Intercept games job offers and concern

[ChubbyCat]

A while ago back in April, Intercept games had a lot of job openings for working on KSP 2. Seeing as how those applications are still open on the website, it appears as though the roles have still not been filled. Beat in mind I am very uneducated on this subject and could be completely wrong, but hopefully they have enough people working on the game, and production isn’t slowed. 

[SciMan]

My line of thinking is more optimistic. Even if the jobs have been filled, they might leave them open so they have an idea of what kind of talent is out there waiting to be hired should they need it unexpectedly.

Or they could already know that they're going to need more people when the game does launch, in order to tackle the (almost unavoidable) flood of bugs that you didn't know about because everyone's playing the game in ways other than how you expected it to be played (sometimes those bugs are left in, which is how we still have a version of the landing gear and piston based "kracken drive" reactionless drive system).

Plus, it could be simply more trouble than it's worth to actually formally close the job opening if they even have the slightest feeling that they're going to need more people later on.

EDIT: Put it this way, I'll be worried about this game when there's good reason to be worried about this game, the fact that they left the job listings open isn't something I personally think is worth worrying about.
My reasoning goes like this: Out of all the mod makers on this forum, don't you think they'd be able to convince enough of them to go work for them to fill all the spots in the job posting?
Surely that must be the case simply because there's so many mods that have been made for KSP over the years, and even if you're not a mod maker there's still slots open for "Community Manager"-type positions, which just require you to be level-headed and be a really invested fan of KSP.

Edited November 26, 2021 by SciMan

[K^2]

Current openings for Intercept include two writers, two leads (design and SE), two SEII, an SEIII, and a UI/UX. Both of the lead positions appear to be for a next project after KSP2. One of the SEII is explicitly for console parity. So in terms of what they are looking for core, it's the writers, two SEs, and a UI/UX designer. Worst case scenario, if they have to go without engineers and the UI/UX person and outsource some of the writing, this adds up to a couple of months of delay. I don't see anything remotely worthy of concern.

[MechBFP]

On 11/26/2021 at 7:18 PM, K^2 said:

Current openings for Intercept include two writers, two leads (design and SE), two SEII, an SEIII, and a UI/UX. Both of the lead positions appear to be for a next project after KSP2. One of the SEII is explicitly for console parity. So in terms of what they are looking for core, it's the writers, two SEs, and a UI/UX designer. Worst case scenario, if they have to go without engineers and the UI/UX person and outsource some of the writing, this adds up to a couple of months of delay. I don't see anything remotely worthy of concern.

 I will admit I don’t know enough about the industry to speak one way or the other when it comes to resourcing. Until I hear otherwise from official sources I’ll just assume all is normal and there just isn’t anything of interest they can show. 
 

[SciMan]

With one of them being "explicitly for console parity" as you say, I hope that doesn't mean we get content cut because they couldn't make it work on consoles and so didn't try to make it work on PC.
I don't really believe that to be the case, however I'd much rather that console players get a slightly reduced experience, rather than have the PC version have any features cut because they couldn't fit them into the console version.
Like i said, that's unlikely so long as they only port it to PS5 or whatever the new Xbox is called (I keep getting confused by that, Microsoft really did a dumb marketing move by changing their naming conventions LITERALLY EVERY CONSOLE GENERATION, I'm honestly surprised MS hasn't had a similar kerfuffle to what Nintendo had with the Wii U being thought of as an accessory to the Wii instead of an entirely new console). If they port it to Xbox one and PS4 as well as the next-gen consoles however, it's highly likely that features will have to be cut from those versions in order to keep performance at reasonable levels.

Beyond that, back on the point of "will this cause delays", I doubt it. If most of them are working on a follow-on project (perhaps already working on a DLC?
Only way I can think of that going is "more solar systems to explore" and "more rocket parts to build with", but I have no clue as to what the specifics of either of those avenues of DLC development could be.

[TheOrbitalMechanic]

4 minutes ago, SciMan said:

With one of them being "explicitly for console parity" as you say, I hope that doesn't mean we get content cut because they couldn't make it work on consoles and so didn't try to make it work on PC.
I don't really believe that to be the case, however I'd much rather that console players get a slightly reduced experience, rather than have the PC version have any features cut because they couldn't fit them into the console version.

Yeah, I feel like if anything, difficulties surrounding consoles would just lead to a console-specific delay of a few months.

 

5 minutes ago, SciMan said:

If they port it to Xbox one and PS4 as well as the next-gen consoles however, it's highly likely that features will have to be cut from those versions in order to keep performance at reasonable levels.

I mean, they've also said there'll be a ton of optimizations for game engine stuff, so... hopefully not? 

[MechBFP]

43 minutes ago, SciMan said:

With one of them being "explicitly for console parity" as you say, I hope that doesn't mean we get content cut because they couldn't make it work on consoles and so didn't try to make it work on PC.

Oh I guarantee you that has already happened multiple times.

A CPU heavy game is going to be screwed by them releasing the game on the old gen consoles, it’s simply the reality of the situation. 
This is why many of us hoped they would disregard the old console generation in favour of the new ones with much more powerful CPUs. 

Edited November 29, 2021 by MechBFP

[K^2]

2 hours ago, SciMan said:

With one of them being "explicitly for console parity" as you say, I hope that doesn't mean we get content cut because they couldn't make it work on consoles and so didn't try to make it work on PC.

There are more mainstream titles where this sort of thing does actually happen occasionally, but I have very little concern for this with KSP2. We might have some features dropped because they are considered too clunky for what KSP2 is trying to be, but it's not going to be a platform problem, but rather just general streamlining. And the attitude from Intercept on this is probably going to be, "This is mods territory." Which is fine, IMO. I'm also sure the bar for this is way, way higher than it would be for Call of Duty or something. When you're building a rocket, some amount of complexity is just part of the game, and everyone involved seems to be aware of it.

In similar vein, I have encountered cases where we've had to make changes to content based on contracts with Sony/Microsoft in terms of what can and cannot be supported. For example, if you are releasing a game on PS4, in the past, you had to support all iterations of the console. You couldn't release features that were available on PS4 Pro but not on base model. This has been relaxed somewhat in the recent years, but this has caused cut features in the past. But these rules never included parity with PC. So again, no reason for concern.

What parity engineers are usually responsible for is making sure all of the UI is accessible with controller/mouse, that performance is fine, etc. There's usually an entire laundry list of problems that have to be solved. And a lot of it is just having an engineer that works on the off-target platform and keeps track of things that are going in.

2 hours ago, MechBFP said:

A CPU heavy game is going to be screwed by them releasing the game on the old gen consoles, it’s simply the reality of the situation. 

Not if they only release on PS5/XBSX. The CPU on these is fine for now. Even with using these models as floor, there are going to be so many people whose PCs aren't nearly as powerful. We might actually be seeing the opposite, where the PC is the bottleneck. To be clear, that won't last, as the PC market is catching up really fast, but just now we're in good place for this.

Of course, I'm making a huge assumption that PS4/XB1 support has been dropped at this point or will be a cut-up back-port, but not part of the core release. I could be wrong about this, in which case we're going to lose a lot of features from KSP2 to try and keep parity with old hardware, but that's precisely why I'm so confident that this won't happen and PS5/XBSX are going to be the only consoles with the full release of KSP2. Switch from Star Theory to Intercept gives them a PR excuse not to support the older consoles, and I think by '22 the PS5/XBSX are going to be common enough to where it makes financial sense as well.

[MechBFP]

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

Of course, I'm making a huge assumption that PS4/XB1 support has been dropped at this point or will be a cut-up back-port, but not part of the core release.

I hope so as well, but the last time they updated their main website a handful of months ago it still lists the PS4 and XBOX One only at the bottom of this page:

https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/game/kerbal-space-program-2/

(Perhaps the new consoles missing in that page even after the page update is a good sign that no one is actually really maintaining that website properly so it shouldn’t be taken too literally.)

I hope the bean counters have changed their tune as well and see the benefit to the overall product with better hardware, but we shall see. 

[K^2]

30 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

Perhaps the new consoles missing in that page even after the page update is a good sign that no one is actually really maintaining that website properly so it shouldn’t be taken too literally.

This is what I'm thinking. I could swear we've seen some publicity images that included only the PS5 and XBSX logos...