This is why I like Elite Dangerous’ model better. They shipped a game and made iterative improvements. It has many flaws, but for most intents and purposes it’s a running space sim.
agreed, ship something and then improve it is a way better approach, then at least we have a game even if the money runs out. star citizen risks never completing, and that's just not something i feel comfortable supporting.
the irony is that i long ignored elite dangerous because its name made me think it's some kind of battle oriented shooter, and not a space simulation.
When I'm making game and I want to finish it fast, I limit myself to "2 of everything". If the game is about maze of rooms, I made 2 rooms (because 2 is minimal amount when you need to implement the switching). When I plan to have hundreds of guns, I make 2 because that's the minimum to test switching. 2 characters. 2 attacks. 2 NPCs. 2 endings. 2 levels. 2 quests... Only when everything is implemented I either release as mvp or start adding more content into otherwise finished game.
So in case of bedsheet deformation, I would make a function that returns deformed bedsheet, but in first release it would simply randomly returned one of 2 premade assets.
If NMS has been honest with what they had vs. what their vision was, they wouldn't even have had to suffer all the negativity.
Imagine if ED had marketed itself around the idea of being able to jump out of your ship and play in first person, people would have been furious.
The fact that NMS managed to come back and actually implement pretty much everything they had originally promised is pretty amazing, but I think it's an anomaly, and most games that suffer from initial disappointment will end up being cancelled.
The problem seems to be that Sean Murray suffered from a case of Peter Molyneux syndrome whenever he got interviewed which was a lot - somehow his future ideas suddenly became a reality when he opened his mouth.
Good to see they made it right and are successful.
