The Star Citizen Thread v5
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In the end it won't matter. The whales will continue giving large amounts of cash for jpegs, and the faithful will continue as they have been. A game will be made, what it'll end up actually being is anyone's guess. CIG is too big to fail in the eyes of the faithful, so they will give their last penny before seeing even one of CIG's studio shut down. What it really comes down to is the version of the game they've got in their heads doesn't clash with whats out right now. Sure it's a bit boring, but look! There's a new patch on the horizon!
Lets get back to SC if all of you don't mind, I'm getting tired of the (drama)
Lets get back to SC if all of you don't mind, I'm getting tired of the (drama)
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Spot on.
Crowdfunding (and then pledges-er, I mean pre-purchases) took Chris Roberts across the Rubicon, and now, 4+ years later, it looks like gaming site are staring at the laurel wreath and whispering in his ear, "All fame is fleeting."
The RSI/CIG/Foundry studios must be feeling pressure to deliver something, ANYTHING, more tangible than trailers and QoL (for certain parameters of "Q") stuff to their backers and prove to the media that there's something substantial to this ever-growing timeline.
And if the media has no bearing on this project, and neither does outside opinion, then we wouldn't see the mess in the comments section of every mildly critical (and critical does not necessarily mean negative) article.
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That's that I figured. It' basically confirmed by Kotaku now.
The latest demo didn't impress me, I saw right through it. Just like the disappointing Morrow tour.
The main problem is, that there is still no honesty.
They try to drag everyone along instead of stating the real state of the project, the mistakes made, the amount of wasted money and how much they need in the upcoming years and the changes they plan to implement (including exchanging top personnel) to get it back on track. Then and only then IMHO there might be a slight chance to see a 2019-2020 release.
I don't see anything of the above happening and it might be way too late for that already.
It might not work either. "Reputation management" companies are pros in voting each other up and gaming reputation systems (see Reddit for a perfect example.) All I see come from this is increasing spam (fake content) in other Elite forum sections to prepare accounts for specific threads, while we lose the occasional SC backer, who found one of the few places where you can actually talk freely about Star Citizen. I think a proper terms of service change where commercial use of a forum is banned and will be charged with money for advertising is more appropriate. But I'm not here to discuss forum moderation, so feel free to remove this section of the post.https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/292441-Changes-to-the-Off-Topic-category-of-the-forums
I actually think this is not great, but I get why it had to be done...
If you go back to the Kickstarter promise timeline, Elite was released very late, and should have only had a 1 month Alpha and 1 month Beta phases. Frontier also used the Kickstarter money to leverage venture capital interest.
If you cast your mind back to just before, and just after launch, a lot of people were saying that Elite was 'unfinished' them. More had bought into the 'vertical slice' or 'these things are placeholder' arguments. And I do think a lot of people were surprised at what got released. Even though it was obvious nothing much would change from Gamma to 1.0.
As to whether RSI will have the cash to ever actually finish their magnum opus, well, that remains to be seen doesn't it? It is surprising that people are still throwing that much cash at the project. In the meantime, I'll be happy playing 'incomplete' Elite.
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You obviously follow SC far more closely than I. It was an outside impression looking in, that they seem to have more to show these days that actually feels like there is a tangible game somewhere, rather than just (all) flashy art and videos. <Shrug>
Bottom line for me is that both games have, and will disappoint in some aspects, both have the potential to amaze in others. It's also madness to want either to fail. Nor do I believe that either Roberts, or Braben, are scamming people - they do both seem passionate about what they do, even if delivery is a bit problematic.
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Ahh, the "stick the head in the sand and ignore the issues presented to me" defense. A classic from you Briguy, as to be expected.
Carry on being you, you are most amusing to watch defending the actions of Chris Roberts to the hilt.
I'm not sticking my head in the sand, I'm blatantly saying that I have no power over how someone runs their company and choose to spend my time/energy on other things that I can control; but continue to think that, I couldn't care less.
I never once defending the actions of CR, I have defended the actions of CIG as a whole which is a bit different than "defending the actions of Chris Roberts to the hilt".
Thanks for sharing the article
A lot of them is more down to CR, than crowdfunding. Plenty of other developers have down the crowd funding route that didn't devolve into offering every possible features to players.
Someone better tell those guys over at Infinity Battlescape. An probably at Hello Games as well because I very much doubt they spent anywhere near 500,000 on their game engines.
Game engine is code and with the right team, a 10 to 15 people, you can do a lot of coding for 500k in a year, by a lot, I mean you probably get a functioning game engine out of it.
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Now you know they've not just been concealing dumb self inflicted problems for two years but have deliberately given an unrealistic picture of progress to backers whilst blaming Derek and threatening the escapist do you think you've been wasting your time ?.
May be they should stop communicating an instead concentrate on getting their current code stabilise, and SQ42 out of the door and into the hands of players.
That could be an issue as to quote a recent article "there is no game".
Squadron 42 would have been a perfect project for a first game studio, a game consisting of 20-50 level telling a tight story about a war built mostly on an existing engine.
If they had focus on developing SQ42 and shipping that game, getting their pipeline setup, getting their studio up and running, putting in place a marketing team. Training up engineers on the Cryengine. This would have allowed the company to have grown organically.
I think that was the original long term aim SQ42 and then a MMO at a later date, CR let the money go to his head and pursue both at the same time, as well as trying to set up a world wide game studio and why all of this was happening, they brought in outside contractors to work on parts of the game that hasn't even been fully design yet.
If they had focus on developing SQ42 and shipping that game, getting their pipeline setup, getting their studio up and running, putting in place a marketing team. Training up engineers on the Cryengine. This would have allowed the company to have grown organically.
I think that was the original long term aim SQ42 and then a MMO at a later date, CR let the money go to his head and pursue both at the same time, as well as trying to set up a world wide game studio and why all of this was happening, they brought in outside contractors to work on parts of the game that hasn't even been fully design yet.
And honestly, I'm all for that. I don't care that it would/could take 10 or 20 years to make or how the product is made. Only thing I really care about is progress and there is progress be it minor or major; but I guess that's defending CRoberts...
Some backers of a certain age would not be happy with that. 20 years !
Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat
Banned
Yes, that's precisely what it is. Thanks for confirming the obvious though.
And who in their right *mind* is going to wait 10/20 years for a game to come out anyway? We're not talking about James Cameron and the creation of the movie Avatar* here, we're talking about a blooming *videogame*.
Please name me a game or even a movie that has come out in the last 20 years, which has taken over a decade to be in active development and production before release, and has gone on to be a success, even remotely?
*(The idea of the Avatar movie was thought up by Cameron in the early 1990's, but it was obvious he couldn't make the movie then with the available special effects technology. It was only towards the middle of the 2000's that he was able to see technology catch up with his "Vision" and it was only because he is a rather good director, had the best special effects houses basically break new ground in 3D effects (and almost $300 million dollars) that Avatar ended up being so successful. Chris Roberts is NOT James Cameron, in any way, shape or form.)
*Edit* As Dementropy rightly points out below, with regards to movies like Avatar or Star Wars, those are all financed privately through the studios own coffers, or even out of the director's own pocket.
Expecting the general public to keep the money tree going for Star Citizen for a decade or more is, quite frankly, stretching credibility beyond the breaking point.
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Even 10-20 years for a movie doesn't involve taking money from the audience directly before it is released. That, to me, is the major difference between Star Citizen/SQ42 and say, a James Cameron movie or Lucas (just to head that one off at the pass) release. Some people are fine with "however long it takes, so long as there is progress" or "you cannot rush perfection/I'd rather have a *great* game some out of this than a bare-bones product."
On the other side, the one where time does matter, people are aging. People are looking at the list of promises and the threshold for tolerance is being tested. Some people, to paraphrase Roger Murtaugh, are "getting too old for this stuff," and want to actually play a finished thing that somewhat resembles what they initially backed. And yes, to a degree, permissiveness is somewhat the same as support, when other people feel that they are not getting what they put money down for, in the first place.
On the other side, the one where time does matter, people are aging. People are looking at the list of promises and the threshold for tolerance is being tested. Some people, to paraphrase Roger Murtaugh, are "getting too old for this stuff," and want to actually play a finished thing that somewhat resembles what they initially backed. And yes, to a degree, permissiveness is somewhat the same as support, when other people feel that they are not getting what they put money down for, in the first place.
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First they appealed to the Wing Commander crowd by explicitly stating that the Star Citizen project is not about a MMO. For example I originally backed for the original Kickstarter pitch of a mission-based SP/MP campaign.
Then instead of continuing development of the originally pitched game ("one year already done"), they deliberately targeted different audiences to get much more money: for example the Freelancer crowd (guess what the first "ship advertisements" were about), then the MMO crowd, later the FPS crowd (which backfired heavily).
Now these crowds outnumber any original backers and everyone of them is dreaming their specific game. That's how they ended up with promising two or more games at once. Because all those conflicting concepts will never fit into one single game.
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It's a ridiculous proposal anyway. It's like promising the BDSSE for the C64 and then releasing it at the same time as Microsoft finally got Freelancer out.
In video games you can't take much longer than three years or your stuff gets outdated quickly.
Just imagine someone wanting to save PC gaming with a goal of 2040. Very likely PCs do not even exist anymore in 2040.
No. It's just ridiculous. If Roberts had ever even hinted that the game was going to take that long, he'd never have got the funding in the first place. Not that there is any prospect of development continuing over that timescale, even now. The 'whales' aren't going to carry on supporting an increasingly-outdated project forever, and eventually the inevitable refunds, along with continuing development costs will exhaust whatever funds are currently left. I'd say that CIG have 3 more years at the very outside before they face oblivion, if they can't get something out the door and into the market.
Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat
Banned
More balanced and completely unbiased commentary of that Kotaku article from folks that know what's really going on with Star Citizen...
+1 to the above well thought post and one I tried to pen in the past and think I just gave up as not worth the effort. But want to write a bit today after reading the Kotaku article and some good responses here.
A lot of CIG fans and even the Kotaku article also get the scope of Elite totally wrong (probably just because of what they launched with at v1.0). Even before ED kickstarted, FD already spoke periodically of the next iteration of Elite, with ideas for players to start on foot with 100 Cr and have to work up to just get a ship to start flying. EVA, sneaking onto other ships on foot, big cities with NPC walking around, atmospheric planets, 1:1 scale galaxy built on current understanding of stellar processes, with accurately rotating and orbiting bodies that players can free-roam, all that was in the plan from the start of ED but not SC. FD just put them in a logical order and scheduled based on needed precedence, complexity, affordability and priority. FD didn't have the money to build a game for 5 years before releasing it, and it wasn't their strategy for growing the business either.
CR original pitch was a staged approach very alike to ED's. He changed that at some indeterminate point to a big-bang release. He has now walked back to an MVP release. Is an MVP release really able to also deliver everything at once as we so often hear from SC evangelists?
CR lack of self-control and focus on achievable roadmap/timeline are exemplified by the 1886 incident in the Kotaku article. He sidetracked his own team from what they were focused on delivering to spend months in R&D for a new, undiscussed feature of questionable value when so much basic stuff is undone and what is there is horribly broken.
It is also surprising CIG experienced game dev managers at the start of the project let common and understood team issues take root deep enough to take years to correct. My guess is that disarray would still reign supreme if it were not for Erin Roberts.
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