A Note To Planetary Annihilation Fans About Human Resources

Convince us by making PA "complete", until then, so yeah, I do not mind backing another uber project.

This would be amazing if they did this. If they really layed it on the table and showed what functions and how well, as well as some rough timelines and maybe a progress thing on certain features every 2 weeks or so, I must admit it would really lay the foundation to get a massive backing for Human Resources.

Love how the game looks, love it. I must say i still wish it has some "round Earths" to play on, as i really have come to love spherical maps from PA and it would be awesome to see a city wrapped around a sphere, and cutting chunks off the planet with that robot.

Only having flat shards floating about might get a bit old after a while, or not. Who knows.

I saw the human resources trailer and my heart just sank, nay, nearly exploded.
Good thing you posted this uber!

In their Kickstarter page, they should CLEARLY communicate how the team is being divvied up between PA and this new game, so that all the thousands of people pissed off at PA won't think to themselves "**** these cash grabbing assholes" and instead think "Oh, yea that makes sense. Put the art direction where they can actually do some work".

Thing is, I think that much is obvious. I read an article awhile back where they said that dev retention after a project is completed is terrible. Once a project is done they let go tons of devs because they have no work. Now that PA is mostly feature complete (barring servers etc) they can put all the guys who don't have any work on this. They are still going to have a lot of the guys finishing all the other features and getting them out. There is no point in having 20 odd people without work.

This seems like a logical step to me. My first knee jerk reaction to this was "this is too soon etc" but the more I think about it the more sense it makes. People not working is money being wasted.

I would love to back but funds are terribly tight at the moment, hopefully the kickstarter is still running when I get paid. I really like the art style but the UI seems a bit meh to me at the moment but I am sure it will be better in game Also very curious as to how close it will be in the game as opposed to what was shown.

Let's not forget that inXile Entertainment ran a kickstarter for Torment before they've even finished Wasteland 2 for these very reasons. You either give people new work or you let them go. You don't need your art team to help develop the local server.

Same here, I will be kicking HR as soon as my next paycheck arrives. I'm not worried about PA, it's enjoyable as it is right now even though there is some stuff missing and I have no doubt they will deliver.

Bad move, uber.
It doesn't matter what team is doing what, finish your first product before starting a second one. You may consider it released, but PA is still far from perfect or polished. PA is your crown jewel.. you've already made a name for yourself of just "dumping" series' that you've acquired ( see : MNC ).. don't repeat your mistakes.

Also, HR really looks fairly generic and boring compared to PA.

Will add my voice to the crowd.
First :
Even if it is good to have a diversified activity in the industry, making a second RTS when the first one is far from finished feels ... like peeing in the mouth of your fans.
Second :
Uber stated many times that PA was a commercial success (and that expectations were more than met), so they should have the tresorery to fund the game by themself. Or at least ask for a lower amount of money.
And with a bigger budget than the one that was wanted for PA. $1.4M Vs $900k. Seriously ?
Backers are not banks, they are fans. You want a project ? Take risks, and do not use the money from faithfool people...

Disappointed.

That's really not how business works. Game development studios make money by making games, not resting on their laurels waiting for a cash cow. Except perhaps the likes of Valve and maybe Riot Games

Having two projects on the go means they can continue using all their staff to full effectiveness. They can keep people around who might otherwise have to have hours dropped etc. This whole thing is to the benefit of PA's development, not the detriment.

"A Planetary Annihilation team will continue its amazing work on the game, and you’ll keep receiving new updates with new features, fixes, and mechanics. Meanwhile, a separate team will roll into pre-production on Human Resources.

As in not the full team they have now.

They're obviously not making enough money if they have to start another kickstarter then, eh?

But you have to understand that people are worried about the missing features in PA. People wont just trust a company that haven't yet delivered a feature complete product, and then ask for money to make another one. Saying things like

Wasn't very smart for the reasons I mentioned. In my opinion, they shouldn't even have launched 1.0 until they had every feature in the game.

The point is, the full team is not needed. Guys who have no more work need work. It's simple business. Sheesh if I had a company and just finished project A I most certainly would not let my guys just sit around jerking off now that they don't have any more work on Project A.

Uber HAS to stay fluid to stay afloat. They can not afford to waste money at the size they are.

Its not about 'enough money' - you don't as a business pay people to do nothing. So rather than say 'sorry guys, nothing to do here, bye', they've now given people something else to work on. And of course they'll hire more fresh meat when it gets funded.

This is nothing unusual; in fact it's very rare for a game studio to have only a single project on the go.

Depends on the business .

Yeah that was a dirty joke.

Project looks cool and I have no problem with it but i'm going to have to agree this was poor timing. Even just another month to push out some serious updates on the features people are complaining about would have made a difference. This is going to cause a shitstorm and i'll be suprised if it gets backed.

That's a viewpoint I completely understand. I've been very fortunate to meet the guys at Uber twice over the course of this year so I am perhaps able to be a little more confident than most that they will deliver on everything.

For what it's worth, my take-away from PAX Prime last month was an office full of people who genuinely love what they do, and people who loved the game. When planets smashed into each other, when annihilasers charged, when nukes landed and commanders exploded, the loudest cheers by far from the floor were from Uber employees, in awe at their own work. @varrak was radiant with pride when he and the team managed to hotfix the build on the show floor.

PA is a passion project, and Uber will continue working on it for as long as they feasibly can. I would go as far as to assert that as an absolute fact. It could not be in safer hands.

Ummm, no unit cannon, servers, unpolished, unoptimised (or rather unfinished) plenty of work to be getting on with.