An open letter to the Starbound community.

Again, Hofstadter's law.

Development is an extremely complex process, and estimating the amount of time it could take, even allowing for some delay, is notoriously difficult. Like impossible level difficult. As Hofstadter's law says, "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law."

 

This, Also I remember me an a few other people listing games that took years to release (DNF, Prey, Diablo 3, Etc...) and I believe some ot them did say they would release or at least hinted they would release WAY before they did. Hell the game "total distortion" said it would be about in like 1995 and came out in 1998 winning vaporware of the year in between that, so it is not unheard of for devs to just miss a date. I need to find it but there was this wonderful post by a indie dev on kickstarter where he pointed out they get release dates wrong all the time, the only different is it is the publishers not the public that hear the incorrect estimate.

 

Except, in any other environment that would not be a defense.

You certainly would not see anyone at, Microsoft, or Sony which Chucklefish I may remind has a vita deal with, use this as a crutch. In business falling back on the "unexpected delays" as an excuse will often find the people giving that excuse removed and replaced with people who, shockingly, can achieve the results required.

People do manage to develop and plan reasonable estimates, and in fact set release dates for a majority of programing projects. This is all happening right now and happens millions of times over. Not just among big business but also small and even independent projects.

All despite, Hofstadter's law.

 

DNF is an odd example of that, though. Odds are that 3DRealms could have had a finished game out long before its eventual release; what caused so much trouble was that they kept starting over. I seem to recall that early in its development, it went through multiple engine changes, because by the time they got anywhere with one engine, they felt it was "dated" and cast about for (or made, not sure) a new one.

It wasn't just hurdles in development that pushed DNF back; their own lack of commitment was a factor. They backed up too many times to fix what wasn't broke, in the interests of the latest shiny thing.

Can't speak for any of the others on that front.

 

Faith in starboundity restored.

 

Prey did this too I believe (switching to the newest quake engine and such).

You must also factor in 3DRealms also had to keep laying people off and taking people off the project since they we have financial troubles if I recall.

I like that word.

 

5 years between XP and Vista. Yep, that must have been well planned and executed. No unforeseen delays there, no sir!

Generally, the larger developers are a long way along in their projects before they announce them. They also have flexible workforces that they can move around to various parts of their projects as required. And I've still seen release dates slip for larger devs too.

Yep, they do. And end up releasing a buggy mess which is closer to alpha than beta, let alone release quality.

It's more the exception that you get software released on time and in stable condition than the rule.

 

Plus you should factor in big companies tend to have all their employees work in a central location which makes communication easier while the dev team is all over the place and thus harder to get together to discuss things.

Heck I was in a project with team in both the US and Europe and it was a pain it the butt to find a time frame when everyone was able to meet.

 

Because they wait until they have a good idea and can release it on time. Nobody wants to be the company that delays and delays and delays.

I mostly agree, but you shouldn't have to constantly delay. As for the last part, is anything on this forum constructive? Any real criticism gets shot down as being a hater. And there are a ton of "Dev appreciation threads" that accomplish less.

That's not a real excuse because it would instantly be disregarded in any environment in a business with an actual hierarchy. I can show up late somewhere and say, "Hofstadter's Law!" all I want. I can miss a deadline at work and say, "Well you don't understand, Hofstadter's Law!" Too bad, I'd get fired. The only reason they can get away with this is because it's a small team and they don't have enough fans willing to call them out on it.

 

Not going to post the same thing wholesale, but here is a link to my post with that whole dev speaking up on kickstarter about missed deadlines and other things.

(Can someone TL;DR it for me, I just find the whole thing way to important to cut anything out)

http://community.playstarbound.com/...er-threads-deleted.25665/page-12#post-1026934

 

No. It's not good to immediately jump to blaming anyone. Admitting to a mistake is not the same as blaming, and it's the first step to learning from said mistake.

I'm a firm believer that if you're going to blame anyone - yourself included - analyze all of the mistakes first. Not that I'm great at it, but it's a process and we're only human.

It was an itchy subject on all sides, and people reacted in less than exemplary ways. Myself included.

 

That is nice but it is also only /one/ developers opinion. Many others working on kickstarters may not feel the same. You keep linking this link, and while it is a nice perspective: You seem inclined to believe that it grants a blanket, irrefutable excuse. That nobody understands the process and has never seemingly worked on a video game.

It isn't one. Not by a long shot. Everyone keeps falling behind the thought that development is this mythical Herculean task.
It really isn't. It happens daily. Worldwide without missed dates. That how business continues to function.
This is one persons experience. Globally, however we see people able to do this.

All the time. Those millions of video games that pop up on gamestop shelves, do not magically pull themselves from the ground on release date. Instead teams plan, execute, and release completed products.

I'm not saying mind, delays never happen. However in the long run they are more an exception then a rule. Even among small developers, to mid sized teams. They know they have little reputation so fight hard to earn it. Part of that is the ability to do what you say you will when you say it. In the long run this may harm Chucklefish, it may not. It certainly isn't helping the situation on the forum long term though, or elsewhere.

 

Guess you missed the old FAQ answer

"2013, no matter what. We've made a lot of estimates in the past but this time we're super serious 2013"

Paraphrasing of course.

 

I've been developing software professionally for about 10 years and I haven't yet worked on a project that really hit its first planned 'done' date. Though I think that's mostly due to a weird tendency to set arbitrarily absurd deadlines under the philosophy that if it's going to be late anyway, asking for it to be done earlier than is possible might somehow get it done sooner than if it had been scheduled realistically in the first place. One thing I've learned about business is that even though it does function, on the whole, it doesn't function nearly as efficiently or effectively I had once imagined it did.

Even when schedules are supposedly hit, my experience has been that it's usually by changing the definition of 'done' to whatever happens to be ready at the time. As a gamer, I've been disappointed by this particular phenomenon before; I was one of the poor folks who pre-ordered Sword of the Stars II.

 

I didn't mean it should be taking as infallible truth but it gives a good prospective that is not the first time a dev company has had these problems. Sorry if it seemed I meant one should take it as fact. I don't believe you can find a text that produces a perfect blanket of how development works in real life.

 

Let me try again.

I'll start by saying: Yes. You are right. Most software projects have a set release date, and by and large they hit that release date. This is largely because those deadlines are strictly enforced by the business types you mention.

Unfortunately, that does not mean that the software itself is finished and ready by the release date. This seems to be the fact that you keep missing. The software is released on the deadline/release date in a buggy mess.

There are countless examples of this. In fact, pick pretty much any game you like, and I can almost guarantee that there were severe bugs at launch. In fact, just look at the patch history of any game. If a game was truly finished at release, there would be no need for patches. This is the way the traditional games industry works. Everyone is used to it working this way, and don't see anything unusual in it. Dev studios take it as a way of life, and simply work themselves to death trying to meet impossible deadlines. Gamers get used to getting games at release which contain bugs that a blind chimp could see, and blame game testers and the dev studio.

 

And there are countless examples where the finished product isn't a buggy mess. If every game that arrived on the deadline as a buggy mess, there'd be no gaming business because people would be tired of having buggy games. The only industry where people can get away with this stuff is indie games, and it's pretty ridiculous.

 

It sucks if a game is being delayed a lot, no doubt. But its not because they are dicking around, they simply understimated how much work it would be to make the game upto the standards theyve set for themselves. And its a good thing that they choose to delay and make the game better.

I disagree that this is still a criticism however. Its been mentioned time and time again, you know it, i know it, everyone knows it, the devs know it. They didnt estimate the workload properly, pretty far off even. But at this point railing on it any further isnt criticism anymore. What is it going to accomplish by constantly go on about it? This isnt helping anyone, neither is white knighting by the way.
Its good to be critical and hold devs to their promises, don't sugercoat it, this is also a learning process for them. But you have to know when enough is enough, and i think we've crossed that line quite some time ago. Its time to stop.

 

I think it shows a lot more than underestimating their workload. I think it shows incompetence about their own game. You can underestimate your workload and be a few months off, but two years?! And I'm not arguing this point because I want the beta faster, all my hype for this game has pretty much died down, I'm arguing this point because it's absolutely ridiculous for these things to happen. A business shouldn't do this.

 

Yeah, look: you've evidently made up your mind, and you're not going to change it if nothing I've said has gotten through yet. I'm not interested in arguing with brick walls. If you seriously want to believe that all indie devs are lazy sobs who can't be bothered sticking to a release date, rather than entertaining reasonable alternatives, well, knock yourself out.