I know, I guess no free advertisement for you except in the comment section....
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I wonder when this person worked for Foundry 42 UK....hmmm?
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The Star Citizen Thread v5
- Thread starter Brett C
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I know, I guess no free advertisement for you except in the comment section....
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I wonder when this person worked for Foundry 42 UK....hmmm?
It's interesting to see the reaction to the article from staunch backers, I wonder if it'll be as remotely as positive as he continues his series. This should be amusing! The way he ended it wasn't anything close to positive and allowing CR to respond at length continues to reveal the arrogant incompetence we love him for. It's always someone else's fault -- but when things go right, there's never a drop of praise for the employees who made it work. Easier to take all the credit, I guess.
As always, I just feel bad for the underpaid perma-crunch devs who have to struggle with mgmt, especially the UK devs. The LA office is poison.
As always, I just feel bad for the underpaid perma-crunch devs who have to struggle with mgmt, especially the UK devs. The LA office is poison.
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CMDR_Orlando
Banned
It does seem to be just a small part of that 7 month investigation, I'm not sure about that following articles being negative or positive, this one seemed fair and showcased both sides evenly.
I think it does a great public service in exposing a industry that is still very much a mystery to most gamers. This might help shed some light of understanding about why delays happen, why things break etc.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/544db7/inside_the_troubled_development_of_star_citizen/
Also these articles (if they keep coming throughout the week as I expect) come at the perfect time imo, this is the kind of in-depth articles that spread as wildfire. It will create the perfect combo of Exposure/News/Info/Hype/Discussion around a Star Citizen turmoil after it already happened and just about 2 weeks before their big CitizenCon presentation.
More than ever gamers eye's will be watching carefully the presentation and considering that they said that the Gamescom demo was nothing impressive compared with what they were showing at CitizenCon... Hype Train !! [big grin]
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And why that happens over and over when a bad manager who can't delegate authority or trust his employees is in charge.
Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat
Banned
Stick to the subject and stow the passive-aggressive attack on DS Bri, it's obvious you're trying to get a rise out of him. Stop it and get back to discussing Star Citizen.
As for the second part of your post, the guy left F42 late last year, I believe in October. Not exactly in the long lost, distant past like you were trying to insinuate it was.
"This article is part of an ongoing series on Star Citizen from Kotaku UK"
It would hinder the journalistic integrity of the ongoing series if it fails to cover some of the more contentious events of the whole saga, and you can't include pivotal moments like the post-Escapist temper tantrum without any mention of the AntiChris. It's part of the Star Citizen narrative, regardless of your (Orlando's) ongoing attempts to whitewash and retcon every single misstep. And the funny thing is that you only have Roberts to blame for that.
Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat
Banned
Meanwhile, more helpful, balanced and totally sensible commentary about the Kotaku article over on the RSI forums...
Oh.
But that can't be right?! I thought it was *this* thread that had a bunch of loony, aggressive, boorish and ignorant posters on it, not the sainted RSI!
*Edit* And more examples of the type of "fans" that support Star Citizen as that brave dude Jeffrey McArthur, who managed to fight through cancer whilst getting attacked for his failure to find anything fun or exciting or understandable to do in the game in a video he posted on YouTube, still gets nonsense chucked his way.
But that can't be right?! I thought it was *this* thread that had a bunch of loony, aggressive, boorish and ignorant posters on it, not the sainted RSI!
*Edit* And more examples of the type of "fans" that support Star Citizen as that brave dude Jeffrey McArthur, who managed to fight through cancer whilst getting attacked for his failure to find anything fun or exciting or understandable to do in the game in a video he posted on YouTube, still gets nonsense chucked his way.
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Nobody denies they have "extraordinary skilled engineers, programmers, and artists." It's the mgmt that sucks and the fish rots from the head down.
Then back up again to make sure!
What's cute is all the people they rant and rave about as dirty "leavers" were the ones put on pedestals as "extraordinary skilled engineers, programmers, and artists" too. The second they exit the space door, apparently all their skills and talent are left with reception. One's greatness is only measured by proximity to Chris.
It's an incredibly rude way to treat people that gave their pound of flesh to this project and still have the scars to prove it.
Then back up again to make sure!
What's cute is all the people they rant and rave about as dirty "leavers" were the ones put on pedestals as "extraordinary skilled engineers, programmers, and artists" too. The second they exit the space door, apparently all their skills and talent are left with reception. One's greatness is only measured by proximity to Chris.
It's an incredibly rude way to treat people that gave their pound of flesh to this project and still have the scars to prove it.
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Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat
Banned
Here's the INN take on the Kotaku article now, but through the patented "BullCrap-O-Vision Filtermatic" which manages to tease out the waffle and asks just how honest was the INN guys assessment of the news... (Answer: It was very honest at all.)
Post nicked from SA user, Zenmaster.
Post nicked from SA user, Zenmaster.
Greetings fellow Citizens! Today I will discuss my thoughts on today’s Kotaku article and Star Citizen development as a whole.
First off I would like to take a moment to be clear about something. I am a fan of Star Citizen and I believe in the project. You might think that is obvious but it’s also relevant.
Today, September 23rd, Kotaku published an article titled, “Inside the Troubled Development of Star Citizen“.
First off I would like to express some irritation with Kotaku’s continued insistence on clickbait titles. A much better, more accurate title would have been “Star Citizen: Inside the Development of the World’s Most Ambitious Game” or simply “A View Inside the Development of Star Citizen”.
Personal opinion, let the author call it whatever he wants.
Regardless, I am much more interested in discussing the content of the article.
The Kotaku article is long, well researched, and balanced. It certainly has a skeptical spin but not in a way that was unfair. They had plenty of comments from Chris Roberts, Erin Roberts, Tony Zurovec, Paul Jones, and others.
When you drill down through the article you find some key, condensed, conclusions that can be drawn:
CIG took time to become properly formed as a global group of well-operating studios since the company had to be built from scratch. But it's not well-operating unless you gloss over everything being said about the brainless decisions, over reach of Chris, and his unyielding "PROVE TO ME YOU CAN'T WAHHHH" style
CryEngine has taken a lot of work to take it from FPS engine to an engine that can actually work for Star Citizen.
Chris Roberts is a demanding leader who expects the best from the people working with him.
CIG has assembled an incredibly talented and driven group of developers. And alienated just as many
Star Citizen’s development has been full of fits and starts but appears to be going consistently in the right direction now.
Building Star Citizen is hard and things haven’t always gone to plan.
Some comments I would like to make about the article’s content:
I give Kotaku a lot of credit for taking what could have been a biased article and balancing it with quotes from the leadership at CIG and current CIG employees.
Using former employees as sources leads to getting a very specific type of answer. Those employees are no longer working for the company and are very likely to be negative on it, often in unfair or undeserved ways, because of the circumstances of their departure.
Your opinion. "likely to be negative" is a given. They left or were fired, that's it. The article spells out that many people were overmanaged and overworked, the tech was too monumentally flawed to allow them to do their jobs, or they felt imposed upon by the CEO and couldn't get accurate information from their own managers.
A lot of effort is expended in the Kotaku article to go through things that are pretty well understood by the majority of the Star Citizen community:
CryEngine is not ideal but no other suitable engine existed at the time Star Citizen was born. Incorrect, they said they would have had to do the same work no matter what existing engine they chose. Thus, they should have MADE THEIR OWN. Like, something Chris had done in the past.
Global production and the formation of a new gaming studio are difficult things that have taken time to get into a good state.
Star Citizen is not other games. Elite: Dangerous is mentioned as a success in the article and it is suggested that Star Citizen should have followed its development route.
Elite: Dangerous has been criticized by its player base and some in the gaming media for its lack of content and gameplay. I believe that this deficiency resulted from the development process that Kotaku praises. Lol, SC has been criticized in the gaming media and its own player base for lack of content and gameplay. ED has 1000 times more gameplay than SC.
Kotaku also praised Frontier for getting a game out and for patching and improving it as time went on. However, it should be noted that the base game for Elite was expensive, as were the betas, and the ongoing expansions are each expensive as well. Often this patching and expansion is to add features that the game should have had in the beginning, and many players are upset that they are being charged an exorbitant cost to get what they should have had in the beginning. Lol again, THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT CHRIS ADMITTED HE WAS GOING TO DO. release a beta and add to it over time.
Star Citizen is constantly criticized for its business model but at the heart of it, it’s still just $45 USD for the game.
A lot of criticism is leveled at CIG in the article for trying to build a singleplayer game, a massive online universe, and operate a live product demoing the project all at once.
The fact is that Star Citizen couldn’t be built any other way. Untrue, the "new" road map is not what Chris had proposed. The money changed everything, and it shouldn't have. At all.
There are suggestions in the article that the singleplayer part should have been built first, released, and then used to build the online universe. This would have created a game that was built very specifically and narrowly for singleplayer and would have led to its own set of massive headaches trying to fix everything that was specifically built to work in singleplayer but would never work in multiplayer, and would likely have limited the long term scope of the online universe. How is this true at all? This is most certainly what should have happened because S42 would be out, in players hands, and the PU could have been made without all the extra problems and non sense. Did you even read the article? Doing them both at the same time wasted so much more time and money, they borrowed people and stretched everyone too thin, making both games suffer and neither are even close to being ready.
The other main topic being the live product. Yes, it is difficult having a live product and full scale development simultaneously. However, that $124 million doesn’t exist without it. This is a massive crowdfunded project but Kotaku seems to gloss over this. The money, this huge amount of money that no publisher would ever have given for this project, is contingent on a community that needs to be kept in the loop – just like a publisher would be. The benefits to this being a constant income that supports development without needing to take on significant debt, a large group of fans who will thoroughly play test for you allowing your QA resources to go further, a group of people who act somewhat as a publisher but also actually understand what you are trying to do and want to help.
A lot of criticism is leveled at Chris Roberts in this article for being overbearing, difficult to work with, and stubborn. Remember when I mentioned the issues with using former employees as sources?
My view of Chris Roberts is that of a visionary. Not a saint. You could call any developer a visionary, it doesn't make them a good visionary able to deliver anything. You have a vision? Guess what, you are a visionary! He is an incredibly talented game developer and director with a clear and unwavering vision of the universe he wants to create. His insistence on high quality, pushing the boundaries, and getting the most from people has led to groups of people, such as former employees, who view him as a tyrant. Then he is a tyrant. His insistence is on DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE or wasting everyone's time doing things the most inefficient way possible. Prove me wrong is ridiculous. It can only engender animosity when you tell your team they are wrong over and over when you haven't been in the industry for the last 10+ years.
I would much prefer someone who pushes people to do their best work, and often to try to accomplish things no one else has, over someone who gets along well with everyone but also accepts a lower standard of work. That is a good boss and not what Chris does... he directly addresses interns and low level artists directly, going over their managers heads. Can you imagine Steve Jobs calling Larry the night janitor and telling him he needs to vacuum his office better?
This is addressed in the article but it needs to be reiterated: Star Citizen is a project being done not because it is easy but because it is hard. Star Citizen is attempting to do things other games have never done, or never all in the same game. This is difficult, it causes tension and stress among the people doing the work. It leads to a long process of weeding out those people who can not or will not strive to consistently raise the bar for the quality of their work, or will not work with others effectively. This is utter . It creates a toxic environment, fear, uncertainty, blame shifting, and second guessing... Chirs tells you to do something impossible... you fail and work really hard to find someone else to blame when he starts yelling at you.
As an aside, I have noticed a lot of parallels between Chris Roberts and Elon Musk. lol
For the uninitiated, Elon Musk is the founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX. He is often criticized by those in the industries his companies serve (automobiles and rockets) for trying to do things in ways that are new/foreign or difficult. His companies tend to have an atmosphere of incredibly talented people working incredibly hard to do amazing things that no one else has done. There are also lots of former employees who complain that Tesla or SpaceX are too high pressure, too demanding. Seem familiar?
I can already hear people telling me, “But SpaceX and Tesla have actually done things! They have launched rockets, landed rockets, and produced incredible electric cars.” SpaceX formed in 2002 and Tesla in 2003. Both companies nearly collapsed entirely in the interim.
Elon Musk is involved in basically every design and engineering decision for Tesla’s vehicles and SpaceX’s rockets and spacecraft. Again, seem familiar?
Amazing things are hard and take time. And amazing leaders trust their leadership. THAT IS WHY THEY WERE HIRED LET THEM DO THEIR JOB OR FIRE THEM AND DO IT FOR THEM AND SAVE THE MONEY.
I would like to say, to sort of cap off my ramblings, that I am 100% confident that Star Citizen is possible to build. Wow, I am glad you think so, I guess it can be then. Will it be easy? Will it be done quickly? Will things always go smoothly? No, no, and no. Will they continues to follow Chris' fife music to the edge of the cliff and when he tells them to jump it's ok you can fly will they believe him? I guess so!
What Star Citizen promises to be, if it even comes somewhat close to its goals, is a universe whose like has never before been seen in gaming. Nice, reset those expectations guy! How much is somewhat? 30%? 50%? The really cool thing is that we get to watch it happen. We, too like watching this happen.
First off I would like to take a moment to be clear about something. I am a fan of Star Citizen and I believe in the project. You might think that is obvious but it’s also relevant.
Today, September 23rd, Kotaku published an article titled, “Inside the Troubled Development of Star Citizen“.
First off I would like to express some irritation with Kotaku’s continued insistence on clickbait titles. A much better, more accurate title would have been “Star Citizen: Inside the Development of the World’s Most Ambitious Game” or simply “A View Inside the Development of Star Citizen”.
Personal opinion, let the author call it whatever he wants.
Regardless, I am much more interested in discussing the content of the article.
The Kotaku article is long, well researched, and balanced. It certainly has a skeptical spin but not in a way that was unfair. They had plenty of comments from Chris Roberts, Erin Roberts, Tony Zurovec, Paul Jones, and others.
When you drill down through the article you find some key, condensed, conclusions that can be drawn:
CIG took time to become properly formed as a global group of well-operating studios since the company had to be built from scratch. But it's not well-operating unless you gloss over everything being said about the brainless decisions, over reach of Chris, and his unyielding "PROVE TO ME YOU CAN'T WAHHHH" style
CryEngine has taken a lot of work to take it from FPS engine to an engine that can actually work for Star Citizen.
Chris Roberts is a demanding leader who expects the best from the people working with him.
CIG has assembled an incredibly talented and driven group of developers. And alienated just as many
Star Citizen’s development has been full of fits and starts but appears to be going consistently in the right direction now.
Building Star Citizen is hard and things haven’t always gone to plan.
Some comments I would like to make about the article’s content:
I give Kotaku a lot of credit for taking what could have been a biased article and balancing it with quotes from the leadership at CIG and current CIG employees.
Using former employees as sources leads to getting a very specific type of answer. Those employees are no longer working for the company and are very likely to be negative on it, often in unfair or undeserved ways, because of the circumstances of their departure.
Your opinion. "likely to be negative" is a given. They left or were fired, that's it. The article spells out that many people were overmanaged and overworked, the tech was too monumentally flawed to allow them to do their jobs, or they felt imposed upon by the CEO and couldn't get accurate information from their own managers.
A lot of effort is expended in the Kotaku article to go through things that are pretty well understood by the majority of the Star Citizen community:
CryEngine is not ideal but no other suitable engine existed at the time Star Citizen was born. Incorrect, they said they would have had to do the same work no matter what existing engine they chose. Thus, they should have MADE THEIR OWN. Like, something Chris had done in the past.
Global production and the formation of a new gaming studio are difficult things that have taken time to get into a good state.
Star Citizen is not other games. Elite: Dangerous is mentioned as a success in the article and it is suggested that Star Citizen should have followed its development route.
Elite: Dangerous has been criticized by its player base and some in the gaming media for its lack of content and gameplay. I believe that this deficiency resulted from the development process that Kotaku praises. Lol, SC has been criticized in the gaming media and its own player base for lack of content and gameplay. ED has 1000 times more gameplay than SC.
Kotaku also praised Frontier for getting a game out and for patching and improving it as time went on. However, it should be noted that the base game for Elite was expensive, as were the betas, and the ongoing expansions are each expensive as well. Often this patching and expansion is to add features that the game should have had in the beginning, and many players are upset that they are being charged an exorbitant cost to get what they should have had in the beginning. Lol again, THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT CHRIS ADMITTED HE WAS GOING TO DO. release a beta and add to it over time.
Star Citizen is constantly criticized for its business model but at the heart of it, it’s still just $45 USD for the game.
A lot of criticism is leveled at CIG in the article for trying to build a singleplayer game, a massive online universe, and operate a live product demoing the project all at once.
The fact is that Star Citizen couldn’t be built any other way. Untrue, the "new" road map is not what Chris had proposed. The money changed everything, and it shouldn't have. At all.
There are suggestions in the article that the singleplayer part should have been built first, released, and then used to build the online universe. This would have created a game that was built very specifically and narrowly for singleplayer and would have led to its own set of massive headaches trying to fix everything that was specifically built to work in singleplayer but would never work in multiplayer, and would likely have limited the long term scope of the online universe. How is this true at all? This is most certainly what should have happened because S42 would be out, in players hands, and the PU could have been made without all the extra problems and non sense. Did you even read the article? Doing them both at the same time wasted so much more time and money, they borrowed people and stretched everyone too thin, making both games suffer and neither are even close to being ready.
The other main topic being the live product. Yes, it is difficult having a live product and full scale development simultaneously. However, that $124 million doesn’t exist without it. This is a massive crowdfunded project but Kotaku seems to gloss over this. The money, this huge amount of money that no publisher would ever have given for this project, is contingent on a community that needs to be kept in the loop – just like a publisher would be. The benefits to this being a constant income that supports development without needing to take on significant debt, a large group of fans who will thoroughly play test for you allowing your QA resources to go further, a group of people who act somewhat as a publisher but also actually understand what you are trying to do and want to help.
A lot of criticism is leveled at Chris Roberts in this article for being overbearing, difficult to work with, and stubborn. Remember when I mentioned the issues with using former employees as sources?
My view of Chris Roberts is that of a visionary. Not a saint. You could call any developer a visionary, it doesn't make them a good visionary able to deliver anything. You have a vision? Guess what, you are a visionary! He is an incredibly talented game developer and director with a clear and unwavering vision of the universe he wants to create. His insistence on high quality, pushing the boundaries, and getting the most from people has led to groups of people, such as former employees, who view him as a tyrant. Then he is a tyrant. His insistence is on DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE or wasting everyone's time doing things the most inefficient way possible. Prove me wrong is ridiculous. It can only engender animosity when you tell your team they are wrong over and over when you haven't been in the industry for the last 10+ years.
I would much prefer someone who pushes people to do their best work, and often to try to accomplish things no one else has, over someone who gets along well with everyone but also accepts a lower standard of work. That is a good boss and not what Chris does... he directly addresses interns and low level artists directly, going over their managers heads. Can you imagine Steve Jobs calling Larry the night janitor and telling him he needs to vacuum his office better?
This is addressed in the article but it needs to be reiterated: Star Citizen is a project being done not because it is easy but because it is hard. Star Citizen is attempting to do things other games have never done, or never all in the same game. This is difficult, it causes tension and stress among the people doing the work. It leads to a long process of weeding out those people who can not or will not strive to consistently raise the bar for the quality of their work, or will not work with others effectively. This is utter . It creates a toxic environment, fear, uncertainty, blame shifting, and second guessing... Chirs tells you to do something impossible... you fail and work really hard to find someone else to blame when he starts yelling at you.
As an aside, I have noticed a lot of parallels between Chris Roberts and Elon Musk. lol
For the uninitiated, Elon Musk is the founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX. He is often criticized by those in the industries his companies serve (automobiles and rockets) for trying to do things in ways that are new/foreign or difficult. His companies tend to have an atmosphere of incredibly talented people working incredibly hard to do amazing things that no one else has done. There are also lots of former employees who complain that Tesla or SpaceX are too high pressure, too demanding. Seem familiar?
I can already hear people telling me, “But SpaceX and Tesla have actually done things! They have launched rockets, landed rockets, and produced incredible electric cars.” SpaceX formed in 2002 and Tesla in 2003. Both companies nearly collapsed entirely in the interim.
Elon Musk is involved in basically every design and engineering decision for Tesla’s vehicles and SpaceX’s rockets and spacecraft. Again, seem familiar?
Amazing things are hard and take time. And amazing leaders trust their leadership. THAT IS WHY THEY WERE HIRED LET THEM DO THEIR JOB OR FIRE THEM AND DO IT FOR THEM AND SAVE THE MONEY.
I would like to say, to sort of cap off my ramblings, that I am 100% confident that Star Citizen is possible to build. Wow, I am glad you think so, I guess it can be then. Will it be easy? Will it be done quickly? Will things always go smoothly? No, no, and no. Will they continues to follow Chris' fife music to the edge of the cliff and when he tells them to jump it's ok you can fly will they believe him? I guess so!
What Star Citizen promises to be, if it even comes somewhat close to its goals, is a universe whose like has never before been seen in gaming. Nice, reset those expectations guy! How much is somewhat? 30%? 50%? The really cool thing is that we get to watch it happen. We, too like watching this happen.
Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat
Banned
What does Chris Roberts interview look like when you take out the intervening article and focus just on what he said?
This.
THIS is what you think a "reasonable, well balanced and credible" leader of a multi-million dollar company that is trying to do things "openly" and NOT like the big, evil, smelly game publishers that Roberts so loathes... looks like?
Orlando?
Briguy?
Anybody?
This.
THIS is what you think a "reasonable, well balanced and credible" leader of a multi-million dollar company that is trying to do things "openly" and NOT like the big, evil, smelly game publishers that Roberts so loathes... looks like?
Orlando?
Briguy?
Anybody?
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Since when did just one system suffice?
Seriously - it wasn't so long ago you were saying the MVP was going to be all the original goals... now you've had some kind of briefing and the one system with 40 locations is GENUINELY what's launching? holy mother.... anyhow it appears the soft launch of the MVP continues. First we had Chris talking to the german magazine about how there were hundreds of hours of gameplay in Stanton and how it's 40 locations and all that planet surface area was so much game and now we're starting to get it from the unofficial sources.
With 3.0 pushed back to after Sq42 we can only hope it's a good movie so development can continue
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ps. that talk of management style scares the hell out of me. I've worked under two of those kind of managers and it was a nightmare both times - from spending half your job tidying up after their car crash efforts with clients to having months of work messed up in a way that will last a decade just so they could be involved.... managers need to remember what their job is or do a different one
The Chris Roberts character does not make me surprised. What makes me suprised is that there are individuals in our planet that still want to defend him and/or believe on him. But as even Trump and Jim Jones have/had followers and believers, I guess I shouldn't be suprised by that too.
Roberts shown many times, and now once again by his answers, that made people fools for years... pretending things that weren't true... talking about releases that clearly weren't coming in years, features that were "well-thought" but were never discussed before presented as strech goals, and pretending that things would come in a few months or some weeks, just to get their money, to sell ships or JPEG's, as the discussions around tech and the statements of Roberts/Zurovec and others in this interview demonstrated, where when reading you are able to infer what was the real company's situation/team's situation, etc, that were far from ready to do anything, but Roberts was telling people that the game was coming out, pretty much, in a few months or "in the next year".
Apparently a few noticed, but while trying to defend himself of the employee's critics, Roberts pretty much corroborated that all those statements were true, and that means that he has been lying to the public again and again.
And yet, people don't see where the scam is.
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Nostalgia's a funny thing. Once you strip away imprinting and associated memories, you're left with something that is less than the sum of its tangents. Chris Roberts has WC, and whatever games he's managed to get his name attached to, and the memories of many people for whom those games were their first "big space adventure." Those last three words are not meant as sarcasm - because everyone here probably has great memories of the first time they ventured into the vast unknown - whether it was trying to save civilization by finding a habitable star system in Starflight; navigating in Elite; playing WC; or flying a particularly frustrating escort mission in Tie Fighter.
Then there's SC. Built in part on a foundation of nostalgia, combined with big-dreamin' from CR himself. "Dreams. Dreams happen now." Chris is great at casting a wide net and selling people on the dream. This time - and maybe it's because he glossed over popular games that have come along since his last finished product and said to himself, "YES! That, but better!" - identifying elements that appealed to people - he may have overextended his reach. There's no doubt at this point that promises and scope are...a tall order to finish. The Kotaku article points to CR being aware of this. Even before this, talk of the MVP spoke to this awareness. But to now have it laid bare that he chose the wrong methods for getting where he wanted to be (remember, if development goes beyond 3 years, then the project gets stale, according to Roberts), and has had to walk things back (MVP - whatever shape that will take), makes people think.
Certainly the more skeptical crowd will read the article, and a few will smirk and say, "Ha! He burned 2+ years of funding, and we can't even be certain if he's found the *right* way to complete the project this time. Are we going to see a re-run of this in another 2+ years?" Those who believe that Chris - the designer of fond memories, and provider of dreams - can make this happen, will come away from the article and think he's now on the path to tame that dragon, and give everyone planets, mining, space malls, and a taste of what being a young gamer was like (again). Maybe, if SC is released, backers will find out if they really CAN "go home again."
What will the next few installments from Kotaku contain? Who knows? They may be spacing out certain articles to drop *after* CitizenCon, with this first one as a reminder that sand is running low in the hourglass and the proverbial worm of "noncommittal" games journalism turns.
For now, I'm seeing a project with a lot of obstacles. A lot of trailers. A lot of "soons" and "maybes." I can see (here and elsewhere) that there are conflicting takes on the articles that dropped today, and general anticipation (on all sides) of what CitizenCon will bring.
With more indie studios, early-access games, and bigger publishers filling the space genre, people will have options to find those games that appeal to what they like (RP, resource management, exploration, flight sim, etc.), and waiting for a "grand unified game" may test the limits of people's patience.
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I don't think it will crash and burn, just a little bit hot.
Look the top 1 mgmt are very very incompetent, the PM level is almost nonexistent. The blueprint design of the game was extremely poor from day one. You can't use the phrase "they are building a company!" sorry but that was mentioned nowhere in the project brief on the KS page.
When you start a new project you take everything known into consideration, infrastructure, organization and SOW. (scope of work)
You always plan so that if there are changes during the project you can change your organisation or infrastructure. It is vital that you keep you organisation open to changes and adaptable to ad-hoc.
To watch this show from the sidelines has been a excellent lesson to future PM's how to NOT manage a project, it's going to be a classroom showcase I will use as an example of how to mess up everything in a blink of an eye, because it was already dead from day one.
We need to tell it as it is, a disaster of epic proportions, 120 Million USD and very very little to show 5 years later. It's going to be hard for anyone involved in this project to benefit from it in a job interview. "so you worked on Star Citizen?"....silence..."eerrr mmhh yes I did a small part of the work" looks around "but you were the CEO of the project RIGHT"...."errr hmm uughh well that is something Derek Smart said ugghh errrrr actually it was mhy wife that ran the company".
Ok, I'm joking if you didn't noticed, but no one can use this as a positive unless they were artists, because until now that is all we have seen in abundance, concept art and ship modelling.
I absolutely agree, a managers job is to ask questions, and set the task of the day/month.
Are we on track? what do you need? are there any roadblocks? what is your plan to overcome them? why are you not working? (the last one was a joke, kind of...)
We just don't understand managers
Big Boss - I want this metrics stuff on my iPhone.
Blue Eyed Boy - we can do that! Give me five minutes and a Team!
Project Manager - Wooo! I have a Project!
Business Analyst - Well there's no budget for it
Lawyer - It's going to break a whole heap of laws!
Security Analyst - We've already blocked that functionality due to the Bosses previous concerns!
Technical Analyst - Yeah, and I made it work!
Implementer - Why do I only earn minimum wage?
Yet here you are..:back to do what you do best.
This quote from a film comes to mind:
"You say that so often, it must be exhausting living up to your expectations."
What did you think of the article Gord?
Coming from RSI you must know how it works, whenever someone mentioned Elite on the RSI forums, it got dumped in the katamari thread.
ProcGen is boring, SC will be much more, all handcrafted!! LMAO what happens now? Oh we got the best ProGen in the world, never done before blah blah blah......the only fidelity here that surpass anything is CR ego, however that one got plenty...
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I think he refused to read it a while back.
So I guess most of these articles will be coming out before citcon?
Not unless they publish them every day, or every other day.
It would be a nice thing to read weekly. Something to look forward to on Friday mornings.
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