Do you understand what Ramone Russell was saying on live stream?

[sportomatic75]

During one of the live streams he said something along the lines of not having enough resources to add some new features and compared it to a gas tank. Is he referring to having not enough physical memory to allocate? From my view I see it as if they are short from a development team standpoint. Maybe they need a bigger team to crank more out in one dev cycle. I was really confused when he said that. Obviously to put more in the game they need more time and employees to bring in all the new features. If they want to focus on one specific addition, why don't they just hire more people to accomplish other parts that they want to improve on? I'm definitely not complaining at all. I just am wondering what he meant.

[Roonster]

Re: Do you understand what Ramone Russell was saying on live stream?

If I'm thinking of the same stream then what I got out of it was the Dev cycle isn't long enough. Thought he said something like no matter how many people they had working on the game there just isn't enough time during the cycle to do everything they need/want to do

[takki]

Re: Do you understand what Ramone Russell was saying on live stream?

From my understanding, they have filled up most of the capacity of the disc and cannot add large additions without taking stuff out.

Ramone for instance mentioned how they cannot just add more uniforms because it would make the game take forever to load along with all the work it would take.

Also it seems that they have limited time. For example, Ramone again mentioned that they were given the choice at the beginning of the dev cycle to focus on improving the challenge system or adding a large amount of gameplay improvements. They chose the latter.

[LastActionHero]

Re: Do you understand what Ramone Russell was saying on live stream?

why don't they just hire more people to accomplish other parts that they want to improve on?

Uhhh maybe because more employes cost more money? I don't know where you work but we could get more work done with more people as well but hey you can only put so many people on the payroll depending on how much money comes in.

[HypoLuxa13]

Re: Do you understand what Ramone Russell was saying on live stream?

Time and money - the arch nemesis of software development. You start a project with a budget and a deadline. Some projects are way over budget and way behind schedule, but they are given the "O.K." to continue, and they get more money thrown at them and the deadline gets pushed back. Though that does happen in the gaming industry sometimes, it so very, very rarely happens with sports games.

Basically, after design and pre-production work, they have about a 9 month dev cycle. That doesn't change, and they have to plan accordingly to make sure they choose work that can get done in that period of time. They only have the time and money to fill up the gas tank once. Stopping when they reach empty and putting more gas in and driving further down the road ins't an option.

[p00p1]

Re: Do you understand what Ramone Russell was saying on live stream?

More programmers doesn't make software development easier or faster

[Chairman7w]

Re: Do you understand what Ramone Russell was saying on live stream?

Exactly. You can't take 9 women, and make a baby in a month.

More programmers doesn't make software development easier or faster

[p00p1]

Re: Do you understand what Ramone Russell was saying on live stream?

Exactly. You can't take 9 women, and make a baby in a month.

LOL, they'd all grown a limb and none of them would work right

[Ghost Of The Year]

Re: Do you understand what Ramone Russell was saying on live stream?

This reminds me of a supervisor I used to work for;
he always said all we (my company) are really selling is time. lol

[kt-od]

Re: Do you understand what Ramone Russell was saying on live stream?

Exactly. You can't take 9 women, and make a baby in a month.

Well it depends on if one of those women is 8 months pregnant.

But yes. He was referring to the dev cycle not the disk capacity itself.

[ScouserHUN]

Re: Do you understand what Ramone Russell was saying on live stream?

Yeah, and bigger team = more costs, which means they have to make a bigger income to cover the costs.

These guys are not starters, they have to plan the incomes and expenditures based on the past and experience. If they see it possible to raise the income, they might be able to hire new staff.

However this is a sports game, and you can't make a huge jump in sales year to year. Maybe last year's DD success makes this possible and based on this year's income they can grow.

You'll Never Walk Alone!

[dran1984]

Re: Do you understand what Ramone Russell was saying on live stream?

From my understanding, they have filled up most of the capacity of the disc and cannot add large additions without taking stuff out.

Ramone for instance mentioned how they cannot just add more uniforms because it would make the game take forever to load along with all the work it would take.

Also it seems that they have limited time. For example, Ramone again mentioned that they were given the choice at the beginning of the dev cycle to focus on improving the challenge system or adding a large amount of gameplay improvements. They chose the latter.

He actually said the exact opposite. He said they have enough memory to add whatever they want and they can do pretty much whatever they want. Time and manpower and R/D time are the issues.

[Vechi8]

Re: Do you understand what Ramone Russell was saying on live stream?

He actually said the exact opposite. He said they have enough memory to add whatever they want and they can do pretty much whatever they want. Time and manpower and R/D time are the issues.

Time, manpower, and money are for sure the major blocks facing the franchise.

The first two factors have solutions to them that could work but there is no escaping the big green.

The Show's franchise is good enough to have a skip a year release. The development team backs it's product all throughout the year to ensure that the game's bugs are squashed. Further, the roster updates are weekly and considering baseball has @ 24 weeks on the regular season, the commitment is quite impressive.

Manpower is always an issue for most small businesses in that you never seem to ever have enough help. On the surface you see a highly respected franchise that puts out good sales and is one of the best sports games year after year. Who wouldn't want to work here? Surely the top programmers in the business wants in so hire them. What's the big deal?

Two viable solutions for 2/3's of the issues at hand...... except......

If the Show implements the every other year format they will forego major sales in the off years in which will cost them millions. Not to mention that we have hired the top minds in video games in which would now raise our expenses and further reduce profit margins already that would be under pressure because of the 2 year release. More than likely because of the MONEY issues, the franchise likely doesn't make it. It becomes a rubix cube, fix one and the other implodes.

What causes these issues? IMO, the major factor that faces the team is something that they cannot control. Baseball has a limited market. Then, add a simulation based game and it increases further.

In my opinion, what hurts the Show is what makes it so great to us die-hards. They have set the bar so high that earth shattering changes are likely non existent. We are talking about baseball here. A sport that EASports won't touch. A sport that the Sport Gurus 2K could not make playable. Why? It appears that in EA's case money and in 2K's case development. Limited market and difficult to master.

The Show has the recipe for a successful baseball simulation franchise. A couple changes here and there and the game leaps forward for us. I mean the Show 15 was absolutely groundbreaking for me over 14. Yet I read the casual gamer post that there is no difference and that they threw away $60. If the casual has purchased the game in the past, they are not going to buy year after year. We sim guys are dedicated and will buy each year but we are not a large percentage of the video game world. Baseball does not have the hooks are gimmicks that will appeal to the mass. Further, let's face it, the game has quite a learning curve. it is not easy on any level.

Given the patience level of people today and all of the above factors, I am truly amazed on how well the game does sell. Truly a great testament to Russell and his team.

[redsox4evur]

Re: Do you understand what Ramone Russell was saying on live stream?

The Show's franchise is good enough to have a skip a year release.

Feel the need to point out this will not happen for a while because the MLB and Sony won't want to lose a rough estimate of $52.2 million in sales. Used the total from vgchartz at a $60 price. And the fact that the MLB and MLBPA have in the licensing agreement that a game needs to come out every year.

[MrOldboy]

Re: Do you understand what Ramone Russell was saying on live stream?

I think a lot of the confusion and saltiness when certain features are added while other parts of the game are ignored will remain the same. People have their preferences and the game is getting so large that it is impossible for a customer to play every part of the game. Everyone will favor some part of the game, be it RTTS or DD. Even though Ramone explains this often it's hard for someone who enjoys one part of the game to accept that another part was given dev time since they can't do everything. It's great that they do the streams since they bring on specific developers who work on distinct parts of the game. You can see for instance where the audio presentation dev's time went. They've been more open on the streams as well basically explaining that DD made them a lot of money so of course it's going to get some love while other modes have a very small relative user base so they were more or less ignored. I think stuff like that makes sense to people and realize that the more money the game makes overall the better it is for all customers of The Show.

I wish more devs would be as open although the yearly cycle of sports games really make this type of content work. Other games you can't really stream and then explain what improvements you made from last year and with single player games people are always afraid of spoilers.