HarvesteR steps down as KSP lead dev

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sargunv
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HarvesteR steps down as KSP lead dev

Post by sargunv »

http://reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/ ... ll_to_ksp/

I think some people here might be interested. Thoughts?
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FlowerChild
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Re: HarvesteR steps down as KSP lead dev

Post by FlowerChild »

I guess I should have some kind of reaction given how involved I've been with the game, but I just kinda shrugged.

The release version game was pushed out the door too early, has largely stagnated over the past year, and is currently sitting in the middle of another patch cycle as another update got pushed out the door too soon, and then the team went on vacation before being done with bug fixing it.

So, I dunno. The game already felt like it was dying to me, and I can't say this news really impacts how I've been feeling about it..
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Re: HarvesteR steps down as KSP lead dev

Post by Taleric »

For Harv I think that is all well and good. He carried that torch and vision to become something amazing. He is due to let go and move on.

For KSP I think the monster it has become slowly prepared for Harv to leave.

Much as he said in his post the vision for KSP is in a place where the team will not juggle it much from here. Poor Harv was probably becoming removed especially after the unity 5 move where I am sure the team got a deep understanding of the code base on his level.

The amazing thing is to consider what we might see in the next decade like KSP. Imagine the depth in engineering. It truly is a game (KSP) I desired since the 90's.
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Re: HarvesteR steps down as KSP lead dev

Post by Katalliaan »

I'm honestly not too surprised, especially after a former developer made some serious claims about low pay and poor working conditions, followed by several others chiming in to confirm. In that situation, I'd want to distance myself from the company as much as possible.
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devak
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Re: HarvesteR steps down as KSP lead dev

Post by devak »

KSP. Now that's a game i haven't heard about in a while.

Sad to hear he's gone, i really do hope he won't be a one-trick-pony
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Re: HarvesteR steps down as KSP lead dev

Post by FlowerChild »

Katalliaan wrote:I'm honestly not too surprised, especially after a former developer made some serious claims about low pay and poor working conditions, followed by several others chiming in to confirm.
Yikes, I hadn't heard about that until now. Just looked it up.
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Re: HarvesteR steps down as KSP lead dev

Post by Wafflewaffle »

@FC You are a man with a history in games develpment. Did you experienced harsh conditions or underpaid work in the industry? This thing with Harv reminded me of Alex St. John's infamous rants about sacrifice and stuff.
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FlowerChild
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Re: HarvesteR steps down as KSP lead dev

Post by FlowerChild »

Wafflewaffle wrote:@FC You are a man with a history in games develpment. Did you experienced harsh conditions or underpaid work in the industry? This thing with Harv reminded me of Alex St. John's infamous rants about sacrifice and stuff.
I don't want to complain too much about my past as I've experienced both good and bad. Most of the time the places I've worked that required heavy work also heavily rewarded that work, but that was also an earlier time in the industry where talent was hard to come by, so companies did everything they could to keep their people.

I've certainly experienced nothing like what's being talked about there. I can't even tell what's the truth of that situation as the source of the info sounds fairly dodgy (the info was released through 4Chan? Seriously?), and even the "verifications" seem to be of a "friend of a friend" nature.

On the other hand, as far as I know, we're talking about some guys at a marketing firm in Mexico that decided to make a game and somehow managed to convince management to go along with that. Would I be surprised if that scenario resulted in terrible working conditions? Well, no, of course not. I used to refer to Canada as "the Mexico of game development" because companies would setup studios there to make games on the cheap due to government incentives and lower wages, so I can only imagine the uphill battle employees would have in Mexico itself for reasonable wages and work conditions. I've also seen a few makeshift game studios setup out of companies focused in other things, and typically, the best way to describe them would be "sweat shops". You wind up with some super eager kids that so want to make games that they beg and plead management to set them up in a back room to do something completely outside of the scope of their regular business, willing to trade their first born child for the chance to do so, which is the exact opposite of negotiating from a position of power.

Anyways, I would definitely not take whatever may or may not have happened at Squad as any kind of example of the game industry as a whole. That whole scenario sounds like it was begging for a complete nightmare, and if they managed to avoid it, then that's entirely to their credit.
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Re: HarvesteR steps down as KSP lead dev

Post by Katalliaan »

FlowerChild wrote:On the other hand, as far as I know, we're talking about some guys at a marketing firm in Mexico that decided to make a game and somehow managed to convince management to go along with that.
That's more or less how it happened. There was a post ages ago explaining it, but basically there was a policy where the firm would help their employees do one thing they really wanted to do - in Felipe's case, that was make KSP.
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Re: HarvesteR steps down as KSP lead dev

Post by Wafflewaffle »

Katalliaan wrote:That's more or less how it happened. There was a post ages ago explaining it, but basically there was a policy where the firm would help their employees do one thing they really wanted to do - in Felipe's case, that was make KSP.
I know how caustic "inbred" entreprise's enviroment can get, especially when a such sideproject starts to make money (I understand KSP was quite successful), but when you frase it like that it sounds so nice of the employers to feed a project like that. So generous of them!
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