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In a similar vein, if you have time to kill check out "Sunk Cost Galaxy" on Youtube

noduerme 4y ago
I'd never seen this, thanks! Breaking out the popcorn. I worked on SC in 2010/11, pre-crowdfunding, and it's funny and head-smacking to see this all laid out as a documentary, even spotting some of my own work here and there in the earliest cuts. It's so bizarre to me that this development is still going on, and still in "alpha" although obviously it's now become an insanely huge product. Chris Roberts did not know he'd hit his crowdfunding goal.. and I think that's why he didn't go with Kickstarter initially, because he was going to work on the game one way or another. He sank his own money into building working demos before crowdfunding. IMHO it would have all been up and running by 2014 if there hadn't been so much money and hype. The fan expectations exceeded what was realistic from the moment it was announced, and just kept going higher. It's one of those things I look at in my life and have a hard time drawing a conclusion from. The obvious conclusions about shipping vs bike-shedding don't quite apply, because at some point the making of the game and the game itself became too intertwined. I'm glad to see it's made some people here happy now and it's finally starting to live up to its promise.
- cbozeman 4y ago
  Not to be too big of an asshole, but you really don't see the lesson here? To me, it's crystal clear. You don't allow a dreamer to be a project manager. They get bogged down in the dream and never finish the damn project. At some point, the dreamer has to hand off the dream to the doer, and let the doer go get it done.
  - noduerme 4y ago
    I don't disagree with that. I think in practice, the reason the campaign was so successful initially was that players wanted the dreamer to be in charge of every aspect of the project and to dream big... so once you get locked into that cycle, it's really hard to get out of it, even if you are someone who's good at delegating, which isn't CR's strong suit. Knowing when and how to hand off "your baby" is harder when you're getting all that positive affirmation that people are really excited for you to do it, and your name and reputation are totally riding on living up to gamers' expectations. It's a sort of self-reinforcing trap, and I'm not making excuses for the excesses of hubris, but nothing would have happened if not for that hubris to begin with. I guess if there's one conclusion I could draw it would be that dreamers need to be balanced by a practical co-founder with equal power in cases like this. But that was never a real possibility here.

I'd never seen this, thanks! Breaking out the popcorn. I worked on SC in 2010/11, pre-crowdfunding, and it's funny and head-smacking to see this all laid out as a documentary, even spotting some of my own work here and there in the earliest cuts. It's so bizarre to me that this development is still going on, and still in "alpha" although obviously it's now become an insanely huge product. Chris Roberts did not know he'd hit his crowdfunding goal.. and I think that's why he didn't go with Kickstarter initially, because he was going to work on the game one way or another. He sank his own money into building working demos before crowdfunding. IMHO it would have all been up and running by 2014 if there hadn't been so much money and hype. The fan expectations exceeded what was realistic from the moment it was announced, and just kept going higher. It's one of those things I look at in my life and have a hard time drawing a conclusion from. The obvious conclusions about shipping vs bike-shedding don't quite apply, because at some point the making of the game and the game itself became too intertwined. I'm glad to see it's made some people here happy now and it's finally starting to live up to its promise.

cbozeman 4y ago
Not to be too big of an asshole, but you really don't see the lesson here? To me, it's crystal clear. You don't allow a dreamer to be a project manager. They get bogged down in the dream and never finish the damn project. At some point, the dreamer has to hand off the dream to the doer, and let the doer go get it done.
- noduerme 4y ago
  I don't disagree with that. I think in practice, the reason the campaign was so successful initially was that players wanted the dreamer to be in charge of every aspect of the project and to dream big... so once you get locked into that cycle, it's really hard to get out of it, even if you are someone who's good at delegating, which isn't CR's strong suit. Knowing when and how to hand off "your baby" is harder when you're getting all that positive affirmation that people are really excited for you to do it, and your name and reputation are totally riding on living up to gamers' expectations. It's a sort of self-reinforcing trap, and I'm not making excuses for the excesses of hubris, but nothing would have happened if not for that hubris to begin with. I guess if there's one conclusion I could draw it would be that dreamers need to be balanced by a practical co-founder with equal power in cases like this. But that was never a real possibility here.