Live for Speed Forum - Stand der Dinge

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Zabas

Beiträge: 8

Fr 12.06.09 12:38 Stand der Dinge - Entwicklerberichte

Scawen, 2.Juni 09

Zitat:

Had a few minutes spare to read some posts here.

Once again I see some people are really getting angry again, and that is a pity.

I have said we are working on things but of course that does not calm some people down. The problem is that we are working on some things that will be released at some point, and some things that may or may not be released (experimental). But experience has taught us to just keep quiet when we are developing things, experimental or not.

Why?

In the case of things we are developing that will almost certainly be released, we would really love to tell the community. And thousands of forum or website readers might be pleased about that. But in time, a few people (maybe a hundred or so) will begin to become angry and frustrated, if for example we were unable to reach our release estimate. Just look at the Scirocco. While we wait for me to improve things that will improve the Scirocco, we can see hundreds of posts of anger and frustration, so we are constantly reminded, never to post information about a future release, until we are 99.9% certain that we can make the release date. We made the Scirocco announcement when we were only say... 95% certain we could make the release date, and this has caused the most amazing amount of grief. We have only ourselves to blame, and a direct apology does not fix the mess we caused by this announcement. Most community members accepted our apology but you can just read the forum to see hundreds of attacks on our work rate, secrecy, rudeness and our general bad attitude.

In the other case, where we are working on things that are in an experimental stage, and may or may not turn out to be released in the end, it's even more important not to say anything. Because this would just raise expectations and excitement, that is highly likely to turn to anger once again, when some weeks of experimental work may possibly turn out to be unused in the end.

In the past, we did write development progress reports on our website, but sometimes we had to make changes, drop an idea here or there before release, sometimes adding something else instead. Sometimes the thing we were working on did not get released, but the backlash for such a thing is just too much.

Face to face I could say to someone, "this is what I am working on". And later I could say "I couldn't finish that, for this and that reason, anyway this is what we have come up with". There would be some kind of acceptance or discussion about that. But on the internet there are some angry people around! And they make it very very clear that they are very very angry! It really is a minority of people... most people out there reading the forums behave online just the same way as in real life, with some manners, and normal human respect. But some people really lose it and unfortunately they do so, very long and very hard. So in the end, it turns out that the best way forward is just to keep on working, ignore the angry posts and so on, remind ourselves, that is just a small minority of people, and just keep going. The less information we reveal about our development plans, the less there will be to moan about when something changes or we don't meet the expected release dates.

Even with all the arguments, moaning and anger about our apparent secrecy, it's still better to keep quiet, even though it would really be nice to be able to say things like "this is something we are working on, although we're not sure when it will be finished" or "we are taking a few weeks to experiment with this thing" for the sake of general interest. That really is what we used to do but experience has led us to where we are now. I don't think that will ever change, it won't be possible to go back to a time when we could give a lot more information about our plans. Because as the realism level goes up and up, it becomes harder and harder (and takes a lot more time) to make one small step. That is what we are doing, small steps, LFS goes forward a little bit more each year. It would be really great if we could work 10 times as fast or whatever, but we just have to go on at a sustainable rate, doing this work that we enjoy, and in the way that we want to work (not by moving into an office and employing people - that's not why we are doing this - and if anyone wants to do that you are very welcome to do so yourself - there are programmers and artists for hire and you can start up your own company).

Anyway, once again, we are working on things and expect some good releases this year!

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Scawen, 3.Juni 09

Zitat:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Warper View Post
You keep on holding information longer and longer behind the scenes in the hope to blow everyone away again at the next release, i would say a very dangerous way of development.

I found your post quite interesting to read, but I'd just like to pick up on this sentence.

It's not that we hold back information in the hope of blowing people away with exciting new information in the next release.

It's just that we have learned not to give away information about what we are doing, or specify release dates unless what we have is already in a good enough state to release. Because we get a real whipping if we say that we hope (or plan, or expect) to release something and then it has to be cancelled. Or if we specify a release date then cannot make it, the backlash is just too much.

For those who say we should not worry about the small minority of angry guys. Remember they are very (overwhelmingly) vocal on the forums. If we do cancel something or miss a release date, dozens of threads will spring up with sometimes thousands of posts, you know the kind of thing, the angry posters, then the people who defend our decision, then the angry guys calling the defenders fanboys, then the people attacking the people who attacked us in the first place, these huge threads of arguments. It's not nice for the forum, it's not nice for the moderators.

It's just the way it is really, actually we are very close to the community, I do believe that most game developers are not actively involved on the forums, but we are and we have the test patch section as well.

We are human so we have to learn by our mistakes. We won't just make the same mistake over and over again. But we will still continue to give news of releases, when there are good results and definite things, specially when release dates are well known. But the development really does take longer and longer as we slowly get closer to reality, so research and development times get longer.

Hope you understand what I am saying, it's no big change. And I'm not writing here looking for solutions - I'm just explaining how it looks from a developer's viewpoint. But I do care about the community so I just have to make these posts every six months or every year or whatever when the rage starts bubbling over and we begin to be attacked by an increasing percentage of the community who believe we are millionaires and have deserted the community and are sitting on a beach in Barbados sipping Pina Coladas or whatever.

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Scawen 4.Juni 09

Zitat:

There isn't really a problem that needs to be solved. We just have to work on things and then release them. Anything we want to discuss, we will do so. No change there... all I was trying to say in previous posts is that we have learned to keep our plans to ourselves a bit more than in the past, because plans change, and when they change, there is disappointment.

Anyway, I will unsubscribe from this thread now because it is a distraction and I do have quite a few things to work on.

Quelle: http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=57247

Sollte jmd. weitere Äußerungen von den Devs zur Entwicklung von LFS finden, dann kann das gerne hier hinzugefügt werden.

Zuletzt bearbeitet von Zabas am Fr 12.06.09 14:15, insgesamt 2-mal bearbeitet