The game failed because...

[Infinite Aerospace]

3 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

If their shabby treatment of the KSP fanbase is a one-off, I have to agree. But does look to me like they've Hoovered up a fair number of such niche markets in the last few years, and if they treat all those the same way they appear to be treating us,  they may end up finding that they have shot themselves in the foot. Time will tell I guess.

There's some fairly high profile people, in the space community who are players and supporters of Kerbal Space Program. So it's a potential hornets nest for sure, given that none of these people are affiliated with, or work in the games industry but do command a sizeable audience, on Twitter.

[MechBFP]

8 minutes ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

There's some fairly high profile people, in the space community who are players and supporters of Kerbal Space Program. So it's a potential hornets nest for sure, given that none of these people are affiliated with, or work in the games industry but do command a sizeable audience, on Twitter.

This is really my only hope is that someone with some power gets ornery over this and sparks some "internal discussions".

[calabus2]

32 minutes ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

There's some fairly high profile people, in the space community who are players and supporters of Kerbal Space Program. So it's a potential hornets nest for sure, given that none of these people are affiliated with, or work in the games industry but do command a sizeable audience, on Twitter.

Rofl. No. These people have zero influence over the studio, the publisher or this game. Take2 is the only entity that can save this train wreck and they, as well as IG have been radio silent. 

It's dead Jim

Edited May 4 by calabus2

[PopinFRESH]

15 hours ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

Nope, they've got no hope in hell of breaking even as we are discussing this right now. Like at this point, the only hope for KSP2 to make money is to dramatically speed up and streamline development.

That's why I don't get the whole concept of scrapping a half baked product before you've ever really seen how it can perform in the market.

To Take Two interactive it's either write the game off as a loss of *insert figure* or to continue to completion, which will cost *insert figure*. Looking at that I can't really make a case for the first. Completing it will undoubtedly cost more money, but a completed KSP2 is much, much more appealing than a half-baked, cancelled one. You could conceivably see a completed KSP2 shifting quite a few copies, especially if it's ported to the Xbox Series S/X and PlayStation 5. Owning an IP is utterly pointless if it's just going to gather dust.

 

They've already gone through that song & dance 3 times since the originally planned 2020 release... You are describing the sunk cost fallacy, and Take Two obviously seems done with throwing good money after bad money for a studio that has continued to fail to meet milestones within reasonable timeframes.

Take Two knows they've burned up what market share they could expect from KSP2 on PC; The only potential upside for them was if PD/IG could get it wrapped up in a reasonable time frame and ported to console.

You could, just as conceivably, see a completed KSP2 shifting very little additional copies after pouring how much more money into it?

13 hours ago, Lisias said:

[Snip]

Censorship is about having your Free of Speech suppressed. If your posts about a determined subject are systematically removed even by not breaking any rules/laws, then we have censorship.

Personal threatening, doxxing, et all are a whole new level of a problem, we are talking felonies here.

Or what the point of the OP is; e.g. moderating things, such as the example I gave of myself, to "put your thumb on the scale" to drive away critics or to try and impose self-censorship if those individuals continued to post.

Edited May 5 by James Kerman
Redacted by a moderator

[MechBFP]

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

If your posts about a determined subject are systematically removed even by not breaking any rules/laws, then we have censorship

Agreed. Since that didn't happen, why did you bring it up?

[Pthigrivi]

[Snip]

Ultimately I think it came down to a single decision—KSP2 should have been delayed a year. If we got the game we currently have as the initial EA launch we wouldn’t be having this conversation. There would have been bugs, yeah, there would still be missing pieces, but we’d have a solidly playable foundation for growth. With a few updates and colonies in the fall I think a lot of positive momentum could have been maintained. Ultimately it was a lack of patience. 

Edited May 5 by James Kerman
Redacted by a moderator

[never_do]

9 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

[Snip]

Ultimately I think it came down to a single decision—KSP2 should have been delayed a year.

I am not sure about that. The game still has so many bugs that it is pretty much unplayable. At least for me.

There was a lot of talk about how "Science" was a good update. I tried it and after all the bugs I stopped playing again.

It did improve the game. But the game was still bad. I know others have a different oppionions. But for me the game in the current state is still not playable and the Science update did not fix any of the main issues I did have with it.

Edited May 5 by James Kerman
Redacted by a moderator

[J.Random]

9 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

[Snip]

Ultimately I think it came down to a single decision—KSP2 should have been delayed a year. If we got the game we currently have as the initial EA launch we wouldn’t be having this conversation. There would have been bugs, yeah, there would still be missing pieces, but we’d have a solidly playable foundation for growth. With a few updates and colonies in the fall I think a lot of positive momentum could have been maintained. Ultimately it was a lack of patience. 

It already has been delayed more than once. The last delay was for almost a year, and somebody (can you maybe remind me who exactly?) claimed that the game is basically done and the year is needed to polish it, bringing it to some standard or other.

Edited May 5 by James Kerman
Redacted by a moderator

[Pthigrivi]

17 minutes ago, never_do said:

I am not sure about that. The game still has so many bugs that it is pretty much unplayable. At least for me.

There was a lot of talk about how "Science" was a good update. I tried it and after all the bugs I stopped playing again.

It did improve the game. But the game was still bad. I know others have a different oppionions. But for me the game in the current state is still not playable and the Science update did not fix any of the main issues I did have with it.

Im sure there are many who feel that way. I played through FS and had a great time. Yeah there were bugs but I would expect that from EA. If those got cleared up along side new content over the course of this year I think we’d be on a good track. 

 

6 minutes ago, J.Random said:

It already has been delayed more than once. The last delay was for almost a year, and somebody (can you maybe remind me who exactly?) claimed that the game is basically done and the year is needed to polish it, bringing it to some standard or other.

I just don’t ultimately think that matters. Only weirdos like us follow the inside baseball of who said what when about release dates. What matters is the actual experience when its released. What we got last year was beyond rough and it killed growth. I think what we have now would have been good enough for day one. 

[J.Random]

13 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

I just don’t ultimately think that matters. Only weirdos like us follow the inside baseball of who said what when about release dates. What matters is the actual experience when its released. What we got last year was beyond rough and it killed growth. I think what we have now would have been good enough for day one. 

Fair point. Since we're dealing with hypotheticals, do you think that what you have now could be reached in another year of development without an extra "motivation" provided by customers' reaction to EA release (or, more likely, bosses' reaction to investors' reaction to customers' reaction)? Or would they release the same crap as in Feb'23 but a year later? Because it seems to me that the latter is more likely. Let me remind you that without backlash they would probably still think that wet noodle rockets are "fun and essentially kerbal", for example.

Edited May 5 by J.Random

[Pthigrivi]

7 minutes ago, J.Random said:

Fair point. Since we're dealing with hypotheticals, do you think that what you have now could be reached in another year of development without an extra "motivation" provided by customers' reaction to EA release (or, more likely, bosses' reaction to investors' reaction to customers' reaction)? Or would they release the same crap as in Feb'23 but a year later? Because it seems to me that the latter is more likely. Let me remind you that without backlash they would probably still think that wet noodle rockets are "fun and essentially kerbal", for example.

All good questions. At a certain point counterfactuals are impossible to predict. I do think though most of the worst offenders then and even now don’t really require the full playerbase to identify. These are all common enough for QA. Wobbly rockets were more than a tuning problem—its hard to say. But at least with the basic foundation of science and progression there would have been a game to dig into. 

[herbal space program]

33 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

I'm sure there are many who feel that way. I played through FS and had a great time. Yeah there were bugs but I would expect that from EA. If those got cleared up along side new content over the course of this year I think we’d be on a good track. 

I played most of the way through it, and although there were still a fair number of bug-related frustrations along the way I enjoyed the experience as well. I actually got a palpable sense of how it could have been the beginning of something genuinely new and better, albeit with a whole lot of work still to be done, and looked forward to exploring the possibilities of the promised new colony content. Now that's all in a state of limbo with pretty poor prospects for ever becoming reality.

Edited May 5 by herbal space program

[Infinite Aerospace]

I think to call the game what amounts to a buggy mess, in its current iteration is a bit disingenuous to be honest. Does it have bugs? Yes, it does but nowhere even in the same area code as what it did have, game breaking bugs like the 'save bug' where the games save file would balloon to fantastical sizes, is long gone at this point. The Kerbal Space Centre randomly joining us on the ascent to orbit, for example, is also long gone. Now the bugs are a lot less 'game breaking' and more an annoyance.

 

Like, "Will my parachutes open? Who knows!" is really the only bug I persistently come across now, and occasionally something like the trajectory line will disappear, but all in all it's not too bad and I fully believe the remainder of the 'more irritating' bugs were being dealt with over time. What I think got lost somewhere is how not bad the game actually runs for people using decent, mid-range and above systems. With For Science! we'd reached a point where the game actually ran quite well, certainly not hugely less than KSP1 with stuff like volumetric clouds (which are vanilla in KSP2) but loads times remained fantastic, and quick.

 

I honestly believe that Colonies would have changed the fortunes of the game and finally set it apart from the original we all hold so dear.

[James Kerman]

A lot of content has been removed again.

Please report posts you feel are against the forum guidelines instead of replying or set members you are triggered by to ignore.

We do understand that this is a difficult time for everyone and that emotions are high but please remember that we used to have the reputation for being the least toxic forum on the internet because of many years of hard work by volunteers creating and enacting the guidelines and policies we have today. Also please remember that many of our members are minors and part of our charter is to keep the forum family friendly. The rules here have come about as an evolution of this so we do ask that you keep discussions civil at a minimum.

To clarify some issues brought up in now removed content, we only redact content that is in breach of the guidelines - you are welcome to be critical or have dissenting opinions but if you include forbidden content in your posts we are obliged to censor it. We do not allow discussion of moderation in the open forum however we are more than happy to explain general policies to members who wish to PM us or post in the Ask the Mods thread although we will not discuss decisions with members who are not involved in specific incidents.

[FreeThinker]

Best Analysis Video which sums up all the reasons

Edited May 5 by FreeThinker

[Pthigrivi]

3 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

Best Analysis Video which sums up all the reasons

Yeah I mean some of this is subjective and speculative but I agree with most of it and definitely with the overall thrust of the analysis. Even in my own small company projects have revenue cycles and often start with long periods of time in which we aren’t billing much or at all. If you take short-cuts and screw up the process and deliverable product the result is you lose out on almost all of the potential gains. The decision to force a too-early EA probably meant a small percentage savings in initial dev capital but cost them essentially all of the potential profit. This wasn’t a decision based on a 5 or 10 year profit analysis and certainly hurt both PD and T2 long term. This was yet another short-sighted move based on some upper exec showing cash on the table quarter by quarter with no concern for or understanding of the long term consequences.

Edited May 5 by Pthigrivi

[dprostock]

5 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Yeah I mean some of this is subjective and speculative but I agree with most of it and definitely with the overall thrust of the analysis. Even in my own small company projects have revenue cycles and often start with long periods of time in which we aren’t billing much or at all. If you take short-cuts and screw up the process and deliverable product the result is you lose out on almost all of the potential gains. The decision to force a too-early EA probably meant a small percentage savings in initial dev capital but cost them essentially all of the potential profit. This wasn’t a decision based on a 5 or 10 year profit analysis and certainly hurt both PD and T2 long term. This was yet another short-sighted move based on some upper exec showing cash on the table quarter by quarter with no concern for or understanding of the long term consequences.

Be realistic. Who is going to wait 25 or 30 years to see dividends when the great mass of video game consumers have an active life of around 10 years maximum? Don't you plan to have a busy and productive life in the future? Wife? Children? Grandsons? Or are you going to spend the rest of your life buying simulators and hiding in the attic of your house? 

It's the same calculation made by the economists they hire in the Corporations.

[FreeThinker]

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

Yeah I mean some of this is subjective and speculative but I agree with most of it and definitely with the overall thrust of the analysis. Even in my own small company projects have revenue cycles and often start with long periods of time in which we aren’t billing much or at all. If you take short-cuts and screw up the process and deliverable product the result is you lose out on almost all of the potential gains. The decision to force a too-early EA probably meant a small percentage savings in initial dev capital but cost them essentially all of the potential profit. This wasn’t a decision based on a 5 or 10 year profit analysis and certainly hurt both PD and T2 long term. This was yet another short-sighted move based on some upper exec showing cash on the table quarter by quarter with no concern for or understanding of the long term consequences.

The decision to go into early acces with a game in a bad state while asking full AAA price from a business perspecitive was uncomprehensible. I would probably bought the game if it was half price, but asking full price with a risk of not delivering was not an option I would do.

Edited May 5 by FreeThinker

[Lisias]

2 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

This was yet another short-sighted move based on some upper exec showing cash on the table quarter by quarter with no concern for or understanding of the long term consequences.

I said before, and I will say again - there's more than one plausible explanation.

For example, I will (again) suggest a quick research about how Stephen Elop conducted Nokia before Microsoft bought them.

[BrobDingnag]

On 5/4/2024 at 4:03 PM, PopinFRESH said:

They've already gone through that song & dance 3 times since the originally planned 2020 release...

From time to time, I think about just what a KSP2 released in 2020 would have looked like. Would it even have had Kerbals in it?

5 hours ago, dprostock said:

Don't you plan to have a busy and productive life in the future? Wife? Children? Grandsons? Or are you going to spend the rest of your life buying simulators and hiding in the attic of your house? 

Might want to take a gander at the direction and velocity of modern civilization these days. It's suicidal nihilism all the way down

[Yaivenov]

10 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

The decision to go into early acces with a game in a bad state while asking full AAA price from a business perspecitive was uncomprehensible. I would probably bought the game if it was half price, but asking full price with a risk of not delivering was not an option I would do.

That move screams to me "loss recovery," aka damage control.  T2 had spent years worth of development and had nothing significant to show for it, so they ordered the tech-demo released "early access" to recoup some money before shelving the failure and moving on to the next IP.

[Flush Foot]

17 hours ago, BrobDingnag said:

Might want to take a gander at the direction and velocity of modern civilization these days. It's suicidal nihilism all the way down

Isn't that better for the planet anyways? [Peacefully] Reduce the population a little to ease the strain on natural resources?

[PDCWolf]

11 hours ago, Yaivenov said:

That move screams to me "loss recovery," aka damage control.  T2 had spent years worth of development and had nothing significant to show for it, so they ordered the tech-demo released "early access" to recoup some money before shelving the failure and moving on to the next IP.

I don't think they released EA with the intention of cancelling, but rather to show shareholders that the project was out in the open and wasn't a lost cause.

The possible cancellation I'm pretty sure is due to what we've all seen regarding how the project went and the future it possibly had.

Edited May 6 by PDCWolf

[PopinFRESH]

On 5/5/2024 at 10:38 AM, Pthigrivi said:

Yeah I mean some of this is subjective and speculative but I agree with most of it and definitely with the overall thrust of the analysis. Even in my own small company projects have revenue cycles and often start with long periods of time in which we aren’t billing much or at all. If you take short-cuts and screw up the process and deliverable product the result is you lose out on almost all of the potential gains. The decision to force a too-early EA probably meant a small percentage savings in initial dev capital but cost them essentially all of the potential profit. This wasn’t a decision based on a 5 or 10 year profit analysis and certainly hurt both PD and T2 long term. This was yet another short-sighted move based on some upper exec showing cash on the table quarter by quarter with no concern for or understanding of the long term consequences.

Except this ignores the repetitive failures to meet milestones within the developers own timelines; Take Two gave them plenty of runway, far from a "quarter by quarter" analysis you suggest. They've racked up the development and studio costs for 50 - 70 people + all of the associated studio expenses for 6+ years. Judging things on the pace of their deliverables they'd easily still be 3+ years out from being anywhere close to the roadmap features; let alone getting it optimized to a point to be able to port it to consoles. It is very easily rational that the long term costs were at or exceeding their revenue projections from PC and Console. Meaning very little potential gain with all of the risk based on a development team that has repeatedly failed.

Have you attempted to actually do that 5 or 10 year analysis of estimating the studio costs and then extrapolating the sales estimates to see what that looks like? Even with very imperfect data it does not look like it has very much potential margin to be worth the risk of failure after continuing to incur further costs.

[Audaylon]

Pardon my interuption of this salt mine...There were a lot of posts to go thru but it's a salt mine.

I love this game and think it was a huge success. 

I'm not the type of player that goes out of my way to download mods. 
Sure there were bugs.  And lots of them.  

I suggest just taking a break from the game if you feel bad about it.  
Otherwise check out my latest creation, the Monocopter.  I want to turn it into a sling shot.   Did I mention I love sandbox mode?