appreciate you saying to wait for an announcement one way or another. You’re right, though I’m firmly on the side of believing the studio is done. I definitely pray that I’m wrong.

Nah, Nate takes all the blame. I can’t even tag him anymore on these forums. [edited for clarity, I was mistaken you can still tag him] He lied in all the promo leading up to EA launch that this game wasn’t the barely-outa-alpha it was and mostly still is and barely acknowledged any real true concerns a majority of this community had. He was at the helm, and though I certainly blame those above him I guarantee Nate tried selling it both ways - selling it upwards that he and his team could accomplish the launch of the game even though almost nothing significant to propel the game to full release was happening, and simultaneously was selling it downwards to all of us who got conned into buying into EA based on game trailers and a huge marketing push making the game seem like it was already well beyond what it turned out to be. It’s a tune many, many in middle management rolls sing to the ultimate demise of a project. No true info gets up, nor down. Execs concerns don’t reach the public, public concerns don’t reach execs, so the fulcrum collapses and everything falls apart. Nate never truly saw reality, in my very unqualified opinion. The writing is truly on the wall with the closure filing. My hope is there is a huge surge in mod support for KSP1 and blackrack and others can continue where they were heading all along. Let’s make KSP1 a continued community success and once the announcement is legitimized, let’s keep our heads up and stay together. That’s my hope, anyways.

@Nate Simpson, thank you for this Dev Blog. THESE are the sort of blogs we expect more frequently from the dev team. They do not have to be long, they just need to be to the point and cover the main things RE development (bugs, progress, something interesting or not). If you can pound out more short posts like this (with or without screenshots of anything) we would be infinitely happier. Just post frequently, it does not have to be huge. Post every two weeks (that's only twice a month, or 24 times a year, just a post) with something compact and to the point, I'm guessing you'll turn around the vibe on these forums right quick.

So am I allowed to start a new thread discussing our frustration with this Dev Blog, or will that get nuked? You can't just mod a thread and nuke half the posts because it was not directly related to some positive response to the topic. You absolutely deleted comments that were not demeaning, not denigrating, and not implying ill intent of another member. I'll chalk that up to some overzealous clicks / accident, because the alternative to it being an accident on your part is alarmingly concerning. You posted something on a community forum (aka a place for open discussion to engage with and hear from your community), and the community responded, and you nuked their constructive comments? Like I said in the other thread, blows my mind. By all means, remove posts that fall under the demeaning, denigrating, and all other rules, but this is a huge misstep for community trust. I'm not saying this angrily, I'm saying this with a lot of shock and disappointment.

After reading the comments in the dev blog, coming back to this specific thread topic, and re-reading this from @Dakota, I just had to laugh out loud with pure incredulity. This comment was more tone-deaf than the dev blog, knowing we were asking for increased development communication and we get a dev blog about an eclipse. Just BLOWS my mind.

Honestly, the most frustrating thing is that this thread and so many others exist that eventually contain - roughly - two sides or two points of view (one being "it's EA, chill and wait," the other being "what we do have in EA is concerning ") and yet despite this clear division, the developers and community managers seem content to observe without making any concerted effort to provide clarity. This lack of proactive engagement is particularly worrying to me and, unfortunately, appears to reflect the approach Take Two and Intercept Games are taking towards early access. If so many threads devolve into such conversation, that should be a big red flag for the devs and something for them to pay extra attention to. Regardless of the specific circumstances, whether it's a shortage of staff or another issue, it's evident that they are falling short in addressing the valid concerns of the community. Dakoda's recent response only serves to underscore this failing, coming across as disingenuous and out of touch with the community's sentiments. It's important to recognize that it was Intercept Games who initiated the Discord Server and Forums for discussions on all aspects of early access. Therefore, they bear a greater responsibility for fostering open dialogue with both existing and new fans. As developers, they have a tremendous opportunity to leverage the early access phase to gather valuable feedback and improve the game before its full release. This should be the primary motivation for entering early access: to collaborate with the community and elevate the game beyond what it could achieve alone.

My favourite pass-time is watching a particular CM post on average 3 tweets/retweets a day every day to every other day since KSP2 EA launched and seeing barely anything on here. Maybe I don’t understand the entire job description (since I’ve never seen it), or what’s cooking behind the scenes (I’m not in the building), or the difference between how much someone types off working hours vs. during working hours in a role where community (and by extension communication) is literally in the job title. Am I hanging upside down or is the world upside down? Hmm.

THIS