Chris Roberts Back in your wallet - STAR CITIZEN

[ajax34i]

eh nevermind

[Maven]

I like how Roberts has turned what any sane person would consider a huge problem with project planning into an asset used to attract more money.

Succinct, insightful, excellent.

[Velorath]

I think ajax has it right. There's no reason to launch ever. No bubble burst, you're just in foreverdevelopment, and the people who start leaving do so because of old age, boredom, or most rarely, coming down with a case of the smarts. People leaving in a trickle does not a bad PR statement make. That's much better PR than whatever they manage to launch.

That's why developers have now meaningless terms like Alpha, Open Beta, Closed Beta, etc..., which let the die-hard fans deflect any criticism. It doesn't matter how long a game has been in Beta, how slow the progress is being made, or how many bad design decisions get implemented, every valid complaint is going to be met with "shut up, it's Beta, you should expect stuff like this to happen". Developers can spend years having launched a game without officially "launching" the game, and while still taking peoples' money.

[Hoax]

Truly a golden age. 

I wonder if Christ Roberts is going to ruin it for everybody else?

[schild]

He won't ruin it for anyone. The massive problem here isn't the core game. The massive problem is the scope. Chris is a terrible designer and maybe the worst "manager" I've ever seen. He blew it into impossible proportions out of greed, stupidity, or a combination of the two.

At this point, he deserves nothing less than failure and a class-action lawsuit.

[ajax34i]

I don't think he's stupid, and he's probably not too greedy; he's doing exactly what's needed to make RSI a successful business.  I don't think he could stop the scope increases if he wanted to, at this point; feature creep is critical to continued funding.

So what does he deserve for being a successful businessman (or scammer, whatever)?  I'd say look at EVE Online if you want to see how scammers are regarded.  The backers will hate him, but the rest of the Internet will think he's just about the smartest guy, and will only ridicule the backers for losing their money.  We're doing it here already.

Class action lawsuit?  Maybe if he doesn't deliver as promised, but technically a screenshot of a ship, or a 3-D model that you can look at with a hangar viewer = virtual goods delivered as promised.  Technically, if he models every ship that's been paid for, and creates all the game components that have been funded, but doesn't bother connecting them together or making a game out of them -- just puts them all on a disc in separate folders and ships the disc out to everyone, he's delivered.

It would even be beautiful:  "I keep saying how you, the community, make this game possible.  Well, I mean it: here are all the bits and pieces we have so far, make a game!  Good luck, and peace, I'm out."

[schild]

We can ridicule the backers and still call Chris Roberts a total shitheel. That's allowed. That is, in fact, the very thing we're doing. He's not the smartest guy in the room, and sure, he may not be stupid (that's up for debate, given an impossible scope in game design means you're pretty stupid), but he's almost CERTAINLY the greediest.

[Maven]

Ballooning the project to such a size that it comes crashing down on the company isn't what's best for RSI. When the project was first announced, there was benefit of the doubt. All evidence points to this project as the Train Wreck of the Decade, and we're only at the part where it's beginning to wobble on the rails.

[Hoax]

He won't ruin it for anyone. The massive problem here isn't the core game. The massive problem is the scope. Chris is a terrible designer and maybe the worst "manager" I've ever seen. He blew it into impossible proportions out of greed, stupidity, or a combination of the two.

At this point, he deserves nothing less than failure and a class-action lawsuit.

I meant did he ruin this:

I think ajax has it right. There's no reason to launch ever. No bubble burst, you're just in foreverdevelopment, and the people who start leaving do so because of old age, boredom, or most rarely, coming down with a case of the smarts. People leaving in a trickle does not a bad PR statement make. That's much better PR than whatever they manage to launch.

That's why developers have now meaningless terms like Alpha, Open Beta, Closed Beta, etc..., which let the die-hard fans deflect any criticism. It doesn't matter how long a game has been in Beta, how slow the progress is being made, or how many bad design decisions get implemented, every valid complaint is going to be met with "shut up, it's Beta, you should expect stuff like this to happen". Developers can spend years having launched a game without officially "launching" the game, and while still taking peoples' money.

Will Robert's greed and the insane amount of cash he has swindled ruin this type of swindle for future bloatware, shovelware and vaporware devs masquerading as game devs? That was what I was trying to ask.

[Venkman]

Nah. "Beta" has been used as a marketing milestone for years. He also won't kill crowd funding as a concept nor space sims. Plenty of stuff is crowd funded, and the only people who care about space sims are his backers and this thread.

I wonder if Christ Roberts is going to ruin it for everybody else?

Ha! Indeed. To his backers anyway...

[Hoax]

I have been told by more than five people across multiple games that its ok to back Star Citizen hundreds of dollars because you can trust Chris Roberts. Often times they say "he put his name on it, so you know he won't scam you like other games". This usually comes up after you find out they backed SC hard and are mocking other greenlight or KS titles.

[Paelos]

The man is either completely in denial, or he's gone completely over to lawful evil.

[satael]

Another month, another stretch goal (or three). Chris Roberts' huge project continues to roll forward, with Star Citizen passing $56 million USD raised this week.      

This truly is a perpetual motion machine.

[Pezzle]

Another month, another stretch goal (or three). Chris Roberts' huge project continues to roll forward, with Star Citizen passing $56 million USD raised this week.    

This truly is a perpetual motion machine.

A post from that page

How the fuck does it have a birthday if it hasnt ever been released?
Is it just the anniversary of the first time they bought a hooker with the kickstarter money?

[UnSub]

There is a chance that backers will pour enough money into the project to paper over SC's scope creep. There's going to be an irony if the most successful crowdfunded game ends up costing more than all but the most expensive of AAA titles.

I will be at PAX AUS where Roberts is announcing something. I'm going to try to get in to that panel and see the madness with my own eyes.

[lamaros]

What day is that? Will be there also.

[UnSub]

Ahh, they've actually released the schedule: Friday at 3:30pm. I've heard they're showing off the FPS module.

[Typhon]

There is a chance that backers will pour enough money into the project to paper over SC's scope creep. There's going to be an irony if the most successful crowdfunded game ends up costing more than all but the most expensive of AAA titles.

I will be at PAX AUS where Roberts is announcing something. I'm going to try to get in to that panel and see the madness with my own eyes.

I'm (now not so) secretly hoping for this (success as a by-product of excess) just so that I can be spiteful to people in this thread that are sure that it's a scam and is doomed to failure.  To be clear, I do think it's scam-y, if not full on scam.  I do think that any success it has (likely none) will be actually due to the unnamed developers actually making the game, and not Roberts himself.  I'm not following the game in anyway except for this thread - if the (a?) game comes out and gets good word-of-mouth I'll play it, but I'm not hopeful for this in any way.  I do think that folks paying hundreds of dollars for ships that don't even exist and that they can get in-game for simply playing (that's my understanding, please correct me if that is flawed) are demented.

So I guess I'm very excited about the potential opportunity to spew bile on those spewing bile.  Does that make me a bad person?

[Margalis]

I've stopped making a distinction between scams by design and scams by negligence.

A good example of this is Spacebase - maybe they didn't plan to scam people, but they had no realistic plan to deliver the final product and the plan they had was 99% of the time going to result in something that ended up indistinguishable from a scam.

[Cyrrex]

The world needs a super cool space pew pew simulation game.  If this ends up scratching that itch, I'd play it.  Not for the eleventy thousand dollar some people are paying, but yeah.

[Lucas]

Tonight, at 7pm PDT, CIG will broadcast their 2nd "CitizenCon" from the Santa Monica CIG studios:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14203-CitizenCon-2014-Livestream


EDIT: oh, and here is the September 2014 Monthly Report (long read as usual):

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14191-Monthly-Report-September-2014

[jakonovski]

Their latest virtual virtual ship costs $600. This thing is like scientology.

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/186116/890-jump-concept-sale-plans/p1

[UnSub]

Again, I can't wait for day zero when SC announces the in-game requirements to unlock everything backers have paid big money to 'own' pre-launch. That will be a special day.

[Lucas]

Still have to watch the whole presentation, but meanwhile here's a video that shows the transition from space to planetside:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gGLE3USB2U

Still w.i.p. , but looking pretty cool. "handmade" planetside locations are amazing 

Cutlass commercial:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14200-Unshackled-The-Drake-Cutlass

[Hoax]

Again, I can't wait for day zero when SC announces the in-game requirements to unlock everything backers have paid big money to 'own' pre-launch. That will be a special day.

No amount of grind will be enough punishment in the eyes of the true believer.

[Malakili]

Still have to watch the whole presentation, but meanwhile here's a video that shows the transition from space to planetside:

I would have liked to see what that looks like entirely from the first person perspective. 

[Brolan]

This is still a thing?  I'm too busy playing Starpoint Gemini 2.

[Sir T]

How dare you spend money on a game that actually made it to release.

[Lucas]

Watched the entire presentation on Twitch (it's around 2 hours long, but that also include the delay at the beginning and some downtime here and there) . I think that, all things considered, it was decently put together: a comprehensive video report from all the studios, recapping the progress that has been done during the previous year, and for each studios, what's in store in the short-mid term. 

The opening location of the single-player campaign, Shubin Mining Station, was particularly impressive: a 6 km long structure, with (supposedly) very detailed interiors; it's still in the "grey-boxing" status, but it already looks impressive. But yeah, the highlight was definitely the space-to-planetside (plus a nice walk around the ArcCorp district and shops) sequence I linked in my previous message.

Anyway, here's the link to the presentation:

http://www.twitch.tv/starcitizen/b/576890938

[Cyrrex]

The youtube video you linked looked technically very impressive.  Maybe too much so.  I wonder at the specs of the machine that will have to run that thing.  The movement of the avatar didn't look very crisp either, which makes me wonder at the frame rate their own uber machine was achieving (although that could be the video clip itself, but other clips don't give me that impression). 

That said, if they can pull of that kind of detail, I would want to play it just as a tech demo if nothing else.

[Mrbloodworth]

CitizenCon 2014: Persistent Universe Demo

Here is the demo without the streaming software running over top.

EDIT: All player animations, and rig is slated for replacement.

I would have liked to see what that looks like entirely from the first person perspective. 

There you go.

[Maven]

Game's not even out yet and already has a con?

[schild]

Game's not even out yet and already has a con?

The word "con" is pretty important to truly achieving enlightenment.

[Lucas]

For those who might be curious but don't want to sit through the entire livestream, CIG released the individual studio video reports:

- CIG Santa Monica (mainly Arena Commander stuff, which also means dogfighting in general, including HUDs) - Link

- CIG Austin (mainly Persistent Universe, network operations and helping on AC as well): Link ; interesting note: the current PU director is Toni Zurovec, who was the creator of the "Crusader" franchise at Origin and among those who worked on the NPC schedules in Ultima VII (something he wants to implement in the SC planetside locations...the schedules, I mean, not Ultima VII :P) ;

- CIG Manchester UK (or "Foundry 42"; single-player campaign, cap ships creation, also helping on AC):  Link - Led by Chris Roberts' brother, Erin; core team is basically formed by those who originally created Privateer 2 and Starlancer ;

- Turbulent Studios, Montreal (web platform): Link ;

- Behaviour Interactive, Montreal (hangars, concept and implementation of planetside locations, various other stuff): Link ;

The only other studio which is not mentioned is Illfonic: they'll be officially presented at PAX Australia during their presentation of the "FPS" features of the game.

Current employee tally (mentioned by Chris Roberts not so long ago) : around 280

[Teleku]

Well that's kind of cool.  By dividing up the different aspects of the game between all sorts of teams scattered around the world, people can make all sorts of nationalist/political/racist comments over the various parts of the game that suck compared to others.  I actually wish more companies would do this!