Simulation games

Hey, this is Paul Furio, the former Technical Director for KSP2 at Intercept Games.

I was going to do an AMA tomorrow, and had already written up a bunch of answers to questions folks asked. Then I received a lovely email, and reviewed the answers I had started to write up, realizing that the very smart author of that email would find something in those answers to your questions that they could argue were troublesome, despite my best efforts for them not to be, and that would just be bad for everyone.

So while I really don’t want to cancel this AMA, I am. You can call me a coward, or worse, it’s fine. Trust me, I’ve been called much much worse.

Your questions are great questions. They deserve answers. Way back two decades ago, when attending the Game Developers Conference, people used to get up on stage and talk about game development sessions that went well, and ones that went poorly. They’d go into deep details, and everyone got better. Everyone made better games as a result. There was a large degree of trust between players and developers. Information was openly shared. It was a golden time for learning and experience.

My personal opinion is that those days are behind us.

What’s ridiculous, in my opinion, is that there really isn’t any secrecy about what goes wrong when products, in general, go south. It’s more or less similar problems at different companies, over and over, but because information is less freely shared, the problems recur and that costs money and time, and also isn’t so great for livelihoods. If you’ve ever worked at a large company, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I’ve spoken at length about the problems with the Amazon Fire Phone project, and Amazon never cared to reach out to tell me not to. Perhaps Amazon, for all their flaws, is a company that wants everyone to get better and smarter.

Anyway, deepest apologies for getting your hopes up. I genuinely hope someone, someday can fill in the blanks, because I think it’s really an interesting story of intense effort during a very challenging time.

I will say that some of the smartest people I’ve worked with were on the KSP2 team. Great engineers solved some difficult problems. Artists made things beautiful, and Howard Mostrom made some of the most glorious music I’ve ever heard. Nate Simpson is not a terrible person, and does not deserve the ire he’s received.

I think I’m done, in this field and career line. Some of you will cheer that on, that’s fine, although I’d ponder you to ask yourselves why you’re so delighted in the defeat of others. Software development and corporate culture aren’t much fun anymore. At the end of the day, I have enough and I’m very fortunate to be there.

I wish KSP2 could have been all that was promised, for all of you. I was really hoping it would be, even after I left the team 18 months ago. I scratched my head a bunch about the timing of updates and communication coming out of the team and studio, just like the rest of you did. I was equally perplexed. Everyone deserved better, and I take a large level of responsibility for the technical failings (despite my best and intense efforts to focus on performance, quality, and so on) at launch, to be sure.

There are lots of great games out there, and there are lots of smart people on this subreddit. My final advice is this: Take a breath, then go fire up Unity or Godot. Read some tutorials and watch some videos. Try to make the game you want yourself. If you go through life waiting for someone else to build your dreams, they almost certainly never will. If instead you try to build your own, sure, many people will try to block you, but if you persevere, if you have tenacity and curiosity, you will definitely get much much closer than you would any other way.

Best of luck to all of you.

-PJF

I have seen many people saying that the villains should be removed from the game completelly. That there should be no quests whatsoever with them. Making them dissappear from the map just doesnt seem enough. Especially when it come to Mother Gothel.

Look i get that you dont like her attitude but thats who she is as a character. Cant handle it? Dont play a Disney game; villains have always been a big part of Disney. I might have sound harsh, sorry, but the thing is some people like me love the villains. It makes me nervous everytime i see people wishing them gone completelly (or even wish no more quests with them) If devs did it my favourite characters would be gone. Please dont wish them to be completelly gone from the game - just banish them from the map. Let us who enjoy the villains also enjoy the game!

For me it's Discover University. I don't hate it, but don't love either. DU annoys me that most of university gameplay is based on rabbit holes. Lecture? Rabbit hole. Exam? Rabbit hole. Some football match? RABBIT HOLE. If I actually could follow my sims to campus buildings and be able to control them there while having some tasks (exactly like in High School Years) I wouldn't even mind it takes so long to graduate.

Britechester is beautiful, but so SMALL. I wish there were empty lots (at least 30x20) to place community lots and houses.

Remember Greek houses in Sims 2 and 3? These were so cool and miss them in Sims 4, but I guess that's because they based Britechester on Oxford and European universities.

Overally DU had a HUGE potential and most of it was wasted.