Personally, I think Vstep have declared SSE to be a "dead" project. In other words, they've now stopped supporting it.
I know I've been pretty vocal about my feelings towards Vstep, but it really is a shame they've let something great slide into the abyss of Davy Jones locker. With a bit of enthusiasm from the developers, SSE could have been something great. Instead it's become a classic case of "how not to develop a simulator". Sad, really.
Sorry Danny but most of these statements are silly and a bit nonsensical...
First, support is not the same as development. As long as people are playing their game Vstep will offer support where they can. Even long after development stops. Vstep is still 'on the case'.
We all know this game has suffered from a bunch of deep rooted problems that simply cannot be corrected other than re-designing all of it. Which is unfortunately sometimes how it goes when a developer starts with a new product from scratch. The big names in the industry who have made their series or games a big succes have had the same issues back when they were just starting to create new things, and many of their older games would be far more fitting to your silly title 'classic case of how not to...'
SSE might lack a lot of content and features that people wanted, but that's got nothing to do with production value, that's personal preference and often the expectations where way too high and not realistic for a small developer to achieve without making the game much more expensive. The majority of worldwide SSE players play without problems even. Sure, MP is virtually non exsistant and that's a major problem in this day and age in my opinion, and the performance issues are a nuisance to say the least, but on the whole this game, even with it's issues, performs heaps better still, than so many other so called sims or games in general, out there, and so many older versions of sims that are now a big success. So it's by no means an example of how not to develop a game. And given how well Nautis is doing and that it's getting awards and certifications left and right and new customers all the time, in a market where it takes a heck of a lot more to be succesful and competitive compared to the gaming industry, well that goes to show Vstep isn't clueless about how to develop software, would you not say?
One 'budget sim' that sadly suffered from irreverisble teething problems is not a benchmark for these folks that have always worked very hard and with lots of dedicated and enthusiasm on this game. Sadly it didn't work out as we all had hoped, but let's not just make silly remarks about a lack of enthusiasm making it slide into an abyss... that's just really uninformed and doesn't show much insight in the reality of software development. I'd go one further, the attitude of a core group of this community might have actually ruined Vstep's own enthusiasm along the way. The constant nay-saying, the constant personal attacks on Vstep's personell, the constant whining and demanding of more and better things, but of course always with the similar demands for it to be free or cheap content.. If it had been me, I would have lost my drive too...
Sure there are many posts about people with issues that ARE of a real technical nature .. But Vstep knows all that, and they are not happy about that, of course. They would have seen it differently too, but it's not magic fairey land, the reality is that some things just cannot be fixed. But compared to the overal player base of this game, the ammount of people that come to Vstep with these issues, is not a huge number and certainly not if you compare it to many games by the huge developers and publishers that are out there, who do not care about the end user at all and who have virtually no decent support or fixes for their problems. just take a look at the BF4 forums over at DICE/EA, to name a popular game of the moment.. talk about a 'classic case of how not to develop a game'.. or more like 'a classic case of how developers and publishers abuse their fans'.. and that's like their 6th or 7th game with the SAME problems each and every time.. And that's a company with resources that simply dwarf Vstep. And yet Vstep has often gone the extra mile even when it was not profitable to do so, and a lot further than the big players in this field would go and have gone. Even if it didnt pan out as we all would have liked, and I do share a lot of these opinions about the missed opportunities and the sad loss of potential due to it, they deserve a little more respect on a personal level than a lot of people here are giving them. That's how I see it, and what I wanted to say for some perspective.
As for the community development thing, that'll become more clear soon enough.
