In my view there are two sides to that story. The aspect we are seeing in his video is the aspect of victimhood. Nate poured his life’s blood, enthusiasm and creativity into this project and now has to pick up the pieces. Clearly Shadowzone and Matt Lowne were convinced that Nate was authentic and really meant what he said. The other aspect is that Nate in his role was part of a -in my opinion- fraudulent activity. In fact he was the prime stoker on the hype train that suckered plenty of people into spending money on a dysfunctional product. In guess you can see a reflection of this other aspect in the scorn that some people heap on him. I tend to be wary of people who were part of the ‚system‘, but portray themselves as victims. There is always the danger of being misled. I have to admit though, that I have more sympathy for Nate now. And that is because he was considerate enough to acknowledge the achievements of his team and apologize to them for the stress he projected on them. Too many people in leadership positions don’t care about their people, because they intend to be long gone by the time the stress catches up with the individuals.
@@rebsredone450I really don't understand how more people aren't talking about this. The misleading report in progress, features which weren't even implemented...
@ I am by no means an expert in the games industry, but I think this boils down to the fact that KSP is a niche game with a niche audience. If I understand the reporting correctly, much bigger titles and companies have been disposed off in a similar fashion. There the ‚shitstorm‘ was bigger, but the results were the same. The industry is in turmoil because of the post COVID slump and so the CEOs do what they need to do in order to keep investors happy and their own bonuses up. Poor Nate was sitting at the interface between the business people and the people who care and has consequently been scorched by both sides. Just a peripheral observation: the ‚just shut it down and pretend it never happened‘-tactic seems to gain ground in other industries too. Recently a well known vendor of astronomy equipment in the US was shuttered without so much as an official notice on their website. Maybe the parent companies have learned from past social media shitstorms that you can get away with behavior like this by generating as much uncertainty about the issue as possible. Uncertainty might keep the established media away from reporting, containing the fallout to the established community.
From what you said in your previous video, a huge reason for failure was down to being forced by studio heads to use recycled KSP 1 code and not being able to talk to KSP 1 developers. Those decisions would certainly not have been Nate's. And once it got to a certain point the sunk cost fallacy and corporate desire for a return on investment kick in and the team were left trying to polish a flawed product. I certainly don't want to see Nate's whole career and life ruined because of KSP 2.
This is what they said in the camps too. Just following orders. He chose to play it this way and go along with the demands of take 2. False promises are bad, I'm glad I never bought in
I was fortunate enough not to have a computer powerful enough to consider KSP2. But yes, the manner in which Take-Two stiffed not just their developers but their customers--I would be happy to see Take Two meet its end for being greedy, indifferent and total dicks, with zero revenue ever made again. I will never purchase a product from them from here on with such a poor reputation.
Yeah I wanted to say the same thing but I’m really exited for gta 6. They f**ked the game I was waiting for a long time and stole my money just for gta 6. I wanna see every dollar and anxiety I had for ksp 2 being put on gta 6 because if that game fails I’m not buying rdr 3
With the things rockstar has done to us with GTA V online i dont understand why people are buying gta 6. I purchased KSP 2 and cant get my money refunded just added salt to my wounds.
I don’t understand how after No Man Sky in 2016 100% of gamers didn’t just flat out refuse to trust game companies and demanded transparency or else total boycott Since 2016 i have zero trust in the gaming industry and refuse to buy games day 1 and ive never once regretted it
I believe that Nate sometimes forget, that the project wasn’t totally under his control. Seeing him acting like a leader/main authority of KSP2 and by that, losing the boundary between responsabilities and privileges bounded to his position, and out of his control - this experience hurt me and most of the people on Nate’s side. Keep in mind, that he is the only person - who was in front of the stage of the development, the whole time. Basically a spirit of the project, imo.
@@dann_ilabNate looked like the spitting image of Sean Murray about a month after No Man's Sky released, I suspect that they would have a lot to talk about. Not entirely the same situation of course since Hello Games kinda dug their own hole to some extent, whereas as Nate was walking into the job with the entire KSP community giving laser eyes and saying "you better not screw this up mate". I reckon it would pretty tough to do your best work under those conditions.
I fully blame the publisher. They pushed the game in early access and kept it (an promises) going long enough that people couldn't simply refund the game. Got back what money they could from the project and closed it. Also it seemed like most of the issues were made higher than Nate. Forced to work on KSP codeback without the original developer helping for example. It was planned to fail.
@@iveharzing Yes, this is crazy. Take2 though it was SUPER EASY to build a game like KSP. They totally ignored the amazing amount of complexity and math behind such a game. It's ridiculous to totally prevent them from using the knowledge of the KSP 1 team. Meaning, they did the exact same mistakes again. Take 2's management was so bad they deserve to be fired over this.
There are actually 5 apology languages: 1. expressing regret: “I’m sorry” 2. Accepting responsibility: “I was wrong” 3. making restitution: “how can I make this right?” 4. planning change: “I’ll take steps to prevent a recurrence 5. requesting forgiveness: “can you find it in your heart to forgive me” All from the book “The Five Apology Languages” Speak the right language to someone, and it’s amazing people’s ability to forgive
I know of that book and its outline. The problem with Nate apologizing is that his hands are tied, and he's also a bit gagged in a sense because of whatever agreements he signed for Take2 that are still binding. Whether he knows that info or not, Shadow Zone's assertion is legitimate, and Nate is putting himself out as the emotional point of accountability because of his passion and attachment, even though he doesn't gain anything besides release and closure from it. Nate has tried hard the whole way, and is sorry and apologetic for the outcome, even though there is no tangible benefit from it. Nate has way more heart (and ⚾️⚾️s) just by doing this than the managers at Take2 who have hoodwinked and ghosted the community & taken no accountability for the failure. They're the ones who ought to apologize; but by now it's clear that's not going to happen. I hope Nate shows up again, and I hope Take2 itself is closed and sold off because they can't sell enough of anything to stay in business.
The thing here is that he was basically the employee of a cooperation. He was the public face, but he was still an employee. In that position you have to tow the company line. I challenge anyone who works in a company trying to sell something that has internal problems that you are going to air dirty laundry in public. Been there, put on the cheshire grin and carry on. Even if you wanted to there are most likely clauses in your employment contract. No one wants to do a bad job in anything they do (unless they are the minority who show up to do the bare minimum, and if so please take some pride). For Nate it's obvious this was a passion project, the rug was pulled and he is devastated. I don't understand why the blame is being laid at his door. My only conclusion is those being most vocal have not worked in a corporate environment. Yes in previous times he was 'bigging up' what KSP 2 would become. Yes depending on one's perspective it could be seen as as snake oil, but KSP 2 had real potential if only it was managed properly.
Yeah, a lot of people forget that (at least in the US), if you make a company look bad, not only can they fire you, they can sue for damages. It can and has happened. Nate most certainly had his hands tied, and still does. Sure, he's an optimist, as am I. But those are the people who look at problems and ask 'How can we' and not 'What can't we'. You'll never get anything challenging done with the latter. So his optimism was required for the project to even have a chance in hell. And he was very much not allowed to share how much of a crap show it was behind the scenes, or all the BS they had to contend with. They'd never let him speak about it.. if he even knew half of it.
@@UdumbaraMusic, he could actually. It'd be VERY hard for him to prove they set him up and ruined his chances to get another job.. but that kind of thing has happened before. I just don't think he could argue they intentionally sabotaged him personally here. ;p Especially since the whole studio was closed, not just him getting the axe.
I’m not exactly pleased with the way he executed his role in all this but fuck I feel bad for the guy. I hope he learns all he can from this and that we can see great things from him in the future. Also, on a wildly different note, I REALLY hope KSA sticks with the astronauts being literal kittens lol
@@Ph33NIXx A small fraction of the fandom wanted wobbly rockets, a maybe-small fraction of the fandom would love if it were kittens, but... I know how you feel! :D Honestly, some people cringe at kerbals. One person left an angry comment when Vaos used a realistic Apollo-style countdown because he thought serious stuff shouldn't be used with silly kerbals. I 'spect there's a balance to be struck. Scott Manley has said there were other space sims before KSP, and he thought the kerbals were what made KSP successful. I know JNO's humanoid droos don't really encourage me to play, which is odd because on the fact of it, it would be natural to picture myself as a droo, but I just don't like looking at them.
Yea I don't want to have to 'defend' the game every time i show someone and they dont take it seriously because the ship is being piloted by a kitten :/
@@eekee6034 yeah... I think a lot has to do with design aswel. I did not particularly like the Kerbal design of KSP1 - but I did like they were goofy little guys just doing their things.. being happily confinded to a can for several years when the you mess up the timing for an intercept 😂 - i think the KSP2 kerbal models were good designs though (from an artistic point of view) I cant put my finger on why I dont like cats. Maybe its just because they exist in our world.. maybe its the internet meme culture surrounding cats. It just feels "cheap" to me..
8:42 I definitely resonate with that. It is easy to say sorry to appease someone, but it is meaningless unless you: 1. Actually are genuinely remorseful 2. Actually make the changes you need to in order to prevent it from happening again in the future It's something that I've been trying to be more intentional about. I will still apologize just to express my genuine remorse, but I am trying to be more accountable and hold myself to my own apologies to make sure that I *do* make up for it by making things right and/or ensuring that I never repeat the same mistake.
wasn't expecting top-tier parenting advice from a ksp video haha Pretty sure everyone could benefit from being a better person and doing stuff like this instead of simply apologizing
@@nt78stonewobble That's very true. In those cases, I just have to accept my failure and commit myself to learning and growing from my failure so I never make the same mistake again. It definitely hurts and takes a lot of time and effort to accept, but it's also often one of the best learning opportunities.
Back when I owned a business, I told my employees, do not apologize. Explain the problem. Take responsibility for the problem. Fix the problem. "We're sorry for the inconvenience" are the most insipid words ever coined by an MBA. Shut the fuck up and make it right.
This is absolutely true. The recognition and change in behavior is important, not words or symbolic gestures. Plenty of abusers think that because they "made it right" afterwards, it's all okay. No, you get forgiven when you've changed your behaviour, not because you felt bad and "made it right", only to repeat again the same "mistake".
I’m glad Nate found the confidence to put out some of his own words. Must’ve been very hard for him considering a significant part of the playerbase (unfairly) places most or all the blame on him. Nate was a creative director. His job was to sketch an idea for a game people would love. He did that very well; else people wouldn’t be so upset about the fact it got cancelled. It is not his fault he was at the same time put into a position where he had (too much) influence over the more technical aspects of the game. If you’re put into a situation where the choices are to either take the lead of the project, or have no firm leader for it at all, can you really blame a ksp fan for trying to do the best he can despite maybe not having the right qualifications or technical knowledge? He did what he could, and i will always appreciate him for that. Hope he gets back on his feet soon. He deserved better, just like all of us did💚
@@ShadowZone thanks, and thanks to you aswell! You’ve been a pilar of fair, unbiased and accurate reporting during the development of KSP2 (and made some great builds in it too). Hope you continue to do so for KSA and any other topics that might peak your interest! :)
I don't hold it against him, they had big shoes to fill and there was never an option other than going big, otherwise it would be a failure by comparison. They gave it their best shot, just shows how shitty Take 2 is.
Just at a glance, Take Two seems to have made the most questionable decisions. While some people were up in arms about how Nate was lying and ruining the game… I mostly ignored that (just consider me an involved outsider giving my perspective) and took note of the fact that they actually had working prototypes of all of the roadmap features on the backburner. I saw the amount of effort going into fixing some of the bugs because I contributed to the thread for what I considered the last game-breaking bug at the time in my opinion (where craft flight status would erroneously be/come "landed"), only to watch the announcement that the studio would be shuttered- -Sorry, the CEO of Take Two allegedly denied closing studios with a distinction that moves nobody- -and even in the face of closure, the dev team finished and pushed the fix for the bug in question in their final days. (Now it's just too depressing/disappointing to play.) What I saw was a game with a pile of mistakes in its history just starting to bear its true fruit. At that time, Take Two decided, gaining what I suspect is little more than the loss of KSP 2's actual successful days, that the project should stop in its tracks. I keep seeing that the best way to kill a dream project is to rely on investors who are in any way removed from the dream. Nate may have had every reason to think KSP 2 would work out so long as Take Two made rational decisions. Instead, they chose to "rationalize" their pipeline for what I strongly suspect is just investor signaling. Nate appears to have cared deeply for KSP 2, but Take Two seemingly obviously didn't.
As an investor, one looks at a project, decides as objectively as possible if it will succeed and produce ROI, puts down money, and WAITS TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS. Take2 didn't do that. They involved themselves in the process far too much to be called an investor; they became a producer, basically riding Intercept Games to a figurative pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If a ridden horse trips and falls, it's rarely the horse's fault.
Yeah I think the people who hired Nate have more responsibility than mentioned. They needed to recognize that Nate was an ambitious, creative guy who had a huge vision that he didn’t have the project management skills nor the huge budget that would’ve been required to realize that vision.
that's not necessarily it either, they were forced to use old KSP 1 code and not given the budget needed, also not given the time needed as take two tried to push them to get it out quickly, plus not being able to consult other developers of ksp 1 He was only creative director, as in the one who decides what to do with the stuff they're given, and I would say they did a pretty damn good job, the looks, sounds and music, game mechanics, the whole creative direction (the thing nate was actually responsible for) was amazing Now, he made many mistakes i think in communication with the community and I'm sure some faults of management is partly his fault, but he could only do so much, and since we can't see behind the scenes we don't really know what he did and could've done differently
knowing how this big corporations work... I don't blame him of anything appart of accepting the project with those conditions. (Old codebase, no access to original devs...). Knowing they were a small team, all this may just be pre-planed. They knew KSP 2 development would be expensive, Instead of just bury the asset in the archives, make it a bare minimum to sell by just adding cosmetic changes to the old code, get some profit and eventually close if that doesn't happen. I bet that was the case.
I've worked as a professional software developer for almost 30 years. I've been part of very tough projects, some of which completely failed. On a personal level, I understand how that feels. But in the end, projects fail for a reason, and if you're in charge of making decisions, you're also responsible for the consequences. They've destroyed a franchise beloved by many. They've failed an entire community, taken their money, and delivered nothing. The publisher shares some of the blame, but the development team hasn't been up to the task.
I mean to be fair I think Nate's only faults were incompetence rather than anything else, Take 2 destroyed ksp because they were greedy and control freaks, Nate just failed to do his job well. if he really wanted control or power or money there are plenty of better ways to do that imo.
@@nousername8162 I mean Nate did knowingly lie to the fanbase about what the product was and made promises that they knew fully they couldn't keep years before the launch.
@@teaser6089 Not to mention that they had us believing we were buying a playable version, even if buggy, for our $60. Then we loaded it up and tried to play, only to find that we were lied to. They fixed a few minor bugs, then took our money and ran. They knew it was unplayable and charged as much as a finished product, knowing full well that they were having financial problems and would have to cancel the project. F*ck them.
@@teaser6089Suppose he was told by managers at Intercept or Take2 to make certain announcements. When you're under a contract, and you're told to.say something that you know is false or imfeasible, it's easy to _say_ what the right thing to do is, but it's hard to _do it._ Whatever level of responsibility Nate has in this, at least he tried to own up to it. The same cannot be said for Take2, who functionally lied about shuttering Intercept Games and the future of KSP2.
If nothing else, I can respect him, going "I failed to deliver." Not "We didn't have enough money." Not "I wish people would do X." _"I,_ personally, am responsible for failing to deliver on those promises." It is increasingly rare to see this attitude in... not just the gaming development, but pretty much _anywhere,_ really. So if nothing else, I have to give him at least _some_ credit for that.
"don't apologize" --nah, we're not gonna just let you cook on this one. Number one, it's polite to do it. Number two, if you aren't able to IMMEDIATELY make it right then your silence will be interpreted as not caring about whatever harm you caused. "Don't *just* apologize" is better.
The apology is only the start. If you just apologize and do the same (like most influencers after a drama), it's pointless. But no apology is kinda wild too if they can't do it immediately, you're not wrong. They should both be there though.
The way I see it, an apology is purely communication. An honest apology should convey the genuine intent to do better and (if applicable) bridge any misunderstandings. But I agree that an apology has to be backed up by action, otherwise it isn’t worth the air it’s made of.
My response to the video was mixed. I appreciated that he made it, I understood the sentiment he was getting at, and I hope he's able to learn from the whole experience and get back on the horse. But I also felt the video was a bit heavy on justifying things and a bit short on an explicit acknowledgement that what happened was worse than "not being able to deliver on promises." To some extent I can forgive this, the line between the aspiration and the possible may not have always been clear, but as late as Aug. 2023 you had Dakota saying "There is a multiplayer framework, it works, but we're putting it on the backburner for now so we can focus on other milestones first." Yet in truth, Thomas Spradling had left Intercept some 18 months earlier and there was nobody really working on it at all. I don't really care about an apology. Saying sorry doesn't give people their money back, and I know that's out of his control. I would just like to see him own his part of it. There's more to the story than "I tried really hard and failed" - he and a lot of other people knew that at least one part of his promised features were basically DOA and yet he allowed the reigning perception to be "Multiplayer is in, it works, it's great, we can't stop playing it." Maybe he wasn't allowed to say otherwise if he wanted to keep his job at the time, but he's not working for them now. Whatever the terms of his NDA, I'm sure it doesn't cover a general "I regret not doing a better job of managing expectations for our customers, who bought into my vision and ended up with a game that will never be finished." And I don't say this because I'm really into watching a guy who is clearly broken by his experience squirm for my own amusement. I just think that it would be good for him, and good for the community. He talked in the video about his name being associated with failure. Failure is something that happens to everyone who tries something ambitious eventually. But there's no getting past that stigma if he's unwilling to directly address the core issue, which is that a lot of customers feel like they were lied to *because they were.*
Well said! I couldn't agree more. I also watched the video and came away feeling like it was a hollow apology. I think it was more about him than those of us who paid so much for a broken game, based on his promotion of it.
At least Nate is brave and took risks and put himself out there. I'm a game Dev with a half finished game too afraid to finish it for fear of failure. Nates experience is my worst nightmare. I feel really bad for him and his team.
@kapytanhook Nate didn't scam people, placing that on him is flat out wrong. He is the _Creative Director_ his one and only job is to dream up the game and send the dream to the actual developers. Everything else is someone else's job.
@@VelociraptorsOfSkyrimThere's some truth here though. It's exponentially less likely that there will be a PR disaster like this if expectations are correctly managed. That said I don't think Nate is responsible for even 10% of what he's getting.
I don't believe Nate would have given the go-ahead to release the product (I won't call it a game, it was at best a tech demo) in that state. But it would be nice to hear it from him. Alas, NDAs probably prevent that.
Go ahead? He was probably ordered to. In retrospect that should have been a red flag for all of us. Early access can work, but in hindsight any early access tied to a big company should be instantly distrusted. KSP2 wasn't meant to be a live service, and early access purchases not only don't include an obligation to add in features later - the terms explicitly say you risk the features not being added. For a small indie company running on passion that doesn't matter as much, but I would be willing to bet that KSP2 was on countdown timer to death the second early access happened. It instantly earned a big chunk of it's sales right off the bat and for a company that only cares about the bottom line people would have started asking "why are we paying all these developers to work on a product people won't pay us more money for?" as soon as sales numbers started to fall.
Nate apologized when he didn't have to. Take2 never apologized, they only ran PR cover while closing down and selling off Intercept as a studio. That speaks volumes of itself.
Well, Nate said he is learning how to do the actual moving parts of game design and production right? To me the best 'apology' he could provide would be to, against all odds and in the face of everything, to see about trying to get on to the KSA team, even in some kind of minor role and make his dream a reality despite Take Two being, well, Take Two and ruining everything for everyone.
As someone whose followed this for a while. He reminds me a lot of my own experience of having a boss who is a fantastic person and trying their best but is situated with demanding corporate demands coupled with some variety of inexperience that is being left unaddressed by same higherups. In the end he was probably the middleman get stretched out between loft goals and reality, being the person who had to somehow carry both into work each day. While I definitely feel bad for everyone who got the short end of the stick from KSP2, I still feel bad for Nate. While he has some responsibility in KSP2s failure, I doubt he ever wanted it to. He just had to walk a tightrope with his hands tied.
Biggest problem is that he doesn't take accountability for the blatant lies, such as multiplayer supposedly working when in reality they were playing with a KSP1 mod.
Tbf someone else raised the point that you kinda have to tow the line for a company, and they can even sue you for damages if you make them look bad... I've had to straight up lie to people at a job in the past otherwise I would get reprimanded. Just glad it wasn't anything as serious as this.
@@UdumbaraMusic Hot take, but if you have to tell a lie as bad as this to keep your job, have some integrity and resign. If you're worried about being able to find a new job afterward... well, look at where Nate is now.
@@74oshua Contracts and NDA's... Breaking a contract and rendering yourself unemployed with no reference AND a hit to your reputation is hardly a reasonable option for someone who is ultimately like everyone else a victim of bad business practices... He could end up in crippling debt for the rest of his life as a result of having to compensate for someone else's lack of integrity and being used as a fallguy just because you're upset a game didn't turn out right. Your criticism is literally what these big companies use as a means to scapegoat so you don't blame them...
@@UdumbaraMusic Again, he's already suffered a hit to his reputation and unable to find work. I also seriously doubt his contract actually obligated him to say what he did about multiplayer publicly, unless he was contractually obligated to read a script for those videos. In which case, he probably shouldn't have taken the contract. People are always responsible for their own actions. Sure, part of the blame is certainly on Take 2 for poor management, but Nate knew the terms of the project before he signed up.
I feel like that while Nate made a lot of mistakes, there were also a lot of mistakes imposed on him from above. I also don't particularly blame him for thinking that, if he had a funding commitment, that meant T2 was in a position to see the game through and not pull the plug within a year. I still wonder how much of the plug pulling had to do with KSP specifically, given that they sold off the entire publishing company over it as well. It kind of feels like just an easy target to save some money on the balancesheet.
Intercept Games at large was probably the hapless victim of bean counters and brusque executives, not any kind of malice or overbearing expectations. Which makes it harder to accept, esp. for someone personally & passionately involved like Nate was. At the same time, 7 years is a long time just to produce a Beta, even accounting for C0VlD.
I'm a firm believer that you need to verbally apologize as well as demonstrate that they mean it, and make efforts to ensure it doesn't happen again. A verbal apology alone is worthless. But just a demonstration doesn't address the emotional and social needs for someone to get a verbal commitment to make amends. And yes, it's never the creative director's fault alone. Even in the worst case, other people have to allow them to keep making mistakes. And in this case, he tried his hardest. If people are giving Nate grief, they clearly are just ignorant of how corporate life works, regardless of how much experience they may think they have. They likely don't understand their own experiences.
When I saw the very first videos of KSP2, I was shocked about the performance. It had exactly the same issues as KSP1. Back then, RUclips comments said that optimization would come later. As a deveoper myself, I had my doubts. I had the impression they were building on sand, and as it turned out, this sand was called KSP1. Modders have done a fantastic job at circumventing a lot of flaws, but you can't change the entire architecture. Kitten Space Agency is following the right approach, IMHO. From Nate's perspective, I think it's fine to have a clear end goal in mind. After all, he was creative director, not technical director. This can be done in parallel. It's not his fault that the studio forced a flawed technical base onto the project.
I have great sympathy for Nate, he is taking the blame for decisions that were well above his pay grade. Did he make mistakes, yes of course, who doesn't. But I think not being able to contact KSP 1 developers and not being allowed to start code from scratch doomed the project from the start and I'm sure those decisions weren't made by him.
Deeds are more meaningful than words, but they are not always possible and sometimes take a long time to happen. Why not combine deeds with a sincere apology?
I watch such videos from the perspective of: If I had to choose whether or not to hire this person, would this video change my opinion? In this case, he would be better off making a short twitter post like this: "I'm sorry we weren't able to deliver on our promises for KSP2. We hope to do better going forward. I'd like to go into details on lessons learned, but I'm still bound by NDAs." No risk of violating NDAs by accident, no making a fool of oneself on the internet (which is a BIG red flag when hiring people), acknowledging just the right amount of responsibility, no risk of going off script, no giving haters or skeptics ammunition. Frankly, I don't care how well an apology video is done. The fact that someone thinks an apology video on social media is a good idea in the first place, is enough to make me wary associating with them (much less hiring them, if I were making that decision.) --- All that aside, I do feel for the guy. Hopefully he learned a lot. In my own life, I've found that my best successes resulted from lessons I learned from "failures".
About apologizing - what I learned that even the act of courtesy is enough for a lot of people, esp. if it's genuine. Sometimes it's not possible to make up. If I may humbly suggest - teach your kids to also _say_ it. I am fairly sure there will be people in their lives to whom just hearing or not hearing that will make a difference.
I told them that as well. What I was trying to say in the video and try to convey to them is that the words alone are not as meaningful as acting. But you're right, it's not always possible, unfortunately. Whatever it is they will do once they're out of the house or I'm no longer alive, I just hope it will be genuine.
Like many people, I also know what it's like to spend years of your life working at something only to have it all come to nothing due to circumstances that were never fully within your control. Unlike Nate, I didn't have the hopes and expectations of an extremely dedicated (and occasionally rather unhinged) community resting on my shoulders while I did that; must be a rough place to be in. He has my respect for taking on such a huge job as CD, and I wish him all the best for the future. Keep your chin up Nate.
I still don't like the guy and his attitude. As for T2, their decision sealed the deal early on anyway. had he been honest, he should have quit the project at that very moment. (aka before the first trailer came out). They hired him because of his artistic fiber to sell a bigger product than what was really designed to be, so that was a LIE from the get go, no excuses can repair that ! They used him as a smoke screen and he walked right into it without question, he's a FRAUD ! Even without him at the helm but with the same conditions, the game would have still been a failiure regardless but without such an artistic publicity and such high revandicated goals, people would have seen the copy-paste plan much earlier and the hype wouldn't have been there. His vulnerability in the video is also a lie and I don't care about him or what he has to say. To me, it's bye bye into oblivion, where you belong, Nate ! If he didn't see that coming from the get go, he's an utter idiot and I don't care either. As for raising children not to excuse but to repair, I understand why now I never followed the people who tried to raise me when they told me to present excuses... I must have instinctively understood that an insincere apology is worthless. If I really care for the person I offended, I'll simply ask them if they are alright. As I undertood instinctively that I should have been punished more severely than I ever was... Trying to understand the rules without a proper father figure is difficult and insanely painstaking, especially mentally. That must explain my tendancy to remain single in nearly every aspect of my life...
I feel sympathy for Nate insofar as he is a fellow human being and it must suck to be in that position, and he seems genuinely very passionate. But I cannot stop wondering if a different person in that role could have done more good.
The thing is, his passion wasn't misplaced. If the higher-ups hadn't insisted on using KSP1's existing codebase as a cost-cutting measure everything Nate wanted and promised for the game would've been feasible. He admits there were some missteps on his part as far as managing things goes, but you work with what you're given, and Take2 mostly supplied the devs with impossible demands and NDAs. At the end of the day, we can wonder about "what if?"s until the cows come home, but the single biggest impact on everyone involved with KSP2 from the start was Take2 / Private Division's draconian approach to things. Even if we interpret Nate's influence on things as unflatteringly as possible it still wouldn't have ultimately mattered as much as their circumstances - no creative director could have pulled this kind of project off under those conditions, and I'd wager most would have thrown in the towel far sooner than Nate did.
Tough one. Its clear that initially, he entered the Project with a lot of excitement and more faith in his Overlords than perhaps he should. Then he says that he became aware that it was going to become a struggle to get the things done that were needed (Ref: The Boulder). Clearly, he was referring to the Overlords once again. But deep down, he still had a lot of Hope that he and his team could pull it off and deliver the Product that he initially envisioned. That last interview highlighted his mental state as far as the project went, hope can be a strong driving force, stubbornness, and delusion also, and all three can cloud good judgement. IMO (using hindsight, and having little emotional attachment) I question why he stayed with the project for so long knowing that his Overlords didnt share the same vision that he and his team did. But, given the state of the industry, jumping ship would have been a risky move. Now hes stuck in an NDA that basically prevents him from telling the whole store and sheilds his Ex-Overlords from any repercussions and make the whole mess appear to be entirely his fault, which is wasnt. I think he did stoke the fire on the hype train a lot, but that was also his Faith in the project at work. Its clear he has learnt a lot. About the business, and the kinds of people in the business that have the final decision which can make or break a title. If it wasnt Nate, it would have been some other poor soul in his shoes now. I personally dont attach any blame on him at all, and its clear that he is genuinely remorseful about the ultimate fate of KSP2.... Yes, he stoked the fire on the hype train, but the decisions that ultimately lead to the state of an final demise of KSP2 were made by the people Above Nate. The same people who were more interested in Patching KSP1, and selling is as a new Product (Looking at you FarmSim2024).
honestly I don't blame him. Yes surely he also made mistakes, but he alone couldn't have messed up that bad to make this dumpster fire happen. I am pretty sure there are people actually at fault that can stay behind there nice anonymity... And we will sadly probably never know who truly made the really destruktiv decisions.
@@ShadowZone made my day :D also, nate: please don't blame yourself too hard! i shoved money in their face for ksp2 as soon as it was buyable, believing in your dream of it. i sure hope you could, i don't know, like, maybe find a way to work on making KSA the sequel you had in mind for your first work of art =)
like did nate make mistakes, yes but fundamentally the more i hear it seems the ksp2 team was told to make a steak dinner but was given a bag of literal shit and bread by take 2
Thanks again ShadowZone for being the voice of reason. People, who don't feel any sympathy for Nate, are either too stuck on their idea that he's the blame and/or they don't understand how his actual role in the whole development story. Here's a made up saying, which might help to describe the situation better: You can't blame the passengers in a car crash. The only one to blame is the driver, and that's Take-Two in this game. They were the once that green lit using an engine which isn't suited for the task, legacy code which came with fundamental flaws, not allowing contact with KSP1 devs to help with the code, and not hiring intermediate and senior coders. Those decisions were 100% on Take-Two, and were 100% the problems why KSP2 failed. Anything else, like added features (like colonies, new start systems, resource gathering, etc) have nothing to do with KSP2's demise. If anything, its prospect set it's self apart as a proper sequel instead of just a graphical overhaul. You could argue that the employees of Intercept Games (which includes Nate) should have demanded that either some, or all, of the above-mentioned problems should be addressed. We don't know if they did, but I would be very surprised if it wasn't addressed at some point. I'm happy to see that a lot of people wished Nate the best, were sympathetic, and even apologized in some form. The sad part is all the negative comments, and even people downvoting positive messages, like it's going to fix anything. I don't know what these people think, but I do know it's very toxic.
Your point about not apologizing but making up for it with deeds is spot on. I raised my son with the same attitude and it was the foundation of my coaching style; it isn’t what you say but what you can do and how you do it. Setting the example for others is the best hope for real change. If you force others to go through the motions it only creates resentment unless you’ve broken their spirit and that isn’t good leadership. Such a subtle distinction but has massive implications. Cheers!
A true apology acknowledges the wrong doing and offers some indication that it was an acident or mistake that will not be repeated. The words "I'm Sorry" in and of themselves make more a statement about the nature of the person speaking them than they do to offer consolation to the listener.
You all are being extremely kind. I’m sure Nate Silver is a cool guy but he fundamentally did a bad job. The idea of interstellar is so bad. The fact that they didn’t prioritize multiplayer is so egregious. If they had given us multiplayer and some wheels this game would have had a viable path to full release. Why did they try to add scope like colonies when they could have added the ONE THING that KSP didn’t have: multiplayer. It’s so absurd that people are only blaming the studio. Yeah, I’m sure they messed things up, but Nate Silver had a FUNDAMENTALLY flawed vision from the start that made the game impossible to create.
Not everyone wants the same things to the same extent. Some people like colonies and industry more than interstellar travel, which is how the Factorio DLC found success. Others like the prospect of using advanced technology to go to other stars, which is prevalent in plenty of games.
@@alexsiemers7898 The problem is that the delta v to reach other stars is so many order of magnitudes greater than to travel between planets that it would make the key gameplay mechanic, the rocket equation, completely trivial. And this is a fundamental problem. There is no way to balance patch it because it is a flaw in the design itself, a design that Silver is responsible for. Interstellar travel is fine for high fantasy, but it is fundamentally incompatible with a space sim like KSP. And the fact that it was ever in the roadmap made the game unbuildable. With another vision and another designer this game could have succeeded. But it never could because of the dead-on-paper design that Silver was solely responsible for. He seems like a cool guy,, but cool guys can fail even when they have the best intentions and are decent people.
The publisher gave them a lot of money , and they had a lot of time to make a great game.Enough is enough Ps.I bought the game , and to this day I play it almost every day.Why ? Because even in the pre alpha stage, KSP2 is AWESOME and beautiful , with passion , and heart.To bad , they will never finish it.
To me it seems like Nate was the right person in the wrong job- a lot of the way he managed the studio I felt was poor but given the pressure from the publisher it would've been very hard to do significantly better, but at the end of the day he did seem genuinely passionate and a good guy overall. Perhaps some sort of comunity facing or comunity advocacy type possition in a similar project would've been really great to see him in as I could see him being a big help there. Edit: You specifically asked for comment on your aproach to apologies so here's mine: I agree with it largely but feel you may be missing the fundamental point of what an apology *is* or at least what it's supposed to be- it's a social signal telling others that either something was not your intent in the first place, so it can be easilly excused or dismissed (this is what 'polite apologies' for very minor things are for) *or* a signal of your intent to change and do differently in future after having realised something you did was wrong or incorrect (a 'formal' or 'serious' apology). If we take what you said "don't apologise, make up for it" literally then you can end up with a situation that's needlessly tense because you come across as extremely rude. Let's say I bump into you and cause you to drop your coffee mug and it smashes, if I literally then walk or sprint away from you to go get an identical replacement it'll probably take me some time and you'd be stood there thinking I've run off and probably not very happy until I come back and hand you a new one, which would then likely leave you very confused. So we clearly need something in there to 'bridge' that gap between my corrective action and my mistake that signals very strongly my intent as to what my next actions are going to be- that's what an apology is. It also functions as part of a social shorthand that makes things go more smoothly- I could sit there and explain in exhaustive detail how specifically my actions were wrong, how I understand it inconvenienced you, how I should have been more careful and am at fault, etc, or I could just apologise which then invites you to *assume* I have understood those things and that I will take the apropriate corrective action. It's naturally understood that the more serious the issue the more detail you need to go into and so even then actually saying the words "I'm sorry" is *supposed* to mean that you have comprehended the depths of the issue(s) you've caused and are accepting the responsibility of now repairing that, it's an 'official' way of acknowledging the transfer of a burden onto yourself. Basically in short: I treat 'serious' or 'formal' apologies as essentially a promise to change my actions or behaviour in the future and to do better, and signaling that to other people is important so you can be held accountable and so your intent is public. Sometimes in order to be able to fix things you also *need* to be granted a second chance and that's also what signaling your intent is good for, too.
In the words of orson scott card "it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves." We dont need an apology. We need to know why.
I don't think there's anyone who could have succeeded in his position, regardless of what he did or didn't do. The parent company's requirements and limitations were tantamount to sabotage. It's like telling someone they have to build a house but they're not allowed to use tools or talk to architects.
then they should build a small house. like focusing on one thing maybe....instead the entire thing is just an unpainted mess. Even if they never did multiplayer, never did colonies, never did interstellar and just added in 1000 more parts, more contracts, and copy pasted modded graphical techs this would not have flopped
i so often see the sentiment that the devs failed the community, and it saddens me that people only have that to take away from this all. like, no, the corporation who pushed KSP2 shafted the devs and shuttered their studio without so much as a word screwed you, not the devs themselves!! devs always get the short end of the stick when it comes to these sorts of corporate decisions and it's genuinely not fair on them. corps are weaponising people's want for justice when they throw the devs to the wolves and nobody seems to realise it
The only thing I really blame on him is the supposed scheme to sell star theory to Take Two. And of couse he is probably a "scope creep" but that was something that shuld have been dealt by the publisher. I hope he could contine to work in the industry: with the right management I think he could do great things!
It made me sad to see him like this. As for the deed to make for it you were talking about, it would take him to do just what he seems to be doing : go by himself (and a little team) and bring us a new fun game about space, rockets and boosters !
Growing up with KSP meant dealing with its janky side. I skipped KSP 2 because it felt like a copy-paste job. KSA, however, has my full support. They're taking the time to build a real successor to KSP.
I think that Nate was being honest, I mean he was being open and vulnerable and while we didn't always see eye to eye on a lot of things on the forums that is painful to see. I think though that Nate himself had the issue a lot of developers get, being too close to the project and not wanting to listen to outside input. I've been there, done that and understand it. I understand his feelings and that in the end there is a very real person who has had to wear the brunt of the anger from the community. Is part of that deserved? Yes, he made promises and he personally sold a product to people that was not what was advertised and no amount of 'Take 2 marketing' etc can change the fact that Nate was the FACE of that selling. But I also think that people go overboard, they forget that Nate's hurting, it's evident in his video, he likely wanted to go public and talk to people 6 months ago. But he can't, NDA's suck.. It's worse when you can't defend yourself because of them and saddly for Nate, he can't. I think honestly that a lot of the mess right now, at this point is on Take 2 and who ever now owns Private Division. KSP2 should not be being sold still, there should be communication about what is going on and what those who have brought it can expect going forwards. Because right now we have been left in the dark and that is wrong.
There was a time when an apology was an admission of a mistake and declaration of an intention to make up for it. Today, "I'm sorry" is a way to pretend they care. I hate this whole story. When I bought into the EA I knew what I was getting myself into. It was money I could afford to part with and not get anything from it. And that is another thing that needs to be brought up: EA games don't always succeed. I'm reminded of Jumplight Odyssey. I was so furious when LoG pulled the plug in that game and made away with the money. No. Putting your face in front of a camera and apologizing is not enough. Either don't do this, and avoid having your face identified as the face of the mess, or present an actual solution. Steam should allow refunds for buyers when this sort of thing happens.
I don't think this was all his fault, but I'm sure some part of it was. I do think apologies are important because we get to hear people say 'im sorry that this was everyone elses fault' or 'i really messed up and this why i was wrong' .. knowing how much responsibility they take can give you a lot of insight into how they will act going forward.
Honestly, as soon as I heard that the original dev team would not be involved, I knew it was going to flop. The more I learned the more certain I was that it was doomed. I have never been so disappointed to be right. I've played ksp1 since early access, it took decades for ksp1 to get where it is today, WITH the help of countless hours from moders keeping it afloat. There was NEVER any chance that this new set of devs with no contact with the original devs could ever pull this off in this short timeframe. The decision to make ksp2 with an entirely new dev team in a much shorter timeframe than ksp1 is what killed ksp2. Whoever made that decision is where the blame should land. As for Nate: I don't think the gaming industry has any patience for people who make promises they cant deliver on anymore. Especially when it is someone who can't actually build anything, and just tells people to do things. I would hate to be working under Nate on ksp2. As he has said himself, he doesn't know how to do anything, only tell devs what to do. He's just now learning game dev now with unreal... I cant imagine how horrible it would be to be working under him as a dev as he made promises to people while being clueless about how the game is coming along. As he said, he must have been a huge source of stress for the devs actually building ksp2! Calling people in the middle if the night?! Talk about a nightmare to work with! I wish good luck to everyone who had to put up with Nate during the development of ksp2 as he over promised and called people while they were sleeping, nagged and pressured them to do something that he should have been able to recognize as an impossible task. His ignorance and baseless promises must have created a hellish environment for the people actually developing the game. I hope Nate has learned some valuable lessons, and stays away from management and leadership positions. I'll keep playing ksp1 with mods because it can do everything ksp2 was supposed to do and WAY more with better performance graphics, and stability to boot. Hopefully in future people will start viewing people in nate's position for what they are: hype men, someone who's job it is to lie and exaggerate to make sails. How would a hypeman be able to promise anything realistic if he doesn't know how to do ANYTHING on the development side? They can't. Ksp2 was doomed from the start.
I don't blame Nate for KSP2 being cut off and shut down. But if he were to try and make up for it to people. I would personally take him trying his best to make something he is passionate about become fully realized. He worked hard and tried to make it real.
To be fair I think Nate’s vision for ksp2 was a good one. All the major planned features where on my list and I linked the exploration mode a lot. I’m sure Nate could have done better but it seems like a systems and corporate environment issue. Nate’s biggest mistake is probably his naivety. I think it’s good to apologize and also to try and make things right. An apology is an acknowledgment of hurt caused. Of course it should be genuine and just acknowledging hurt does not heal it but it’s an important step. Disregarding the value of this undervalues the feelings that might be involved and focuses on a practical solution. For example if Nate gave me my money back it wouldn’t make up for the disappointment I felt. I’m a teacher I would never force an apology but I encourage it all the time as part of getting a student to empathize. I also encourage them to put things right after, make a mess, apologize for the upset and clean it up. And so on.
I'm not looking to judge anybody. I just want to want to hear Nate's side of the ksp2 development story, to get to the truth of what actually happened, especially with answering the unanswered questions from your KSP2 dev history video. To me the worst thing someone can do is judge someone based on inaccurate information, or information that's totally false. However one outstanding question does seem to be partially answered, the question on whether your timeline video was more on the accurate side or wide of the mark. Based on Nate's acknowledgement of your ksp2 dev history video (and lack of pushback), it seems to be more on the former. That was a really well-researched and put together video piecing together the seven year history of ksp2 development.
He flat out lied to us. He said things like multiplayer is happening. You showed it barely existed. He said it was fully funded, but they were in the red and he should have known that. Either he's incompetent or a liar. I'm not sure which. Maybe both. But it too late. There is nothing he can do to make it up to us. I do place most of the blame on take 2, but having a liar be the community contact? yeah......I'm not ok with that. "I can't comment on that" is a perfectly viable option. He should have said that. I would have been more forgiving if he did.
The thing that KSA can learn is that KSP1 is a great game, it just needed the bugs fixings like slow frame rate and the building issues and a light buff on graphics to be ksp2. They focused on GUI and not gameplay.
The guy shouldn't be so hard on himself. Gamers *are* fed up with getting fed bullshit and dead games but failures happen. Its part of life. Its how you grow.
yea, i agree actions speak louder than words, but im not sure what action/deed nate can do at this point lol. just hope he's alright and looks back on his decisions during his time working at ksp 2, as things to learn from
To apologies/make up for KSP2, Nate could make the game he wanted ksp to be and possibly make it a community project through open source or other available options.
i also watched the whole thing, i really liked the guy and i myself got sad from seeing him be sad. im really grateful that he tried to do his best at giving us a good product. and if we exclude all the features that we got we got a good ksp 1 reskin with in my opinion a better science mode. i hope he gets to move on and get a good job. also unreleated but you guys look way to similar. i also hope that modders will make mods for the promised features or atleast colonies for ksp2 i think a colonies mod is being developed right now. somebody in the comments (a mod dev i think) asked for advice on how to make a colonies mod to be something like the ksp2 team was going to release itself. i dont think he needs to do a good deed to us we need to thank him for all the work and all the stress he and the other devs had to go trough or maybey if he ever wants to help ksp fans the maybey help the ksa devs make a good game or help them with decision making.
There's a little game called "Planetary Annihilation: Titans" that is a passable attempt at an RTS, but feels very indie, not exactly groundbreaking in any respect. So with the first upswell of KSP2 excitement, I hear the i.p. was sold, and the team that made Titans was going to be making KSP2. I had a small funeral for KSP2 back then in 2019. It's not a matter of talent, just like the "hot mic" clip you shared, they simply lack Rockstar funds and tried to make an A-list game. This whole thing felt like a cash-grab into an excited market, taking advantage of the demand left by KSP and building a liability piñata that they made Nate hold when the inevitable shit-show began at launch. This is why I hope that Nate is able to develop more games from a Managerial standpoint. These kinds of things build character, and I imagine given the opportunity to do it again he would be fiercely protective of his devs time and sanity while being a bit more reluctant to fuel a hype machine with his own blood. Hopefully we can all move passed this and make better decisions in the future.
Apologies and forgiveness isn't about the person receiving. An apology is recognition of having done a wrong and a promise to do better. Making it right for the one wronged may or may not come later. It may or may not be possible, but an unconditional apology allows them to move forward. Similarly, forgiveness isn't forgetting or allowing someone to repeat their actions. We forgive to let go of anger, hate, and revenge. We cannot change the past and we shouldn't allow it to destroy our future.
Good takeaways. I watched both first, the raw footage of Nate and your take. I agree that it takes a village to raise a child, and not a single individual is to blame. (A single actor can do much harm, but that is for philosophy and not for Nate.) Nate didn't have the power to do damage here as the private division destroyed the company and its prospects, and those who sold it to them are now on to apologize. Like most things, it is essential to teach ownership in multiple forms. Ownership of the responsibility and the actions done. The responsibility is taken through accountable actions, which you call deeds. Still, I also believe from an incentive point of view, it is essential to inwardly accept ownership of the act and two outwardly accept ownership of the action, which acts most notably as an incentive of action towards the deed; this also proves the others who also have ape brains in their head that the individual is no longer a threat, and shares the added benefit of not attacking you or the person doing the evil act. This could all be Hufflepuff as I am a born and bred Canadian EH! Maple sugar is running through my veins and sorry's are in there too But we tend to be an accountable nation!
It seems obvious to me that at the time we paid FULL PRICE for an unplayable game, Take Two knew that things were not working out and already planned to shut it down. They just screwed us all so that they could recover some of their losses due to their piss-poor management. Their ToS assured that they couldn't be sued for for it, so they gave us, their customers, the middle finger and kept our money. Extreme disappointment at the game being killed aside, that is why people are so angry, and rightly so!
I appreciate him breaking the silence and the challenges he faced, but as a retired project manager, I still have to place the lion's share of the blame on his shoulders. He clearly wasn't prepared for this challenge and this is why you shouldn't take on large projects like this until you have the chops to do so. Part of that includes knowing how to push back against corporate when needed, and when not to (pick your battles). I remind everyone that Take Two extended their timeline by nearly 4 years and increased their budget multiple times to make this happen. Those kind of recommendations are (typically) made by someone in his position or an equivalent, and the fact that this had to happen multiple times is indicative of having an unclear idea of what resources are required to complete a project. The bean counters at Take Two finally had enough and someone pulled the plug, deciding not to throw good money after bad. I don't blame them. Ultimately, his team and the community are those that suffer most. I hope he learns from his mistakes and moves onto projects that he can learn further from.
@wyattutz What you described as his job is exactly what a project manager does. Nate even admitted in the full video that he realized he was unprepared. He advanced (if you look at his career progression on LinkedIn) way too fast for any industry and bit off more than he could chew. According to his video, he recognizes that now, but saw it too late. I understand you wanting to defend him, but so much of what you said is blatantly false (i.e. "they didn't have the funding they would need to build a half-decent KSP 1 mod"--initial funding from T2 in 2017 was $10 million for a two year dev period; community estimates based on T2 investor reports and disclosures estimate around $40 million from 2017 to 2022) that I know it likely fruitless to engage on this. So we'll just have to agree to disagree.
I think Nate definitely over-promised to the community, but it does seem like he did his best to try and get the studio to deliver. A lot of the really big issues (re-using KSP-1 code and not talking to the KSP-1 staff in particular) were not his decision. Probably he should not be in that kind of leadership/public facing roll, at least not for a while, but I hope he is able to find a job somewhere. He seems like nice enough guy and he obviously has a passion for games, even if his passion gets away from him a little.
This video and Nate's makes me sad. I wish this project could have made it. But this is the world we live in. I wish Nate the best. A former CEO i worked for once told me after a big mistake i made said "the people that never make a mistake, don't do anything."
I'm not angry at the devs for the promises that were not fulfilled. If anything, I'm angrier at Take Two for not giving the game more time. I still had a lot of fun with KSP2 though, and even though development has stopped, I can still have fun with the latest build of the game. The devs clearly had a lot of passion to make this thing from the ground up and bring it into existence, but as with a lot of ambitious projects, scope creep sets in and you find the initial problem harder to solve than you initially expected. Maybe KSA will be the next great space game, maybe KSP2 development will resume, maybe KSP3 will exist. Neither Nate nor any of the devs should be shamed just because they worked on the project. Project development is unexpectedly hard, and sometimes you overpromise and underdeliver when you don't know the scope of your promises. If anything, this is something the devs have learned from, and they shouldn't be rejected because they failed to deliver on a big project (partly due to forces beyond their control). Nate never hurt me personally, so he doesn't need to do anything to make up for it. His apology was sincere, and I had fun with KSP2 while it was in development, so I don't have any hard feelings toward Nate or any of the devs. In a way, KSP's developement was like a Kerbal rocket. The first one was a work of complete jank at first, and then it got refined and iterated to become something more complete. KSP2 seems like the devs wanted to make something complete from the beginning where no janky bodges would be required to glue colonies and interstellar to the game. But it seems like while some parts worked really well, others didn't, and that led to negative reception and other problems. After For Science, things got a lot better, but as we were approaching the release of the colonies update, Take Two decided to shut down Intercept. I liken this to a rocket reentering but flipping over and burning up right before the maximum heat load is over.
I just hope someone in my lifetime develops the real ksp 2 with all promised interstellar content (DebDeb system and that precursor lore was about to be great), but fully anew.
3:26 I disagree with this assessment. True, there are cool projects that can be built with either approach. For THIS game and what we as the audience expect from a follow up title to KSP, these approaches are not equally valid. Without a solid technical foundation this kind of game cannot work. Building a vertical slice to demo the tech is practically speaking the only feasible approach.
Dear Nate, if you see this, don't be so hard on yourself friend. You are not responsible for the decisions made above you by corporate bean counters that do not care, that caused your mission to fail. I hope you find peace, your love and mourning of this project is clearly evident.
It's hard to see 7 years of your life blow up in your face like that. Can't imagine the way he feels
Yeah
And having to bear the blaming people put on him as he's the face of the project
In my view there are two sides to that story. The aspect we are seeing in his video is the aspect of victimhood. Nate poured his life’s blood, enthusiasm and creativity into this project and now has to pick up the pieces. Clearly Shadowzone and Matt Lowne were convinced that Nate was authentic and really meant what he said.
The other aspect is that Nate in his role was part of a -in my opinion- fraudulent activity. In fact he was the prime stoker on the hype train that suckered plenty of people into spending money on a dysfunctional product. In guess you can see a reflection of this other aspect in the scorn that some people heap on him.
I tend to be wary of people who were part of the ‚system‘, but portray themselves as victims. There is always the danger of being misled. I have to admit though, that I have more sympathy for Nate now. And that is because he was considerate enough to acknowledge the achievements of his team and apologize to them for the stress he projected on them. Too many people in leadership positions don’t care about their people, because they intend to be long gone by the time the stress catches up with the individuals.
@@rebsredone450I really don't understand how more people aren't talking about this. The misleading report in progress, features which weren't even implemented...
@ I am by no means an expert in the games industry, but I think this boils down to the fact that KSP is a niche game with a niche audience. If I understand the reporting correctly, much bigger titles and companies have been disposed off in a similar fashion. There the ‚shitstorm‘ was bigger, but the results were the same. The industry is in turmoil because of the post COVID slump and so the CEOs do what they need to do in order to keep investors happy and their own bonuses up. Poor Nate was sitting at the interface between the business people and the people who care and has consequently been scorched by both sides.
Just a peripheral observation: the ‚just shut it down and pretend it never happened‘-tactic seems to gain ground in other industries too. Recently a well known vendor of astronomy equipment in the US was shuttered without so much as an official notice on their website. Maybe the parent companies have learned from past social media shitstorms that you can get away with behavior like this by generating as much uncertainty about the issue as possible. Uncertainty might keep the established media away from reporting, containing the fallout to the established community.
From what you said in your previous video, a huge reason for failure was down to being forced by studio heads to use recycled KSP 1 code and not being able to talk to KSP 1 developers. Those decisions would certainly not have been Nate's. And once it got to a certain point the sunk cost fallacy and corporate desire for a return on investment kick in and the team were left trying to polish a flawed product. I certainly don't want to see Nate's whole career and life ruined because of KSP 2.
Well put
This is what they said in the camps too. Just following orders. He chose to play it this way and go along with the demands of take 2. False promises are bad, I'm glad I never bought in
@@kapytanhook From Nate's point of view, they were moreso optimistic promises rather than false ones.
@iveharzing you don't know that. He could have lied. He was caught on the multiplayer lie. He does not deserve the benefit of the doubt
@@kapytanhook
KSP2 actually happened though.
KSP2 was a hard lesson for me, but I don't blame Nate. Take-Two on the other hand, will never earn my dollars again.
I was fortunate enough not to have a computer powerful enough to consider KSP2. But yes, the manner in which Take-Two stiffed not just their developers but their customers--I would be happy to see Take Two meet its end for being greedy, indifferent and total dicks, with zero revenue ever made again. I will never purchase a product from them from here on with such a poor reputation.
Yeah I wanted to say the same thing but I’m really exited for gta 6. They f**ked the game I was waiting for a long time and stole my money just for gta 6. I wanna see every dollar and anxiety I had for ksp 2 being put on gta 6 because if that game fails I’m not buying rdr 3
With the things rockstar has done to us with GTA V online i dont understand why people are buying gta 6. I purchased KSP 2 and cant get my money refunded just added salt to my wounds.
@@kspencerian A i7-4790, GTX 970 and 16GB of RAM runs KSP2 fine enough to play, but I have to agree, I'll definitely not play GTA 6 "legally".
I don’t understand how after No Man Sky in 2016 100% of gamers didn’t just flat out refuse to trust game companies and demanded transparency or else total boycott
Since 2016 i have zero trust in the gaming industry and refuse to buy games day 1 and ive never once regretted it
I watched it as well. Was a bit sad to see him that way. I hope he is able to move on soon
I think everyone with at least a shred of empathy does.
I believe that Nate sometimes forget, that the project wasn’t totally under his control. Seeing him acting like a leader/main authority of KSP2 and by that, losing the boundary between responsabilities and privileges bounded to his position, and out of his control - this experience hurt me and most of the people on Nate’s side.
Keep in mind, that he is the only person - who was in front of the stage of the development, the whole time. Basically a spirit of the project, imo.
Yeah he looks kinda broken. Sucks that the cards fell the way they did.
@@dann_ilabNate looked like the spitting image of Sean Murray about a month after No Man's Sky released, I suspect that they would have a lot to talk about. Not entirely the same situation of course since Hello Games kinda dug their own hole to some extent, whereas as Nate was walking into the job with the entire KSP community giving laser eyes and saying "you better not screw this up mate". I reckon it would pretty tough to do your best work under those conditions.
thank you for all the great work you do with mods!
I fully blame the publisher. They pushed the game in early access and kept it (an promises) going long enough that people couldn't simply refund the game. Got back what money they could from the project and closed it.
Also it seemed like most of the issues were made higher than Nate. Forced to work on KSP codeback without the original developer helping for example. It was planned to fail.
The publisher gave them a lot of money , and they had a lot of time to make a great game.Enough is enough
@@marekkos3513 The publisher also forced them to start with KSP1's code, and didn't allow them to talk to the devs of KSP1.
@marekkos3513 Yes, they gave him money and time.....
But they also shot out his kneecaps and ordered him to run a Marathon.
@@iveharzing Yes, this is crazy. Take2 though it was SUPER EASY to build a game like KSP. They totally ignored the amazing amount of complexity and math behind such a game. It's ridiculous to totally prevent them from using the knowledge of the KSP 1 team. Meaning, they did the exact same mistakes again. Take 2's management was so bad they deserve to be fired over this.
110% blame T2 from the git. I may have been upset at the game itself, but I have always known who was to blame.
There are actually 5 apology languages:
1. expressing regret: “I’m sorry”
2. Accepting responsibility: “I was wrong”
3. making restitution: “how can I make this right?”
4. planning change: “I’ll take steps to prevent a recurrence
5. requesting forgiveness: “can you find it in your heart to forgive me”
All from the book “The Five Apology Languages”
Speak the right language to someone, and it’s amazing people’s ability to forgive
I know of that book and its outline.
The problem with Nate apologizing is that his hands are tied, and he's also a bit gagged in a sense because of whatever agreements he signed for Take2 that are still binding. Whether he knows that info or not, Shadow Zone's assertion is legitimate, and Nate is putting himself out as the emotional point of accountability because of his passion and attachment, even though he doesn't gain anything besides release and closure from it.
Nate has tried hard the whole way, and is sorry and apologetic for the outcome, even though there is no tangible benefit from it. Nate has way more heart (and ⚾️⚾️s) just by doing this than the managers at Take2 who have hoodwinked and ghosted the community & taken no accountability for the failure. They're the ones who ought to apologize; but by now it's clear that's not going to happen. I hope Nate shows up again, and I hope Take2 itself is closed and sold off because they can't sell enough of anything to stay in business.
The thing here is that he was basically the employee of a cooperation. He was the public face, but he was still an employee. In that position you have to tow the company line. I challenge anyone who works in a company trying to sell something that has internal problems that you are going to air dirty laundry in public. Been there, put on the cheshire grin and carry on.
Even if you wanted to there are most likely clauses in your employment contract.
No one wants to do a bad job in anything they do (unless they are the minority who show up to do the bare minimum, and if so please take some pride).
For Nate it's obvious this was a passion project, the rug was pulled and he is devastated. I don't understand why the blame is being laid at his door. My only conclusion is those being most vocal have not worked in a corporate environment.
Yes in previous times he was 'bigging up' what KSP 2 would become. Yes depending on one's perspective it could be seen as as snake oil, but KSP 2 had real potential if only it was managed properly.
Yeah, a lot of people forget that (at least in the US), if you make a company look bad, not only can they fire you, they can sue for damages. It can and has happened. Nate most certainly had his hands tied, and still does. Sure, he's an optimist, as am I. But those are the people who look at problems and ask 'How can we' and not 'What can't we'. You'll never get anything challenging done with the latter. So his optimism was required for the project to even have a chance in hell. And he was very much not allowed to share how much of a crap show it was behind the scenes, or all the BS they had to contend with. They'd never let him speak about it.. if he even knew half of it.
@@stormycatmink Kinda raises a point... Can he not sue them for damaging his reputation from essentially coercing them to be their fallguy? :P
@@UdumbaraMusic, he could actually. It'd be VERY hard for him to prove they set him up and ruined his chances to get another job.. but that kind of thing has happened before. I just don't think he could argue they intentionally sabotaged him personally here. ;p Especially since the whole studio was closed, not just him getting the axe.
That's no defense, I mean the nazis were just employees too, right?
I’m not exactly pleased with the way he executed his role in all this but fuck I feel bad for the guy. I hope he learns all he can from this and that we can see great things from him in the future.
Also, on a wildly different note, I REALLY hope KSA sticks with the astronauts being literal kittens lol
Each to their own... but man i would cringe if it were kittens 😅
@@Ph33NIXx A small fraction of the fandom wanted wobbly rockets, a maybe-small fraction of the fandom would love if it were kittens, but... I know how you feel! :D Honestly, some people cringe at kerbals. One person left an angry comment when Vaos used a realistic Apollo-style countdown because he thought serious stuff shouldn't be used with silly kerbals. I 'spect there's a balance to be struck. Scott Manley has said there were other space sims before KSP, and he thought the kerbals were what made KSP successful. I know JNO's humanoid droos don't really encourage me to play, which is odd because on the fact of it, it would be natural to picture myself as a droo, but I just don't like looking at them.
@ you lack perspective my friend (/j) 😩
Yea I don't want to have to 'defend' the game every time i show someone and they dont take it seriously because the ship is being piloted by a kitten :/
@@eekee6034 yeah... I think a lot has to do with design aswel. I did not particularly like the Kerbal design of KSP1 - but I did like they were goofy little guys just doing their things.. being happily confinded to a can for several years when the you mess up the timing for an intercept 😂 - i think the KSP2 kerbal models were good designs though (from an artistic point of view)
I cant put my finger on why I dont like cats. Maybe its just because they exist in our world.. maybe its the internet meme culture surrounding cats. It just feels "cheap" to me..
8:42 I definitely resonate with that. It is easy to say sorry to appease someone, but it is meaningless unless you:
1. Actually are genuinely remorseful
2. Actually make the changes you need to in order to prevent it from happening again in the future
It's something that I've been trying to be more intentional about. I will still apologize just to express my genuine remorse, but I am trying to be more accountable and hold myself to my own apologies to make sure that I *do* make up for it by making things right and/or ensuring that I never repeat the same mistake.
wasn't expecting top-tier parenting advice from a ksp video haha
Pretty sure everyone could benefit from being a better person and doing stuff like this instead of simply apologizing
Well, some things you can't make right, no matter how much you try.
@@nt78stonewobble That's very true. In those cases, I just have to accept my failure and commit myself to learning and growing from my failure so I never make the same mistake again. It definitely hurts and takes a lot of time and effort to accept, but it's also often one of the best learning opportunities.
Back when I owned a business, I told my employees, do not apologize. Explain the problem. Take responsibility for the problem. Fix the problem. "We're sorry for the inconvenience" are the most insipid words ever coined by an MBA. Shut the fuck up and make it right.
This is absolutely true. The recognition and change in behavior is important, not words or symbolic gestures. Plenty of abusers think that because they "made it right" afterwards, it's all okay. No, you get forgiven when you've changed your behaviour, not because you felt bad and "made it right", only to repeat again the same "mistake".
I’m glad Nate found the confidence to put out some of his own words. Must’ve been very hard for him considering a significant part of the playerbase (unfairly) places most or all the blame on him.
Nate was a creative director. His job was to sketch an idea for a game people would love. He did that very well; else people wouldn’t be so upset about the fact it got cancelled. It is not his fault he was at the same time put into a position where he had (too much) influence over the more technical aspects of the game. If you’re put into a situation where the choices are to either take the lead of the project, or have no firm leader for it at all, can you really blame a ksp fan for trying to do the best he can despite maybe not having the right qualifications or technical knowledge? He did what he could, and i will always appreciate him for that.
Hope he gets back on his feet soon. He deserved better, just like all of us did💚
geg
Hey Greg, thanks for all you contributed to the KSP2 community!
@@ShadowZone thanks, and thanks to you aswell! You’ve been a pilar of fair, unbiased and accurate reporting during the development of KSP2 (and made some great builds in it too). Hope you continue to do so for KSA and any other topics that might peak your interest! :)
I don't hold it against him, they had big shoes to fill and there was never an option other than going big, otherwise it would be a failure by comparison. They gave it their best shot, just shows how shitty Take 2 is.
we KNOW for a fact his decisions are what caused the problems, try watching some non-apologetics channels that don't suck his dick
What happened around No man's sky is a pristine example of something going terribly wrong, but they made up for it.
Yeah but he is not in a position to do that. He is neither the owner or anything like that of the studio, game, or IP
Just at a glance, Take Two seems to have made the most questionable decisions. While some people were up in arms about how Nate was lying and ruining the game… I mostly ignored that (just consider me an involved outsider giving my perspective) and took note of the fact that they actually had working prototypes of all of the roadmap features on the backburner. I saw the amount of effort going into fixing some of the bugs because I contributed to the thread for what I considered the last game-breaking bug at the time in my opinion (where craft flight status would erroneously be/come "landed"), only to watch the announcement that the studio would be shuttered-
-Sorry, the CEO of Take Two allegedly denied closing studios with a distinction that moves nobody-
-and even in the face of closure, the dev team finished and pushed the fix for the bug in question in their final days. (Now it's just too depressing/disappointing to play.) What I saw was a game with a pile of mistakes in its history just starting to bear its true fruit. At that time, Take Two decided, gaining what I suspect is little more than the loss of KSP 2's actual successful days, that the project should stop in its tracks.
I keep seeing that the best way to kill a dream project is to rely on investors who are in any way removed from the dream. Nate may have had every reason to think KSP 2 would work out so long as Take Two made rational decisions. Instead, they chose to "rationalize" their pipeline for what I strongly suspect is just investor signaling. Nate appears to have cared deeply for KSP 2, but Take Two seemingly obviously didn't.
As an investor, one looks at a project, decides as objectively as possible if it will succeed and produce ROI, puts down money, and WAITS TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS.
Take2 didn't do that. They involved themselves in the process far too much to be called an investor; they became a producer, basically riding Intercept Games to a figurative pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If a ridden horse trips and falls, it's rarely the horse's fault.
"it takes a village to raise a child, this goes both ways" ah yes it also takes a Child to raze a village
Genuine LOL from this. Thanks! 😄
"As a matter of cosmic history, it has always been easier to destroy, than to create."
-Spock in "Star Trek II"
Yeah I think the people who hired Nate have more responsibility than mentioned. They needed to recognize that Nate was an ambitious, creative guy who had a huge vision that he didn’t have the project management skills nor the huge budget that would’ve been required to realize that vision.
that's not necessarily it either, they were forced to use old KSP 1 code and not given the budget needed, also not given the time needed as take two tried to push them to get it out quickly, plus not being able to consult other developers of ksp 1
He was only creative director, as in the one who decides what to do with the stuff they're given, and I would say they did a pretty damn good job, the looks, sounds and music, game mechanics, the whole creative direction (the thing nate was actually responsible for) was amazing
Now, he made many mistakes i think in communication with the community and I'm sure some faults of management is partly his fault, but he could only do so much, and since we can't see behind the scenes we don't really know what he did and could've done differently
knowing how this big corporations work... I don't blame him of anything appart of accepting the project with those conditions. (Old codebase, no access to original devs...). Knowing they were a small team, all this may just be pre-planed.
They knew KSP 2 development would be expensive, Instead of just bury the asset in the archives, make it a bare minimum to sell by just adding cosmetic changes to the old code, get some profit and eventually close if that doesn't happen. I bet that was the case.
I've worked as a professional software developer for almost 30 years. I've been part of very tough projects, some of which completely failed. On a personal level, I understand how that feels. But in the end, projects fail for a reason, and if you're in charge of making decisions, you're also responsible for the consequences.
They've destroyed a franchise beloved by many. They've failed an entire community, taken their money, and delivered nothing. The publisher shares some of the blame, but the development team hasn't been up to the task.
I mean to be fair I think Nate's only faults were incompetence rather than anything else, Take 2 destroyed ksp because they were greedy and control freaks, Nate just failed to do his job well. if he really wanted control or power or money there are plenty of better ways to do that imo.
@@nousername8162 I mean Nate did knowingly lie to the fanbase about what the product was and made promises that they knew fully they couldn't keep years before the launch.
@@teaser6089 Not to mention that they had us believing we were buying a playable version, even if buggy, for our $60. Then we loaded it up and tried to play, only to find that we were lied to. They fixed a few minor bugs, then took our money and ran. They knew it was unplayable and charged as much as a finished product, knowing full well that they were having financial problems and would have to cancel the project. F*ck them.
@@teaser6089Suppose he was told by managers at Intercept or Take2 to make certain announcements. When you're under a contract, and you're told to.say something that you know is false or imfeasible, it's easy to _say_ what the right thing to do is, but it's hard to _do it._ Whatever level of responsibility Nate has in this, at least he tried to own up to it. The same cannot be said for Take2, who functionally lied about shuttering Intercept Games and the future of KSP2.
@HuntingTarg ah yes the good old "just following orders" argument
If nothing else, I can respect him, going "I failed to deliver."
Not "We didn't have enough money."
Not "I wish people would do X."
_"I,_ personally, am responsible for failing to deliver on those promises."
It is increasingly rare to see this attitude in... not just the gaming development, but pretty much _anywhere,_ really. So if nothing else, I have to give him at least _some_ credit for that.
Or having a hate filled community that review bombs your game every 5 minutes for no reason.....
💯🎯
"The buck stops here."
Who thinks or does that anymore?
Not Take2, for sure...
"don't apologize" --nah, we're not gonna just let you cook on this one. Number one, it's polite to do it. Number two, if you aren't able to IMMEDIATELY make it right then your silence will be interpreted as not caring about whatever harm you caused. "Don't *just* apologize" is better.
What can he do but apologise though? He has zero power now. I just feel dreadful for Nate.
@@minerscale I was referring to what he said he told his kid.
The apology is only the start. If you just apologize and do the same (like most influencers after a drama), it's pointless. But no apology is kinda wild too if they can't do it immediately, you're not wrong. They should both be there though.
The way I see it, an apology is purely communication. An honest apology should convey the genuine intent to do better and (if applicable) bridge any misunderstandings. But I agree that an apology has to be backed up by action, otherwise it isn’t worth the air it’s made of.
I tell my kids that "Sorry doesn't magically fix it, but it is the first step of making things better"
My response to the video was mixed. I appreciated that he made it, I understood the sentiment he was getting at, and I hope he's able to learn from the whole experience and get back on the horse. But I also felt the video was a bit heavy on justifying things and a bit short on an explicit acknowledgement that what happened was worse than "not being able to deliver on promises."
To some extent I can forgive this, the line between the aspiration and the possible may not have always been clear, but as late as Aug. 2023 you had Dakota saying "There is a multiplayer framework, it works, but we're putting it on the backburner for now so we can focus on other milestones first." Yet in truth, Thomas Spradling had left Intercept some 18 months earlier and there was nobody really working on it at all.
I don't really care about an apology. Saying sorry doesn't give people their money back, and I know that's out of his control. I would just like to see him own his part of it. There's more to the story than "I tried really hard and failed" - he and a lot of other people knew that at least one part of his promised features were basically DOA and yet he allowed the reigning perception to be "Multiplayer is in, it works, it's great, we can't stop playing it." Maybe he wasn't allowed to say otherwise if he wanted to keep his job at the time, but he's not working for them now. Whatever the terms of his NDA, I'm sure it doesn't cover a general "I regret not doing a better job of managing expectations for our customers, who bought into my vision and ended up with a game that will never be finished."
And I don't say this because I'm really into watching a guy who is clearly broken by his experience squirm for my own amusement. I just think that it would be good for him, and good for the community. He talked in the video about his name being associated with failure. Failure is something that happens to everyone who tries something ambitious eventually. But there's no getting past that stigma if he's unwilling to directly address the core issue, which is that a lot of customers feel like they were lied to *because they were.*
Well said! I couldn't agree more. I also watched the video and came away feeling like it was a hollow apology. I think it was more about him than those of us who paid so much for a broken game, based on his promotion of it.
At least Nate is brave and took risks and put himself out there. I'm a game Dev with a half finished game too afraid to finish it for fear of failure. Nates experience is my worst nightmare. I feel really bad for him and his team.
Just don't scam people and you are good
@kapytanhook Nate didn't scam people, placing that on him is flat out wrong.
He is the _Creative Director_ his one and only job is to dream up the game and send the dream to the actual developers.
Everything else is someone else's job.
@@VelociraptorsOfSkyrimThere's some truth here though. It's exponentially less likely that there will be a PR disaster like this if expectations are correctly managed. That said I don't think Nate is responsible for even 10% of what he's getting.
Dw my guy, make it for yourself if no one else and it'll be worthwhile
Nate was very emotional. I don't really like emotions, but it was heartbreaking, really. I hope he gets over this soon. KSP will truck on.
"i dont really like emotions" ???? hæ??
Proud to have backed KSP1,
Shamed to have backed KSP2,
AFAIC, Take-Two owe us a refund.
F*** GTA 6.
I don't believe Nate would have given the go-ahead to release the product (I won't call it a game, it was at best a tech demo) in that state. But it would be nice to hear it from him. Alas, NDAs probably prevent that.
Go ahead? He was probably ordered to. In retrospect that should have been a red flag for all of us.
Early access can work, but in hindsight any early access tied to a big company should be instantly distrusted. KSP2 wasn't meant to be a live service, and early access purchases not only don't include an obligation to add in features later - the terms explicitly say you risk the features not being added.
For a small indie company running on passion that doesn't matter as much, but I would be willing to bet that KSP2 was on countdown timer to death the second early access happened. It instantly earned a big chunk of it's sales right off the bat and for a company that only cares about the bottom line people would have started asking "why are we paying all these developers to work on a product people won't pay us more money for?" as soon as sales numbers started to fall.
Nate apologized when he didn't have to. Take2 never apologized, they only ran PR cover while closing down and selling off Intercept as a studio. That speaks volumes of itself.
When I was out in Seattle 5 years ago for PaxWest, they said that they were making a framework for modders to be able to enhance the game
nothing to do with video but seing you here i'd like to thank you for all you have done for the ksp1 modding comunity :)
Well, Nate said he is learning how to do the actual moving parts of game design and production right? To me the best 'apology' he could provide would be to, against all odds and in the face of everything, to see about trying to get on to the KSA team, even in some kind of minor role and make his dream a reality despite Take Two being, well, Take Two and ruining everything for everyone.
Re: apologies and acts of sympathy in general. I was once told It's not what you do wrong, it's what you do to put it right.
As someone whose followed this for a while. He reminds me a lot of my own experience of having a boss who is a fantastic person and trying their best but is situated with demanding corporate demands coupled with some variety of inexperience that is being left unaddressed by same higherups. In the end he was probably the middleman get stretched out between loft goals and reality, being the person who had to somehow carry both into work each day. While I definitely feel bad for everyone who got the short end of the stick from KSP2, I still feel bad for Nate. While he has some responsibility in KSP2s failure, I doubt he ever wanted it to. He just had to walk a tightrope with his hands tied.
Biggest problem is that he doesn't take accountability for the blatant lies, such as multiplayer supposedly working when in reality they were playing with a KSP1 mod.
Exactly
Tbf someone else raised the point that you kinda have to tow the line for a company, and they can even sue you for damages if you make them look bad... I've had to straight up lie to people at a job in the past otherwise I would get reprimanded. Just glad it wasn't anything as serious as this.
@@UdumbaraMusic Hot take, but if you have to tell a lie as bad as this to keep your job, have some integrity and resign. If you're worried about being able to find a new job afterward... well, look at where Nate is now.
@@74oshua Contracts and NDA's... Breaking a contract and rendering yourself unemployed with no reference AND a hit to your reputation is hardly a reasonable option for someone who is ultimately like everyone else a victim of bad business practices... He could end up in crippling debt for the rest of his life as a result of having to compensate for someone else's lack of integrity and being used as a fallguy just because you're upset a game didn't turn out right.
Your criticism is literally what these big companies use as a means to scapegoat so you don't blame them...
@@UdumbaraMusic Again, he's already suffered a hit to his reputation and unable to find work. I also seriously doubt his contract actually obligated him to say what he did about multiplayer publicly, unless he was contractually obligated to read a script for those videos. In which case, he probably shouldn't have taken the contract.
People are always responsible for their own actions. Sure, part of the blame is certainly on Take 2 for poor management, but Nate knew the terms of the project before he signed up.
I feel like that while Nate made a lot of mistakes, there were also a lot of mistakes imposed on him from above. I also don't particularly blame him for thinking that, if he had a funding commitment, that meant T2 was in a position to see the game through and not pull the plug within a year. I still wonder how much of the plug pulling had to do with KSP specifically, given that they sold off the entire publishing company over it as well. It kind of feels like just an easy target to save some money on the balancesheet.
Intercept Games at large was probably the hapless victim of bean counters and brusque executives, not any kind of malice or overbearing expectations. Which makes it harder to accept, esp. for someone personally & passionately involved like Nate was.
At the same time, 7 years is a long time just to produce a Beta, even accounting for C0VlD.
I'm a firm believer that you need to verbally apologize as well as demonstrate that they mean it, and make efforts to ensure it doesn't happen again. A verbal apology alone is worthless. But just a demonstration doesn't address the emotional and social needs for someone to get a verbal commitment to make amends.
And yes, it's never the creative director's fault alone. Even in the worst case, other people have to allow them to keep making mistakes. And in this case, he tried his hardest. If people are giving Nate grief, they clearly are just ignorant of how corporate life works, regardless of how much experience they may think they have. They likely don't understand their own experiences.
It was more sad than anything. Every time we saw Nate he was happy, maybe nervous. He just seemed so sad during this video. I’m wishing him the best.
When I saw the very first videos of KSP2, I was shocked about the performance. It had exactly the same issues as KSP1. Back then, RUclips comments said that optimization would come later. As a deveoper myself, I had my doubts. I had the impression they were building on sand, and as it turned out, this sand was called KSP1. Modders have done a fantastic job at circumventing a lot of flaws, but you can't change the entire architecture. Kitten Space Agency is following the right approach, IMHO.
From Nate's perspective, I think it's fine to have a clear end goal in mind. After all, he was creative director, not technical director. This can be done in parallel. It's not his fault that the studio forced a flawed technical base onto the project.
We learn more from our failures than our successes. Nate will land on his feet.
I promise I will learn a ton from winning a mega million dollar lottery.
I have great sympathy for Nate, he is taking the blame for decisions that were well above his pay grade. Did he make mistakes, yes of course, who doesn't. But I think not being able to contact KSP 1 developers and not being allowed to start code from scratch doomed the project from the start and I'm sure those decisions weren't made by him.
Deeds are more meaningful than words, but they are not always possible and sometimes take a long time to happen. Why not combine deeds with a sincere apology?
what deeds would you hope to see from him?
I can't imagine one is possible, so the apology was enough in that case, in my opinion. It's just counterarguing the point in the video at 8:16.
Well, he signed an NDA that he's apparently not willing to break, so...
I watch such videos from the perspective of: If I had to choose whether or not to hire this person, would this video change my opinion?
In this case, he would be better off making a short twitter post like this:
"I'm sorry we weren't able to deliver on our promises for KSP2. We hope to do better going forward. I'd like to go into details on lessons learned, but I'm still bound by NDAs."
No risk of violating NDAs by accident, no making a fool of oneself on the internet (which is a BIG red flag when hiring people), acknowledging just the right amount of responsibility, no risk of going off script, no giving haters or skeptics ammunition.
Frankly, I don't care how well an apology video is done. The fact that someone thinks an apology video on social media is a good idea in the first place, is enough to make me wary associating with them (much less hiring them, if I were making that decision.)
---
All that aside, I do feel for the guy. Hopefully he learned a lot. In my own life, I've found that my best successes resulted from lessons I learned from "failures".
Harvester is already on it for a real KSP successor. Better forget about KSP2 and everybody involved with it especially the publisher.
KSA will not be KSP successor, KSP is already buried... at least the second chapter. If I were you i woulnd't turn on the hype train too much
You're wrong that apologies are worthless. What is Nate supposed to do at this point?
About apologizing - what I learned that even the act of courtesy is enough for a lot of people, esp. if it's genuine. Sometimes it's not possible to make up.
If I may humbly suggest - teach your kids to also _say_ it. I am fairly sure there will be people in their lives to whom just hearing or not hearing that will make a difference.
I told them that as well. What I was trying to say in the video and try to convey to them is that the words alone are not as meaningful as acting. But you're right, it's not always possible, unfortunately. Whatever it is they will do once they're out of the house or I'm no longer alive, I just hope it will be genuine.
Like many people, I also know what it's like to spend years of your life working at something only to have it all come to nothing due to circumstances that were never fully within your control. Unlike Nate, I didn't have the hopes and expectations of an extremely dedicated (and occasionally rather unhinged) community resting on my shoulders while I did that; must be a rough place to be in. He has my respect for taking on such a huge job as CD, and I wish him all the best for the future. Keep your chin up Nate.
I still don't like the guy and his attitude.
As for T2, their decision sealed the deal early on anyway. had he been honest, he should have quit the project at that very moment. (aka before the first trailer came out). They hired him because of his artistic fiber to sell a bigger product than what was really designed to be, so that was a LIE from the get go, no excuses can repair that ! They used him as a smoke screen and he walked right into it without question, he's a FRAUD ! Even without him at the helm but with the same conditions, the game would have still been a failiure regardless but without such an artistic publicity and such high revandicated goals, people would have seen the copy-paste plan much earlier and the hype wouldn't have been there.
His vulnerability in the video is also a lie and I don't care about him or what he has to say. To me, it's bye bye into oblivion, where you belong, Nate ! If he didn't see that coming from the get go, he's an utter idiot and I don't care either.
As for raising children not to excuse but to repair, I understand why now I never followed the people who tried to raise me when they told me to present excuses... I must have instinctively understood that an insincere apology is worthless. If I really care for the person I offended, I'll simply ask them if they are alright. As I undertood instinctively that I should have been punished more severely than I ever was... Trying to understand the rules without a proper father figure is difficult and insanely painstaking, especially mentally. That must explain my tendancy to remain single in nearly every aspect of my life...
Your average programmer has no clue about solid body simulations. They should have hired a mathematician.
unity does it for you.
Nate was not the one who needed to apologize. The Take-Two higher-ups need to apologize.
I feel sympathy for Nate insofar as he is a fellow human being and it must suck to be in that position, and he seems genuinely very passionate. But I cannot stop wondering if a different person in that role could have done more good.
The thing is, his passion wasn't misplaced. If the higher-ups hadn't insisted on using KSP1's existing codebase as a cost-cutting measure everything Nate wanted and promised for the game would've been feasible. He admits there were some missteps on his part as far as managing things goes, but you work with what you're given, and Take2 mostly supplied the devs with impossible demands and NDAs.
At the end of the day, we can wonder about "what if?"s until the cows come home, but the single biggest impact on everyone involved with KSP2 from the start was Take2 / Private Division's draconian approach to things. Even if we interpret Nate's influence on things as unflatteringly as possible it still wouldn't have ultimately mattered as much as their circumstances - no creative director could have pulled this kind of project off under those conditions, and I'd wager most would have thrown in the towel far sooner than Nate did.
Tough one. Its clear that initially, he entered the Project with a lot of excitement and more faith in his Overlords than perhaps he should. Then he says that he became aware that it was going to become a struggle to get the things done that were needed (Ref: The Boulder). Clearly, he was referring to the Overlords once again. But deep down, he still had a lot of Hope that he and his team could pull it off and deliver the Product that he initially envisioned. That last interview highlighted his mental state as far as the project went, hope can be a strong driving force, stubbornness, and delusion also, and all three can cloud good judgement.
IMO (using hindsight, and having little emotional attachment) I question why he stayed with the project for so long knowing that his Overlords didnt share the same vision that he and his team did. But, given the state of the industry, jumping ship would have been a risky move.
Now hes stuck in an NDA that basically prevents him from telling the whole store and sheilds his Ex-Overlords from any repercussions and make the whole mess appear to be entirely his fault, which is wasnt. I think he did stoke the fire on the hype train a lot, but that was also his Faith in the project at work.
Its clear he has learnt a lot. About the business, and the kinds of people in the business that have the final decision which can make or break a title.
If it wasnt Nate, it would have been some other poor soul in his shoes now.
I personally dont attach any blame on him at all, and its clear that he is genuinely remorseful about the ultimate fate of KSP2.... Yes, he stoked the fire on the hype train, but the decisions that ultimately lead to the state of an final demise of KSP2 were made by the people Above Nate. The same people who were more interested in Patching KSP1, and selling is as a new Product (Looking at you FarmSim2024).
I'm looking at EA with FIFA. Except for small texture changes and players being in different teams, it's the same game.
The comment about making up for your mistakes instead of apologizing was golden. I’ll definitely keep that in mind next time I mess up.
you know the apology is real when it is done from inside a car
honestly I don't blame him.
Yes surely he also made mistakes, but he alone couldn't have messed up that bad to make this dumpster fire happen.
I am pretty sure there are people actually at fault that can stay behind there nice anonymity...
And we will sadly probably never know who truly made the really destruktiv decisions.
Take-Two has a CEO. His name is Strauss Zelnick.
@@ShadowZone Strauss Zelnick is one of the biggest assholes the industry has ever seen.
@@ShadowZone made my day :D also, nate: please don't blame yourself too hard! i shoved money in their face for ksp2 as soon as it was buyable, believing in your dream of it. i sure hope you could, i don't know, like, maybe find a way to work on making KSA the sequel you had in mind for your first work of art =)
like did nate make mistakes, yes but fundamentally the more i hear it seems the ksp2 team was told to make a steak dinner but was given a bag of literal shit and bread by take 2
We all live in pottersville now. Our animal instincts hacked for distraction while our humanity is squeezed out for profit
Thanks for keeping watch and letting us informed.
Thanks again ShadowZone for being the voice of reason.
People, who don't feel any sympathy for Nate, are either too stuck on their idea that he's the blame and/or they don't understand how his actual role in the whole development story.
Here's a made up saying, which might help to describe the situation better:
You can't blame the passengers in a car crash.
The only one to blame is the driver, and that's Take-Two in this game.
They were the once that green lit using an engine which isn't suited for the task, legacy code which came with fundamental flaws, not allowing contact with KSP1 devs to help with the code, and not hiring intermediate and senior coders. Those decisions were 100% on Take-Two, and were 100% the problems why KSP2 failed.
Anything else, like added features (like colonies, new start systems, resource gathering, etc) have nothing to do with KSP2's demise. If anything, its prospect set it's self apart as a proper sequel instead of just a graphical overhaul.
You could argue that the employees of Intercept Games (which includes Nate) should have demanded that either some, or all, of the above-mentioned problems should be addressed. We don't know if they did, but I would be very surprised if it wasn't addressed at some point.
I'm happy to see that a lot of people wished Nate the best, were sympathetic, and even apologized in some form. The sad part is all the negative comments, and even people downvoting positive messages, like it's going to fix anything. I don't know what these people think, but I do know it's very toxic.
Your point about not apologizing but making up for it with deeds is spot on. I raised my son with the same attitude and it was the foundation of my coaching style; it isn’t what you say but what you can do and how you do it.
Setting the example for others is the best hope for real change. If you force others to go through the motions it only creates resentment unless you’ve broken their spirit and that isn’t good leadership.
Such a subtle distinction but has massive implications. Cheers!
seems like take 2 didn't know what they were getting into if they couldnt support ksp2 ksp1 was a rocky start so i would expect the same from ksp2
A true apology acknowledges the wrong doing and offers some indication that it was an acident or mistake that will not be repeated.
The words "I'm Sorry" in and of themselves make more a statement about the nature of the person speaking them than they do to offer consolation to the listener.
You all are being extremely kind. I’m sure Nate Silver is a cool guy but he fundamentally did a bad job. The idea of interstellar is so bad. The fact that they didn’t prioritize multiplayer is so egregious. If they had given us multiplayer and some wheels this game would have had a viable path to full release. Why did they try to add scope like colonies when they could have added the ONE THING that KSP didn’t have: multiplayer.
It’s so absurd that people are only blaming the studio. Yeah, I’m sure they messed things up, but Nate Silver had a FUNDAMENTALLY flawed vision from the start that made the game impossible to create.
Not everyone wants the same things to the same extent. Some people like colonies and industry more than interstellar travel, which is how the Factorio DLC found success. Others like the prospect of using advanced technology to go to other stars, which is prevalent in plenty of games.
@@alexsiemers7898 The problem is that the delta v to reach other stars is so many order of magnitudes greater than to travel between planets that it would make the key gameplay mechanic, the rocket equation, completely trivial. And this is a fundamental problem. There is no way to balance patch it because it is a flaw in the design itself, a design that Silver is responsible for. Interstellar travel is fine for high fantasy, but it is fundamentally incompatible with a space sim like KSP. And the fact that it was ever in the roadmap made the game unbuildable. With another vision and another designer this game could have succeeded. But it never could because of the dead-on-paper design that Silver was solely responsible for. He seems like a cool guy,, but cool guys can fail even when they have the best intentions and are decent people.
The publisher gave them a lot of money , and they had a lot of time to make a great game.Enough is enough
Ps.I bought the game , and to this day I play it almost every day.Why ? Because even in the pre alpha stage, KSP2 is AWESOME and beautiful , with passion , and heart.To bad , they will never finish it.
To me it seems like Nate was the right person in the wrong job- a lot of the way he managed the studio I felt was poor but given the pressure from the publisher it would've been very hard to do significantly better, but at the end of the day he did seem genuinely passionate and a good guy overall. Perhaps some sort of comunity facing or comunity advocacy type possition in a similar project would've been really great to see him in as I could see him being a big help there.
Edit: You specifically asked for comment on your aproach to apologies so here's mine: I agree with it largely but feel you may be missing the fundamental point of what an apology *is* or at least what it's supposed to be- it's a social signal telling others that either something was not your intent in the first place, so it can be easilly excused or dismissed (this is what 'polite apologies' for very minor things are for) *or* a signal of your intent to change and do differently in future after having realised something you did was wrong or incorrect (a 'formal' or 'serious' apology).
If we take what you said "don't apologise, make up for it" literally then you can end up with a situation that's needlessly tense because you come across as extremely rude. Let's say I bump into you and cause you to drop your coffee mug and it smashes, if I literally then walk or sprint away from you to go get an identical replacement it'll probably take me some time and you'd be stood there thinking I've run off and probably not very happy until I come back and hand you a new one, which would then likely leave you very confused. So we clearly need something in there to 'bridge' that gap between my corrective action and my mistake that signals very strongly my intent as to what my next actions are going to be- that's what an apology is. It also functions as part of a social shorthand that makes things go more smoothly- I could sit there and explain in exhaustive detail how specifically my actions were wrong, how I understand it inconvenienced you, how I should have been more careful and am at fault, etc, or I could just apologise which then invites you to *assume* I have understood those things and that I will take the apropriate corrective action. It's naturally understood that the more serious the issue the more detail you need to go into and so even then actually saying the words "I'm sorry" is *supposed* to mean that you have comprehended the depths of the issue(s) you've caused and are accepting the responsibility of now repairing that, it's an 'official' way of acknowledging the transfer of a burden onto yourself.
Basically in short: I treat 'serious' or 'formal' apologies as essentially a promise to change my actions or behaviour in the future and to do better, and signaling that to other people is important so you can be held accountable and so your intent is public. Sometimes in order to be able to fix things you also *need* to be granted a second chance and that's also what signaling your intent is good for, too.
In the words of orson scott card "it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves." We dont need an apology. We need to know why.
So why isn't there a link to his video in the description?
I don't think there's anyone who could have succeeded in his position, regardless of what he did or didn't do. The parent company's requirements and limitations were tantamount to sabotage. It's like telling someone they have to build a house but they're not allowed to use tools or talk to architects.
then they should build a small house. like focusing on one thing maybe....instead the entire thing is just an unpainted mess. Even if they never did multiplayer, never did colonies, never did interstellar and just added in 1000 more parts, more contracts, and copy pasted modded graphical techs this would not have flopped
...I just want what I paid for, without having to pay for it again.
i so often see the sentiment that the devs failed the community, and it saddens me that people only have that to take away from this all. like, no, the corporation who pushed KSP2 shafted the devs and shuttered their studio without so much as a word screwed you, not the devs themselves!! devs always get the short end of the stick when it comes to these sorts of corporate decisions and it's genuinely not fair on them. corps are weaponising people's want for justice when they throw the devs to the wolves and nobody seems to realise it
The seagulls were a nice touch to the feel of the video, imo.
The only thing I really blame on him is the supposed scheme to sell star theory to Take Two.
And of couse he is probably a "scope creep" but that was something that shuld have been dealt by the publisher.
I hope he could contine to work in the industry: with the right management I think he could do great things!
I get the general impression he has little technical background and so didn't realize how difficult most of the ideas he pushed would be
It made me sad to see him like this.
As for the deed to make for it you were talking about, it would take him to do just what he seems to be doing : go by himself (and a little team) and bring us a new fun game about space, rockets and boosters !
Growing up with KSP meant dealing with its janky side. I skipped KSP 2 because it felt like a copy-paste job. KSA, however, has my full support. They're taking the time to build a real successor to KSP.
I think that Nate was being honest, I mean he was being open and vulnerable and while we didn't always see eye to eye on a lot of things on the forums that is painful to see. I think though that Nate himself had the issue a lot of developers get, being too close to the project and not wanting to listen to outside input. I've been there, done that and understand it. I understand his feelings and that in the end there is a very real person who has had to wear the brunt of the anger from the community.
Is part of that deserved? Yes, he made promises and he personally sold a product to people that was not what was advertised and no amount of 'Take 2 marketing' etc can change the fact that Nate was the FACE of that selling. But I also think that people go overboard, they forget that Nate's hurting, it's evident in his video, he likely wanted to go public and talk to people 6 months ago. But he can't, NDA's suck.. It's worse when you can't defend yourself because of them and saddly for Nate, he can't.
I think honestly that a lot of the mess right now, at this point is on Take 2 and who ever now owns Private Division. KSP2 should not be being sold still, there should be communication about what is going on and what those who have brought it can expect going forwards. Because right now we have been left in the dark and that is wrong.
There was a time when an apology was an admission of a mistake and declaration of an intention to make up for it. Today, "I'm sorry" is a way to pretend they care.
I hate this whole story. When I bought into the EA I knew what I was getting myself into. It was money I could afford to part with and not get anything from it. And that is another thing that needs to be brought up: EA games don't always succeed. I'm reminded of Jumplight Odyssey. I was so furious when LoG pulled the plug in that game and made away with the money. No. Putting your face in front of a camera and apologizing is not enough.
Either don't do this, and avoid having your face identified as the face of the mess, or present an actual solution.
Steam should allow refunds for buyers when this sort of thing happens.
I don't think this was all his fault, but I'm sure some part of it was. I do think apologies are important because we get to hear people say 'im sorry that this was everyone elses fault' or 'i really messed up and this why i was wrong' .. knowing how much responsibility they take can give you a lot of insight into how they will act going forward.
"the camera kept rolling without anyone of uns noticing" HAHAHA😂😂
Not Nates fault at all. He seemed to love the project as well as the other devs. Boils down to having their hands tied and corporate greed.
Honestly, as soon as I heard that the original dev team would not be involved, I knew it was going to flop. The more I learned the more certain I was that it was doomed. I have never been so disappointed to be right.
I've played ksp1 since early access, it took decades for ksp1 to get where it is today, WITH the help of countless hours from moders keeping it afloat.
There was NEVER any chance that this new set of devs with no contact with the original devs could ever pull this off in this short timeframe.
The decision to make ksp2 with an entirely new dev team in a much shorter timeframe than ksp1 is what killed ksp2. Whoever made that decision is where the blame should land.
As for Nate: I don't think the gaming industry has any patience for people who make promises they cant deliver on anymore. Especially when it is someone who can't actually build anything, and just tells people to do things.
I would hate to be working under Nate on ksp2. As he has said himself, he doesn't know how to do anything, only tell devs what to do. He's just now learning game dev now with unreal... I cant imagine how horrible it would be to be working under him as a dev as he made promises to people while being clueless about how the game is coming along. As he said, he must have been a huge source of stress for the devs actually building ksp2! Calling people in the middle if the night?! Talk about a nightmare to work with!
I wish good luck to everyone who had to put up with Nate during the development of ksp2 as he over promised and called people while they were sleeping, nagged and pressured them to do something that he should have been able to recognize as an impossible task. His ignorance and baseless promises must have created a hellish environment for the people actually developing the game.
I hope Nate has learned some valuable lessons, and stays away from management and leadership positions.
I'll keep playing ksp1 with mods because it can do everything ksp2 was supposed to do and WAY more with better performance graphics, and stability to boot.
Hopefully in future people will start viewing people in nate's position for what they are: hype men, someone who's job it is to lie and exaggerate to make sails.
How would a hypeman be able to promise anything realistic if he doesn't know how to do ANYTHING on the development side? They can't. Ksp2 was doomed from the start.
I don't blame Nate for KSP2 being cut off and shut down.
But if he were to try and make up for it to people.
I would personally take him trying his best to make something he is passionate about become fully realized.
He worked hard and tried to make it real.
To be fair I think Nate’s vision for ksp2 was a good one. All the major planned features where on my list and I linked the exploration mode a lot. I’m sure Nate could have done better but it seems like a systems and corporate environment issue. Nate’s biggest mistake is probably his naivety.
I think it’s good to apologize and also to try and make things right. An apology is an acknowledgment of hurt caused. Of course it should be genuine and just acknowledging hurt does not heal it but it’s an important step. Disregarding the value of this undervalues the feelings that might be involved and focuses on a practical solution. For example if Nate gave me my money back it wouldn’t make up for the disappointment I felt. I’m a teacher I would never force an apology but I encourage it all the time as part of getting a student to empathize. I also encourage them to put things right after, make a mess, apologize for the upset and clean it up. And so on.
All i remember from KSP 2 is Scott saying "Dont screw this up!"
I'm not looking to judge anybody. I just want to want to hear Nate's side of the ksp2 development story, to get to the truth of what actually happened, especially with answering the unanswered questions from your KSP2 dev history video.
To me the worst thing someone can do is judge someone based on inaccurate information, or information that's totally false.
However one outstanding question does seem to be partially answered, the question on whether your timeline video was more on the accurate side or wide of the mark. Based on Nate's acknowledgement of your ksp2 dev history video (and lack of pushback), it seems to be more on the former.
That was a really well-researched and put together video piecing together the seven year history of ksp2 development.
He flat out lied to us. He said things like multiplayer is happening. You showed it barely existed. He said it was fully funded, but they were in the red and he should have known that. Either he's incompetent or a liar. I'm not sure which. Maybe both. But it too late. There is nothing he can do to make it up to us. I do place most of the blame on take 2, but having a liar be the community contact? yeah......I'm not ok with that. "I can't comment on that" is a perfectly viable option. He should have said that. I would have been more forgiving if he did.
Nate Simpson and Sean Murray. Never forgive, never forget.
Incompetent AND liar is an option too
Wow, you people are pathetic...just like the terrible community that these devs had to deal with. Toxic and childish...grow up.
Dean Hall? The guy who did the first DayZ mod for Arma II and the first version of the standalone?
Yep. And we also talked about what happened there. No question was off the table.
Honeslty, this is not the first time he handled a project in this manner.
whats your source for this?
If only Nate didnt have a track record of unfinished and abandoned projects
The thing that KSA can learn is that KSP1 is a great game, it just needed the bugs fixings like slow frame rate and the building issues and a light buff on graphics to be ksp2. They focused on GUI and not gameplay.
The guy shouldn't be so hard on himself. Gamers *are* fed up with getting fed bullshit and dead games but failures happen. Its part of life. Its how you grow.
He can make it up to me by meeting his personal goals of self improvement....and use those skills to make a banger future title.
yea, i agree actions speak louder than words, but im not sure what action/deed nate can do at this point lol. just hope he's alright and looks back on his decisions during his time working at ksp 2, as things to learn from
To apologies/make up for KSP2, Nate could make the game he wanted ksp to be and possibly make it a community project through open source or other available options.
i also watched the whole thing, i really liked the guy and i myself got sad from seeing him be sad. im really grateful that he tried to do his best at giving us a good product. and if we exclude all the features that we got we got a good ksp 1 reskin with in my opinion a better science mode. i hope he gets to move on and get a good job. also unreleated but you guys look way to similar. i also hope that modders will make mods for the promised features or atleast colonies for ksp2 i think a colonies mod is being developed right now. somebody in the comments (a mod dev i think) asked for advice on how to make a colonies mod to be something like the ksp2 team was going to release itself. i dont think he needs to do a good deed to us we need to thank him for all the work and all the stress he and the other devs had to go trough or maybey if he ever wants to help ksp fans the maybey help the ksa devs make a good game or help them with decision making.
There's a little game called "Planetary Annihilation: Titans" that is a passable attempt at an RTS, but feels very indie, not exactly groundbreaking in any respect. So with the first upswell of KSP2 excitement, I hear the i.p. was sold, and the team that made Titans was going to be making KSP2. I had a small funeral for KSP2 back then in 2019. It's not a matter of talent, just like the "hot mic" clip you shared, they simply lack Rockstar funds and tried to make an A-list game. This whole thing felt like a cash-grab into an excited market, taking advantage of the demand left by KSP and building a liability piñata that they made Nate hold when the inevitable shit-show began at launch. This is why I hope that Nate is able to develop more games from a Managerial standpoint. These kinds of things build character, and I imagine given the opportunity to do it again he would be fiercely protective of his devs time and sanity while being a bit more reluctant to fuel a hype machine with his own blood. Hopefully we can all move passed this and make better decisions in the future.
Feels like the epilogue of the story
Apologies and forgiveness isn't about the person receiving. An apology is recognition of having done a wrong and a promise to do better. Making it right for the one wronged may or may not come later. It may or may not be possible, but an unconditional apology allows them to move forward. Similarly, forgiveness isn't forgetting or allowing someone to repeat their actions. We forgive to let go of anger, hate, and revenge. We cannot change the past and we shouldn't allow it to destroy our future.
Good takeaways. I watched both first, the raw footage of Nate and your take. I agree that it takes a village to raise a child, and not a single individual is to blame. (A single actor can do much harm, but that is for philosophy and not for Nate.) Nate didn't have the power to do damage here as the private division destroyed the company and its prospects, and those who sold it to them are now on to apologize. Like most things, it is essential to teach ownership in multiple forms. Ownership of the responsibility and the actions done. The responsibility is taken through accountable actions, which you call deeds. Still, I also believe from an incentive point of view, it is essential to inwardly accept ownership of the act and two outwardly accept ownership of the action, which acts most notably as an incentive of action towards the deed; this also proves the others who also have ape brains in their head that the individual is no longer a threat, and shares the added benefit of not attacking you or the person doing the evil act. This could all be Hufflepuff as I am a born and bred Canadian EH! Maple sugar is running through my veins and sorry's are in there too But we tend to be an accountable nation!
It seems obvious to me that at the time we paid FULL PRICE for an unplayable game, Take Two knew that things were not working out and already planned to shut it down. They just screwed us all so that they could recover some of their losses due to their piss-poor management. Their ToS assured that they couldn't be sued for for it, so they gave us, their customers, the middle finger and kept our money. Extreme disappointment at the game being killed aside, that is why people are so angry, and rightly so!
Can only agree. I have worked to teach my child that apologies are just words. Actions mean far more.
Better call Luigi on the Take 2 CEO instead of pushing hate towards Nate, people.
#knowYourEnemy
Man you had no grey hair the first time you talked to Nate!
I appreciate him breaking the silence and the challenges he faced, but as a retired project manager, I still have to place the lion's share of the blame on his shoulders. He clearly wasn't prepared for this challenge and this is why you shouldn't take on large projects like this until you have the chops to do so. Part of that includes knowing how to push back against corporate when needed, and when not to (pick your battles).
I remind everyone that Take Two extended their timeline by nearly 4 years and increased their budget multiple times to make this happen. Those kind of recommendations are (typically) made by someone in his position or an equivalent, and the fact that this had to happen multiple times is indicative of having an unclear idea of what resources are required to complete a project. The bean counters at Take Two finally had enough and someone pulled the plug, deciding not to throw good money after bad. I don't blame them.
Ultimately, his team and the community are those that suffer most. I hope he learns from his mistakes and moves onto projects that he can learn further from.
@wyattutz What you described as his job is exactly what a project manager does. Nate even admitted in the full video that he realized he was unprepared. He advanced (if you look at his career progression on LinkedIn) way too fast for any industry and bit off more than he could chew. According to his video, he recognizes that now, but saw it too late.
I understand you wanting to defend him, but so much of what you said is blatantly false (i.e. "they didn't have the funding they would need to build a half-decent KSP 1 mod"--initial funding from T2 in 2017 was $10 million for a two year dev period; community estimates based on T2 investor reports and disclosures estimate around $40 million from 2017 to 2022) that I know it likely fruitless to engage on this. So we'll just have to agree to disagree.
I think Nate definitely over-promised to the community, but it does seem like he did his best to try and get the studio to deliver. A lot of the really big issues (re-using KSP-1 code and not talking to the KSP-1 staff in particular) were not his decision.
Probably he should not be in that kind of leadership/public facing roll, at least not for a while, but I hope he is able to find a job somewhere. He seems like nice enough guy and he obviously has a passion for games, even if his passion gets away from him a little.
This video and Nate's makes me sad. I wish this project could have made it. But this is the world we live in. I wish Nate the best. A former CEO i worked for once told me after a big mistake i made said "the people that never make a mistake, don't do anything."
I'm not angry at the devs for the promises that were not fulfilled. If anything, I'm angrier at Take Two for not giving the game more time. I still had a lot of fun with KSP2 though, and even though development has stopped, I can still have fun with the latest build of the game. The devs clearly had a lot of passion to make this thing from the ground up and bring it into existence, but as with a lot of ambitious projects, scope creep sets in and you find the initial problem harder to solve than you initially expected. Maybe KSA will be the next great space game, maybe KSP2 development will resume, maybe KSP3 will exist.
Neither Nate nor any of the devs should be shamed just because they worked on the project. Project development is unexpectedly hard, and sometimes you overpromise and underdeliver when you don't know the scope of your promises. If anything, this is something the devs have learned from, and they shouldn't be rejected because they failed to deliver on a big project (partly due to forces beyond their control).
Nate never hurt me personally, so he doesn't need to do anything to make up for it. His apology was sincere, and I had fun with KSP2 while it was in development, so I don't have any hard feelings toward Nate or any of the devs.
In a way, KSP's developement was like a Kerbal rocket. The first one was a work of complete jank at first, and then it got refined and iterated to become something more complete. KSP2 seems like the devs wanted to make something complete from the beginning where no janky bodges would be required to glue colonies and interstellar to the game. But it seems like while some parts worked really well, others didn't, and that led to negative reception and other problems. After For Science, things got a lot better, but as we were approaching the release of the colonies update, Take Two decided to shut down Intercept. I liken this to a rocket reentering but flipping over and burning up right before the maximum heat load is over.
I just hope someone in my lifetime develops the real ksp 2 with all promised interstellar content (DebDeb system and that precursor lore was about to be great), but fully anew.
3:26 I disagree with this assessment. True, there are cool projects that can be built with either approach. For THIS game and what we as the audience expect from a follow up title to KSP, these approaches are not equally valid.
Without a solid technical foundation this kind of game cannot work. Building a vertical slice to demo the tech is practically speaking the only feasible approach.
Dear Nate, if you see this, don't be so hard on yourself friend. You are not responsible for the decisions made above you by corporate bean counters that do not care, that caused your mission to fail. I hope you find peace, your love and mourning of this project is clearly evident.