Shadowzone's findings on KSP2 history

[Vexillar]

@ShadowZone - thanks. This seems to answer a lot of questions.

 

Edited May 24 by Vexillar

[Heretic391]

Great video!

[dprostock]

The title of the post is wrong! He should say, "O Jebus! We've been sold the Monorail!" 

[ShadowZone]

25 minutes ago, Vexillar said:

@ShadowZone - thanks. This seems to answer a lot of questions.

You're welcome!

If there are any questions I can answer, feel free to ask. I felt this needed to be made public after all the intransparency over the past 5 years.

[ttikkoo]

11 minutes ago, ShadowZone said:

You're welcome!

If there are any questions I can answer, feel free to ask. I felt this needed to be made public after all the intransparency over the past 5 years.

Amazing video, thank you. I always thought there was a huge imbalance between the KSP2's presentation and playability - the bit about the creative lead focusing on the art clears that up a lot. I really liked the "We need to talk about Nate" section - it was necessary given things that people have said here and on Reddit. Banning the developers from speaking to Squad still has me in disbelief.

Did the the people involved in the KSP2 project provide any input on what they thought was the future of the game? 

[ShadowZone]

4 minutes ago, ttikkoo said:

Amazing video, thank you. I always thought there was a huge imbalance between the KSP2's presentation and playability - the bit about the creative lead focusing on the art clears that up a lot. I really liked the "We need to talk about Nate" section - it was necessary given things that people have said here and on Reddit. Banning the developers from speaking to Squad still has me in disbelief.

I think LGG's stunned face when I told him says it all.

Quote

Did the the people involved in the KSP2 project provide any input on what they thought was the future of the game? 

Nothing beyond speculation, just as we all do.

Edited May 24 by ShadowZone

[Meecrob]

Have you guys ever done that thing where you get upset at something and imagine a worst-case scenario? Where all people involved except you are totally incompetent to make you feel better? I need a better imagination after seeing this comedy of errors, lol.

Edited May 24 by Meecrob

[The Aziz]

Just as I thought. Terribly mismanaged and underfunded by the people on the top with money to spare.

[PDCWolf]

Writing as I watch so this is more a disorganized stream of consciousness:

He should not have said the "you won't feel validated if you think the devs suck" and only 10 minutes later state how they were forced to hire juniors with no experience that didn't even play the first game. It's also very funny to see how it indeed was prohibited to ask the people that knew, much less consult with someone like HarvesteR. This also explains why they hit pretty much the exact same walls. It's HILARIOUS to me they might've pitched a re-engineering of the original game code with none or little knowledge of it and much less asking the people that worked on it about it. Talk about overpromising and underdelivering, something Uber was known for from previous titles.

It was also really easy to guess that T2 really did see Kerbal as a golden egg goose, good to have confirmation. I still believe it was... until they absolutely ruined it by believing overpromising amateurs on their bid and then placing the dumbest restrictions upon them. Add Nate being a serial overpromiser, and them banning scott manley! It's like they took every step and precaution to set themselves up for failure. It's no wonder some of us saw them as completely arrogant when they refused or were prohibited to consult or ask anyone with a smidge of knowledge of the franchise, and then proceeded to make the same or worse mistakes.

Continuing with hilarity. "This focus of visuals resulted in more fundamental design and gameplay decisions to take the back seat" AHAHAHA, as if the game looked any good. Yes, it has some modern fx and shaders, but to be a mess just to look like that? Incredible.

"Nate believed the difficulty introduced by wobble would be necessary to have a fun game." Absolute clown. At least ShadowZone understands wobblyness in real rockets, even if he uses that to make a dumb case about "teaching engineering". No, enabling parts to clip into each other or otherwise exploding out of the blue does not teach engineering, it teaches cheesing. Couple that with the statement saying he was actively steering stuff away from realism specifically to dumb it down... yeah... no wonder.

At this point (16 minutes) we arrive to the public reveal, yet there's no mention of any feature being complete even by the original Uber Entertainment, so either they did believe they could finish before the release, or they were already in the cycle of misleading that they had a full game when in reality they, at this point, had a bad frankenstein of KSP1. This is also known to be the point where the revolving door starts at, even after the transition from ST to IG. A revolving door filled with amateurs and juniors, hired under secrecy and now, we know also hired for minimum price.

At last we also have confirmation that they were working with the original codebase ST was using, so pretty much another "I told you" to the clowns stating they magically started a new game from scratch after the merge. To further pile up on this, it seems I also was right on pointing out the "multiplayer build" we got screenshots from was indeed the original one, and not some magical new build they started after the merge. By minute 28 we get a second confirmation of this... They really didn't, at any point have a single one of the features developed.

It's also a good warning story that, with multiplayer engineers being fired so early on... the long term product was dead long before these current days.

My key takeaways, in comparison/opposition to SZ:

• Read the forums. It was impossible to miss what the community wanted... yet somehow T2 and then IG/PD/Nate did horribly.
• Early Access is for customer integration and feedback. If you don't care about feedback, then don't do Early Access. It seems we'll never get that font changed now...
• Dumb down accessibility, not the game itself. Games are hard because systems are most times loosely explained, or in the case of KSP1 have literally no explanation. Fix onboarding and you don't need to make everything inconsequentially easy to the point your game is a mediocre mess that elicits no emotional response.
• You can't make a product this complex with amateurs.
• You can't work on someone else's code without the ability to consult them... specially if it's the mess we know from KSP1.
• Stop using Unity. Unless you come out with something revolutionary, the public perception is always negative when you announce your project is in Unity, specially from a fanbase that's been dealing with its limitations and misuse for 10 years.
• Stop listening to Nate.
• KSP2 is dead.

[VlonaldKerman]

Gonna set aside some time and watch this Netflix style.

This is exactly the sort of video we need right now. Thank you. It obviously took a lot of work.

[Vexillar]

42 minutes ago, ttikkoo said:

Banning the developers from speaking to Squad still has me in disbelief.

 

[Meecrob]

27 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

He should not have said the "you won't feel validated if you think the devs suck" and only 10 minutes later state how they were forced to hire juniors with no experience that didn't even play the first game.

I think he is just playing the "youtube game" where all the trolls will watch the first 30 seconds and start posting complaints, whereas his target audience will watch the whole thing.

27 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

banning scott manley!

Then stealing his catchphrase for the new craft name. I know Scott is a chill guy and probably doesn't lose sleep over it, but these billionaire game publishers couldn't even think up their own name? They had to rip off a guy that does youtube videos in his spare time?

27 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

You can't make a product this complex with amateurs.

I honestly think this was done on purpose. They wanted a dumbed down KSP1 from the start. I think the intention was to show the inexperienced devs how complex KSP1 is and give them the task of removing all those annoying "complex" parts. They "Jenga'd" it, if you will.

27 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Stop listening to Nate.

This a million times. I'm sure the guy is great to grab a beer with, but he is kryptonite to game development.

Edited May 24 by Meecrob

[Vallius]

This is the worst kind of tragedy. A completely avoidable one.  I think not letting the KSP2 devs and KSP1 developers communicate was the Achilles heel of the whole effort.

As an actual rocket scientist, there are many points in my career where I would have made big mistakes had I not been able to sanity check my design work with a more experienced engineer. 

I'll soon be the lead on my component. Even with 9 years under my belt, I'm still  nervous about taking over for the old guard. I can't imagine the pressure Intercept Games devs were under, having to relearn things Squad figured out years ago 

[dprostock]

Recently someone contradicted me when I said that they didn't have engineers and that they didn't prioritize code and did prioritize advertising and marketing.

Well, I was right.

Things that happen when you put someone at the helm who, even with good intentions, doesn't have the slightest idea of what it is to manage and even less of what the product was about.

The secret was the palpable evidence of his own professional and mental limitations, lest anyone knew him well and realized the degree of professional ineptitude he professed. 

Also the one who put up the money for the development has responsibility: did he ever ask for the credentials of the person he put in charge of the project? 

On the one hand, rest assured, it would seem that it was not a Pyramid Scam per se.

Would that save them "the shirt" (as we say in my country) if they put money in?

NOP!

Since they failed due to missed deadlines, the problem became evident, and now, with the passage of time, what some of us perceive (added to unofficial information) has happened. 

It's a shame, it could have been an excellent product.

But to consider continuing it now means assuming losses of perhaps $70 million, to which would have to be added perhaps another $30 million to continue with the KSP1 code and polish it of errors, about five more years.

Too much money. 

THE END.

 

[Icegrx]

@Nate Simpson I hope you feel bad and sad for awhile

[Meecrob]

8 minutes ago, Icegrx said:

@Nate Simpson I hope you feel bad and sad for awhile

I know lots will disagree with this sentiment and think of it like kicking someone while they are down, but when one is the leader of a project and that project fails, they need to own it. Or I should say people with integrity will own it. People with integrity will feel bad and sad about the project they led failing.

[dprostock]

10 minutes ago, Icegrx said:

@Nate Simpson I hope you feel bad and sad for awhile

[MechBFP]

Unfortunately it looks like everything that I expected might be going wrong, did in fact all go wrong, which is very unfortunate. Oh well.

It is pretty funny that Take Two started up PD to run things like an indie dev would to find the next big hit, and then completely hamstrung the entire process with stupid ass forced decisions.

No wonder they are pretty much canning all of PD, the management clearly didn't get the memo on how they were supposed to be operating.

Edited May 24 by MechBFP

[Tony Tony Chopper]

Thank you very much Shadowzone. No empty buzzwords, no hate, no half truths at all. But all the haters will feel confirmed by now. No statement after WARN, no statement after earnings call, not even a hint after you gave Nate a chance to talk over Zoom. Too bad. Yeah, I still wish it's best for it's completion. At this point I also hope there won't be any violence happening to them. That's quite possible for developers these days.

[PDCWolf]

7 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

No wonder they are pretty much canning all of PD

Source?

PD is already mostly occupied on their most recent launch and their upcoming project.

[ShadowZone]

1 minute ago, Tony Tony Chopper said:

Thank you very much Shadowzone. No empty buzzwords, no hate, no half truths at all. But all the haters will feel confirmed by now. No statement after WARN, no statement after earnings call, not even a hint after you gave Nate a chance to talk over Zoom. Too bad. Yeah, I still wish it's best for it's completion. At this point I also hope there won't be any violence happening to them. That's quite possible for developers these days.

"You cannot NOT communicate."

The long silence was in itself a way to communicate corporate's disdain for our community. The silence also made people more willing to talk to me because they wanted the story to be heard. Had PD/T2 decided to be super open and transparent and honest, we would not be at this point.

[Lisias]

4 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

It's also very funny to see how it indeed was prohibited to ask the people that knew, much less consult with someone like HarvesteR.

You don't imagine how many projects I had seen dying due egotrips from someone in charge.

Some people prefer to let the plane crash (even when they are on the ride, but most usually they aren't) than to help a pilot they don't like.

Secrecy is the excuse some use to accomplish their real, underlining intent.

It's absolutely appalling. Pathological Narcissism are the root of all the Humanity's evils.

Hanlon's Razor proposes to "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - but sometimes we just run out of options. IMHO there're really few now.

Edited May 24 by Lisias
Of cuorse, tyops!

[Bej Kerman]

1 hour ago, Icegrx said:

@Nate Simpson I hope you feel bad and sad for awhile

Funny how nobody bats an eye to this brand of malice.

[VlonaldKerman]

2 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Early Access is for customer integration and feedback. If you don't care about feedback, then don't do Early Access. It seems we'll never get that font changed now...

Before the game even came out, it was obvious to me that they were not releasing into EA to get community feedback. My first posts on this forum were partially about this.

I concluded that since the game was so buggy they were not at the stage where community input was necessary. Thus it was forced out of EA. Thus they were struggling to meet internal deadlines for an undisclosed reason that had nothing to do with COVID. Thus, the game was in trouble.

It does seem like the overall direction of development would have been much better if they had just consulted with people who worked on the code for KSP 1. They would have known that it would be impossible to deliver on the vision for KSP 2 without substantial reworking of the code base.

But they were shunned, because T2 didn’t want the game to leak and ruin DLC sales for the first game.

Pathetic.

When all is said and done, T2 probably has lost tens of millions on this project. So this really isn’t the story of greed- more so a story of incompetence. Competent greedy people would have made better decisions.

I feel like at its heart, KSP 2 is a software engineering project, not a traditional video game project. And T2 is not an engineering firm.

[Tony Tony Chopper]

26 minutes ago, ShadowZone said:

"You cannot NOT communicate."

The long silence was in itself a way to communicate corporate's disdain for our community. The silence also made people more willing to talk to me because they wanted the story to be heard. Had PD/T2 decided to be super open and transparent and honest, we would not be at this point.

Ha, I met an communication scientist once and he said the exact same. Yeah, good point but the problem with that is always interpretation. That changes over time, and then it slowly gets very explicit at some point - whenever it might be. For example some people do interpret the communication between the community and game development as very negative because it lefts room for apologies as you bound emotions to the community so they will accept that product anyways. Or to put it in aggressive words: manipulation.