Read more about Ashes of Creation ā https://ashesofcreation.mgn.tv
Hey all! Iām Grolo of Unhinged Gaming ( https://unhinged.gg ) and Iām a systems architect by trade. In this video we discuss why itās taking so long to build the latest generation of MMOs, primarily focused on Star Citizen and Ashes of Creation, with some clips and reactions mixed in.
Be sure to check out the related videos that came before this for additional context:
ā Scaling & redundancy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zRf2FM_dY8
ā Borders & Servers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtLuNzVgb_Q
ā Servers & Meshing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8zkYsqLk7g
Join us in https://discord.gg/unhinged to continue the discussion!
Hereās a list of all the original videos that I pulled clips from for this video (in no particular order). These are all amazing content creators; please give them a visit!
ā https://youtu.be/X8M7Yf7vtgM?si=Pv6gx5bY8kMjgI30
ā https://youtu.be/enriuB6rJ7Y?si=_ozPYZbdQk2fPnBM
ā https://youtu.be/HzT20hC51hI?si=RXvowG8bAPyekMsU
ā https://youtu.be/TpPjYCiQz0k?si=jeKt70wzQ13m_BiU
ā https://youtu.be/l8WOaCfiHlA?si=ugAGodwjttnJt_gD
ā https://youtu.be/-ZQ4CAdVUc4?si=u8V1IGTCvpy4S47D
ā https://youtu.be/y_QE4qig9sw?si=KF8OY9kYeUqBn5nu
ā https://youtu.be/wVXkVGsR5V8?si=z5JacJcxuewTCrW3
ā https://youtu.be/L5DeC8wIcuM?si=n27m1XycIIQrguMQ
And Pirate Software who appeared in a reaction:
ā https://www.youtube.com/@PirateSoftware
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We sometimes forget that even if they are based in the same tech, SQ42 is also being developed. There is bespoke assets and mechanics for the single player story. So it is not one game, it is 2 extremely ambitious games.
BGAE 2 is a co-op, but it has planet to space without loading screens. For the dev presentations I saw it is very ambitious, but it also felt like a playground for new tech. We will see what happens. Eve took 4 years, but it is in continuous dev. When it came out was buggy, but after 21 years of dev, it is in a pretty good state
I think its also notable to consider that star citizen was developing 2 games , a very complex game engine, NEW TECHNOLOGY, and build new game STUDIOS to be able to to it and started with 5 people in a basement on their FIRST projectas a yeam , as well as, in 2015 had to basically reset most of its progress from scratch because they figured out full scale planitary tech , as well as train new devs on their engine , thats 750 million devided between 2 games , a game engine, new tech , and several new studios . Thats like 200mil for each game , 200 mil for the game engine and 200 mil for the studios. You cant compare that to games like red dead 2 or cyberpunk that are made by studios that are already pre established, have trained devs from day one , and have previous projects under their belt and aren't breaking boundaries in gaming , and even those took 8 years more than 200 million and one of them came out buggy and needed an extra 3 years to get good, i say star citizen is doing just fine both price wise and time wise when you consider everything and not to mention the dev count that started as 5 people in a littleral basment
Cyberpunk took 8 years to release but only because they released in early access. Finished Cyberpunk took 10+ years.
Ashes is getting the hate that sc has had for a decade plus š
We've been having a western games crash, for 10 years. That's why a little Kickstarter project started called Star citizen
Good vid. Having worked in tech for 30 years, what you say def resonates with me. It is refreshing to hear someone talking about this, from a professional perspective, instead of farming views for the drama.
I like your takes, but the coffee bar thing is a really valid criticism. If you asked me if Iād rather work in a fake spaceship with a coffee bar, or make .50 cents more per hour – itās a no brainer. A coffee bar is not attracting the talent you are suggesting. Money does, and CIG would not be in short supply of it if they didnāt build an overly extravagant office space
I'm a software engineer myself and it's crazy hard to explain all of this to people. They all seem to think that a game start when they see the trailer and that to go faster you just throw bodies at the problem. It's so frustrating.
Holy shit, an actual level-headed star citizen and ashes of creation take
Development time isn't scaling linear. It takes a long time to develop fun mechanics and a new kind of backend. It's much faster and more predictable to make it look good and work flawlessly. SC is still in the network prototyping phase, just with a screenshot simulator attached, so money keeps flowing.
Pirate software guy always has the most random takes. He worked as a developer at blizzard for a few years so people take his word as gospel, when in reality he's wrong as often as he's right
If anyone can't grasp the simple concept of ship sales funding development, they can't have an opinion. If they don't sell ships, the game stops being developed. You can have a problem with the marketing or the direction of the game, but if you just say generally they should "stop developing the storefront and finish the game" but don't realize "finishing" would mean it releases in its current state tomorrow you're braindead.
But he was a blizzard dev at blizzard the company that made WOW and then fucked it up so bad they rereleased the old version which is the only version people play, and then continued to drop disappointment after disappointment
Yay. It's like an ex Starfield dev coming out and shitting on stalker. Your company made some good games, but that's irrelevant. Experienced massive dev companies have proven time and time again that past successes have no impact on further ones.
Not even worth coming up with any other argument.
You like AAA endless sequel and remake slop? That exists in abundance.
You want a game like star citizen or ashes to come out? There are no other options. Play throne and liberty (actually a pretty good MMO) or new world. (I like new world) Play elite dangerous (used to be pretty good) or no mans sky (couldn't get into it but there's content). Nothing comes close
My only real criticism of CIG / CR is that of improperly managing expectations and disingenuous ETAs. On top of that communicating that they have x or y tech or gameplay in a semi mature state, but when it releases to the public is just shadow of their demo. A lot of this is because of their funding model, but it still dirties everything it touches. Note that CIG is much better at this now, thanks Lando!
Until we have a large success with these new kickstarted MMO projects, we have yet to know if this model works. The frustrating part about SC PU is not only has it been in dev for a very long time, but also that there is no end in sight. Not a trivial amount of people who kickstarted this project are dying off, that is unacceptable.
A big part of leading a project is not just having vision but also knowing what can be done in a reasonable amount of time; It is a delicate balance.
I'm a SC player/backer and yes I actually played it this year. Put some 700+ hrs in it, just this 2024.
What I don't like about the negative responses or reviews or whatever you like to call them; it's just clickbait.
At this point in time, unless you have played some 100 hrs in this game, your opinion on it is just null and void.
Often complained about 750+ million, they use this for every argument.
– Squadron apparently cost 750 million
– Sc also cost 750 million
– the starengine cost 750 million
– they bought studios for 750 million
– the star cast cost 750 million
– the entire staff cost 750 million
In what economy are these folks living, where they get to spend the same stack of money more than once?
Several single player games came out this year, costing a nice 400 million.
Some MMOs cost 350 mil and counting, while being updated.
Take 75k salary for a thousand people over 10 years, hmmm….
Ow yeah, we need licences for the software that is running on those thousands of pc's and let's just say they got the hardware for free, ey?
Manchester is probably sponsoring them with a free office, because jobs for the region. No heat necessary either, the sun is free.
Ofcourse none of these cost and/or incomes are taxable, because they are excempt form that plebeian stuff.
I think they're doing it on the cheap, to be fair š
CIG has about 1300 employees and is still hiring today.
These people complaining about a "Western gaming crash" and "No good games anymore" are out to fucking lunch!
Ya, maybe Call of Duty XXIV is a snoozefest, but how is that surprising?
Almost ALL the action is at indy dev houses. Games like Enshrouded, and BG3, and even 7DTD are where the fun is.
Maybe the "crash" is a crash of AAA houses – but I don't have a problem with that. Make GOOD games or die. Why does that concern these dudes?
Honestly some of the bigger star citizen youtubers should take notice of your channel and do collabs and such. Excellent work thank you.
Hope to see you on some of the more popular SC podcasts soon.
I've been waiting for Beyond Good & Evil 2 since i was a wee lad, I haven't heard them post anything for a while so assumed it was canceled.
As for Star Citizen, I don't think most people are mad at the development speed but more on what's being prioritized. I personally could care less about 90% of the ships, I want gameplay, I want Missions, Lore, Events, STuff to do in-game. The reason i personally get mad at them is because they tease stuff like basebuilding or server meshing or the npc crew and then casually cut a lot of the stuff they literally just discussed from the development plan.
I hate when you ask them questions and they dodge the question with "Well, I can't talk about that" or "We can't talk about that until (X) team is caught up and then maybe . . " It's always when you ask basic questions like "Do bodies float" "Will i be able to wear clothing under my armor?" "Will terrain modification be possible" "Any plans to do stuff about people abandoning ships within armistice zones?" ETC.
Star Citizen as a concept i like, I Really despise how they prioritize things the ship content should be their final focus not primary.
Well said:)
You asked for feedback so here it is.
If you want to get your information across to your viewers, don't record yourself rambling at a camera and have your points and slides prepared ahead of time.
What's the main difference between SC and other large technology production put there? Usually such productions/technology evolutions are spread across entire trilogies, quadrologies or even pentalogies, which gives audiences a solid retail game release every couple of years while still maintaining a technology progression. CIG on the other hand had the financial freedom to aim straight for the technological end goal and not bother with "stepping stone retail releases" along the way to please audiences and especially shareholders.
In a way the critics and sceptics were right (to some extent): CIG did embezzle backer money to do their own thing. That this thing broadly aligns what most backers can agree with, doesn't change the fact that CIG at some point realised, that the money keeps flowing in no matter what they do, and that they can do everything they want. Which they did. Luckily for us their goal was not buy Chris Roberts a yacht and get every lead developer a Porsche, but to R&D next-level technologies for the absolute MMO space sim.
In a perfect world they would have had a ten or twelve year roadmap with three or four retail game releases that all build on one another, while quietly researching and developing MMO technologies like server meshing in the background. And who knows, that might have been the plan in 2012. Get a good singleplayer campaign game out as quickly as possible and hope that is successful enough to start a franchise that can carry long tech R&D endeavours. But like I said above, at some point they realised that they had already crated something that can pay for years and years of tech R&D, and that they don't have to jump through the usual "release a game and secure funding for the next game" loops every other studio has to jump through.
I'm not sure if such an alternative roadmap would have been preferable for their production (probably not), but it would have definitely made their marketing and their communications much easier and would have been a lot more transparent to the audiences. More importantly it would have avoided that huge discrepancies between what audiences were made believe about what was going on inside the production, and what actually came out of the production.
It's funny that since most people only see a game when it's first announced and then it's published a couple years later, they ACTUALLY think the game only takes about 2 years to make and anything that takes more is a scam or dead in the water.
As far as star citizen :
The money stuff is always funny to me. I don't personally care how much money they get. I'm not giving them any more because, as I said on another of your vids recently (you responded but dunno if you'd remember), I don't agree with the way they've gone about development since I backed, plus I'm particularly unhappy with certain bits of behavior from them, but I know they have to make the sales to fund their operation and it's just how it's gonna be. Tons and tons of money – whatever, if people are willing to spend the money on it it's theirs to spend.
The timeline – I wouldn't care, if they didn't keep making more timelines that were unrealistic and then so consistently failing at those timelines. Little bit better last few years, it seems, but they've failed so much at meeting their own stated goals that even getting like half of what they said done and the other half seeming to disappear into the void can feel like a win and I don't like that. š
But that would all be minor quibbles for me. It's the way they've gone about development that's a bigger deal to me (particularly the constantly shifting focus), and some of their behavior. Would ignore the rest if it weren't for that.
One thing about the overall timeline does kinda tick me off a bit extra, though – Sq42, every time they show it off so much progress has been made, it's so much better, now it's feature complete, in polishing, blah blah blah… Then, every time – 2 years away. It's been 2 years away for the last 12 years. Saying it's 2 years away now just feels like saying "we want you to think we're close to release but we're not!" After so many times, it just feels like a scummy lie and I hate seeing them give the same estimate again when it's already been six times as long as the estimate, which is the same one they've given since the start.
My business plan for CiG is as follows:
From this day forward, CiG only releases cosmetic things on the shop, any new ships are only available in game immediately upon release, where cosmetic paints and skins for said ships can be sold on the storefront. Cosmetics and skins for guns and armor can also be added to the shop. Furniture and other things for people to decorate their hangers and ships can be added to the shop. All ships should be removed from the shop. The only things sold on the shop are in game usable immediately for already released ships, armor, weapons, furniture, and game loops. No more Jpegs or selling dreams. Only tangible, non pay to win options, priced to sell. I believe this would actually raise more money overall, and bring more backers into the game over time. All the while protecting the integrity of the game into the long run, and prevent an inevitable pay to win death like every other MMO (mostly asian ports) suffers from once people play for a few months and hit that pay to win wall to be competitive.
Great vid!
Not all developers / artists are fungible / interchangeable. Anyone making a comment implying this is more of an advertisement of their ignorance than anything else. Sadly, due to culture and the bell curve distribution, we know that most of "us" are not well suited (with information, knowledge and sufficient understanding / IQ) to make the comments we often make,
Love what you had to say at multiple parts. At the 38 min mark you talk about different teams working on different things and then go on to dependencies. I think it is important to high-lite how bad the existing dependencies / dependency graph is and why fixing unrelated things breaks features so often. It would seem to indicate they rushed so much of the earlier code and are now dealing with the ticking time bombs of those "designs" / those dependencies. The mission system not being suitable for server meshing is a great example. Who approved that design? Who reviewed that code and merged it in? Why did management allow / choose that "code standard"?