PC When will the game be released II?
- Thread starter Roland
- Start date
Streamers play a part in the process, we all have our favorites and they serve a purpose, you can relax and watch someone else play the game and possibly get some new ideas but specifically in this case they serve to get the word out that the new Alpha is ready and they fuel the hype train.
RavenGT
New member
LOL Where the heck do you work? If my developers told me that their work 'would be done when it's done', both me and my project manager would sit them down for a serious chat. That kind of stuff doesn't fly in the competitive business world. I'd argue that the gaming industry is a bit more forgiving especially for small studios, but deadlines and goals are a good thing, and saying you have no clue when your work will be done is indicative of management issues.
The above is my experience in the civilian and military world. Try telling some full bird that you have no idea when you'll accomplish X and prepare your ♥♥♥♥ for a boot.
Note that the above statement isn't in any way a reflection on my thoughts in regards to TFP/7DTD. It's a general principle and each specific case warrants its own analysis.
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Get you a job in the marketing department at a gaming company, work your way to the top of marketing and you can then decide to forgo the free advertising streamers offer games if you want. You should be fired for turning down free advertising but go for it.
This has been said, I don't know, TWO HUNDRED TIMES. TFP will NOT release an experimental build to the general public on a Friday. The bug reports by Monday morning would be awful to go through. So the streamers getting it on a Friday and us on a Monday IN NO WAY affects us. NONE. You do know the internal testers already get to play A17, right? I mean it wasn't them that made this game popular it was us why do they get it early? *rant over*
In the business world the variable is the quality and finish of the code instead of the time. You surely know the principle that ends with "Pick two" :smile-new: . Yes, you can always finish on time but that doesn't necessarily mean it is what the customer expected or wanted. Lots of times the code might fullfill any item in the specification sheet but is practically an unusable pile of ****. I've heard of some projects where the customer returned to the previous software suite after testing the new software in practice.
Deadlines and goals are only partly a good thing for a game developer IMHO. Yes, they can stop feature creep and some developers with no sense of money probably need someone to stop them (Double Fine and Peter Molineux come to mind). Deadlines also work well when you know what game you want to produce in detail.
But games need a of process of experimentation as soon as they get away from the true and tried. The goal might be a weapon system or a weather system, but nobody can really know beforehand whether the first, second or fifth version really results in anything fun to play. If you have time or money contraints you have to take the second version whether it works or not, a more relaxed development can shoot for the version that really works.
RavenGT
New member
I agree with you, and I understand that the gaming industry has its own tolerances for goals. However, a developer who says "I have no clue" as to when their work will be done is probably working with a catastrophic failure that was unavoidable or unforeseen... Or they aren't as strong of a developer and should seek guidance from those with more experience. This is also where development managers, project managers, and operations directors should provide advice/guidance too. Now, when there are regularly scheduled/expected releases, there should be a clear roadmap on what the goals are, who's responsible for them, and how to best attain them. Any modern system of development management (Agile, etc.) can address these issues as they change. Again - none of the above is meant to pertain to the situation with TFP
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Acknowledged. But I don't think Faskar meant "no clue" when he said "and I still give wrong estimates.". A wrong estimate is a wrong estimate whether it is a few days, weeks or many months. Internally even the best programmers still give wrong estimates on sufficiently complex problems, a project manager's job is to never let those infos reach the customer.I agree with you, and I understand that the gaming industry has its own tolerances for goals. However, a developer who says "I have no clue" as to when their work will be done is probably working with a catastrophic failure that was unavoidable or unforeseen... Or they aren't as strong of a developer and should seek guidance from those with more experience. This is also where development managers, project managers, and operations directors should provide advice/guidance too. Now, when there are regularly scheduled/expected releases, there should be a clear roadmap on what the goals are, who's responsible for them, and how to best attain them. Any modern system of development management (Agile, etc.) can address these issues as they change. Again - none of the above is meant to pertain to the situation with TFP
But (and I know you know this, it is for other readers) in the case of TFP there is no single customer with a defined specification sheet and a time limit. And there would be no need for the project or community manager to keep the customers ignorant of internal time tables were it not for people who don't know the difference between estimate and promise or give that estimate a relevance it clearly doesn't have for the developer himself.
91 :smile-new:I wonder how many people chose August 28 because they wanted to participate and it was the latest date available? I know did
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Chancer0076
New member
The game is only "empty" if your head is and you have no imagination, oooosh! Plenty of people find enjoyment in it :smile-new: (obligatory smilie)
RavenGT
New member
LOL Project Managers are still needed to make sure segments, tasks, and sprints are completed as required. Without this, projects would run high on time and waste money. There has to be some benchmark for success, and someone to hold people accountable to it. In regards to the business or tech specs, their Kickstarter goals and goals listed on Steam serve as a notice to paying customers about what can be expected. The whole early access / kickstarter route plays around with goals and expectations treating customers as stockholders rather than customers. There's the element of return vs risk that's expected when you buy EA versus when you buy a 'finished' product
That philosophy has been installed in my own startup, which I'm the co-founder+CTO combo
There are limits, of course, but mostly everyone is free to work as "it's done when it's done". And normally they finish earlier and better than if they had deadlines, because I also work like that.
Deadlines are active only in very critical fixes, as an example, when a release breaks the production servers / game breaking bugs overall - the deadline is then ASAP, which is common sense.
spacepiggio
New member
You remember that Release a lot differently than I do, It was the Mishap that led to No More Release Dates being Instated in the first place.
If they could have Burnt the Forum's Down they probably would have tried to back then, they went Nuts leading to the implementation of,
No More Release Dates, or so we thought...
Sure, it wasn't my intention to list the complete job description of a project manager, just the part of intermediate between team and either the higher management or the customer itself.LOL Project Managers are still needed to make sure segments, tasks, and sprints are completed as required. Without this, projects would run high on time and waste money. There has to be some benchmark for success, and someone to hold people accountable to it. In regards to the business or tech specs, their Kickstarter goals and goals listed on Steam serve as a notice to paying customers about what can be expected. The whole early access / kickstarter route plays around with goals and expectations treating customers as stockholders rather than customers. There's the element of return vs risk that's expected when you buy EA versus when you buy a 'finished' product
If we talk about games, there is no benchmark that really works, at least if you want to produce a quality game. If all one needs is to tick of kickstarter goals and disregard quality, then any game is finished in a few months. Look at the multiplayer part of No Man's Sky to see how rudimentary a feature can be implemented to fullfill a goal.
Compare a bad game to a really good game in the same genre and you might see exactly the same technical features included.
Roland
Community Moderator
The temptation to give a release date is huge because it's good news to share. Joel was playing the game and liking what he saw and got excited and said his hope was that we could play it in July. He even said it was just a guess. But you're absolutely right. He shouldn't have said anything. I shouldn't have posted it.
In the future I don't care what the developers say. If their anticipation overcomes their reason and they put a date out there I'm still going to post it as It's done when it's done. NEXT time I will have learned my lesson.
