Dev blog PR

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

Hi all,   I've been haunting the KSP forums since 2012, i don;t think in all that time I've seen the front page look as negative as it does now.

  Once upon a time there were regular posts in the dev blogs,  with some little gem or other, and I've not got out of the habit of glancing at them when i log on, and for the recent weeks one thing stands out, ignoring the fact that the pre release had little mention there,  the full release wasn't mentioned at all i think, not even the HelloGreen thing, so what leaps out at you?

  Two sets of goodbyes, i think on the whole the community has come to terms with the whole business, and it's time to put something a little more positive in the devblogs if only to brighten the mood of the first page most people see. Or is it some kind of unofficial memorial ? which is odd if it is , in the time some of those guys worked around here I've had two jobs, nobody stays put

I can't imagine it's particularly inviting to someone looking at the forum for the first time,  as most will have had at least 1 digital game fail to meet the promises of developers and seen companies fall apart by now and at first glance it looks like it was happening here too, even if it wasn't  

Cheers

 

 

then followed ten mins of procrastination while i wondered if to press the post button or not, 

Edited October 27, 2016 by SpannerMonkey(smce)

[Gordon Fecyk]

58 minutes ago, SpannerMonkey(smce) said:

I don't think in all that time I've seen the front page look as negative as it does now.

In my opinion, Kerbal Space Program is growing up. Gone from the confines of early access and having reached two major milestones since, it's discovering the 'real world' of PC and now console gaming. That world is not a pleasant one, and the 'new kid' is attracting unwanted attention. Reminds me of Grade 4 back home. And Grade 8, and Grade 10. And a few other milestones I'd rather forget.

The tone was quite different here, because in early access there were very low expectations. Even I, who would gladly lash out at an established developer for not following best current practices on Windows, am holding back something fierce. I genuinely love the premise of KSP, and only the Steam edition makes installing it somewhat sane because Valve is taking care of the workarounds needed to run this game somewhat safely. So I just sit back, and if anyone asks for my professional IT opinion I suggest they get a Steam account and purchase KSP from there.

That tone is changing with KSP's popularity expanding. We're attracting the console generation here, and they are used to the quality (ahem) of Call of Duty, Halo, Gears of War, Fallout, and so on with very large amounts of development time behind them. With more YouTube exposure we're also attracting the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is the YouTube Comments Section. And our teenage space sim franchise is learning the hard way that the real world sucks and groups of real people can and will be evil.

How our community and developers respond to this will define it for good. It's time to live away from home and make the hard decisions.

--

[Kerbart]

1 hour ago, SpannerMonkey(smce) said:

(...) so what leaps out at you?

  Two sets of goodbyes, i think on the whole the community has come to terms with the whole business, and it's time to put something a little more positive in the devblogs if only to brighten the mood of the first page most people see. Or is it some kind of unofficial memorial ? (...) I can't imagine it's particularly inviting to someone looking at the forum for the first time,  as most will have had at least 1 digital game fail to meet the promises of developers and seen companies fall apart by now and at first glance it looks like it was happening here too, even if it wasn't  

Good point. As we say in marketing: perception is reality.

I always found it curious that Squad doesn't seem to care about its outside appearance regarding the future of the development of the game. Surely there are some occasional “but we really do! There IS a future!” posts but words are cheap, especially when they are not backed by the perceived reality (which might not be the real reality). Especially when words are not needed if actions speak for themselves (see: companies who claim that “our workers are our biggest asset”).

Luckily Squad doesn't need words to convince us. A solid 1.3 release, as well as fixing the console problems, will do the trick. Time will tell!

[pxi]

46 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Luckily Squad doesn't need words to convince us. A solid 1.3 release, as well as fixing the console problems, will do the trick. Time will tell!

Agreed.  Some of the best communication I've seen from Squad came from the devs on the front line (a great example of this would be Harvester's post from years back explaining how he re-did the craters on the Mun by using a quadtree implementation).

However, especially in the last year or so, communication has more and more gone in the direction of vague assertions that great things are around the corner, only Squad can't talk about them right now, but omfg you're going to love it.  There are times when it's hard to judge whether that thing that Squad were hyping so hard even made it in because we were never told "that's the thing we were hyping".  A good example of this would be to think back a couple of releases to that time when we were told that something was in the works that was going to make us (the community) very proud of them (Squad).

Fortunately KSP is a decent product, and I think the devs, both past and current deserve respect for the work they've done.

Let the end-product do the talking.