To be fair, can we put one side by side with Derek Smart and 'Line of Defense?'
A nod of respect with that said for Derek Smart & co-developers with the capabilities to design a complete PC game but as Derek Smart is quoted [time-stamped below] during Derek Smart's interview in April of 2012 when he predicted a goal of 'Line of Defense' being released for 'retail' in 4 to 5 months of his interview... delays happen. YEARS of delays when exploring new software innovation in PC game design.
Prediction of 'Line of Defense' @ 7:53 time-stamp:
The really funny part of it is that if you followed my dev history, or even that of LoD, you would know that my games aren't delayed for lack of technical expertise. More often than not, it's because of lack of resources (team + money = not cheap) because I fund ALL my games and use people from around the world, which is challenging all by itself.
In the case of LoD, a few months after that interview, it dawned on me that I was wasting time trying to use my custom Battlecruiser/Universal Combat engines to develop that game as I was spending more time stripping and replacing stuff, than I was building a [smaller, non-sim] game. So I re-started
with a new engine based on Havok. Then Microsoft bought Havok and killed that engine, thus removing my ability to complete the XBoxOne and PS4 versions which were already
reviewed and approved by both platform holders. So once again, I had to
switch to UE4 or lose all the effort and money on a PC only game which would definitely mean huge loses for me as I didn't spend all this time and money on a PC only title. When I look back at the
screen shots from all the various versions since 2011, I am actually horrified because next to Battlecruiser 3000AD (my first game), it's my second longest game in dev.
And in between all that time, I designed, developed, and released (in 2015) a multi-platform game in order to recoup some of the money spent as a result. If I had lots of other people's money, I wouldn't care, and would have just continued with the PC only game. Not to mention that I also started to work on an improved version of my best selling game series, which I worked on right through this past holidays as well and ended up
releasing three versions in the past week (one was last night).
People who try to compare me (who has shipped over a dozen games) to this Star Citizen train wreck, not only make me smile, but it makes me look good because my accomplishments as a 30 yr industry vet - and indie - it means that I am an overachiever in comparison to those guys whereby 500 of them only came up with a screen shot generating machine after spending over $250M of other peoples money.
Delays are a factor of any process, not just game development. However, in the case of Star Citizen, the delays were self-inflicted due to bad management, bad planning, and wanton incompetence by the people in charge. To wit, if they had stuck with the original pitch, there would've been a
game out by 2015. Instead, as we now know, they've been bleeding money because it came with no strings and croberts felt that he could basically do what he wanted. We have seen the results.
