Chris Roberts Back in your wallet - STAR CITIZEN

[Lucas]

In the last stretch goal letter, Roberts wrote this:

For our next several stretch goals, we’re going to try something different. We are constantly asked where the additional money goes. Surely new mocap hardware or a new starship design doesn’t cost a million dollars. The answer is that the stretch goals are an example: one big thing we will be doing with some of the money. Every additional million means that we’re hiring additional artists and programmers, equipping the team with better development tools and increasing the size of the talented outsource groups being trusted with aspects of Star Citizen’s development. It means more actors and time for mocap studios, more reference for designers, greater variety in game characters, more options in clothing and armor and a large array of ship items and weapons.

Every dollar improves the project. That isn’t as sexy as spending large amounts of money on impressive, headline-grabbing stretch goals… but it means a significantly better game in the end. So, for the next several stretch goals, we’re going to leave you with the knowledge that the money goes to improving all aspects of Star Citizen’s development. Instead of specifying some new development goal, we’re going to add a new ship to the game as a reward.

Now, of course, if every additional penny will go down the Curt Schilling route, they might get in trouble :P

[WayAbvPar]

If?

[Falconeer]

No space dating sim then :(

[KallDrexx]

I'm very confused by all the motion capture talk for a game about spaceships and space fighting....

[Mrbloodworth]

Well, this is one of those rare space games where you are not just a ship.

[Lucas]

I'm very confused by all the motion capture talk for a game about spaceships and space fighting....

Heh, that's a problem related to another matter they really need to adress: present all the info about how mechanics and system *curently* work in a MUCH MORE cohesive way; now it's all lost in old newsposts (death mechanics, economic system, FPS ground combat and avatar customization, which is the reason of motion capturing, Kall). Don't care if everything is still under discussion, they have to start presenting the bigger picture, otherwise all is bits and pieces that obviously give the idea that everything is still just ink on paper, so to speak (damn, I'm a dinosaur).

[Falconeer]

I understand they are ambitious, as businesspeople AND as game designers, but the motion capture thing is the first one that would bite them in the arse should the game fail to deliver under any other aspect.

"WHAT! THE LASERS ARE SHITE AND THE TRACTOR BEAMS DON'T TRACT CRAP AND THE TARGETING IS WONKY AND THE ECONOMY IS A MESS.... AND THEY SPENT MILLIONS OF MY MONEY ON MOTION CAPTUREEEEEEE!?!!!!!! %&%!&$"!$&%$!%$!$&||!!!!!!!!!"

You know what I mean? Personally, I feel it was a stupid stretch goal, no matter how much did they raise, and buying a mocap studio screams of "future projects". Which is not cool.

[WayAbvPar]

The only stretch goal they should be working on is delivering what they have already promised. That is the very definition of stretch.

[ajax34i]

Heh, no. 

They use the term "stretch goal" exactly backwards:  instead of the community (or the investors) being the coaches with the whistles and the entire dev team working hard to code and meet each of the stretch goals, Chris Roberts has the whistle and he's pushing us (the investors) to donate hard and deliver more and more millions of dollars to the project. 

I'd love to see just progress reports, but currently my impression is that they're still sitting on their butts.  For every extra million that is added, they add another feature to the list of things to do at some point in the future.  It's not like, "if you guys make donations up to 31 million by Friday, we will match the effort and code the fucking flight engine, fully coded and debugged, also by Friday."  No, it's "if you make 31 million by Friday, we'll go ahead and pen in "flight engine" to the hand-written TO DO list that Roberts has on his wall."

[Samprimary]

I think you guys are all just MAD that CHRIS ROBERTS is SO SUCCESSFUL.  And will make the BEST GAME EVER. I will get a THOUSAND DOLLARS WORTH OF GAME out of my Idris ship.

[schild]

Shutup and make us a comic for the frontpage following the exploits of Roberts Space Industries. 12 Part series, 1 every 2 weeks. Send them to me via PM. Thanks.

[Samprimary]

man I don't know does this come packaged with LTI??

[Lucas]

I would read that  

Regarding the ambition, yep, that surely is an area they don't lack. I agree that a Mocap studio wasn't really a thing they needed (plus, I'm old enough that I still bear playing games on a C64, I don't really need the latest tech), but Roberts, on that front, seem quite stuck in the "Origin glory days" (I know, I shouldn't get Schild started on that "hive of scum and villainy" that "polluted the Austin videogaming area"...or something) with the (for that time) big budget space operas and games like the later Wing Commander-s.

The "experienced developers = great game" equation of course often fails. Yep, this might be another case, we'll see. Now, 90% of those working on both projects (S42 and SC) already worked on Wing Commanders, Privateers, Starlancer and Freelancer, so I HOPE THEY HAVE A "VAGUE" IDEA of what they need to do to publish a good game on the same vein.

But of course, with publishing a game comes other business and planning decisions (plus, yes, times change, we're not in the '90s anymore), so we'll see if Chris Roberts will get the "Curt Schilling" achievement or not, bloody sock and everything.

[Mrbloodworth]

I understand they are ambitious, as businesspeople AND as game designers, but the motion capture thing is the first one that would bite them in the arse should the game fail to deliver under any other aspect.

"WHAT! THE LASERS ARE SHITE AND THE TRACTOR BEAMS DON'T TRACT CRAP AND THE TARGETING IS WONKY AND THE ECONOMY IS A MESS.... AND THEY SPENT MILLIONS OF MY MONEY ON MOTION CAPTUREEEEEEE!?!!!!!! %&%!&$"!$&%$!%$!$&||!!!!!!!!!"

You know what I mean? Personally, I feel it was a stupid stretch goal, no matter how much did they raise, and buying a mocap studio screams of "future projects". Which is not cool.

They explained a while ago, that this was cheaper/more cost effective than renting the space/studio time. Numbers and all. They spent $150,000 on the equipment.

[Falconeer]

Except no one gives a fuck about motion capture in a game of this kind. A FLYING SPACE FUCK. There are too many important factors to even remotly care about the motion capture. So it could have costed 1 dollar or five trillion dollars and it would still be wasted money until you can prove that all the other things you have promised to be amazing actually happen to be.

[Mrbloodworth]

Except no one gives a fuck about motion capture in a game of this kind. A FLYING SPACE FUCK. There are too many important factors to even remotly care about the motion capture. So it could have costed 1 dollar or five trillion dollars and it would still be wasted money until you can prove that all the other things you have promised to be amazing actually happen to be.

You can get out of your ship. This is not Eve. No one gives a fuck except those interested in space sim that allows you to get out of your ship. Its all part of the game.

Update videos about it.

Star Citizen - Behind the scenes with the Motion Capture

Inside Cloud Imperium Games . Mocap Update . Bryan Brewer

Its been part of the game-play since before it was announced, and game-play was shown in 2012 GDC.

Star Citizen - Gameplay (GDC 2012)

[Lucas]

Just posted on the official website: presentation of the "Foundry 42" team, in charge of the single-player game, SQ42. Most of them were on the Starlancer and Privateer 2 teams that, yeah, we can say were the "weaker" titles of the entire Roberts catalogue (although both titles didn't really have Roberts at the helm).

Around the 1:29 mark, you can see what I assume is an early written draft of (possibly) the opening sequence of the game...Or maybe just a random cutscene.

http://youtu.be/V8jfVhjC2Xs

[Samwise]

Except no one gives a fuck about motion capture in a game of this kind. A FLYING SPACE FUCK. There are too many important factors to even remotly care about the motion capture. So it could have costed 1 dollar or five trillion dollars and it would still be wasted money until you can prove that all the other things you have promised to be amazing actually happen to be.

You can get out of your ship. This is not Eve. No one gives a fuck except those interested in space sim that allows you to get out of your ship. Its all part of the game.

Update videos about it.

This would be a great time for you to use your words to provide a summary of what gameplay is available outside of your ship, so that people who don't give a fuck can at least understand why somebody else might.  Ain't nobody got time to click on a bunch of YouTube videos and watch them all the way through when a couple of quick sentences could convey the desired information.

Have I posted this in this thread yet?  Somebody was saying something about the proven track record of the people behind this scam and this is what came to mind.

[UnSub]

I think you guys are all just MAD that CHRIS ROBERTS is SO SUCCESSFUL.  And will make the BEST GAME EVER. I will get a THOUSAND DOLLARS WORTH OF GAME out of my Idris ship.

The end of 2014 will be a glorious time.

[Miasma]

Except no one gives a fuck about motion capture in a game of this kind. A FLYING SPACE FUCK. There are too many important factors to even remotly care about the motion capture. So it could have costed 1 dollar or five trillion dollars and it would still be wasted money until you can prove that all the other things you have promised to be amazing actually happen to be.

You can't really make a 3D game with human models without motion capture these days.  It is expected, anything else looks like janky wolfenstien era crap.  The costs have come down so much that if you have enough animation that needs to be modeled it's probably cheaper than trying to get animators to poorly imitate what the motion would like frame by frame.

As stated this isn't EvE.  You are a person not a ship.  You have to walk to your ship, climb into it, sit down, manipulate controls.  They need animation for all of that, animation for combat with guns (personal guns not ships), animation for hopping into sleeping pods, animation for jumping into and using turrets.  There are ships in the game that take a dozen crew members, there are carrier ships that have other ships in them that you have to run to and jump in.  There is also an entire single player game with characters, plot, cut scenes etc that they have to complete.

If they weren't using motion capture everyone would criticize about how "Holy crap you mean they have thirty million but can't spare a couple hundred grand so that the animations don't look like shit lololol".

[calapine]

I think you guys are all just MAD that CHRIS ROBERTS is SO SUCCESSFUL.  And will make the BEST GAME EVER. I will get a THOUSAND DOLLARS WORTH OF GAME out of my Idris ship.

The end of 2014 will be a glorious time.

I know I should let that argument die, but this is really puzzles me. I always thought the "This is a SCAAM!!" people were being tongue-in-cheek. Do you really think it's not coming out?

The worst possible scenario I can imagine is the MWO one, potentially fun game (wee Mechs!) ruined by a totally inept design team that seems to be in over their head (both manpower and actually skill wise) , whacky balance (boating, PPC), stupid solutions to fix those problems and on top of that bad netcode and basic features that never materlise (Is there UI 2.0 out yet? Directx 11?).

While I personally don't expect that, this outcome its possible. But, in MWO's case I still played it over 300+ hours,  spent >150$ on the mechs and enjoyed it immensely. So what is the terrible that thing that I have to be afraid of regarding SC?

[Samprimary]

My actual for serious guess is that it will probably go through one or two token delays, have lots of extreme (but transparent) foibles as they test out dogfighting and see what happens when their grand schemes get traduced down to the most mechanically efficient ways to cheese, go through a Great Contraction where they have to scramble to scale back their ambitious plans into a working model, and by then we'll know from the modules if its going to be a good, ok, or shit game, and we can hedge our bets on the apoplexy of the insane backers on that measure.

I'll make comics until i have a ship.

[Paelos]

So what is the terrible that thing that I have to be afraid of regarding SC?

You have no recourse whatsoever if this thing doesn't even get released on schedule, with any of the features promised, or with any of the items promised.

See if you bought a product, you'd have consumer protection laws. Or if you were an investor you'd have the right to sue for fraud. Or if you were a banker you'd be entitled to recourse on your money through legal means.

None of that exists with these things. It's literally the worst possible way ever to get something done. If a game can't get made on its own merits without turning into a welfare case, it doesn't deserve to exist.

Oh and what's worse? If the gaming world sees this as viable, we all get fucked right on down the river. They already look for ways to screw over gamers because they know for a fact the majority of us are walking wallets with no sense of financial responsibility, but for the ones who actually have a problem with this kind of thing, our only recourse is to leave the hobby until the sheep stop getting sheared, and start getting gutted.

[calapine]

So what is the terrible that thing that I have to be afraid of regarding SC?

You have no recourse whatsoever if this thing doesn't even get released on schedule, with any of the features promised, or with any of the items promised.

See if you bought a product, you'd have consumer protection laws. Or if you were an investor you'd have the right to sue for fraud. Or if you were a banker you'd be entitled to recourse on your money through legal means.

None of that exists with these things. It's literally the worst possible way ever to get something done. If a game can't get made on its own merits without turning into a welfare case, it doesn't deserve to exist.

I totally agree with these points, but doesn't that apply to any sort of Kickstarter type crowdfunding? You actually said in this thread you disapprove of gaming Kickstarters, which I why understand your reasoning the most. SC funding is very much Kickstarter expanded so this is only a consequent position.

Maybe others feel that way too, but so far I thought the crowdfunding/kickstarter idea was very well received on this forum, with various people pledging for different games, so the derisviness in this thread took me a bit by surprise.

I am totally aware that to a big degree I am trusting for an idea to work out, but overall I don't see much difference to Day 1 purchase I got burned with. DA2 was a full price purchase, turned out I hated it from the tutorial onward and 5-6 hours later I dropped it. I don't see that happening here...even the most stale FPS/flying SIM/space SIM will get dozens of hours of out me.

And again, we are not talking about 1000$ pledge people, which I feel are becoming a bit of a straw man here.

[Furiously]

Why are they pushing so many polygons is my question. My guess is so it runs like crap for everyone.

[Velorath]

So what is the terrible that thing that I have to be afraid of regarding SC?

You have no recourse whatsoever if this thing doesn't even get released on schedule, with any of the features promised, or with any of the items promised.

See if you bought a product, you'd have consumer protection laws. Or if you were an investor you'd have the right to sue for fraud. Or if you were a banker you'd be entitled to recourse on your money through legal means.

None of that exists with these things. It's literally the worst possible way ever to get something done. If a game can't get made on its own merits without turning into a welfare case, it doesn't deserve to exist.

I totally agree with these points, but doesn't that apply to any sort of Kickstarter type crowdfunding? You actually said in this thread you disapprove of gaming Kickstarters, which I why understand your reasoning the most. SC funding is very much Kickstarter expanded so this is only a consequent position.

Maybe others feel that way too, but so far I thought the crowdfunding/kickstarter idea was very well received on this forum, with various people pledging for different games, so the derisviness in this thread took me a bit by surprise.

I am totally aware that to a big degree I am trusting for an idea to work out, but overall I don't see much difference to Day 1 purchase I got burned with. DA2 was a full price purchase, turned out I hated it from the tutorial onward and 5-6 hours later I dropped it. I don't see that happening here...even the most stale FPS/flying SIM/space SIM will get dozens of hours of out me.

And again, we are not talking about 1000$ pledge people, which I feel are becoming a bit of a straw man here.

I'm more or less ok with Kickstarters, but whenever I've seen a Kickstarter project that needs to do a second round of funding (aside from slacker backer packages or simple pre-orders) it always sends up a red flag to me. It shows that maybe the scope of the project was too ambitious, or the people in charge just sucked at budgeting. Star Citizen has had a non-stop year-long second round of funding with some of the most aggressive salesmanship I've ever seen when I watch the youtube videos of some of those ships being announced. I know Bloodworth will say something about how the Kickstarter amount was really just for some proof of concept kinda thing and that the real game was always going to cost this much, but why shouldn't they have just stopped at the proof of concept at first and then proven that they had a fucking concept?

The sheer scope of what they're promising would be difficult for even big publishers and developers to pull off let alone a guy whose best work is close to two decades ago. They're already breaking this thing up into modules so instead of saying "hey let's take as much money from you guys up front as we possibly can and we'll give you a space simulator with a single player story mode, a persistent multiplayer game, you can get out of the ships and walk around and fight on foot, and we'll make all these ships, and do all this mo-cap work, etc..." why didn't they just say "hey, were're going to put out this dog-fighting module so you guys can see the core gameplay and if that's good then we'll start funding something more ambitious stuff, or we might even be able to sell enough of this dog-fighting game to non-backers that you guys don't have to take the whole financial burden upon yourselves".

They don't need the extra money at this point and they certainly don't need to keep squeezing it out of their loyal fans right now when it's been pointed out that they should be able to get funding from other sources if they find they really need it. Now they're just taking money from you guys because they can. They're doing it because every time they offer a new ship people lap that shit up so they're just going to keep riding the gravy train until it goes off the rails. They're at the point where they can't even offer reasonable details on how continued funding actually benefits the game it's just "we'll hire some more people and add some more ships in". Maybe at one point Chris Roberts really did just want to make a Space sim, and when I first heard about the project it sounded like something I might like to play. It's taken on such an air of them viewing their customers as open wallets full of free money they get to play with though that I wouldn't even touch this game now.

Many people dislike EA because of how it's perceived that they view their customers. That's more or less how I feel about these guys. The fact that they've then got a lot of their fans happily posting links for them on forums like this advertising the cool new $250 ship that just got announced or whatever just makes it that much worse. It's a similar feeling as the one I get when I see the Free Stress Test table set up outside the grocery store or in the mall.

[KallDrexx]

And again, we are not talking about 1000$ pledge people, which I feel are becoming a bit of a straw man here.

You can't just hand wave high spenders as a straw man.  Normally released games cost $60.  People who spend $20-30 on a kickstarter is no big deal because they are essentially pre-ordering a game at a reasonable price.  However, SC is different because if you look at their store and their website they aren't getting their millions of dollars from $20-30 donations, people are paying upwards of $150 for spaceships for a game they've seen very little gameplay with.  You can find real proof of a lot of people spending a LOT of money on this game (and a lot post kick-starter) which makes the high spenders very much a non-strawman.

I also agree with Velorath.  Most companies suck at making single player games and most companies suck at making MMOs.  MMOs alone are ridiculously hard and expensive.  It's hard to find numbers for most MMOs but Rift's executives say it cost $50 million to create, Curt Shilling (while an idiot for other reasons too) went bankrupt trying to finance an MMO, etc...  Even those games are not in the same vein as SC it's still applicable and shows that they are hard to succeed in.  So now you have promises of both an amazing singleplayer game but also an amazing MMO.  Not only that they are proposing making both an amazing space dogfighting game, economy game, and a first person shooter all in one go.  If they were planning to stagger the release 2-3 games out of it, each full games with a natural progression between them, then I would actually be a lot more inclined to think that their ambitions could be realized but instead they are trying to do everything at one time and not really giving them the chance to fully release a game and see where they went wrong and gather post-mortems for the next spot (the modules don't count because they are singular modules and don't test integration between systems).

You guys keep talking about motion capture being necessary and yet this forum always laughed when Eve was talking about allowing you to walk in stations.  The new X game added walk in stations and everyone absolutely hates it (and no, better animations wouldn't have made it better because it's utterly pointless and pain in the ass). 

Finally, it seems that everyone forgets that we are way out of the age of the gaming rockstar.  Most of the well known game designers from years past who made a name for themselves have not really adapted well, and most of them that have put their names to products recently have not done very well.  It doesn't bode well either that Chris Roberts has been out of game development for so long and then decided to come back and yet everyone thinks he'll be space jesus.

[Malakili]

Maybe others feel that way too, but so far I thought the crowdfunding/kickstarter idea was very well received on this forum, with various people pledging for different games, so the derisviness in this thread took me a bit by surprise.

It's already been said, but it boils down to the feeling that the development of the game has become a vehicle for selling ships.  It seems like the news people get "excited" for (not just here mind you, I'm part of another community with some die hard SC fans) is "Another ship I can buy!" rather than someone that actually has to do with development progress.  I guess people got excited for the hangar module, but people walked around for 15 minutes and then went back to thinking about which ships they could buy to they could look at them in their hangar.


If the kickstarter ended and that was that, I don't think anyone would care.

[Falconeer]

This is how the most recent Star Citizen newsletter looks like covering the last FIVE days. Out of 10 topics 7 are about money and ship sales: "Rare chances", "Limited editions" and "Crown Jewels!". 1 is about lore, 1 is about community, 1 is probably about graphics.

Get it?

It's not f13 that is sinking contents into a bickering thread. It's them, they are sinking it into their stupid greed.
The probem is, they baited you into thinking that the fact they are so focused on sales is a GOOD THING for the game and it means it will just be a better product thanks to the additional money. This is the very nature of a Ponzi scheme, isn't it? Convincing you, basically, that carpet bombing/advertising bring benefits to everyone, and turning everyone who invested into a believer and pretty much hiring you for free as agents who will spread out free advertising for the company. But the only one benefitting from the sales is the top of the pyramid and as in any scheme of this kind it works because everyone else who is not the top of the pyramid refuses to see this, blinded by hopes of an ultimate gain (in this case the 'gain' is the game ame not just delivering, but becoming better and better).

That newsletter is an insult. Roberts needs someone to tell him to stop this bullshit. But instead every time you don't tell Roberts to stop the fucking push for new ships and limited editions you are looking like fools who have invested too much to admit this is ridiculous and unacceptable, and are at the same time buying into his idea that the more money HE makes the better the game is going to be. Which makes no sense, especially with already more than 25M in the bank. Make the fuckin game already, if it's any good you can ask for more money later. Hell, can't wait to throw money at a great space multiplayer sandbox myself if it ever gets released.

[calapine]

Uff, I think you guys worried about the game are already more involved than those who pre-orderd. I am the only one left "arguing" and I am not really doing that either, I just wanted to understand what the some peoples issues where exactly.

Edit:

The probem is, they baited you into thinking that the fact they are so focused on sales is a GOOD THING for the game and it means it will just be a better product thanks to the additional money. This is the very nature of a Ponzi scheme, isn't it? Convincing you, basically, that carpet bombing/advertising bring benefits to everyone, and turning everyone who invested into a believer and pretty much hiring you for free as agents who will spread out free advertising for the company. But the only one benefitting from the sales is the top of the pyramid and as in any scheme of this kind it works because everyone else who is not the top of the pyramid refuses to see this, blinded by hopes of an ultimate gain (in this case the 'gain' is the game ame not just delivering, but becoming better and better).

Ok, that is just pure projecting and ascribing motivations to people.

[Falconeer]

Then why are you not annoyed at all the money stuff?

EDIT: Also, I don't question anyone's motivations. I think your objective judgement (about the business model) is held hostage by your massive hopes.

[Miasma]

This is how the most recent Star Citizen newsletter looks like covering the last FIVE days. Out of 10 topics 7 are about money and ship sales: "Rare chances", "Limited editions" and "Crown Jewels!". 1 is about lore, 1 is about community, 1 is probably about graphics.

Get it?

Again, the main campaign ends in three days.  All of those ships are ones that despite being a "ponzi scheme" are not typically available for purchase, they are bringing them back for these last few days before the original backers' perks expire and trust me, the original backers want to know about them.  Even if you don't want to spend any more money right now is your last chance to sell back ships you already own and buy one of these (which you can do).  So if you always wanted the Gladiator but didn't get to buy one you can swap it out for the Freelancer you settled on.

You are looking at the last frantic gasp of activity before things settle down, the 26th is going to be bonkers.  This isn't the ideal time to form opinions about money, it would be like going to a mall on black Friday and assuming every day must be that nuts.

Then why are you not annoyed at all the money stuff?

EDIT: Also, I don't question anyone's motivations. I think your objective judgement (about the business model) is held hostage by your massive hopes.

Why would I care about how other people spend their money?  It's not like they're putting a gun to anyone's head.  Unless you seriously think this is a ponzi scheme in which Roberts has a swiss bank account that he is funneling the money into why would you care what a bunch of overly optimistic fans donate to?  I'm always amazed and stunned that they keep getting more people and more money, I never imagined so many people out there also wanted a half decent persistent space sim.  There are like 310,000 backers now.

And I don't have massive hopes.  My expectation is that a year or two after it launches it will be a better game than EvE.  "Better game than EvE" is a really low bar.

[Job601]

I anticipate this game having terrible performance and major technical problems. I saw the quote where Roberts said that this would be a old school "pc" game -- well, I remember the era of PC games before console ports took over.  A big part of what made companies like id and blizzard popular was that their games actually worked, while EA and Origin would consistently shoot for the moon performance-wise and end up putting out buggy messes.  I'll make a prediction now:  no matter how good the design is, the story about this game in the first six months after its release is going to be about game-breaking hardware requirements and bugs.

[Paelos]

Unless you seriously think this is a ponzi scheme in which Roberts has a swiss bank account that he is funneling the money into why would you care what a bunch of overly optimistic fans donate to?

I do honestly believe this is in the realm of possibility, given the updates and marketing involved.

[Mrbloodworth]

I anticipate this game having terrible performance and major technical problems.

I Personally believe the method they are using for development will minimize this. The iterative release to the public/backers in theory is more manageable then tossing out an entire game at once and THEN working out how to address issues. Its already happened with the Hanger module. They test, profile and correct at every step, and backers are able to see every bit of it, and test in a "live" environment. The machine they own.