There's also an article about this from PC Gamer: Cyberpunk 2077 devs reportedly angry with management about unrealistic deadlines And in that article they make an important point: It'll be...
It's been a bad week for CD Projekt, to say the least, although prior to this refund business, the company made its Cyberpunk 2077 development costs back and more in just one day. The game is far from being a failure, then, and patches are coming. Plenty of other games have launched in a rough state and improved significantly over time.
It'll be interesting to see what the larger, long term effects on the company are as a result of this launch, especially because as stated in this Bloomberg article:
CD Projekt’s stock fell 12% in Warsaw Friday, punctuating a steady decline this month that has wiped out gains for the year.
It's also important to point out that no one actually knows why the game shipped in the unfinished state that it did. Sure, we can say "they didn't have enough development time", that much is painfully obvious, but why was eight four years not enough time?
I think, probably more than once, there were redesign decisions made that threw away a lot of development progress, such as game mechanic changes or rewriting parts of the story. For now that's all speculation though.
And then, even once we find out why eight four (plus) years wasn't a long enough time to get the game shipped, we still have to find out who/what was responsible. Was it management? Was it side effects from contracting Keanu Reeves to star in the game? Was it ray-tracing or trying to take advantage of upcoming hardware?
I mean, a launch this big, a fiasco this extravagant, there have got to be a lot of really important lessons here that other game developers could learn from, so I really hope we eventually get a lot of insight into what exactly happened.
I'm not expecting to learn anything we didn't already know from this launch. This story is as old as gaming, it never changes, it never improves. Management become money-blinded and panic-stricken...
I'm not expecting to learn anything we didn't already know from this launch. This story is as old as gaming, it never changes, it never improves. Management become money-blinded and panic-stricken trying to meet holiday deadlines, they cut corners and burn out staff. I'll wager once you strip the shiny corporate-speak veneer off of the lessons learned that mismanagement is the entire reason, and I'd also bet you couldn't list a single medium to large developer that hasn't been bitten repeatedly by this issue.
Protip: If your game is a shitshow at Christmas, then release it next Christmas. No one is going to mind except your managers missing out on their fat bonus checks, and that should be on the bottom line of any sane priority list in any company. If your company can't handle running without fresh revenue that long, perhaps learn how to run a company in the black for a change instead of in the red all the time.
CDPR could have delayed it another year, leaving them ample time to polish and refine the game without making developers go home with redeye and keyboardface every night. They could have even had an extended beta where they collected feedback and constructive criticism during that time. This would have revealed all of the honest flaws (empty, lifeless environment etc) and given them the opportunity to fix those problems and add more content.
That's the difference between a game people are still buying several years later and a game that gets refunded on day one. Apparently being fast is vastly more important to the suits running things than making their customers giddy with joy or making real money.
Fire any managers or owners responsible for making these predictable, amateur, bush-league mistakes. Let's stop pretending that it is anything other than base greed and abysmal business management.
If you've read Blood, Sweat, and Pixels it sounds like, as often as not, there's another layer to the story. Gaming companies are just bad at managing scope. In almost every story in that book...
Management become money-blinded and panic-stricken trying to meet holiday deadlines, they cut corners and burn out staff.
If you've read Blood, Sweat, and Pixels it sounds like, as often as not, there's another layer to the story. Gaming companies are just bad at managing scope. In almost every story in that book Schreier talks about how they bit off more than they could chew in scoping out the project, kept going down development rabbit holes that didn't pan out, or had to make major design changes because what they were doing before just wasn't fun.
This seems to be a particular problem in gaming, probably because the industry is full of 'passionate' prima donnas who have a hard time letting go of their darlings.
I think Shovel Knight was the one game where this didn't happen in that book and the thing there seems to be that it was made by a team of highly experienced and seasoned game devs who were basically on a shoestring budget. So they both didn't have time or resources to fuck around AND they had the skills to know off the bat what was useful to pursue and what would end up being a distraction.
TL;DR: Project Management as hard, especially in creative fields.
I'm sure it's more complicated in practice. I also have a lot of experience working devops and supporting large programming teams. Scope creep will eat you alive, things that seemed simple can...
I'm sure it's more complicated in practice. I also have a lot of experience working devops and supporting large programming teams. Scope creep will eat you alive, things that seemed simple can turn rapidly into complex nightmares, unexpected bugs or core design mistakes can set you back months overnight. Programming is really, really hard work at scale and it's damn expensive too - those aren't cheap salaries to manage.
Managers make promises and sign contracts that lock them into certain dealines that are hard, or expensive, or both, to meet and to change if they can't be met. Most managers laugh at the 'scotty factor' but it's been my experience that the ones who take it to heart and pad the time to allow for the inevitability of these problems are the ones who are both successful and well liked by their employees.
If you do it well, these cram-time nightmares turn into unexpected vacation time, comp time, and bonuses instead. One can flip the script, I've done it, I've worked with people who've done it, and a company that was very good at it. Even then, we still fucked up from time to time - it's not a guarantee.
If it's June, and you already feel the Christmas crunch coming on, it's time to punt.
Cyberpunk was announced before they shipped Witcher 3. Eight years wasn't enough time because they've only actually been working on it for four—the game didn't start pre-production until after...
why was eight years not enough time?
Cyberpunk was announced before they shipped Witcher 3. Eight years wasn't enough time because they've only actually been working on it for four—the game didn't start pre-production until after Blood and Wine shipped in 2016.
Good point, I didn't really think about that. Though the game started development with less manpower than Witcher 3, it actually had about an extra six months of development time, thanks to the...
Good point, I didn't really think about that. Though the game started development with less manpower than Witcher 3, it actually had about an extra six months of development time, thanks to the delays, and more people working on it overall, according to Wikipedia's sources.
So now I'm wondering if, instead of redesigns and throwing away development progress, maybe they just couldn't pace to keep up with the ambitions and scope of the game?
My understanding is that proper development didn't begin until after the Witcher expansion, Blood & Wine shipped. So, a bit over five years. I have two large assumptions, one practical and one...
My understanding is that proper development didn't begin until after the Witcher expansion, Blood & Wine shipped. So, a bit over five years.
I have two large assumptions, one practical and one cynical:
Assumption 1) Based on the 38 hours I've invested so far, much of the development has been art & aesthetic focused. The map is fucking gigantic, and much of it (the large assets, anyway) is unique. Modelling and texturing those assets takes a large team, and a lot of time. Then there's planning out how the assets are distributed throughout the world. Literal world-building is a massive investment of hours. This is the kind of thing I have personal experience with*, and I assess that it was what most man-hours were spent doing, at least in the beginning stages. Working with the engine, outlining the story, and all else was surely being done during that time, but I don't see them being dominant—hour-wise—during that time. Ever watch the BTS for LotR? The art design, costuming, and manufacturing all of the props started a few years before the first day of filming. Kind of like that.
Assumption 2) Shareholders pushed for early release in time for Holiday Season 2020, because shareholders are the way that they are; product readiness, worker treatment, etc, be damned. It was delayed from its first date, which I think was management/marketing's fault in being overzealous. But being so fucking gung-ho about getting it out before the end of the year, and making folks miserable with 100+ hour work-weeks? Shareholders. I'd bet money on that. That first release date got shareholders excited, the delay upset them, and they put pressure on CDPR to ship before Christmas.
*as a hobbyist with a former interest in this as a career. I don't have experience on doing this in a corporate environment, but I do know the workflow and how long things can take.
Bingo. If there's one thing I've learned about business for myself, I'd never, ever, under any circumstances take any company of mine public. It's like signing up to have a posse of greedy...
Shareholders. I'd bet money on that.
Bingo. If there's one thing I've learned about business for myself, I'd never, ever, under any circumstances take any company of mine public. It's like signing up to have a posse of greedy short-sighted children take over your company and fling shit at you four times or more a year. Why on earth would anyone want to answer to that? Better to answer to yourself and your employees. It should be more of a worker co-op model, and the people working there should be the shareholders. Vastly better alignment of incentives that way, no?
I get that going public is a time-tested, battle-proven way to generate funding to grow and secure your business - in a hurry too if the demand is there. That said, this is 2020, not 1950. There are other ways to go about this now. If you're going to be indebted to someone, perhaps your customers are the better choice. They aren't interested in how much money you can make for them in X years. They are interested in your product, mission, or both. If one must go public, there are ways to do it that don't involve giving up all of the control to become shareholder's puppets.
Those other paths perhaps require more patience, prudence, and perseverance. It's harder. Seems like you're much more free to avoid making the same mistakes capitalism so often forces upon every business if you do it that way, though.
There's also an article about this from PC Gamer:
And in that article they make an important point:
It'll be interesting to see what the larger, long term effects on the company are as a result of this launch, especially because as stated in this Bloomberg article:
It's also important to point out that no one actually knows why the game shipped in the unfinished state that it did. Sure, we can say "they didn't have enough development time", that much is painfully obvious, but why was
eightfour years not enough time?I think, probably more than once, there were redesign decisions made that threw away a lot of development progress, such as game mechanic changes or rewriting parts of the story. For now that's all speculation though.
And then, even once we find out why
eightfour (plus) years wasn't a long enough time to get the game shipped, we still have to find out who/what was responsible. Was it management? Was it side effects from contracting Keanu Reeves to star in the game? Was it ray-tracing or trying to take advantage of upcoming hardware?I mean, a launch this big, a fiasco this extravagant, there have got to be a lot of really important lessons here that other game developers could learn from, so I really hope we eventually get a lot of insight into what exactly happened.
I'm not expecting to learn anything we didn't already know from this launch. This story is as old as gaming, it never changes, it never improves. Management become money-blinded and panic-stricken trying to meet holiday deadlines, they cut corners and burn out staff. I'll wager once you strip the shiny corporate-speak veneer off of the lessons learned that mismanagement is the entire reason, and I'd also bet you couldn't list a single medium to large developer that hasn't been bitten repeatedly by this issue.
Protip: If your game is a shitshow at Christmas, then release it next Christmas. No one is going to mind except your managers missing out on their fat bonus checks, and that should be on the bottom line of any sane priority list in any company. If your company can't handle running without fresh revenue that long, perhaps learn how to run a company in the black for a change instead of in the red all the time.
CDPR could have delayed it another year, leaving them ample time to polish and refine the game without making developers go home with redeye and keyboardface every night. They could have even had an extended beta where they collected feedback and constructive criticism during that time. This would have revealed all of the honest flaws (empty, lifeless environment etc) and given them the opportunity to fix those problems and add more content.
That's the difference between a game people are still buying several years later and a game that gets refunded on day one. Apparently being fast is vastly more important to the suits running things than making their customers giddy with joy or making real money.
Fire any managers or owners responsible for making these predictable, amateur, bush-league mistakes. Let's stop pretending that it is anything other than base greed and abysmal business management.
If you've read Blood, Sweat, and Pixels it sounds like, as often as not, there's another layer to the story. Gaming companies are just bad at managing scope. In almost every story in that book Schreier talks about how they bit off more than they could chew in scoping out the project, kept going down development rabbit holes that didn't pan out, or had to make major design changes because what they were doing before just wasn't fun.
This seems to be a particular problem in gaming, probably because the industry is full of 'passionate' prima donnas who have a hard time letting go of their darlings.
I think Shovel Knight was the one game where this didn't happen in that book and the thing there seems to be that it was made by a team of highly experienced and seasoned game devs who were basically on a shoestring budget. So they both didn't have time or resources to fuck around AND they had the skills to know off the bat what was useful to pursue and what would end up being a distraction.
TL;DR: Project Management as hard, especially in creative fields.
It really does seem this simple.
I'm sure it's more complicated in practice. I also have a lot of experience working devops and supporting large programming teams. Scope creep will eat you alive, things that seemed simple can turn rapidly into complex nightmares, unexpected bugs or core design mistakes can set you back months overnight. Programming is really, really hard work at scale and it's damn expensive too - those aren't cheap salaries to manage.
Managers make promises and sign contracts that lock them into certain dealines that are hard, or expensive, or both, to meet and to change if they can't be met. Most managers laugh at the 'scotty factor' but it's been my experience that the ones who take it to heart and pad the time to allow for the inevitability of these problems are the ones who are both successful and well liked by their employees.
If you do it well, these cram-time nightmares turn into unexpected vacation time, comp time, and bonuses instead. One can flip the script, I've done it, I've worked with people who've done it, and a company that was very good at it. Even then, we still fucked up from time to time - it's not a guarantee.
If it's June, and you already feel the Christmas crunch coming on, it's time to punt.
Cyberpunk was announced before they shipped Witcher 3. Eight years wasn't enough time because they've only actually been working on it for four—the game didn't start pre-production until after Blood and Wine shipped in 2016.
Good point, I didn't really think about that. Though the game started development with less manpower than Witcher 3, it actually had about an extra six months of development time, thanks to the delays, and more people working on it overall, according to Wikipedia's sources.
So now I'm wondering if, instead of redesigns and throwing away development progress, maybe they just couldn't pace to keep up with the ambitions and scope of the game?
My understanding is that proper development didn't begin until after the Witcher expansion, Blood & Wine shipped. So, a bit over five years.
I have two large assumptions, one practical and one cynical:
Assumption 1) Based on the 38 hours I've invested so far, much of the development has been art & aesthetic focused. The map is fucking gigantic, and much of it (the large assets, anyway) is unique. Modelling and texturing those assets takes a large team, and a lot of time. Then there's planning out how the assets are distributed throughout the world. Literal world-building is a massive investment of hours. This is the kind of thing I have personal experience with*, and I assess that it was what most man-hours were spent doing, at least in the beginning stages. Working with the engine, outlining the story, and all else was surely being done during that time, but I don't see them being dominant—hour-wise—during that time. Ever watch the BTS for LotR? The art design, costuming, and manufacturing all of the props started a few years before the first day of filming. Kind of like that.
Assumption 2) Shareholders pushed for early release in time for Holiday Season 2020, because shareholders are the way that they are; product readiness, worker treatment, etc, be damned. It was delayed from its first date, which I think was management/marketing's fault in being overzealous. But being so fucking gung-ho about getting it out before the end of the year, and making folks miserable with 100+ hour work-weeks? Shareholders. I'd bet money on that. That first release date got shareholders excited, the delay upset them, and they put pressure on CDPR to ship before Christmas.
*as a hobbyist with a former interest in this as a career. I don't have experience on doing this in a corporate environment, but I do know the workflow and how long things can take.
Bingo. If there's one thing I've learned about business for myself, I'd never, ever, under any circumstances take any company of mine public. It's like signing up to have a posse of greedy short-sighted children take over your company and fling shit at you four times or more a year. Why on earth would anyone want to answer to that? Better to answer to yourself and your employees. It should be more of a worker co-op model, and the people working there should be the shareholders. Vastly better alignment of incentives that way, no?
I get that going public is a time-tested, battle-proven way to generate funding to grow and secure your business - in a hurry too if the demand is there. That said, this is 2020, not 1950. There are other ways to go about this now. If you're going to be indebted to someone, perhaps your customers are the better choice. They aren't interested in how much money you can make for them in X years. They are interested in your product, mission, or both. If one must go public, there are ways to do it that don't involve giving up all of the control to become shareholder's puppets.
Those other paths perhaps require more patience, prudence, and perseverance. It's harder. Seems like you're much more free to avoid making the same mistakes capitalism so often forces upon every business if you do it that way, though.
In case of paywall: https://outline.com/93CYw8