LOL! Batgirl is back - Gorf is on her case.
YOUTUBE: BATGIRL’S “STAR CITIZEN AA STARTING NEW AGAIN IN SC 3.01”PART 1
From her YouTube Description:
“While I am waiting for Tyler to release the new method of obtaining CIG guests for my show, I am just playing the Alpha Build. There is so much promise in this title, I can help but be a bit anxious for it all to work out.”(I think you meant to type “can’t” Batgirl but hope is so instinctive that you prevented yourself...)And yes, I’m splitting this summary into two parts, for your sake fellow thread readers and for my own.
—
Batgirl returns to the game after a
non-sequitur outing that felt at first glance like a cry for help. (Alas, it was a collaborative work with some other intended audience so it needs no additional examination.)
As Batgirl returns, so too must I in my duties as chief essayist of her adventures. And it would seem, as her latest journey to nowhere begins, that I may have come in the crosshairs myself after 3 years of intermittent thread reporting on Batgirl’s reporting...
0:20 -
Batgirl seems to throw an elbow this direction, “It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even express frustration with a game I love without people picking it up and thinking of criticizing the development of the game.”
(It’s been that way longer than you think. Goonship must be earned, too, and
I’m doing my part.)
0:58 - After that opening jab, Batgirl then
proceeds to achieve peak irony by explaining that she’s tried to record a video of her just enjoying the game but “the servers have been absolute crap” when she has.
1:58 -
(These are your words, Batgirl.)Batgirl muses that perhaps CIG isn’t paying attention to server issues then speculates about early morning reboots, as she enjoys higher frame rates when she...
...
OH CRAP WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THAT GUY?2:27 -
Batgirl recounts a happier recent play session that she apparently didn’t record. Yet she then starts to let her Citizen guard down and open up, admitting that times have been rather hard for her in the Verse economically speaking (and in every other possible manner, really.) Her constant session-crashes while flying cargo-laden ships have nearly wiped out her credit balances, balances she’d built up with countless joyless hours of space trucking.
THE PURGATORIAL LOOPBehold the Purgatorial Loop, Batgirl.
Again. Behold the
Grand Parade.If you would find peace in this lifeless, nihilist play experience, you must channel the enlightened wisdom of your former fellow Space Game streamer Dan Gheesling, who said
THIS when facing
circumstances quite similar to you own (and then
promptly bugged out of covering this game to play fun games instead.)
—
2:52 -
Right on queue, she starts experiencing frame rate issues. “This is not going to be a good night....” (It will for one of us, Batgirl. If not you, the streamer, then me, the space journalist reporting live from the scene of the accident.) “We’re going to try though, because I really want to talk about the game.”
3:05 -
In that spirit of hopefulness, Batgirl discusses her plans for a future 3.1 play session, one which will benefit from that ‘huge optimization patch’ and the addition of service beacons...
:negative:
3:33 -
”A patch, a fix, a patch, a fix... And we got a patch, and I haven’t seen the fix. I just never expected 3.1 was going to be the fix for 3.0...”
4:33 -
Batgirl then discusses attempts to complete fighter missions but these too have come to ruin due to server instability and lag.
5:15 -
Batgirl opts for a new cargo mission with the roomy Freelancer, yet only moments after spawning the ship, her
bat-senses start tingling with foreboding.6:15 - Batgirl utters the
Shibbolethic Mantra of Critical Indictment:
”I absolutely love the game — I do...” — The phrase, whether when written or uttered aloud, is a goodwill tax paid upfront by native citizens before words of criticism are dared. While the phrase is generally considered sufficient to orient another to intent, she follows it with formal pleading, “... but
please, when I criticize things, when I show frustrations like things like this...” and the indictments begin:
6:23 -
“The physics are still bugged — because they’re not going to fix it until most of the systems are in. But you can see the right landing gear over here glitching through the deck. You can see this one off, up and in the air, you can see the ship kind of rocking back and forth...”
REFLECTIONS ON THE PURGATORIAL LOOPShe boards the glitching, rocking, tilted craft in the game she loves so much and makes her way down a dark corridor towards the pilot’s seat. Nearly 8 minutes of gameless, buggy busywork have passed now. To her, it is but a blinking of the eye, just as the last 6 years spent in pre-Alpha have been. Yet to us, the grindingly dull
Sprint of a Dozen Corridors is both micro and macro of Chris Roberts purgatorial vision both of game design and backer patronage itself.
This is the loop.You will forever feel the sensation of running yet rarely know the joys of progress. You will wait for fun both inside and outside his game because Roberts demands that you pay and you wait. Just as he has wiped you out inside of the game he will wipe you out outside of it if you continue to play. 7:58 -
Meanwhile, back in the game, Batgirl’s adventure is finally ready to begin!Oh no. Wait. She’s still stuck in Roberts purgatorial loop. It can not be escaped so easily despite the 8 minutes already suffered, for the bugs descend on her like
The Flies in Sartre’s classic, and in this play and that play they are the collective punishment of the many for the sins of the few; they are the price forever paid for faith.
9:02 - A minute of futzing with keybindings via the advanced menu liberates her from this particular setback. And so, now
9 minutes in to this play session, the quest for fun can finally begin.
9:35 -
JUMPING TO YELLIN[/url]
The jump has her cockpit jostling about frightfully as if the forces themselves might tear the ship apart. She’s nonplussed, however, because it’s just the hassle of an interdiction event that obliges her to another jump to escape it. It’s not like she wants to bother with combat in this turkey — that’s a bigger slog than cargo missions.
11:00 - Having jumped to Yellin,
she has yet more time to kill, for that was grand bargain of the PG switch in the first place and might as well be a slogan for any space sim that embraces it:
Procedural Generation: Hope you’ve got some time to kill11:33 - After pleading for commenters to offer assistance with some mouse related business,
Batgirl directs a message possibly at your author specifically.“Now, I know that the critics are going to say, ‘There’s not a lot of game there, how are you going to have fun?’ — And I think it’s one of those things where you make your own fun...”:negative:
I honestly think I’m having more fun writing up this summary of your gameplay experience than you’re having playing it
and I’m unironically making Sartre references. (i.e. this is quickly growing wearying.)
“...And that’s what you have to do in Star Citizen right now, it’s because there’s not going to be content for a very long time. Not until the game actually enters Beta.” (She reflects briefly and amends her statement.)
“Well, there is content, there is Miles Eckhart, and... the only reason I don’t partake in the Miles Eckhart quest is because well.. they’re not bugged, the GAME is bugged, I fly all the way out to Delamar, I get the quest with him, the missions with him, and 9 out of 10 times I crash and it’s like a waste of time...”—
”Jean Paul?”“Cigarette?”
“No, No...”
POW!
—
12:33 - Now over a dozen minutes into a gameless play session, Batgirl casually mentions that
she’s taken up drinking while playing Star Citizen. Is
that what you meant by “finding your own fun”, Batgirl?
For what is now probably the fourth time in the last half-dozen sporadically released Star Citizen videos,
she talks about her desire to get back into streaming the game.Sure. Why should you and I have to be the only ones having to suffer through this?
12:59 - Batgirl then
mourns the loss of her fellow Lightspeed Lunatics streamers, for they have stopped making time for the existential miseries of Star Citizen fandom. Most of us play games to escape the burdens of our day to day grinds not augment and compound them. But you do you, Batgirl.
THE GRIEVANCE RETURNS13:39 - I’d wondered how long into this particular video we might have to journey before the axe-grinding about
The Grand Betrayal might begin. Turns out it starts
at 13:39.
And here, I actually rather agree. Despite her eccentricities, Batgirl is one of the better fan journalists CIG has had. She’s produced more inadvertent scoops just by virtue of her repeated access to Ben and Sandi and I can only assume that was part of the problem.
CIG is engaged in outright hypocrisy and two-faced deceit by shutting you out while granting an all access pass to Bored Gamer. Fact. My cynical read is that you outlived your usefulness to CIG LA during the critical transition period that saw Wingman decapitated and Sandi and Ben awkwardly joining together in a Chris-approved effort to elevate Sandi’s symbolic fanbase authority to levels equal to that she enjoys organizationally as The Boss’s Wife.
Batgirl mentions that the excuse offered for her reduced access is that Ben is working on a “Top Secret Project.” Aside from continuing as the world’s foremost hoarder of the Detritus of Chris Roberts, one assumes perhaps he’s been tasked with overseeing some propagandistic duty like getting “The Wonderful World of Star Citizen” documentary prepped. But who knows?
—
14:50 -
BATGIRL REFLECTS ON 5 YEARS OF FANDOM15:40 -
Be very careful, Batgirl. Very careful. You are already fighting for renewed CIG face time and you sure aren’t going to make that easy by saying nice things about that
other game.
Hey, speaking of games, did you realize that Batgirl’s still playing one?
That moon has actually been getting closer for several minutes!:chanpop:
To my enormous relief, at
16:30 Batgirl starts talking about monitor crap I feel absolutely no duty to summarize. As it begins I say a silent prayer that it might actually stretch for another 20 minutes or so and allow me to bring this overlong summary to a conclusion because WE AREN'T EVEN AT THE HALF-WAY MARK!
Purgatory.
...and it lasts about 2 minutes.OH FOR THE LOVE OF
BENJI WE
STILL HAVEN’T REACHED THE HALF-WAY MARK!
:negative:
18:22 - Batgirl
mentions her gratitude for the donations that helped her upgrade her hardware... which then becomes a chance to remind people how Patreon is spelled... which then becomes a chance to give her address. But hey, she’s hanging in and still talking about this game as others fall away and seek out idols. She at least deserves to get paid for what she endures and the truth is that Kegerator sure isn’t going to fill itself.
19:29 - Oh wait... is
she going to start talking about monitors again? Saints be praised!
It lasts about ten seconds.:negative:
(Are you starting to sense the true purgatorial power on display here? Because it’s so overwhelming it’s bleeding into the meta and making me victim of it as well.)
19:39 -
Batgirl segues to another topic with the grace of Makarova.That topic is her love of several other game genres and her particular fondness for the story and agency rich RPG world of Fallout Games, particularly Bethesda’s entries. And this gets Batgirl musing, as she passes the 8 minute mark of her approach to Yellin (yes, she’s still playing the game — really!), about some things.
20:18 -
”I’ve been playing them like crazy, and... I don’t get a lot of followers when I play them on Twitch because I can’t help but believe those games would be boring for people watching...:negative::negative::negative:
(I’m taking a few deep breaths at this point.)
20:34 -
Batgirl talks about how much she loves exploration and discovery of lore, stories, terminals and the rest of it you get in Bethesda’s Fallout games.Oh Batgirl, you don’t worry. You won’t have to wait that much longer. My boy Todd has such
wonderful things to show you with
Starfield, and you will
finally see your love of RPGs and Sci-Fi rewarded like you never dared dream... You gotta believe!)
20:54 -
Batgirl shares her feeling as she approaches Yellin (still approaching!) that it would be a tragedy of CIG didn’t flesh out their worlds like Bethesda has done. After all,
you can fit all of Skyrim in one of Chris’s craters, right? And as the Code Whisperer assured himself some time ago, “worlds need life and danger”.
Yes, Batgirl, that would be a tragedy. Chris has promised us millions of NPCs and Tony Z. has spoken of the lifelong relationships we will form with them. It would be quite a letdown if those huge planets that take us 15 gameless minutes to even land on ended up bereft of much in the way of plots, stories and adventure.
But I’ve heard it often said about this game, particularly in response to critics, that “you make your own fun.” And as long as you know how to do that? Well, you should be absolutely fine.
(END OF PART 1 because I need a break and we’re still not to the halfway mark. I will eventually append this with a Part 2 and drop a link rather than throw another novel in here...)
