SCs not a scam, its just a badly run project that needs to prostitute itself to survive and now lives in a cycle it can't escape from.
Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12
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That's not quite how it went, at least from what I remember.
The trailer was a small part of it, sure. But the fact that it was Chris Roberts was also a part of it, because most people (including myself) were aware of Wing Commander and Privateer, and unaware of Roberts' history. Hollywood is well aware of the inherant attraction of nostalgia, and Roberts has learned his Hollywood lessons well.
What really sold Star Citizen to the average backer, again including myself, was that Chris Roberts lied through his teeth about the current state of Star Citizen and Squadron 42. He claimed that he and "his team" had been working for a year on the game, to the point where he was able to present a demo with actual game play... as opposed to a Machinima video made in CryEngine 3. All he needed was a few million to polish the game to AAA quality.
If he had went on Kickstarter and said "I got this neat idea. Here's an animatic of what I want the game to look like. I have no team, no prototype. Nothing but my name and a sweet deal with CryTech," I really doubt he would've gotten much funding, especially to the tune of millions of dollars.
Ok where is the space sim part Art Sc ? Actually it’s a walking and screenshot simulator..? Maybe you could tell me this. You could have the best graphics in a game but if the game is boring and buggy like SC is the graphics are useless even the 50 player count
I am quite curious about FP gameplay. I guess it will be slightly less fidelitious, but with more gameplay and about 99.99 % less crashes/clips.
Chris Roberts, Wing Commander and that demo especially would have sold me. I always preferred Elite to Wing Commander, so went to the ED KS first, by the time I started to look at SC they were into the stretch goals and I just had a bad feeling they weren't costed through. Trouble is I had a career change from accountancy into software (not games) and it just did not feel right. I remember sitting there for around six to twelve months thinking should I have backed this? Several times I went to pull the trigger and reluctantly put the safety. The stretch goals grew and with it came the realization that gut feel was right. That infamous demo was presented to suggest the flight model was done, large ships were a thing, so all that was needed to build it out, something that seemed entirely possible in two years, especially when contrasted with ED's very obvious sticking plaster tech demo created during the KS.
A KS is all about selling a vision, in ED's case it seemed like very much a vision of intent. SC always seemed like it was more this is what we have from twelve months development, we now want to take it to market. We now know the truth! I think there was a vision to create a game, but as the money poured in and the realization that each stretch goal or imagined new aspect of the game would cause the coffers to tinkle with more gold coins they added more. SC became the game where everything you imagined in a space game was suddenly possible, the BDSSE to coin the phrase that was used. Control was lost to a mountain of technical debt and game concepts that they had no plan or design as to implement, let alone what the budget would be for them.
For me it wasn't a scam to begin with. If you look at how much has been spent and how much more money will be needed, given the gap between how much is promised and what is currently in game after eight years. The funding needs to continue for a considerable period, if you go on the number of systems then its centuries. The number of players in an instance is nowhere near what was suggested etc. Given the unfulfilled promises, what is being sold currently is funding the delivery of prior promises, something that hints at a Ponzi scheme. If you continue to take money when you know know you cannot make something for me there are hints of a scam. Whether this is deemed a Ponzi scheme or a scam is a question for the authorities. The longer this continues without a delivery of the promises, the gap between the revenue and what should reasonably produced with that money is growing. The money in the project for a game is taking it into the largest game budgets ever, that is likely to make it more likely it becomes an issue.
Oops starting to approach MTBFritz lengths time to stop.
A KS is all about selling a vision, in ED's case it seemed like very much a vision of intent. SC always seemed like it was more this is what we have from twelve months development, we now want to take it to market. We now know the truth! I think there was a vision to create a game, but as the money poured in and the realization that each stretch goal or imagined new aspect of the game would cause the coffers to tinkle with more gold coins they added more. SC became the game where everything you imagined in a space game was suddenly possible, the BDSSE to coin the phrase that was used. Control was lost to a mountain of technical debt and game concepts that they had no plan or design as to implement, let alone what the budget would be for them.
For me it wasn't a scam to begin with. If you look at how much has been spent and how much more money will be needed, given the gap between how much is promised and what is currently in game after eight years. The funding needs to continue for a considerable period, if you go on the number of systems then its centuries. The number of players in an instance is nowhere near what was suggested etc. Given the unfulfilled promises, what is being sold currently is funding the delivery of prior promises, something that hints at a Ponzi scheme. If you continue to take money when you know know you cannot make something for me there are hints of a scam. Whether this is deemed a Ponzi scheme or a scam is a question for the authorities. The longer this continues without a delivery of the promises, the gap between the revenue and what should reasonably produced with that money is growing. The money in the project for a game is taking it into the largest game budgets ever, that is likely to make it more likely it becomes an issue.
Oops starting to approach MTBFritz lengths time to stop.
Viajero
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I would argue that a project where its head knows full well he can not deliver what he describes and sells, but continues selling it for years anyways, is not just a "badly run" project (that aswell) but it may have solidly entered customer deception and willful misrepresentation territory. One or two slips can be explained away by incompetence. When the pattern is recurrent over almost a decade we are talking about something else.
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Either way its bad, I'm not trying to excuse it- people should have known by now what CR is like with no controls or No people to smack his knuckles now and again.
I dunno, feels more like a sex slaver holding the passports of citizens to The Promised Land to ransom. The amounts they have to pay to get there are about right too.
I don't know....I just feel that CR has lost his drive to the game, and that he's caught up in the PR and not actually sitting down and tapping out the goodies really. Isn't Sandi off doing films now? Seems the lower minions have been left to fend for themselves as CR dials in the dream.
Is it really delivering a patch when 50-90% of its pertinent content is indefinitely deferred?
The truth is that each patch has been gutted prior to deployment. That's not delivery.
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Its called agile management.....or something
You mean it got stale?
What makes me think SC is a scam are the little things. Too many patterns eludes to lack of substance on the part of the man in charge and no direction towards completing a product, this while they continue to openly recieve and encourage people to fund them is dishonest and dare I say, scamming people off their money.
The scammy thing started with the kickstarter video. At the time, I thought it was at best a rendered video made in-engine. It was too smooth, too polished to be an alpha level sample, too clean of glitches and appeared as if the game was near complete. I filed it under the same group as what EA and Ubisoft does. We found out later it was just a video, there was no game the video was based on. the assets used in the video made it into SC not the other way round. Scam, in hindsight.
The sand worm thing was the first real redflag for me. it was obvious to me the worm wouldn't be in game. Again, too polished and too cinematic to make me thing the whole thing was a real in game mission. "Already in game" it was not, unless you can show a screenshot of it in 2020. Scam.
Biggest red flag for me was Squadron 42 under development. I gave ti the benefit of the doubt for all the motion capture with A-list starts giving it a lot of credibility. All we ever saw of SQ42 were the cutscenes, eventhough they keep saying it'll spoil the game. The game mechanics, assets, carrier, start system, how many missions, were never shown. These assets wouldn't ahve spoiled anything and a WIP snapshot would have infinitely proved it was in development but nothing. Then there was news CIG was working on the design docs for SQ42. So...they've been developing SQ42 without a design document? Or is it more likely it wasn't being developed in the first place. Scam.
There were so many ther things. I find it both amusing and frustrating every year when CIG announce some features like face over IP that they had never mentioned in development before. The latest one is ToW. You gotta ask yourself, where did CIG get teh man hour to develop these things before they revealed it to the public, especially when they usually said everything else is delayed to work on SC or SQ42 during the same period. It looks too muhc like distraction tactics.
So far more than a few SC supports had said, in this thread and earlier version, the roadmap shouldn't be trusted for the date estimate. Other SC suporters had also said we can't qoute devs at CIG because only CR knows what's going on and he's the only one that can be trusted when it comes to SC. Yet other SC supports had also said something along the line of "everyone knows you can't believe everything CR says". They all said it in one version of this thread or another, so what gives, it's a convienient catch 22. Who can we actually qoute from CIG, who can we trust? If we can't trust anyone from CIG, even regarding dates and features in the works, doesn't that make it all lies? we're supposed to assume it's all lies? Doesnt' make it a scam? Because they banking on their supporters hoping there will be a finished product someday.
Further funding will ub crease scope, and scope will not affect developement. That should be the only redflag anyone needs -_-'
MTBFritz, I love you man I'm trying to walk in your footsteps.
There was an MMORPG in development called Dragon Empires, by Codemasters. I was followng its developemtna dn was looking forward to playing it, way back when. I was disappoined when it was canceled, there's even a wiki entry for it check out why it was canceled. Now compared that kind of accountability to SC.
Nah, agile is just a method for picking priorities. Like all other technical terms, it's one that CI¬G is using incorrectly because they have no idea what it means.
What it's actually called is “stringing people along.” Known in some circles as “scamming them.”
"on behalf of something that is not them personally" wrong, it directly attacks/endanger their future pleasure.
SC is in alpha. Backers love the game and want the game to be a success because they can't find an equivalent game on the market. A lot had tried ED/NMS but didn't get hooked on those games. When SC will be released, a success = good financial state and more evolutions to come for SC. Accusations and bad press can mitigate/destroy the potential success of the game. No success = no more evolutions and less players in the game to play with for the backers. So an accusation of scam for instance have a direct impact on the potential future pleasure of actual backers = strong defensive reaction.
An accusation of scam is not a light one. Currently, a lot of potential players just know the game as a scam and will not try it at release, there are induced losses. If proven, CR will go to jail and the game will die. A lot of actual players will just see the game they love to play close with no similar game to play. So even if the scam is true, you will find backers defending the game because that's currently the only space sim they like to play.
It's the same for all projects in development. A scamming charge, even false, can kill a project.
If tomorrow a false embezzlement charge against David Braben starts crawling the Internet and you know it's false, you will have extreme defensive reactions. Why ? Because there's a risk that it will delay or kill Odyssey.
If tomorrow, several video leaks of Odyssey show us a collection of atrocious bugs FD had during it's alpha phase, you will have extreme defensive reactions. Why ? Because it will harm the potential success of Odyssey. Less succes = less money for the next evolution (perhaps no evolution at all in the future...).
They really can't in any way that matters, especially not in relation to the real threats: the company developing it and its leadershpi.
If the scam is true, what they like to play will never happen. That leaves nothing to defend except the indefensible.
No and no, in that order.
No and no, in that order.
The actual reactions in those cases would be “oh? well, hope that gets sorted then…” and then life goes on. The potential, undetermined, and undeterminable success of a game's DLC does not create an unhinged emotional response in stable and sensible people. There is nothing to be defensive about because stable and sensible people do not make their personal well-being contingent on an entertainment product.
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Tehy already Collected more than 300 M enough to make multiple AAA games, I don't think the financial danger could come from some random people commenting on the internet.
For potential player thanfully they are doing freefly so anyone could see for themself what a bugg mess this game is...
No because you will have a lot of SC "fanboys" that will propagate the video and make nasty jokes. And you'll find that unfair from people who don't even play the game.
Someone missed offlinegate, the Fleet Carrier saga and the 786423 reaction threads to the Odyssey "reveal" if they thing ED is a defensive cult. This thread is about SC, we have multiple entire sections to talk &$%^ about ED, and believe me, we do, just not here as we have so much to rant about that we'd sidetrack every single conversation otherwise. It may seem unbelievable if you only read this thread, but the game whose official forums this is gets slammed regularly by its players, including a fair few denizens of this thread. Say what you want about FD, but their moderation policy is pretty generous seeing what they let go about their own game and company.
If Odyssey turned out to be a disaster? My money would be on half the community here laughing hysterically and shouting loudly how they said so all along.
If Odyssey turned out to be a disaster? My money would be on half the community here laughing hysterically and shouting loudly how they said so all along.