Star Citizen Discussions v7

[MarktJones]

So am I right they they showed a video most of which was a ship flying through a city you wouldn't be able to fly through and a loading screen?

 

[Ian Phillips]

Thats enough everyone.

Elite Dangerous forum is that way ======>

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

So am I right they they showed a video most of which was a ship flying through a city you wouldn't be able to fly through and a loading screen?

Yes, and apparently it is true evidence of development of the game, despite actual release not being released for two years, still being in very deep pre-alpha and buggy, and PG cities having tons of other demos outside SC for years.

But I will just guess I don't understand what gamers want.

 

[frostypaw]

Edit2: You want a timeline? I give it about 5-6 more years until initial release, if I follow the normal release schedule of games launched so far.

This is one of the new tactics - claim that 5-6 years more is not only something that has always been obvious to everyone but also entirely normal and hence those who didn't entirely expect that from the original launch are ignoramuses who know nothing about game development.

We have seen this before, and with 6 threads behind us there are legions of SC fanbois who've come here like yourself telling us that we're all baddies and wrong and that development of the tools they need to start building the 'verse are almost done now and we'll shortly be seeing loads of content with loads of planets and loads of systems for years now - the only interesting alteration is that's gone from "within the next year or two" to "maybe in about 5-6 years"

That should ring alarm bells even for the faithful

 

[VidarSnipes]

I have player around 3 hours of PU in total, and I had fun for about three minutes, the rest was spent phasing through the airlock wall and strolling around in vacuum while wearing street clothes, trying to navigate Mustang's interior and failing (and falling out of it), dying after travelling in going-whooosh-through-space-fast mode, fighting AI whose sole fighting strategy was flying into my ship, or seeing sod-all because of g-force screen filter obscuring everything. I'd like to play a game from all of the CIG's videos, whatever it's called, it looks nice.

 

[dreamer1986]

This is one of the new tactics - claim that 5-6 years more is not only something that has always been obvious to everyone but also entirely normal and hence those who didn't entirely expect that from the original launch are ignoramuses who know nothing about game development.

We have seen this before, and with 6 threads behind us there are legions of SC fanbois who've come here like yourself telling us that we're all baddies and wrong and that development of the tools they need to start building the 'verse are almost done now and we'll shortly be seeing loads of content with loads of planets and loads of systems for years now - the only interesting alteration is that's gone from "within the next year or two" to "maybe in about 5-6 years"

That should ring alarm bells even for the faithful

What new tactic? That's just my estimation, and it doesn't ring any alarm bells, for me at least. Star Citizen is known that is going to take a long time until release, no surprises there, and I've known this since 2014. I hope that SQ 42 gets released in a year or two, that seems more likely.

And like I said, I can't claim I'm even a "SC fanboy", but I can't just accept unjust criticism and general rudeness towards ambitious and hard working people. Yes, you are baddies, and you have managed to steer the direction in this thread only towards the negative, and pushed away the people that had something good to say.

 

[Cotic]

This is one of the new tactics - claim that 5-6 years more is not only something that has always been obvious to everyone but also entirely normal and hence those who didn't entirely expect that from the original launch are ignoramuses who know nothing about game development.

We have seen this before, and with 6 threads behind us there are legions of SC fanbois who've come here like yourself telling us that we're all baddies and wrong and that development of the tools they need to start building the 'verse are almost done now and we'll shortly be seeing loads of content with loads of planets and loads of systems for years now - the only interesting alteration is that's gone from "within the next year or two" to "maybe in about 5-6 years"

That should ring alarm bells even for the faithful

Indeed. There was a time that saying the game would release in 2020 was guaranteed to wind up the subreddit, people used to say 2020 and it this tongue in cheek jest. So strange to think that 2024 is apparently more of a realistic outlook...

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

What new tactic? That's just my estimation, and it doesn't ring any alarm bells, for me at least. Star Citizen is known that is going to take a long time until release, no surprises there, and I've known this since 2014. I hope that SQ 42 gets released in a year or two, that seems more likely.

And like I said, I can't claim I'm even a "SC fanboy", but I can't just accept unjust criticism and general rudeness towards ambitious and hard working people. Yes, you are baddies, and you have managed to steer the direction in this thread only towards the negative, and pushed away the people that had something good to say.

It should ring alarm bells, because CIG does not have infinite sources of financing. That's long and short of it.

 

[dreamer1986]

It should ring alarm bells, because CIG does not have infinite sources of financing. That's long and short of it.

160 million dollars is not pocket change. But even then, when SQ42 will get released they will get a little more money to continue development of SC.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

160 million dollars is not pocket change. But even then, when SQ42 will get released they will get a little more money to continue development of SC.

They are out of most of that money (source: their own financial reports). They have few hundreds left, which means basically one year and maybe half.

Also they need SC to be at descent level to sell SQ42. That's not gonna happen for more than year.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Indeed. There was a time that saying the game would release in 2020 was guaranteed to wind up the subreddit, people used to say 2020 and it this tongue in cheek jest. So strange to think that 2024 is apparently more of a realistic outlook...

Its not an honest realistic outlook. Its just pushing it for enough over the horizon they wont get bitten in the rear in the near future again.

 

[DLewth]

This is one of the new tactics - claim that 5-6 years more is not only something that has always been obvious to everyone but also entirely normal and hence those who didn't entirely expect that from the original launch are ignoramuses who know nothing about game development.

We have seen this before, and with 6 threads behind us there are legions of SC fanbois who've come here like yourself telling us that we're all baddies and wrong and that development of the tools they need to start building the 'verse are almost done now and we'll shortly be seeing loads of content with loads of planets and loads of systems for years now - the only interesting alteration is that's gone from "within the next year or two" to "maybe in about 5-6 years"

That should ring alarm bells even for the faithful

Hey guys, I just figured it out: CR has invented actual relativistic space travel! If he's moving at 99.9999926% the speed of light, it explains how his original 3.0 release date turned into over a year - he was right all along, and it's just time dilation!

And to think I mocked his grasp of physics.

Oh look, more rum.

 

[frostypaw]

What new tactic? That's just my estimation, and it doesn't ring any alarm bells, for me at least. Star Citizen is known that is going to take a long time until release, no surprises there, and I've known this since 2014. I hope that SQ 42 gets released in a year or two, that seems more likely.

The thing is why should your new estimate be right when all the previous serious fan's (whether you are one or not) estimates were wrong. Year in year out the estimate has been "in a few years" which has now increased to "in 5 years" - where is there a single shred of evidence that in four years time the estimate won't be "in 7 years" following the current trend.

$160m is a lot but as simple maths can demonstrate it's not a lot considering the size of the project staff and the famous actors and mocap expenses - once all that's figured in it's likely that most of that money has been used up and with the moneygrabs like CitizenCon steadily making less money and funding slowing down it becomes increasingly worrying for those of us who REALLY want to see a game out that the money will run out before they even get close to what was originally promised right back at the Kickstarter. We want that game - I really want a Sq42 flavour cheesy-fun scripted retro shoot'n'betray - the concern you read here isn't people being 'bad' and hating on it all, just hating on what's become of what once seemed quite imminent and doable - nobody likes watching something they were looking forwards to fall apart.

Now we're looking at several years more until Sq42 (the list of requirements for Sq42 vs current development say we're a long way off) and by that time everyone interested will have already bought it by doing the pre-order, or moved onto other games which offer the same experiences. There might be no more money from it so relying on it to complete the project is dangerous.

All this against the backdrop of CR having once said they have more than enough to complete both games and all the kickstarter goals AND him saying more money and staff would mean the game would get completed quicker despite all the kickstarter goals... now he's saying they don't have enough money to do it at all and that's scary and should be to anyone who wants to see these games finished

 

[VidarSnipes]

160 million dollars is not pocket change. But even then, when SQ42 will get released they will get a little more money to continue development of SC.

Two things, first: CIG's financials in UK are available online, so you can see how much money they spend there. There are some strange things happening there that makes sense to accountants only, but if I'm understanding it correctly their costs were 17.2 million pounds for half a company (the Citizencon 2016 slide had 191 people in Manchester to 363 in total) in 2016, and 14.5 million quid in 2015. If we assume that the exchange rate in 2016 was 1.35 and 1.49 in 2015, (guesstimate based on the rate at the start and end of the year), we get $23,220,000 for the UK branch in 2016, and $21,605,000 in 2015, so $44,825,000 for UK branch in two years, or $89,650,000 if we extrapolate that to the total spending all around the world in those two years. Also this year is almost at the end, and if the situation was identical The latter number might be underestimated, because any increase in workforce or other spending in UK would be eaten by the fall in the pound value, but that effect isn't there for the wider world.
Their profits were quite consistent at around $36 million per year. This year might be worse by 2-3 million, but it's hard to say without seeing what's ready for the holidays.

TL;DR of point one - $160 mil is not pocket change, but it's not that much if you take their spending into account.

Second point: as far as I remember, SQ42 is supposed to share a lot of technology with SC proper, so I wouldn't be so sure in predicting that it will show up soon(-ish). Also they have 18 or something hours of motion capture data, and from what I've heard it's really hard to process in general. Also, I'd guess that at least five hundred thousand people own SQ42 already, and a similar game from a successful franchise, COD:IW wasn't really that successful either, with around 500-600 thousand copies available on Steam, so I don't know, 1.5 million for PC sales in total?

TL;DR of the efortpost - financials really should worry CIG, especially if the development is supposed to take another half a decade.

 

[Cotic]

Its not an honest realistic outlook. Its just pushing it for enough over the horizon they wont get bitten in the rear in the near future again.

Yeah I know, I was being sarcastic. I forget how that doesn't come over in text sometimes.

 

[xyphic]

160 million dollars is not pocket change. But even then, when SQ42 will get released they will get a little more money to continue development of SC.

$160m is certainly not pocket change, and should be enough to produce a good game. However, given the levels of staffing over the past 5 years we can infer that -- assuming they burn money at a rate that's comparable to other game developers -- they don't have a lot of that money left. Even if they're being really efficient with their costs, the best case is that they need around $3.5m revenue *per month* to continue to break even ($4.5m if you use industry figures), and they're not getting close to that most months.

Now, I'm not one of those people who thinks that they're literally on the verge of bankruptcy, but I do think that internally there *has* to be a focus on delivery. Concept sales and conventions will provide temporary revenue boosts, but while that cash balance is being inexorably eroded by time, they really do *need* to get either Squadron 42 or Star Citizen out of the door, and when they do it *has* to be good because their costs aren't going to stop at the point of delivery. They will still have several chapters of Squadron 42 to produce, ongoing server and maintenance costs, and a *lot* of technical debt still to service in the MMO portion (because they've promised a lot, and have yet to implement even a fraction of it).

My scepticism comes from the knowledge of how technically challenging a lot of what CIG intend to do actually is. What they've shown us so far is but a tiny portion of the game as scoped. I'm not a believer in the "jesus patch" where they've got all this stuff implemented but aren't showing it yet -- CR *loves* to show off, so it'd be in our faces if it existed. Time is simply against CIG at this point, and the question is whether they'll manage to implement something that's saleable before the money runs out. I hope so. I'm not confident, but I hope so.

 

[DLewth]

Two things, first: CIG's financials in UK are available online, so you can see how much money they spend there. There are some strange things happening there that makes sense to accountants only, but if I'm understanding it correctly their costs were 17.2 million pounds for half a company (the Citizencon 2016 slide had 191 people in Manchester to 363 in total) in 2016, and 14.5 million quid in 2015. If we assume that the exchange rate in 2016 was 1.35 and 1.49 in 2015, (guesstimate based on the rate at the start and end of the year), we get $23,220,000 for the UK branch in 2016, and $21,605,000 in 2015, so $44,825,000 for UK branch in two years, or $89,650,000 if we extrapolate that to the total spending all around the world in those two years. Also this year is almost at the end, and if the situation was identical The latter number might be underestimated, because any increase in workforce or other spending in UK would be eaten by the fall in the pound value, but that effect isn't there for the wider world.
Their profits were quite consistent at around $36 million per year. This year might be worse by 2-3 million, but it's hard to say without seeing what's ready for the holidays.

TL;DR of point one - $160 mil is not pocket change, but it's not that much if you take their spending into account.

Second point: as far as I remember, SQ42 is supposed to share a lot of technology with SC proper, so I wouldn't be so sure in predicting that it will show up soon(-ish). Also they have 18 or something hours of motion capture data, and from what I've heard it's really hard to process in general. Also, I'd guess that at least five hundred thousand people own SQ42 already, and a similar game from a successful franchise, COD:IW wasn't really that successful either, with around 500-600 thousand copies available on Steam, so I don't know, 1.5 million for PC sales in total?

TL;DR of the efortpost - financials really should worry CIG, especially if the development is supposed to take another half a decade.

There is something very odd about the SC companies. OK, there are tax reasons for having one in each country but multiple ones? It sounds like they're playing Three-card Monte with the money.

 

[Viajero]

Rant time.


No. It's a historically proven fact. It's no more rude than saying that trees are useless babysitters. Every project he has been on has wholly and completely proven that he lack those abilities and that his mouth would give Jupiter an inferiority complex.


That was 27 years ago. It also almost ruined Origin (twice) because of the massive cost overruns and horribly bad management. It was pure chance that it happened to come at a point in time where they could slap on a cheap DLC that took advantage of new PC tech that made it sell a lot more and make the numbers go into the black. Oh, and Chris himself only did a small portion of Wing Commander.

No. Chris deserves no respect for the same reason that people stopped respecting Peter Molyneux, only he's much worse. As much as he over-promised, at least Molyneux delivered something. Chris has a long history of overpromising and then not delivering at all, across multiple industries. He deserves no respect for the same reason people stopped respecting John Romero, only much worse. As much as he had a huge ego, at least Romero had actually defined an entire genre and been part in designing two of the top-ten most influential game(s) of the last 30 years, and then stumbled when he was given free reign. He still understands good game design and often does very informed (and informative) talks on the topic. Chris has only ever done a mashup of existing games, and then copied that one game four times over. He has been given free reign half a dozen times and keeps falling on his face every time, and nothing he has ever been involved with has had good game design — indeed, he never even talks about it other in the vaguest and most incoherent terms. Chris deserves no respect for the same reason people stopped respecting Tim Schafer, only much worse. As much as Schafer was bad with money and couldn't make his mind up as far as scope goes, at least he also released something, did something he knew how to do, and demonstrated some creativity. All Chris's work is derivative; pretty much all of it is economically disastrous; and he's even less capable of making up his mind. Compared to Schafer, his back-catalogue is also ancient, absolutely minuscule, and not all that relevant to the evolution of games — Chris simply lacks the breadth, depth, and continuous history to have that kind of history to fall back on.

Ultimately, Chris deserves no respect because he's fundamentally a dishonest person — in particular, he's dishonest about his own competence and achievements. Even going back as far as WC1, there is this funny anecdote (retold in a book on the beginnings of modern PC gaming in the early 90s — I'll try to dig up the name) about Chris prancing up and down COMDEX or CeBit or some other large trade show, crowing about how he had reverse-engineered Lucasart's Battlehawks/Finest Hour/SWotL engine for WC1. It wasn't true of course — he just didn't understand what reverse-engineering meant, and he also didn't understand that, had it been true, Origin would have become a very thin red smear after Lucasart's lawyers had finished rolling over them. What he meant was that his team of programmers had made an engine that used the same kind of sprite-morphing that Lucasart did three years earlier, only less efficiently. This may sound familiar: Chris not understanding standard industry terminology; bragging about accomplishments that he didn't actually accomplish and that weren't his to begin with; and Chris insulting his peers when they were actually already doing the new thing he was so proud of.

And that was just the start. Since then, you need to remember that he has only really made two more games (and taken a specific part in a third), and all of those are just his original game updated with newer looks and less interesting gameplay: Strike Commander (aka Wing Commander in Jets), WC3 (aka Wing Commander in 3D and FMV), and WC4 (aka Wing Commander III, but even more FMV). That is all. Yes, he put his name on a ton of things, but that's just a name on a box, not any actual involvement in the products themselves (indeed, the less he had to do with them, the better they were). Then he made one of worst movies ever, which only really proved two things: that he wasn't very well-versed in the Wing Commander IP, and that the horribly cheesy WC3/4 FMVs were a really lucky break in terms of his movie-producing chops. Oh, and he siphoned off cash meant for a completely different purpose to make that movie — so did the Schafer thing long before Schafer did — which was a part of the reason he was thrown out of the industry.

And of course, then there was his Hollywood career, which consisted of coming up with funding for movies and… that's all. He had already proven wholly unsuited for actually making a movie — he simply didn't have the writing, or directorial, or organisational talent to pull it off. It then turned out that he didn't have the talent to come up with funding either. He made grandiose promises about funding a fairly simple old tale — the kind that Hollywood spits out dozens of every year, so it's not the most difficult thing to do — and failed to deliver. There are rumours (but only rumours, mind) that the money was siphoned off for some completely different purpose, and in the end he was thrown out of another industry. Never mind the utterly insane web of companies and ventures he was involved with at the time, all of which tend towards the crummy or even outright sleazy end of the spectrum. Used car dealerships and horse trading aren't exactly at the top of the “yeah, I'd call those guys trustworthy and honourable” list. There's a reason why CIG's company structure most closely resembles what you'd expect from a pastiche of a money-laundring scheme… Oh, and I'm sure that other company called Rising Star has absolutely nothing to do with the half-dozen “Rising Star”-alikes Chris and Ortwin have been involved with. Probably. Maybe.

Chris does not deserve any respect, because in the last quarter-century, the sum of his achievements amount to catching lightning in a bottle once, milking it for all it was worth, being consistently wasteful and downright unethical in how he deals with other people's money, and being thrown out of two separate industries because of his one consistent feature: not delivering what he promised.


3.0 is expressly the exact opposite — it will not be what was originally claimed. Neither was 2.6 and Star Marine. It's not that they're not perfect examples — it's that they're examples against the point you're hoping to make.

Ok, now tell us how you really feel.

 

[Zak Gordon]

I rarely poke my head in here, in part of avoid any possible spoilers (i know, kinda quaint when talking about SC!), but like with ED i was an early kickstarter backer, just happy we were getting some space-games

Anyway, obviously it has been a long-time since the backing stage for SC, and as yet i have no game to play (boo!), and my game has changed from what it originally was going to be (according to the KS backing tier i got), if i read the details correct. I have no interest in MP gaming (except on very rare controlled occasions), did that got the t-shirt ('officially BORED of MP!'). So my bid now just being about something called Squadron 42 in SC, a single player campaign or some such, does not really bother me that much. I loved Wing Commander back in the day, so if i get that then cool.

So anyway after that recent CitizenCon thing, i saw a bit of it (not much, mostly don't have the time to spend on watching people talk about what they are aiming for SC to be etc) and found this little bit of gameplay footage someone had extracted from the main event:

[video=youtube;b9RUWxsVmws]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9RUWxsVmws[/video]

Most of that looks pretty nice, and looked to run quite smooth (no major tech issues), still it was basically a 'demo' so not sure how representative it actually is on the state of the 'game'? And god knows what my kickstarter tier will actually be when i do eventually (i will right?) get access to it? Fingers crossed and all that

 

[Ian Skippy]

You have a problem with genuine curiosity?

Not when it is about the game. You know, the topic of conversation.

Most of that looks pretty nice, and looked to run quite smooth (no major tech issues), still it was basically a 'demo' so not sure how representative it actually is on the state of the 'game'? And god knows what my kickstarter tier will actually be when i do eventually (i will right?) get access to it? Fingers crossed and all that

Its not part of the main game, there is no ETA for it, its not in the planning for 3.x, so Q2-3 2019 at the earliest. If they keep their schedule, which they havent done so far (currently over a year behind schedule for just one alpha patch that was originally scheduled to be released in a few weeks a year ago). They had a similarly impressive demo about flying over cities in 2014, its nowhere in the actual game. Its a tech show.

[video=youtube_share;7Gx-3iwXvoQ]https://youtu.be/7Gx-3iwXvoQ[/video]

Its a 'statement of intent'. It looks cool, but dont hold your breath.