So i had never heard of you or the forum you post on until someone sent me a link where you were talking about me. Then i saw you have become fascinated by the rise of Rexzilla "seemingly out of nowhere." and the Alex Jones-esque conspiracy theories of him being a paid marketer by CIG's due to an investment in marketing Squadron 42.....
It's almost funny how wrong you have it.
Here are the main reasons:
First of all Rexzilla isn't new to Star Citizen, he backed the game around the same time i did back in 2016 and was a member of an org called Aces High (ACESHI). I know this because my previous org (which i co-founded) used to fight them at Security Post Kareah. So he isn't new, he played the game in 2016 and 2017 but didnt stream it and took a break from it because peformance was poor and all we had were a few on foot PvP areas. He's not a pilot, the FPS aspect of the game appealed to him.
He like me never played any of Chris Roberts old games. i was born in 1995. You should not hold this against me or anyone else who didn't know who Chris Roberts was until they discovered Star Citizen. There are a lot of us and we are a fast growing part of the Star Citizen community.
There is growing new guard due to a perfect storm. The game being playable due to client-side OCS and new game features and environments has brought in a lot of new people. In my case i only became a backer after a woman told me in a Second Life group voice chat that procedural planets were going to be a thing (she sent me a link to the Homestead Demo) and that playable female characters were coming soon with both likely to make an appearance in 3.0 (i know right!?). Knowing nothing of the delays SC has had i enthusiastically pledged in Dec 2016 for an Aurora starter package. Today we have OCS, FPS AI (derpy as it is, its something), 2 landable planets, 9 landable moons and landable planetoid with ourposts, stations even cities with trains and stuff. And i finally get to play with a character which represents me making it all finally immesive. This probably doesn't surprise you but friends i have who are also female and game have held off until they could play with a female character.
Some older streamers and backers see any change as scary and this influx of newer, often younger backers is disruptive to what the Star Citizen community has traditionally been since the Kickstarter.
The reason Rexzilla gets the huge audience he does are because he offers something none of the old guard offered:
a) A positive attitude taking advantage of the sandbox, sci-fi space sim we have today rather than theorycrafting and wishing for what we might have in the future.
So many of the Star Citizen streamers fall into a "negative nancy" mode. i totally get why they're like this, because for most of their streaming life there was no playable game. Old habits die hard and now that there is one its hard for them to break out of this. Instead of taking Chris Roberts seriously when he has repeatedly stated Star Citizen would be a sort of Space Second Life, they spend time talking about delays on gameplay mechanics even though we have cargo and mining.
b) Accessibility. Most of the older Star Citizen streamers have had an air about them of "I'm the streamer, you watch me but that's it." In other words, they kept a wall between themselves and people who might want to join in with what they're doing. Rexzilla has taken the opposite approach, he welcomes everyone to play with him and have epic experiences as a group. i am part of ZDF as well as my own org and i can tell you, we're not actors. We do some light roleplay but we're all there to have a good time. Part of that is following instructions but you have that in any org. My org did the same type of ops on a regular basis, we didn't stream them but they do require willing participants, clear comms and clear leadership. Its the same in the ZDF. Whether we are part of the ground forces or support and combat pilots (those ships you see on his streams are often there to protect the op against stream snipers, i know because i took one down in my Glaive).
c) Personality. Sorry but many of the older guard remind me of my dad trying to play games in the way they interact with the audience. Its boring, even when they are doing something midly interesting because they just don't have the energy or hype level Rex does.
Fear of the new leads to salt. You've seen it and commented on it with reactions to Rex's rise. i've seen it personally on a much smaller level as some people who are fans of TheBase radio station have attacked The Peoples Radio (TPR), the immersive, Star Citizen station i started. Older backers have thrown shade at us even though we're doing something quite different than TheBase in terms of content and our target demographics (newer and younger backers and a more diverse audience in general). This some of this low level salt among older fans of TheBase goes on even though Juntau from TheBase and i get along great and respect each other. In fact he
recently had some very nice things to say about us and our quick rise on The Captain's Table. CIG loves our weekly news program (we've been the Staff Pick in the Community Hub on CIG's site and they and
even made me an MVP for it one week. Again, it's because we use the game to make immersive content now. Everything is content to us, een bugs. It's that kind of positive attitude the community has responded to both with us and Rexzilla (who gives us shoutouts from time to time).
ZDF as an org is bigger than Rexzilla. It's not just an org, its a movement. The ZDF does a lot of stuff on and off stream not involving Rexzilla. This ranges from Star Marine tournaments to
participating in the 50 person pub craw i organized in Star Citizen. Most large orgs with charasmatic leaders would not have responded the way ZDF did when i put the idea out there seeking both security and participants. (i know this having interacted with them in the past). Rexzilla was reachable and their support of the event helped ensure it was success but they were one of like 5 smaller orgs who all contributed to that. We managed to fill a server with people all involved in the event on a day servers were going down left and right due to 30K errors related to an FPS AI mission. Wakapedia from CIG even came in at the end of the pub crawl and let us all in the Million Mile High Club in Area 18 making for more great content both on the stream and for TPR News.
So i guess what i'm saying is this is all organic growth of the game and a demographic change. i had a good conversation the other day on Discord with another content creator when this very subject came up. i asked her what she thought would happen as people who like and play Fortnite now start coming over to playing Star Citizen and she nearly spit her coffee out both because she knows its inevitable and the reaction will be a culture shock not unlike what you're seeing happening now with the emergence of Rex and the ZDF.
A game like this can not be successful based on old money and old salt alone. Too many older backers and streamers are jaded and what Rex has proven is that almost no one wants to watch endless negativity of what is missing from the game when the alternative is watching and/or participating in some epic, community created sandbox gameplay with the amazing locales, weapons and ships CIG has created.
PS: Yes i did buy $10K worth of ships during the height of the cryptocurrency boom the same amount of crypto i used back then is worth about $1500 today. The same foresight that helped me see that Ethereum would be something worth mining and holding on to at the end of 2015 (when it was $0.40 cents and helped me pursuade my boyfriend to start mining and trading before we sold when it went above $1,000 is the same foresight i've used in seeing the long view of this game's development.
Doing the former paid of my student loans. Doing the later will pay off in many years of fun. In some ways, it already has.
i hope this clears things up.
i am fairly certain that what we are witnessing isn't some co-ordinated marketing campaign. it's the result of years of game development and an influx of new blood.
if you want, feel free to share this in its entirety.
robertsspaceindustries.com
But I guess it makes sense in context of CIG's dream-as-a-service model.
