TakeTwo has sold Private Division

[Lisias]

15 hours ago, Deddly said:

They did? When?

I'm not being able to find the post, but someone (I forgot who) told us that someone that had worked on KSP2 and now on KSA (but I'm not sure if my memory is working, so I prefer not to nominate him) said on Twitter or Reddit that they had no relation with the KSP buyout.

I managed to find this, however:

Where Kerbart  said something about. The "Not my circus, not my monkeys" is related to that post that I'm not finding where the information was posted.

I'm still looking on it, I will edit this post when I find it.

======== POST EDIT

Found it! It was JplRepo and it was on Discord! (Well, whatever I have, it's not dementia... )

 

Edited November 17 by Lisias
Post edit

[Superfluous J]

I don't really care that much if KSA (or anybody) buys the KSP IP, unless it would cause a better game to be created than would happen otherwise. I don't really see how it would make KSA better.

What WOULD make things a lot better is if KSA (or anybody) bought the KSP FORUM

[PDCWolf]

14 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

I don't really care that much if KSA (or anybody) buys the KSP IP, unless it would cause a better game to be created than would happen otherwise. I don't really see how it would make KSA better.

What WOULD make things a lot better is if KSA (or anybody) bought the KSP FORUM

Considering they don't have a forum themselves, and neither do rocketwerkz have forums for Icarus or Stationeers... I just don't think forums are something they do. Neither did dean answer my question for a forum but I did ask pretty snarkily about it on what was a reply to a reply on the subreddit so no surprise.

[Superfluous J]

35 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Considering they don't have a forum themselves, and neither do rocketwerkz have forums for Icarus or Stationeers... I just don't think forums are something they do. Neither did dean answer my question for a forum but I did ask pretty snarkily about it on what was a reply to a reply on the subreddit so no surprise.

Much to my chagrin, forums are out of style these days.

I'm sure 10 years from now Discord will be lame and all technical discussion will only go on in voice-only Zoom channels and people on Apple phones, Android phones, and PCs won't be able to actually talk to each other. And that will be somehow regarded as "better."

[LameLefty]

1 hour ago, Superfluous J said:

What WOULD make things a lot better is if KSA (or anybody) bought the KSP FORUM

I agree. However, like nearly all game studios this day save MS and at least one flight sim developer I follow, everyone has moved to Discord. And the KSA Discord is … a mess. The Changlog and Dev-Updates channels are great but sparse. The General channel is just a whiplash of content. One minute you’ll have an actual physicist trying to explain plasma dynamics to a bunch of teenagers who haven’t even taken basic high school science; ten minutes later it’s a bunch of fish emojis for some reason; an hour after that another engineer is trying to explain orbital mechanics; then two minutes and fifty messages later it’s kids talking anime. Darn it, I hate that kind of chaos. 

[Lisias]

On 11/17/2024 at 11:54 AM, LameLefty said:

One minute you’ll have an actual physicist trying to explain plasma dynamics to a bunch of teenagers who haven’t even taken basic high school science; ten minutes later it’s a bunch of fish emojis for some reason; an hour after that another engineer is trying to explain orbital mechanics; then two minutes and fifty messages later it’s kids talking anime. Darn it, I hate that kind of chaos. 

If this is the target audience of the game, then I suggest to brace for impact - the reality is that the content creators will get fed up pretty quickly and leave.

Physicists and Engineers have better things to do with their life than repeating ad nauseaum the same information in a "public square" in hopes of being heard.

Imagine Einstein trying to explain Relativity on Time Square yelling to the public, competing with guys yelling about how the End of the World is coming.

Same thing.

This Forum was key for the success of the Franchise by the same reason Books and Periodics were the key for the success of Science itself. You don't do Science on the mess of a Public Square.

Edited November 24 by Lisias
Hate posting from mobile. Come back to desktop to fix the mess mobile did.

[Dakitess]

This forum is the only one that I know, related to KSP, that have somehow (barely) survived the Discord wave.

And just like you I really really mess this whole era. For multiples reasons :

- Indeed, Discord is chaos when it's "successful". People won't care about the channel, the topics, it will always derive fast and strong.

- Most youngers never used a forum or barely and thus they don't know what they are missing and while non-instant conversations are great.

- Discord is... Completely not reachable from Google. Meaning that any constructive content, help, tutorial, workaround, etc won't ever appear on Google. Which is absolutely nefast for a game like KSP which remains A LOT on keywords, on finding an helpful post, a guide, etc. This is one the main grief I have about Discord and assimilated apps.

- Discord is not meant to have Hundreds of pages, which is required for a game like KSP. One page for a mod dev, for instance, and you're already done, you won't ever be able to explore the database like you would on this forum. And again, they would not be reachable by a google search, sooo...

Then Discord really have some advantages, it really connects people, with an instantaneous way that matters equally. For "small" communities, like 500 members at most, it makes sense, you can pretty much follow all the contents added, and you can maintain some kind of activities, of dynamism that would not work on a forum with such a "low" number, especially when the game is falling down very drastically. This is what happen to our french community, and I'm not glad about it, but at the very least, it's the only tool that allow our community to survive, to gather around a easy-to-use and convenient app, available on computer and designed for smartphone. 

Even if I'm not able to write down gigantic guide anymore haha.

[Lisias]

3 hours ago, Dakitess said:

This forum is the only one that I know, related to KSP, that have somehow (barely) survived the Discord wave.

There's also Orbiter-Forum. Worst case scenario, we can invade their beach*.

Spoiler

*local old pun in Brazil. due this music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSMHon7QEfE

 

3 hours ago, Dakitess said:

 

- Indeed, Discord is chaos  <...>

The whole problem is that Discord is being used for something it is not, a Content Management System.

A Forum is, essentially, a CMS that promotes interaction between the readers.

Discord, at best, is a Instant Messenger with extra features where you end up getting the worst of all worlds.

Here in Brazil, the trend is WhatsApp - I'm part of a lot of retro-computer enthusiasts groups. Initially, we used to gather together using mailing lists (damn you, Yahoo!, for killing the YahooGroups!), but then Facebook came and literally killed all of them.

Now, Facebook have some advantages, and as a CMS, its Groups is not that bad (nowadays) - it can even be good sometimes. But due political issues, most people on the retro scene (a good fraction of them old farts like me) got fed up with how some things are run there, and decided to gather on WhatsApp instead.

TL;DR: the Brazilian retro-computing Scene is dying on Dementia. All the huge content we used to rely on YahooGroups was essentially lost, near 40 years of invaluable content, some of them created by people that made history and aren't with us anymore, lost in the local mailbox backups of some diehards like me. A very small part of that content migrated to Facebook, but now this content is locked inside a walled garden, and if Facebook goes kaput, we will lose it too.

And anything posted on WhatsApp is lost in days to never be reached again - and I kindly ignoring the privacy problem.

Spoiler

Any scumbag entering the group have the contact of a whole group of relatively wealthy people (retro-computers are expensive nowadays). A known member of the group passed away recently and, guess what... his house was robbed in the very next day. What a tragedy... And I blame how people handles WhatsApp groups on this country - you get the dude's phone number, you locate his home address with a couple clicks on the "right sites".

At least, Discord allows you some privacy - as long you don't use it in your mobile, neither register your phone number on it.

 

3 hours ago, Dakitess said:

This is what happen to our french community, and I'm not glad about it, but at the very least, it's the only tool that allow our community to survive, to gather around a easy-to-use and convenient app, available on computer and designed for smartphone.

At least until the company behind it doesn't goes bankruptcy - the word I have is that they are not financial healthy (they never got profitable anyway).

On the long run, I think people will end up learning (being by love , being by pain, everybody ends up learning what's right). But until there, I'm afraid the current generation will be on the receiving end of the "Information Highway".

[Gargamel]

On 11/17/2024 at 3:33 AM, Lisias said:

I'm not being able to find the post, but someone (I forgot who) told us that someone that had worked on KSP2 and now on KSA (but I'm not sure if my memory is working, so I prefer not to nominate him) said on Twitter or Reddit that they had no relation with the KSP buyout.

I managed to find this, however:

Where Kerbart  said something about. The "Not my circus, not my monkeys" is related to that post that I'm not finding where the information was posted.

I'm still looking on it, I will edit this post when I find it.

======== POST EDIT

Found it! It was JplRepo and it was on Discord! (Well, whatever I have, it's not dementia... )

 

Two scenarios exist here:    JPL and friends actually don’t have anything to do with the acquisition, although I find that highly suspect given the timing of their collecting ksp devs like they’re shiny Pokémon.    Or they are still not allowed to comment publicly.   
 

 

22 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

Much to my chagrin, forums are out of style these days.

I'm sure 10 years from now Discord will be lame and all technical discussion will only go on in voice-only Zoom channels and people on Apple phones, Android phones, and PCs won't be able to actually talk to each other. And that will be somehow regarded as "better."

Again two scenarios regarding KSA forums:   One, they don’t have enough content on their own to necessitate a forum yet, and discord is working sufficiently enough for internal uses and for some sort of public front. A forum is intended to come later as multiple contributors to the project are keenly aware of how important a forum is to the game, in particular for modding.   
 

Or two: There’s already an existing forum they plan on acquiring perfectly suited for their needs, and already has all the predecessors’ content on it.

Now I’m not going all Vl3d here on my optimism, but I do see the pieces lining up in a plausible manner.   

 

[Lisias]

50 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

although I find that highly suspect given the timing of their collecting ksp devs like they’re shiny Pokémon.

If the information leaked soon enough, and Dean Hall got word about, it would be logical to grab whoever he could the fastest they could because otherwise he would risk having the personal being recruited by the IP buyer (assuming they would want to work on the Franchise, of course), or just to any other employer - making the recruiting harder and more expensive.

Not to mention that he started to recruit people for his project way before the sale announcement, essentially 20 days after the layoff were announced.

Bonus track:

Spoiler

 

So, IMHO, DH probably had already plans to do a KSP replacement for some time and, being seasoned on this industry, I'm absolute sure he predicted correctly the outcome just by... buying and playing KSP2.

Since this dude knows how to run a Game Studio, it's logical to infer that he added 2 + 2 and concluded that "it's now or never", as building up that team 6 months after the layoff would be, well, essentially impossible.

About the timing of announcing KSA... Marketing. He surfed on the PD's buyout trend and managed to get even more visibility if he announced it before or later.

 

50 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Or they are still not allowed to comment publicly.  

If they would not be allowed to talk publicly about a hypothetical IP acquisition by RW, then JPLRepo essentially disobeyed the order by... talking about a hypothetical IP acquisition by RW. Since he's still employed , I think we can assume he could talk about - or, at very least, nobody told him to avoid touching the subject.

So, and assuming he was allowed to talk about, we have essentially two possibilities:

1. It's true, RW didn't bought the IP
   1. (damn)
2. It's a lie. JPLRepo (by his own initiative or perhaps induced to do it without being aware - i.e., someone lied to him) lied to their potential consumer base.
   1. A really, really, really really bad move and poor judgment. It would undermine the credibility of the one of the front-man of the project.
   2. And I don't see any benefit on doing that - but, hey, I don't have any insider information, it's not impossible that by doing it they prevented a worse problem. It happens.
      1. But I just can't imagine something, at this stages of development, that would worth this price.

In a way or another, since I don't have word of anyone denying or confirming what was said by JPLRepo, it's my understanding that it's RW best interest to keep people thinking this way and, really, this is the only thing I can be sure right now.

Edited November 18 by Lisias
Better phrasing.

[PDCWolf]

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

1. It's a lie. JPLRepo (by his own initiative or perhaps induced to do it without being aware - i.e., someone lied to him) lied to their potential consumer base.
   1. A really, really, really really bad move and poor judgment. It would undermine the credibility of the one of the front-man of the project.
   2. And I don't see any benefit on doing that - but, hey, I don't have any insider information, it's not impossible that by doing it they prevented a worse problem. It happens.
      1. But I just can't imagine something, at this stages of development, that would worth this price.

Whilst there's zero benefit to saying you're not doing anything KSP, I think if things changed, it's not as bad. As we've learned with these amateurs making KSP2, "something can be truth and then not be".  Maybe it was true when he said it but then they managed to secure an easy deal through a third party buying the whole pack for chops like we've been speculating.

[LameLefty]

3 hours ago, Lisias said:

TL;DR: the Brazilian retro-computing Scene is dying on Dementia. All the huge content we used to rely on YahooGroups was essentially lost, near 40 years of invaluable content, some of them created by people that made history and aren't with us anymore, lost in the local mailbox backups of some diehards like me. A very small part of that content migrated to Facebook, but now this content is locked inside a walled garden, and if Facebook goes kaput, we will lose it too

There’s always AtariAge - over 20 years of deep, searchable forum contents covering almost every retro computer and game console ever made. Admittedly the deepest content is Atari-related. However, there are active forums and discussions devoted to nearly every system ever made. On the off chance there’s not a dedicated forum for something, there are certainly threads covering it. And every time I’ve seen someone ask about some obscure bit of whatever, people have dusted off dusty brain cells and provided info and links.  While Al (founder of AtariAge) has recently sold the forum and AA brand to Atari (well, the current company that calls itself  “Atari”) that was done to provide support and funding to keep AtariAge’s forums and homebrew game publishing efforts alive. As far as most of us can tell, the forums themselves haven’t changed really at all. 

Edited November 18 by LameLefty

[Lisias]

12 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Whilst there's zero benefit to saying you're not doing anything KSP, I think if things changed, it's not as bad. As we've learned with these amateurs making KSP2, "something can be truth and then not be".  Maybe it was true when he said it but then they managed to secure an easy deal through a third party buying the whole pack for chops like we've been speculating.

And that's exactly the problem: we learnt our lesson. We start to see History repeating itself, we will jump into the obvious conclusion, even if prematurely. 

There's zero benefit on telling us they aren't doing anything KSP if they are not doing it. If they are, there're some drawbacks. At very least, we will know the communication between devs and management is so bad as it was on the old team.

=== == = POST EDIT = == ===

I reconsidered. If they are, indeed, not doing anything KSP, it may be their best interest to prevent the potential userbase's hope to grow strong, not only to avoid disappointment on them later, but also to prevent the new IP owner from "surfing" in their hype...

Edited November 19 by Lisias
Hit "Save" too soon.

[Gargamel]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

Whilst there's zero benefit to saying you're not doing anything KSP, I think if things changed, it's not as bad. As we've learned with these amateurs making KSP2, "something can be truth and then not be".  Maybe it was true when he said it but then they managed to secure an easy deal through a third party buying the whole pack for chops like we've been speculating.

Or, it’s a false flag statement they let float to help drum up interest.    
 

Either way, we’re probably getting a worthy successor to KSP.  

[Scarecrow71]

3 hours ago, Gargamel said:

Either way, we’re probably getting a worthy successor to KSP.

Oh how I hope.  Just so long as I can finally do a Jool-5 in KSP first, I'm ok with this!

[Superfluous J]

12 hours ago, Gargamel said:

One, they don’t have enough content on their own to necessitate a forum yet, and discord is working sufficiently enough for internal uses and for some sort of public front. A forum is intended to come later as multiple contributors to the project are keenly aware of how important a forum is to the game, in particular for modding.   
 

Or two: There’s already an existing forum they plan on acquiring perfectly suited for their needs, and already has all the predecessors’ content on it.

You forgot three: Okay Boomer, stick to your forums the cool kids are moving out of the stone age.

[Mr. Kerbin]

1 hour ago, Superfluous J said:

You forgot three: Okay Boomer, stick to your forums the cool kids are moving out of the stone age.

Have you considered that some people don’t want discord or social media(or have) accounts?

Unless that’s a joke.

[Superfluous J]

26 minutes ago, Mr. Kerbin said:

Have you considered that some people don’t want discord or social media(or have) accounts?

Unless that’s a joke.

It's 100% a joke.

[Scarecrow71]

2 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

You forgot three: Okay Boomer, stick to your forums the cool kids are moving out of the stone age.

As an OG GenX...get off mah lawn!

[Fizzlebop Smith]

I was afraid of forums being replaced by Fandom Wikis & Discord @Lefty reigns me back. There are forums still going strong. 

Besides the Simcity4k and other esoteric circle in which I lurk, I have seen newer ones that arise for other things.

Many Tech / Engineering forums save my bacon when writing technical reports or researching opinions on contradicting code across governing scope.

Phew. Long live forums.

I just joined the Orbiter server and am looking forward to trying it out. There's some real dinosaurs in there

Edited November 19 by Fizzlebop Smith

[PDCWolf]

13 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

You forgot three: Okay Boomer, stick to your forums the cool kids are moving out of the stone age.

I know this is a joke but hey, I'll ride it to say something: I love discord. I much prefer real time communication than deferred communication, even if the latter tends to allow for much more thought out messages to take place in an easier way. My problems with discords are, first and foremost, that it is not part of the indexed internet: whatever discussion, feedback, mods, or whatever is posted to it is forever lost to anyone who doesn't have a local copy if a mod decides to go rogue, doesn't like something they read, or the server gets deleted. It also means whatever is posted there can't be searched from outside, so you're forced to be in the discord if you want its contents.

Live channels also means discussions are much more ephemeral and topics are forgotten as soon as they're out of the live section of the screen. This makes it bad for discussing stuff at length, giving proper feedback, bug reports and so on. It's just bad for these kinda things.

Lastly all of this also means moderation is much more over-reaching (specially if it's the only platform available officially!). Discord is chosen by corporations precisely because of its "outrage quelling" capabilities. Mute the discussion, ban the wrongdoers, and resume the live chat with a complete change of topic. This allows you to silence discussion at root rather than to have to take the work to keep it going in a controlled way. Add to that being a non-indexed place and any overzealousness of mods, any wrongly administered moderation action is completely unverifiable by people outside. It's exactly why every dubious corporation... like our previous benefactors, would rather hide in a Discord than host a forum.

Edited November 19 by PDCWolf

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

I love discord

I do too, when it's used for its purpose.

I don't really care about moderation. Over-moderation sorts itself out and if I'm over-moderated I just leave, usually while laughing.

What I care about is that during those weeks when the KSP forum was down, about 90% of the information about KSP was GONE.

The good thing about Discord, I guess, is that if it goes down there won't be any useful, easy to find information on there anyway.

[Kerbart]

On 11/17/2024 at 3:33 AM, Lisias said:

I'm not being able to find the post, but someone (I forgot who) told us that someone that had worked on KSP2 and now on KSA (but I'm not sure if my memory is working, so I prefer not to nominate him) said on Twitter or Reddit that they had no relation with the KSP buyout.

I managed to find this, however:

Where Kerbart  said something about. The "Not my circus, not my monkeys" is related to that post that I'm not finding where the information was posted.

I'm still looking on it, I will edit this post when I find it.

======== POST EDIT

Found it! It was JplRepo and it was on Discord! (Well, whatever I have, it's not dementia... )

For clarification: "not my circus, not my monkeys" was me imagining what RW was saying and not actual insider knowledge. For clarification, my reasoning is not based on secret knowledge but just on what we do know:

• At this point the KS2 title is quite toxic and I can imagine RW having doubts about the marketing value of the brand
• With KSA already (rightfully or not is a separate issue) seen as a "KSP1 successor done right" there seems little added value to me to be the "official" replacement. It's a nice to have that they might pay $50k for, but not $1M (pulling the numbers out of where the sun don't shine)
• The software is of little value; most of the code clearly can't be reused. There is the sound and 3D models though
• That makes me think that RW buying the KSP IP is more a matter of "it's nice to have if the opportunity arises and the price is right" than something they're spending a lot  of effort and money on to pursue
• So, IF Tencent decided to buy PD, it's less on RW's request and more as a way to make money by selling the rights to individual titles. Any interest RW expressed to them would be more along "how much would you want for it if you buy it?" and far less of "oh yes please please"

Delayed reaction due to constant "bad gateway" responses when clicking the submit button

[Scarecrow71]

I'd like to weigh in on the Discord discussion, but only as it relates to the forums here and what the purchase of the IP may or may not mean to both the forum's existence and the Discord channel's existence.  If this is the wrong place, then I ask that the mods here please merge this post with the appropriate thread.

I personally dislike Discord.  I use it because it's easy, convenient, and a lot of other people use it, so I know where I can reach someone (potentially) in real time.  But it has too many faults IMHO to be used as the primary source of communication for anything even coming close to the size of a gaming community.  Even one as (relatively) small as KSP.  The reasons are numerous, but the primary ones are:

• Loss of information
• Off-topic chatter
• Heavy-handed moderation
• Questions either not seen or simply ignored

As an opposing viewpoint, the forums are a better way to:

• Effectively communicate with the community
• Store relevant information (such as 10 years' worth of mod talk, tips, and help)
• Easily moderate threads and the community

These are my personal opinions, and should be taken with as many grains of salt as you need to in order to find them palatable.

Anyhow, back to the point of this post:  my thoughts on the continued existence of the forums and what the purchase of the IP may mean here and to Discord.  I'll start with Discord, because that's the easy one.  The current Discord server and all of its channels won't see much, if any, impact.  Why?  It's not an official Discord server for KSP, but rather a community-run unofficial one.  That means that the current Discord server shouldn't be going anywhere and should continue to be used after this all gets smoothed out.  I cannot speak for any Discord servers for any new owner of the IP; we don't know who that is yet, nor what their current strategy or communication architecture looks like.  If we use RW as an example, I don't think their Discord is going anywhere.  If anything, it will see increased usage (which I am sure it has).

As far as the forums go...that's a trickier subject.  As has been pointed out, whatever is in the contract is what the new owner acquires.  That could include the forums...it could not.  And therein lies the problem - we once again simply don't know.  There is an effort to preserve the information here, and there are multiple threads on that subject.  And that's a good thing, because if the new owner doesn't acquire the forums, TT can shut them down at any point.  Heck, the new owner could acquire them and then come in and say "We're moving to our own thing, so you have to migrate yourselves over there" and then shut them down.  While the acquisition of the IP is an exciting thing, and we are all crazy with wonder over it, it's actually a scary time to be here because this place could shut down without any warning at any time.

My hope through all this is that the forums continue to be up and running, whether on the current servers through TT or on new ones through the new owner of the IP.  I much prefer forums to Discord; perhaps that's due to my being old-school and preferring the slow pace of being able to read a forum post and think about my response as opposed to hoping I can catch all the posts in Discord and respond before the topic changes on me.  I'm an OG GenXer, and we like what we like.  Unfortunately, if things change, we will have no choice but to adapt and change with them...or be left out in the cold.

[PDCWolf]

18 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

These are my personal opinions,

No need to downplay yourself when you just typed facts

18 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

 That could include the forums...it could not.  And therein lies the problem - we once again simply don't know.  There is an effort to preserve the information here, and there are multiple threads on that subject.  And that's a good thing, because if the new owner doesn't acquire the forums, TT can shut them down at any point.  Heck, the new owner could acquire them and then come in and say "We're moving to our own thing, so you have to migrate yourselves over there" and then shut them down.  While the acquisition of the IP is an exciting thing, and we are all crazy with wonder over it, it's actually a scary time to be here because this place could shut down without any warning at any time.

Yeah, if the new owner is some VCA who knows nothing about KSP, they could absolutely come here and say "sorry guys, forum is not in our plans, join us at Discord.gg/* see you there". So every day I'm leaning more and more towards the fact that we need a functional mirror of the forum, or to migrate to the subreddit. Sadly without the DB that mirror thing is not happening, and obviously we aren't getting the original DB ever, so all we can have from this forum in case someone decides to pull the plug, is what Lisias and others have managed to back up (mostly everything) in static, plain-ish text.

And these are just the things we're slowly realizing as the franchise gets yet another new owner... I wonder what are the things going on behind the scenes about what to keep and what to throw away.