Yes, but if all the code needs to be examined and what-not, they effectively have to freeze development. Switching engines to a clean license and freezing the codebase for a trial/settlement is the safest move. At least that’s the way it seems to me.
What would you hear that isn’t already public? Deadlines keep getting pushed, JPEGs are being sold that never get turned into functional game elements, and features keep getting added. ALL of that is public and folks keep throwing money at it. The only juicy stuff is arguably the financials, and that stuff is only known by a few.
I think there’s a lot to be found out and, uh, “discovered” here, at least from an investor standpoint. Where’s money being allocated? Is it being allocated according to terms of investment? Is work that is being represented on the game corresponding to actual work being performed by developers?
The way this house of cards likely comes tumbling down has to do with the $46 million in venture capital investment that Roberts took on in December of last year. The laws and rules that apply to kickstarter and “Buy a jpg” marketing are pretty fast and loose. But the laws in the UK and USA that apply to venture capital investment…aren’t. If there’s been misrepresentation of anything from overstating software assets, workflows, reasonable projection of timeframes on revenue streams, etc., well, that could be something that a billionaire venture capital company like Snoot Entertainment and the Calder family who run it may eventually start wondering about.
And if they get antsy, they could start demanding information and answers. $46 million is a lot. That’s on the high end of what Snoot might typically invest in a movie, which is their normal milieu. And perhaps Roberts/CIG can give them assurances that calm them down. But it’s just as likely that auditors and lawyers may decide they want to see what’s up, and may likely have to pursue some civil recourse to get a look under the hood. And at that point, Chris Roberts may want to lawyer up in a big way.
They don’t have to freeze anything. If the code at a specific time needs to be investigated they pull it from source control. If they’re switching engines it’s either because they incorrectly think it will allow them to escape the lawsuit or because they just want a new excuse as to why there’s no progress on anything of value.
That’s my guess. Now they will have to start all over which should be good for another 7 or so years of excuses while milking the whales.
The “choose two” meme has been around forever. To me what it essentially says is software development is impossible to plan, because otherwise you should be able to deliver a project on time, on budget, with good quality. Is that some kind of impossible dream? I do realize that projects often run over, but not all of them do.
Imagine you’re building a house. You have the plot of land. You are ready to contract with a builder. He worked up a project plan, budget and timeline, and then he tells you can have two of three – quality, time, and price – but the third will have to sacrificed. You’d talk to another builder!
It’s just saying that if you want something to work right and be done fast, you’d better be ready to pay good money, because if someone tells you they can do it fast and cheap, probably they aren’t going to deliver something sturdy. If your hypothetical builder said they could build you a house in half the time another builder quoted you for half the price, would you not be skeptical that it would be built to the same standards?
Yeah, I first heard it in relation to regular engineering, long before “software engineering” was something average people even talked about.
I mean is it hitting any of those? It’s not cheap, being one of the most expensive games ever in production. It’s certainly not delivered quickly, having missed numerous dates. Quality is a bit more of an unknown but there’s lots of questions there too from the dev builds and live streams.
Poor analogy. The builder has built that house 100 times. Software is always unique. You sort of know what you want and have confidence you can build it, but there are tons of unknowns.
I always took it as a way to imply that the schedule is too aggressive.
So you’re saying software projects are impossible to plan well?
No, he’s saying that planning and building a house that has been built before innumerable times is different than planning and building unique software.
Ok, so the analogy isn’t perfect. How about I go to a company that builds phone apps with a software idea. I agree to pay them to build it. They present me with a plan that includes cost, timeline, and functionality. Is this saying that I really shouldn’t expect them to hit all three goals?
To me it’s a given if I pay someone for something it will be delivered in good fashion. But if the idea is that a software development company can’t keep to plan and deliver a quality product on time and in budget, then I think they are not really doing their job well. Is it wrong of me to think that?
To account for the unknowns, shouldn’t you budget in both time and expense beyond what you see when you draw up the initial plan?
You’re conflating “cheap” with “on budget”, and “fast” with “on time”. If you budget for realistic dev time frame and expenses, then you aren’t doing it on the cheap.
On the flip side, if another guy says he can make the same app for half the price and half the time, you’re very likely going to get a buggy, piece of crap app.
It’s a basic truism that quality engineering takes time. If you want quality engineering, you can’t get it rushed and on the cheap. That’s the point of the analogy. The point is not “if you want good software, it’s gonna cost a fortune and you might as well throw timetables in the garbage”.
If you’re budgeting in extra time and expenses for setbacks in your plan, that’s the definition of not doing it on the cheap.
As for Star Citizen - Roberts hasn’t managed his expenses well, has shredded multiple timetables for delivery (and still is), keeps adding more rooms onto the house in the building plan while this is going on, and insists on micromanaging the construction crew. All while bullshitting to the homeowners that everything is going great, and financing the circus by getting them to buy in on (pictures of) gilded stair railings and gold leaf wallpaper he promises to install.
I get that but the graphic said “Time”, “Quality” and “Money”. I am saying you can hit all three if you plan well. There seems to be an implication that since it’s software development of course it’s going to cost more or take more time than originally planned. Perhaps, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
I worked at software development companies for 20 years or so, so I’m sympathetic. I was there day to day with the developers as a tech writer. I saw deliverables slip or have features cut all the time. I just don’t think in 2019 it needs to be like that.
Star Citizen is a lost cause at this point. I’m really not even talking about that. It’s an aberration more than an example.
It doesn’t have to happen anymore, because we have the tools (eg Agile methodologies) to deal with the fact that we are always discovering the unknown unknowns while development is ongoing. An analogy to construction work is the time our apartment building was having pipes renovated, which ran over both time and money. Bad planning? No, turned out the blueprints we had for the building were incorrect/outdated, so the builders discovered unknown pipes that they had to deal with.
That sums up my daily work pretty well. As long as we don’t run into any unknowns, we can give a pretty good estimate. But there are always unknowns.
It’s called the project management triangle and is not really specific to engineering as such. Been around for many years.
Those are pretty risky aren’t they? They assume everyone on a team is at the top of their game in terms of expertise, which is not always realistic.