Kerbart

Isn't that literally what I said? What KSP showed is that it's much more fun to put your astronauts on a celestial body (and get them back) than merely putting a lander there. They probably need to have a cuteness factor. Far fewer players will be inclined to a rescue mission of all they've stranded are a bunch of GI-Joe a-holes. But they don't need to be Kerbals either. Given the development history, there's probably also a practical reason Kerbals are the way they are. You're not investing a ton of resources in modeling your crew when thety're basically a green tube with two white spheres for eyes. And that's fine for software that's basically proof of concept. Redoing the project now, there's no reason why they can't be capybaras, chipmunks or washing bears (although I'd avoid the latter lest you'll have a costly Guardians of the Galaxy lawsuit that you'll probably win but is costing you a lot of money regardless).

Those gimmicks certainly did help the game spread in the beginning - for me, a video with the terrorized looks on the Kerbals helmcams was what drew me in. But as T2 found out it's not defining success. The personal touch the Kerbals provide and other spacesims don't can easily replaced with other creatures. There is now also a hungry market for "engineer & launch your own rocket" games, so the LGM gimmick is far less important than in the 0.18 days. If at this point we'd have to choose between (let's fantasize and assume production continues) the KSP2 EA release (again, fantasize they're continuing it) and a competitor made by Harvester, most of us will go by the latter. Kitbash shows that he has the mechanics down, it will be written from scratch and closer to Harvester's vision of what the game should be than Nate's vision.

The KSP2 saga just keeps getting worse and worse. I doubt the end will be short term. The forum might be running on another service and doesn't require any action on the side of T2. But then again, bills for those services will at one point no longer be paid and the light goes out. There are some other platforms, some of them not owned by T2, so the community will end up there. I hope.

It still shows for me as well. Not that I see anything else in it than nobody's there to care about updating it. Don't think I have the illusion it means the game is still being worked on.

Yes, as much as there is glee over Nate losing his job, it means a further diminishing of hopes (if there were any) that the project somehow, miraculously, would continue. And there's the kicking someone when they're down. To my knowledge Nate never drowned puppies or burned down orphanages; I think it's better to keep dark thoughts to ourselves than to spout them online without having intimate knowledge of the entire story. Unless he drowned puppies. But I don't think he did. We have stories that portray him as the guy responsible for the mess, but to what point he actually made the (claimed) decisions or was given marching orders by upper management and tried to make the best of it, we don't know. Yes he was the smiling face that lied to us. What we still don't know was whether that was something he did happily knowing that he was just perpetrating his spiel, or agonizing on where T2 was taking his beloved game and how he had to keep up a straight face. We think we know. But do we really, for sure? I've had jobs in marketing where what we had to write didn't quite jive with what we felt. It's not fun. Getting kicked in the face afterward by customers is even less. But who's willing to say "I quit" when kids need feeding and mortgages need to be paid? The biggest loss is indeed that KSP2 development is over. I have a hard time how anyone values "I told you was right all along" over "KSP2 eventually turned out great" and is happy about the current state of affairs.

"Recent events and announcements: june 11, 0.2.2.0 update" At the very least a fortunate side effect of the final update for Intercept is that it looks like "it's being worked on" for a few more months. I almost wonder if that was an intended effect. On the other hand I cannot imagine that it would generate that much additional sales, but then again they'll see it as revenue otherwise not collected. With "overwhelming negative" reviews, anyone who still buys the game has to blame it on themselves.

And the books were worse, back then. As book store shelves were the #1 way of advertising a book, most IT related books tended to have 3" (7.5 cm) wide spines to make them better visible. Filling those 800 pages takes more time than the 300-400 pages you see nowadays, so that drives up the price (then there's printing, shipping...) Glad those days are over.

The application of nuclear technology in WW2 was, on all levels, incredibly crude and primitive by modern standards. It still took a tremendous effort, not just for the technology to build the implosion bomb, but also to refine the fissile material. The motivation to get that done was there; aside from that the Germans had a nuclear program, very little was known of it (and as was learned later, because there was very little to it). Facing extinction by the threat of the other side getting there first, the US completed the project. So, is it inevitable that a civilization with 1940s technology would develop the bomb? When facing existential threats, maybe, otherwise, unlikely.

In fairness, what kind of response would you like to see? If it's a response that makes you positive about the future of the game, how reliable would you find it? Regardless of the future of the project, no one on the team can be in a great state of mind and then there's corporate rules about what kind of community engagement is allowed. My money is on if any interaction is ok'd (and that's a huge if), it's probably weighed against benefits vs community backlash and I cannot imagine many scenarios where posting at this point would be beneficial.

It didn't load for a while, so that felt foreboding

It's fun to speculate. Everyone does it. At this point there's little harm in it. The best answer though, is to take everything that we know is factually true and extrapolate from there. Of course, the outcome isn't very popular so it's a response few (certainly not me) will hand out.

And it probably is the patch that was ready many weeks ago. The extended credits make me feel that this patch was more or less intended for all involved in the project, kinda like to have something to showcase, either for pride, resume or just memories. And since this patch was laying around anyway. Timing wise it would make sense. You want to do this as late as possible, in case you realize someone was left out. But at one point in clearing out the office all the equipment is taken down, and with 2 weeks before the WARN date it makes sense this would be that moment. Timing wise it makes sense, which also means with 95% certainty that this is, indeed, the last update of KSP2 we'll see, Not that we had any illusions (this one already came as a surprise) but it's a sad confirmation of what we already knew.

The good news is that if that was their intention there will be a 0.2.3 patch. Because they did a pretty lousy job at it. It looks more to me that an effort was made to ensure that everyone who worked on the project was listed in the credits/ Because the credits were expanded a lot.

No one knows, but \this update came out of the blue in total radio silence. So if there's on going work they'll have bug reports to work off. Based on past performance and the tendency to over hype everything I'm not inclined to interpret the radio silence as "we're still working on it" though. More like an attempt, before the lights are turned off, to leave a product that although it is a turd, will at least be left as a warm turd. With steam coming off it.

I get the impression that the KSP2 code base is largely KSP1 and I assume that slow development had a lot to do with the high load of technical debt. Not ussure if anyone is willing to take that on, or make it work if they do. Expectations will be low though, so there's that.