Why isn't the dev team larger?

[SkyHook]

In light of recent statements by Harvester (statements to the effect of managing the company's resources, and features being indefinitely postponed as a result) and various members of the dev team, I want to start a discussion: Why hasn't the dev team expanded in response to the success and needs of the game? The game has increased in popularity many times since I joined the game in version 0.15.2, but even with the extra revenue that the game has brought in, the devteam has only been about 4 full time members (as was said a couple of months ago). I lack knowledge of the gaming industry's business practices, so I won't speculate, but the low number of staff is the second largest problem affecting the game at the moment (IMHO). What do you think can/should be done to speed development?

Edited December 22, 2013 by SkyHook

[stupid_chris]

I doubt the amount of staff is currently affecting development. They didn't cross out resources because they didn't have the manned power to do it, but because they felt it didn't fit in the game (mod note, do not start a resources debate here, thanks).

The game increasing in popularity does bring in some more revenue, but it also forcibly brings in more bills to pay. Not only that, but once a player has bought the game (us) we practically don't bring in any more revenue from that point on, except if we buy merch or the Kerbalizer. I think the team ins't expanding because a) they don't feel the pressing need to add some more members and/or their revenues don't allow for it.

[Kialar]

On one hand it is a question of budget, as stupid_chris stated, on the other hand the point is: how many people may work on a software like this independently without messing everything up? From a software developing process view, the functionallity of KSP isn't that big. I can imagine, that snipping tasks into part for more than 4 full time devs may be hard.

More coders not always improve developement spees. Sometimes it slows everything down, decreases quality and just kills a project.

A functional team of 4 with occasional part time reinforcements sounds like a reasonable size for me.

I don't know how exactly SQUAD organized the team, but I think I wouldn't do it in very different way, if I had no hard due date in a project.

And just one wisdom at least:

You can have it done

quick, cheap, good.

Chose any two.

[lincourtl]

Why hasn't the dev team expanded in response to the success and needs of the game?

See Fred Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month. Developers are not a fungible resource.

[Murph]

Bigger is definitely not always better. I'd imagine most people here can think of a giant game developer who took over a smaller popular developer with a very popular simulation game, pumped a fortune into a reboot of the game, massive development effort, publicity, etc. They then royally screwed up the launch of it to the point of making worldwide headlines in fairly mainstream media, demonstrably outright lied about certain "features" which the end users didn't like or want, have pretty terrible communications with their customers, and the whole thing is still riddled with critical bugs and problems 9 months later, despite many updates, and still doesn't really deliver the game that their fan base wanted. Sure, it looks all shiny and fancy, but I'm positive that the original small-ish developer could have done a far better job than the expensive disaster delivered by the big developer.

[Sirrobert]

Fun fact:

The bigger a team devoloping anything is, the harder it is to get anything done.

The more people there are, the more difficult communications become

[TMS]

What do you think can/should be done to speed development?

Stop losing the people they already have?

Edited December 22, 2013 by TMS

[nine_iron]

They eat healthy?

[Kialar]

Moar coffee?

[bsalis]

We can only speculate why.

I'd just like to point out that it is folly to think scaling up to a bigger team is the same, just bigger. It is not... scale changes the nature of the development dynamic significantly. So to grow the team is a big risk to a novice game development shop. I say novice here just as a statement of fact, no criticism. They are doing a great job.

[jwenting]

The more people you add, the more overhead you have. Pretty soon you end up having to have more people to do management and facilities support, than people actively working on the product.

[zarniw00p]

KSP is "developed" by many more people than the few guys from Squad. There are people creating mods for parts, aerodynamics, resources, planets, and so on.... and it all seems to work fine together. Actually it's pretty rare that different mods conflict with each other. So I don't believe the argument that adding more developers (for example 1 for parts and planets, 1 for resources, etc.) would complicate things. If it works with mods, why not with stock development?

But, you know... The longer it takes for Squad to develop KSP, the more time they have to sell their product.

[jfx]

See Fred Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month. Developers are not a fungible resource.

This doesn't really apply at this small size. Stuff like art assets, part models or sound files can easily be sequestered away and working on them does not impair the people working on the code base at all.

The more people you add, the more overhead you have. Pretty soon you end up having to have more people to do management and facilities support, than people actively working on the product.

Team sizes up to seven members do not require significant overhead, since the consensus in project management is that they can be coordinated by a single person. Afther that you'd start to see more overhead - but still far from "more people clicking around in MS project than coding" like you suggest

[SkyHook]

KSP is "developed" by many more people than the few guys from Squad. There are people creating mods for parts, aerodynamics, resources, planets, and so on.... and it all seems to work fine together. Actually it's pretty rare that different mods conflict with each other. So I don't believe the argument that adding more developers (for example 1 for parts and planets, 1 for resources, etc.) would complicate things. If it works with mods, why not with stock development?

But, you know... The longer it takes for Squad to develop KSP, the more time they have to sell their product.

My original response to this post was to say that modders should not be in a discussion about game development, but I think it's a good idea. I think it would be a GREAT idea for Squad to obtain assets, plugins, and ideas from the modding community (as they have in the past). Not only would this be a great recruitment program for future devs, but it would save time. This way, the devs could focus on Harvester's vision while the lower priority (but still important to some) items could be developed as well!

[Sandermatt]

They only get income from selling new copies. So they have to pay the saleries by growing the scene and not from the existing player base. So they probably need to save up some money, that in case the scene stays big but doesn't grow anymore at some point they can still finish the game.

[Psycix]

What I wonder, is why half of the KSP weeklies / devnote tuesdays show a majority of the staff being busy with attending events rather than adding to the product.

[Murph]

What I wonder, is why half of the KSP weeklies / devnote tuesdays show a majority of the staff being busy with attending events rather than adding to the product.

You're only getting the edited highlights in the weekly devnotes. Stuff they feel ready to talk about, or is interesting, or significant, or good PR, etc. Attending an event is often not an all-week thing.

[jfx]

I think he reckons that there are two "community managers" for a dev team of four. Which is ... odd.

[Arsonik]

Personally I see no reason why the final product cant be monetized further. When we have 1.0, add a cosmetic shop. I'm sure tons of people would pay to skin their Kerbals or their Rockets from a selection on a store page. Even larger overhauls like the universe replacer. Some people would see this as trivial because all of this and more is already possible for free with mods. However it is a nice way to make a donation to the dev team without actually hitting a donation page. Do note I'm not suggesting that cosmetic mods shouldn't be allowed, but just that the two can co-exist. So if you wanna throw ten bucks at the devs, you can come out with a nice new space suit for your Kerbals or something. And I'm sure they can release at least one expansion pack without it being received poorly.

[LaydeeDem]

The dev team doesn't need to be larger. It just needs to stop shrinking. There was no reason to fire bac9, nova, and N3X15. And now the people responsible for making this game actually look good are all gone.

[Murph]

And I'm sure they can release at least one expansion pack without it being received poorly.

Many of us (that purchased sufficiently long ago, before the end of Apr 2013, if memory serves) are on a promise of lifetime free dlc, expansions, everything contenty.

If they feel happy with the current size of team, I think it's quite prudent for them to avoid any rash expansionism, as that can be a good way to kill a company if you get it wrong.

Edit: Oh, and they already have the "Kerbalizer" for a small fee, I think.

[Arsonik]

Many of us (that purchased sufficiently long ago, before the end of Apr 2013, if memory serves) are on a promise of lifetime free dlc, expansions, everything contenty.

Sounds like a death sentence to a company with an open modding scene unless they plan to begin work on a new game as soon as 1.0 is released, killing off all development on KSP. However I purchased in March when steam early access opened up, and with 729 hours in I've heard no mention of such a deal. Even if it is true, they can honor that and still give people the option to pay for add-ons. As I said previously, its really just a glorified donation that would get you something in return. I paid something like $12 for this game. I would gladly give squad another $38 and some change for the many hours I've enjoyed now.

And if they are scrapping things that were on the feature list before, I think they can forget about their promises of free DLC now anyways. I'm sure many people upgraded from the demo to the full game under the premise that they would eventually get features that are now no longer planned for the game. Thats the problem with releasing a planned feature list for an early access game if you don't intend to complete all of those features. I'm sure many people would gladly pay $20 for a new universe with resources in an expansion pack. Myself included.

Due bear in mind, even if we forget everything I previously just said, they can release expansion packs and DLC for $$$ and still honor their promise to early backers if what you say is indeed true. Minecraft had a similar launch platform. I know because I was a early backer and remember hearing people whine later on about it. There is no reason you can't be served a free download while joe shmooe who just bought the game yesterday would have to pay.

[Luckless]

Expanding a dev team is not an easy task. It is far more complicated than simply putting up an ad online and asking for help.

Who do you hire? Why do you hire them? In squad's case if they put out a call for official help they are probably going to get half a million job applications flooding their inbox.

Expanding a team, especially a small team with limited HR capability and a massive hit like KSP behind them, needs to be done very carefully, and generally from the limited pool that the developers are already very familiar with. Anyone new brought on needs to be brought up to speed with not only the past development process, but clearly aligned with the vision of a project going forward.

It is very easy for a team to expand too fast, and then rip itself apart from the inside due to surprise conflicts. I have seen multiple independent teams go under in the last few years due to rapidly expanding from the initial three or four, double a few times in the space of year to sit at 20-30 employees, and then have their projects fail horribly because the 'new' people's visions differ from that of the founder's. The real trouble comes from the team making big promises to customers, then hitting the in fighting part way through the project, having the team split and suffer massive ship-jumpers, and then the team fails on their promises which causes massive backlash from their customers.

So be happy that the devs are growing slowly and trying to be careful about it.

[Murph]

Sounds like a death sentence to a company with an open modding scene unless they plan to begin work on a new game as soon as 1.0 is released, killing off all development on KSP. However I purchased in March when steam early access opened up, and with 729 hours in I've heard no mention of such a deal. Even if it is true, they can honor that and still give people the option to pay for add-ons. As I said previously, its really just a glorified donation that would get you something in return. I paid something like $12 for this game. I would gladly give squad another $38 and some change for the many hours I've enjoyed now.

I'd imagine that they will still find plenty of new people to jump in and buy it once it hits 1.0. And yeah, I'm eligible for the lifetime free, but might pay anyway if they are still a cool company, doing cool stuff, the price is reasonable, etc.

And if they are scrapping things that were on the feature list before, I think they can forget about their promises of free DLC now anyways. I'm sure many people upgraded from the demo to the full game under the premise that they would eventually get features that are now no longer planned for the game. Thats the problem with releasing a planned feature list for an early access game if you don't intend to complete all of those features. I'm sure many people would gladly pay $20 for a new universe with resources in an expansion pack. Myself included.

They are not scrapping stuff from the feature list, that I'm aware of, only scrapping specific plans that they no longer think look like fun. All of the general concepts are still on the possible feature list. The features were also not a clear promise of anything. They seem like a decent bunch of people, decent company, so I think they will honour concrete promises such as lifetime free for early folks.

Due bear in mind, even if we forget everything I previously just said, they can release expansion packs and DLC for $$$ and still honor their promise to early backers if what you say is indeed true. Minecraft had a similar launch platform. I know because I was a early backer and remember hearing people whine later on about it. There is no reason you can't be served a free download while joe shmooe who just bought the game yesterday would have to pay.

I fully expect they to look at DLC, expansions, etc, once the dust settles on KSP 1.0. I wasn't suggesting that the various post-release extra revenue streams were unavailable to them, just that you can't count all of the current supporters for those, necessarily.

[TimMartland]

'Computer programmers are simply a method of turning coffee into code.'