A Message from Nate Simpson

[boriz]

Money flows up, crap flows down, TT are also victims.

[Lisias]

3 hours ago, boriz said:

Money flows up, crap flows down, TT are also victims.

IMHO, they were victims of themselves on this case. Granted, still victim - one can commit an offense against themself, after all.

[boriz]

My comments are generalized. They are directed at the gaming industry and those pulling the strings, making the rules, not specifically at TT. Perhaps TT were working with certain constraints about which we know nothing. That NDA is there for a reason. It's possible for a company to lose money yet the CEO personally lose nothing, and indeed still gets a bonus big enough to buy a helicopter. I'm not saying this happened at TT, just that it does happen, and more frequently than you'd think. Does anyone here read Private Eye?

Here in the UK we recently had this abomination called a super-injunction. An injunction is where you pay some lawyers to create a zone of silence around your misdeeds. It becomes a prosecutable offense to publicly mention your name, even if the misdeeds themselves are apparent to everyone. Some would say that stamps all over freedom of the press and is anti-democratic, but it gets worse. A SUPER-injunction takes it a step further and makes it a prosecutable offense to publicly acknowledge the existence of an injunction at all. It's ridiculous, and it's a privilege only afforded to those wealthy enough to buy it. I like Democracy, I'm all for it, but this isn't it. Some would call it an oligarchy, I'd go a step further and call it a kleptocracy. (Bitter? Me? No...) But that's a discussion for another time

I forget where I heard this phrase, but I'm pretty sure it started as a joke and then became Tory doctrine: "There are no poor people. At least, none that matter". A bit like Orwell's 1984 was intended as a warning, but of late has been treated more like an instruction manual.

I guess my point is don't be too quick to judge individuals like Nate Simpson or others on the dev team. They are pretty low on the food chain, your information is incomplete, and that's by design.

Spoiler

 

Edited December 16 by boriz

[PDCWolf]

13 hours ago, boriz said:

I guess my point is don't be too quick to judge individuals like Nate Simpson or others on the dev team. They are pretty low on the food chain, your information is incomplete, and that's by design.

In regards to the game itself. Nate as the producer was in charge of the general vision, he had anywhere from 20 to 50 people under him, including directors Furio, Markham and Mostrom for technical, art and audio respectively, all of which of course had their whole departments under them.

Above Nate lay private division, which handled QA (though probably not for KSP2), marketing, communications, game releases, and business development. That's another 5 departments full of people dedicated to managing and supporting subsidiaries like Intercept and Roll7.

Above those departments laid their internal legal department, accounting department, and upper PD management.

Only above that do we find the lowest of T2 people, which must have another at least 5 similar departments dedicated to private division, and only those people are the highest that didn't get the boot. Anyone from Nate downwards got fired. Anything from Nate upwards all the way to PD's upper management had their ties to T2 cut and are now under new management, which arguably, whilst not as bad as outright losing their jobs, is definitely one of the other horrible situations to be in, as the new owner might be seeking to cut down costs of their recently acquired business and seeing who can be let go, or shuffled around for that.

This never ended at Nate, it did affect people above him. However Nate is responsible for everyone under him and for KSP2 being what it is, from pitching a simple "let's remaster KSP1" as the original pitch (thanks to SZ and dean hall for a bit of insider info), to making the "hey bro, give me $100.000.000 and we'll make ksp2" pitch (number picked at random), and being unable to carry that to success with the restrictions imposed upon him (no consulting or hiring people from the previous game).

[boriz]

"our instinctual need to document everything" - I'm sure there is plenty more to be revealed, but I'll stick my neck out and take a guess that it ultimately boils down to one thing: Profit Motive. Not that making some money is wrong, just that once this becomes the primary motive, and artistry and talent is relegated, we all lose.

Who was that bloke who thought it would be a good idea to take micro-transactions to the next level and charge players for ammo in multiplayer games?

The gaming 'industry' is relatively new, but it has much in common with the music 'industry', and could learn from it's mistakes. (Auto-tuned cookie-cutter boy bands who can't play instruments and don't even use there own voices?). I use quotes because I believe these are art forms and adding the word 'industry' pollutes it, cheapens it, and makes it an oxymoron.

There are plenty of small indies out there still creating original games and entertainment because that's what they like to do, they love it, have a passion for it, and they are good at it, but they are a dying breed. (KSP1, Minecraft, Factorio, Rimworld etc.. Coincidentally some of my favorite games).

Look at what's happening in movies and TV. Good writers/producers are being displaced by younger, cheaper ideological writers/producers who work for less so long as they get to spread their message, ipso facto, garbage. (Don't click this link if you're bothered by adult language).

Did anyone here watch The Boys? First and second season, awesome. Then, once they had a big audience, a large platform, they replaced some writers (bait-n-switch) who started to use it to preach certain narrow ideological values and completely destroyed it. I couldn't stomach the forth series, it just upset me, it was like watching my favorite pub burn down*.

Sadly, gaming is going the same way. At least they are not getting any of my money. I wouldn't touch Steam with a sh*tty stick. I have contacted devs directly to offer them full (undiscounted) price for their game if I can get it without steam and been turned down. I consider that due diligence before seeking an alternative way. GOG is always a good place to start if you're looking for DRM free titles. That's where I bought KSP and DLC's.

On a side note, when was the first time you saw the term 'toxic fandom'? A bizarre moniker for your primary customers wouldn't you say? Was it about the time movie and TV writers started favoring their message above actual character and story? When giving the audience what they want, changed into giving them what you think they should have? When entertainment turned into a teaching opportunity? *cough... Dr Who ... Star Trek ... Star Wars ... Marvel ... cough*

*Quote stolen from Robbie Williams on The Graham Norton show.

Spoiler

 

Edited Monday at 09:01 PM by boriz

[cocoscacao]

4 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Above Nate lay private division

If I recall correctly, SZ mentioned they were unable to correspond with original KSP 1 devs. Just a bunch of junior/medior devs were around that weren't familiar with the original game. Over ambitious pitch or not, that sounds like trouble from the get-go.

[PDCWolf]

1 hour ago, cocoscacao said:

If I recall correctly, SZ mentioned they were unable to correspond with original KSP 1 devs. Just a bunch of junior/medior devs were around that weren't familiar with the original game. Over ambitious pitch or not, that sounds like trouble from the get-go.

Yeah, they were apparently trying to be so secretive with it that no one from squad or that had at any point worked for squad was to be contacted or consulted. Then their hiring conditions really didn't allow to hire senior devs, so it was a bunch of directors and leads leading juniors, which would be what led the studio to become a revolving door.  And before anyone blames "the juniors" for being bad at their job, the vision for KSP2 was mediocre at best, and then it definitely got further constrained by the technical debt and the desire to get something out the door.

And since we got confirmation that it was in development for 7 years from this same video (I'm so glad we can finally put that to rest!) then a lot of other theories fall into place. But hey, velocity is good and the development is funded.

 

[Lisias]

6 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Yeah, they were apparently trying to be so secretive with it that no one from squad or that had at any point worked for squad was to be contacted or consulted.

This is what I don't understand. In theory, there's a thing called N.D.A. that exists exactly to solve such problems.

So, Logic (always this crap! ) dictates that one of the following is likely what really happened:

• They are incapable of enforcing the current NDAs, so it would be stupid to think a new one would solve this problem
  • What would explain why everybody and the kitchen's sink around here insultingly violates the License, and nobody cares about.
• This is just an excuse, they had other reasons and don't want us to even hint about them.

Edited Tuesday at 05:40 AM by Lisias
Gee... Now I'm switching words?

[Scarecrow71]

3 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

But hey, velocity is good and the development is funded.

 

This is the part that bothers me the most.  Yeah, the game was in development for 7 years, and we constantly got told things were good.  But Nate's statement about how they were infected track and doing all the right stuff, and then doubling down by saying the game would be developed as they were fully funded is the hardest piec to forgive.  If that were even remotely true, they would still be working on it.

[PDCWolf]

10 hours ago, Lisias said:

This is what I don't understand. In theory, there's a thing called N.D.A. that exists exactly to solve such problems.

So, Logic (always this crap! ) dictates that one of the following is likely what really happened:

• They are incapable of enforcing the current NDAs, so it would be stupid to think a new one would solve this problem
  • What would explain why everybody and the kitchen's sink around here insultingly violates the License, and nobody cares about.
• This is just an excuse, they had other reasons and don't want us to even hint about them.

Consider the following:

We've know the setting, the characters, the writing tone, the engine, the goals, and even some internal documents of GTA VI for years now and it's not even close to coming out. Take Two has a ton of reasons to be stupidly strict, and even if it doesn't fit KSP2, it could still simply be company policy propagated to it.

10 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

This is the part that bothers me the most.  Yeah, the game was in development for 7 years, and we constantly got told things were good.  But Nate's statement about how they were infected track and doing all the right stuff, and then doubling down by saying the game would be developed as they were fully funded is the hardest piec to forgive.  If that were even remotely true, they would still be working on it.

And that's the most obvious and nowadays easily disproven thing they said, thanks to impossible to ignore evidence, you'd be luckier trying to ignore the sun in the sky at this point.

Other things have much less evidence on them but have been falling into place and look obvious in hindsight, all the way back from when it was just a couple of us getting grossly downvoted for years on Reddit for mentioning that the trailers and videos back in 2019/2020 either looked liked they performed horribly, or did not reflect any sort of gameplay at all (unity editor shots, shots with vehicles standing still in "space", and other promotional materials) and they never did all the way to the release.

We could probably go and make an iceberg image of all the things that were criticized, were met with witch-hunting, and now are obviously proven true and impossible to ignore.

[jost]

16 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

This is the part that bothers me the most.  Yeah, the game was in development for 7 years, and we constantly got told things were good.  But Nate's statement about how they were infected track and doing all the right stuff, and then doubling down by saying the game would be developed as they were fully funded is the hardest piec to forgive.  If that were even remotely true, they would still be working on it.

Every software development project is funded until it's not. I mean during the seven years there were quite a bit of changes in the world (be it political, economical or in other regards (covid)) so it's not totally wrong to assume that the beginning budget plus reasonable extra expenses will cut it. Until shtp and your funders decide to redraw their funding. This is not limited to the game industry btw. One of the greatest German shipyards (Meyer Werft Papenburg) usually doesn't get funding from their customers (which are mostly enterprises running  cruise ships), they need to complete and deliver the ship before they get any penny. How are they doing it? By going to banks and ask for financing loans. If everything works fine they can build and deliver the ship, get their money and pay the loan back to the bank. Now during and after covid many of their customers got into financial trouble (since nobody wanted or was allowed to go on cruises) and cancelled their orders. Without orders the banks also didn't wanted to give them further loans, resulting in their announcment that if not something happens they would have to file for bankruptcy. Since many jobs were at stake and Germans navy don't want to relay to much on foreign suppliers the Government rescued them (for some conditions like moving back their seat to Germany (they went to Luxemburg some years ago due to work relation laws and taxes). I'm quite sure Meyer always said: Our next curise ships are completly funded (and they were, things always worked liked described earlier). Until they wasn't. 

Now Meyer had some  advantage many other industries don't have: It's existence is deemed (by our politicians  at least) important for the military capabilities of the German state so it wasn't very hard to find a majority of law makers to agree to rescuing them. Gaming industry however is not, how many tanks can you make by funding video games development? 

And not you get the wrong idea: Since politics is not allowed here, I won't comment whether I think it's a good or bad decision by our beloved government but it was the first example I could think of that claiming to be financial stable although you are only as long as your investors agree, is not limited to the video gaming industry

Edited Tuesday at 06:54 PM by jost

[Scarecrow71]

2 hours ago, jost said:

Every software development project is funded until it's not.

We were told, flat-out by Nate, that the project was FULLY FUNDED and would be seen through to completion.  That's not semantics, that's not up for debate.

[PDCWolf]

2 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

We were told, flat-out by Nate, that the project was FULLY FUNDED and would be seen through to completion.  That's not semantics, that's not up for debate.

Just to add the source, where he says the literal quote:

"Our team is fully funded, properly staffed, and completely focused on executing the full vision of KSP2. Our velocity is good and our morale is great. This is still a dream job, and we’re still committed to making this game spectacular"

Every upnate post is its own gem of absolute tonedeafness, and now the game is dead the tonedeafness has increased at least tenfold, passing from anger inducing to almost hilarious.

[Kerbart]

22 hours ago, Lisias said:

This is what I don't understand. In theory, there's a thing called N.D.A. that exists exactly to solve such problems.

So, Logic (always this crap! ) dictates that one of the following is likely what really happened:

• They are incapable of enforcing the current NDAs, so it would be stupid to think a new one would solve this problem

That's one theory. Maybe T2 didn't have enough lawyers or wasn't sure they had the skills to produce a watertight NDA?

On 12/16/2024 at 5:47 PM, PDCWolf said:

it definitely got further constrained by the technical debt and the desire to get something out the door.

Nobody wants to rush an unfinished product to the market, do it's less "desire" and more "confronted with the reality of needing to ship the product"

 

[PDCWolf]

[Snip]
It's also the consistency shown in not being able to assume an ounce of responsibility by people involved. They came, took people's money, lied to our faces, and no one has so far been able to say "sorry guys, we did wrong", everyone's a victim here, everyone is competing to be the victim, the op video is just another attempt at it.

There's also people believing they're somehow better humans for being able to smile at getting scammed.

Edited Wednesday at 08:30 AM by James Kerman
redacted quoted content.

[Vanamonde]

Okay, a number of comments have been removed. Please don't try to tell others how they should feel. 

[jost]

11 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

We were told, flat-out by Nate, that the project was FULLY FUNDED and would be seen through to completion.  That's not semantics, that's not up for debate.

Yes and Meyer told the press that their order books are full and their financing were fully secure. Until Covid hit the cruise enterprises. 

My point being is that every Business might kill every project ( even fully funded ones ) if circumstances change and to the outside World everything will be said to be fine, nothing to see here, yadayadayada. Until it's not

[Scarecrow71]

6 hours ago, jost said:

My point being

And apparently my point has been lost by everyone in this thread.

I was responding to someone who put out there that "Every project is funded until it's not".  Except that in this case, we were literally told by Nate that there was nothing to worry about.  That's all.  Nothing more, nothing less.  I am simply stating FACT.

[boriz]

12 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

There's also people believing they're somehow better humans for being able to smile at getting scammed.

I don’t think that’s strictly accurate. It’s called ‘virtue signalling’ (see: The Four Yorkshiremen), it’s all the rage with the kids right now. Often just preening and hypocrisy, it’s fairly harmless on it’s own, but what tends to happen is other individuals jump on the band wagon and they try to ‘out virtue’ each other. This can quickly spiral into something much more sinister. Ask J.K.Rowling or Gina Carano (I’m still sore about that one). Fortunately we have a great moderation team on this forum, so it doesn’t get that far, here. Hail to the mods! Which lest we forget, are not getting paid for performing this difficult and demanding service.

It’s one of the reasons I’m going to miss this forum, this community, when those pesky 502’s become 404’s. Because TT couldn't handle KSP2. And Nate Simpson had his part to play. (Long on promise, short on delivery).

Nate’s optimistic sounding updates may have just been PR, but perhaps that was part of his remit. Who knows? I believe that, like radioactivity*, the truth hates to be confined and will usually find a way out eventually.

Honestly, my opinion of Nate has softened somewhat after watching his video as linked by the OP. Perhaps that was the point of it, but cynicism aside, he was obviously struggling to say what he wanted while also honouring his NDA. And he didn’t need to make that video. And he has filled in some blanks, like confirming the seven years hypothesis. He gets some point’s from me for that.

He may have been part of the structure of this failure, but he certainly was not the architect. To paraphrase myself: Money flows up, blame flows down. Or Success flows up, failure flows down. Whatever, you get the idea.

I hope that whoever takes up the mantle of a sequel to KSP, and whatever it’s called, some of the original devs are involved in senior positions. They had a vision, and what a vision! If the money men can get out of the way, we can still have our next gen KSP. Kraken and all.

Hail the Probe!

*Fun fact: There is a very special type of high quality steel, of which there is a limited and dwindling supply. It is primarily used in sensitive scientific equipment. It’s exaggerated value comes not from it’s physical properties or how it was manufactured. It’s simply because it was manufactured before July 1945 and has been ‘stored’ safely. (I.E. Under 30 meters of water.)

Since then there have been 520 atmospheric nuclear explosions, and an estimated 1,352 conducted underground. This has scattered radioactive isotopes all around the planet. Everywhere. From the frozen poles to the milk in our bowls. And it’s going to be with us for a long long time. And any steel made since the war comes with a small amount of radioactivity that steel made before/during the war does not.

It comes from sunken WW2 warships. Primarily (due to access presumably), Scapa Flow in Scotland, where around seventy captured German warships were scuttled after the war. Afraid of radioactive fallout? Relax, you’ve been living in it, breathing it and eating it since you were born. Ok. Maybe this fact wasn’t quite so fun.

[PDCWolf]

41 minutes ago, boriz said:

Nate’s optimistic sounding updates may have just been PR, but perhaps that was part of his remit. Who knows? I believe that, like radioactivity*, the truth hates to be confined and will usually find a way out eventually.

I don't know whether you're trying to imply he was horrible at PR, or that his paid position was to lie to us on top of producing the game. Maybe I should add that to the KSP2 conspiracies iceberg.

41 minutes ago, boriz said:

Honestly, my opinion of Nate has softened somewhat after watching his video as linked by the OP. Perhaps that was the point of it, but cynicism aside, he was obviously struggling to say what he wanted while also honouring his NDA.

We all can cry after our parents ground us. I don't think his demeanor matters if it's still 11 minutes of him failing to assume any sort of responsibility.

41 minutes ago, boriz said:

And he didn’t need to make that video.

Exactly. This video should not exist, I firmly believe there's not a single non-backhanded reason for this video to be out. He's not assuming responsibility (apart of stressing his teammates, which he assumes in a backhanded way with humblebragging justifications), he's not clarifying things (past the 7 years thing which we already had a source on), I doubt anyone wanted an update on his professional prospects, and so. That's why I fail to feel any sort of empathy: I don't see any reason for this video to exist past trying to make me feel bad for his person, and I see that as backhanded.

41 minutes ago, boriz said:

He may have been part of the structure of this failure, but he certainly was not the architect. To paraphrase myself: Money flows up, blame flows down. Or Success flows up, failure flows down. Whatever, you get the idea.

Never bought into the idea that we can blame everything bad and everything we disagree on to some sort of higher power out of our control, be that the universe, fate, god, "the system", "the beancounters", and so. This means I also believe Nate wasn't the only one at fault, but I also believe before blaming up, you first have to take what's actually your responsibility, and only then can you keep passing the blame up.

Edited Wednesday at 04:39 PM by PDCWolf

[NexusHelium]

People sure do love arguing until they drive their point into the ground don't they

Edited Wednesday at 05:01 PM by NexusHelium

[boriz]

PDCwolf. You're upset, you want someone to blame, I get it, and I'm grateful there are people here passionate enough to do the legwork and try to make sense of all this rubbish for the rest of us. I'm just pointing out that the information vacuum we currently face is not in itself evidence of anything. I'm implying nothing beyond what I said, "Who knows?". You should not infer anything beyond that.

"it's still 11 minutes of him failing to assume any sort of responsibility. " - Yes it is. And there could be reasons for that unknown to you or I.

"I firmly believe there's not a single non-backhanded reason for this video" - Believe what you like friend, and you could indeed be correct, but it's hardly a slam dunk is it? Personally I need a little more than belief before I start sharpening my pitchfork.

"Never bought into the idea that we can blame everything bad and everything we disagree on to some sort of higher power" - Me neither.

2 hours ago, NexusHelium said:

People sure do love arguing until they drive their point into the ground don't they

Welcome to the thread friend. Do you have anything on topic to say or are you just here to bait someone? It didn't work out too well for the other person that tried.

Edited Wednesday at 07:09 PM by boriz

[Superfluous J]

13 hours ago, jost said:

Yes and Meyer told the press that their order books are full and their financing were fully secure. Until Covid hit the cruise enterprises. 

One problem. Nate said that like 6 months ago.

6 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

we were literally told by Nate that there was nothing to worry about.  That's all.  Nothing more, nothing less.

The day before I lost my first "real" job (at a grocery store so don't shed too many tears for me) my manager looked me square in the eye and told me no one was going anywhere. The next week the store was empty and the entire workforce was either finding another job or re-applying for the other grocery chain that bought the building.

Maybe I'm jaded. I know he either lied or was lied to. People lie all the time. My problem isn't the lying, it's the expecting it to ever stop.

[NexusHelium]

2 hours ago, boriz said:

Welcome to the thread friend. Do you have anything on topic to say or are you just here to bait someone? It didn't work out too well for the other person that tried.

Not trying to bait just tired of the nonstop fighting between two side of the same coin 

As for something on topic the only thing left I really have to share here is something I said on discord about what Nate could do to truly apologize since it was pretty clear some weren’t satisfied with his response.

Spoiler

“I think all Nate really needs to do for us is prove that he’s actually taking to the promises made to us. 

The community (understandably so as well) I imagine doesn’t trust Nate much right now due to his past, but if he was able to *show* us his skills that he’s learning and put them to use then I think that would be a suitable enough *true* apology for almost everyone in the community (except for like the deep haters who won’t be happy until he’s gone from their world forever, but we can all agree that no person deserves that kind of malice inflicted on them). 

Not saying that this video wasn’t an amazing step and deeply meaningful to me and a bunch of the community (and I imagine himself) but I think that it would be nice if he would check in every so often with maybe a new blender model or something he’s working on. Simply show us he’s truly learning from his mistakes”

 

[cocoscacao]

3 hours ago, boriz said:

Personally I need a little more than belief before I start sharpening my pitchfork.

That's why I'm more of a torch person in the rabble. Zero maintenance.