The moderation policies of this forum actually preclude me from giving a full and detailed explanation of my opinion of youtubers like that. Suffice to say that I think channels which deliver deliberately misleading content to that degree should be permanently banned, it's an utter disgrace.
I mean, that's not merely an over-enthusiastic fan ballooning about future content. That is someone who has carefully edited together in-game footage (the first minute) with footage from a con presentation showing content which isn't even close to being integrated in the game and then delivers a voiceover as if the whole thing represents current live gameplay. That's without even getting into his intro talking about what can be done in all of the places that exist only as circles on a map as of today.
I couldn't get past the second paragraph:
Whatever else people might say about him, Chris Roberts doesn't have a humble bone in his body. His entire career is founded on an almost maniacal devotion to self-aggrandisment.
Yes. Released because they weren't under the directorship of a control freak who is incapable of letting people do the jobs he hires them for.
See this is what I really don't get about you and your seeming confidence in this project (and note please, I'm not trying to turn this 'personal' because I'm not about to insult you here...) You're clearly an intelligent person but you seem to have something of a blind spot where Chris Roberts and his impact on this project is concerned.
Roberts has a long history of over-committing and under-delivering. There are accounts from people who have worked with him over a 20+ year period, not only the 'disgruntled former employees' that he characterised former CIG employees as when they criticised him, but going all the way back to colleagues from his Origin days. Just one of them was Warren Spector, a man who managed to deliver a game that is widely recognised to be a genuine milestone within the canon of PC gaming (Deus Ex) whilst working for one of the most dysfunctional game development companies that has ever existed (Ion Storm) which was headed by one of the few people in the industry that could be considered to be a bigger megalomaniac than Roberts himself, John Romero.
I think it's pretty safe to say he is in a far better position to make informed comments than you or I. There are many other people in the industry who have expressed the same opinion, in fact it's much harder to find someone in the industry who doesn't express that opinion.
Every single game that Roberts has been involved with, either as an employee or later with his own company, suffered from a battle between his 'vision' and the pubisher's need to ship a product within the timescales that had been agreed. Finding the balance between those two fundamentally conflicting forces is pretty much the single most important skill that a good project manager has; they need to be able to recognise the difference between things that are critical and those which are desirable and be capable of making tough decisions when the conflict between content and time reaches a tipping point.
The closest that Roberts has come to what he is doing with CIG previously was when he set up his own studio to develop Starlancer and Freelancer, both of which were to be published by Microsoft.
Although Starlancer was nominally a Digital Anvil game, most of the actual development work was done by Warthog who were headed up by Erin, the only member of the CIG team who does actually have a reputation for delivering games on time and within budget. As far as I recall, Starlancer was delivered broadly on time and it wasn't a bad game. Publishers happy.
Freelancer was developed in-house by Digital Anvil with Chris in the driving seat. It suffered from massive feature creep, was planned to deliver gameplay which the technology of the time struggled to deliver (let me know if any of this sounds familiar...) and was delayed again and again because Chris refused to compromise and just carried on designing his dream game despite the increasing body of evidence that it could never be released in the form that he imagined. That only ended when his despairing publisher actually bought his company out from under him and kicked him out of the direct production chain into a 'consultancy role', which can be broadly defined as 'sit over there burbling away whilst we get on with making a computer game'.
This time there is no publisher involved to jerk his chain. In Chris's head there is also no money problem because his funding model consists of thinking of a vague gameplay idea, getting his artists to knock up a 'concept ship', selling what is literally a dream to people for real cash and then using that cash to fund the next round of dreamcrafting. He has actually said openly and bluntly that it doesn't matter how long it all takes because he doesn't have to answer to a publisher, seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that the reason for that is he has real people paying him up-front for a game which most of them expect they will be able to play before they're in their dotage.
Even a buy-out looks unfeasible in the event that things do reach a crisis point because the way the game has been 'developed' so far mean that even if any potential buyer put a complete block on any new content at all being added prior to release they would have to find a way of funding the significant period of development needed to address the enormous technical debt already present. Most of the concept ships themselves, plus literally all of the gameplay loops and mechanics required to make use of them (colonisation now for God's sake!!!) are still to be created, plus all of the current assets that so much time has been spent on would be between three and five years old with even a 2020 release (which itself would be absurdly optimistic, 2022 is more realistic) and so would need reworking, plus the mo-cap would be five years old and would need reworking, etc. etc. All whilst paying a huge development team. Even if the rights for the game and all existing development assets were sold for a penny it's difficult to see how someone could come in, fund all of that and then make a profit on sales after release (bearing in mind how many potential players have already spent all that they will be spending) without moving to the most exploitative kind of EA sales model that it's possible to imagine, or a subscription model which would provoke a backlash the likes of which has never been seen.
So that's what we have. A game that is ultimately under the complete control of someone whose entire track record would suggest has literally no chance at all of delivering what he is promising and which, unlike all of his previous endeavors, doesn't have any obvious deus ex machina waiting in the wings to either force his hand or deliver a rescue when required. It doesn't matter how many talented people he has working for him because as the Jennisson letter indicates, he isn't giving them sufficient control over their areas of expertise to actually use their talents to best effect. You can hire the best chef in the world but if you're going to try to cook your own dinner and then ask him to season it for you, you're not getting the benefit of his skills.
There's a saying in business which I think Chris would do well to remember. The fish rots from the head.
