Selling IP can go both ways. It could be picked up by someone wanting to do better, or it could be picked up by someone just after a quick buck by doing the bare minimum.
And then there’s Rocketwerkz - They originally bid to develop Kerbal Space Program 2 for Take2, but they lost the bid because the winners showed up fancy concept art while rocketwerkz focused on a solid technical foundation. And then Take2 severely botched KSP2 and the franchise is now considered dead. Rocketwerkz is now building something relevamt from scratch, with their own IP, and it looks really promising. I hope this happens to a lot more AAA titles and IP holders.
KSP2 is such a sad situation all around. The guys working on it had the same idea and were going to build a brand new engine for it to fix the tech debt of the original, but management demanded that they use the original engine “to speed up development time.”
My understanding was that KSP2 was originally going to be just a slightly cleaned up re-release of KSP1. A remaster if you will. Buy up some existing mods, bundle them in, clean up the UI a bit and enjoy the fruits of this new definitive edition of the game. But the team was able to convince Take2 to try to replace the game engine as part of that remaster and truly make it worth while (hence the 4 year delay from the original release date)
The original idea that was sold to the public was essentially “Kerbal Space Program, but bigger.” I couldn’t tell you all of the details or the timetable, but there were a lot of new features planned from the start (a number of which were mods of the first game) including fixing issues that were present in the original and adding things far outside the scope of the first game like multiplayer, colonies, and FTL travel to a new solar system. The dev team openly talked about creating a new engine to fix the physics bugs and such, at least.
I don’t know what happened along the way, but it’s pretty clear that the KSP2 that we have has the engine of the first game in it, as to this day it has many of the same bugs.
My guess is that the team originally planned on a new engine, but at some point, management stepped in and demanded that they use the old engine. IIRC, there was some restructuring that happened during the development - both in taking the project away from the original dev studio working on it, and then restructuring the team that was working on it, so it could’ve happened at some point during that.
Ubisoft is owned and run by a family who are super old French aristocrats who trace their family wealth back generations. The Guillemots have zero idea what their customers want or how to make a good game. They want to make money and don’t care what the poor have to say in criticism or frustration. They are too insulated to feel like they have to improve - it’s the children who are wrong.
I was never very into Ubisoft or their titles, so I’m perfectly content with everything burning to the ground, hoping it’ll send a signal to franchises I actually care about:
Stop developing games for focus panels, and try to innovate instead.
consider firing from the top down as your managers aren’t doing shit for the company
I disagree. Because of his… “antics,” I know the name Bobby Kotik, and he’s done nothing but good things for the company. Really uplifted them from a dark place.
Do better Ubisoft
Stop fucking outsourcing and actually fund your devs, consider firing from the top down as your managers aren’t doing shit for the company
I’m legitimately at the point where I hope they don’t pivot and are just forced to sell off their IP. There’s just too many reasons to not like them.
Guess they better start feeling comfortable with not owning their company.
Microsoft will buy it. Don’t worry.
Selling IP can go both ways. It could be picked up by someone wanting to do better, or it could be picked up by someone just after a quick buck by doing the bare minimum.
And then there’s Rocketwerkz - They originally bid to develop Kerbal Space Program 2 for Take2, but they lost the bid because the winners showed up fancy concept art while rocketwerkz focused on a solid technical foundation. And then Take2 severely botched KSP2 and the franchise is now considered dead. Rocketwerkz is now building something relevamt from scratch, with their own IP, and it looks really promising. I hope this happens to a lot more AAA titles and IP holders.
KSP2 is such a sad situation all around. The guys working on it had the same idea and were going to build a brand new engine for it to fix the tech debt of the original, but management demanded that they use the original engine “to speed up development time.”
My understanding was that KSP2 was originally going to be just a slightly cleaned up re-release of KSP1. A remaster if you will. Buy up some existing mods, bundle them in, clean up the UI a bit and enjoy the fruits of this new definitive edition of the game. But the team was able to convince Take2 to try to replace the game engine as part of that remaster and truly make it worth while (hence the 4 year delay from the original release date)
The original idea that was sold to the public was essentially “Kerbal Space Program, but bigger.” I couldn’t tell you all of the details or the timetable, but there were a lot of new features planned from the start (a number of which were mods of the first game) including fixing issues that were present in the original and adding things far outside the scope of the first game like multiplayer, colonies, and FTL travel to a new solar system. The dev team openly talked about creating a new engine to fix the physics bugs and such, at least.
I don’t know what happened along the way, but it’s pretty clear that the KSP2 that we have has the engine of the first game in it, as to this day it has many of the same bugs.
My guess is that the team originally planned on a new engine, but at some point, management stepped in and demanded that they use the old engine. IIRC, there was some restructuring that happened during the development - both in taking the project away from the original dev studio working on it, and then restructuring the team that was working on it, so it could’ve happened at some point during that.
Also, please sell Nadeo to someone who deserves the Trackmania IP.
Ubisoft is owned and run by a family who are super old French aristocrats who trace their family wealth back generations. The Guillemots have zero idea what their customers want or how to make a good game. They want to make money and don’t care what the poor have to say in criticism or frustration. They are too insulated to feel like they have to improve - it’s the children who are wrong.
It’s hilarious that they are trying to condition the sale of the company on letting the guillemots retaining control.
Let it burn.
I was never very into Ubisoft or their titles, so I’m perfectly content with everything burning to the ground, hoping it’ll send a signal to franchises I actually care about:
Stop developing games for focus panels, and try to innovate instead.
I disagree. Because of his… “antics,” I know the name Bobby Kotik, and he’s done nothing but good things for the company. Really uplifted them from a dark place.
I genuinely can’t tell if this is sarcasm.
It absolutely is. I’m just kinda over the /s at this point.
What does Bobby Kotick have to do with Ubisoft? He worked for Activision/Blizzard.
I thought he was ubisoft. Sorry, getting my rapists mixed up…