Author Topic: STAR CITIZEN: JEU PRÉFÉRÉ DE VOMKRIEGE  (Read 306914 times)

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Barry Egan

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STAR CITIZEN: JEU PRÉFÉRÉ DE VOMKRIEGE
« on: August 26, 2015, 06:14:06 PM »
« Last Edit: October 18, 2016, 09:34:53 AM by Great Rumbler »

Great Rumbler

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #1 on: August 26, 2015, 06:19:09 PM »
 :money
dog

The Sceneman

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #2 on: August 26, 2015, 06:25:24 PM »
#1

toku

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #3 on: August 26, 2015, 08:02:40 PM »
what about the ships tho

The Sceneman

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #4 on: August 26, 2015, 11:38:14 PM »
LEAKED STAR CITIZEN LEVEL ONE PLAYER SHIP 3D GRAPHICS MODEL

#1

Joe Molotov

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #5 on: August 26, 2015, 11:58:09 PM »
 :cac
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VomKriege

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #6 on: August 27, 2015, 01:38:02 AM »
Send your donations to the church of holy PC.The savior will be back. Soon. Soonish.
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Kara

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #7 on: August 27, 2015, 02:08:57 AM »
EVE fans have been sweating bullets about this. :rofl

HyperZoneWasAwesome

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #8 on: August 27, 2015, 02:46:44 AM »
really nice mo-cap on the chicken dance.

Its like that PS4 Godzilla game that uses high technology to painstainkingly recreate shitty 70's era kaiju flicks.

benjipwns

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #9 on: August 27, 2015, 03:03:43 AM »
But wait, there's more: http://www.pcgamer.com/derek-smart-threatens-legal-action-against-cloud-imperium-games-over-star-citizen/
Quote
Derek Smart says he has instructed his lawyers to send a "demand letter" to Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games insisting on a "complete forensic accounting" of the money that has been spent on the game, as well as a solid release date and a refund option for anyone who wants one. Failure to deliver on any of those demands, he said in a post on his personal blog, will lead to the immediate filing of a class-action lawsuit.

Smart has been a very vocal critic of Star Citizen and CIG for some time now. He backed the game on Kickstarter at the $250 tier, but in July his pledge was refunded, and not at his request: "It was obvious he was not a supporter of our project and was just using our visibility as a platform to gain attention and promote his current game and his past games," a CIG rep said at the time. But Smart has continued his campaign against a game he says is simply too ambitious and complex to be developed and delivered as promised.

Today, he said he'd taken the first step toward launching legal action against the studio by sending a letter demanding a full accounting of the situation—legal action he expects will be necessary to force the studio's compliance.

"As all previous calls for accountability have failed, we don’t expect RSI [Roberts Space Industries] to co-operate (hence the need to contact the Federal authorities), with us. Which means that the next steps, depending on how they respond to the letter, would be for a class-action lawsuit (already in various stages of preparation), to move forward and be immediately filed," Smart wrote. "And through that, we’re going to subpoena and depose every single key person, while asking for specific documents during discovery which will hopefully shed a light on what is going on. They will ask for protective orders, try to delay and drag things out etc. We will fight it every step of the way and my guess is that with the Federal authorities involved, it may get resolved even before it gets to trial; and then we’ll have answers either way."

"And if they do fight this, they’re going to do it with your money, simply because they don’t believe that you—the backers—are entitled to accountability. If they had nothing to hide, resolving this matter should be very straightforward," he continued, bold emphasis his. "Sadly, I feel that this is the only way that we are going to get the answers that we are entitled to, before this whole thing collapses and makes it more difficult to sift through; especially where spoliation of material evidence becomes an issue. Not to mention the fact that they have studios outside of North America, which will make things even more difficult to sift through."

"Had [Cloud Imperium Games founder] Chris Roberts and co not maintained a pattern of dishonesty, then when called out, foolishly singled me out, then went for broke and tried to silence me with the actions that they took, and which gave me a clear indication that they had something to hide, we would never have come this far," he wrote. "Finally, in this legal action that I have now initiated, note that I haven’t asked for anything that benefits me in any, way, shape or form. This is not, and never was, about me nor my game."

Barry Egan

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #10 on: August 27, 2015, 07:51:42 AM »


:hulk

Great Rumbler

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #11 on: August 27, 2015, 08:52:15 AM »
DEREK SMART
DEREK SMART
DEREK SMART
dog

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ToxicAdam

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #13 on: August 27, 2015, 10:00:59 AM »
Derek is the worst example of it, but I bet there are thousands of game developers that are rooting for this thing to fail in a big way.


VomKriege

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #14 on: August 27, 2015, 10:10:40 AM »
The word scam is maybe too strong because it supposes dishonesty from the start, but that's probably the most insane feature creep that the crowdfunding system created to this day and it's very hard not to get the impression the current bait and switch of the funding is purposely engineered. The designer has a reputation of being a big blowhard and / or insanely ambitious but at this point a lot of backers have been reduced to cultish like defenses claiming that the project itself, completed or not, will be a monument to the PC master race.
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mormapope

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #15 on: August 27, 2015, 10:15:03 AM »
When people say things like "they'll never be done with the game, there will never be a finished product, things will just keep getting updated forever", that sounds like the worst thing ever for a videogame. MMOs have a base, and then the developers decide to modify that base or add to it. A game that is completely freeballed for the next 10 years makes it impossible to care for onlookers.
OH!

VomKriege

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #16 on: August 27, 2015, 10:38:56 AM »
http://kotaku.com/why-star-citizen-is-taking-so-long-1724835913

Quote
As an example, one high-level ex-employee shared the story of the Menu Helmet. At one point, according to that employee, Roberts decided he wanted players to have to find and wear an in-game helmet in order to gain access to the menu in Arena Commander. Some developers tried to shoot down the idea, noting that players would grow frustrated if they couldn’t find something as essential as a menu, but Roberts insisted, so a team of developers spent weeks making it work. Then, according to that source, Roberts tried it, only to realize that it wasn’t actually fun. So they scrapped the whole thing and went back to a regular menu system.

Roberts’ account of the Menu Helmet is quite different. In an e-mail this week, he said it had come about because Star Citizen’s main menu UI wasn’t far along enough, and players needed a way to select what ship from their hangar they wanted to fly in Arena Commander. Problem: the hangar is also intended to function as a ship gallery, where you can hop into ships and have a gander at all their immaculately rendered buttons and knobs. Solution: have them wear a helmet to designate that they want to play Arena Commander, not just look around in their ship. Ultimately, Roberts said, once CIG decided they wanted to be able to launch Star Marine from the hangar too, the helmet method started making less sense. So they switched over to an in-game VR Pod. They also added a quick launch menu option for people who’d prefer to bypass all of that. So, according to Roberts’ account, it was still a lot of time and effort expended on a feature that didn’t stay in the game for long, but it wound up making sense in the long run.

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benjipwns

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #17 on: August 27, 2015, 10:41:36 AM »
Quote
Star Citizen will consist of two main components: first-person space combat, mining and trading with first-person shooter elements in a massively multiplayer persistent universe and customizable private servers,[7][8] and a branching single-player and drop-in co-operative multiplayer campaign titled Squadron 42

...

Star Citizen will continue to develop after commercial release via a combination of emergent gameplay generated by players and new content which will be developed by Cloud Imperium Games on an ongoing basis.[6] Players and organizations will be able to own certain production nodes including factories and mines. Capital ships can be owned and operated by players. Select "lawless planets" will feature ground-based combat using infantry style weapons. Personal armaments can also be used to board disabled ships and stations.

...

Squadron 42 is a story-based single-player campaign set in the Star Citizen fictional universe described by the developers as a "spiritual successor to Wing Commander".[17][59] It is being developed by the Foundry 42 UK studio under the supervision of Chris Roberts' brother Erin, who had already worked with him on the Wing Commander series and led the production and development of titles like Privateer 2: The Darkening and Starlancer.[25][60][61]

The interactive storyline centers on an elite military unit and involves the player character enlisting in the United Empire of Earth Navy, taking part in a campaign that starts with a large space battle.[6][17] The players' actions will allow them to optionally achieve citizenship in the UEE and affect their status in the Star Citizen persistent universe, but neither of the two games has to be played in order to access the other.[10][60] In addition to space combat simulation and first-person shooter elements,[60] reported features include a conversation system that affects relationships with non-player pilots and an optional cooperative multiplayer mode.[17][59] The game is planned to be released in multiple chapters, the first of which is expected to be available to eligible backers of the project in the second half of 2015, offering an estimated of 20 hours of gameplay for SQ42 Episode 1 with about 70 missions worth of game play, “Squadron 42 Episode Two: Behind Enemy Lines” and “Episode 3,” will launch in 2016 and 2017, respectively.

This only raised $13 million on Kickstarter:
Quote
Portable 60 quart cooler designed by Ryan Grepper that contains a battery powered rechargeable blender, waterproof Bluetooth speaker, USB charger, cutting board, plates, among other features.

And this only $12 million on indiegogo:
Quote
Flow Hive is a new type of domesticated bee hive box with a valve, where the beekeeper can extract honey from the hive without disturbing the bees.

I demand both features be added to Star Citizen, with their own individual 90+ mission campaigns.

VomKriege

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #18 on: August 27, 2015, 10:45:41 AM »
When people say things like "they'll never be done with the game, there will never be a finished product, things will just keep getting updated forever", that sounds like the worst thing ever for a videogame. MMOs have a base, and then the developers decide to modify that base or add to it. A game that is completely freeballed for the next 10 years makes it impossible to care for onlookers.

Yeah, but you least have to have that base... Honestly everything about this project is basically a red flag, it became an AAA game developed by a dozen different studios, with an infrastructure more or less created on the spot, with a crazy outline (as far I can tell, it's a MMO space sim FPS, is that right ?) and no real design bible. At that point, it seems it's a race to see if they release something that may pass as a working product before the funding stalls.
« Last Edit: August 27, 2015, 10:50:49 AM by VomKriege »
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benjipwns

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #19 on: August 27, 2015, 10:47:26 AM »
Quote
Two sources pointed to Star Citizen’s unusual first-person camera as an example of this. Usually, video games that use both first- and third-person perspectives display different animations based on how you’re perceiving the game—in Skyrim, for example, your sword swing will look a lot different in first-person than it does when you’re zoomed out of your character’s eyes. For Star Citizen, Roberts wants to maintain the same animations no matter which perspective a player uses—his goal, as always, was to be more ambitious than anything else out there.

But according to two high-level sources, this system has been messy and at times disorienting, leading to several overhauls and delays, including one that pushed the shooter module Star Marine back by months. One source said they had to scrap and redo player skeletons—a core part of the animation system—a whopping seven times.
:dead
Quote
Roberts, for his part, argues that those ex-employees didn’t have a full understanding of why he chose to spend so much time on this animation feature.

“It’s not an arbitrary decision that was made because, oh yeah, that’d be cooler,” Roberts said. “If you look at games like Call of Duty, you’ll notice that animations are much cruder for players than AI. That’s because the animation was kinda cheating, so they can’t do as much with the animations for other players in third-person. With us, we’re having people sit next to you and fly ships and sit at tables and drink things. We can’t cheat on that. We really needed a way for first- and third-person to be unified. Plus, if you can make that work, it means less resources and assets used, which is another issue for us since we already have such a big game.”

studyguy

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #20 on: August 27, 2015, 10:59:36 AM »
I gave this game like 20 bucks two years ago or whatever when it first started because I loved Freelancer/Starlancer. Never getting that 20 back.
pause

Kara

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #21 on: August 27, 2015, 11:29:28 AM »
Why would anyone give the guy who directed the Wing Commander movie 87 million dollars to make a video game. ???

Great Rumbler

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #22 on: August 27, 2015, 12:55:49 PM »
Fun fact: Star Citizen is continuing to raise over $1 million every month.
dog

Joe Molotov

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #23 on: August 27, 2015, 01:22:56 PM »
Why would anyone give the guy who directed the Wing Commander movie 87 million dollars to make a video game. ???

When that money could have funded Wing Commander 2 instead?
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VomKriege

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #24 on: August 27, 2015, 01:50:42 PM »
Some cosmic adventure in astroturfing with this guy in RPS comments for the last info in Star Citizen :
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/06/29/star-citizen-fps-module-delay/#comment-1951259
« Last Edit: August 27, 2015, 04:27:20 PM by VomKriege »
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Great Rumbler

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #25 on: August 27, 2015, 01:53:05 PM »
Sometimes developers don't get as much money as they deserve, sometimes developers get way more money than they deserve. If Star Citizen ever releases in state that isn't a total mess of disparate systems, I'll be completely shocked.
dog

Kara

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #26 on: August 27, 2015, 02:41:11 PM »
Why would anyone give the guy who directed the Wing Commander movie 87 million dollars to make a video game. ???

When that money could have funded Wing Commander 2 instead?

Archangel can't stay trapped in that Rapier forever. :maf

spoiler (click to show/hide)
They rescue her at the end of the movie.
[close]

Why would anyone give the guy who directed the Wing Commander movie 87 million dollars to make a video game. ???

Cause his games were fucking great and because starfighter sims aren't made often anymore yet there's still a big market for them?

If there was still a big market for them they wouldn't have gone away, unless you're suggesting people don't want to make money.

Also I was taking the piss, one of my played out jokes is to take someone well known and identify them by one of their most terrible or obscure works.

Barry Egan

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #27 on: August 27, 2015, 03:23:26 PM »
Cause his games were fucking great and because starfighter sims aren't made often anymore yet there's still a big market for them?

So how many in-game spaceships have you purchased so far JayDub?

Barry Egan

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #28 on: August 27, 2015, 04:02:31 PM »
well gee-whiz!

Tasty

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #29 on: August 27, 2015, 04:37:28 PM »
The word scam is maybe too strong because it supposes dishonesty from the start, but that's probably the most insane feature creep that the crowdfunding system created to this day and it's very hard not to get the impression the current bait and switch of the funding is purposely engineered. The designer has a reputation of being a big blowhard and / or insanely ambitious but at this point a lot of backers have been reduced to cultish like defenses claiming that the project itself, completed or not, will be a monument to the PC master race.

I need deets and a tldr on all this juicy KS drama.

Kara

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #30 on: August 27, 2015, 05:04:49 PM »
Crowdfunding is finance, not a market. Successful crowdfunding demonstrates the existence of people willing to finance in exchange for little (analogous to charitable giving), not the existence of a market.

Yulwei

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #31 on: August 27, 2015, 05:31:49 PM »
Imagine being one of the people who have spent literally thousands/tens of thousands of dollars for virtual space ships in a tech demo.

 :neogaf

Barry Egan

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #32 on: August 27, 2015, 06:02:49 PM »
The word scam is maybe too strong because it supposes dishonesty from the start, but that's probably the most insane feature creep that the crowdfunding system created to this day and it's very hard not to get the impression the current bait and switch of the funding is purposely engineered. The designer has a reputation of being a big blowhard and / or insanely ambitious but at this point a lot of backers have been reduced to cultish like defenses claiming that the project itself, completed or not, will be a monument to the PC master race.

I need deets and a tldr on all this juicy KS drama.

Because my time once spent playing videogames is now spent seeking out internet drama, I know way too much about this whole thing.

A pretty good summary is in the Kotaku article VomKriege posted earlier:

Quote
In the original announcement, Roberts and his team said they’d complete Star Citizen by November of 2014....Two years later, they still don’t have much to show. Star Citizen has pulled in a staggering $87.5 million from fans, and over 200 people are currently working on the game in offices across four countries—in addition to contractors and third-party partners like Behaviour Interactive—but that promised November 2014 release date has come and gone. Today, players can access two parts of the game: A hangar for storing and observing spaceships, and a multiplayer dogfighting module called Arena Commander that contains multiple modes and a horde shooting section called Vanduul Swarm. It’s a fraction of what Roberts has promised over the past few years—an MMO-style sandbox universe with a complete single-player story, a complex economy, and countless star systems and planets to explore—and many fans have wondered why all those tens of millions of dollars haven’t led to more tangible results.


Alot of this money has come from selling 'limited quantity' ships to backers that will be available whenever the game happens to be released.

What the article doesn't get into is the Derek Smart angle.  About a month ago Derek called out Chris Roberts for basically marketing vaporware, and even claimed to have inside sources confirming it is as such.  Because he can't stand the thought of injustice in the videogame industry, he's made a list of demands for Chris and his spouse:

Quote
Chris, and Sandra Roberts, you both know that I am right, and where this is headed. And as I see it, this is never going away, and you’re never going to be able to silence me. So, you have the following choices going forward:

1) You, and your wife, Sandra Roberts (aka Sandi Gardiner), should resign, effective immediately, and relinquish control of this company to an interim CEO.
2) Using the same rules you used to refund my pledge, without my asking, you are to immediately process refunds in the amount of $2,134,374 as per the initial Kickstarter crowd-funding effort for those who request it. Those who want to wait to see the end (my instinct, from what I know now, is telling me that the end is looking a lot like a catastrophic total loss of this project), and funded to the tune of $83m on your website, are welcome to do that.
3)  Give backers the opportunity to hire an independent forensics accountant, and an executive producer, to audit the company records, and give an accurate picture of the financial health of the company, and it’s ability to complete, and deliver this project in a timely fashion. I hereby offer to foot the entire costs of this effort. And I will put up to $1m of my own money, in an escrow account of an attorney’s choosing, to be used as-needed for this exercise. I will pay this price to prove that I had every right to seek these answers. So this money can either go toward a good cause (righting this ship), or to attorneys who are most likely to burn it all down anyway.
4)  If you ignore this, the more time passes, the more articles that myself, and investigative media write, revealing what we know, the more likely it is that this will end in legal (someone suing someone, and opening the flood gates) action, thereby  forcing you all to come to court and answer these questions.

As I warned before, unless there is full accountability from you, there is no version of this that ends nicely. If this ends in legal action, in any form, all relevant people who are still with your companies, or who have left, are going to be subjected to subpoenas, and depositions – under oath, as this process unfolds. This will just end up being messy, time consuming, and costly, for everyone involved. As you probably know, aside from your inner circle of sycophants, you and Sandra, have very few people who are going to put their future at risk, in order to lie under oath.

Alot of the people who are heavily invested in SC are apoplectic because of the twin-assault of missed deadlines and the Derek Smart offensive.  Now is a good time to keep abreast of this ill-fated project because implosion is imminent and tears will be flowing like milk and honey. 

HyperZoneWasAwesome

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #33 on: August 27, 2015, 06:13:07 PM »
isn't Elite: Dangerous, which is out now, pretty much the starship part of Star Citizen, what with the online features and all?

and also with a gigantic generated universe like the also not yet finished No Man's Sky is getting so much coverage for?

Rufus

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #34 on: August 27, 2015, 06:34:17 PM »
isn't Elite: Dangerous, which is out now, pretty much the starship part of Star Citizen, what with the online features and all?
Yup.

and also with a gigantic generated universe like the also not yet finished No Man's Sky is getting so much coverage for?
NMS has planets that you can visit. Elite doesn't and I think (?) Star Citizen doesn't plan to have any.

VomKriege

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #35 on: August 27, 2015, 06:55:38 PM »
The word scam is maybe too strong because it supposes dishonesty from the start, but that's probably the most insane feature creep that the crowdfunding system created to this day and it's very hard not to get the impression the current bait and switch of the funding is purposely engineered. The designer has a reputation of being a big blowhard and / or insanely ambitious but at this point a lot of backers have been reduced to cultish like defenses claiming that the project itself, completed or not, will be a monument to the PC master race.

I need deets and a tldr on all this juicy KS drama.

Dude who made Wing Commander the game (also the movie, during a failed career in Hollywood) crowdfunded a space ship combat game. After the initial kickstarter two years ago he continued to take in funding up to this day for 87 millions, selling access to ships to pledgers sometimes up to several thousand dollars apiece, and the project which started as a new gen Wing Commander apparently devolved into a spaceship game which will also be a MMO in third person which will also be a FPS (when you exit the ship in some situations). There's apparently 200 to 300 persons working on it (which will eat fast through funds) & several other studios have been contracted to do "modules" like the FPS part, modules that are supposed to be released by bits during the alpha / beta then seamlessly integrated into a monster game (Client expected to be 100GB  :lol also game will probably require an high end PC to run properly). The game is supposed to have permadeath (for the ships) so you'll have to buy insurance ingame to not lose everything everytime. On top of the rest, Roberts apparently shoots for a simulationist approach, like you have to put your helmet on before going in the ship, or the fact that he wants the third-person and first-person view to be the same and anatomically consistent. In short the guy wants to create a virtual space world to play in. If you go through discussion of the game, you'll find a thousand kooky ideas being on the table, like how -since they reached all of their stretch goals- they may consider working on pets or animal plant to include into the game.

It's not vaporware, some alpha modules have been released (although buggy, even in controlled presentations), info is given on a very regular basis about the progress, they have slick marketing (like ads in CGI for several ships) but they missed a lot of release dates and it's unclear to this day that they have anything viable in a near future. Funding continues to goes in (some pledgers gave up to 15000$ and there's anecdotes of a guy splitting up with the wifey over this) and the game has a lot of touchy defenders that may have gone all the way down the rabbit hole. Meanwhile, the new Elite has been crowdfunded at the same time, released and and had a good reception (although the scope is of course narrower and the game is still supposed to be augmented via regular updates before shaping up to what it is supposed to be).

Crowdfunding is finance, not a market. Successful crowdfunding demonstrates the existence of people willing to finance in exchange for little (analogous to charitable giving), not the existence of a market.

True. However it doesn't change the possibility that some viable market may be untapped and that the invisible hand may not be perfect at conveying that to videogame producers. Whatever the case, a 90m insane tech demo made as they go is probably folly, whether there's a market or not.
« Last Edit: August 27, 2015, 07:11:09 PM by VomKriege »
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bluemax

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #36 on: August 28, 2015, 01:47:36 AM »
I interviewed for a job at CIG a few months ago. Their office didn't really have the feel of a company with a bajillion dollars.

I also once had a conversation about the game with a guy I later discovered is like one of the main designers or something (he's the fedora wearing dude who seems to be in a lot of videos on their website). Apparently they have some super insane physics system that I can't even begin to comprehend.

The Glassdoor reviews don't make it sound like a particularly well organized place. Just from interviewing their and shit I've heard at drink ups I don't think there really is any leadership, it is just Chris Roberts making people do whatever he fancies that day.

WRT the Derek Smart thing, someone I know posted a link about that on FB, I was gonna make a smart ass response on it, and then I saw that Derek Smart had commented on it. I apparently know people that know Derek Smart.
NO

VomKriege

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #37 on: August 28, 2015, 03:24:01 AM »
Quote
“Several years from now, when you are surrounded by your loved ones, and they ask you what did you do during the battle for Space Sims and PC games, you can look them in the eye and say; I helped make Star Citizen.”

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14839-Letter-From-The-Chairman

 :usacry
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Cerveza mas fina

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #38 on: August 28, 2015, 03:28:40 AM »
Everybody is 3 connections away from Derek Smart, that's how networked that guy is.

VomKriege

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #39 on: August 28, 2015, 03:41:22 AM »
Also 66 days of shooting mocap.

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Barry Egan

  • The neurotic is nailed to the cross of his fiction.
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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #40 on: August 28, 2015, 09:11:58 AM »
I also once had a conversation about the game with a guy I later discovered is like one of the main designers or something (he's the fedora wearing dude who seems to be in a lot of videos on their website). Apparently they have some super insane physics system that I can't even begin to comprehend.

Was it Ben Lesnick? 


Tasty

  • Senior Member
Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #41 on: August 28, 2015, 01:09:14 PM »
Alot of the people who are heavily invested in SC are apoplectic because of the twin-assault of missed deadlines and the Derek Smart offensive.  Now is a good time to keep abreast of this ill-fated project because implosion is imminent and tears will be flowing like milk and honey.

Funding continues to goes in (some pledgers gave up to 15000$ and there's anecdotes of a guy splitting up with the wifey over this) and the game has a lot of touchy defenders that may have gone all the way down the rabbit hole. Meanwhile, the new Elite has been crowdfunded at the same time, released and and had a good reception (although the scope is of course narrower and the game is still supposed to be augmented via regular updates before shaping up to what it is supposed to be).

This is even better than I could have imagined. I need a link to that wife anecdote. :lol

Is this Derek Smart guy some kind of faux online celebrity or something?

Great Rumbler

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #42 on: August 28, 2015, 01:27:02 PM »
Is this Derek Smart guy some kind of faux online celebrity or something?

He's internet famous for trying to develop the same kind of all-in-one space sim as Star Citizen nearly two decades ago [and failing miserably] and for getting into intense flame wars with people.

Also, he might have attacked a Coke machine.

« Last Edit: August 28, 2015, 02:19:31 PM by Great Rumbler »
dog

Steve Contra

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #43 on: August 28, 2015, 01:45:36 PM »
Quote
“Several years from now, when you are surrounded by your loved ones, and they ask you what did you do during the battle for Space Sims and PC games, you can look them in the eye and say; I helped make Star Citizen.”

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14839-Letter-From-The-Chairman

 :usacry
"Shut the fuck up Grandpa, this is why we're putting you in a home"
vin

Joe Molotov

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #44 on: August 28, 2015, 02:14:50 PM »
Is this Derek Smart guy some kind of faux online celebrity or something?

He made a game once (kinda). Then he kept making it for the next 20 years.
©@©™


VomKriege

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  • Senior Member
Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #46 on: August 28, 2015, 05:05:40 PM »
Quote
“Several years from now, when you are surrounded by your loved ones, and they ask you what did you do during the battle for Space Sims and PC games, you can look them in the eye and say; I helped make Star Citizen.”

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14839-Letter-From-The-Chairman

 :usacry
"Shut the fuck up Grandpa, this is why we're putting you in a home"

I was thining along the lines of
- "When where you when President Trump ruined America ? Also when I struggled with my identity at the university ?"
- "Well I was backing Star Citizen. One day al those ships will be yours."
  :smug
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Phoenix Dark

  • I got no game it's just some bitches understand my story
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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #47 on: August 29, 2015, 06:01:15 AM »
The word scam is maybe too strong because it supposes dishonesty from the start, but that's probably the most insane feature creep that the crowdfunding system created to this day and it's very hard not to get the impression the current bait and switch of the funding is purposely engineered. The designer has a reputation of being a big blowhard and / or insanely ambitious but at this point a lot of backers have been reduced to cultish like defenses claiming that the project itself, completed or not, will be a monument to the PC master race.

I need deets and a tldr on all this juicy KS drama.

Because my time once spent playing videogames is now spent seeking out internet drama, I know way too much about this whole thing.

A pretty good summary is in the Kotaku article VomKriege posted earlier:

Quote
In the original announcement, Roberts and his team said they’d complete Star Citizen by November of 2014....Two years later, they still don’t have much to show. Star Citizen has pulled in a staggering $87.5 million from fans, and over 200 people are currently working on the game in offices across four countries—in addition to contractors and third-party partners like Behaviour Interactive—but that promised November 2014 release date has come and gone. Today, players can access two parts of the game: A hangar for storing and observing spaceships, and a multiplayer dogfighting module called Arena Commander that contains multiple modes and a horde shooting section called Vanduul Swarm. It’s a fraction of what Roberts has promised over the past few years—an MMO-style sandbox universe with a complete single-player story, a complex economy, and countless star systems and planets to explore—and many fans have wondered why all those tens of millions of dollars haven’t led to more tangible results.


Alot of this money has come from selling 'limited quantity' ships to backers that will be available whenever the game happens to be released.

What the article doesn't get into is the Derek Smart angle.  About a month ago Derek called out Chris Roberts for basically marketing vaporware, and even claimed to have inside sources confirming it is as such.  Because he can't stand the thought of injustice in the videogame industry, he's made a list of demands for Chris and his spouse:

Quote
Chris, and Sandra Roberts, you both know that I am right, and where this is headed. And as I see it, this is never going away, and you’re never going to be able to silence me. So, you have the following choices going forward:

1) You, and your wife, Sandra Roberts (aka Sandi Gardiner), should resign, effective immediately, and relinquish control of this company to an interim CEO.
2) Using the same rules you used to refund my pledge, without my asking, you are to immediately process refunds in the amount of $2,134,374 as per the initial Kickstarter crowd-funding effort for those who request it. Those who want to wait to see the end (my instinct, from what I know now, is telling me that the end is looking a lot like a catastrophic total loss of this project), and funded to the tune of $83m on your website, are welcome to do that.
3)  Give backers the opportunity to hire an independent forensics accountant, and an executive producer, to audit the company records, and give an accurate picture of the financial health of the company, and it’s ability to complete, and deliver this project in a timely fashion. I hereby offer to foot the entire costs of this effort. And I will put up to $1m of my own money, in an escrow account of an attorney’s choosing, to be used as-needed for this exercise. I will pay this price to prove that I had every right to seek these answers. So this money can either go toward a good cause (righting this ship), or to attorneys who are most likely to burn it all down anyway.
4)  If you ignore this, the more time passes, the more articles that myself, and investigative media write, revealing what we know, the more likely it is that this will end in legal (someone suing someone, and opening the flood gates) action, thereby  forcing you all to come to court and answer these questions.

As I warned before, unless there is full accountability from you, there is no version of this that ends nicely. If this ends in legal action, in any form, all relevant people who are still with your companies, or who have left, are going to be subjected to subpoenas, and depositions – under oath, as this process unfolds. This will just end up being messy, time consuming, and costly, for everyone involved. As you probably know, aside from your inner circle of sycophants, you and Sandra, have very few people who are going to put their future at risk, in order to lie under oath.

Alot of the people who are heavily invested in SC are apoplectic because of the twin-assault of missed deadlines and the Derek Smart offensive.  Now is a good time to keep abreast of this ill-fated project because implosion is imminent and tears will be flowing like milk and honey.
This post is appreciated. I've been wondering about this largely due to seeing the $$$ numbers on gaf.

010

VomKriege

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #48 on: August 29, 2015, 07:49:55 AM »
Alot of the people who are heavily invested in SC are apoplectic because of the twin-assault of missed deadlines and the Derek Smart offensive.  Now is a good time to keep abreast of this ill-fated project because implosion is imminent and tears will be flowing like milk and honey.

Funding continues to goes in (some pledgers gave up to 15000$ and there's anecdotes of a guy splitting up with the wifey over this) and the game has a lot of touchy defenders that may have gone all the way down the rabbit hole. Meanwhile, the new Elite has been crowdfunded at the same time, released and and had a good reception (although the scope is of course narrower and the game is still supposed to be augmented via regular updates before shaping up to what it is supposed to be).

This is even better than I could have imagined. I need a link to that wife anecdote. :lol

Is this Derek Smart guy some kind of faux online celebrity or something?

The wife anecdote I read on RPS or Quarter to Three forums... not sure if there's an account somewhere.
But you can always go on the Reddit for horror stories (Poe's Law ?) :

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/2vogfa/wife_just_told_me_to_stop_giving_money_to_that/

A lot of jokes about that in that community :

http://forums.starcitizenbase.com/topic/11031-guide-to-get-wife-spouse-acceptance-for-star-citizen/

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/176487/spent-all-morning-downloading-new-patch-and-my-wife-won-t-let-me-play

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/897776/#Comment_897776

 :quark
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The Sceneman

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #49 on: August 29, 2015, 08:13:23 PM »
I just about puked reading that Reddit thread.... jesus christ the loser-dom
#1

Himu

  • Senior Member
Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #50 on: August 29, 2015, 09:08:25 PM »
Alot of the people who are heavily invested in SC are apoplectic because of the twin-assault of missed deadlines and the Derek Smart offensive.  Now is a good time to keep abreast of this ill-fated project because implosion is imminent and tears will be flowing like milk and honey.

Funding continues to goes in (some pledgers gave up to 15000$ and there's anecdotes of a guy splitting up with the wifey over this) and the game has a lot of touchy defenders that may have gone all the way down the rabbit hole. Meanwhile, the new Elite has been crowdfunded at the same time, released and and had a good reception (although the scope is of course narrower and the game is still supposed to be augmented via regular updates before shaping up to what it is supposed to be).

This is even better than I could have imagined. I need a link to that wife anecdote. :lol

Is this Derek Smart guy some kind of faux online celebrity or something?

The wife anecdote I read on RPS or Quarter to Three forums... not sure if there's an account somewhere.
But you can always go on the Reddit for horror stories (Poe's Law ?) :

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/2vogfa/wife_just_told_me_to_stop_giving_money_to_that/

A lot of jokes about that in that community :

http://forums.starcitizenbase.com/topic/11031-guide-to-get-wife-spouse-acceptance-for-star-citizen/

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/176487/spent-all-morning-downloading-new-patch-and-my-wife-won-t-let-me-play

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/897776/#Comment_897776

 :quark

Shenmue III won.
IYKYK

Tasty

  • Senior Member
Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #51 on: August 29, 2015, 09:17:18 PM »
Those links :dead

Syph

  • Senior Member
Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #52 on: August 30, 2015, 09:58:30 PM »
I feel like if this doesn't deliver, it will finally be the needle that broke the camel's back in terms of developers just claiming "woops guess we ran out of funds!"
XO

bluemax

  • Senior Member
Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #53 on: August 31, 2015, 04:31:04 AM »
I also once had a conversation about the game with a guy I later discovered is like one of the main designers or something (he's the fedora wearing dude who seems to be in a lot of videos on their website). Apparently they have some super insane physics system that I can't even begin to comprehend.

Was it Ben Lesnick? 

(Image removed from quote.)

Its none of the dudes in that gif.
NO

recursivelyenumerable

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  • Senior Member
Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #54 on: August 31, 2015, 02:58:10 PM »
this isn't really my thing. i'm reluctant to mock it b/c i'm not comfortable with kink-shaming.
QED

naff

  • someday you feed on a tree frog
  • Senior Member
Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #55 on: August 31, 2015, 07:27:34 PM »
These guys have done an amazing job so far, tech demo is solid, game feels good to play like what I want from a space sim, marketing is genius. Haters hating.

Nothing but respect and admiration for the deep understanding this team has for their market  :jawalrus





Selling digital ships for an incomplete game for up to $2500 a pop :rejoice
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naff

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #56 on: August 31, 2015, 07:48:40 PM »
.. By relative standards 3 years and 87 million is not an egregious budget or timeline for a project like this at all... Roberts kinda fucked himself with the overly ambitious schedule though for sure, but they still appear to be making steady progress.

Derek Smart hasn't got a case, is salty af, and likely worships Chris Roberts behind closed doors while hating himself and his legacy of shit tier titles.
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Rufus

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #57 on: August 31, 2015, 08:09:10 PM »
Derek Smart hasn't got a case, is salty af, and likely worships Chris Roberts behind closed doors while hating himself and his legacy of shit tier titles.
That guy is way too far up his own ass for that. He is the chip on his shoulder, from what I've seen.

Barry Egan

  • The neurotic is nailed to the cross of his fiction.
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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #58 on: August 31, 2015, 09:22:31 PM »
By relative standards 3 years and 87 million is not an egregious budget or timeline for a project like this at all.

Development started in 2011, which means we are approaching year five with very little to show for it aside from an abundance of nifty trailers and a couple bare-bones tech demos.  Their are people who are more familiar with game development who can probably comment on whether that's a typical time frame or not. 
« Last Edit: August 31, 2015, 09:28:19 PM by Barry Egan »

naff

  • someday you feed on a tree frog
  • Senior Member
Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #59 on: August 31, 2015, 09:42:45 PM »
I was thinking about other big efforts in a similar space

Destiny - first hinted 2009, released 2014. According to Activision cost around 500 million (incl. marketing, dev, infrastructure cost)

Diablo 3 - Dev started 2001, announced 2008, released 2012. No idea on cost but.....
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