[Mick Buckles]

I’m going to ignore the LOD vs SC because it’s a ridiculous thing to continuously bring up. They’re not comparable projects and never will be.

I didn’t say that all the spending has been wasteful though. And my point about the MoCap is that they’ve had no less then four attempts at it. But only someone keeping track, would know that. We’re tracking everything.

Source please. Additionally, multiple takes at large swaths of a technically challenging project is not a sign of failure, or even unusual if you’re trying to maintain a certain bar of quality.

Plus, nobody cares how long they think it takes to develop a game. They care about promises made and which were either broken, or turned out to be flat out lies.

I may look at all upcoming projects from a more cynical view, but I assume everyone is lying to me all the time. I can’t think of a single game project that has ever delivered exactly what they initially promised, and the end result is almost universally okay. Obviously there are exceptions to this, but even those Molyneux full on fantasy life simulators just ended up being reasonably fun games. Were we disappointed? Momentarily, but then you learn to push your expectations back. We’re not spoiled children, we can clean ourselves up and move on.

I’ve always had trouble understanding your argument that they failed to deliver the 1.0 vision. They put out their teaser video and got an enthusiastic response, then built further interest by putting out some reasonable (some not) stretch goals. These goals take the game from something that can be easily done with what currently exists to what you’ve deemed impossible, but isn’t this what Kickstarter is for? Why would anyone crowdfund the same kind of recycled, ported garbage that’s been pushed down on PC gamers for the last couple of years?

Putting money into something that does not exist is always a risk. You have to weigh whether or not you’re comfortable with the idea of something never existing, and how much you’re willing to risk to help it exist in some way. If it doesn’t come to fruition, then oh well. You pick yourself up, and say goodbye to the amount of money that you decided was inconsequential enough to piss away on an idea.

And no, it’s not better to be honest and say they’ll deliver. Every single project manager knows that you must have a delivery and completion schedule. The reason that he did this is because it’s painfully clear that they don’t believe this game – as promised – will ever see the light of day.

Every single project manager also knows that a large project consists of a large amount of small projects that also consist of smaller projects that also consist of general daily tasks. Even a fully agile shop is dependent on other aspects of a project coming together at some point before they can move forward, so you build estimates on estimates and come away with something that is almost never even close to right. It’s a mistake to ever make those estimates public. A mistake on estimation is almost guaranteed and when it’s compounded you end up with a nightmare deadline that you’ll never reach.

The only mistake they made was by promising we would see specific items in a specific state on a specific date. It’s a dumb mistake to make, and it’s understandable that people would get frustrated at some point. I don’t see how rectifying it is an admission that the game can be made.

And it was right there during CitizenCon that, after months of denying (my reports that the fps module was on indefinite hold), he admitted that it was no longer being released as planned, but was instead going to be rolled into either 2.0 or the PU.

This is not true. You could have at least said “And now they’re telling us that Star Marine will come out after 2.0. Star Marine is not coming out at all. Ever.”

Then at least you wouldn’t be lying.

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