Straight-up Question, no game

They need to give us the names, home addresses, social security numbers, and phone numbers of everyone who currently works on the game or ever has. Before we invest our hard earned money in this game we should be able to run background checks on their employees and interview them extensively.

Actually, maybe we can get DNA samples too? That might be asking too much!

Just as an aside, as a software development professional, the idea that qualifications somehow impact coders' quality of work in any way is laughable and reflects a complete lack of understanding of this industry.

Some of the worst code I've ever seen was turned in by people with multiple advanced degrees, and some of the best folks I've ever hired had no post-secondary education of any kind. I've seen brilliant, elegant, well-executed code from the cheapest offshore firms, and absolute disasters turned in by 7-figure, top-flight consultants.

I haven't worked with the AI coding tools, but I imagine they're just like anything else in the industry. We've had various ways of accomplishing the same things for decades. Teams with good process and good management will achieve good results, and teams that don't have those things will fail, regardless of tools or languages or coders' education levels (LOL) or anything else.

@KGB said:
@entrailbucket

This has also been my experience in the software industry (1990 till now).

I imagine it's like this in a lot of other industries as well.

KGB

P.S. I can't imagine a 7 figure consultant failing that badly along with the failure of the company hiring them to identify that 7 figure consultant as a bad risk.

I've been through some stuff, man. I've seen things you can't unsee.

Fwiw, once you get to that level of megafailure, it's the lawyers sorting it out.

You can hire the best coders in the world, and if your management and your process is trash, they will give you trash.

You can hire the worst possible outsourcing firm, or use AI, or copy stuff from the Internet, or have your neighbor's kid write the code, and if your management and your process are good, you'll get good results.

Every single engineer writes bugs -- the best developers in the world make mistakes, because that's the nature of the job. If your process is good you'll find most of them before you ship.

None of the problems MPQ is having are the fault of bad coders, outsourcing, AI, or the Unity engine.

@bluewolf said:
I dunno why you think the game's state is unrelated to the coders or outsourcing or Unity exactly.

Bad outsourcing or bad coders can be problems sometimes, but usually it's when you have bad process/bad management. When you have good process and good management you can get good results with just about anybody.

Unity itself is almost certainly not a problem. Unity works just fine in lots of other apps and games that are way bigger than this one. If they'd picked some other engine they'd most likely be in the same situation, because somebody decided to rebuild the entire game from scratch.

Blame management, not the coders or the outsourcing firms or AI.

@Gymp28 said:

@entrailbucket said:

@bluewolf said:
I dunno why you think the game's state is unrelated to the coders or outsourcing or Unity exactly.

Bad outsourcing or bad coders can be problems sometimes, but usually it's when you have bad process/bad management. When you have good process and good management you can get good results with just about anybody.

Unity itself is almost certainly not a problem. Unity works just fine in lots of other apps and games that are way bigger than this one. If they'd picked some other engine they'd most likely be in the same situation, because somebody decided to rebuild the entire game from scratch.

Blame management, not the coders or the outsourcing firms or AI.

To be fair I think @bluewolf pretty much was blaming management. Or more accurately, the money guys that sit above them.
I tend to agree with the assessment that ‘they’ have slashed resources (staff) that support the game. Certainly would go a long way to explaining why we hardly ever hear off the devs anymore, and why all the bugs persist.

It’s a difficult position, because I’m sure we’d all like to see MPQ continue for many years to come, but equally are disinclined to spend on what had become a less quality product…

I’d like to support the game, if they offered anything that I considered good monetary value, but 50 Galactus shards (+ assorted bumf I don’t need) for £49.99 ain’t even close to being it…
A full Galactus cover? Then you’d have me rifling through my wallet!

I was mostly responding to the OP of this thread, who made a whole bunch of assumptions that were targeted at very specific culprits for this.

It's like blaming the plumber who worked on your new house, vs the general contractor who hired him and oversaw the work. You don't know who messed up what and how (because you are not a plumber), but something is broken so the general contractor messed up. Maybe he hired a bad plumber, or maybe he told him to do the wrong job, or gave him substandard materials, or didn't give him enough time.

We really can't know and ultimately it doesn't matter. Stuff is screwed up and it's the fault of whoever's in charge.

As I continue my beautiful conversation with @Scofie and I work on being the nicer version of myself, please know that I see sarcasm in my statement and apologize if hurt feelings were incurred.

However, please know that these questions are quite unreasonable and they don't owe us answers, to these questions, or really any at all. You are free to purchase their products, or not, this is a choice you are given and have to live with.

NOW, if there was a contract guaranteeing answers signed somewhere that I am not aware of, that changes everything.

I would be curious though, what do you expect to get out of those answers. Is the intent to provide advice that might help them?

As it happens I sell game outsourcing services for a living, and I do in fact know some people who could help with this if there was an interest.