"Doomed from the start" - KSP2 Development History FINALLY Revealed

แชร์
ฝัง
  • เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ธ.ค. 2024

ความคิดเห็น • 2.8K

  • @ShadowZone
    @ShadowZone  7 หลายเดือนก่อน +1508

    Huge thanks to Scott Manley, Matt Lowne and Linuxgurugamer for sharing their expertise and opinion to make this video happen! KSP2's future might be uncertain, but the community remains strong. 💚

    • @chillbruh333
      @chillbruh333 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +18

      Thanks for the video Shadow!!!❤❤

    • @andreaslusti4018
      @andreaslusti4018 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +6

      Well done! This was really great information. Professionally researched and delivered. We need more of this.

    • @Alfred-Neuman
      @Alfred-Neuman 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      I don't know why people are angry, the game is almost exactly like in the trailer they showed years ago, minus a few things here and there...
      :P

    • @johnburr9463
      @johnburr9463 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      Well balanced and objective as ever. You are good at keeping me grounded in reality.

    • @f4lenwarrior
      @f4lenwarrior 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +6

      I just feel so damn justified in saying this. "I TOLD YOU SO" Moment this jenky mess got released at full price in early access I knew it was a bust. Hell the moment TakeTwo took over I knew to avoid this turd of a game... Before they even finished the first game!!!!!!! And to think you bought in and rode that Hypetrain and helped push that crap onto the community. You kept telling everyone that "It's going to be great" and "Wait and see" Well we waited and saw and it isnt great and never will be.
      Nice vid but honestly you should have been more harsher on this entire game from the outset!.
      People have the right and are justified to say this game was a heap of junk and you can't say they wont be validated here. You are not the community. Nor are you your entire comments section. Not when this entire vid calls KSP2 a shit show indirectly. You helped push this garbage into the community by playing along with the hype to keep up your developer contacts intact to keep up your own viewership numbers. You even stopped producing KSP1 content on your channel to focus on advertising a bucket of buggy shite.....
      KSP2 is DEAD!!!!!!!, No great loss. Long Live KSP1!

  • @SqueakyBe
    @SqueakyBe 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4090

    The irony.
    KSP1:
    A company whose primary product was marketing and advertising makes a great game.
    KSP2:
    A company whose primary product was games makes nothing but marketing.

    • @Infernal_Elf
      @Infernal_Elf 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +94

      Thats so totally spot on!

    • @daviniusb6798
      @daviniusb6798 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +77

      The moment they hired the scatterer guy (no shame, I LOVE his work!) I knew what was to come. They were in hot water over the whole wobbly rockets are part of KSP interview, and then they made a big thing out of making the planets look better. Timing is important lol

    • @charlieiskandar1597
      @charlieiskandar1597 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

      damn what a bullseye

    • @shawa666
      @shawa666 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +19

      Felipe Falanghe makes a great game

    • @SqueakyBe
      @SqueakyBe 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +53

      @@shawa666 exactly. Squad was pretty hands off as I understand it. Leaving the developer to have a clear vision of what they wanted to accomplish, in a way they saw fit.

  • @linuxgurugamer
    @linuxgurugamer 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +2436

    It was an honor and pleasure to be asked for my opinions.

    • @ShadowZone
      @ShadowZone  7 หลายเดือนก่อน +167

      Thank you for taking the time, your insights were valuable!

    • @grapeape7284
      @grapeape7284 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      Subscribed!

    • @lunabell-2
      @lunabell-2 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

      thank you for your input!

    • @darknote7579
      @darknote7579 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +11

      @linuxgurugamer! I love you! Subbed!

    • @basila33
      @basila33 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +16

      Whose opinion if not yours should be asked? You're living legend!

  • @MattLowne
    @MattLowne 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +1966

    KSP's absolutely shambolic development is a fascinating story. Great job on the investigation and video, glad I was able to be a part of it!
    I can verify that all my anonymous conversations with devs and former staff match the video's script.

    • @ShadowZone
      @ShadowZone  7 หลายเดือนก่อน +224

      Thanks for being the cool dude you are!

    • @MattLowne
      @MattLowne 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +147

      @@ShadowZone right back at ya 😎😎😎

    • @Infernal_Elf
      @Infernal_Elf 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +20

      Great to see such a close knit community of content creators :D and thanks for calling out the developers also Mattlowne

    • @darksars3622
      @darksars3622 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +7

      Intercept right now: EVERYTHING IS FINE EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OK (explotion)

    • @tiagodagostini
      @tiagodagostini 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +14

      Well most people that worked in game industry warned publicly that it smelled like a bomb. But we were all shut down and called very bad names for daring to warn of the clear truth.

  • @tiefensucht
    @tiefensucht 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +1089

    You never hear that managers that mess up at this scale lose their jobs. No, they fire the people that actually work.

    • @doltBmB
      @doltBmB 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      Because it wasn't the managers, didn't you pay attention?

    • @tiefensucht
      @tiefensucht 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +251

      ​@@doltBmB This is clearly failed project management. Take-Two is a huge software company, they should know how things work.

    • @doltBmB
      @doltBmB 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +8

      @@tiefensucht It was clearly incompetent devs, take-two just gave them too much leeway.

    • @tiefensucht
      @tiefensucht 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +203

      ​@@doltBmB This is what management is for: Hiring the right people, doing quality assurance, setting and controlling goals and budgets. You can't blame workers for the end result. They just do their job.

    • @doltBmB
      @doltBmB 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +19

      @@tiefensucht You absolutely can blame them. First people cry about studio interference, then they cry about not enough interference, never prepared to blame the actual culprits.

  • @Cptn.Viridian
    @Cptn.Viridian 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +244

    Probably one of the most consistent themes in this story is the frequent intervention of the "Higher Ups" making things worse.
    If the higher ups had allowed an earlier release date sooner, Nate Simpsons ambitions would be easier to realize
    If the higher ups hadn't mandated absolute secrecy, the team could have hired much more seasoned and relevant developers.
    If the higher ups hadn't enforced the use of old code, while preventing the team from contacting the squad employees that breathed it, development would have gone smoother.
    And this is just what I have seen in the first ten minutes!

    • @HuntingTarg
      @HuntingTarg 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +14

      The rest is devolvement and fallout.
      I have a personal policy of not commenting until I've watched the whole video, but you picked up the gist.

    • @ADHJkvsNgsMBbTQe
      @ADHJkvsNgsMBbTQe 6 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Who hasn’t worked in an organization where the “higher ups” have ultimately screwed everything up and everyone over? All too common unfortunately.

    • @Robbadobbsoldier
      @Robbadobbsoldier 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      It is important with management. Had they have a few more middle bosses it would have worked out

  • @daviddickey9832
    @daviddickey9832 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +2568

    The moment I heard 2 years and $10M, my first thought is someone non-technical is expecting 9 women to give birth to 1 baby in a month.

    • @ShadowZone
      @ShadowZone  7 หลายเดือนก่อน +692

      Experienced people I interviewed said it would have been possible with those parameters if they had just done a refresh of KSP. Better graphics, polish code, add a few parts and planets, done. Would have worked.

    • @notfeedynotlazy
      @notfeedynotlazy 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +262

      @@ShadowZone Hilariously, that was all that was needed. Integrate the "must have" mods in the base game. That includes planets: want a start that isn't "orbiting Kerbol like many Kopernikus player-made stars are? Give it a million years orbital period and hide its orbit path. Colonies? FTL? Procedural wings? Already in the "must-have mods". And so on. It was doable, it was easy(sih), it was what we expected, and it was a sure bet.
      But naaaaah... 😞

    • @arieldario3849
      @arieldario3849 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +156

      ​@@notfeedynotlazy Absolutely NO. Thats exactly what great companies has been doing with sports games the last 10 years: they have been offering the SAME GAME year after year at a higher price with a few minor features on it. Why i would pay 50 bucks for a game that offers the SAME THINGS that KSP1 offers with 50 mods? I'm OKEY with the fact that the team tried to expand the game beyond the original one, but someone with BALLS should have say from the very beggining that 10 millions and 2 years would never be enough. I would have preferred the game not be developed at all, before what ended up happening now, at least that way the option of develop KSP2 from the scratch it would be on the table for more capable studios...

    • @HeadCannonPrime
      @HeadCannonPrime 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +142

      @@arieldario3849 because, lets face it, KSP 1 was never more than a beta game. The mod community basically fixed the game for free and made it complete. Incorporating the greatest mods, fixing the wobble, and upgrading the graphics and code WOULD have been enough for a successful game.

    • @pierrotA
      @pierrotA 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +71

      ​@@ShadowZone Sometime taking existing code that evolve for years is even more difficult that writting the code from start.
      KSP code is a mess, and it was made on an old version of Unity. It's not that simple to make heavy modifications while keeping an optimized and stable code.
      Was it "possible" ? Yeah sure, everything is possible... Was it realistic ? No.

  • @MiniEnder
    @MiniEnder 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +798

    The whole situation of higher-ups refusing to let anyone rewrite the code base reminds me of a situation with the development of Mother 2, known in the English speaking world as Earthbound, where they were over budget and behind schedule and the, at the time, future CEO of Nintendo was brought on as a consultant and told the people at Ape essentially, "We can either keep what you have here and be done in 2 years, or we can rewrite the code and be done in 6 months." Sometimes you need to take several steps back before you can step forward.

    • @ShadowZone
      @ShadowZone  7 หลายเดือนก่อน +277

      Also, the sunk cost fallacy comes into play. "We already invested so much time into this code, we can't just throw it away!"
      Time and time again...

    • @ShadowZone
      @ShadowZone  7 หลายเดือนก่อน +144

      @chrishoppner150 Ugh. 90% of software development happens inside the brain of the developer. The code is just the result of hours of hard work, losing yourself in a problem, trying to find solutions etc. If I read "money per line of code" it makes my hair stand up. And I basically have an MBA haha
      Thanks for keeping it real and trimming the code that has no business being in there!

    • @dosmastrify
      @dosmastrify 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +54

      ​@@ShadowZone This is funny because I know anytime a military project goes long and over budget. It's typically because the mission requirements change and the services want more features added late, And it's only when they freeze it early and don't let people add requirements that it gets done on time and not too far over budget, That sounds like in this case that certainly wasn't Right Way Forward

    • @thygrrr
      @thygrrr 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +19

      (narrator voice) They were, in fact, not done in 6 months.

    • @tiagodagostini
      @tiagodagostini 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@ShadowZone Sometimes it is true and valid, but it is mostly for small value project.

  • @MarcusHouse
    @MarcusHouse 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +554

    Gosh. What a ridiculous bloody mess.
    Thanks for doing all the research around this one mate.

    • @ShadowZone
      @ShadowZone  7 หลายเดือนก่อน +64

      You're very welcome, my friend! I sure makes IFT1 look like smooth sailing compared to KSP2 development.

    • @RayneAngelus
      @RayneAngelus 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      @@ShadowZone IFT1?

    • @ShadowZone
      @ShadowZone  7 หลายเดือนก่อน +33

      @@RayneAngelus Integrated Flight Test 1 for Starship. The one where it cartwheeled out of control and made Das from NasaSpaceflight cry out "did it just do a Kerbal?".

  • @KnightDaylight
    @KnightDaylight 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +222

    In Aviation, the #1 rule that everyone must abide by is “If you don’t know, ASK”
    The fact Take Two’s studios were not allowed to contact each other for input was a massive mistake, and the greed they have shows in the final product. The indecisiveness of the developers for the “vision” made a huge problem worse. KSP2 was screwed out of success because of ignorance and greed, and we were caught holding the bag as players.

    • @mprojekt72
      @mprojekt72 6 หลายเดือนก่อน

      It is as if the Take Two execs were watching the publicly available news of Boeing's issues and failures with the 737 Max, while high AF on meth and cocaine, and thought to themselves, "We can be just like Boeing but our mistakes and idiocy won't get people killed, so no one will get mad and the Feds won't come after us. Amirite bois? Gimme the pipe, intern-person."

    • @murasaki848
      @murasaki848 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +30

      And blocking out Scott Manley in specific is baffling as well. A huge fan, an astrophysicist, a coder, a pilot, someone who helped put KSP1 on the map, someone who's not looking to jump ship from his current job or probably even any compensation if you don't push him too hard like asking him to actually write code, and someone who despite being a TH-camr very much understands and will conform with an NDA. What that rattles around in my head as is FREE TECHNICAL AND FAN EXPERT ADVICE WITHOUT HAVING TO NECESSARILY FOLLOW IT. I mean, seriously? "This stays away from Scott"???

    • @Izithel
      @Izithel 5 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@murasaki848 If you ask me, the insistence on secrecy is why, Scott Manley is an outsider and would be unlikely to agree to a very stringent NDA.
      Not to mention his influence on the potential audience, if Scott knew development was as much of a disaster as it was he would have told his audience.
      And Managment displayed no competence in development, so I doubt they had any desire to consult him for his expertise.
      And that is without going into all the complot theories about Star Theory trying to scam Take-Two, or Take-Two scamming Star Theory, either way non of the companies involved would have wanted Scott Manley to know anything if any of those theories are true.

    • @Rootiga
      @Rootiga 5 หลายเดือนก่อน +5

      take two is one of the greediest game companies out there, all they have cared about for the last 8 years is GTA...

  • @notapplicable7292
    @notapplicable7292 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +1287

    Fucking up KSP2 is such a tragedy for the next generation of scientists and engineers.

    • @adamredwine774
      @adamredwine774 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +44

      And yet somewhat reminiscent of the "better, faster, cheaper" days of NASA where they kept crashing multi-billion dollar space craft.

    • @bustabusts
      @bustabusts 6 หลายเดือนก่อน

      No it's not we have scientists and engineers pouring over the border..

    • @livethefuture2492
      @livethefuture2492 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +29

      Eh no worries we still have the original for that, certainly what got me into it.

    • @CCountZero
      @CCountZero 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +14

      Honestly though, they can go grab RP-1 off of CKAN, easy-peasy install; if they really want a better understanding. And then they can progress to the (very old) MIT-license Orbiter simulator if they wanna get proper serious about orbital dynamics.

    • @Kanakotka
      @Kanakotka 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +16

      Nah. It was always going to fail, you could see it from get go before any game footage was seen from dev interviews talking about how they want to expand the lore of kerbals and the story instead of, i don't know, focusing on the game.
      Juno: New Origins is the real KSP 2.

  • @fluxxi5289
    @fluxxi5289 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +260

    An article frome The Hard Drive I saw yesterday was titled “Gaming exec makes first positive impact to company by passing away” and that feels fitting with this video

  • @Stratzenblitz75
    @Stratzenblitz75 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +376

    Thank you for making this. In a sad way, its nice to have closure on what went wrong with development and why we received such a broken game on release after being promised so much more.
    Just... what a tragedy. Before it released, I was so excited about my future ideas for KSP projects but after the first few days of playing it my enthusiasm was killed. Seeing everyone else's excitement about the game fade really snuffed out the remaining enthusiasm I had for making content as well.
    Its really sad to hear how out of touch management was on software development. I'm not super experienced with writing software, but in my time developing I've come to realize how important refactoring is and how horrible things can become if you defer maintenance on your code. Sometimes, it really is better to throw something out completely rather than waste time trying to band-aid it into a working solution.
    Also, about reusing the old code... I KNEW it. When I was playing, I was under the assumption that we were getting a new engine for the game and felt crazy running across the same bugs that I had experienced in KPS1.

    • @welshcorgi4652
      @welshcorgi4652 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +32

      I remember watching one of your streams where you were convinced it was the same spaghetti code after getting the grounded state bug

    • @Stratzenblitz75
      @Stratzenblitz75 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +42

      @@welshcorgi4652 Yes, I was literally screaming inside. It HAD to be same code!

    • @dandula3378
      @dandula3378 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

      The fifty dollar stream was absolutely iconic, I can't believe you almost landed on the VAB in that mess

    • @AsliceOFtea413
      @AsliceOFtea413 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      I was so excited to see your ksp2 interstellar shenanigans:'

    • @ryanspence5831
      @ryanspence5831 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      @@Stratzenblitz75 50 DOLLARS FOR LANDED STATE

  • @Fred-rv2tu
    @Fred-rv2tu 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +656

    Not the first time I’ve been done wrong by game. But this has to be the most hurtful. KSP 1 is so wholesome and beloved. I knew it wasn’t squad anymore but that never really clicked until after I bought it and saw the results. To be clear it’s not the money I’m upset about. It’s the murder of something so beloved.

    • @thewonkysauces2002
      @thewonkysauces2002 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +50

      same here dude, I'm lucky enough to be able to afford the original and this game, just upset about how they killed this game plus the fact the science update made me believe - like REALLY BELIEVE - that this game had a future and now this..... its the hope that always kills you

    • @Yaivenov
      @Yaivenov 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +43

      "Look how they massacred my boy." 😢

    • @dangercopperfield
      @dangercopperfield 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +19

      Yes, all of this, 100% this. I decided to hold the line, root for the dev team and wait for the game to improve. For Science was a good start but the closing of the studio has left me with a sense of betrayal and thoughts of what might have been.

    • @thewonkysauces2002
      @thewonkysauces2002 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      @@Yaivenov fr fr

    • @only1thatmakessense
      @only1thatmakessense 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      The worst part is that they continued to try to blag it after as well , shows ABSOLUTE contempt

  • @Archris17
    @Archris17 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +101

    God, just hearing how KSP2 was all but smothered in its crib and then we were thrown the carcass just makes me want to cry. It's heart-breaking to see how every single step went wrong.

    • @fractalelf7760
      @fractalelf7760 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +7

      Sadly apt metaphors… 😢

    • @kelly4187
      @kelly4187 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +8

      I swear, if they had just turned the source code over to modders we would have have a significantly better product, in a fraction of the time.

    • @tsm688
      @tsm688 5 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

      What burns me is how they just lied, over and over. To keep people interested, they told us they already had multiplayer -- not "were working on", **HAD**. They claimed significant progress on all the things they never did. That is how they got everyone's preorder money, and it was all a lie.

  • @justinb2824
    @justinb2824 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +14

    Lead Dev: Okay, we've got 10 million, how should we allocate this?
    CEO: Marketing.
    Lead Dev: What do you mean? How much for marketing?
    CEO: ALL OF IT.

  • @50_Stars_and_Stripes
    @50_Stars_and_Stripes 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +717

    "We're fully funded."
    Famous last words.

    • @Infernal_Elf
      @Infernal_Elf 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +19

      Famous last lie!

    • @Fred-rv2tu
      @Fred-rv2tu 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +17

      Yea that set off alarm bells for me. I don’t want to bully the guy but it seems like Nate has a surprising amount of responsibility for this. Usually it’s just a greedy studio.

    • @Ph33NIXx
      @Ph33NIXx 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +8

      @@Fred-rv2tu I am not sure how you got that impression from seeing this movie.. the guy loved the project, he had both hands tied at his back and just wanted it to succeed. Maybe he hoped that if he could somehow satisfy or put the community at ease.. he could keep it going until the game was "ready"... and sale would start going

    • @Fred-rv2tu
      @Fred-rv2tu 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +19

      @@Ph33NIXx what I took away from the video was he was the driving force that pushed it beyond an achievable scope. I wasn’t say he bears sole responsibility. Just I’m surprised that it’s probably not a trivial amount. Also by the time he said we’re fully funded he would have know. It was doomed.

    • @Ph33NIXx
      @Ph33NIXx 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      @@Fred-rv2tu yeah.. from his perspective they probably was. As far as i know.. the reason they still work on it is because of law. Not because Take Two is being nice.
      And well, there is some truth in him making scope creep.. but the original 10mill 2 year plan seemed bad as well.

  • @bobbyjeffsupremelordofcraz3532
    @bobbyjeffsupremelordofcraz3532 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +943

    Ultimately, they claimed they could slay the Kraken, and they were punished for their hubris.

    • @eekee6034
      @eekee6034 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +33

      I'm torn between replying, "Indeed they were!" or "It could have been done if they were actually good." It's hubris either way.

    • @birbeyboop
      @birbeyboop 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +39

      the kraken does not take kindly to challengers. they're lucky to be alive.

    • @OGPatriot03
      @OGPatriot03 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +29

      The chance to do it, was when they considered starting from scratch on a new engine. Once they decided to stick with the original code/engine I think it was doomed.

    • @5Andysalive
      @5Andysalive 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +7

      well they thought building the Kraken in was a good idea for a while.

    • @connycontainer9459
      @connycontainer9459 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      @@5Andysalivethe kraken always finds a way - Jeff Goldblum

  • @mocko69
    @mocko69 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +341

    The first requirrement for hiring people for KSP2 should have been ''have you played the original KSP?''

    • @CJSHM
      @CJSHM 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +74

      The moment the release disaster happened my first response was "did none of these idiots ever even play KSP1?" I was ridiculed for supposing such a thing. Vindicated.

    • @kjgoebel7098
      @kjgoebel7098 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +31

      "Do you have over 1000 hours in KSP?"
      "That XKCD where it's 'knowledge of orbital mechanics' as a function of time, that was pretty funny, huh?"
      "What is your favorite sci-fi movie, and why is it The Martian?"
      "Do you even lithobrake, bro?"

    • @p_serdiuk
      @p_serdiuk 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +14

      Tbh considering a lot of gamedev involves coding that's not necessarily specific, having decent hours in Factorio should also qualify

    • @jonc2914
      @jonc2914 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +5

      ​@@CJSHMnot to mention SHADOW kissed KSP2's a$$ up until now... he supported a game he knew was junk.

    • @cybisz2883
      @cybisz2883 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +8

      Reminds me of what Netflix did with their Witcher series. The execs didn't give a damn about the original works - they just wanted to milk a beloved franchise. It's the same story with Take Two.

  • @danieldorn9989
    @danieldorn9989 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +426

    Squad was able to build KSP1 in cave
    with a box of scraps

    • @livethefuture2492
      @livethefuture2492 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +28

      😂 That's so ironically true!
      There's another comment here that went something along the lines...
      "Squad a marketing company, went all on producing a fantastic game
      And take-two a game production co. went all in on producing marketing..."

    • @brendanrockwood6535
      @brendanrockwood6535 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +25

      “I’m sorry Mr TakeTwo Games, I’m not Squad.”

    • @quality9299
      @quality9299 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +8

      which took 10 years lol

    • @chaptap8376
      @chaptap8376 5 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      ok
      i see

    • @rileygladue3979
      @rileygladue3979 5 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      @@quality9299 Still impressive considering how minute their capabilities and budget were compared to what TakeTwo could've mustered with the lift of a finger

  • @electrifiedspam
    @electrifiedspam 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +59

    I can't believe that an IP as valuable as KSP will be left to rot.

    • @tsm688
      @tsm688 5 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      It happens all the time. They don't care about old customers, only new ones. which is kind of how business works

    • @Mepharias
      @Mepharias 5 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      @@tsm688 infinite growth galore

    • @tsm688
      @tsm688 5 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@Mepharias Eh, they're not selling subscriptions, so this is just plain transactions, not corporate bullshit

  • @merinsan
    @merinsan 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +325

    I work in software development, and any time I mention refactoring, management gets scared.
    So I don't mention it any more, and just do it.
    They wanted better error messages, I refactored the import function that was generating them!

    • @tiberius8390
      @tiberius8390 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +36

      I don't really understand how they can be scared or maybe it's the communication part. In technical design the design engineers do exactly the same. If they come up with a better design they "throw away" the old one. It's not like you literally throw it away, but it is digitally stored anyway, so in case somebody wants it it can be recovered.
      Also higher ups in the management who have no technical insight should not have a decision in those refactoring processes anyway. If it does not change the "cutomer requirements" or whatever you want to call it in game development but potentially improves things it should not be their concern. That's the decision of a lead engineer. Someone who really understands the design/code/... on a technical level and has the ability to decide what the better solution is.

    • @thygrrr
      @thygrrr 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +29

      It's YOUR responsibility to do it.
      Just do it. All the time. Don't tell anyone that it's different from business as usual.
      It is business as usual.

    • @mga149
      @mga149 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +44

      We see the same in IT. As soon as we even hint at rebuilding something now that we've learned from out mistakes, it instantly becomes impossible to get approvals. Endless meeting on justifying why. Usually ending with; we'll get to is sometime. Which is always after the problem or band-aid solution we wanted to rebuild correctly causes a major outage. Then we get blamed for never fixing it.
      It's like they want to keep the crappiest version of the system that they can.
      I think some of it comes from not wanting to waste resources on something that doesn't directly generate revenue. Other times it because an exec remember that one huge problem that was caused by an engineer wanting to refactor something, therefor ALL refactoring MUST be bad.

    • @Ikbeneengeit
      @Ikbeneengeit 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

      Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission!

    • @Innero
      @Innero 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +5

      That’s just normal. Don’t mention it, just do your work. Who cares what you are writing, it’s the code, it will work on the demo.

  • @martinvranovsky7085
    @martinvranovsky7085 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +171

    It always amazes me how these huge multi-billion companies can screw up basic project management. I see it often enough in my own line of work and I just don't get it. It's not rocket science.

    • @rainbowkrampus
      @rainbowkrampus 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +78

      When you get a business degree, it comes with a mandatory lobotomy.

    • @OGPatriot03
      @OGPatriot03 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +31

      The whole corporate video game industry is just intellectually rotten and lacking passion, I suppose that's what happens when non-gamers join the industry purely as a means to make a living.

    • @fleetadmiralj
      @fleetadmiralj 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +13

      @@rainbowkrampus I mean, not really, but this is kind of the problem, though, right? When you have business people doing project management, the priorities are not longer making sure the *project* is *managed* well (as the job description would lead you to believe) but to minimize costs. And if there is a choice between cutting costs and managing a project well, guess which one gets picked?

    • @rainbowkrampus
      @rainbowkrampus 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@fleetadmiralj In this case as in countless others, the penny pinching resulted in a ballooning budget and massive delays and the eventual failure of the project.
      This has been a running trend in media production for decades now.
      I'm pretty sure it's because of the whole business schools producing brain dead morons thing.

    • @martinvranovsky7085
      @martinvranovsky7085 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +10

      @@fleetadmiralj Not quite, though. I have some experience in project management and 'managing the budget' (i. e. maximizing the gross margin, really) *is* one of the responsibilities of a PM. The problem is when people who are above the PMs see gross margin as the only relevant metric.

  • @Georgesspierre
    @Georgesspierre 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +263

    A stable ksp game with thousands of parts in crafts would be incredible. So much potential thrown right in the bin.

    • @calluxdoaron1903
      @calluxdoaron1903 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +16

      *cough*
      Juno: New Origins
      *cough*

    • @Dan-yk6sy
      @Dan-yk6sy 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      I just wanted new star systems and interstellar travel, maybe some resource mining / refueling.

    • @oberonpanopticon
      @oberonpanopticon 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +8

      @@Dan-yk6sycough
      Mods
      cough

    • @alexsiemers7898
      @alexsiemers7898 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

      @@calluxdoaron1903the problem with JNO is that you end up using those thousands of parts just trying to give your ships the same amount of visual depth as KSP’s stock parts. If you try building in JNO like you do in KSP you end up with very flat looking ships

    • @davescott7680
      @davescott7680 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +5

      ​@@Dan-yk6syI just wanted a less janky KSP1 with optimisations and all the core QOL mods baked in.
      Insitu resource extraction, colonies and orbital construction would have been nice.
      The ability to create automated systems to launch and refuel depots and land reusable rockets, would have been incredible.
      Interstellar could have been a stretch goal expansion much later down the route. As interstellar would need all those systems in working properly to really work.

  • @eskandare1968
    @eskandare1968 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +51

    Hello, Eskandare here (Kerbal Konstructs, Kerbinside Remastered, Eskadare Aerospace) I appreciate your shedding some light on what happened with development. I seriously hope that this someday gets rebooted fresh with a solid structured code base. Since Take 2 is a business they are more likely to go and invest in a new money making fad then what they misperceived as the next Minecraft. I think what will likely happen is a similar game may be developed with racoons instead of kerbals, who knows.

    • @HuntingTarg
      @HuntingTarg 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +6

      Yet still hold on to the IP just so noone else can make a profit (and possibly a good reputation) from it and thus show them up.

    • @thebluehat6814
      @thebluehat6814 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +8

      "we want this to be the next Minecraft!"
      >10 Million USD budget
      >2 years development time
      ???
      what the fuсk were they thinking???

    • @PrograError
      @PrograError 5 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      @@thebluehat6814 except minecraft, and mojang, is still living on the original game... nearly every single venture is a bust... except for refactoring and screwing around within the existing codebase while rolling out updates for the community which is getting more unhappy and getting aged out.

    • @bumblingbongo7969
      @bumblingbongo7969 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Racoons would be p cool

  • @kushnkanopy8940
    @kushnkanopy8940 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +122

    i wanna live in a world where the publishers doesn’t think that an unfinished game should be $79.99

    • @kelly4187
      @kelly4187 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      Especially when all they've done is work on the graphics with no real gameplay. Basically Ksp2 offered nothing we didnt already have in KSP1 with free mods.

    • @theyellow432
      @theyellow432 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      Kinda reminds me of vic3, except that the game isnt dead

    • @XentorAntarix
      @XentorAntarix 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      @@xabhax That is not correct. It is not Early Acess itselfe, it is how you use and do it.
      See Baldurs Gate 3. One part of it`s sucess was the integration of the Communety.
      Ah and see this other Game ehm... how was the name.. ehm kkkkerbal sssspace programm (1).... ah yes. Well how long was this in Early Acess?
      but the differenct was:
      It had too an early Acess Price at this time.

    • @XentorAntarix
      @XentorAntarix 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      @@xabhax Perhaps I wanted simple not to write down the tons of other sucesses, beacause a few good examples would lead to the point? And people could use this magical power called: "Look for more yourselfe". Yes yes I know... I always overestimate the selfeinitiative and inteligence of my Co Speciemembers. My error, appologies.

    • @tsm688
      @tsm688 5 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@xabhax I don't regret a single cent I spent on the KSP1 preorder. I was one of the first five preorders and got years of entertainment from it.
      KSP2's managers can do @#%$ a rake. They sold me nothing but what I already had.

  • @fiveoneecho
    @fiveoneecho 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +282

    I wish there was some legal framework for reclaiming IP from companies that royally fucked it up like this. I wish HarvestR could get his Kerbals back for his big idea for a sequel space game…
    Edit: I guess there is and it’s called a contract, but that requires foresight lol
    I’m saying I wish he could specifically get it back for free since he has talked about how personal Kerbals are to his childhood and how it’s so much more than just the little green guys we know and love today. He has publicly talked about how he wants to make a spiritual successor to KSP with everything KSP2 said it was going to have, but with the announcement of KSP2, it was never more than just something unrealistic he had thought about. Now that KSP2 is pretty dead, he said he would like to make something like it, but planned out better, and it’s sad that he can’t use his Kerbals.

    • @arieldario3849
      @arieldario3849 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +10

      Dont forget the "few millions" for it!

    • @Helperbot-2000
      @Helperbot-2000 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +25

      yes waiter! one IP reclamation for the Fallout series please!

    • @throwback19841
      @throwback19841 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +23

      they can't patent space and much as I love the little green bastards I don't need em. you can make an excellent accessible space sim without kerbals

    • @rustyshaklford9557
      @rustyshaklford9557 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +14

      Open-source versions of games like XCom, Roller Coaster Tycoon 2, Doom, and some others simply pull assets from a user-provided directory of the original game, so that's one option.

    • @danilooliveira6580
      @danilooliveira6580 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

      they can claim the owner of the IP is not doing anything with it. that is why a lot of companies release shit games with the name of dead franchises, remakes, rereleases, or even completely unrelated games with the same name. it's a way to protect their property. though I'm not sure if they can straight up LOSE the ownership of the IP or if they can't complain if someone copies that IP.

  • @FearlessSon
    @FearlessSon 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +201

    Earlier this year, I was in the pipeline to interview for a position at Intercept Games. After getting through the Take Two vetting process I was ready for the Intercept interviews. Then I got a call from a Take Two recruiter saying that they were pausing hiring for the moment, "pending financial review". I heard nothing further from them until a few weeks ago when I got an email saying that the position had been eliminated, thank you for your interest, etc.

    • @jonmoore176
      @jonmoore176 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      Interesting insight, thanks!

    • @phutureproof
      @phutureproof 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +7

      Crazy, I was too but I got sidetracked selling my cure for cancer to bill gates who did take me on to rewrite windows 3.1 using a mixture of Rust and GoLang with a hint of braille thrown in.

    • @legolegs87
      @legolegs87 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +20

      Wow, the HR actually contacting to deliver a denial message instead of remaining silent? Fascinating.

    • @elliotgillum
      @elliotgillum 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

      😂 that's insane me too.​@@phutureproof

    • @adamredwine774
      @adamredwine774 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +7

      When I was finishing my Master's my top pick employer was a big electric utility. I did three rounds of interviews all with positive responses and then they just fell off the map; stopped returning emails, no sign of life at all. I found work elsewhere and about a year later the company announced they were selling a huge part of their business and had been on a worldwide hiring freeze for a full year. I was disappointed not to get the job I hoped for, but it's probably better than getting that job and then getting fired a few months later in downsizing.

  • @skoll6098
    @skoll6098 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +320

    He wanted wobbly rockets?! Perhaps they should have let potential buyers vote on it.
    Those responsible at the top of the decision-making chain really made a spectacular effort to drive the thing into the wall.

    • @ShadowZone
      @ShadowZone  7 หลายเดือนก่อน +156

      Wobbly rockets aside: ALWAYS verify your assumptions about user experience when designing software.

    • @KernelFault
      @KernelFault 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +10

      @@ShadowZone I see you don't live anywhere near Redmond.

    • @durbeshpatel3047
      @durbeshpatel3047 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +53

      They didnt see it as a serious game, they thought kerbals and their rockets should be goofy and silly

    • @Coolproko
      @Coolproko 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +18

      Also, I wished the game had a more realistic art style, the current one is too cartoony for me.

    • @TheAechBomb
      @TheAechBomb 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      while I'm not a massive fan of wobbly rockets, I think they do belong in KSP by default

  • @HHHamiller
    @HHHamiller 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +21

    Sounds like the management had absolutely no idea about software development projects:
    - If you have have a long running software product, you need a clean rewrite of the code base every few years, because the old code base becomes unmaintainable and is based on obsolote technologies. If you do a sequel for a game, that is exactly the time to do so. It's debatable whether you can at least mine the old codebase for code snippets and problem solutions, but that code parts should also be updated to current coding practices.
    - You will repeat all mistakes of the developers of the old product if you start with fresh developers.
    - And if you simply couldn't do some features with the old version, because the architecture didn't support it without massive changes, than that is one more reason for a rewrite. I think Squad would have loved to add colonies and multi-player in expansions, if the KSP 1 code base had allowed it.

  • @Felice_Enellen
    @Felice_Enellen 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +10

    I'm a veteran of the Seattle-area game industry and I'm familiar with some of the players in this story (no I will not name names or doxx myself, don't ask). I've also been lucky to be privy to a lot of industry inside info and dirt (not just here but nationally and internationally) over the years since the early 90s, so I know how things work and how publishers manipulate studios to make money for themselves.
    My best guess about what actually happened is that the suits at Take 2, who rather infamously seem to lack moral compasses, were probably in the mood to cut the KSP1 devs loose so they could hire a cheaper, smaller team to write a sequel that simply built off of their work with shallow, largely-cosmetic changes that would somehow justify selling the same spaceship-shaped cash cow for full price again and then to sell a bunch of cheaply produced -milk- DLC as well.
    I would bet the secrecy around KSP2 was not intended to avoid distracting the KSP1 team, but rather to keep them from realizing that the rug was going to be pulled out from under them once they finished servicing KSP1. Typically if a studio thinks it's going to suffer layoffs, it will quickly hemorrhage its top talent, who can find work anywhere anytime. I imagine Take 2 shopped around to find a competent but small studio that needed work and was willing to do it for cheap, and given that Uber had recently put out its Planetary Annihilation space-based RTS to meh reviews, it would have been a likely candidate in the eyes of the kind of C-suite person who sees two vaguely-similar things and thinks they are sufficiently alike that one can easily replace the other. Except that seldom works with engineering or design.
    The rest of it would have been Take 2 bungling repeatedly when their ill-conceived plans didn't come to fruition, time and again, and finally giving up and just letting the KSP1 people take over again instead of dumping them, but it was probably too late to save the game at that point. Or at least too late to save face, though perhaps not too late to fix it somehow if they stick with it.

    • @HuntingTarg
      @HuntingTarg 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      Thanks for your perspective.
      Longtime gamer misses Sierra Studios.
      Hope Homeworld 3 shames all the suits.

    • @Felice_Enellen
      @Felice_Enellen 6 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@HuntingTarg I dunno, we all thought Baldur's Gate 3 could clue them in to what they're doing wrong, but I don't hear any real rumblings to that effect yet.

  • @piggyinthemiddle
    @piggyinthemiddle 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +90

    Such a bummer guys. I'm part of the gang. I have 5k hours in KSP. I've modded it to have all the features KSP2 promised, so when they released an unfinished game there were features promised that I was prepared to wait for. Now it seems I'll never play KSP2. If you said that 2 years ago I wouldn't have believed you. On another note, I never imagined "that weird guy who keeps making Massive space ships" would become the public voice of KSP2. Well played ShadowZone old chap!

    • @laffontmaxime3588
      @laffontmaxime3588 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Hello, do you have some tips to install a lot of mods because i feel that after reaching lot of skills in ksp the limits is the bug or errors bringed by lot of mods. Sorry my english is bad

    • @piggyinthemiddle
      @piggyinthemiddle 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      @@laffontmaxime3588 Its a difficult one. but i can give you one tip. you can install a lot of mods, but its better if they're by the same author, that way they're usually optimised to work together. Usually its not the number of mods but the number of different modmakers that is your problem

  • @TemporalWolf
    @TemporalWolf 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +95

    This is like watching an NTSB report on a trainwreck... just walking through all of the minor and major contributing factors that lead to the derailment.
    Sad the outcome, but thanks for insight: confirming a lot of things people suspected, and shedding new light on a lot of things that help explain how things went so wrong.

    • @andrasbiro3007
      @andrasbiro3007 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      Except NTSB reports don't have things like trains running on rails that don't exist, having square wheels, being shot at by fighter jets, and getting nuked at the end.

  • @IstasPumaNevada
    @IstasPumaNevada 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +57

    So the TL:DR is that it's Take Two's fault.
    Because even if there were also problems with the intermediary people... those people were entirely chosen by, monetarily-limited by, controlled by, directed by, and constrained by Take Two.

  • @LifeAsANoun
    @LifeAsANoun 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

    I fell in love with Kerbal Space Program, hard! As a parent I saw it as a natural successor to Legos -- like, "play this and nurture the engineer in you, babe." I couldn't help but be extremely excited at the prospects of having a team fix all the really simple to understand issues with it in KSP2...
    The lesson: never get excited for anything ever again...

  • @offendersofficial
    @offendersofficial 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +958

    the modern games industry is so cooked.

    • @edheadgaming8411
      @edheadgaming8411 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +13

      yup

    • @Coolproko
      @Coolproko 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +11

      Pretty much.

    • @sciencecompliance235
      @sciencecompliance235 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +138

      It's not just the game industry. This arrogance from management types exists in many different industries.

    • @thesolitaryowl
      @thesolitaryowl 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +43

      Not the indie scene!

    • @RyanCole-x7k
      @RyanCole-x7k 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +41

      ​@thesolitaryowl Indie scene is thriving, and some of the games made by indie developers are better then that of a AAA studio. I'm actually working on an indie game rn lol

  • @Yaivenov
    @Yaivenov 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +541

    "Let modders save the game" is a very Bethesda development strategy.

    • @carl8703
      @carl8703 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +42

      See, the difference there is that Bethesda baked modding into their game ever since the days of Morrowind. KSP started as an agile experiment that was struggling with doing something that no one ever did before, to do that while also supporting mods would have been the death of the project.

    • @erkinalp
      @erkinalp 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@carl8703CKAN supports KSP2 as well, it lets you use BepInEx with KSP

    • @manvslife271
      @manvslife271 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +27

      And just like how Betdesda acted with Starfield, trying to cut corners with the hope of "Modders will fix it" to have modders basically be unpaid workers will only make said modders step away from the game entirely.

    • @Brixxter
      @Brixxter 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +30

      For modders to save a game the game needs to have potential to begin with. Some high profile mods for Starfield have already been cancelled, and that game was technically functional unlike KSP2

    • @croustibat682
      @croustibat682 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

      colossal order is doing the same with cities skylines 2 unfortunately.

  • @sciencecompliance235
    @sciencecompliance235 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +208

    I can't believe they thought they had a successor to Minecraft on their hands. It's like the people who thought this had never played Minecraft or KSP, at least not for much time.
    KSP was always going to be more niche than Minecraft, for multiple reasons.

    • @elitecereal
      @elitecereal 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +56

      Comparing KSP to Minecraft is like comparing GTA to Tetris. It doesn't make sense. They're both completely different games and the only notable similarity between the two is that they're both sandboxish games.

    • @Niosus
      @Niosus 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +34

      It explains why Take Two bought the IP. That never made sense to me. They didn't make games like this. And well, currently, they still don't.
      I hope they'll get rid of the IP so another publisher can pick it up. I was hoping for a scenario like IO Interactive where the devs bought the Hitman IP from the original publisher and went independent. But given that the devs for KSP were barely even invested in the product... Maybe it's better if some other team gets a stab at it...

    • @adora_was_taken
      @adora_was_taken 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +14

      @@Niosus realistically they'll just own the IP indefinitely and occasionally release a bit of merch or tiny anniversary content

    • @carl8703
      @carl8703 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      I disagree, I think it's wholly possible to franchise the hell out of the game, I just fear what happens if ever some greedy investor was to do that.

    • @Niosus
      @Niosus 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +6

      @@adora_was_taken Ehhh it depends. KSP is pretty much dead now. They alienated the fans, and nobody else has heard about it. If someone makes them a decent offer, anything can happen.
      I hope a worthy successor gets made, whatever its name ends up being. After all, the game itself and the community around it is what matters. A few good writers can figure out another great setting with fun characters.

  • @P1XeLIsNotALittleSquare
    @P1XeLIsNotALittleSquare 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +53

    Chuck Noble leaving the project is the most healthy thing he could do. When management start to tell you how to do your job - you show a middle finger and leave.

    • @rorykeegan1895
      @rorykeegan1895 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Only if you're a dickhead.
      The smart engineer shows management why they are wrong, and how to do it properly. That engineer ends up with a pay rise, and your engineer ends up in the unemployment line and acquires a reputation for being difficult and arrogant.

  • @ElTurbandito
    @ElTurbandito 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +31

    KSP 2 has the same development vibe that disney star wars has. The soulless corporate husks whose entire thought process revolves around how much milk they can get out of the cow start feeding it sawdust to save money and spray it down with lead based paint for easy PR wins and are surprised the cash cow dies moments after they get their hands on it.

    • @tsm688
      @tsm688 5 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      it's not dead. the movies are kind of terrible but they got lots of other stuff going on. some of it actually interesting.

  • @Debilitator47
    @Debilitator47 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +91

    I started playing KSP 1 after a couple years of watching Scott Manley and Matt Lowne. I got into and was enjoying myself early on. The irony, to me, is I never took a physics course. When I first achieved orbit, it was actually a triumph. Then for forEVER achieving a rendezvous between two separate launches became a huge hurdle. When, after watching videos, trying and failing, and trying, and failing, try fail try fail...finally, FINALLY I achieved a rendezvous and docking. It was a major triumph. I landed on the Mun and Duna and MInmus and crashed into Eve before I achieved that successful docking (and yes, I accidentally one launched my way through most of the inner planets, including returns, before I finally docked two ships). I literally stood up and jumped for joy and was laughing and it was a MOMENT.
    I was very much looking forward to more of those moments in KSP2. I bought it when it became available. I held on, through doubt and 'it just needs more time to cook, they're making progress...' Then the layoffs. And now this excellent expose. It feels BAD, to have reached my age, and have a game/tool that I enjoyed LEARNING from, that made learning fun and feel actually like an accomplishment, and then that game's sequel just falls apart like this, mis-handled from the start. It's left me feeling upended. Sad to see the way KSP2 has turned out.

    • @JD96893
      @JD96893 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +8

      This comment makes me want to riot in front of T2 headquarters for their colossal blunder. I mean if you think about this from your perspective of learning and inspiring, like we all did in Ksp1, it is such a loss. Ksp2 could have inspired a new generation of engineers and astronauts. Or inspired kids to study astrophysics or astronomy. Not to mention teaching people about orbital mechanics, something completely alien to the average person.

    • @bvenable78
      @bvenable78 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      @Debilitator47 ^^^ so much this ^^^

    • @timmy3822
      @timmy3822 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      I remember making my first orbital docking, that eureka moment was a hell of a drug. I remember watching Scott’s Interstellar series and it scares to em think that’s like well over a decade ago now.

    • @timmy3822
      @timmy3822 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      I remember making my first orbital docking, that eureka moment was a hell of a drug. I remember watching Scott’s Interstellar series and it scares to em think that’s like well over a decade ago now.

    • @piggyinthemiddle
      @piggyinthemiddle 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      you're not alone mate

  • @andrewhofmann5453
    @andrewhofmann5453 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +89

    In 2003, I went through the same thing with a game studio I co-owned in Austin, TX. Our investors kept changing our direction, ran up cost and eventually shut us down. We couldn't tell the community what was going on, we couldn't do anything to save the game, sometimes I wonder if it was intentional.
    I wont go back into the game business, too cut throat.

    • @MasterLPG
      @MasterLPG 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +19

      Must've been for the Intellectual Property of your studio, as no company who buys a company strictly for it's IP will want to keep it's staff around.
      *The 'failure' that 'forced' them to 'regrettably' shut down their newly-purchased studio is all for show to prevent getting into legal trouble for terminating a viable business intentionally in certain countries where they have legislation to protect it's labour from such actions.*
      *That's the short and gist of it anyhow.*

    • @andrasbiro3007
      @andrasbiro3007 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +10

      That sucks. I've been on a project that got killed at the last minute because the company went bankrupt. It hurt because it was a super fun game, and had a feature I still haven't seen in other games after almost 20 years. It was an RTS/FPS hybrid, you could switch between the two modes seamlessly, and could control your units in both. And there was no compromise in functionality or graphics in either mode. And it had a physics engine that was like 5-10 years ahead of it's time. And it had a super efficient graphics engine too, which allowed it to run on affordable PCs.

    • @BrokenToe
      @BrokenToe 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      What games did you make?

    • @cslpchr
      @cslpchr 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      What was the company called?

    • @HuntingTarg
      @HuntingTarg 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +6

      ​@@MasterLPGUnfortunately, we're in the time of 'IP milking', where executives and investors are seeking to 'mine' rather than 'build' products with a loyal following and brand recognition. In consumer markets, building comes BEFORE mining, not after.

  • @AtilaElari
    @AtilaElari 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +80

    I am astounded to realize just how much devs were barred from any sort of communication with anyone. This is just... most un-Kerbal thing that could be done.
    An open development cycle would get them scores of highly qualified people in love with the game who would probably be fine working for below-average salary because it is Kerbal. Instead they had to hire low-tiers who knew nothing of the game. And for what? What did they gain from it?
    This is maddening. Not because it is greedy or corpo-bulshit, but because it is plain stupid and had no redeeming sides to it. It was just bad on all accounts. And this hurts my soul.
    Maybe someone someday will liberate the IP from TakeTwo and do it justice. Until then... well, KSP1 is as good as it ever was.

    • @bartolomeothesatyr
      @bartolomeothesatyr 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +8

      KSP1 is arguably better now than it has ever been before.

    • @Crayonberry1212
      @Crayonberry1212 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +7

      This is like when a book is made into a movie...and NONE of the actors, director, producer, editors, anybody is familiar with the original.

    • @HuntingTarg
      @HuntingTarg 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      Hear hear.
      Running the project development in a manner completely opposite the way that worked for the first title (open- vs. closed-comms) and shutting out all the original talent was a formula for failure. It's probably easier to see in hindsight, but the buck has to stop somewhere, and the first people to identify project problems are in the best position to either play hot potato or Harry Truman.

    • @thebluehat6814
      @thebluehat6814 6 หลายเดือนก่อน

      yeah, no, take 2 will never let go of an IP they themselves ran into the ground lol. They'll be catching flak from the investors

    • @HuntingTarg
      @HuntingTarg 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      @@thebluehat6814 The investors stand to gain more from recovering some of their losses by selling the IP rather than holding onto it and hoping that 'this will all blow over' and starting over in 2-10 years. Holding on at this point is out of stupidity, or stubbornness, or both.

  • @AshenElk
    @AshenElk 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

    As a project manager, it really resonated with me when you talked about them jerking the engineers around.
    The number one thing I've learned about delivering a good project is to give people stability and the space to focus.

  • @Argosh
    @Argosh 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +21

    "What were they doing for 7 years?" Enjoying a close view of an industry standard management failure that then gets projected onto the folks that never had any choice or input...

    • @HuntingTarg
      @HuntingTarg 6 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Yet still took FOREVER to produce something salable.
      th-cam.com/video/GOkk9kSsrYk/w-d-xo.htmlfeature=shared

  • @pattschetter
    @pattschetter 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +26

    Not having the KSP1 guys involved till so late is absolutely insane to me, as a mechanical engineer whose career has mostly been midcycle product improvements and new-product development. I learned so very much from the older guys who could look at what had been put on the test stand, see how it failed, and say just from instinct "why don't you take what you've got and do (this / that / other thing)", or remembered ideas from before my time that maybe we young guys were re-inventing and remembered why those ideas didn't go forward.

    • @beertlont776
      @beertlont776 5 หลายเดือนก่อน

      When your stupid you get greedy. Greediness makes you even more stupid. Don't worry it's not a never ending circle. More a snake chasing its own tail. It wil starve eventually.

  • @TheBeardyPenguin
    @TheBeardyPenguin 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +52

    Incredibly well researched video. I'm disappointed, but not surprised.
    As a software engineer for an aerospace firm myself, I've encountered all the same attitudes from upper management that you and the KSP 2 devs have. People who don't understand software making non-negotiable decisions about software just never ends well, but it's unfortunately all too common.
    I've been on the receiving end of refusals to requests to rewrite code, followed by everything built on the sand foundation inevitably not working and having to spend far more time patching bugs than it would have taken to just rewrite the foundation as initially suggested.
    Not consulting or bringing on any of the original developers then being surprised when they encountered the same problems was just plain insanity.
    Glad to see that myself and Scott agree on what we wanted from KSP 2. I would have been perfectly happy with just a prettier, more performant version of KSP 1 with some more quality of life features, better tutorials, and a modding API. Interstellar and colonies I'd have gladly paid for as DLCs - after all, they'd be much larger in scope than the KSP 1 DLCs were.
    Take Two really have killed the golden goose they had with KSP and the overwhelmingly passionate fanbase it had cultivated. It's very sad to see.

    • @makssachs8914
      @makssachs8914 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      The idea of such attitudes being present in an aerospace company concerns me. Maybe I should stick to a bicycle for now.

    • @TheBeardyPenguin
      @TheBeardyPenguin 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +7

      @@makssachs8914 I don't work for them, but you've heard of Boeing right? :P
      Such attitudes are present everywhere there are software engineers

    • @makssachs8914
      @makssachs8914 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      @@TheBeardyPenguin looks like I’m stuck putting up with DB.

    • @Dman6779
      @Dman6779 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +5

      ​@@TheBeardyPenguincant wait for the new raytheon drone to mistake my house for a russian military HQ in WW3 and i get lauched into the stratosphere in the form of a fine red mist

    • @nikolaideianov5092
      @nikolaideianov5092 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

      ​@@Dman6779or to somehow confuse a dog with an scud d

  • @profwaldone
    @profwaldone 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +148

    Hold on, it was well known in the community that adding multiplayer to ksp 1 was near impossible without severe overhauling. It was also know from mods that other solar systems can get floating point errors and other such issues.
    So was the original idea for ksp 2 to be a paid bug patch?
    Doomed from the start is an understatement. This project was doomed wel before the running shoes were even tied on.

    • @D1ndo
      @D1ndo 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +26

      Exactly. And who started the scope creep even while fully knowing it's impossible to build with the budget and time constraints? Nate Simpson. Yet this video and some other people still try to defend him, smh. He's the nr1. screw up man.

    • @tweda4
      @tweda4 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +32

      ​@@D1ndoNate Simpson was asked what features he wanted to bring into the game. He's not the boss, he was basically just the ideas guy. It's the responsibility of management to establish with the developers what is or isn't possible and make decisions accordingly.
      Don't get me wrong. I thought the idea to have multiplayer built into KSP2 was moronic, because even without having played it, I knew it was probably janky as all hell, and would be both difficult and arguably pointless, but I don't blame Nate for putting it on his wishlist.

    • @pierrotA
      @pierrotA 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +20

      Most people do not seem to understand that modifying very complex codes to add new functionalities is generally harder that making a new code from scratch...
      Especially multiplayer, you need to replicate a lot of variables and events... If you do not think about it while making your code, better to start again.
      It's like making a flying drone by modifying a TV instead of building it from nothing and expecting to finish quicker... It make no sences.

    • @RandomPickles
      @RandomPickles 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +6

      Yeah. Multi-player was the dumbest choice ever. Said it was going to be the downfall since the start while impressionable teens who loved fortnight laughed at me in moron.

    • @danilooliveira6580
      @danilooliveira6580 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +10

      @@D1ndo and if you watched the video it wasn't his choice to stick with the original code, it was forced on them by management.

  • @FireDragonDoL
    @FireDragonDoL 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +5

    Thank you for the video. I'm in line with Scott Manley here, replacing planets and graphic improvement mods were core, although having played Juno, they could have taken some of the ideas to improve the UX. A big deal was the "integrated" autopilot mod. It makes a lot more sense to control the spaceship by setting a parameter than by holding that S letter forever.
    My dream is still interstellar travel. Dyson Sphere Program scratched that itch and I was really hoping to see that in Kerbal Space Program.
    I think there has been an overlook of things that make the game actually fun. For example, it seems like they went full in on the "inner physics" of a spaceship (forgive my layman terms) and that caused enormous performance problems (8 engines would cause 2 FPS) and the result were spaceships that could easily crumble on themselves.
    I have yet to hear a person that says "it's fun to keep adding struts to your spaceship". By comparison, Juno has no inner physics, but the game is fun and apparently can run on mobile! (I never actually tried on mobile). Now, KSP is more realistic, so it is desirable, but not at the cost of making the game less fun.
    And finally, why can't we have dynamic fuel tanks: it is a feature in Juno, it was done by mods in KSP, it should be the default, instead no: we have an editor where 90% of the parts are fuel tanks of different size.
    I'm so frustrated I can't get a refund because I played 16 hours (of frustration), all of this because I wanted to give the game a good attempt before giving up

    • @tsm688
      @tsm688 5 หลายเดือนก่อน

      If that were core, then KSP2 succeeded. Graphical facelifts are things they definitely did.
      Unfortunately, that's about **all** they did, and it turned out, despite everyone saying so, that's not the interesting part of the game...

  • @IAmNumber4000
    @IAmNumber4000 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

    Not to sound like an "uhhh aykschyually I knew this was going to happen" type person, but something felt very wrong from the start, as the first trailers promised tons of incredible features like interstellar travel and colony building but they didn't show any gameplay or demonstrate that they had built a solid enough foundation to support such extravagant and complex features.

  • @SpainSpace
    @SpainSpace 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +62

    Not going to every buy anything not just tied to, but related to Take Two Interactive ever again. Hell, I might not even pirate them out of spite. KSP is more than a videogame for me.

    • @STRIDER_503
      @STRIDER_503 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      I think Take 2 already had a bad name well before the KSP2 scandal was a thing...

    • @spiritoffire7432
      @spiritoffire7432 6 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Scroll, one dong...
      Key, two dongs...
      Sword, uh, uhh..... t-three dongs..?

  • @FrederickKoehlmann
    @FrederickKoehlmann 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +34

    LOL, as a retired developer, I can honestly say that nothing fucks up code more than bad management decisions!

    • @martinn.6082
      @martinn.6082 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +5

      Those hiring decisions were also crazy. A team of pure juniors won't produce anything great without a few seniors by their side.

    • @Izithel
      @Izithel 5 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@martinn.6082 It just screams of a management that doesn't have any knowledge or understanding of whatever they are managing.

    • @csibesz07
      @csibesz07 5 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      Looks like they couldn't have done better job at fking this up. The sad thing, this is a positive feedback loop.
      Management really only has one job: putting the right people in charge. If they consistently fail at this, they are not managers, just bunch of greedy monkeys.
      These wrong hiring decisions in key areas, make the loop inescapable, regardless how many people work on project.

  • @Furebel
    @Furebel 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +108

    I don't understand, why the secrecy? Why was it so important that they couldn't even contact original KSP1 devs...

    • @olegshkurenko-0448
      @olegshkurenko-0448 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +32

      To sell more dlc for ksp1 i guess

    • @fleetadmiralj
      @fleetadmiralj 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +17

      @@olegshkurenko-0448 I mean, as far as secrecy with the public, that part kind of makes sense to a degree. The no contact with KSP1 people, however, does not. I mean, I guess management was like "we don't want to make them distracted" but like dude. They're the ones who can actually answer the questions!

    • @t_z1030
      @t_z1030 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +39

      There is a certain kind of manager whose highest priority is maintaining their authority and control, and this smells like that to me. Veterans from the original project would be an authority by default, and that threatens the control freak. This is purely speculative of course, but why else would you shoot yourself in both feet with a 12 gauge like that except for stupid personal reasons.

    • @exalosm
      @exalosm 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      Isn't it understandable that some managers wanted to make all the dumbest development mistakes they could? It's strange that they didn't call Sweet Bay Inc.

    • @DeanRockne
      @DeanRockne 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      I'm guessing part of it was wanting to keep KSP2 from poaching devs from KSP1 DLC. If you were a KSP1 dev working on a DLC and you found out KSP2 was coming in less than 2 years, you'd probably want to jump ship to that team because there wasn't going to be more KSP1 work soon and KSP2 offered better long term opportunities.

  • @AeVinxce
    @AeVinxce 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +32

    As a professional dev, I realized It was bound to death at the moment they talked about multiplayer being added vary late in the roadmap...
    This kind of feature MUST be added from the ground up, extensively tested through all the development phases to be provide an smooth game experience.
    One cannot simply make a game then add multiplayer on top of it like adding sprinkle on cupcakes.
    I have a profound hatred for Take-Two that killed a very promising sequel for my favorite game...
    I'd love to see the KSP2 Unity project sources opened to the community, where passionate game devs - like myself - could share a bit of their time to build brick by brick the game we all dream of... How ingenuous of me...

    • @tsm688
      @tsm688 5 หลายเดือนก่อน

      I assume they mentioned this well after they told us multiplayer was "already in the bones of it"

  • @Knux02
    @Knux02 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    Im getting second hand PTSD here. Sounds like an absolute trainwreck of bad decisions over bad decisions from people that had no idea what they were doing. From hiring juniors only to taking over the KSP1 codebase to barely having any Kerbal fans on board to the absurd policy to not talk to any veterans ins absolutely insane. As a Software engineer myself, i would have just told them to screw themselves. Its a miracle that this project was released at all, my god. If you would tell me "make a sucessor and make it fail as hard as possible" i would have done exactly that. SMH.
    Feeling really so sad for the whole team. or rather the two teams that were put into this misery.

  • @Orion-CSAT
    @Orion-CSAT 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +49

    Everything is making sense, watching this. Very well done and informative video, thank you!

  • @andrewcyrbag
    @andrewcyrbag 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +16

    The fact that the fanbase/playerbase is relying on ShadowZone for any form of communication is very telling. T2 refuses to comment, Intercept probably got NDA'ed to all hell and back and very likely will never chime in. As much as I also want KSP2 to succeed, I think LinuxGuruGamer's "not with Take Two" comment is the sad reality.
    EDIT: I can tell you worked really hard on this video and I'm sure much of the community appreciates it. You're doing more to clean up this mess than the actual PR/Marketing team.

  • @pebegou
    @pebegou 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +35

    "DID IT JUST DO A KERBAL?!"

  • @Dumbrarere
    @Dumbrarere 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

    Personally, I think the WORST mistake in all of this, was selling the KSP IP to Take Two in the first place.

  • @SB-cz9vo
    @SB-cz9vo 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +10

    Frankensteining the core code was the initial fatal error. One of KSP's biggest drawbacks was its lack of multicore support. As far as I know, this is still the case in KSP2. These crosscoads are so deep in the game engine that you have no real chance to fix it afterwards and need a revamp of the engine and the game. Well that revamp was KSP2 and that is out there while multithreading is still lying around in the VAB.
    Gunning for nice graphics at a point when solid code at the core was the most critical thing for a successful change. I won't go into other neck-breakers like Timewarp vs multiplayer.
    Sadly, it is one of many cases where management min-maxed the project into a state where it kept many of KSP's old ailments. Now they see it failing, with no cheap fix in sight, and losing interest. Do I want a proper sequel to KSP? Yes, I do. Do I see the current KSP2 having any chance of taking that place? Absolutely not.
    Maybe one day some other lonely dev will start a space game, removing all the constraints that bind KSP to make something stronger.

    • @tsm688
      @tsm688 5 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      Collision physics is not really the kind of thing you can multicore. Too many edge cases and show stoppers that prevent them from cooperating. Everyone waits for everyone else and the end result is the same or slower than one core in a lot of cases. That's why physics done on GPU lacks collision entirely...

  • @DinnyOrSomething
    @DinnyOrSomething 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +37

    This is a really good summary of years of stonewalling and silence, but... damn, man. It's shocking just how badly these high level managers, who are probably paid 6-7 figure salaries, can be SO BAD at their main job. And it's so sad that they destroy games that people love in the process

    • @TheBelrick
      @TheBelrick 6 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Dont think for a second that the devs were any better. Clearly weren't up to the task.

    • @HuntingTarg
      @HuntingTarg 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +6

      ​@@TheBelrickIt's bern pointed out elsewhere that hiring inept developers was a result of management constraints, and led to inept product development.

    • @HuntingTarg
      @HuntingTarg 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      It's been pointed out in the world of finance that many money managers are paid based on the scope of their responsibility (the value of whatever they're mansging), and not on the results they get (revenue). If their financial success was tied to the success of their projects or assets, they would think and behave VERY differently. That's why I believe in profit-sharing over yuge salaries.

    • @TheBelrick
      @TheBelrick 6 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@HuntingTarg Probably DEI hires. And the mass exodus into "learn to code" from people unfit to use logic and the utter trash state of universities.

    • @thebluehat6814
      @thebluehat6814 6 หลายเดือนก่อน

      it's funny, I have never heard about the people who are paid 6 figures getting fired my whole life.

  • @UENShanix
    @UENShanix 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +13

    As a gamedev (not at all related to KSP, TakeTwo, or any other entity featured), I really appreciate your little segment on how "let modders fix it" isn't the panacea most Gamers think it is. For exactly the reasons said and so many more. It may be easy to fix or change something on your end but it's difficult to verify that it's truly fixed without having deeper access. And there are _many_ problems that can't be truly be solved without getting into the nitty gritty of it. I remember having to track down one bug that was coming from how our internal engine was handling IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and treating them, somehow, as the same but different. No modder could've fixed that even our game was as moddable as KSP or Skyrim.

    • @guitarfan01
      @guitarfan01 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      It's been so annoying seeing all of the technically illiterate people (and I will freely admit I'm only first grade reading level with game dev) saying things like "well, mods could fix it" or "mods can give the same ksp2 experience in ksp1." Neither of those are true.
      Yes, mods in KSP 1 can give you some barebones approximation of multiplayer, interstellar travel, and colonies. But all of those are hacks into existing systems instead of systems built to do those things. This isn't to take anything away from the brilliance and hard work of the modders that have given us these things at all! The modders simply did not have access to the direct source code.
      Interstellar through Kopernicus gives you terrible floating point errors when you get half a light year away from Kerbol. Multiplayer has plenty of limitations, especially timewarp and working with other mods. And colonies are the worst of all three: either you try to simply dock colony ships on the ground in ksp and deal with the fact that they all suffer Kraken attacks whenever they load, or if you use Kerbal Konstructs, the difficult UI and lack of satisfying systems and gameplay loop.
      What KSP2 needed was a new codebase designed from the ground up to support these features. According to people who cracked open KSP2, a lot of those things were in there even in the first Early Access release, just incomplete, ripped out and roughly bandaged to make the deadline.

    • @meneldal
      @meneldal 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      You can fix stuff with mods like limited content, adding a new planet or new engines, but new systems are always going to be difficult and janky.

  • @LeeSpork
    @LeeSpork 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +22

    It's so heartbreaking that they weren't allowed to rewrite the game anew. Even when I was doing creative writing in high-school, I knew that sometimes the best way forward was to just start from a fresh canvas and "cannibalise" pieces from the old version, rather than to uselessly tinker continuously with something that's fundamentally just not working.

    • @williammanning5066
      @williammanning5066 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      It's such a big deal that there's a whole design methodology in software of writing it once, throwing it out, and then writing it again.

  • @susangoaway
    @susangoaway 5 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    19:00 This is extremely typical of western corporations to completely remove all connection to the original and turn it into a cashcow which in the end turns out to be a wet disgusting turd.
    You were able to see this with all these bade "remakes" of good games, and movies too (Star Wars especially).
    I am convinced DEI/ESG had a hand in this too.

  • @hashtagrex
    @hashtagrex 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    Take Two saw an IP that literally built the future generation of space engineers, the generation which will do amazing things in the space industry, and then decided to burn it to the ground because the players arent willing to burn their wallets for an unfinished pile of junk that was nothing but an advertising campaign. And now they will hold on to that IP with an iron grip out of pettyness, greed and revenge against the playerbase. There is a single thing that can save KSP 2, and thats making it open source. KSP 2 is a passion project, not a piggybank

  • @Fieryxjoe
    @Fieryxjoe 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +75

    I know you came to the conclusion Nate is a good guy and maybe just the wrong guy for the job. But to me this proved that he was knowingly lying to our faces in every interview he did.
    Not just lying about devs having fun in multiplayer, but also lying about there being no KSP 1 code in KSP 2. His statements that every feature was designed with multiplayer in mind when none of them were and the multiplayer team had been fired. Statements that there was no risk of the plug being pulled while the publisher is firing whole departments and the most senior devs and features are being internally erased from the roadmap.
    At the end of the day Take Two was shooting themselves in the foot but Nate didn't have to lie about these things and was borderline scamming people by doing so.

    • @eekee6034
      @eekee6034 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +17

      I'm thinking he lied to us to protect himself. He first convinced Take 2 to follow his vision when he had no idea how to make it work -- a massive display of Dunning-Kruger Syndrome -- then he lied to protect his job.
      (If you saw my previous, deleted comment, I watched a bit more of the video and no longer think it applicable.)

    • @guitarfan01
      @guitarfan01 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      Just a point of order here: the multiplayer team wasn't fired until months after the Early Access launch. So it's entirely possible he was telling the truth about everything being designed with multiplayer in mind before that point. When you're trying to evaluate statements made over a period of 5 years, chronology is important.

    • @eekee6034
      @eekee6034 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      @@guitarfan01 A solid point of order in the general case, but in this case KSP2 was based on KSP1's code. It would need to be redesigned from the ground up to be "designed for multiplayer". Colony resource management was designed with multiplayer in mind, but core features were designed in KSP1 so they couldn't be. It's like when Nate talked about the devs having so much fun in multiplayer. Now we know that was modded KSP1, but at the time we all believes it was KSP2 as I'm sure Nate knew we would. In both cases, Nate has committed _lies of omission;_ omitting certain details with intent to decieve.

    • @user-burner
      @user-burner 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      I think he probably did have to though, at the demands of Take 2. Remember, someone answering a community question got fired, if you revealed actual info about the development he'd get fired or at least take a huge pay cut probably instantly

    • @Fieryxjoe
      @Fieryxjoe 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      @@user-burner no way he was told "lie about that time the devs had fun playing KSP1 and say they played KSP2" or stuff like that. More likely he was simply told "you have to release on this day unfinished and if you dont sell 100k copies the game is on the chopping block" and he decided on his own telling the truth wouldn't make that happen.

  • @DonnK-rc4im
    @DonnK-rc4im 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +43

    Ill never forget the first time i managed to escape orbit in KSP1. It was euphoric after so many trials and failures, then I began to reenter, when i was half way through reentry i noticed id forgotten to put a heat shield on the pod.
    Great memories. Sad to see how the sequel went.

    • @TheBelrick
      @TheBelrick 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      People still dont get it. KSP was a huge success BECAUSE of squad. The people. Talent and passion combined.
      These new devs were never up to the task and were just $$$ seeking learn to code dropouts. It was an obvious fail from the start and I TOLD YOU ALL SO!

  • @zaclegoattack
    @zaclegoattack 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +18

    In my field of systems engineering there is an old adage:
    The biggest mistakes are always made on day 1

  • @Capybellie
    @Capybellie 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    27:54 A reasonable project goal would have been to rewrite the code, because even the most amateur player of KSP 1 could see that the game had reached very hard limits due to the way it was made. Then, they should have aimed to match the KSP 1 features for Early Acces and then add the other features during the process. From there on our, the should have started adding everything new.
    I am pretty sure, if they had communicated that, mwde it clear, they would have had the support of the community.

  • @axelord4ever
    @axelord4ever 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    'Cultural successor to Minecraft' and 'Kerbals as their version of Minions,' really is emblematic of the tonal shift KSP2 suffered, something I absolutely _LOATHED._ To me, Kerbals being stand-ins for astronauts worked because they were needed to serve a purpose not only in terms of visuals, but also gameplay-wise. Trying to turn them into mascots was stupid.
    Using not only the same engine, but the same basecode, KSP2 was pushed out as a what amounts to a prettified KSP1 mod.
    Almost everything I saw about KSP2 from the moment it was announced until release was alarming. Wobbly-sausage rockets (it's a feature!), low framerate (it'll be fixed!), cartoonification (for lack of a better word), accessibility (totally won't detract from realism, we swear!), multiplayer (this never goes well as an addon)...

  • @TeleportingBread161
    @TeleportingBread161 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +124

    If Nate Simpson was a software engineer he would have just killed the wobble to improve performance.

    • @michagrill9432
      @michagrill9432 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +16

      Just like simplerockets 2/juno does

    • @TheAechBomb
      @TheAechBomb 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      killing the wobble for performance makes some sense, but then you can't have rockets fold and break in half from aero shear

    • @clayel1
      @clayel1 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +31

      @@TheAechBombyou can, you just dont need them to move until they break (which is more realistic)

    • @RAFMnBgaming
      @RAFMnBgaming 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +18

      @@clayel1 Given it was (IIRC) based on unity joints you'd have to pull the whole thing out and rewrite the shear code.
      Which might have been a good idea.

    • @TeleportingBread161
      @TeleportingBread161 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@TheAechBomb Yes. If you partweld them they cant. Some people would choose to sacrifice that for fps

  • @RpattoYT
    @RpattoYT 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +19

    Matt's interview with HarvestR pretty much puts the kybosh on the idea that the KSP1 dev team could have helped a great deal with the code. Most of the experienced KSP1 dev's left the team prior to the acquisition by Take2.

  • @lewismassie
    @lewismassie 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +106

    You know what's incredible?
    You were talking about Nate being genuine and with the best intentions and being well spoken in interviews and perhaps overpromising.
    That is _exactly_ what people said about Sean Murray for No Mans Sky.
    But Sean was left alone to fix it. Nate will likely never get that chance.

    • @henlostinky273
      @henlostinky273 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +67

      NMS was self-published so they could set their own deadlines, KSP was kinda cooked the minute T2 bought it thinking they could squeeze minecraft money out of it

    • @MagicCuboid
      @MagicCuboid 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +34

      In addition to Hello Games being private, No Mans Sky also sold way better at launch than KSP2 did. They were able to ride those profits for years fixing the game.

    • @meneldal
      @meneldal 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +22

      Also No Man's Sky, even on release and the mess it was, offered something new and you could see potential. KSP2 on release was just an inferior KSP1.

    • @thisisnotajoke
      @thisisnotajoke 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      @henlostinky273
      That is not entirely true, Sony was/is the publisher of the PS4 (and probably PS5) version and it was Sony that put a lot of pressure on hello games to release the game at a certain date.

    • @rickamsler3088
      @rickamsler3088 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +10

      the glaring difference here is that Sean is absolutely a developer first, and everything else second. Nate isn't a developer but a "visionary" and quite literally the guy that creates scope creep.
      KS2 only needed some general visual upgrades, the procedural wings to better design planes, new parts, and a planets update.
      Interstellar could have been a DLC. where you could work to build a space station that functions as your its own launch platform. you don't have to spend 3 hours delivering ship parts to space after the station is done. just build the ship in a new editor window.
      Multi player too could have been a DLC - or future update. but it would have needed to be very transparent. highlighting issues when they are encountered and communicating with the playerbase about issues or pitfalls.

  • @Waldherz
    @Waldherz 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

    I remember the hyper agressive KSP2 fanboys when the trailer was all we had.
    They went to every Space Engineers forum, telling people how dead their game was and that KSP2 would kill it fast.
    I hope these people are sad.

  • @vicviper319
    @vicviper319 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +36

    Thank you so much for the level-headed reporting on this ShadowZone. Your videos do the best job on trying to figure out why we're in this mess.

  • @archerroo007
    @archerroo007 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +11

    This was a great send-off for KSP2. Thank you for assembling all the elements, providing insights behind the scenes and synthesizing the elements that brought us to this point.

  • @generalsirc2615
    @generalsirc2615 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +26

    I am dumb founded, the level of incompetence is really mind blowing. And we see this Al over the industry. I think it has to be from corporatization, you have people with business degrees making technical decisions. Some things can be corporatized and work out all right. Video games are not one of them. Video games are a creative endeavor, and corporations are rarely creative

    • @bobsemple9341
      @bobsemple9341 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      This is what happens when non tech people infect software

    • @Wrangler-fp4ei
      @Wrangler-fp4ei 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      @@bobsemple9341 Specially when they have investors who poke them those people in the side wanting results.

    • @user-burner
      @user-burner 6 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Money is just entirely incompatible with art

    • @generalsirc2615
      @generalsirc2615 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      @@user-burner I’d say money is a good motivator for an artist to produce high quality work, but where money is an issue is when non artistic people impose their ideas and cost saving measures onto the artistic people.

    • @HuntingTarg
      @HuntingTarg 6 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Are you volunteering to be a 'starving artist'?
      Money for these projects has to come from somewhere, very few finished projects spring forth unfunded.

  • @Francois424
    @Francois424 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    @26:25 - Can totally relate and vouch for that. I had to tell my boss at some point that he wanted me for my efficiency on tough problems, but if he keeps changing my focus often because "teamA" or "teamB" are falling behind, that I would not be as efficient as I could. He got the message and try to minimize doing that to me now, but I was in a work environment where I could voice my concerns. In other places that would not have been possible.

  • @themadkraken1912
    @themadkraken1912 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    I remember being active on the KSP forums when it was announced that Take Two was purchasing Squad, and later when KSP2’s development was announced. Most people saw it going just about this way, and I’m increasingly disappointed our predictions were mostly correct.

  • @terravexillar
    @terravexillar 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +7

    Great video. Thanks to all who contributed - including the anonymous sources.
    Much of what has passed is not too much of a surprise - having worked in IT for "a few decades". Management's assumptions around what was involved being far disconnected to the engineering challenges; much success with the look-and-feel, but with too little resource on the underpinnings; where was the testing?!!
    Still hoping things can be turned around, but much has to change for that to happen.

  • @OzzyInSpace
    @OzzyInSpace 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +79

    They did such a rug pull on the community. And they knew it. Teasing us with all those dev blog videos up until the release date announcement; Then that Oct (just few months from that release time) they said none of those previously bragged about features would be there, and it would be early access. I knew at that moment it was a rug pull. They took advantage of the community's good will from the first game. I'm so thankful KSP 1 is in a great place.

    • @rainbowkrampus
      @rainbowkrampus 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

      You literally just watched a video where it was made explicit that the people involved were dedicated to producing the game but were mired in bad decision making, much of it outside of their control, from the start.
      And your takeaway is that the game was an intentional scam?
      Touch grass dude. You've lost touch with reality.

    • @OzzyInSpace
      @OzzyInSpace 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +6

      @@rainbowkrampus Whatever helps you sleep at night...

    • @thelyric2751
      @thelyric2751 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      ​@@rainbowkrampusreally it's more like the devs were forced into the rugpulling by Take Two.

    • @rainbowkrampus
      @rainbowkrampus 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@thelyric2751 The "rugpull" language is unhelpful here. A rugpull is a scam, it requires intent. There was no intent to fail or deceive here. It was a series of bad decisions leading to an overinflated budget and an eventual decision to cut losses on a project that was looking to require way more dev time, and thus dollars, than it already received.
      It wasn't a scam at any point, it was incompetence and failure. Is every mistake you make a rugpull? Do you see the problem here?
      "Rugpull" here is just emotive language. It doesn't have anything to do with what actually happened, it has no meaning, It's just OP trying to express their feelings. But by using a term with an accepted meaning it has resulted in them being dishonest. It's not cool. You can be upset and not be dishonest.

    • @guitarfan01
      @guitarfan01 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Dumb take, Ozzy. You literally just stated the opposite of what the video showed.

  • @Paulunatr
    @Paulunatr 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

    "Failing and learning is the Kerbal way." Man from that line I knew this was gonna be a good one. I applaud you for being fair and responsible in your reporting and analysis, and for gathering input from other people of note. I know you said you aren't a journalist anymore and that's a real pity because you are a class act. Every fan community needs more reasonable people like you.

  • @Cyclonit
    @Cyclonit 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

    A prime example of management completely ruining the potential of what could have been a great game for the sake of greed and bolstering their own egos. The utter ignorance and self indulgence required to outright dismiss senior devs and experts from KSP1 is baffling.

  • @FatovMikhail
    @FatovMikhail 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +7

    the most important part that wasn't even touched here is KSP1 WAS FINE, it had yearly updates with new mechanics, major agencies collaborations, i think after "only 150k per year" ksp1 devs started to cry. they were a team, they had a vision, they were capable, they had some refactoring undergoing. with some more budget they could make ksp1 look like ksp2 but work better. now we have both games killed and most of the ksp1 source code lost. and THIS is a terrible situation, not the cancellation of ksp2.

    • @tsm688
      @tsm688 5 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      The failure of KSP2 really puts the lie to everyone who insisted KSP needed a graphics upgrade. KSP2 was pretty as hell but that turned out to be unimportant...

  • @JD96893
    @JD96893 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +13

    Wobbly rockets is a clear disconnect between what the community, aka consumers, want and the devs. That was a big red flag for me.

  • @CoperliteConsumer
    @CoperliteConsumer 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +13

    This is a perfect example of why making games via "design by committee" always ends in disaster. Art for one cant be done like that and this whole thing was treated like trying to remake an action figure or rerelease an old album. Thats just not how games work. The industry is dying and this is exactly why. So unfortunate to happen to one of the games i was so invested in :'(

  • @britishgaming6
    @britishgaming6 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

    47:13 if i had a nickel for every ksp youtuber with a mountain biking side channel, i'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but its weird theres two of them

  • @williamruiz26
    @williamruiz26 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +35

    It's always management.

    • @fractalelf7760
      @fractalelf7760 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      Always. Management by its nature is arrogant - in a position of ordering people they often presume a sovereign right to rule - and ignore inputs and then can scapegoat people for their failures.

    • @user-burner
      @user-burner 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      It's also always money

    • @DiomedesStrosMkai
      @DiomedesStrosMkai 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@fractalelf7760 It only human nature. The real tragedy is that management always seems to get to fail upwards, or come down on a golden parachute.

    • @fractalelf7760
      @fractalelf7760 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@DiomedesStrosMkai Expressed easily in management 😌

  • @triggermovies
    @triggermovies 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +7

    Nate may love KSP, that doesn't mean he has no responsibility on the failure of the project.
    He is one of the only (or the only ?) person involved from the beginning until now, as a director moreover. You don't lead 7 years of such a sh%£show of a project without a good part of the blame.
    Furthermore, he must have known he was lying through his teeth on every interview he was giving. And if he didn't, then it proves how incompetent he was for the job.
    On many aspects, he reminds me of Mark Kern (Grummz) : take a compelling concept, act passionate, promise the world, but in reality run the project into the ground or turn in into vaporware, and then blame the editor for your mistakes.
    It might work the first couple of tries, but after a while you start to see the pattern...

    • @mutilatedpopsicles
      @mutilatedpopsicles 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      I place a good chunk on the blame on him tbh, if he wasn't lying through his teeth then he's just an idiot.

  • @bizzehdee
    @bizzehdee 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +179

    10 million is a nothing budget for a publisher backed game these days, even for a "small" game like KSP2

    • @alexsiemers7898
      @alexsiemers7898 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +26

      The full budget of Subnautica was $10M iirc, and compared to KSP2 that’s a tiny game (even with the lore and biosphere being as rich as it is)

    • @Infernal_Elf
      @Infernal_Elf 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +7

      yeah absolutely. But not for greedy Publisher Ceo`s that also happen to own most of the company.

    • @tiagodagostini
      @tiagodagostini 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      depend where you develop it. Do it in South america or eastern europe and you can go an OK way with it. You just need to be smart on how to use that money.

    • @IstasPumaNevada
      @IstasPumaNevada 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +6

      @@tiagodagostini And not have the big developer/publisher's higher ups using the location as a vacation spot/appointment while you bilk the smaller country's government out of grants.
      LOOKING AT YOU, UBISOFT.

    • @Gentleman...Driver
      @Gentleman...Driver 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

      As far as I understand they didnt want the game to have all these new functions. They just wanted a more polished version of the old game. "Quick and dirty." And honestly, there is a market for that. 10 mio. bucks and two years, seems still like a stretch... Like, how do you even organize that fast? How much time do you have to understand the code really?

  • @darthvader0510
    @darthvader0510 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +12

    Thank you for the very detailed and interesting video. There are many things made clear from the video. As a ksp1 fan and a software developer myself, many of the mentioned things make me feel so painful. But I do not feel bad about the studio closure, they are not without faults.

    • @ShadowZone
      @ShadowZone  7 หลายเดือนก่อน +10

      Remember where they made the wrong turn when there are decisions to made in your job. Smart people learn from the mistakes of others. Not so smart people learn from their own mistakes. Idiots never learn.

  • @franciscoexmachina
    @franciscoexmachina 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +14

    Corporate is where creativity goes to die. When decisions are made around profits, what else could one expect?

    • @HuntingTarg
      @HuntingTarg 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      To eat and pay the hired talent, both technical and creative, cost and profit are unavoidable considerations. But they're not the ONLY considerations.
      'If all executives were tomorrow replaced with angels, they would still be constrained to think and act with the financial well-being of the company in the forefront of their minds, for profit is the lifeblood of a company; and profit is properly understood to be the result of serving consumers.'
      -F.A. Hayek (paraphrase)

    • @csibesz07
      @csibesz07 5 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      ​@@HuntingTarg You see, the problem is that these executives have only one goal: profit. They don't actually care about the product. Their goal is not the product.
      Look at Apple. Steve Jobs had the goal of making a product to satisfy customer needs. Not making highest profit by selling a shitty, but well marketed product, which is what Apple or any other mindless corporate structure archive today.

  • @deathincluded3706
    @deathincluded3706 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    I liked how you showed someone saying starship 1 launch just did a kerbal....
    Yes... This was probably the most kerbal launch ive ever seen....

  • @rh906
    @rh906 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    Corpo-rats will do corpo-rat things. I don't see a No-man Sky's or even Cyberpunk 2077 recovery here.

  • @MoldySpace
    @MoldySpace 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +85

    The real shame is 2 years and $10 million, we could've just polished up KSP1 and had something truly glorious

    • @danilooliveira6580
      @danilooliveira6580 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +25

      there wasn't much to polish without throwing alway the old code and starting from scratch. that is the problem.

    • @christophelemaire4551
      @christophelemaire4551 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      @@danilooliveira6580 Sure thing, knowing that KSP1 grew way bigger than initialy expected, they really pushed their project to the farthest point possible here.

    • @fleetadmiralj
      @fleetadmiralj 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      yeah but what would you have paid for "KSP1 but prettier"? I have a feeling the answer there may be well lower than what T2 would have sold it to you for.

    • @tandemcharge5114
      @tandemcharge5114 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +6

      ​@@fleetadmiraljPeople would have 100% paid for a polished KSP 1 that have had its jank removed.
      Imagine being able to approach stations without getting smacked by lag for one

    • @manvslife271
      @manvslife271 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +7

      @@fleetadmiralj I wouldn't have paid for "KSP1 but prettier" but I *would* have paid for "KSP1 but ran better" which is basically all what people *actually* wanted from this project at it's core, because a good sandbox game needs a solid foundation which can be built upon.

  • @cmilkau
    @cmilkau 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +33

    The lesson I take away from this is, never let management in on technical decisions. Management needs to know what you can do, and when (including associated risks), but not how. The how is up to execution, not management.

    • @Erowens98
      @Erowens98 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Problem is, often management will force their way in because they want to feel like they're contributing something. Micromanagement is a plague in the engineering world.

    • @fleetadmiralj
      @fleetadmiralj 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      The problem is that the "how" may also be a matter of "how much" and that IS a matter for management.

    • @jordanledoux197
      @jordanledoux197 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

      You know the thing you might find absolutely terrifying? I've worked as a software engineer since I was a teenager. I've worked in multiple industries, including at a game studio, on multiple types of software.
      The engineers (who also occasionally have crack-pot or just wrong ideas about features), probably shield you from about 50-60% of the stuff that would annoy you or be dangerous by lying to their bosses and managers. "Lying" to management, and learning the skill to do so in a non-destructive and convincing way, so that you can actually address the things that YOU KNOW are important but don't have the time or energy to argue about, is an absolutely CRITICAL career skill for engineers.
      Game studios are particularly susceptible to this problem however, because these kinds of awful decisions can originate from management, but they could also come from the art department doing something they think is "art" but is actually "engineering", or it could come from the director if they are the type to think "I'm the idea guy, so I'm the only guy that has ideas".
      When it comes to technical issues, any of those people could be the source of EXTRA problems on top of the ones that engineers introduce themselves through the process of development. Devs can probably put their job on the line and kind of bluff their way into blocking one of those groups, but if you are getting problems from multiple directions, it's game over. In that situation, the devs probably know the company is going under almost a year before management does.
      But like I said, all these examples you actually see in the software you use or want to use of management screwing up technical decisions? That's the stuff the engineers couldn't block, or weren't willing to risk their job over, or weren't willing to ignore and get done on a weekend anyway. If engineers didn't essentially act insubordinate when they knew something was a bad idea, there would be very, very few companies that would be capable of shipping running code that isn't an absolute mess.

    • @henlostinky273
      @henlostinky273 6 หลายเดือนก่อน

      one thing making that hard is that most software management were promoted from engineers (or people who already made a game in this case) and the 'how' colors the way they plan things. they tend to block out plans in terms of what code they need to write, not what features they need to launch, and set priorities according to how much code they think needs to change and how complex the changes would be. this means 'heavy' things like new features and sweeping refactor jobs get priority while 'simple' things like QoL and devops and performance fixes get neglected. or the opposite, they know a lot of complex code lives somewhere so they automatically de-prioritize working on it out of paranoia.

  • @OlCrunch
    @OlCrunch 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +58

    It really does feel like a lot of the mistakes made by the devs would've been ironed out quick smart in a typical development cycle without the crushing silence imposed by Take-Two/Private Division. I'd be pinning a lot more of this on the corporate side of things then on Nate. He was just too optimistic.

    • @D1ndo
      @D1ndo 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +12

      On the contrary, I'd be pinning a lot more of this on Nate. He's the one responsible for knowingly exploding the scope well beyond the time and budget constraints, at the start of the project already. That's not how a good manager operates. You can spin it any way you like, everything points to the game being doomed by him going full scope creep, and refusing reality. If T2 had not been benevolent enough to dump so much more money on the project, we would not even have the early access prototype we can play now.

    • @rainbowkrampus
      @rainbowkrampus 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@D1ndo Then you'd be deranged.
      T2 agreed to his pitch then tied his arms. When they first ran into trouble they could have talked to KSP1 devs were it not for the bizarre secrecy mandates.
      You need to touch grass. You just watched an entire video explaining all of this and you still have a rage boner for Simpson. You've lost touch with reality.

    • @E1Luch
      @E1Luch 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      ​@@D1ndo The possibility of simply making "polished KSP 1" that would've been different enough from regular modded KSP 1 assumes that the old codebase was actually good enough to permit that. And if the old code needed to be thrown out regardless they could have built in some better functionality from the beginning. The problem was that every single person with the power to make decisions was seemingly completely incompetent do deal with anything technical and was instead operating on a bunch of insane and unfounded assumptions about the game and its market niche.

    • @alexsiemers7898
      @alexsiemers7898 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      @@D1ndoNate wasn’t the one who gave the go-ahead for the all the new content, he just said it would be a cool idea. T2 is still at fault for letting it get accepted but without changing the budget and dev time for the game accordingly

  • @Thoringer
    @Thoringer 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +14

    Not a software developer here, but a data scientist. When I heard the "solving multiplayer later" part, I had to chuckle.
    That's like me creating the dashboard before starting to code the data query, or even looking what data I can get and how clean it is. That's just hilarious.

    • @tsm688
      @tsm688 5 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      The thing is, they actually said they HAD multiplayer worked into it. They lied, outright, and got tons of preorders from it.

    • @Thoringer
      @Thoringer 5 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@tsm688 yes, and that is very common to overstate. Even when Bill Gates sold the first DOS, he barely had it working for the presentation to - I believe that was IBM? Fake it until you make it!
      And if you cannot deliver, then Theranos! I mean adios! 😎

  • @doxviper7576
    @doxviper7576 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

    Not having open communication with a community has and continues to kill many games in the industry. The developers who have realized this have gone on to make very successful games while those who haven't will end up in the unemployment line.

  • @explosiveapple1
    @explosiveapple1 7 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

    If Take2 continues with KSP2 everyone on the project should watch this