KSP2 at GDC23

[Alexoff]

1 hour ago, cocoscacao said:

What do you want? Is it so difficult to answer?

I have already written several times - do not make provocative statements against the background of the depressing state of the game. Find non-Amazon specialists, start serious work. This is a question from the series what to do if alcohol ruined someone's life by the age of 50. At least stop drinking alcohol, although this is certainly not a panacea, one should have thought before. Simple solutions no longer work. A frivolous attitude only sends a signal that no changes are planned.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

10 minutes ago, regex said:

EA process is not "shipping"

I get the quibble here - but then the industry has also played fast and loose with the terminology.

I think its fair for consumers to think 'shipped' once a product has been monetized (especially to this extent), with some exceptions to very small studios trying to survive.

14 minutes ago, regex said:

Not a game dev but they seem like separate things. One is a geometry system and the other is a rendering process, they're not intrinsically linked but CBT might work better with HDRP in place.

That's one of the biggest questions I have.  Mainly, because once you start looking at how lighting and shadows and stuff work - the presumption is that its rendering / working with the existing geometry.

So - for a duffer... what has to come first?  

Like - I don't know if doing HDRP work now is a total waste of time if they do something that changes the geometry of the planet... but I kind of suspect it might be.

[TomKerbal]

20 hours ago, Alexoff said:

... Perhaps T2 monopoly on the franchise and the lack of similar alternatives, except for KSP1

There is a very good alternative which I have discovered: Juno: New Origins (or SimpleRockets2). They have also an RSS mod there, which the moon having the correct axis tilt !

[regex]

8 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

So - for a duffer... what has to come first?

Again, not a game dev (I do business software and have modded games), but I suspect neither; they're separate systems. My sense is that CBT will undoubtedly be better with HDRP in place though.

8 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Like - I don't know if doing HDRP work now is a total waste of time if they do something that changes the geometry of the planet... but I kind of suspect it might be.

I don't think it'll be a waste of time even if they stick with PQS. They're two separate things with different pros and cons.

[K^2]

2 hours ago, Rosten said:

If this is a risk for you, then leadership roles are a bad career track as people will depend on you showing up to your job, especially during difficult times.

I've been leading game dev teams for several years now, and my teams consistently outperform others, despite me giving plenty of vacation to my team and to myself as needed. Well rested people write better code that doesn't have to be re-written several times due to exhaustion-caused mistakes. Weird, huh?

If your job is so simple, you can just toughen up and keep doing it, it at least explains why you're so afraid of looking weak to your bosses, as you'd be easily replaced. I'm sorry, that must suck. I work in a field that requires specialists that can work with their head, and so ability to say, "Hey, I'm not coming in today, because I'll just make a mess of things," is far more valuable here than whatever it is that you're trying to express with "built different". And you probably shouldn't apply your life experiences to game development.

[Rosten]

44 minutes ago, K^2 said:

I've been leading game dev teams for several years now, and my teams consistently outperform others, despite me giving plenty of vacation to my team and to myself as needed.

We were talking about taking vacations after consistently underperforming when the ship urgently needs righted, though.   I mean, not to diminish your cool story about being a titan of industry.

[K^2]

2 minutes ago, Rosten said:

We were talking about taking vacations after consistently underperforming when the ship urgently needs righted, though.   I mean, not to diminish your cool story about being a titan of industry.

So wait, when you made your comment about being "built different," you meant constant underperforming? Because otherwise your comments don't add up. You should probably revise that.

More importantly, and actually to the point, if the product is bad because my team shipped bad code, if I drive them harder and make them work more, they'll just ship even more bad code. If I thought the team underperformed because they're burned out, I might send them on a vacation and fix things properly later. Yes, it's a delay, but you get better product eventually rather than more crap. If I thought they were lacking experience, maybe a conference is a place they can pick up a few techniques. Finally, if they're actually just bad at their work, either because they're simply not good at it or because they don't do the work (and we've crossed solvable problems off the list), then I start the process to terminate the employment.

There is absolutely no universe in which devs shipping a bad game is fixed by having these devs sent back to the office to work harder. That's just doing the same thing again and expecting a different result.

And that's if it's even their fault to begin with. The schedule for the project overall could have been unrealistically aggressive. Priorities might have shifted really late in development. Build and test pipelines might not have been in place. What if the tech art was knocking it out of the park, but rendering engineers didn't realize until really late that there is a problem with the pipeline, and now a bunch of shaders have to be re-made? The tech art team is now behind, but they did everything right. They were never underperforming, but now they have to go back and work instead of taking their earned rest? Make it make sense.

If after shipping a bad game, you deny people vacation, the only people you're punishing by that are people who worked hard in the first place, and these people can easily find other jobs. And then you're left with just the underperforming ones who are going to make an even bigger mess of things. So again, not a wise strategy under any circumstance.

[cocoscacao]

4 hours ago, Alexoff said:

6 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

What do you want? Is it so difficult to answer?

I have already written several times - do not make provocative statements against the background of the depressing state of the game

Written several times where? 

[Bej Kerman]

14 minutes ago, K^2 said:

So wait, when you made your comment about being "built different," you meant constant underperforming? Because otherwise your comments don't add up. You should probably revise that.

More importantly, and actually to the point, if the product is bad because my team shipped bad code, if I drive them harder and make them work more, they'll just ship even more bad code. If I thought the team underperformed because they're burned out, I might send them on a vacation and fix things properly later. Yes, it's a delay, but you get better product eventually rather than more crap. If I thought they were lacking experience, maybe a conference is a place they can pick up a few techniques. Finally, if they're actually just bad at their work, either because they're simply not good at it or because they don't do the work (and we've crossed solvable problems off the list), then I start the process to terminate the employment.

There is absolutely no universe in which devs shipping a bad game is fixed by having these devs sent back to the office to work harder. That's just doing the same thing again and expecting a different result.

And that's if it's even their fault to begin with. The schedule for the project overall could have been unrealistically aggressive. Priorities might have shifted really late in development. Build and test pipelines might not have been in place. What if the tech art was knocking it out of the park, but rendering engineers didn't realize until really late that there is a problem with the pipeline, and now a bunch of shaders have to be re-made? The tech art team is now behind, but they did everything right. They were never underperforming, but now they have to go back and work instead of taking their earned rest? Make it make sense.

If after shipping a bad game, you deny people vacation, the only people you're punishing by that are people who worked hard in the first place, and these people can easily find other jobs. And then you're left with just the underperforming ones who are going to make an even bigger mess of things. So again, not a wise strategy under any circumstance.

I agree with you 100%, K^2.

These people legitimately see the developers as assets. They are literally upset about the idea of them taking breaks from development. This just brings me to a boil to see forum users supporting unhealthy workplace practices OVER A GAME. It was a laugh before debating with these people but now it's actually disturbing to see their colours shine here.

It's a game. You all should stop putting your hurt feelings above the health of the developers. Strong wording is the only thing that gets my point across.

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

I agree with you 100%, K^2.

These people legitimately see the developers as assets. They are literally upset about the idea of them taking breaks from development. This just brings me to a boil to see forum users supporting unhealthy workplace practices OVER A GAME. It was a laugh before debating with these people but now it's actually disturbing to see their colours shine here.

It's a game. You all should stop putting your hurt feelings above the health of the developers. Strong wording is the only thing that gets my point across.

Dude. Take a deep breath.

No one ever said they are upset about people working on KSP2 taking a break. 

The point here is you just don’t go public about taking some time off (maybe we’re not here for Nate’s personal agenda?), after such a launch and when no new feature was added in months from release.

If they think it’s cool and useful to let us know about their holiday plans, maybe at least wait until v1.0 to then make those things public, and we’ll cheer for their well deserved time off.

I’m also starting to think these Announcements and AMAs do more harm than good in the way they do it now, and if they can’t do that better I’d rather they go radio silence and get their stuff together, because it’s a pretty tall order this Roadmap.

Edited April 29, 2023 by GGG-GoodGuyGreg

[K^2]

2 hours ago, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

No one ever said they are upset about people working on KSP2 taking a break. 

You haven't. You specifically stated that you only have a problem with it being communicated - though, being silent about it contributes to toxic culture, which is a separate problem. But aside from that, other people have, quite directly, stated that they have a problem with the concept itself. Either because they went to a conference (which is unavoidably making public that they are taking time to do something else) or explicitly that they shouldn't be taking holidays at all at this time.

On 4/27/2023 at 11:40 AM, Alexoff said:

It's amazing that the developers of KSP2 took the time to participate in the GDS23 just a couple of weeks after the successful release of the working version of KSP2! They probably didn't have more important things to do in the office, like fixing bugs or creating features from the roadmap.

On 4/27/2023 at 3:18 PM, Rosten said:

Taking a vacation while in dire straits might be a trait associated with games that have low review scores.

18 hours ago, Rosten said:

19 hours ago, regex said:

So you actually do have a problem with people taking vacations, gotcha.

I do when that vacation is during a disaster or other urgent need.  It's something I'd never for a second consider doing myself, so I'm shocked when I see someone else do it.

So rather than telling me to take a deep breath, why not take a moment and see who and what the discussion is aimed at and consider for a moment if you have a problem with demands quoted above.

Also, not a fan of "dude" as a vocative expression directed at me. Please, consider alternatives if you'll need to similarly punctuate a dismissive remark directed at me in the future.

[Rosten]

12 hours ago, K^2 said:

So wait, when you made your comment about being "built different," you meant constant underperforming?

I mean you seem to be treating a desk job clacking on a keyboard like dodging gunfire in 'nam and that might be more of a problem with you.  Like, if you're at risk for a mental breakdown over making a typo on an entertainment product, there's probably some deeper problem you need to look into as I don't think it's normal and have never experienced that.  Either way, it'd be a personality factor that should exclude someone from a leadership role.

There's almost nothing in the world of programming less stressful than working on a video game as at worst your mistakes will disappoint some kids.  With almost all other software, mistakes will harm someone, like mistakes in medical software, automotive ECUs, defense and aerospace industries, even web CRUD that manages sensitive personal information.  Maybe that's why you see mental fragility as normal, your teams are composed of people who found other software too stressful and so ended up in video games?

12 hours ago, K^2 said:

More importantly, and actually to the point, if the product is bad because my team shipped bad code, if I drive them harder and make them work more, they'll just ship even more bad code.

We're not talking about the team taking a vacation though, are we?  It's about leadership taking a vacation and leaving the team to fend for itself during a difficult time when leadership is most valuable.

[cocoscacao]

On 4/29/2023 at 6:26 PM, Alexoff said:

have already written several times - do not make provocative statements against the background of the depressing state of the game

I can't see it. Unless it's a fully working game with some features missing... In which case, count me out from that discussion, it already happened. 

I also don't get the rest of your answer. 

[Alexoff]

22 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

Written several times where? 

Is this the only question? For the rest, no objections?

On 4/29/2023 at 9:15 PM, K^2 said:

I've been leading game dev teams for several years now, and my teams consistently outperform others, despite me giving plenty of vacation to my team and to myself as needed. Well rested people write better code that doesn't have to be re-written several times due to exhaustion-caused mistakes. Weird, huh?

And who worked better? Your team or KSP2 developers? And like Nate is the boss, so we have to compare your holiday. In my experience, traveling to a conference is no less difficult than working, I would say it is a more time-consuming and generally pointless process.

[Periple]

10 hours ago, Rosten said:

There's almost nothing in the world of programming less stressful than working on a video game as at worst your mistakes will disappoint some kids.  With almost all other software, mistakes will harm someone, like mistakes in medical software, automotive ECUs, defense and aerospace industries, even web CRUD that manages sensitive personal information.  Maybe that's why you see mental fragility as normal, your teams are composed of people who found other software too stressful and so ended up in video games?

This just isn't true! I used to work in the conventional software industry before jumping ship to gamedev; stuff I've written is used in healthcare, military, and even nuclear safety, and I can assure you that gamedev is inherently WAY more stressful. 

Why? Because in my old industry, the tools and processes were mature; we had things like "certifications" and "audits;" we had customers who did acceptance testing; we usually worked from a spec of at least the problem domain that was well understood and agreed-upon by everybody, and most of all nobody knew who I was, or cared. 

In gamedev, none of these are true! There's a pitch and a design bible and the "customer" certainly provides feedback on milestones, but it's all about really hard to specify things like "fun" and "engaging" and "creative" (and also "it has to make money, somehow"). On top of that, there's a fanbase who has really strong feelings about EVERYTHING -- they'll find out who you are, stalk you on LinkedIn and any other social media, and let you know exactly what they think -- whether it's a star-struck "SQUEE I CAN'T BELIEVE I MET SOMEONE WHO WORKED ON <insert game here> IRL" or... well, the opposite, right up to and including death threats.

Also the game industry in general is frankly awful, with exploitative work practices, terrible tools and infrastructures, outsize egos and narcissistic personalities left and right, and a HUGE amount of money that draws in some incredibly greedy people like a rotting carcass draws flies. Some studios are better than others and I'm really happy I landed in one that treats us well!

So if you're looking for a low-stress work environment, I strongly recommend something like embedded systems in the aerospace or automotive industry. These are well-specified problems with a lot of prior art running on well-specified, stable hardware, and BECAUSE people will die if it goes wrong, there are so many safety nets in place that any mistakes you make are 100% minus epsilon guaranteed to be caught before they make it into production.

(I do have to say that gamedev is a lot more fun too. I didn't use to wake up in my old job thinking "WOW! Today I'll be working on PATIENT HEALTH RECORDS!" But I do think that about the stuff I'm doing now. It's just so cool, and it's so cool to be working with artists and musicians and animators and writers and all kinds of other crazy creative powerhouses!)

Edited April 30, 2023 by Periple

[Alexoff]

1 hour ago, Periple said:

On top of that, there's a fanbase who has really strong feelings about EVERYTHING

The KSP has a very powerful fan base, which really knows a lot (I'm not talking about myself). One of these fans created most of the parts in KSP2, as well as the engine plumes. I think the KSP fanbase is one of the best, what other fans would give a game like KSP2 only mixed reviews on steam?

[Rosten]

25 minutes ago, Periple said:

This just isn't true! I used to work in the conventional software industry before jumping ship to gamedev; stuff I've written is used in healthcare, military, and even nuclear safety, and I can assure you that gamedev is inherently WAY more stressful.

I've done a bit of everything over the years including games and in my experience games were a joy to work on.  The most stressful for me personally was the startup scene during the second dot com boom which I think caused a global shortage of knives from all the backstabbing.  And then the economy imploded, which was deserved.

44 minutes ago, Periple said:

Also the game industry in general is frankly awful, with exploitative work practices, terrible tools and infrastructures, outsize egos and narcissistic personalities left and right, and a HUGE amount of money that draws in some incredibly greedy people like a rotting carcass draws flies. Some studios are better than others and I'm really happy I landed in one that treats us well!

I've not worked with any terrible groups, but then I never worked with AAA studios which I hear can be pretty bad.  My main fields are embedded and networking but I contract on the side mainly for the fun of seeing what everyone else is up to and to stay current.

[K^2]

13 hours ago, Rosten said:

There's almost nothing in the world of programming less stressful than working on a video game as at worst your mistakes will disappoint some kids.  With almost all other software, mistakes will harm someone, like mistakes in medical software, automotive ECUs, defense and aerospace industries, even web CRUD that manages sensitive personal information.  Maybe that's why you see mental fragility as normal, your teams are composed of people who found other software too stressful and so ended up in video games?

That's about the worst take I've seen, and I've seen a lot of bad takes.

First of all, a lot of the stress comes from heavy mental workload. I don't know what you do for a living, but you clearly never had to solve a problem that's actually new and takes more than five minutes to think of a solution to. So we can basically exclude any software work from the list of things you've ever attempted.

Second, if I'm working at Google, as I have, and I screwed something up, and it caused our service to fall for a few minutes while the revert is being processed, do you realize how little I care about it? It might cost Google a few million, if it's an important enough service, but I don't give a damn. There is no consequence for anything you do, and it gets boring after a while. I left precisely because there is zero impact. Most software jobs are like that.

Yeah, there are a handful of people working on things like self-driving cars and crewed Falcon missions. If you screw up on one of these, it'll get people killed. Though, it's super unlikely that you'd ever be able to trace it down to a mistake any one person made. Some people can manage that better than others, and it's not a job for just anyone. Other than that, though? Medical and military software goes through so many validation checks... The only place where you have to follow more strict guidelines is software for slot machines. It takes enormous level of carelessness from the corporate for any one engineer's mistakes to propagate to an issue that causes people to die, at which point, it's not on the engineer. It's an extremely different environment. Security is somewhere in between. Realistically, though, nobody works in security feels that sort of personal responsibility for people losing money due to leaks. Again, it's closer to the impact of just a general corporate work.

What sets gaming industry aside is that we're all working on things we actually personally care about. Nobody goes into games for the money or prestige. You go into games because you want to make games. And it's not about making some little brat happy about playing a game. It's about making an art piece that you're proud of. And when you screw up as an engineer on a game, you're not letting down the corporate or the gamers. You're letting down your colleagues in art and design, who have worked for months on a feature, that now either can't be shipped or works like total crap, because you didn't fix something in code. Or you weren't able to solve an optimization problem. You're not letting down some arbitrary person out there. Someone you'll never know or hear from. You're letting down people you work with day after day for many years, many of whom become your close friends.

I have experience across variety of sectors. Academia, where I started, corporate giants, like Google and a certain media company I do not even wish to name. Several games-adjacent startups that were sort of related, but where it still felt more like just a job in fintech than anything creative, and a number of large and small gaming studios. I've never worked on a project involving autonomous guidance, where I'm literally holding someone's life in my hands. I suspect I'd hate that, and they are probably under more stress than anyone in the tech industry. But outside of that, games are the easy second. No security or financial works come close.

Your attitude is ignorant, based on nothing but your own imagination, and is toxic to the industry.

4 hours ago, Alexoff said:

And like Nate is the boss, so we have to compare your holiday.

I've taken vacation time two months before we had to ship a feature that we were on an X million dollar contract to deliver along with the game, while I was acting as a tech manager for that feature from distributing work to certain aspects of negotiation with the corporate entity that was paying us for it. We were running behind, because the entire project was on fire, and my engineering and art resources were constantly getting pulled from me. I had that vacation time scheduled from way before, back when we were still supposed to have the feature already delivered by that point in time, and I refused to shift it. Two reasons. First, I was tired and I needed this time. I already scheduled it for way further out than I was supposed to, and I was already losing PTO hours due to them being unused. But more importantly, I knew that if I don't take this time, nobody on my team would, and these final two months would be absolutely devastating, because the entire game was far behind schedule.

I've made my vacation public within the relevant teams. I publicly asked not to be disturbed while on that vacation. I've also privately made sure that people who might need to reach me for some emergency could. Two or three people from my team have requested PTO after that, people I knew needed it, and nobody from upper management tried to fight me on approving it because that would be bad optics if I had my PTO already approved. We shipped the feature on time. We got the payout for delivering it, we got praised for it in game reviews, and five names from my team ended up on a patent for a certain part of that feature. It's purely a defensive patent, but my team still got bonuses for it, and it looks good on the resume.

If you are leading an exhausted team during difficult part of development, it's critical to make a big show out of taking PTO, because some people will absolutely not take the PTO they desperately need because they feel like they're letting the team down. If you, as a manager, don't set a good example on good work practices, who will?

 

I don't know what the exact situation is at the Intercept. I don't know exact causes for the delays. I've said before and I'm saying this still - they shipped a decent alpha. Some problems, sure, but nothing that wouldn't get green-lit to go into the next milestone, and absolutely nothing like a disaster some people here try to claim it to be. Yes, people are used to seeing betas in early access, but the business case for an indy studio releasing beta as early access is very different than publisher-backed studio releasing an alpha build. So I don't know to what degree the Intercept has been mismanaged if at all. All we know is that the game is taking longer to develop than it was estimated from a few years back, and we don't know the exact causes of that.

So with all of that in mind, do I think Nate has done the right thing about publicly taking vacation right now? I don't know. What I know is that there are good, legitimate reasons to do so, and I don't have enough information to call it a misstep. Even in terms of how it was communicated, because that wasn't for your benefit. That was for the benefit of the team that worked hard, and might not take the vacation if all they're seeing is harsh criticism from the forum and are thinking they're letting their colleagues down. And if that's the reason it was done the way it was done, then it was the right call.

[Alexoff]

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

I've made my vacation public within the relevant teams.

Just told other developers? Here the situation is quite different.

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

I've taken vacation time two months before we had to ship a feature that we were on an X million dollar contract to deliver along with the game

As I understand it, here the conversation was about months, in the situation with KSP2 we are talking about years.

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

I don't know what the exact situation is at the Intercept.

That's right - we don't know the situation at all. Here there is a studio - a black box. It releases promotional materials, and then a "decent alpha". And the game itself is just a pale shadow of what players have been waiting for. Why do we need to be sure that the developers did everything they could? Or maybe they just pretended to work? I have rich experience of working with people who do not fulfill agreements, miss deadlines, do the job very badly, and at the same time tell in bright colors how great they are and that they will soon reveal their creation to the world. I also know a lot of managers who lead in a way that would make the job go faster without that kind of leadership. Why is your version of events the only one - the game is simply incredibly difficult to create, nothing can be done better than it is, anyone but the developers are to blame? Maybe we’ll figure out the specifics, arrange a real investigation, who made what part of the game, who was responsible for what, find the dates of the creation of assets? What if the management wasn't so badly organized, and only the big bosses broke the game?

[Buzz313th]

5 hours ago, Periple said:

Also the game industry in general is frankly awful, with exploitative work practices, terrible tools and infrastructures, outsize egos and narcissistic personalities left and right, and a HUGE amount of money that draws in some incredibly greedy people like a rotting carcass draws flies. Some studios are better than others and I'm really happy I landed in one that treats us well!

Carbon copy of the Film Industry.

[K^2]

It's getting better in a lot of places. People calling attention to it in social media, and both the popular backlash and various stricter labor laws (esp. in California) have been pushing the needle in the right direction.

[cocoscacao]

10 hours ago, Alexoff said:

Is this the only question? For the rest, no objections?

Only one for now. I don't know about the rest yet. 

@Rosten while I am not in a game dev, I can relate somewhat. In most software, you can reatrain user actions, and there are only so many ways user can interact with it, so tracking bugs is easier. In games, not so much. In games like KSP, you can throw whole concept in a trash can. 

[Periple]

7 hours ago, K^2 said:

What sets gaming industry aside is that we're all working on things we actually personally care about. Nobody goes into games for the money or prestige. You go into games because you want to make games. And it's not about making some little brat happy about playing a game. It's about making an art piece that you're proud of. And when you screw up as an engineer on a game, you're not letting down the corporate or the gamers. You're letting down your colleagues in art and design, who have worked for months on a feature, that now either can't be shipped or works like total crap, because you didn't fix something in code. Or you weren't able to solve an optimization problem. You're not letting down some arbitrary person out there. Someone you'll never know or hear from. You're letting down people you work with day after day for many years, many of whom become your close friends.

Yes exactly this! And it's in everything, not just the game itself, and not just the programming team.

We have an in-house tool that's used by about a dozen, maybe 20 people, and it's just ridiculously polished with all kinds of little usability tweaks and clever tricks to make it fun to use, and that's because the team that made it and maintains it just cares so much -- if someone says "Hey it'd be nice if a right-click in this context did this thing, it'd help me maintain my flow" the team will do everything they can to give them just that. The thing is just so much nicer to use than high-profile, public-facing services from billion-dollar corporations serving tens of millions of users. All for a dozen users, and only because the team knows them, likes them, and doesn't want to let them down!

It really sucks when you know exactly who's going to have a sinking feeling when you screwed up. Like if you're a tech artist and just made a really cool FX filter that the art team liked, and then the programmer tells you "Uh, the frame rate on the Switch just dropped from 60 to 20" that sucks a lot more because you know and like the programmer and you know just how much work she puts into keeping it performant. So unless your lead stops you, you might immediately do an all-nighter to re-implement it, just because you don't want to make the programmer sad. 

Even in really good studios, people burn themselves out this way -- not because their bosses or the producers make them crunch,  just because they don't want to let their friends down.

[cocoscacao]

7 minutes ago, Periple said:

We have an in-house tool

Ah yes. The internal tools. Unity of purpose. Freedom of design. Not answering to any management. The weirdest and most interesting pieces of software. 

[K^2]

9 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

The weirdest and most interesting pieces of software.

- "There is a secret pixel you have to click to open this sub-menu."

- "A secret pixel?"

- "A secret pixel."