Nate Simpson and the core KSP2 creative team should be rehired by the new owners

[Vanamonde]

Please return to the thread's actual topic. Hint: it's not gaming hardware. 

[Jacke]

22 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Yet you'd be a reasonable person and not expect a heavy physics simulation game be targeted for 12 years old mid tier hardware on a limited wattage spec such as a laptop... would you?

Thanks for your support, @Lisias.

I know enough about physics and computers that it's more often poor coding that overwhelms the hardware.  (Some esoteric details of the hardware, especially video, can also be problematic.)  I actually expect things to perform better than KSP did, not worse.  Because that is reasonably possible.

 

5 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Please return to the thread's actual topic. Hint: it's not gaming hardware. 

Oh, alright.  (You're no fun anymore!)

Seeing as KSP 2 was a disaster, I can't see any new owner just reconstituting the exact same team that had that disaster.  It's far more likely that they'll do one of the following:

• Split off and sell KSP complete to someone else.
• Use the KSP Kerbals to make a new simple game to attempt to make a relatively quick and certain ROI.
• Hiring someone(s) to do an independent appraisal of KSP, including KSP 2, to gauge what else they can do with it.

 

[The Aziz]

one thing is for sure, Nate isn't coming back, he's already busy

 

[para 9]

On 1/13/2025 at 7:51 AM, Fizzlebop Smith said:

 

On a positive note I haven't had much issues connecting to the forum in the last few days. 

 

Along with most other statements in this forum, this aged well. 

[Meecrob]

Nate is a loveable clown

[Scarecrow71]

4 hours ago, Meecrob said:

Nate is a loveable clown

You got the clown part right.

[Meecrob]

13 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

You got the clown part right.

I gotta give him credit for loving KSP....thats about all the credit I will give, but seriously, I talk smack about him, but he loves KSP...I don't hate him THAT much

Edited Wednesday at 11:08 AM by Meecrob

[Jacke]

On 2/4/2025 at 5:14 PM, Meecrob said:

Nate is a loveable clown

While I don't particularly like clowns, I feel I should stand up for clowns here, as none appear to be reading.

Nate is not a clown.  Clowns have a profession that is often comedically and dramatically demanding, sometimes even needing stuntwork skills.

Nate is a game design manager with many failures under his belt.  KSP 2 was particularly bad.  Nate is now off on the next phase of his life.  While I feel he contributed to the mess that KSP 2 turned out to be, I hold no grudge.  Primarily because I'm not hiring game design managers.  Because I couldn't give Nate a good reference until he gets some wins.

[chefsbrian]

20 hours ago, Jacke said:

While I feel he contributed to the mess that KSP 2 turned out to be, I hold no grudge.

Pretty much this for me as well. I'll never trust a game project he's associated to in a leadership role again, but he's also not a monster or anything. I may have opinions about his judgement when it comes to his work, but I won't wish ill will on him. The worst I'll say is that I hope he never has a leadership position in a game studio again, but I hardly think its malicious to hope for him to not be set up for failure like that again. Dudes limits clearly below that, and no shame in it. Keep in in the general creative team pool where he can do his thing in a more restricted scope.

But whatever happens with KSP2, we'll probably have a hint for it at the end of next month, and more in the future. The new publishing house has one acquired game under its belt that's supposed to launch march 25th, so they'll have to reveal a name, and may come out with their own plans to the public at that point, especially if the parent investment firm establishes them as a publicly traded entity they control. With any luck, that'll give us financial disclosures next quarter, and those will almost certainly have high level reference to their plans for the other IP they control, if nothing has yet been disclosed. 

There's a path for information to come out at least, which is better than we can say for the last year or so. But I do still consider it likely that the information will be bad news for KSP2.

[Scarecrow71]

On 2/5/2025 at 4:08 PM, Jacke said:

While I feel he contributed to the mess that KSP 2 turned out to be, I hold no grudge.

I'm not holding any grudges against the guy.  I mean, I'm not going to ever be all "You are an [insert whatever expletive you wish] for jerking us around" if I ever run into the guy IRL.  But that doesn't alleviate the fact that I feel he lied to us, or that he continued to promise communication and updates but then never produced.  I am taking KSP2 as a learning opportunity with several lessons learned:

1. Never buy into EA at full price again.  I have to caveat that with the full price, because, should KSA be for something like $5, I won't turn that down.
2. Never buy into anything Nate is ever associated with again.  Even if that ends up being KSA or, lord help us, anything that comes out of Haveli/ex-Annapurna.
3. Keep on trucking with KSP1.  Like, why deviate from the original, especially when there are enough mods to make it into thousands of different games?