Subsim Videos: Silent Hunter 5

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Heretic

There's a very simple reason that things are the way they are - business. That's not a dirty word. It's the reason that companies exist. Every software project has two absolutes that require an act of God to change - time and money. There's never enough of either one to do what you want. Also your project must make a profit for the company. That's the only reason it's being made. For any given budget, there is a sales target that must be met to justify the expense. And it's designed with that in mind.

Let's say SH5 has to sell 100,000 copies to justify it being made. The devs have the experience and knowledge to make the sub sim of our dreams. Unfortunately, that game wouldn't sell 100,000 copies, so it can not be made. Every development decision is driven by that. Does this feature help me or hurt me in meeting my sales target? What percentage of that target represents hardcore sub simmers? 5%, at best? So, it becomes very difficult to justify spending precious development money and time for features that only appeal to a tiny fraction of your target audience. And if that comes at the price of cutting something that appeals to the larger audience, it's a no-brainer. It can't be done.

Everything becomes a trade-off. Details are simplified or left out, not because the developers are stupid or lazy or hate hardcore gamers, but because the development resources must go to the things that give the biggest bang for the buck. Things that make the game more accessible to the causal gamer will always have a higher priority than those that appeal to the hardcore minority. To do otherwise would just put your company out of business.

Unless every subsimmer who wants a 100% realistic subsim is willing to pony up $500 a copy, we will never get our dream sim out of the box. There is no market for it.

The best we can hope for is the current model, a Subsim lite, which will appeal to casual gamers, but moddable, so us Subnuts can make our own approximation of a hardcore Sim. Don't forget that Ubi leaves the game easily moddable for exactly that purpose...think of it as a model kit...