DayZ SA slow development. Ponderings on why.

[Thadius (DayZ) 40]

In a blunt nutshell, I have seen small mod teams (working on their spare time) produce faster content. 
 
This is alpha, they should be shotgunning us with new stuff constantly to see what sticks on the wall and what doesn't. Weekly fixing bugs, causing new ones, new features that may or may not work. Constant stream of equipment that may or may not be unbalanced. 
 
They do, sort of, but at such a slow pace that is very much at odds at the commercial success of the game. 
 
And the only reason I can figure, is because their "dedicated teams" are vastly smaller then they have implied. They have sold over a million alpha copies of the game, one wonders where the money has gone. It sure has not gone into a bigger staff. 
 
I know how long it takes to make a medium polygon count 3D object, texture it, set values to it and put it in the game (worked with it myself). Using that knowledge, at the speed they are going, I would judge their total employee size at around one modeller, two programmers, and one designer to organize and do a little of everything. Maybe even an animator.
 

You can not blame everything on: "taking it slow to minimize bugs and player discomfort".

 

Unless they have an enormous backlog of content just sitting in storage waiting for their programmers to catch up, the current speed is still to slow even if you are "being careful".

 

However, going by comments made by them regarding the AKM it does not seem to be any real bottleneck from creation to implementation. 
 
Then you have to think on perhaps why this is. Why are they understaffed? 
 
After some thought, the only reason I can think of is that the game is on life support to squeeze as many sales they can, before terminating the thing and taking the profits and calling it quits. 
Somewhere, someone has made a profitability calculation and realized they already saturated the market, and investing all that money from alpha sales would be a waste. This since they would not sell enough games of the full version product for the expenses to be worth the amount of sales. 

 

In short, those that stand to profit from DayZ SA sales have no motivation to increase costs (staff). They already have our money. The real danger of popular early access games I guess.
 
Anyone else have thoughts on this? Maybe I am the only one who thinks things are going to slow. Maybe I am just a paranoid cynic.

Edited April 11, 2014 by Thadius

[ptk (DayZ) 178]

The development process is slow, because sometimes the development process is slow...

[Skyelur 57]

I agree with your intro and the fast paced of an alpha

[Etherious 907]

I don't give a damn how long it takes. I have patience, I mean waited over 14-15 years for Duke Nukem Forever to be made and in thee end it got finished. (Horribly) My point is that if you just give a little more patience then we will get a excellent finished product. But, with all these children spamming and beetching why they're taking forever, is going to demoralize them (somewhat) and make them not really want to work hard for us.

Edited April 11, 2014 by DJ SGTHornet

[boneboys 7988]

What makes you think they are under staffed ?

From my perspective, which by definition can not be the same as yours, the progress is in line with expectations.

 

Your argument that...

"Somewhere, someone has made a profitability calculation and realized they already saturated the market, and investing all that money from alpha sales would be a waste. This since they would not sell enough games of the full version product for the expenses to be worth the amount of sales."

Makes this a Troll Topic, you have no information whatsoever.

 

This is an Early Access release,  (ALPHA/ALPHA/ALPHA means nothing).

As with all BIS games development will continue until final release is announced.

 

 

EDIT : There is no harm in discussing development progress on these Forums as can be seen in different Topics, however I will not tolerate slander on these Forums.