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Stern, 2016
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Stern, 2010
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Stern, 2015
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Stern, 2013
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Stern, 2013
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Stern, 2012
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Stern, 2012
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Stern, 2011You're currently viewing posts by Pinsider circus_animal.
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Quoted from tp:Would be nice to see Transformers code polished up if your offering. Thanks tom in pa.
They're not offering anything. They're pointing out how committed they are to finishing the code. You know, just so that people realise that waiting several years for the manufacturer to provide a finished product is fantastic customer service.
Quoted from Jaybird815:It's a lot easier when you only have one game to worry about
...which makes it all the more mystifying that Stern's standard business practice is to allow multiple games to languish with half-arsed code.
Quoted from markmon:No actually it doesn't mean that. It means they have a lot of factory workers and paying say 15 workers $15 and hour for a week of doing nothing because the dev team has more code to write could be enough to go out of business if you do it regularly.
If software development can't keep pace with manufacturing, the company will go out of business no matter how they time things; the backlog will just keep getting bigger until the whole thing falls over. If it can, then there's no reason for Stern to be releasing half-finished games. All they would need to do is slow the frequency of announcements for a year or two and software would be synchronised with manufacturing, after which point they could continue at the current rate.
Quoted from markmon:if the dev cycle for software is (for example) 2 years per game and the cycle for mechanics and manufacturing is 1, all you need is enough software guys so that one guy can keep working on one machine until it's done. At this point stern has 2-3 real releases per year but it has 4 lead software devs so it actually does work out and it does keep pace but just to be more behind.
Okay, so software development can keep pace with production. So why are they releasing half-finished games? Slow the release cycle for a couple of years until games are actually finished when they start selling them.
Quoted from flynnibus:When the work backlog gets too big - you evaluate what is most important and if the work items are still relevant... And drop stuff that never will feasibly get done. You don't "fall over" -- you decide what is not worth doing.
That's fine up to the point that customers decide that buying their games is not worth doing. Short-changing customers on advertised features, taking years to provide a finished product, failing to address software bugs is eroding the consumer goodwill that Stern relies on, and it is setting them up for a fall.
Quoted from markmon:Unfortunately, you misunderstood what I said. Software can be written in multiple teams where each team can be working on a game independently of another team. These numbers are examples. Suppose software needs about 1.6 years to complete its job but mechanical engineering only needs 1 year. Suppose the factory must run a minimum of 3 items per year for them to stay in business. Suppose the software cycle cannot begin until the game is 4 months into the mechanics. With this model you can have double the software teams as the mechanical teams and the software will always be done about a year after the game and the factory will always be running on schedule. This explains why the situation is as it is. Otherwise each game would need say another year of time before its release.
I'm sure many would love to see stern just pause and wait a year, have each game take a year longer, and start releasing completed games but that isn't going to be possible for them as a business that has bills to pay and workers to pay.
And btw, this problem will only get worse when DMD moves to led with fancy graphics that take tons longer to develop than DMD dots which almost anyone can do.
I understand what you're saying about the manufacturing process, I just don't agree with your conclusions. Stern don't need to sit on their hands for a year to get the code on track; they can release vault editions, rethemes, even make a few games that don't need extensive code (there's plenty of great games with straightforward rulesets). Nor do they need to release X number of games per year to stay in business; they need to make X dollars, irrespective of which game the sales come from- and sales of each game will increase if they can provide a better product i.e. complete code in a shorter timeframe. It would be smart business for Stern to try to find a way to do this.
Quoted from Deez:Prediction: one year from now bm66 owners will be crying in this same thread.
My prediction: four years from now bm66 owners will be crying in this same thread.
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Coos Bay, OR