V2.5+ Survival Revival Dev Diary

[Uncle Al]

That all sounds reasonable until you remember that they sold the game with dates. How'd they come up with dates IF it's only done when it's done, and there's no way to know how long these things will take? If their personal credo is that it doesn't go out until it's ready...what the ■■■■ happened with 2.5?
Timely honest Communication would be the grease between these friction points, but, "we" really don't even get THAT.
Y'all keep asking for dissenters to be reasonable without making any concessions yourselves...good grief.

I don't know which version you bought, but the one I bought didn't have dates on it. Sure, they put some dates on the roadmap, and have (unwisely) given dates a couple of times, but that's not 'selling the game with dates'.

How do you do estimates when you know the actual work required might vary a lot from your assumptions? You accept your estimates aren't going to be particularly accurate and will almost certainly change. Which is pretty much exactly what TFP did when sticking 'these dates are indicative and might change a lot' on the roadmap.

There's an unfortunate tradeoff in software development where effort you put into keeping people informed how you're doing slows down how much progress you actually make. There is a sad history of projects where everyone and their dog were kept informed of absolutely everything at all times, while no real value was ever delivered.

If you're really interested:

A lot of what the agile development methodology (which TFP appear to use) tries to do is abandon the traditional project culture of constant updates and detailed status reports in order to gain productivity. That's often doesn't sit well with Project Sponsors/Senior Responsible Owners, who are the people who effectively paid for development (well...it came out of their budget). They often require a lot of education that if they want the productivity gains of agile, they have to give up the (often false) feeling of security that precise milestones and release dates give.

None of us are sponsors or owners of 7DTD development. I'm actually surprised we get as much info as we do, but then again I'm probably more familiar with agile software development than the average gamer. Admittedly none of my knowledge relates to game development, but I have every reason to believe game development is worse than regular commercial software.

I saw a rather good conference speech by Chris Bourassa (Red Hook Studios -they made Darkest Dungeon) where he pointed out that game development is twice as hard as regular software development because even when you meet all your requirements, you can still find the gameplay isn't good. That means that estimates are even hazier in game development than commercial development, and they're hazy at best in commercial.

I'm no apologist for TFP, and there are undoubtedly things they could do better. That said, many of the expectations I see voiced fairly regularly on the boards are completely unreasonable and show a total unfamiliarity with how software development actually happens.

 

[HammerDano]

I don't know which version you bought, but the one I bought didn't have dates on it. Sure, they put some dates on the roadmap, and have (unwisely) given dates a couple of times, but that's not 'selling the game with dates'.

How do you do estimates when you know the actual work required might vary a lot from your assumptions? You accept your estimates aren't going to be particularly accurate and will almost certainly change. Which is pretty much exactly what TFP did when sticking 'these dates are indicative and might change a lot' on the roadmap.

There's an unfortunate tradeoff in software development where effort you put into keeping people informed how you're doing slows down how much progress you actually make. There is a sad history of projects where everyone and their dog were kept informed of absolutely everything at all times, while no real value was ever delivered.

If you're really interested:

A lot of what the agile development methodology (which TFP appear to use) tries to do is abandon the traditional project culture of constant updates and detailed status reports in order to gain productivity. That's often doesn't sit well with Project Sponsors/Senior Responsible Owners, who are the people who effectively paid for development (well...it came out of their budget). They often require a lot of education that if they want the productivity gains of agile, they have to give up the (often false) feeling of security that precise milestones and release dates give.

None of us are sponsors or owners of 7DTD development. I'm actually surprised we get as much info as we do, but then again I'm probably more familiar with agile software development than the average gamer. Admittedly none of my knowledge relates to game development, but I have every reason to believe game development is worse than regular commercial software.

I saw a rather good conference speech by Chris Bourassa (Red Hook Studios -they made Darkest Dungeon) where he pointed out that game development is twice as hard as regular software development because even when you meet all your requirements, you can still find the gameplay isn't good. That means that estimates are even hazier in game development than commercial development, and they're hazy at best in commercial.

I'm no apologist for TFP, and there are undoubtedly things they could do better. That said, many of the expectations I see voiced fairly regularly on the boards are completely unreasonable and show a total unfamiliarity with how software development actually happens.

Well...I'm in a real catch 22...if I answer you honestly, there will be the same people saying I'm just rehashing the same ■■■■ all over again.

the new version was sold with the road map (which was a strong selling feature to me and some people that I know bought the game again).
the original telltale version had no dates... so I did buy it once with no dates. lol

can't help but notice you did not address how did 2.5 go out so very broken.

It would have been "nice" if they had a least put out a post acknowledging that they knew it was broken and they were working on it. I'd consider THAT to be bare minimum PR stuff. Instead they stopped responding to people on their own posts...which became mostly just Streamer of the Week posts...which, unfortunately for those streamers, was all people had to post comments/ask questions on.

Joel said on Dec 30th

We are working on bandits and will start previewing some stuff real soon. We'll announce an updated roadmap too. I think we might even start putting previews of what's coming in the news launcher so anyone playing the game will know everything that's coming without getting on social media.

so where is any of that? or further communication indicating it is coming?

I know you can't answer that, but, I hope you get my point. He said that almost 2 months ago.

You say you can't believe we get this much communication and I can't believe they are still so poor at it.