Chris Roberts Back in your wallet - STAR CITIZEN

[Pennilenko]

Does anybody why this was supposed to be secret?

Would you want anybody to know if you were married to Chris Roberts?

[Hutch]

In the response to The Escapist though, Roberts does actually confirm that Sandi Gardiner is his wife. Which is a thing that was hotly denied and apparently a huge secret previously.

Does anybody why this was supposed to be secret?

When Roberts runs out of money, her pimp will take her back.

[MahrinSkel]

In the response to The Escapist though, Roberts does actually confirm that Sandi Gardiner is his wife. Which is a thing that was hotly denied and apparently a huge secret previously.

Does anybody why this was supposed to be secret?

Well, since we've repeatedly even told that she is eminently qualified to be the SVP of Marketing for a $90m firm, it must have been her and Chris Roberts' desire to remain private individuals, out of the public eye.

I thought this industry had matured, gotten all corporate and boring. Glad to see it is still interesting. I provide, without comment, a link to Sandi's explanation, in her own words:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/3jgejz/transcript_meet_the_devs_sandi_gardiner/

[patience]

Christ. Is there some kind of a Star Citizen Tithe for true believers during times of trouble?

They honestly should get an "I Win" tax form.

Apocalyptic cults get more and more intense as the appointed day approaches, but oddly, many of them stay devoted even when the world doesn't end when it was supposed to. Because by that point they've usually given over most of what they owned and most of their ordinary life to the cult, so it's not like they have anything to gain by walking away.

Well they've earned at least 90 million. GTA V took like 5 years to be developed. Since they started in 2012 don't you think they can't release it on 2018 the latest?

There is fundamental problem that even before you account for equipment and building rent their average staff salary should burn through their millions by next year but they alluded to having funding from non-crowdfunding sources.

*shrugs*

[jakonovski]

SD should buy it and make the game he's always promised

I'd have to buy that as an esoteric artifact for the collection. Alongside the crystal skulls and other things.

[patience]

In the response to The Escapist though, Roberts does actually confirm that Sandi Gardiner is his wife. Which is a thing that was hotly denied and apparently a huge secret previously.

Does anybody why this was supposed to be secret?

When Roberts runs out of money, her pimp will take her back.

They do have a kid now. 

[Teleku]

SD should buy it and make the game he's always promised

I'd have to buy that as an esoteric artifact for the collection. Alongside the crystal skulls and other things.

Like when Daikanta was released on steam, and then went on sale for less than a buck.  I bought it just to own.  I've still not actually ever played the game.  Waiting for some special drunken night to enjoy it for the special artifact it is.

SD buying the art assets for this and attempting to make a new battle cruiser game out of them, might just create such a pure concentrated form of lol, that it rips a hole in the fabric of time and let's the old ones in.

[Khaldun]

In the response to The Escapist though, Roberts does actually confirm that Sandi Gardiner is his wife. Which is a thing that was hotly denied and apparently a huge secret previously.

Does anybody why this was supposed to be secret?

Well, since we've repeatedly even told that she is eminently qualified to be the SVP of Marketing for a $90m firm, it must have been her and Chris Roberts' desire to remain private individuals, out of the public eye.

I thought this industry had matured, gotten all corporate and boring. Glad to see it is still interesting. I provide, without comment, a link to Sandi's explanation, in her own words:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/3jgejz/transcript_meet_the_devs_sandi_gardiner/

Marketing for nightclubs and stuff. Lots of stuff!

She had experience with stuff!

(Also, it turns out that in fashion and real estate you don't interact with people, but with video games you do. How about that. You learn new things all the time.)


Also,  : it's a challenge to market Star Citizen, because (in her own words): "most things, there's a date".

[Yegolev]

I provide, without comment, a link to Sandi's explanation, in her own words:

[Mandella]

Making money from games (as a player, not producer) is such a crazy business that it is somewhat like the old saw about running from a bear -- I don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than you. But in the gamers' case replace "faster" with "crazier."

As a case in point, I have a friend that still plays Evony (honestly, it is a friend and NOT ME). He's not so crazy, as he's probably only dropped somewhat under 100 dollars over the lifetime of the game. But he tells me there are players who routinely spend hundreds buying up a good starting position, then grind it up to super powered levels and resell it for thousands. It's actually a dependable enough market to make a decent living. Off of Evony. One of the worst games in the known universe.

My point is that the crazy people who are buying up ships now might, *might,* still be able to turn a profit if the game ever ships in any form whatsoever. Day one there are going to be trust-fund kiddies who are looking to be spending granddad's money on the biggest baddest ships in the fleet, and they may well be willing to buy your 1000 buck ship for 2000.

Might.

But at this point, good luck with that.

[Yegolev]

Well, my friends are also crazy and today we were looking at this link:
http://www.yachtworld.com/boats/1968/Noaa-Flagship-Ice-Class-Diesel-Electric-Expedition-2857704/Seattle/WA/United-States#.Vg6ppflVhBf

For when it is truly time to cash out.

[HaemishM]

In the response to The Escapist though, Roberts does actually confirm that Sandi Gardiner is his wife. Which is a thing that was hotly denied and apparently a huge secret previously.

Does anybody why this was supposed to be secret?

When Roberts runs out of money, her pimp will take her back.

Not to be that guy, but that was probably a bit over the top into unnecessarily offensive. Not that I didn't LOL, because I did. I am a very bad man.

EDIT: And by offensive I do mean misogynistic, and there's really so many better ways to insult her than to go there. Things like quoting her exact words.

As for those $900 ships selling as this controversy was erupting, in normal circumstances, I might disbelieve those numbers too. But then I remember that many, many dipshits bought virtual ships in a non-existent not even in alpha game for over $18,000 and I realized that if you are that balls deep in something, $900 is a goddamn nothing.

And... I... WEPT.

[Pennilenko]

In a dramatic turn of events, that guy I have spoken about before that spent a ridiculous amount of money on virtual ships and ended up losing his family, has somehow come out of his reality coma and has managed to move a majority of his ships to other interested buyers at (according to him, so I regard with suspicion) a very modest profit. He is talking about rebuilding his life and trying to make up with his family. Unfortunately, from first hand conversation with his now ex-wife, there is no chance of him putting things back together.  He isn't completely cured of his virtual-ship sickness completely though, because he is still holding onto some of the accounts he has packages on because he really believes that they are going to get more valuable.


Edit: The disclaimer about this guy though, is that I think if it hadn't been virtual space ships, this guy would have blown his shit up over something else, maybe bitcoin or those buy gold cons.

[Torinak]

Has anyone pointed out - and I'm not going through 83 pages of nonsense to see - that it's HIGHLY likely that the numbers of things "sold" is completely fabricated and they don't have nearly the money they're claiming?

I absolutely refuse to believe they legitimately sold 357 of a $900 ship with all this shit going on.

There are a heck of a lot of single people who work in tech, make comfortable 6-figure salaries, and live in the equivalent of their parents' basement. They live paycheck-to-paycheck because it's more fun than thinking about saving for the future. The number of people I ran into in Silicon Valley who would just go drop 3-4K on some random tech gizmo they'd never use again "because it looked neat" was mind-boggling. Virtual spaceships could easily suck them in.

That's not even getting into all of the "rich but not RICH" people who cashed out at the right time from various IPOs and ended up with multiple millions of liquid cash and nothing to do with it. Or the ones with more than that who decided they were all business geniuses and decided to become "angel investors" (i.e., bigger sheep).

[Torinak]

Well, trying to find something positive here.  If this whole thing does collapse in an orgy of smashed coke machines and weasel rape, there might be a good opportunity for somebody to buy a ton of art assets for cheap during the inevitable sell off of company assets.  Not knowing a ton about 3D game development, would it be very hard for another group of people to take the art/animation assets they’ve already developed and use them in a totally different project?  Or is there a lot of stuff baked into them that makes it hard to re-purpose this stuff outside of whatever special Engine SC is being developed in?  Say what you will, but a lot of the artwork and 3D models for this look pretty nice.  It would be a shame if that all totally went up in smoke.

Could be a way for another company to get $100 million (minus company sex parties and CEO blow) worth of art assets for pennies on the dollar.  Maybe for use in a future Elite expansion possibly.   

Given the recently-linked comments from a lead artist about the lack of guidance and attention to poly budgets, etc., in the artwork, I doubt much of it would really be usable. It's not much good to have a nice spaceship model that you can't actually render without killing your framerate...

But if the assets did get bought up and incorporated into a passable game (even one by DS) I'd buy it just for the sense of irony.

[Hutch]

In the response to The Escapist though, Roberts does actually confirm that Sandi Gardiner is his wife. Which is a thing that was hotly denied and apparently a huge secret previously.

Does anybody why this was supposed to be secret?

When Roberts runs out of money, her pimp will take her back.

Not to be that guy, but that was probably a bit over the top into unnecessarily offensive. Not that I didn't LOL, because I did. I am a very bad man.

EDIT: And by offensive I do mean misogynistic, and there's really so many better ways to insult her than to go there. Things like quoting her exact words.

But you are that guy.

And not to put words in my own mouth, but it never occurred to me to insult Ms Gardiner. I was going the other way with it. 

[schild]

Well, my friends are also crazy and today we were looking at this link:
http://www.yachtworld.com/boats/1968/Noaa-Flagship-Ice-Class-Diesel-Electric-Expedition-2857704/Seattle/WA/United-States#.Vg6ppflVhBf

For when it is truly time to cash out.

$1M is a weak cash out.

[Megrim]

Well, my friends are also crazy and today we were looking at this link:
http://www.yachtworld.com/boats/1968/Noaa-Flagship-Ice-Class-Diesel-Electric-Expedition-2857704/Seattle/WA/United-States#.Vg6ppflVhBf

For when it is truly time to cash out.

I don't know man, if I had a spare million, that is a pretty cool boat. All you'd need to do would be to outfit it into a 70s Bond Villain scheme, and you are set.

[Miasma]

Apocalyptic cults get more and more intense as the appointed day approaches, but oddly, many of them stay devoted even when the world doesn't end when it was supposed to. Because by that point they've usually given over most of what they owned and most of their ordinary life to the cult, so it's not like they have anything to gain by walking away.

This is the same analogy I use for the die hard fans but with the added twist that at least people who thought that old fool had calculated the end of the world based on "biblical math" had a set in stone release date.  It passed and they had to move on to new and different delusions, the star citizen zealot however has no hard date and will be strung along for years to come.

I really doubt they are inflating their pledge numbers, the aftermarket for rare ships, their forums, anecdotes here and that spreadsheet I linked ages ago from SA make me pretty sure the money is real.  I'm sure it's all being wasted but the inflows are real.

I bought some ships years ago literally as an experiment in being less cynical and it has backfired in a pretty amazing way.

[Pennilenko]

I don't know man, if I had a spare million, that is a pretty cool boat. All you'd need to do would be to outfit it into a 70s Bond Villain scheme, and you are set.

If you are a bond villain, this is what you would go for. http://www.migaloo-submarines.com/

[Samprimary]

In a dramatic turn of events, that guy I have spoken about before that spent a ridiculous amount of money on virtual ships and ended up losing his family, has somehow come out of his reality coma and has managed to move a majority of his ships to other interested buyers at (according to him, so I regard with suspicion) a very modest profit

To credit his story, the bubble of robertsmania has actually made it so that the modest profit is a plausible outcome.

The minor advantage to him having done this with the promise of future digital space ships is that it was a stable enough investment (... of, uh, sorts) that there was enough of a timeframe to cash out and make profit.

If he had done it with bitcoin he would probably have watched the value of his investments plummet faster than the fucking ruble and been more out of sorts about it.

If he's listening, have him get rid of all the rest of it shy of a tiny parcel of vanity early backer shit.

[Malakili]

I know a couple of people who bought in at low pledge levels who have cashed out at a profit.

[Mandella]

I know a couple of people who bought in at low pledge levels who have cashed out at a profit.

I didn't realize you could legally sell the ships at this point (before release).

Well then yes that makes it a futures commodity of a sort and the canny speculators will make a mint. It makes no difference at all if the game ever ships, or even if there has ever been a line of code written or one texture applied to a workable frame. It's all about the belief.

Of course, there will be a lot of doofuses left holding the bag after the final crash, but there always are...

[Azazel]

Erin is a dude's name?  Well okay.

I am thinking of another bimbo who made some comment about how she couldn't be VP of XYZ when there was no President of XYZ, or some other moronic comment.

That was in fact the wife we are talking about who said that, Sandi Gardiner. Calling her a bimbo though...

I imagine calling her a bimbo is a direct result of the "how can I be vice-president? tee hee." quote.

[Severian]

Not that anyone here is doubting the info, but The Escapist gives more details on its sources. The interactions were not brief. One of the sources even sent video, which may be published if they can verify it.

Ideally, if you can get two people on the record saying the same thing, or at least three anonymous people saying the same thing, then the information is good to run. We got our information from nine independent sources talking about the working conditions at Cloud Imperium and their take on the status of Star Citizen, and all were properly vetted.

[schild]

I know a couple of people who bought in at low pledge levels who have cashed out at a profit.

I didn't realize you could legally sell the ships at this point (before release).

I can't tell if this is a joke post.

[Teleku]

Given the recently-linked comments from a lead artist about the lack of guidance and attention to poly budgets, etc., in the artwork, I doubt much of it would really be usable. It's not much good to have a nice spaceship model that you can't actually render without killing your framerate...

But if the assets did get bought up and incorporated into a passable game (even one by DS) I'd buy it just for the sense of irony.

Ah, good point.  Though it seems like it would always be easy to scale back the poly count on an existing model, while the act of building more into one is the time consuming (and costly) process.  But again, don't know much at all about 3D modeling for games, so could be totally wrong on that (anybody have an idea?).

Everything will likely go poof if/when this collapses, but it would be a shame if all the money poured into the art assets didn't get used for something at least.

[Falconeer]

In the meantime, on Steam, a tiny English team with NO budget (which is 90 million times less money than 90 million dollars) released this rough and unpolished gem called Angels Fall First that does the Star Citizen/Star Marine/MultiCrew stuff years before Star Citizenl ever will (if ever).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NejH2VWd06M

[Ironwood]

 

[tmp]

Pffft but they don't even have animation of putting on your helmet as you board the ship.

(seriously though, that looks more functional than Star Citizen and Battlecruiser spin-offs combined. and the Early Access is dirt cheap in comparison)

[Mandella]

I know a couple of people who bought in at low pledge levels who have cashed out at a profit.

I didn't realize you could legally sell the ships at this point (before release).

I can't tell if this is a joke post.

I meant "legally" as in allowed by the game TOS, which now that I think about it doesn't make any difference. People will obviously do it anyway.

So maybe a stupid question, but *are* the ship properties freely transferable right now, or do you have to pull account swapping shenanigans?

[patience]

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14979-Chairmans-Response-To-The-Escapist

CiG have given Escapist a 24 hour ultimatum (it should be 18 hours left) apologize or they'll sue.

[jakonovski]

There'll be a settlement, but in case it all went to court, that'd be the final nail in Star Citizen's coffin. No matter who wins. 

Unless of course there's a special Lawsuit Sale where all the ships cost double.

 

[Falconeer]

They are literally pulling a dereksmart here. This is probably the biggest acknowledgement they could ever give to Serek. Wow.

Also, the letter is signed by that lawyer who is the co-founder of Cloud Imperium Games, so I smell a mess there. Wouldn't you want an external party to give you some clarity here, especially legal-wise?

By the way, first page of that letter (you can see it for yourself at the link patience posted):

We are contacting you because a) you have violated the most basic rules and ethics in journalism

So it's just about ethics in journalism after all 

[patience]

A lawyer is a lawyer. It's sort of like having a lawyer on retainer but he's actually a business partner instead of a contractor.