Author Topic: STAR CITIZEN: JEU PRÉFÉRÉ DE VOMKRIEGE  (Read 306933 times)

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Freyj

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #180 on: October 04, 2015, 08:35:22 PM »
I'm not surprised by anything anymore. One of our biggest clients started in housing some of their development and scheduled a call with my boss the other day. He's not a developer, but he had to explain the basics of git to their developers.

A few hours later we get a "who approved the use of git?" email from their CTO.  :goty

VomKriege

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Great Rumbler

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #182 on: October 05, 2015, 10:07:11 AM »
Quote
Who is Derek Smart? He's the Orly Taitz of computer gaming.

:dead
dog

VomKriege

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VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #184 on: October 05, 2015, 12:43:26 PM »
There's two more questions that someone familiar with programming can maybe answer :

- If the development lasts 5 years or more (like it will, at best), don't they run the risk that some part of the programming may become "obsolete" (like if a new DirectX comes out or something), especially since they have the pretense of making a cutting edge game ?
- Post launch support, servers and all that is probably not something trivial cost wise. Shouldn't the budget already have some money set aside  (esp. since there should be no subscriptions) if the sales can't support the cash flow ?

(Not that I think they will reach the release stage... But heh, who knows ?)

It's only a very wild guesstimate, but crunching hypothetical numbers and taking as a reference point my current employer, it seems fairly plausible their current yearly spending is in the 20-40m bracket. For wages for 260 employees I arrive at a 12m yearly payroll by being conservative to which is added rent, utilities, hardware & software, some marketing, shows & conventions, subcontractors, the month(s) long motion capture gig (at Andy Serkis studio) with a "top level" casting which alone should cost a several millions one off expense, etc... They started out much smaller but still makes you wonder. It's still unclear what other sources of funds they might have, but the pledge money certainly can't last forever at that pace.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2015, 01:04:55 PM by VomKriege »
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Barry Egan

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #185 on: October 05, 2015, 08:05:26 PM »
Escapist doubles down:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/features/14715-CIG-Employees-Talk-Star-Citizen-and-the-State-of-the-Company

Quote
Update: The Escapist, notwithstanding Cloud Imperium Games' notice and posting, stands by its coverage of Star Citizen and intends to continue to investigate the developing story. Since publishing our original stories, we have been contacted by, and are currently interviewing, additional sources corroborating a variety of the reported allegations. Additionally, if Mr. Roberts' offer for The Escapist to "meet the developers making the game and see how we're building one of the most ambitious PC games first hand" remains open, we take the opportunity to accept such invitation so as to hopefully provide the public with sufficient information and opportunity to vet such sources' allegations and claims for themselves. We have also communicated the foregoing directly to Cloud Imperium Games.

Derek Smart chimes in -


5 days til Citizencon! :marimo

Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #186 on: October 05, 2015, 10:09:37 PM »
😈

benjipwns

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #187 on: October 05, 2015, 10:16:23 PM »
I wish I was important enough to have a blog that had to clear legal first.

benjipwns

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #188 on: October 05, 2015, 10:22:25 PM »
- If the development lasts 5 years or more (like it will, at best), don't they run the risk that some part of the programming may become "obsolete" (like if a new DirectX comes out or something), especially since they have the pretense of making a cutting edge game ?
This is what happened to Daikatana and Duke Nukem Forever.

In both cases, they had enough staff churn that they had to recreate a lot of stuff that was already done because later staff couldn't waste the time to figure out the old code when they could just write new stuff. So that's a lot of wasted man-hours.

They also both did multiple engine changes to try and stay in vogue, although that's not so much the case as it was during Daikatana's days where each game/card/etc. was a major tech event. And shouldn't be if Crytek's vision of CryEngine going forward works out. But Romero has said that making the switch from Quake I to Quake II engine without talking to Carmack first was the dumbest decision he probably made. Ion Storm wound up having to restart basically because of all the pipeline and other changes Carmack had made, and they had just assumed it was going to be Quake I with new stuff thrown on top but it broke all their maps and objects and so on.

benjipwns

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #189 on: October 05, 2015, 10:42:11 PM »
I now see Kara pointed it out well before I saw the comment on popehat, but the CIG "lawyers" letter literally has this to start the third paragraph:
Quote
We are contacting you because a) you have violated the most basic rules and ethics in journalism..

VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #190 on: October 06, 2015, 12:28:39 AM »
To my surprise, Star Citizen actually did try the MLM route already :

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/12762-Star-Citizen-Enlist-Your-Friends
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bluemax

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #191 on: October 06, 2015, 03:13:16 PM »
I'm not surprised by anything anymore. One of our biggest clients started in housing some of their development and scheduled a call with my boss the other day. He's not a developer, but he had to explain the basics of git to their developers.

A few hours later we get a "who approved the use of git?" email from their CTO.  :goty

The first job I worked at where we used Git we had an hour plus training seminar on how to use it. I still fucked up my first merge (and I had tons of experience with doing P4 integrations). Git is fucking confusing.

Also:

http://kotaku.com/angels-fall-first-is-trying-to-be-your-dream-sci-fi-com-1734823211

I wish I was kidding. Back in the day there was talk about some multi-location development houses having problems on that sort of level. This was before GitHub. I'm trying to remember the... yeah. I think it was Ubisoft and Ubisoft Shanghai and Montreal. They'd send the day's work from one location to QA (in Shanghai I think) for Splinter Cell but it wasn't "sync"d to where bugs and other shit would pop-up despite Montreal apparently fixing them that day.

I worked on a game for a major developer where it was actually quicker for them to mail us a hard drive with the latest and have us use that as a basis for anyone new coming on to the project, than it was for a new dev to synch up to the latest. Of course this was because they were morons and didn't use P4 right for the assets part of the project so if you didn't manually do your synch you ended up grabbing a branch that had all the level assets, the raw assets, and several gigs of 1080p reference movies for the artists an animators. Yeah that was fun.
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Steve Contra

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #192 on: October 06, 2015, 03:20:27 PM »
I worked on a game where a designer accidentally checked out every available file.  Took like 3 days to revert everything :beli

vin

VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #193 on: October 06, 2015, 04:55:12 PM »
New Smart rambling

http://www.dereksmart.org/2015/10/star-citizen-the-endgame/

Lots of crazy talk but few actual meat in this, apart from Gary Oldman doing the intro of SQ42. I'm kind of curious to see the motion capture cast if only to get a sense of just how much money they burned on this. I suspect Roberts may want to use SQ42 as a way to leverage more funds with its release.
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Howard Alan Treesong

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #194 on: October 06, 2015, 06:44:53 PM »
I worked on a game where a designer accidentally checked out every available file.  Took like 3 days to revert everything :beli

I fucking apologized okay
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Dickie Dee

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #195 on: October 06, 2015, 07:11:33 PM »
___

bluemax

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #196 on: October 07, 2015, 01:17:42 AM »
Lots of new Glassdoor reviews popped up:

http://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Cloud-Imperium-Games-EI_IE776546.11,31.htm

Quote
Cons
People externally trying to kill the project also a lot of "Late Work Days" but that is to be expected.

Quote
   
Tea Boy Interview

Anonymous Employee
Application
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Cloud Imperium Games.

Interview
A bightly lite area, wide screen tvs, sky sports on the main tv, a jukebox playing, a monkey handing out free beer. Suddenly a carsleberg girl aproaches you and wafts sweat sents towards you and kisses you on the lips as a welcome. I found this relaxed very much.

Interview Questions
who is derek smart 

Quote
Pros
CIG is a great place to work in! really disappointed to see a few negative reviews, clearly from some disgruntled former employees who didn't work out. that is their own experience and I can say that's definitely not the same for everyone else here. CIG is a very fun, groundbreaking and challenging place to work in. what makes this studio worth it is the amount of passionate people on this project, working closely with Chris Roberts and the endless opportunities we have that we would never get anywhere else in a regular corporate environment. - benefits package is pretty good! never worked in a place that gave free benefits to their employees, a good amount of time off, and a fully paid holiday break between christmas and new years - very flexible work environment: we work really hard but management is also very lenient and relaxed in giving time off overall I have had a very positive experience working in CIG.
Show Less
Cons
- need to hire more leads/directors to help drive the project forward - need better communication across global studios

Quote
Cons
I worked way more hours than I expected because the quality standard was very high. I don't mean that as it was unreasonable for them or they kept tearing my work apart in frivolous ways, though. I just felt like I was working on something special and really obsessed on getting my little contributions perfect. Definitely went without enough sleep sometimes; but that was my choice, not because it was asked of me.
Advice to Management
Keep doing what you're doing. This project blew up larger than you were expecting, which showed. But I also saw many steps being made to streamline the project management while contracting with you guys. So, just keep at it. It was a pleasure.

Quote
   
“started of nice....became the worst place ive ever worked ”

Former Employee - Artist in Los Angeles, CA   
Doesn't Recommend
Negative Outlook
No opinion of CEO
I worked at Cloud Imperium Games full-time (More than a year)
Pros
great people...chris is talking a hell of a lot of flak recently but i will say he is great at creating visions...just seems incapable of delivering them was technically fun to use cryengine and surrounded by great talented people....until they were driven away or quit that is
Cons
im sure i will get slammed as a troll for being negative but the fact is the project totally lost its way and assuming it is ever released it will be nothing like the original pitch management are incompetent...maybe dues to pressure to be fair...but that doesn't excuse how certain people treated others VERY long hours which is common in this industry but in this case you are almost slave driven and its not worth it
Advice to Management
for the future of the project PLEASE try listening to your staff before you drive them all away. everyone was always too busy trying to keep chris happy -that was wrong. it seemed like the game didnt matter. check your ego...this is fairly negative i admit but i dont actively want it to explode and fail so please stop trying to control every little detail

Lots of them mention long hours, some saying "its a sign of demand for quality" others saying its a sign that the project has spiraled out of control etc.
NO

Kara

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #197 on: October 07, 2015, 02:02:40 AM »
who is john galt derek smart 

Trent Dole

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #198 on: October 07, 2015, 01:18:02 PM »
Oh hey guess it's time to post this again then

never gets old

Hell, this too.

:teehee
Hi

chronovore

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Re: Ever wondered what 87 million dollars in crowd-funding looked like?
« Reply #199 on: October 07, 2015, 05:15:08 PM »
It's like Ion Storm, except Ion Storm actually managed to release a few games.

bluemax

  • Senior Member
Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #200 on: October 09, 2015, 02:10:31 PM »
Went to Game Dev Drink Up last night. A current CIG employee was ranting about how working there is akin to being at a Nazi Concentration camp. I asked him if he had heard of Godwin's Law.

A moment later a woman who had just quit working at CIG the day before (and was far less drunk/psycho nerd) did confirm that it is apparently pretty bad there.

I mean I've worked some bad places in my life, one that I thought might just be an elaborate psych experiment, but nothing I'd ever compare to being in a CONCENTRATION CAMP.
NO

VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #201 on: October 09, 2015, 02:20:48 PM »
Well, have you vetted them ? Did they show you paystubs ? Are you DEREK SMART ? Why do you want to kill Star Citizen ?
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recursivelyenumerable

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #202 on: October 09, 2015, 02:53:50 PM »
So does this analogy make the SC backerariat Roberts' Willing Executioners?  :doge
QED

VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #203 on: October 09, 2015, 05:55:07 PM »
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Barry Egan

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #204 on: October 09, 2015, 11:44:04 PM »


 :goty :goty :goty

Barry Egan

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #205 on: October 10, 2015, 02:33:06 AM »
90 million dollars.

VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #206 on: October 10, 2015, 02:38:24 AM »
Roberts getting enamored with the idea of jamming a FPS in there is bizarre. I'm no game designer but it all seems so inconvenient at many levels, like are you switching from your flight stick to M/KB on the fly if the game switches gear (IIRC, the whole FPS part was related to boarding ships) and even on a larger level I'm not sure I would see the appeal of having to care about some part that may not interest me during game sessions. I know there's a crowd for excessively time consuming game and MMOs but that whole design idea, if they ever manage to pull off something akin to it, sounds like way too busywork for the player.

About the FPS teaser :

Quote
I would also like to point out that this was made by a couple QA testers and a Producer just today while play-testing a build. This was not meant to be a grand trailer for FPS, but more-so some fun clips we put together in excitement for tomorrow. :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/3o62mm/star_marine_citizencon_teaser/cvug9ae

Even the marketing is starting to get lackluster ?
« Last Edit: October 10, 2015, 04:28:08 AM by VomKriege »
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VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #207 on: October 10, 2015, 05:04:32 AM »
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14997-Star-Marine-Status-Update

Animation
Started working on to/from prone animation transitions
Removed all ADS and iron transitions – they looked bad

Blocking Issues
All Armor Types – Taking damage while swapping weapons causes character to lose weapons.
When pistol is selected user is unable to throw grenades or use gadgets.
Throwing a grenade can cause a crash.

Well...

Meanwhile in the rumor mill at 4chan

http://boards.4chan.org/v/thread/312405840/so-did-those-claims-about-star-citizen-turn-out#p312411992

Quote
Couldn't post this at /vg/ because they keep banning me for three days every time i post about the game's lack of progress.

I know a guy (used to be bosom buddies with Ben Lesnick back in the day) who is an actual, no-shit investor in Cloud Imperium. Pre-Kickstarter (when they were still hoping to buy the Wing commander License back from EA) he was given the opportunity to buy in, so he dropped $55k. Gets a share of any profits (starting with commercial release of Squadron 42).

All this escapist stuff had him a little worried, so he exercised his rights under the investment agreement (there's only like 3 other investors left, because the rest exercised an option to get bought out when crowdfunding reached $25 mil) to look at some financials, but he's been rebuffed repeatedly for almost a week now.

Suddenly, people getting refunds the past couple days were getting refunded by a movie development company owned by Ortwin Freyemuth, a German entertainment lawyer and movie producer who worked with Roberts at Ascension Pictures (before they got sued into oblivion by Kevin Costner because they jerked him around for a year, promised him $8 mil for a film, and then never paid him or made the movie; Roberts and Freyermuth were basically blacklisted after that).

Also if you look at the British website for Companies House, you can see that Foundry 42 hasn't filed any of their legally-required fiscal paperwork with the government. It was due in December of last year. Fines are racking up, and Chris and Erin Roberts (as well as Ortwin Freyermuth) actually face criminal charges and unlimited fines and civil penalties.

https://companycheck.co.uk/company/08703814/FOUNDRY-42-LIMITED/summary

They we have Derek Smart with an inside source, and he has now announced two dozen firings before they were made public. They've had the same 65 supposed job openings listed on their website unfilled for almost 7 months now.

None of these things point to a financially-stable company.

 :hans1
« Last Edit: October 10, 2015, 05:31:40 AM by VomKriege »
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Rufus

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #208 on: October 10, 2015, 06:52:07 AM »
So if that's true, Roberts is not just a naive idiot with grandiose ideas.

VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #209 on: October 10, 2015, 09:50:01 AM »
Even if all allegations were false, I wouldn't call him naive...

The yearly financials of the UK branch (and maybe others) will probably be the only factual insight into the project we can look forward to.
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Van Cruncheon

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #210 on: October 10, 2015, 10:34:45 AM »
Quote
The best joke I've heard in all of this that Chris Roberts is the second coke machine Derek Smart has beaten up

:dead
duc

nudemacusers

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #211 on: October 10, 2015, 10:47:36 AM »
this is pretty much a game that sounds great on paper but hell/impossible in execution. you can't outfund feature creep.
﷽﷽﷽﷽﷽

Kara

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #212 on: October 10, 2015, 11:06:22 AM »
That's not a government website and it indicates that a tax return was filed about a year ago which seems kosher.

I also don't understand why a private company would have to disclose financial reports to the public.

VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #213 on: October 10, 2015, 11:13:35 AM »
That's not a government website and it indicates that a tax return was filed about a year ago which seems kosher.

I also don't understand why a private company would have to disclose financial reports to the public.

Just a site making a dime out of a public registry.
Official Companies House site here :
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08703814

"Financials" is maybe not the proper term, but making a rough outline public may be considered as fair information for anyone planning to deal with a company or somesuch, just like you can generally access info about who runs a company.
Accounts are marked overdue here, but the online info may be updated with some lag. I guess a young company could maybe have some trouble coping with all the administrative work without any sinister going on (still reflects poorly on their accountants, I suppose).

EDIT : Checked a few companies, and not everyone has numbers (HSBC doesn't...) but some do, like Games Workshop (Here) or Frontier Developments -of Elite fame- (Here)

So who knows.
« Last Edit: October 10, 2015, 11:26:26 AM by VomKriege »
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VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #214 on: October 10, 2015, 03:34:18 PM »
The stream for Citizencon... has been delayed. :-D

Quote
Maybe there's no stream, maybe it's just a mockup of their idea of what a stream would be like.

:dead
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VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #215 on: October 10, 2015, 04:50:06 PM »
The cast is in.

http://www.pcgamer.com/star-citizen-features-gary-oldman-gillian-anderson-mark-hamill/

It's pretty good in terms of famous people. Must have cost some dough.

Otherwise there's now a referral program to reward you for brainwashing friends and family.
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Sho Nuff

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #216 on: October 10, 2015, 04:53:51 PM »

VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #217 on: October 10, 2015, 05:14:15 PM »


WOW it's pretty...

Pretty shit actually.
Gary Oldman not sounding too motivated to play in a video toy thingie, to be honest.
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mormapope

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #218 on: October 10, 2015, 05:24:42 PM »
Interesting to see a blockbuster and AAA game implode together at the same time.
OH!

HyperZoneWasAwesome

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #219 on: October 10, 2015, 05:39:13 PM »
Craig Fairbrass is really flattered he's a marquee name in this. Really, he's quite anxious to tell his mum bout it.


demi sighting...

VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #220 on: October 10, 2015, 05:48:35 PM »
Derek Smart might be a pompous sucker, but he may have some legit source inside. 4 out of 5 (EDIT: Some multicrew was shown, so 5 out of 5) for his forecast of what was showcased.
« Last Edit: October 10, 2015, 06:29:34 PM by VomKriege »
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Barry Egan

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #221 on: October 10, 2015, 07:29:12 PM »
If I had invested money in this I would be kinda pissed watching that cast list float by.  Seems pretty costly for a generic space-opera.  During that presentation Chris mentioned that the script is 10 HOURS long, longer than a Kojima joint, and if that Oldman speech is any indication it's all bland dreck. 

In terms of awkward videogame presentations though, this had some really great moments, the opening and closing especially.  Chris Roberts' wifes resignation speech (?), which ends in her breaking down into tears and receiving a huge bouquet of flowers, and the staff bringing out a cake and singing "Happy Birthday" to Star Citizen.  Just really bizarre stuff. 

Also the game looks about as fun as Farm Tractor Simulator set in space and with all the requisite jank included. 

mormapope

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #222 on: October 10, 2015, 07:32:48 PM »
That sounds like a nightmare   :-\
OH!

VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #223 on: October 10, 2015, 07:54:54 PM »


That's for version 2.0 of Arena Commander mind you, which is not the next update but sometimes soon™.
The whole running to the spaceship in FPS mode is weird as all hell to watch. Considering the state of gameplay here, the single player game is far from being finished (same mechanics).

Anyway, official communication for this month is both a cringe exercice in corporate talk and a jab at Derek Smart

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14995-Monthly-Studio-Report

Quote
I wanted to update everyone on some organizational changes we are making to maximize our creative synergy and development abilities.
It’s no secret that having a distributed development structure presents challenges as much as it provides advantages. Without this approach we wouldn’t have some of the most talented people in the industry working on star Citizen. There are people in Los Angeles, Austin, Manchester and Frankfurt that are only working on this game because we have offices in these locations. We truly have a WORLD CLASS team.

(...)

As with all reorganizations there will be some roles that will no longer exist in their current location – we are really trying to reduce the single man outpost syndrome – as well as concentrate feature teams in single locations. In the event relocation doesn’t make sense for the roles that are now redundant we are at the minimum giving the small number of people affected five weeks’ notice as well as two weeks’ severance to allow people to try to land on their feet. In some cases we are allowing for work until the end of the year to give even more runway. This is the not so great part of the reorganization as we will definitely be losing some hardworking and talented people and we haven’t come to this decision lightly but ultimately we felt we owed it to the backers and the game to make sure we were allocating our resources effectively. So for the people in this category I’m sorry and hope the big lead-time helps.

No need for publishers indeed.

Quote
It won’t be an easy road. We’re very public and there will always be obstacles trying to block our path, whether they are normal problems that crop up in development or outside agitators that are threatened by a completely crowd funded project building a dream game they wished they had the talent or support to build.

 :umad
« Last Edit: October 10, 2015, 08:06:36 PM by VomKriege »
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Kara

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #224 on: October 10, 2015, 08:56:05 PM »
Waifugate comes to a close. :'(

bluemax

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #225 on: October 10, 2015, 09:06:26 PM »
Well, have you vetted them ? Did they show you paystubs ? Are you DEREK SMART ? Why do you want to kill Star Citizen ?

I realize you are joking but I went ahead just now and looked them up on LinkedIn. They both are on LinkedIn and the woman has updated her profile to indicate she doesn't work at CIG. I'm not gonna go blabbing this to Kotaku or Polygon or The Escapist though.
NO

VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #226 on: October 11, 2015, 04:08:14 AM »
In the Gary Oldman interview :

“From what I gather, Chris [Roberts] is a bit of – the sort of George Lucas of this stuff… or potentially could be."

 :lol
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Rufus

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #227 on: October 11, 2015, 05:49:01 AM »
High praise. :doge

recursivelyenumerable

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #228 on: October 11, 2015, 11:38:04 AM »
this is great for anyone who's ever wondered what Scientology would be like if they led with the bad space opera instead of reserving it for initiates.
QED

mormapope

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #229 on: October 11, 2015, 12:38:37 PM »
Its laughable as all fuck when people say things like "We aren't ready for developers to be transparent with development due to all the whining and questioning :maf"

The criticism being lobbed at this abomination in the making is doing nothing to development, and these same people are willing to or have thrown dozens of other games under a bus for any number of reasons. A lot of game players on the internet are whine monsters.

Developers/publishers nowadays release a shit ton of promo footage, along with there being impressions from other people all the time. These dorks have convinced themselves that the narrative CIG is giving them is some sort of godsend in the gaming world.
OH!

Joe Molotov

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #230 on: October 11, 2015, 12:41:33 PM »
omg, I just saw Fish Tank 2.0 :dead

At least pyramid schemes offer you actual money for scamming your friends and family.
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Barry Egan

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #231 on: October 11, 2015, 01:38:56 PM »

VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #232 on: October 11, 2015, 03:25:32 PM »
Star Citizen is a master class in deceitful marketing. There's no denying they communicate a lot, in fact they overload their backers weekly with minute list of bugs and tasks... While changing the TOS without notice, never aknowledging delays until after the fact or adressing elephants in the room (why is the FPS alpha that was weeks away in March still not out ?).

Reading reactions to the recent CitizenCon, a lot of backers got the impression the FPS module was merged away in the MMO. That the thing is even to be speculated upon after a promotion show is an indictement of how opaque the marketing is, to the point of not clearly conveying what the core features will be.
« Last Edit: October 11, 2015, 03:56:34 PM by VomKriege »
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Barry Egan

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #233 on: October 11, 2015, 03:43:57 PM »
Reading reactions to the recent CitizenCon, a lot of backers got the impression the FPS module was merged away in the MMO. That the thing is even to be speculated upon show is an indictement of how opaque the marketing is.

Yep, I'm convinced that the FPS module they've been promising all year is gone for good.  CIG has totally abandoned even pretending to have release dates at this point, so there is absolutely no sign of when the next playable anything will be released. 

On the plus side, there is a new referral system in place!  Tell your friends!


wsippel

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #234 on: October 12, 2015, 03:35:53 AM »
Star Citizen is a master class in deceitful marketing. There's no denying they communicate a lot, in fact they overload their backers weekly with minute list of bugs and tasks... While changing the TOS without notice, never aknowledging delays until after the fact or adressing elephants in the room (why is the FPS alpha that was weeks away in March still not out ?).

Reading reactions to the recent CitizenCon, a lot of backers got the impression the FPS module was merged away in the MMO. That the thing is even to be speculated upon after a promotion show is an indictement of how opaque the marketing is, to the point of not clearly conveying what the core features will be.
I'm as skeptical as the next guy, but it's not that intransparent. As a backer, it was impossible not to notice the ToS change. Arena Commander displayed a modal message, and I'm pretty sure CIG sent out emails as well. They also explained why the FPS got delayed (after the fact, but still): What they had was buggy as hell, so they ended their relationship with Illfonic and worked on it themselves, then decided that, as maintaining separate branches for Arena Commander, Star Marine and the PU alpha was inefficient, they'd merge first, then focus on fixing the FPS stuff. That obviously led to further delays, but it was something they had to do sooner or later anyway.

VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #235 on: October 12, 2015, 06:15:18 AM »
I honestly didn't get the impression they were that forthright with this info. Judging by the RSI forum itself, not meeting the September release of Star Marine wasn't even really aknowledged, it just happened. Last week update still seems to imply a separate release for the FPS, and now it's supposedly not the case anymore. To be clear, I don't even postulate active malicious intent : I get the impression the communication is a mirror to the development that tends to get lost in the details while missing the big picture.
« Last Edit: October 12, 2015, 06:27:09 AM by VomKriege »
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wsippel

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #236 on: October 12, 2015, 08:49:20 AM »
I honestly didn't get the impression they were that forthright with this info. Judging by the RSI forum itself, not meeting the September release of Star Marine wasn't even really aknowledged, it just happened. Last week update still seems to imply a separate release for the FPS, and now it's supposedly not the case anymore. To be clear, I don't even postulate active malicious intent : I get the impression the communication is a mirror to the development that tends to get lost in the details while missing the big picture.
The official forums are a cesspool and pretty useless as a source of information. You basically have to watch AtV and RtV to stay up to date. It's not ideal, but they don't actually have a huge marketing and PR team (and what they have is in Santa Monica, while the heavy lifting is mostly done in Europe), so it's to be expected I guess. I don't think it actually reflects the development itself. Well, I hope it doesn't...  :-\

And I have no idea what's going on with Star Marine either. I think it's still happening as a stand alone thing, but I could understand if CIG wanted to release the PU alpha first, as that contains the FPS mechanics and doesn't require that much balancing. Seems more efficient to me.

Barry Egan

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #237 on: October 12, 2015, 08:08:20 PM »
And I have no idea what's going on with Star Marine either.

No one does, hence the accusations of CIG not being forthright with what's going on. 

Every indication at this point is that they've quietly terminated the independent module, and are "rolling it in" to the PU, which they have no intention of putting a release date on.  They did this without any outright acknowledgement at their presentation, and after an entire year of promising the modules release in 2015. 

I heard that if you give them $900 though, they will send you a JPEG with "YOU ARE BEING SCAMMED" written in comic sans across a white background.     

VomKriege

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #238 on: October 13, 2015, 05:19:31 AM »
FPS module is still a thing but should release after AC2.0 according to Ben Lesnick on the forums
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benjipwns

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Re: It's About Ethics in Videogame Spaceships
« Reply #239 on: October 14, 2015, 01:43:34 AM »
I heard that if you give them $900 though, they will send you a JPEG with "YOU ARE BEING SCAMMED" written in comic sans across a white background.   
Will this have voicework?