4 ms·

> Optimisations like this aren't even hard or time consuming (and they are fun) - can anyone clue me in on why you ship your stuff in this state - what happens

> Optimisations like this aren't even hard or time consuming (and they are fun) - can anyone clue me in on why you ship your stuff in this state - what happens in a studio like this? Business and survival is what happened. Read any of Jason Schreier's books on game development. Income is very chunky with games being in development for years. Postponing by a few months might sink your company, especially with interest rates being high. Calling out that something is "easy" and "fun" is likely insulting to the developers who are frequently working 70-80hour weeks sand ruining their family life in the process.

Pannoniae 3y ago
They are wasting all that effort in the wrong things though. I fully understand the problem of crunch - but these poor devs wouldn't have to crunch as much if the game's budget wasn't wasted on "analytics" and useless features, instead of polishing the core gameplay, then adding the fluff after launch. In this game, they've focused on the superficial stuff, yet the core gameplay is still broken (instead of a city builder where citizens have agency, the game is effectively a god simulator where your biggest challenge is traffic management, economy or politics is a joke) This is why many people prefer older games - the amount of effort spent on the gameplay itself is only decreasing year by year, while most of the budget is spent on useless graphical effects, quirky things everyone forgets in two months and all the usual "analytics"/"cloud" stuff.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  None of that is the engineers' fault. All that comes from the game directors and business people.
  - stylepoints 3y ago
    And for very good reasons. A huge fraction of players buy the game based on how it looks.
- habinero 3y ago
  Nobody sets out to make a bad game or "waste effort" on "useless" features. Things like this happen because the people giving you money have a hard deadline and you ship what you have. Or you decide to use a game engine that was more difficult to use than expected. It's insulting to say "well, just make the game better first, duh". I promise you, they know. But they have to balance a lot of things you don't see. If you ever find yourself saying "why don't they do [obvious thing]", stop and assume you don't have all the facts.
  - Pannoniae 3y ago
    I would believe this.... if 1. games made 15 or 20 years ago 2. and indie games made today would not be able to manage it. It's always the bigger studios who utterly mess up in making an actually playable game, which indicates that the problem is not something inherent but a simple product of laziness and greed. (Latest example: see Creative Assembly's meltdown)
    - ajmurmann 3y ago
      As scope increases all the organizational challenges balloon. Coordinating 10 people is much easier than several hundred. It's the same almost regardless of domain. What happens if your core game loop still is no fun, but you got 100 people rolling off a previous project and ready for the next phase of this new project to get to where you need them to start design levels and assets? It's much easier to fix if the additional 3 month of development is just 3 months cost of living for John Romero and John Carmack.
      - Pannoniae 3y ago
        it's not like game studios have increased in size, it's just more bloat. look at old games' credits, you'll find maybe even bigger studios (making art and programming with limited hardware was much more time-consuming....) but they had good gameplay on a much smaller budget. Today, studios waste money on analytics, governance things and other fluff... Best case study is Mojang, the company has over 800 employees but it is literally outperformed in game design and update quality/quantity by ten people at Re-Logic. (which includes managers and legal as well!)
vGPU 3y ago
Sure, but this is Paradox, a company that constantly makes buckets of money on DLC for Stellaris, Europa universalis, crusader kings, etc. I doubt they were about to run out of money. They just had to release a new race of scantily dressed aliens for stellaris and they’d be good for another half a year.
- meepmorp 3y ago
  Paradox is just the publisher, it's developed by Colossal Order.

Pannoniae 3y ago

They are wasting all that effort in the wrong things though. I fully understand the problem of crunch - but these poor devs wouldn't have to crunch as much if the game's budget wasn't wasted on "analytics" and useless features, instead of polishing the core gameplay, then adding the fluff after launch. In this game, they've focused on the superficial stuff, yet the core gameplay is still broken (instead of a city builder where citizens have agency, the game is effectively a god simulator where your biggest challenge is traffic management, economy or politics is a joke) This is why many people prefer older games - the amount of effort spent on the gameplay itself is only decreasing year by year, while most of the budget is spent on useless graphical effects, quirky things everyone forgets in two months and all the usual "analytics"/"cloud" stuff.

ajmurmann 3y ago
None of that is the engineers' fault. All that comes from the game directors and business people.
- stylepoints 3y ago
  And for very good reasons. A huge fraction of players buy the game based on how it looks.
habinero 3y ago
Nobody sets out to make a bad game or "waste effort" on "useless" features. Things like this happen because the people giving you money have a hard deadline and you ship what you have. Or you decide to use a game engine that was more difficult to use than expected. It's insulting to say "well, just make the game better first, duh". I promise you, they know. But they have to balance a lot of things you don't see. If you ever find yourself saying "why don't they do [obvious thing]", stop and assume you don't have all the facts.
- Pannoniae 3y ago
  I would believe this.... if 1. games made 15 or 20 years ago 2. and indie games made today would not be able to manage it. It's always the bigger studios who utterly mess up in making an actually playable game, which indicates that the problem is not something inherent but a simple product of laziness and greed. (Latest example: see Creative Assembly's meltdown)
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    As scope increases all the organizational challenges balloon. Coordinating 10 people is much easier than several hundred. It's the same almost regardless of domain. What happens if your core game loop still is no fun, but you got 100 people rolling off a previous project and ready for the next phase of this new project to get to where you need them to start design levels and assets? It's much easier to fix if the additional 3 month of development is just 3 months cost of living for John Romero and John Carmack.
    - Pannoniae 3y ago
      it's not like game studios have increased in size, it's just more bloat. look at old games' credits, you'll find maybe even bigger studios (making art and programming with limited hardware was much more time-consuming....) but they had good gameplay on a much smaller budget. Today, studios waste money on analytics, governance things and other fluff... Best case study is Mojang, the company has over 800 employees but it is literally outperformed in game design and update quality/quantity by ten people at Re-Logic. (which includes managers and legal as well!)

vGPU 3y ago

Sure, but this is Paradox, a company that constantly makes buckets of money on DLC for Stellaris, Europa universalis, crusader kings, etc. I doubt they were about to run out of money. They just had to release a new race of scantily dressed aliens for stellaris and they’d be good for another half a year.

meepmorp 3y ago
Paradox is just the publisher, it's developed by Colossal Order.