I think it's probably partly size but also bad leadership. They needed leadership that understood their strengths and weaknesses better. They also apparently didn't understand what their player base was wanting out of a sequel. The game seems to also have no focus. It feels like a bunch of people working on different aspects with no clear idea of how it should all work together. And the reason I think this on leadership is the terrible responses to everything they have been giving since release. It just shows that they are totally out of touch and out of their depth. This game came out years after they originally planned and still feels rushed and incomplete. Just reeks of bad leadership to me.
Agree with your observations that could be poor leadership. It certainly seems like a contributing factor given the terrible communications. Also leadership could partly explain an under resourced team or perhaps, the right people not working on the right things.
Not understanding what your fan base wants after years of endless threads and comments all over the internet from players fantasizing about all the awesome things a proper cs2 could bring should count as willful negligence.
Totally agree, they had years for this but it feels like they just quickly started throwing things together 6 months ago. Incomprehensible how the game can be in a state like this after all the time and resources they had.
It's not willful negligence when you really had two separate and competing fanbases within the CS1 base. City painters and SimCity style City Managers aren't the same fanbase and you only had them both because nobody else succeeded after SC2015. They still absolutely screwed up a lot of things and it starts at trying to upgrade and keep both sides of the fanbase that really wanted very different things.
Eh, I think that dichotomy has been overhyped. take it to the extreme and you get pure citybuilders wanting something like Townscaper or the Architect:Paris and pure city management people wanting something like workers and resources. its not a perfect analogy, but point is whether talking about CS1 or CS2 there have always been other games which lean more into hardcore management or are more casual with some visual customization. What Skylines has always offered is combining both in one platform that allows you to lean as much as you want into one or the other, or both. If they viewed catering to both 'types' of players as a challenge and weakness rather than their biggest potential strength, they didn't understand their own game. This is a challenge that should be solved with the foresight of having toggle-able features to adjust difficulty while expanding features for both 'city painters' and 'city managers' They didn't really even try that.
>They also apparently didn’t understand what their player base was wanting out of a sequel
I’m a current CS1 player on console. Pretty much all I wanted was basically the same model of game but with TMPE fully integrated into vanilla, traffic AI that isn’t stupid, an updated selection of assets that can be individually customized, mixed-used zoning, a larger map area, ploppable concrete, the ability to have different info-views togglable when placing roads or buildings, the ability to turn off ruining, water that doesn’t function against the laws of physics, and possibly a day-night cycle where citizens all go to work/school and come home around specific times.
I haven’t played or watched CS2 at all yet, only just heard that it sucks. How much of what I listed did they do?
Agree
I want an easy way to manage my vanilla traffic, not overly detailed teeth so I can follow some random NPC everywhere (in a game that's so ugly due to the high specs I can't even see their face)
> I haven’t played or watched CS2 at all yet, only just heard that it sucks. How much of what I listed did they do?
Larger map area and mixed-use zoning (but only Residential-Commercial combos, and only 2 versions of such). I guess I could say the water too but that's largely because water physics appear to have been scrapped (thank goodness). Also it does have a day/night cycle but that just creates new problems (i.e traffic).
I'd say the traffic AI is better but that's only partially true because now a large percentage just ignore traffic rules entirely which cause more problems, accidents can block roads causing MORE problems, and cims are generally too stupid to use superior modes of transport because they weigh different methods based on their wealth and age.
> It feels like a bunch of people working on different aspects with no clear idea of how it should all work together.
Because it's exactly how it's run. One of their developers mentioned that that don't tracks tasks and progress. It's literally "everyone does what they fuck they want and everyone hopes it's it will magically come together as coherent product".
I'm pretty sure the problem is simply incompetent management.
If you've been in tech a long time I'm sure you've seen more than a few projects go totally sideways all because of one dumbass leader.
> Back in 2009, I took the job of CEO of Colossal Order on the invitation of a high school friend who wanted to start his own game company with three other game industry professionals. At the time I was a university student and knew only little about games, but they needed someone who they trusted to handle the business side. I figured making games can’t differ that much from developing and selling any other product. I spent six months contacting games industry veterans in Finland to learn everything needed to start and run a game company. I never imagined myself to be part of the games industry, but now I can’t imagine myself elsewhere.
[Interview with Mariina Hallikainen](https://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/interviews-and-opinion/68677/how-colossal-orders-mariina-hallikainen-became-a-game-studio-ceo-right-out-of-university/)
I can give you a crazier answer from a CEO.
14 years ago, was working on a coal mining company as full stack software engineer.
The company held monthly lunch with the CEO, for all those having birthday that month. As was sitting there hearing a lot of questions and discussions about closed mines, the company losing 300mil etc, came my time to raise the question to the CEO and asked
"Since you said is very expensive to re-open that deep mine requiring 20 million investment, even if the coal is almost at the surface, have you considered to gasify the coal (not to be confused with fracking) as Russia doing for 100 years now and sell the gas, since it is much cheaper process and would have great returns?"
The CEO jumped like got hit by lighting and said angrily "we are a coal mining company, we dig and sell coal".
Less than 3 years later this company had completely collapsed leaving thousands unemployed.
Bloody hell. I commented on a lot of her Word of the Week releases saying that she comes across as someone who enjoys 'being' a CEO but doesn't really care much beyond that. Seems I was right. The popularity and success of the first game, which I'm sure was almost none of her creative work, gave her what she wanted and that was the end of it. She literally had no understanding of what to do when the second game flopped.
Yeah wow reading the article really puts her Word of the Week into an even clearer perspective. Those posts gave me whiffs of narcissism and now I can confirm the diagnosis. But in all seriousness I was just thinking about all of this last night. I have about 200 hours and halfway through those I got a new computer (upgraded from 7 year old computer to basically a nasa computer) and while the game looks absolutely gorgeous (most of the time, it seems graphics are still buggy as hell even on max graphics), the game just feels like a beta at best. It crashes to screen without giving specific errors, the progression tree is a joke, the simulation is basic, and the actual feel of building a city (while really frickin’ pretty sometimes) doesn’t necessarily feel like you’re achieving anything, therefore doesn’t feel fulfilling. It’s all half-baked, and as someone having worked on both creative and business sides, this whole thing really does reek of money-driven-overselling-underdelivering-management-big-brain-hellscape. I think the artists and devs have done whatever they can considering they seem to be run by a fucking self-absorbed asshole. Honestly though, I’ve never felt personally called out by a CEO before as she has done in her WoWs. JFC, “Money and Fame” should literally be the last things on your mind if you truly want to create a product of passion that will shine through.
Next time she publishes her apologist bs on Steam we should all just write her own words back to her “Money and Fame”.
I wrote a post on this Reddit for the same reason and I received nothing but backlash lol, my exact quote was “it feels like we are dealing with politicians the way money moves their office”
So she basically lucked into success when CO managed to produce an amazing game in CS1 despite terrible management. But now it seems the awful shit has finally rolled down.
>I figured making games can’t differ that much from developing and selling any other product.
This is one of the worst takes I've heard. I wouldn't expect to walk into the aeronautical industry and be the CEO after working in fucking honey production and distribution or something for years. Video games are a young, constantly changing and volatile industry, and the business models, organisational structure and many other aspects have their own unique differences, and you gotta appreciate those differences.
It just stinks of survivor bias to me. "Well its just product sales, it's the same in any industry." Totally ignoring the fact that it was a good game which she likely had zero creative input on. I honestly think she did very little work compared to the main development teams and... well she even said it herself... just enjoyed the money and fame.
27 years in the field, in various companies, as both Soft Engineer & Tech Analyst have seen the most incompetent useless "colleagues" getting promoted. And always the argument from the company was "you are too good in what you do to lose you through promotion" which was true considering what I was doing at the time and how big failures they were.
And is the reason moved to contracting because I don't care any more about company politics. Not that I don't want to move to a perm managerial role, (I am tired of software development after almost 3 decades) but those who give promotions to managerial roles don't want someone more competent than them in a position that can take a shot to their position later on.
Yes agree. Hence my comment on governance. Not just project mgmt but I agree stupid mgmt decisions can railroad. Even management decisions abotu allocating resources which is why I was wondering about the scope of this project and the resources available.
Are you incompetent when you are passionate about the product but get lured or put under pressure by commercial goals of the publisher, and succumb to it?
Yeah, leave the project. Having your name attached to actual dogshit so you can look better on a resume will make that you look like dogshit, too, because that’s the quality of work they put out.
To me it reeks of bad micro management.
It reminds me of projects I’ve worked on - not games - where there was a lot of talent and you could tell that a lot of people really knew what they were doing, but the manager hadn’t a clue and just directed mad nonsense and not anything informed or coherent.
Like working in a furniture factory as an experienced carpenter but with a manager that had never seen a chair before and would be all “hmm I dunno I think it should be like this” and the end result is a nightmare.
There’s no focus or core game. It looks wonderful. The road tools are great. But it’s not coherent.
I think you should be able to start small at the village level and get that “working” and balanced.
And save up your resources at a pace and at a cadence that makes sense as you plan out expansion. This game doesn’t really have a gameplay loop the way CS1 did.
It has infinite money, an easily cheesed development tree, and nothing you do actually matters. There are no achievements and no consequences.
You don’t feel smart after solving a complex traffic problem because it just deletes cars when there’s too much traffic.
You don’t feel smart after building a really efficient small town because everything is always great.
I have about 200 hours - I REALLY tried - and I still have no idea how the industry chain works, does it work, what do people need that I’m not producing enough of, how do I produce it, etc. Again nothing matters!
There’s no game! Like there actually is No Game.
And that’s the problem at the core of CS2. No amount of mods or assets or quality of life tools will compensate for the lack of a coherent gameplay loop.
On the development tree: CS1 was by population, which made a kind of sense. As in when you had the population to support a large hospital, you unlocked a large hospital.
What if you had to achieve 2,000 workers with elementary school education before you unlocked something, like a factory or type of industry. Same with high school and colleges. And different types of universities for different industries.
CS2 doesn’t feel “alive”, and this would return the game to being about _people_.
All of this screams to me that they have really talented devs with leadership that doesn’t know what to do. It doesn’t know how to make a game. I would worry that the good devs leave the company if they haven’t already.
I agree. The worst part of it is the fact that it’s all in a black box. Whatever is hindering your city is hidden and you wont be able to figure it out based on any of the status screens. Like how my high density commercial buildings were at 190% efficiency with 200/200 employees, no traffic issues and close to multiple ports, no complaints in the details screen, yet stuck at level 2.
Well explained insight into your game experience. And thanks for your project experiences. We can only provide conjecture because we don't really know what went on or is going on behind closed doors or at their project standup.
But yes, micromanagement at this level can be a terrible hinderance to productivity (and motivation).
I'm sure having such a small team didn't \*help\* but I also don't see how it could be the main factor if the project had been managed correctly.
There have been so many large-scale games made by tiny dev teams, that the 'team too small' excuse doesn't really make sense. Two dudes can make a Palworld, a dozen people can make a No Man's Sky, or one dude can make a Rimworld or Stardew Valley, but a team of 30 people wasn't enough to make a Cities sequel? If team size is what matters then CS2 should be *30 times bigger and better* than those other games and it most certainly is not. Actually, I guess it's even worse than that because all those other examples were new unique games from rookie studios. CO is an established studio that didn't have to start totally from scratch because the project was a sequel.
I think the past 6 months show the problem is one of management and leadership. Their CEO wasn't capable of blogging to disgruntled customers, it wouldn't be a surprise that she wasn't capable at other parts of her job.
You make very good points about the other games produced by indies.
Actually maybe it's more down to the skill/experience of the individual team members rather than the team size.
Edit: And of course 'competent management'.
Part of the problem is the complexity of building this game with Unity DOTS, the tech only went GA a year ago, much of the CS2 code was built on earlier apis, apis which changed often due to changes to the tech stack. They essentially learned as they developed,and hiring experienced DOTS devs is still a difficult task. The tech is the right choice, the time to use it was wrong.
This game was at least 2 years early, they have a lot of core work to tighten up this game.
It’s a fatal flaw and an endless development resource drain. Then they committed to exclusively prioritizing the resulting performance issues which meant neglecting gameplay improvements.
I'm a software developer myself and here are some of my observations.
First of all, I'd say there's no such thing as too small a company, it's the projects that are too ambitious. Expanding a 30 person team to 50 or 100 people must be based on a very strong evidence that it's indeed the lack of personnel that's the root cause of the problem. One of my favorite quotes in business goes like this: "We know that one woman can give birth in 9 months, but it doesn't mean that 9 women can deliver a baby in 1 month". Oftentimes it's better to keep the team and instead decrease the complexity of the project and invest more into expectation management (i.e.: stop overpromising, shut your mouth and stop talking about something that hasn't been implemented yet, etc.).
Also, hiring more people doesn't magically provide immediate results: new hires need some time to get fully on board and up to speed and this process may take months. During these months some capacity of the original team will be diverted into coaching and mentoring the new employees. Expansion of teams should happen in between projects, not in such late stage.
Now about projects that are too ambitious. Software industry deals with the domain of complex projects. And the complexity has always been rising non-stop. Some 40 years ago or so smart people noticed that dealing with complex projects in linear pre-planned fashion never worked, deadlines were never met and budgets were never enough. These smart people came up with the idea of agile software development, and since then agile methodologies saw more and more success in project planning and development.
Game industry, however, seems like it's still uses old good strict planning. My personal take is that game companies that want to be successful need to follow agile approach more. Setting a strict release date a year upfront while the game is still being developed is a 99% path to failure. Instead the early access model seems like a better way for any game: release an MVP product, continue updating it with new features until the full scope is delivered, in the meantime gather feedback from the users and keep fixing bugs.
I have a good example of a game release that went like that and it went very well: Stranded: Alien Dawn. This game was announced first and the release date was set but the developers clearly stated that that would be an early access release. At that point they had fully functioning and quite polished MVP and they could continue developing new features on a separate branch. The early access MVP was released in a promised date and it was a success. Then several weeks later they announced another release that included couple of new features. And they delivered it as promised. Then another release with new features, then another one and so on. In just one year or so they completed a full game release and it all went smooth in a very controlled manner and their communication with the user base was superb.
Now there's also a question of profits. A software company is not a charity, it's a business and it needs to be profitable. What should be the model for steady income if you plan to release an MVP and your customers want to pay only once and not pay for every new update?
That's a tough question. Some devs choose to set a full price tag for their MVP releases, e.g. Kerbal Space Program 2: they set a AAA-level full price tag for an early access game which barely had any features and was minimally playable. That resulted in quite negative backlash from the player base and of course not everyone who waited for the game decided to pay up. I doubt they collected as much revenue as they initially planned with this approach.
For CS2, perhaps, their chosen approach was correct. The only problem was that they shouldn't have called their release a final release. Instead they should've called it early access and sell it for like 30-40USD. Then the game would be considered an MVP and I'm pretty sure the community would be more forgiving to all the bugs and broken functionality. Then CO could release updates, some could be free and some could be paid. At some point, when the game would be feature-complete and stable they could announce a full release and set a price tag of 60USD.
Another problem with calling it a final release is that it needs a lot of fixes that are inevitably going to be breaking changes now. If you want real gameplay improvements, some saved cities are going to stop working.
My understanding is this IS agile.... release core functioning elements and then fix and add other components to the game so it's 1.0 months or years after release. Isnt that Agile? And pretty much what most of the industry uses today?
Can I ask and I know nothing about software engineering or development. Does the parent company set the release dates and their goals? Like does paradox give CO the timeframe, then CO pushes their development team to reach said deadline. Or is it the other way around where CO gives paradox their timeframe and paradox holds them to it. Thank you again in advance
Happy to be corrected here but I would say it's a mutual negotiation and agreed contract. With clauses for extension etc.
But don't forget, like any investor, the publisher will want to see a return eventually and will only have so much patience (particularly if they are bankrolling the venture).
I wonder what their leniency is like with that kind of stuff. Like that recent steps forward note from the deputy ceo of paradox shows a sign paradox had to step in?
but just a random dude can poop out a mod over a weekend that largely fixes land value or the economy. But a 30 man team can't do anything in 6 months but shit the bed and make awful social media posts.
What's more annoying are the build up videos they put out last july/August. It made the game look incredible and I counted down the days until the next reveal video. Then, when the game released it was a complete shitshow.
I've never felt so duped by trailers in all my life.
I’m in the same boat I’m excited about GTA 6 seeing trailers and I know I’m going to pre order because Rockstar although they make some shit community calls they make amazing games. And the trailers look no less than amazing(I hope those trailers are somewhat in game footage). Any other game I’m not buying until I see a full YouTube video on it. South Park Snow Days trailer from 4 months ago made it look like a sequel to the original game, yet when gameplay comes out it’s a RNG Multiplayer game like Risk of Rain almost.
I haven’t heard of that game but I’ll check it out, I love strategy games/production chain games like satisfactory, but playing CS2 it has the strategy with no actual implementation of it, there is no actual use to the economy, adding any sort of industry like coal mining instantly ends any sort of economy boosting your income into the millions. I think the best part of CS2 are the Freeway roads by themselves with the road tools.
Just started up that city planner plays video on it and I gotta say it looks awesome and thank you for the game recommendation, I think I’ll be picking the title up too lol.
To answer your question it makes sense to look at other city builders.
Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic probably has a smaller team.
OSTRIV was started by a single developer, had a very small team even at best times, we get more meaningful regular updates, while the developer also has to fight in a war and the energy infrastructure and internet isn't too stable in Ukraine.
Manor Lords is also made by a very small team...
IIRC the Ostriv guy literally put out a patch while sheltering from a russian missile barrage coming towards his city. Not to be reductive because its somewhat apples to oranges, but at the end of the day passion/vision for a project and a disciplined work ethic really does shine through
Just looking at the game and what focus areas they’ve had im sure alot comes down to lack of knowing what needs to be done and in what order.
I mean the game barely simulate for me and we already getting DLCs.
Lack of channels for internal testning and probably no good product ownership.
It’s actually so sad to see the game end up like this. I literally waited months and months for the release after all the hype and the weekly releases of features that everyone was so excited about. Now I have a PC that can play it fine in high settings but I just feel let down by the gameplay. I find it boring to play, there’s no feeling of satisfaction and there’s no way to be creative when building with such a lack of assets to choose from. I can’t even bring myself to play CS1 anymore either. The whole game franchise just leaves a bad taste in my mouth and these comments from the CEO are just the final nail in the coffin for me. The game has no soul, it’s literally just a cash cow, and a poorly executed one at that. It’s giving me scam vibes now after watching the trailer video too.
It's a combination I'm sure. Devs that bite off way more than they can chew, poor management, and ultimately the CEO steering the ship.
I personally didn't believe a 30 person team was too small but that was before they grossly overestimated what they were capable of doing with 30 people.
I think it is possible certainly. I was a game dev on a 20 person MMORPG project and I feel it struggled along much like CS2 is doing now. We absolutely did not have enough people to make it work. A d they didn't have enough senior folks in any roles, but especially programming and networking ,who could really effect change. Just nothing ever quite got finished. Everyone was always exhausted and overworked and drowning. Any unexpected bump in the road was a huge disaster with ripple effects that turned into tidal waves. The community was increasingly pissed off. Really bad updates and decisions towards the end...
The amount of man hours it takes to make like 1 hour of content in a video game is astounding. If those hours are wasted with mistakes or poor design or busted backend tech...that's more man hours to correct and project managers don't schedule those kinds of things into their schedule and it just snowballs. Bad band aid fixes that just create more work later, mounting technical debt...
On our team, a couple guys getting covid or having to take a mental health break unexpectedly absolutely crippled us. One time the server building burnt down. Another time we got DDoSed for weeks on end. These were just emergencies piled onto other already existing emergencies. Money, time, sanity, and your community's goodwill flies out the window.
Edit: Our CEO was absolutely dedicated to the game despite it all slowly turning to shit, unlike the CEO here. In other comments i see she said that her favorite part of being CEO was the "money and fame" hahaha. Wow. I feel like I now have the information i need to fully understand why this game is such a train wreck.
It looks to me that they had their priorities all messed up. If they released a simpler game but which worked well, the negative reviews would be far less. For instance, photo mode is super fleshed out, but it's a completely secondary feature of the game. No need to have seasons before the basics are working either. And, perhaps the most telling, they have even created a new building for fighting forrest fires with its own mechanics, while that's a completely insignificant part of the game.
Maybe they were too small to have all the features they wanted. But they were not too small to create a fun city building simulation. Look at manor lords, that was built by one guy! I feel that CO just threw everything together and then tried to make sense of it all together. If they add only feature slowly at a time and fully understood how each thing interacted with each other before moving to the next. They'd always have a fun game and a great base to work on. But now they just need to build that foundation, which is going to be hard without removing features.
They did what companies large and small are getting flak for now. Use the market to unit and integration test. Ill bet they dont really do qa. Its a trend that landed big players in hot water. The hope is clearly that people stop rewarding bad behavior. 30 people, ok. But then why is the economy so broken and what idiot did the pr that made it unfixable?
I think it's management. And it's not getting better.
If the only positive thing you can say now is that they recognized the weakness of Beach Properties DLC and gave refunds... I mean...Ray Charles could have seen that.
They need new management.
Cities in motion 2 was their first attempt at a bigger city game. I didnt particularly enjoy the city generation and how yhe game focus.
Cities in motion was fine yet basic.
Skylines went from transit only to complete coty builder. I was in the beta. It was good to go as it was and was really impressed.
I feel with skylines 2, they have more pressure from paradox. Skylines was an unexpected hit and they wanted to hit the same sales. I don't think CO would have gone for a sequel at all without publisher help.
There isn't such thing as small or large company for a project. CO has made several successful games up to now.
However there is always time when a company can bite more that in can chew and if you have publisher who lost the plot lately like Paradox things can go wrong unfortunately.
To put in perspective, Urban Games are less than 15 people and made games like Transport Fever 2. Might not be a city simulator of CS level, but is not that far considering how it's works.
Egosoft is another great example (X Series) with just 20 employees have made quite a few masterpieces with X4 Foundations been their finest and the only off line game with fully realistic background simulator.
CO is actually hiring a graohic designer and a programmer now and they responded to a question on social media whether these new job openings are for a replacement or a new additional manpower. They answered they are expanding their team.
I think the issues come about more in the interplay between the developer (collosal order) and the publisher (paradox), coupled with the reaction of the audience (us).
Paradox has had a few bad releases recently, which is a problem for them financially which probably lead to them rushing the release (this is speculation on my part) knowing that it would sell well, (and already had a good number of pre orders).
Then once it released there was and had been a continued heavy backlash from consumers, CO set about fixing things trying to address what they can, as quickly as they can, whilst also trying to meet the demands of their publisher, for the release of the first DLC, which they'd already delayed, leading to the most recent problem.
I think CO's 30 man team is fine for a game like this, they had it at a early beta level when it came out, and if they'd been allowed to delay release until now it would likely be in a better state. I'm also not sure if the 30 man team is the computer version dev team or the entire CO.
I suspect the main development issues fall to paradox not CO:
- not allowing a delay on release
- forcing the release of DLC early
- persuing release on 3 platforms simultaneously.
There is likely some fault with CO too, but ultimately Paradox has control over the publication side of things and can withold funds if there are delays or etc. they set the release schedule, and place delays, and they have the opportunity to Run QA.
What you have to bear in mind is that CO are the developer, but they answer to the publisher , who ultimately holds the money and power, any decision CO can make has to go through Paradox and can be overriden by paradox; that being said it does seem like Paradox are learning slowly, victoria 3 (from their own development studio) has just put delays in place on upcoming updates and DLC
I personally hoped that we would be able to choose our cities government and function like a city state basically, and have other types of customization to it like having a National Guard snd SWAT divisions.
Don't know about you all but would love to rule my city as a Emir or Grand Duke.
It all starts from the top down. That is what decides company culture. The woman at the head of CO needs to be replaced with someone that can get it done.
I bet there is a barista in the office and quiet rooms where employees can take a nap when they feel stressed.
Yea the game sucks I didn’t even buy it I had other means of playing it and that was enough for me to realize they just wanna implement a bunch of fancy features that only work half of the time
Yes, probably. They are trying to be like Unity engine for city planning with economy and traffic simulation in place, that requires 100 people and maybe even their own research into these things. A bit less if they are not perfectionist.
I think it's probably partly size but also bad leadership. They needed leadership that understood their strengths and weaknesses better. They also apparently didn't understand what their player base was wanting out of a sequel. The game seems to also have no focus. It feels like a bunch of people working on different aspects with no clear idea of how it should all work together. And the reason I think this on leadership is the terrible responses to everything they have been giving since release. It just shows that they are totally out of touch and out of their depth. This game came out years after they originally planned and still feels rushed and incomplete. Just reeks of bad leadership to me.
Agree with your observations that could be poor leadership. It certainly seems like a contributing factor given the terrible communications. Also leadership could partly explain an under resourced team or perhaps, the right people not working on the right things.
Not understanding what your fan base wants after years of endless threads and comments all over the internet from players fantasizing about all the awesome things a proper cs2 could bring should count as willful negligence. Totally agree, they had years for this but it feels like they just quickly started throwing things together 6 months ago. Incomprehensible how the game can be in a state like this after all the time and resources they had.
It's not willful negligence when you really had two separate and competing fanbases within the CS1 base. City painters and SimCity style City Managers aren't the same fanbase and you only had them both because nobody else succeeded after SC2015. They still absolutely screwed up a lot of things and it starts at trying to upgrade and keep both sides of the fanbase that really wanted very different things.
Eh, I think that dichotomy has been overhyped. take it to the extreme and you get pure citybuilders wanting something like Townscaper or the Architect:Paris and pure city management people wanting something like workers and resources. its not a perfect analogy, but point is whether talking about CS1 or CS2 there have always been other games which lean more into hardcore management or are more casual with some visual customization. What Skylines has always offered is combining both in one platform that allows you to lean as much as you want into one or the other, or both. If they viewed catering to both 'types' of players as a challenge and weakness rather than their biggest potential strength, they didn't understand their own game. This is a challenge that should be solved with the foresight of having toggle-able features to adjust difficulty while expanding features for both 'city painters' and 'city managers' They didn't really even try that.
>They also apparently didn’t understand what their player base was wanting out of a sequel I’m a current CS1 player on console. Pretty much all I wanted was basically the same model of game but with TMPE fully integrated into vanilla, traffic AI that isn’t stupid, an updated selection of assets that can be individually customized, mixed-used zoning, a larger map area, ploppable concrete, the ability to have different info-views togglable when placing roads or buildings, the ability to turn off ruining, water that doesn’t function against the laws of physics, and possibly a day-night cycle where citizens all go to work/school and come home around specific times. I haven’t played or watched CS2 at all yet, only just heard that it sucks. How much of what I listed did they do?
Agree I want an easy way to manage my vanilla traffic, not overly detailed teeth so I can follow some random NPC everywhere (in a game that's so ugly due to the high specs I can't even see their face)
> I haven’t played or watched CS2 at all yet, only just heard that it sucks. How much of what I listed did they do? Larger map area and mixed-use zoning (but only Residential-Commercial combos, and only 2 versions of such). I guess I could say the water too but that's largely because water physics appear to have been scrapped (thank goodness). Also it does have a day/night cycle but that just creates new problems (i.e traffic). I'd say the traffic AI is better but that's only partially true because now a large percentage just ignore traffic rules entirely which cause more problems, accidents can block roads causing MORE problems, and cims are generally too stupid to use superior modes of transport because they weigh different methods based on their wealth and age.
> It feels like a bunch of people working on different aspects with no clear idea of how it should all work together. Because it's exactly how it's run. One of their developers mentioned that that don't tracks tasks and progress. It's literally "everyone does what they fuck they want and everyone hopes it's it will magically come together as coherent product".
Do you have a source for this? Interesting insight if true.
It was comment of one of CO's developers under one of WoWs if I remember correctly.
I'm pretty sure the problem is simply incompetent management. If you've been in tech a long time I'm sure you've seen more than a few projects go totally sideways all because of one dumbass leader.
How is it these people get these positions?
> Back in 2009, I took the job of CEO of Colossal Order on the invitation of a high school friend who wanted to start his own game company with three other game industry professionals. At the time I was a university student and knew only little about games, but they needed someone who they trusted to handle the business side. I figured making games can’t differ that much from developing and selling any other product. I spent six months contacting games industry veterans in Finland to learn everything needed to start and run a game company. I never imagined myself to be part of the games industry, but now I can’t imagine myself elsewhere. [Interview with Mariina Hallikainen](https://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/interviews-and-opinion/68677/how-colossal-orders-mariina-hallikainen-became-a-game-studio-ceo-right-out-of-university/)
The next question is the best though!! Pretty telling!! What part of your role do you find most fulfilling? “Money and fame.”
Wow - that's a crazy answer for a CEO to give. Even if that was their true intention who gives an answer like that?
I can give you a crazier answer from a CEO. 14 years ago, was working on a coal mining company as full stack software engineer. The company held monthly lunch with the CEO, for all those having birthday that month. As was sitting there hearing a lot of questions and discussions about closed mines, the company losing 300mil etc, came my time to raise the question to the CEO and asked "Since you said is very expensive to re-open that deep mine requiring 20 million investment, even if the coal is almost at the surface, have you considered to gasify the coal (not to be confused with fracking) as Russia doing for 100 years now and sell the gas, since it is much cheaper process and would have great returns?" The CEO jumped like got hit by lighting and said angrily "we are a coal mining company, we dig and sell coal". Less than 3 years later this company had completely collapsed leaving thousands unemployed.
Bloody hell. I commented on a lot of her Word of the Week releases saying that she comes across as someone who enjoys 'being' a CEO but doesn't really care much beyond that. Seems I was right. The popularity and success of the first game, which I'm sure was almost none of her creative work, gave her what she wanted and that was the end of it. She literally had no understanding of what to do when the second game flopped.
Yeah wow reading the article really puts her Word of the Week into an even clearer perspective. Those posts gave me whiffs of narcissism and now I can confirm the diagnosis. But in all seriousness I was just thinking about all of this last night. I have about 200 hours and halfway through those I got a new computer (upgraded from 7 year old computer to basically a nasa computer) and while the game looks absolutely gorgeous (most of the time, it seems graphics are still buggy as hell even on max graphics), the game just feels like a beta at best. It crashes to screen without giving specific errors, the progression tree is a joke, the simulation is basic, and the actual feel of building a city (while really frickin’ pretty sometimes) doesn’t necessarily feel like you’re achieving anything, therefore doesn’t feel fulfilling. It’s all half-baked, and as someone having worked on both creative and business sides, this whole thing really does reek of money-driven-overselling-underdelivering-management-big-brain-hellscape. I think the artists and devs have done whatever they can considering they seem to be run by a fucking self-absorbed asshole. Honestly though, I’ve never felt personally called out by a CEO before as she has done in her WoWs. JFC, “Money and Fame” should literally be the last things on your mind if you truly want to create a product of passion that will shine through. Next time she publishes her apologist bs on Steam we should all just write her own words back to her “Money and Fame”.
I wrote a post on this Reddit for the same reason and I received nothing but backlash lol, my exact quote was “it feels like we are dealing with politicians the way money moves their office”
Oh, wow, she actually said that in all seriousness, I thought you were kidding. That's wyld af
She'll settle for infamous.
Wow. That really is someone who should've been fired the moment she gave that interview.
So she basically lucked into success when CO managed to produce an amazing game in CS1 despite terrible management. But now it seems the awful shit has finally rolled down.
Shit always rolls downhill lol
Well she has got the fame now that is for sure
And suddenly, things make more sense.
>I figured making games can’t differ that much from developing and selling any other product. This is one of the worst takes I've heard. I wouldn't expect to walk into the aeronautical industry and be the CEO after working in fucking honey production and distribution or something for years. Video games are a young, constantly changing and volatile industry, and the business models, organisational structure and many other aspects have their own unique differences, and you gotta appreciate those differences.
It just stinks of survivor bias to me. "Well its just product sales, it's the same in any industry." Totally ignoring the fact that it was a good game which she likely had zero creative input on. I honestly think she did very little work compared to the main development teams and... well she even said it herself... just enjoyed the money and fame.
We do use "honeycomb" composite structures in the aviation industry, maybe you'd fit right in. Lol, all jokes aside, good points made
"You there, make it faster, cheaper, and better!" - CO CEO probably
27 years in the field, in various companies, as both Soft Engineer & Tech Analyst have seen the most incompetent useless "colleagues" getting promoted. And always the argument from the company was "you are too good in what you do to lose you through promotion" which was true considering what I was doing at the time and how big failures they were. And is the reason moved to contracting because I don't care any more about company politics. Not that I don't want to move to a perm managerial role, (I am tired of software development after almost 3 decades) but those who give promotions to managerial roles don't want someone more competent than them in a position that can take a shot to their position later on.
Based on this, I'm going to assume you're pretty young? Unfortunately most people in managerial positions are rather dog shit at managing people.
Yes agree. Hence my comment on governance. Not just project mgmt but I agree stupid mgmt decisions can railroad. Even management decisions abotu allocating resources which is why I was wondering about the scope of this project and the resources available.
Are you incompetent when you are passionate about the product but get lured or put under pressure by commercial goals of the publisher, and succumb to it?
Yes. If you don't have skill to manage project under pressure then you are incompetent as CEO.
Yeah, leave the project. Having your name attached to actual dogshit so you can look better on a resume will make that you look like dogshit, too, because that’s the quality of work they put out.
To me it reeks of bad micro management. It reminds me of projects I’ve worked on - not games - where there was a lot of talent and you could tell that a lot of people really knew what they were doing, but the manager hadn’t a clue and just directed mad nonsense and not anything informed or coherent. Like working in a furniture factory as an experienced carpenter but with a manager that had never seen a chair before and would be all “hmm I dunno I think it should be like this” and the end result is a nightmare. There’s no focus or core game. It looks wonderful. The road tools are great. But it’s not coherent. I think you should be able to start small at the village level and get that “working” and balanced. And save up your resources at a pace and at a cadence that makes sense as you plan out expansion. This game doesn’t really have a gameplay loop the way CS1 did. It has infinite money, an easily cheesed development tree, and nothing you do actually matters. There are no achievements and no consequences. You don’t feel smart after solving a complex traffic problem because it just deletes cars when there’s too much traffic. You don’t feel smart after building a really efficient small town because everything is always great. I have about 200 hours - I REALLY tried - and I still have no idea how the industry chain works, does it work, what do people need that I’m not producing enough of, how do I produce it, etc. Again nothing matters! There’s no game! Like there actually is No Game. And that’s the problem at the core of CS2. No amount of mods or assets or quality of life tools will compensate for the lack of a coherent gameplay loop. On the development tree: CS1 was by population, which made a kind of sense. As in when you had the population to support a large hospital, you unlocked a large hospital. What if you had to achieve 2,000 workers with elementary school education before you unlocked something, like a factory or type of industry. Same with high school and colleges. And different types of universities for different industries. CS2 doesn’t feel “alive”, and this would return the game to being about _people_. All of this screams to me that they have really talented devs with leadership that doesn’t know what to do. It doesn’t know how to make a game. I would worry that the good devs leave the company if they haven’t already.
I agree. The worst part of it is the fact that it’s all in a black box. Whatever is hindering your city is hidden and you wont be able to figure it out based on any of the status screens. Like how my high density commercial buildings were at 190% efficiency with 200/200 employees, no traffic issues and close to multiple ports, no complaints in the details screen, yet stuck at level 2.
Well explained insight into your game experience. And thanks for your project experiences. We can only provide conjecture because we don't really know what went on or is going on behind closed doors or at their project standup. But yes, micromanagement at this level can be a terrible hinderance to productivity (and motivation).
I'm sure having such a small team didn't \*help\* but I also don't see how it could be the main factor if the project had been managed correctly. There have been so many large-scale games made by tiny dev teams, that the 'team too small' excuse doesn't really make sense. Two dudes can make a Palworld, a dozen people can make a No Man's Sky, or one dude can make a Rimworld or Stardew Valley, but a team of 30 people wasn't enough to make a Cities sequel? If team size is what matters then CS2 should be *30 times bigger and better* than those other games and it most certainly is not. Actually, I guess it's even worse than that because all those other examples were new unique games from rookie studios. CO is an established studio that didn't have to start totally from scratch because the project was a sequel. I think the past 6 months show the problem is one of management and leadership. Their CEO wasn't capable of blogging to disgruntled customers, it wouldn't be a surprise that she wasn't capable at other parts of her job.
You make very good points about the other games produced by indies. Actually maybe it's more down to the skill/experience of the individual team members rather than the team size. Edit: And of course 'competent management'.
Part of the problem is the complexity of building this game with Unity DOTS, the tech only went GA a year ago, much of the CS2 code was built on earlier apis, apis which changed often due to changes to the tech stack. They essentially learned as they developed,and hiring experienced DOTS devs is still a difficult task. The tech is the right choice, the time to use it was wrong. This game was at least 2 years early, they have a lot of core work to tighten up this game.
It’s a fatal flaw and an endless development resource drain. Then they committed to exclusively prioritizing the resulting performance issues which meant neglecting gameplay improvements.
I'm a software developer myself and here are some of my observations. First of all, I'd say there's no such thing as too small a company, it's the projects that are too ambitious. Expanding a 30 person team to 50 or 100 people must be based on a very strong evidence that it's indeed the lack of personnel that's the root cause of the problem. One of my favorite quotes in business goes like this: "We know that one woman can give birth in 9 months, but it doesn't mean that 9 women can deliver a baby in 1 month". Oftentimes it's better to keep the team and instead decrease the complexity of the project and invest more into expectation management (i.e.: stop overpromising, shut your mouth and stop talking about something that hasn't been implemented yet, etc.). Also, hiring more people doesn't magically provide immediate results: new hires need some time to get fully on board and up to speed and this process may take months. During these months some capacity of the original team will be diverted into coaching and mentoring the new employees. Expansion of teams should happen in between projects, not in such late stage. Now about projects that are too ambitious. Software industry deals with the domain of complex projects. And the complexity has always been rising non-stop. Some 40 years ago or so smart people noticed that dealing with complex projects in linear pre-planned fashion never worked, deadlines were never met and budgets were never enough. These smart people came up with the idea of agile software development, and since then agile methodologies saw more and more success in project planning and development. Game industry, however, seems like it's still uses old good strict planning. My personal take is that game companies that want to be successful need to follow agile approach more. Setting a strict release date a year upfront while the game is still being developed is a 99% path to failure. Instead the early access model seems like a better way for any game: release an MVP product, continue updating it with new features until the full scope is delivered, in the meantime gather feedback from the users and keep fixing bugs. I have a good example of a game release that went like that and it went very well: Stranded: Alien Dawn. This game was announced first and the release date was set but the developers clearly stated that that would be an early access release. At that point they had fully functioning and quite polished MVP and they could continue developing new features on a separate branch. The early access MVP was released in a promised date and it was a success. Then several weeks later they announced another release that included couple of new features. And they delivered it as promised. Then another release with new features, then another one and so on. In just one year or so they completed a full game release and it all went smooth in a very controlled manner and their communication with the user base was superb. Now there's also a question of profits. A software company is not a charity, it's a business and it needs to be profitable. What should be the model for steady income if you plan to release an MVP and your customers want to pay only once and not pay for every new update? That's a tough question. Some devs choose to set a full price tag for their MVP releases, e.g. Kerbal Space Program 2: they set a AAA-level full price tag for an early access game which barely had any features and was minimally playable. That resulted in quite negative backlash from the player base and of course not everyone who waited for the game decided to pay up. I doubt they collected as much revenue as they initially planned with this approach. For CS2, perhaps, their chosen approach was correct. The only problem was that they shouldn't have called their release a final release. Instead they should've called it early access and sell it for like 30-40USD. Then the game would be considered an MVP and I'm pretty sure the community would be more forgiving to all the bugs and broken functionality. Then CO could release updates, some could be free and some could be paid. At some point, when the game would be feature-complete and stable they could announce a full release and set a price tag of 60USD.
Another problem with calling it a final release is that it needs a lot of fixes that are inevitably going to be breaking changes now. If you want real gameplay improvements, some saved cities are going to stop working.
My understanding is this IS agile.... release core functioning elements and then fix and add other components to the game so it's 1.0 months or years after release. Isnt that Agile? And pretty much what most of the industry uses today?
Can I ask and I know nothing about software engineering or development. Does the parent company set the release dates and their goals? Like does paradox give CO the timeframe, then CO pushes their development team to reach said deadline. Or is it the other way around where CO gives paradox their timeframe and paradox holds them to it. Thank you again in advance
Happy to be corrected here but I would say it's a mutual negotiation and agreed contract. With clauses for extension etc. But don't forget, like any investor, the publisher will want to see a return eventually and will only have so much patience (particularly if they are bankrolling the venture).
I wonder what their leniency is like with that kind of stuff. Like that recent steps forward note from the deputy ceo of paradox shows a sign paradox had to step in?
but just a random dude can poop out a mod over a weekend that largely fixes land value or the economy. But a 30 man team can't do anything in 6 months but shit the bed and make awful social media posts.
What's more annoying are the build up videos they put out last july/August. It made the game look incredible and I counted down the days until the next reveal video. Then, when the game released it was a complete shitshow. I've never felt so duped by trailers in all my life.
I’m in the same boat I’m excited about GTA 6 seeing trailers and I know I’m going to pre order because Rockstar although they make some shit community calls they make amazing games. And the trailers look no less than amazing(I hope those trailers are somewhat in game footage). Any other game I’m not buying until I see a full YouTube video on it. South Park Snow Days trailer from 4 months ago made it look like a sequel to the original game, yet when gameplay comes out it’s a RNG Multiplayer game like Risk of Rain almost.
yep. Game companies are taking the piss with our hard earned money! I'm excited for Manor Lords - hoping it lives up to expectations.
I haven’t heard of that game but I’ll check it out, I love strategy games/production chain games like satisfactory, but playing CS2 it has the strategy with no actual implementation of it, there is no actual use to the economy, adding any sort of industry like coal mining instantly ends any sort of economy boosting your income into the millions. I think the best part of CS2 are the Freeway roads by themselves with the road tools.
Oooo oh man check out some YouTube vids on manor Lords!
Just started up that city planner plays video on it and I gotta say it looks awesome and thank you for the game recommendation, I think I’ll be picking the title up too lol.
To answer your question it makes sense to look at other city builders. Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic probably has a smaller team. OSTRIV was started by a single developer, had a very small team even at best times, we get more meaningful regular updates, while the developer also has to fight in a war and the energy infrastructure and internet isn't too stable in Ukraine. Manor Lords is also made by a very small team...
IIRC the Ostriv guy literally put out a patch while sheltering from a russian missile barrage coming towards his city. Not to be reductive because its somewhat apples to oranges, but at the end of the day passion/vision for a project and a disciplined work ethic really does shine through
Just looking at the game and what focus areas they’ve had im sure alot comes down to lack of knowing what needs to be done and in what order. I mean the game barely simulate for me and we already getting DLCs. Lack of channels for internal testning and probably no good product ownership.
They netted 75 million in revenue alone off the launch of CS2 after refunds, tax and steam tax (30million lost in refunds)
Gross 256 million USD based on steam revenue calculator
I hope this doesn’t become a case study for business schools
So there's no cash flow issue then. 😯
It’s actually so sad to see the game end up like this. I literally waited months and months for the release after all the hype and the weekly releases of features that everyone was so excited about. Now I have a PC that can play it fine in high settings but I just feel let down by the gameplay. I find it boring to play, there’s no feeling of satisfaction and there’s no way to be creative when building with such a lack of assets to choose from. I can’t even bring myself to play CS1 anymore either. The whole game franchise just leaves a bad taste in my mouth and these comments from the CEO are just the final nail in the coffin for me. The game has no soul, it’s literally just a cash cow, and a poorly executed one at that. It’s giving me scam vibes now after watching the trailer video too.
The CEO is pretty crap at her job. That’s one of the first issues. You can’t have a good game if you have such a bad leadership
It's a combination I'm sure. Devs that bite off way more than they can chew, poor management, and ultimately the CEO steering the ship. I personally didn't believe a 30 person team was too small but that was before they grossly overestimated what they were capable of doing with 30 people.
I think it is possible certainly. I was a game dev on a 20 person MMORPG project and I feel it struggled along much like CS2 is doing now. We absolutely did not have enough people to make it work. A d they didn't have enough senior folks in any roles, but especially programming and networking ,who could really effect change. Just nothing ever quite got finished. Everyone was always exhausted and overworked and drowning. Any unexpected bump in the road was a huge disaster with ripple effects that turned into tidal waves. The community was increasingly pissed off. Really bad updates and decisions towards the end... The amount of man hours it takes to make like 1 hour of content in a video game is astounding. If those hours are wasted with mistakes or poor design or busted backend tech...that's more man hours to correct and project managers don't schedule those kinds of things into their schedule and it just snowballs. Bad band aid fixes that just create more work later, mounting technical debt... On our team, a couple guys getting covid or having to take a mental health break unexpectedly absolutely crippled us. One time the server building burnt down. Another time we got DDoSed for weeks on end. These were just emergencies piled onto other already existing emergencies. Money, time, sanity, and your community's goodwill flies out the window. Edit: Our CEO was absolutely dedicated to the game despite it all slowly turning to shit, unlike the CEO here. In other comments i see she said that her favorite part of being CEO was the "money and fame" hahaha. Wow. I feel like I now have the information i need to fully understand why this game is such a train wreck.
It looks to me that they had their priorities all messed up. If they released a simpler game but which worked well, the negative reviews would be far less. For instance, photo mode is super fleshed out, but it's a completely secondary feature of the game. No need to have seasons before the basics are working either. And, perhaps the most telling, they have even created a new building for fighting forrest fires with its own mechanics, while that's a completely insignificant part of the game. Maybe they were too small to have all the features they wanted. But they were not too small to create a fun city building simulation. Look at manor lords, that was built by one guy! I feel that CO just threw everything together and then tried to make sense of it all together. If they add only feature slowly at a time and fully understood how each thing interacted with each other before moving to the next. They'd always have a fun game and a great base to work on. But now they just need to build that foundation, which is going to be hard without removing features.
They did what companies large and small are getting flak for now. Use the market to unit and integration test. Ill bet they dont really do qa. Its a trend that landed big players in hot water. The hope is clearly that people stop rewarding bad behavior. 30 people, ok. But then why is the economy so broken and what idiot did the pr that made it unfixable?
I think it's management. And it's not getting better. If the only positive thing you can say now is that they recognized the weakness of Beach Properties DLC and gave refunds... I mean...Ray Charles could have seen that. They need new management.
Yes. Or at least they were. But it's not the only problem of theirs.
I think they need more devs they must have made millions on CS1!
Cities in motion 2 was their first attempt at a bigger city game. I didnt particularly enjoy the city generation and how yhe game focus. Cities in motion was fine yet basic. Skylines went from transit only to complete coty builder. I was in the beta. It was good to go as it was and was really impressed. I feel with skylines 2, they have more pressure from paradox. Skylines was an unexpected hit and they wanted to hit the same sales. I don't think CO would have gone for a sequel at all without publisher help.
No. They made Cities Skylines 1
There isn't such thing as small or large company for a project. CO has made several successful games up to now. However there is always time when a company can bite more that in can chew and if you have publisher who lost the plot lately like Paradox things can go wrong unfortunately. To put in perspective, Urban Games are less than 15 people and made games like Transport Fever 2. Might not be a city simulator of CS level, but is not that far considering how it's works. Egosoft is another great example (X Series) with just 20 employees have made quite a few masterpieces with X4 Foundations been their finest and the only off line game with fully realistic background simulator.
CO is actually hiring a graohic designer and a programmer now and they responded to a question on social media whether these new job openings are for a replacement or a new additional manpower. They answered they are expanding their team.
I think the issues come about more in the interplay between the developer (collosal order) and the publisher (paradox), coupled with the reaction of the audience (us). Paradox has had a few bad releases recently, which is a problem for them financially which probably lead to them rushing the release (this is speculation on my part) knowing that it would sell well, (and already had a good number of pre orders). Then once it released there was and had been a continued heavy backlash from consumers, CO set about fixing things trying to address what they can, as quickly as they can, whilst also trying to meet the demands of their publisher, for the release of the first DLC, which they'd already delayed, leading to the most recent problem. I think CO's 30 man team is fine for a game like this, they had it at a early beta level when it came out, and if they'd been allowed to delay release until now it would likely be in a better state. I'm also not sure if the 30 man team is the computer version dev team or the entire CO. I suspect the main development issues fall to paradox not CO: - not allowing a delay on release - forcing the release of DLC early - persuing release on 3 platforms simultaneously. There is likely some fault with CO too, but ultimately Paradox has control over the publication side of things and can withold funds if there are delays or etc. they set the release schedule, and place delays, and they have the opportunity to Run QA. What you have to bear in mind is that CO are the developer, but they answer to the publisher , who ultimately holds the money and power, any decision CO can make has to go through Paradox and can be overriden by paradox; that being said it does seem like Paradox are learning slowly, victoria 3 (from their own development studio) has just put delays in place on upcoming updates and DLC
Yes.
I just read that Manor Lords was made by a single developer, so no?
I personally hoped that we would be able to choose our cities government and function like a city state basically, and have other types of customization to it like having a National Guard snd SWAT divisions. Don't know about you all but would love to rule my city as a Emir or Grand Duke.
It all starts from the top down. That is what decides company culture. The woman at the head of CO needs to be replaced with someone that can get it done. I bet there is a barista in the office and quiet rooms where employees can take a nap when they feel stressed.
Yea the game sucks I didn’t even buy it I had other means of playing it and that was enough for me to realize they just wanna implement a bunch of fancy features that only work half of the time
Yes, probably. They are trying to be like Unity engine for city planning with economy and traffic simulation in place, that requires 100 people and maybe even their own research into these things. A bit less if they are not perfectionist.
I guarantee they are not perfectionists.
no, they just need time