The Star Citizen Thread v9

Sure it costs money, but precisely wouldn't you, as an dev that owes its existence to the generosity of people, have to make sure to control and tamper expenses? You shouldn't come back to backers and say "sorry we overspent (and Sandi wants a new bag) so you have to give more". This is not right, this is not sane, and it reflects how bad this mess is managed since the very beginning.
 
This year's CitizenCon is much bigger than last years, with two separate stages and tracks.

With a venue and planned attendance three times the CitizenCon in Frankfurt, ...the proposed budget for this year's CitizenCon was almost double last years. And this was without any video coverage, let alone streaming of the second stage, and a plan to just stream the opening keynote from the main stage.

Of course, me being me, wanted more.

And since we constantly get criticized for our home-brew approach to videography and streaming, let's bring in a specialist company that can handle multiple simultaneous stages, cameras and streams.

Now of course this doesn't help with the budget because what I just asked about adds a low six figure amount to the cost of the event.

I thought let's take a leaf out of Blizzard's book and have a digital pass to allow people to virtually be there for all the presentations and the money for these passes would help offset the not inconsiderable increase in costs that I was asking for because I wanted to do it better for all of you.

What we didn't anticipate is how dearly some of you value watching the main CitizenCon presentation live.

I just don't want to see threads about how we shouldn't live-stream and just post a polished video afterwards (because that has never happened! /s)

Cut the fluff and you get someone who wants bigger because other companies do bigger as well as showing they don't understand their own backer base..
 

dayrth

Volunteer Moderator
This year's CitizenCon is much bigger than last years, with two separate stages and tracks.

With a venue and planned attendance three times the CitizenCon in Frankfurt, ...the proposed budget for this year's CitizenCon was almost double last years.

Surely if the budget is twice last years, but the attendance is three times last years then the ticket sales would have more than funded the difference. I don't understand how this justifies charging even more.
 
Well, one cannot defend them for it but they would have been damned if they did and damned if they did not.

- Free access to event: OMG! CIG is using backer money that should go to the game!
- NOT free access to event: OMG! CIG fleecing everyone for money, they greedy.

I mean, the event clearly cost money and has to be paid one way or the other so backers either pay, or development money goes to the event.

The free access version can be excused if they are burning $10k to bring in $50k of new money. I mean, it's still a bit dodgy, but at least there is an excuse.

Burning $10k to bring in $0k and stiffing existing backers to get the $10k back is just terminally stupid.

My guess is they expected a sell out attendance that would pick up the costs and have been caught out by the current lack of interest. But rather than cancel the whole thing and walk away, they have chosen the path of pure idiocy.
 
Reading through Chris Roberts's Spectrum post (linked by Tippis above), it appears that you will now be able to watch the opening and closing presentations for free if you have an RSI account. Roberts also says the video will be posted to YouTube as soon as possible, and that Twitch offers poor quality video anyway. So he's attempting to put the fire out to some degree.

Personally, I like to watch the FA Cup Final live, not on catch-up, and at least my £20 pledge should now let me watch some of the content live.

But yes. If Montoya is fuming, and he is (he made a passing remark about CIG's "stupid delays"), CIG has shot itself in its corporate foot.
 
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Well, one cannot defend them for it but they would have been damned if they did and damned if they did not.

- Free access to event: OMG! CIG is using backer money that should go to the game!
- NOT free access to event: OMG! CIG fleecing everyone for money, they greedy.

I mean, the event clearly cost money and has to be paid one way or the other so backers either pay, or development money goes to the event.

Subscriber money is already used for events, as CR says this in his response above.

However he wanted a 6 figure film crew this year and asked the backers to pony up for it.

The clergy is funding his whims, fantasies and wastages. They most certainly are not funding development of a game.

He wanted a 6 figure film crew and asked backers to pay for it on top of subscriber funding which wasn't enough to cover it.

In other words he didn't have the budget for what he wanted to do, and assumed the clergy would swallow the cost like they always do.

He's a con man and you're all a bunch of fools supporting him.

The free access version can be excused if they are burning $10k to bring in $50k of new money. I mean, it's still a bit dodgy, but at least there is an excuse.

Burning $10k to bring in $0k and stiffing existing backers to get the $10k back is just terminally stupid.

My guess is they expected a sell out attendance that would pick up the costs and have been caught out by the current lack of interest. But rather than cancel the whole thing and walk away, they have chosen the path of pure idiocy.

Word on the street is the whole thing is costing close to $1m.
 
I must say, that the Almighty Roberts has decided to come down from his cloud to give his pathetic excuse in person is remarkable.

Although looking at the wording, I think Sandi told him to do it... :D
 
Who's betting on a spike in the funding chart today? Lord almighty addressed the concerns, absolved himself so the citizens should rejoice.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
Word on the street is the whole thing is costing close to $1m.

Well, Chris acknowledges "six figures" in his post today.

The thing is the priciple of charging backers for any part of the Convention (key note speech or not it does not matter) is ridiculous given many backers have already payed hundreds if not thousands of USD. This is a crowdfunded game. Chris´reference to Blizzard is also very unfortunate. Blizzard has delivered many games and has not crowdfunded a single one of them, so they can do as they well please. CIG on the other hand not only has a completely blank delivery track record but it is also paywalling content to the same backers whose good will and USD are sustaining the development.

There is no excuse or Chris apology than can justify this. CIG has a very simple alternative to avoid using/wasting backer funds on a more complex and expensive Con than usual: Not to do it. Or to revert back to a simpler and cheaper agenda/format commensurate with the obligations of a crowdfunded developer to protect and use backer funds responsibly.
 
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Apparently so.

Chris's pitchfork meltdown says 6 figures for the 2 film crews, the rental alone is supposed to be a quarter million.

I have no idea, maybe the clergy ought to ask Chris how much this is costing them, seeing as half of reddit/games is laughing at them right now
 
Apparently so.

Chris's pitchfork meltdown says 6 figures for the 2 film crews, the rental alone is supposed to be a quarter million.

I have no idea, maybe the clergy ought to ask Chris how much this is costing them, seeing as half of reddit/games is laughing at them right now

Flipping heck. Chris, you are not Peter Jackson. You are not even "Meet the Feebles" era Peter Jackson.

Dude, seriously. Give up the Hollywood dreams.
 
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Well, Chris acknowledges "six figures" in his post today.

The thing is the priciple of charging backers for any part of the Convention (key note speech or not it does not matter) is ridiculous given many backers have already payed hundreds if not thousands of USD. This is a crowdfunded game. Chris´reference to Blizzard is also very unfortunate. Blizzard has delivered many games and has not crowdfunded a single one of them, so they can do as they well please. CIG on the other hand is just paywalling content to the same backers whose good will and USD are sustaining the development.

There is no excuse or Chris apology than can justify this. CIG has a very simple alternative to avoid using/wasting backer funds on a more complex and expensive Con than usual: Not to do it. Or to revert back to a simple straightforward agenda/format commensurate with the obligations of a crowdfunded developer to protect and use backer funds responsibly.

It's really just another aspect of Chris' game of playing pretend-big-studio.

CIG immediately started covering themselves in the fancy trappings of a large and successful studio — hugely impractical stylish furniture, fancy room-spanning decorations, themed cafeteria, specialist machinery (without the specialists to operate them), and various other expensive details where the only point is that they're expensive, just to signal that success. And of course, you have to have tons of people working for you to be a large and successful studio, so pile in all of those as well, and damn any notion of actually having figured out what they're supposed to do yet. Those large and successful studios have sold-out four- or five-digit-attendee conventions for their hugely popular games, so obviously CIG needs to have that too in order to be a large and successful studio.

…the only thing that's missing is, you know, the game. The success. The profit that allows for those other studios to have those trappings, and the kind of audience that demands that kind of recognition.

Chris absolved himself from that stage and just skipped to the end, as if somehow it's the display that creates the success rather than the other way around. The parallel with how he has always suffered from the delusion that visuals make a game is striking.


…oh and,
xNjUJGK.jpg

“Digital Ticket for CitizenCon 2948. Includes … access to purchase exclusive CitizenCon merchandise.”

Yes. Let's pay for the privilege of being allowed to pay for marketing material intended to make people pay. Chris, I do not say this lightly, but kindly jog on. [haha]
 
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I like the numerous Reddit posts (before Chris outed himself as being behind this) as asking "Which idiot at CIG was responsible for this idea?"

:)

There's nothing he doesn't touch that turns to crud.
 
I like the numerous Reddit posts (before Chris outed himself as being behind this) as asking "Which idiot at CIG was responsible for this idea?"

:)

There's nothing he doesn't touch that turns to crud.

Actually, there's nothing Sandi doesn't touch that doesn't turn onto handbags. Look at how he worded it, and the time in PST.

There's a man who doesn't want to sleep on the couch tonight.
 
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