Can Kerbal Space Program Be Relaunched?

I discuss the current State of Kerbal Space Program, How it got here, and whether some other company could still make it the game everyone was hoping it would become, although by an entirely different path.
0:00 Introduction
0:15 Current State
0:40 A Summary of How it Got Here
4:33 A New Business Plan
5:00 Disclaimer
5:25 The Tail Wags the Dog.
5:55 Company 1
6:37 Company 2
7:17 Compnay 3
7:33 The Secret Sauce
8:44 Give-Aways
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[@versegen2]

I do hope KSP2 manages to pull through. Low expectations, high hopes.

[@setaindustries]

Considering how mismanaged and terribly designed the internals of the game is it is probably easier to drop all of it and start from the beginning.

[@Qwarzz]

People say Star Citizen has been badly managed but it's nothing compared to KSP2 :)

[@stormwolf3255]

Having previously been involved in a software project where we were not allowed to call on the 'institutional knowledge' of the original development team and a crunchingly short timescale in which to get the project over the finish line (as well as having the customer move the goalposts) it really feels like you're being set up to fail, so I can really empathise with the devs who have been screwed over here. It would be great to see a customer for StarEngine so long as it doesn't get in the way of CIG's own needs (I don't think it's quite ready for a third-party use yet) but that being said, Amazon have the cloud servers and own Lumberyard from which StarEngine was forked... also Bezos can get 'Green Origin' added to KSP :D

[@CMDR_Elizium51RA]

I think another tie in with Amazon you missed is Bezos owns Blue Origin, which they could heavily leverage into the game.

[@justawildstickman1787]

I just hope some how in some way it goes well and we can recover the game

[@TheRealFreakaros]

i don't see amazon pulling anything off, all i remember of amazon game studios turned out as a failure, but CIGs star engine could totally be a very good application for KSP. If they went on an open pool approach (which means they help with expanding the engine to KSP needs but also are allowed to use all the code themselves) this could even benefit SC (orbital physics etc)

[@gabrielibarra5551]

They're completely different engines meant for conpletely different thing. Star engine being used for ksp is wishful thinking at best

[@thebudhole8885]

BRILIANT idea to use Star Engine for Kerbal! That would be amazing!!!!

[@JimCook]

I was following along and listening to the woes of KSP, but that insight dropped my jaw. Brilliant idea.

[@jch1386]

I'm actually surprised CIG hasn't tried selling the engine - incomplete as it is - to possible game studios. Although, if they sold it to Amazon Games Studio, the slight jank isn't unfamiliar to them with things like New World at least. Still fun at times though!

[@51ghardy]

I thing the long term goal at CIG is to develop the next generation of game engine and Amazon is the vehicle to sell it.

[@3dVisualist]

I’d be surprised if Amazon got involved, but they certainly have the resources!

[@Temprasphere]

Amazon creating it is interesting. I wonder how cig would go if they took it as a side money project. Might be considered a competing game

[@z-beeblebrox]

I've seen this happen before, and it rarely goes well. The IP is just gonna get kicked around and nothing substantial will be done with it, at least not in a good way. You might see a buying publisher make a halfbaked attempt to salvage KSP2, but it'll be scrapped, some other dev will get asked to start all over from scratch, *that* will be scrapped, they'll try to make a mobile game, it'll fail, and they'll mostly recoup their losses through merch while the IP sits in a vault forevermore. Or the creator gets it back and fixes everything, but I doubt that will happen. As for the suggestions in the video well... Illumination *could* like the Kerbals as a Minion supplement, but the very fact that they're similar goes against the Kerbals' favor. They wouldn't want an IP that cannibalizes their own IP, and if you suggest to Illumination that the Kerbals have run their course they're gonna bonk ya. And even if they begrudgingly agreed, they'd just hit back with "well we got Mario Goombas now, and we're about to send the film version of that IP into the stratosphere" so it's sadly not a convincing argument. This before even getting into their lack of a game studio, but that's a lesser issue cuz lots of movie studios are getting into games these days. Amazon Studios certainly wouldn't mind buying it up, but this is where my cynical predictions come in, because they're not immune to the ruthless, awful business decisions that run Take2, Activision, Embracer Group, etc. I could easily see Amazon buying it as part of Take2's indie sale package, and then just never really doing anything substantial with it, besides maybe repackaging KSP1 into some kinda anniversary edition exclusive. Finally, could the StarEngine be used to make KSP3? Genuinely I don't know. StarEngine is a technological marvel, however it's a technological marvel specifically designed for one game and one game only. It's kind of like how the developers of say "Dragon Quest" have their own bespoke engine, and it's certainly very capable of making a great jrpg...but that doesn't necessarily mean it's also capable of making ANY jrpg. Maybe it's possible, but as soon as you start banging against an engine's edge cases, you start to see how truly fragile it is, whereas the games they're specifically designed for aren't going to run into those problems.

[@fnunez]

The big flaw in that plan is that if CIG starts selling StarEngine, they will be bound by the priorities of their paying engine customers. If Amazon demands engine features and bugfixes for KSP, CIG will be contractually obligated to take devs away from star citizen to work on those, even if they don't benefit SC (example: KSP uses a hardcore newtonian flight model based on orbits where delta-v rules absolute. This is not even close to SC's flight model). We'll be right back to the days when SQ42 ate up most development resources, but this time SC will not benefit from them (unless by luck those fixes and features happen to be useful in SC).

[@RaysGuide]

Game engines have nothing to do with game mechanics. Think of all the various companies making games with Unreal Engine. Do they get to demand changes of the engine? Of course not.

[@preechr]

@@RaysGuide Absolutely true. CIG would simply license the engine to the customer who would then add whatever code they wanted to it, just like anybody could do with Unreal, Unity or any other engine. As the engine gets updated and changed, the licensing contract details would either allow those updates and changes to be available to the licensee or not, at an additional price or not. CIG could however decide to take feedback from licensees and spend what could have been Star Citizen hours on implementing changes to the engine code based on that feedback, but there is no evidence that CIG cares about feedback or ever makes changes based on what people that pay them money think or want. What is more likely is that licensees could develop changes to the engine needed for their implementations that accomplish more with the engine than CIG is currently able, and then CIG could steal employees away from their licensees to gain access to technology they need to finish Star Citizen but have been unable to develop themselves because they are more interested in building a new-age hippie coder cult than a functioning game.

[@fnunez]

@@RaysGuide Unless you're using the free tier, Epic charges $1850 per dev per year or a 5% royalty over the lifetime of the game made with it. They have 4300 developers, most of them working on Unreal. What do you think those devs do all day?

[@Tsudico]

@@RaysGuide While game engines have nothing to do with game mechanics you listed specific game mechanics as features of the game engine. Seamless ground to space is a game mechanic that CIG has done in a certain way which may or, given Kerbal's focus on more realistic physics likely, may not fit with the mechanics necessary for another game using that engine. Much of CIG's feature set depends on object containers having separate physics grids that are independent from each other which runs counter to Kerbal's need to have consistent physics across any possible boundaries that might exist.

[@thebudhole8885]

@@Tsudico I'm sure the studio licensing the engine could add whatever code they needed to and get rid of what they don't need.

[@superhobo412]

I always figured the end goal of star engine outside of completing SC and S42 would be to sell for use elsewhere, especially the use of server meshing. Amazon would be an excellent place to sell the engine to along with a few other game development companies that have MMO projects

[@andyandreson3989]

I wasn’t even aware Amazon had a game studio. But I don’t pay much attention to them anymore.

[@PyroRaptor841]

Their most notable activity was that MMO they released bricking people's 3090s

[@z-beeblebrox]

@@PyroRaptor841 I think a good 2/3rds of their output has been MMOs, insanely. And they're working on two more. I don't get it

[@Schmeeda-wt9wm]

Here's hoping Private Division survives this shakeup, always enjoyed their games.

[@Kurisu2019]

You need to rename the segment "Company 3" (it says Compnay 3). I always felt that CIG could license the Star Engine to Amazon, since there is a ton of tools and the engine is good enough to be used on different types of games, including games with a single planet, but incredibly detailed.

[@kn9788]

Don't make me dream about Amazon pulling this off like we all dream about the Star Citizen ship backlog coming to the servers...

[@Lord_Retrospect]

Well thought out as always, Amazon publishing KSP in the Star Engine is something I can definitely get behind. Somebody give this man a cookie

[@erickruller4266]

I'm not sure if Amazon Game Studio would go for it but it's an interesting idea. And there was no doubt in mind when CIG unveiled "Star Engine" that there would come a time when it was being used for another company's game, why not Kerbal. :-)

[@Aero_Yuki]

I don't have much confidence in Amazon making a KSP reboot. While a pretty KSP 2 with seemless transtions to and from space is possible with StarEngine, the core of KSP requires a robust Newtonian physics engine with planetary and spacecraft motion in elliptical/hyperbolic orbits, virtually unlimited speeds reached through burning fuels, and spacecraft dynamics dependent on how they are built/flown by the user - things I haven't seen yet in StarEngine's current form in Star Citizen.

[@brentmellinger]

I can see Amazon's role, but not actually CIG/StarEngine. KSP needs to handle high speed physics, and it seems StarEngine has precision struggles getting above 1km/s, which is still far less than orbital speeds.

[@Qwarzz]

I would expect something smaller than Amazon game studios to pick KSP 2 up. If someone does they really need to use something other than original KSP codebase definitely. I've also been fantazising about Starengine being used for KSP. They'd have to add proper physics but that shouldn't be too hard. I assume that having the technology to build spacecraft from parts that can also be disassembled and built in space piece by piece would require quite a bit of work but even that could probably use some of the existing features. Many of the assets the current project could probably be used as well to save time on that front.

[@Verinia]

I hope Amazon delivers to the deepest part of the black because that's where I'm taking my Zeus ES!

[@johnmoore4577]

"Amazon" could pull it off, and getting hold of star engine if possible would certainly add to the coffers of SC

[@johnnytrongaming]

I highly doubt CIG will be letting anyone get their hands on Star engine for a long time after release.

[@mattgriffin8383]

Isn't having one crew work in isolation without the other crew having knowledge the same thing that drove HAL9000 crazy?

[@jhbk5]

I have not entirely been wowed by Amazon Game Studios, but it is an exciting prospect.

[@kookiespace]

The secret word is AMAZON. Doesn't feel like much of a secret but here you go

[@mattwaelder]

amazon I've been following ksp 2 since it was announced and was really gutted to see what's come of it. I fortunately didnt buy the game because of how rough it was, but with another update or two i would have. its still on the top of my steam wishlist :(

[@Qwarzz]

I was also waiting for it to surpass KSP. It didn't...

[@ellismendez]

KSP in Star Engine. That just opened a whole new can of excitement :) CIG AND Amazon collaboration is the way to go. *cross fingers*

[@morgandyoung]

Blue Origin branded KSP 2 made by Amazon GS powered by CIG's starengine? Clever!

[@Maegriss]

Its a novel idea for amazon to take over it, but I expect KSP is dead for now until someone wants to pickup the pieces and start over

[@jessebrinson4582]

Doesn't Amazon have some sort of stake in CIG? I'd be a little surprised if CIG tried to sell/license the Star Engine before a SEEMINGLY near release.

[@merefield2585]

Given their pedigree, I reckon FDev would do a fabulous job with this, but I'm sure they'd want to start again with a new engine.

[@FredFenster]

I'd also be surprised if Amazon got involved with KSP......

[@Shadowen925]

I've been pretty impressed with Amazon game studios' lumberyard game engine. Did Great in New World even if the game itself died out. Same, for the most part, engine as Star Cit too. KSP2 using it. That's an idea for sure.

[@dasofdoom]

Though it sounds pie in the sky, i could see this working... somewhat.. but likely only after 1.0 drops with all the missing features.. some of these things may actually help. such as base building etc... I don't think CIG or amazon would bite though... we can only dream also something of note, this could potentially drag back out the crytech legal drama, as part of cigs defense there was "we aren't in the game engine business"

[@scribblescrabble3185]

lol, this is pretty much what I thought last month, how I would do it, what I would need. edit: though I would fear for the game if Amazon is involved

[@yifeng3007]

I do feel like Amazon would be a great choice too, at least that way we'll know they'd use AWS right, unlike CIG does :D

[@notmyname4790]

Option 4 and the only true option: RocketWerks

[@David-82]

Amazon, also a good source of income for Star citizen selling it's engine.

[@spcrowe]

Amazon builds it, that'll do, I just want ksp2 to finish

[@whitewolf9317]

I loved KSP 1, but honestly haven't paid much attention at all to KSP 2 (beyond hearing about it's shortcomings). Even with StarEngine, Amazon Game Studios would have their work cut out for them if they want the game to go somewhere.

[@LetsPlayBojangles]

Amazon stepping in wouldbe great, im already in the game for 2 copies so i hope it gets salvaged.

[@BlueWolff22]

I would like to take a trip to the Amazon in Ksp 2.

[@profdecoy]

I hadn't looked into the origins of KSP2, and it seems like it was doomed to failure from the start based on your summary of events. I'd have to go look at what all Amazon Game Studios have actually published. If it's all small mobile timewaster type games, they might not have all of the right experience with their developers to do a larger scale game like KSP. It's an interesting thought experiment none the less.

[@krisghoststar]

Deffo like Star Engine being used for other games. Not so sure about Amazon developing though. It would be nice if some of the original team were on this relaunched program.

[@RaysGuide]

Well obviously they would need to be hiring for the project

[@c-mcd7618]

I don't think migrating a game from one engine to another is a practical idea. I think it would be easier and safer to start from scratch if you are going to a new engine. I also think StarEngine is overkill for what KSP is trying to be; though as you mention it checks off a lot of boxes as to fulfilling desired requirements (assuming those haven't changed).

[@mattp1337]

I'd like to believe you're right, and it's more plausible that Amazon + CIG's tech could deliver on the hopes for KSP2 than any other known studio. But KSP as a brand is tainted by this failure, and honestly it's not much of a brand to begin with. Someone else will make another realistic space physics franchise with cute aliens, because there's little else to KSP that holds trademarkable value. Maybe Keen Software House's new VRage3 engine for a rumored Space Engineers sequel will incorporate enough realism to be KSP-like, where Space Engineers 1 was not. There's no way it will have all the capabilities of StarEngine, but it is an engine for construction games which StarEng is not and they know they need more efficient multiplayer in their next engine, but 64 players would be fine they don't need to do thousands. That would be my ideal outcome anyway.

[@finesse5119]

That would be a genious move for CIG to get Amazon Games to pay for their own Lumberyard Engine :D But who knows, Amazon also owns The Expanse so that's the hard SF niche covered. I'd just be afraid they'll ruin Kerbal with free to play and DLC

[@RaysGuide]

True but an Expanse game would be so much different in tone than KSP...But an Expanse game would also be a perfect game for StarEngine.

[@ianwilson4286]

Ray - what do you think of Take Two (GTA6) patenting server messhing? Does this not kill SC or cost CIG lots of money? About The Patent - In short, the patent outlines a system that allows R* to seamlessly switch a player from one session to another without a loading screen. This means if you are flying from one area to another, during that time you will switch to a new session without any loading.

[@Billy-bc8pk]

Completely different tech and coding infrastructure. Only way it would affect CIG is if Rockstar could prove CIG utilised their tech in some way. But CIG has beat Rockstar to the punch, so CIG would have more of a case than Rockstar.

[@ianwilson4286]

@@Billy-bc8pk No the patent sound just like SC server meshing. "In short, the patent outlines a system that allows R* to seamlessly switch a player from one session to another without a loading screen. This means if you are flying from one area to another, during that time you will switch to a new session without any loading."

[@Billy-bc8pk]

@@ianwilson4286 They already use that in Red Dead Redemption 2, but it doesn't work anything like Star Citizen, because when it migrates you to another server it resets the session data on the shard, opposite of how it works in Star Citizen. You'll note that there is no loading screen, but all the NPCs and entities reset to whatever the entity state properties were on the server you were migrated to, including losing any mission or quest progress. With Star Citizen and the persistenty entity graph database, you do not lose your state properties in transference from one server to the next, as that is the whole point of PES. So no, it's nothing like SC's unless they're using a similar entity database like PES to retain state properties between server transfer.

[@aaronpaul5990]

Amazone games studio would be a intresting choice ... Especially in combination with star egine since the star engine is based on the lumberyard engine that they are quite familar with (seeing that amazoen is the one owning it)

[@Tael71]

I am really bummed about KSP2. I was looking forward to it after the fun I had with KSP1. I bought the early access but it was to buggy to play so I have been waiting... All for naught it seems. Even if a company like Amazon came in and ported the game to Lumbaryard (same engine as Star Citizen), I would be worried it wont make all the strides we wanted. Even CIG's Star Engine has abandoned realistic Newtonian Physics (which was promised in the original kickstarter)... Seeing these studios close and CIG's recent consolidation of studios and staff with layoffs, I am getting nervous that CIG will not deliver the end product either, or it will be severely scaled back from what was promised if we even just reached the $6 million funding stretch goal (and we are over 100x that now)...

[@inkwell3019]

Well, Amazon definitely has the cash for it.

[@parkerxgps8101]

ugh, Take two? blech, I can't anymore.

[@CMDR_Elizium51RA]

Oh man I feel like CIG could knock out a better KSP2 no problem with the tech they’ve built.

[@hephaestion12]

But how much is real physics gonna fit in star engine? We have speed limits and i wonder how important that is? Cig good luck

[@ForgeofAule]

Amazon game studios making KSP2? Interesting...

[@craxsdep7197]

I am not certain about Amazon due to the poor record of released games, except new world.

[@bitmau5]

If it does get scooped up by another company, it's going to monetised to hell and back, with parts packs. I can smell it a mile away.

[@marcjensen9080]

I can't say I've played anything from Amazon.

[@FuzeeSC]

Amazon has a game developer department ?

[@SendySenderson]

I'll tell you what could be better: If Amazon built it and I had bourbon popsicles in my freezer.

[@seotenin]

Actually not a bad idea, while most people think they are funding a game,.. we are actually funding the development of a Game Studio. Having other games in development is not a bad idea and Amazon game studios should be able to get the job done

[@Billy-bc8pk]

That's assuming they actually want to make a game people want to play and not something funded by Blackrock/Vanguard to simply push a message.

[@rttakezo2000]

Does Amazon actually "create" anything?

[@Adam-vo6yl]

Yeah, I dunno. Has Amazon game studios actually made anything?

[@Schmeeda-wt9wm]

Amazon games studios working on KSP2 does sound far-fetched. I understand your reasoning, but I just can't see amazon doing that. Lately they've seemed fixated on trying to create large, monetized experiences, which wouldn't be a good fit for KSP2. Imagine microtransactions for our Kerbals! But I guess it 'could' happen. I'd just be really surprised if it did is all.

[@3769Chris]

Amazon Game Studios doesn't have a great track record in creating games. I think the only one that is still being played is New World.

[@RaysGuide]

The reason why I picked Amazon Game Studios is that the parent company would be making so much money from the Kerbals merch and streaming then spending extra to build a game that would fit in with all that other revenue makes sense. As the finance types say, synergy.

[@sammyfromsydney]

Famtasy.

[@leproticfella]

star citizen is missing the most important part of ksp, the physics. they may be refined to making sense in later versioins but i cant see that happening as it doesnt suit the arcadiness. so its probably possible to make ksp on that engine idk but its not a perfect fit.

[@leproticfella]

and then theres the whole multiplayer warping thing to worry about in ksp. i dont think they ever figured that out in ksp2.

[@RaysGuide]

Game Engines are independent of gameplay mechanics, including the physics.

[@Qwarzz]

Physics in Atmosphere are already in there. There's similar boundary when transitioning to space so they'd have to handle physics differently after that. I've also understood that planets in Star Citizen could already be oribiting but they've chosen not to allow that.

[@Chaos-gu3yc]

Space X might make another possible option

[@Qwarzz]

I'm acutally surprised Musk hasn't funded some proper game yet considering the amount of software development all his projects require. The Crew Dragon docking simulator was pretty much what it is to dock in KSP, especially if you have docking cam mod and such.

[@hanzo52281]

If CIG can't get Star Citizen working properly on Star Engine why would anyone else want it for their game? Let's walk before we run.

[@haze.x3342]

Imteresting and sad, but thanks for the coverage.

[@the_omg3242]

KSP 2 overpromised and under delivered and now it's got a bad reputation. Any further work that goes into it might make early purchasers happy but is unlikely to generate enough new sales to cover the cost of that work due to the bad reputation. If anyone decided to continue with KSP, the more likely move would be to make KSP remastered. A new version of KSP 1 with graphic upgrades from the second built on the code of the first game. And it would be a 3rd game requiring a 3rd purchase which would be much more profitable than a late gift to KSP2 buyers that any ongoing improvements to KSP2 would be. As for it having anything to do with Star Engine, I don't see that happening. Seems to me the first thing you need to sell a game engine is an actual working game to show it off and while CIG has an impressive tech demo, (that's an extremely unstable resource hog) they're years away from having a finished game to show off how awesome their engine is. And even if they could get someone else to license it before SC is done, how does it make them look if another studio releases a game with their engine while they're still struggling to finish SC 15 years after they started on it?

[@deRNmEpRrMm]

What the fuck did you smoke for this script to happen?

[@RaysGuide]

Well, I like science fiction, and I admit up front that the video is science fiction!

[@darkfae2002]

I have no faith in Amazon

[@Bland-79]

Would be nice but the definition of wishful thinking.

[@RaysGuide]

oh absolutely I am engaging in wishfull thinking.