Star Citizen – Interstellar Pirates
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Kristoffer S:
Thanks for your reply. I agree with most of what you wrote.To clarify: I don’t even feel lied to (in advance). Chris just changed his mind after our agreement, which I wouldn’t call a lie. But still he changed the terms to something I hadn’t agreed to.
About Diablo 3 and the others who do similar: I would expect the same from them what I request from CIG if they change their minds after our agreement.
In my opinion, the project is “going south” because Chris wanted too much. All signs tell me this project is going to fail just because it was planned too big. And this would be the time to be open to your investors and tell them about the status. Instead they keep on selling concept ships to go fishing for new customers.
I’m not concerned that the project will fail due to the refunds. Monthly stats show that there is already a lot more income than refunds, so if Chris tells the truth (which we have to assume unless proven otherwise, don’t we?), this won’t be a problem at all.
Only time will tell.
Since you asked about Kickstarter in general: About a third of my backed games were good (i.e. funny playing), another third was bad (i.e. fulfilled but just bad quality); the last third I haven’t even looked at yet (i.e. lost interest in playing them) and can’t comment on.
I usually go for the physical boxed copy, so I am used to pay more then average for the game. That’s why failure hurts a lot more than just having lost the basic pledge level.
$30,000 spent on pictures of ships is insane. for that money i could do far more constructive things lol, man some people are just nuts! “i did it with side job money” ok awesome, spend it however but man that is so much money. no videogame is justifiable for that amount.
I’m an SC backer and only for the love of PC gaming do wish this game makes it even close to what CIG has mentioned. I’ve purchased a Freelancer first in early 2014 then an Avenger at the end of 2014. That’s a total of about $225. I’ve invested to my limit and am totally fine with never getting it back at this point. At this point because of my investment, of course, I want the project to succeed. Any attempt for someone to want to take down this endeavor is it completely against my best interest along with hundreds of thousand of others. …And yes I just created this account so I could interject from time to time. I aim not to harm either but only say what I feel.
Just to be up front, I’m very skeptical of you Mr. Smart, but I do have an open mind. The blogs are interesting at the very least. We all know that corruption is everywhere, and we don’t want to believe it’s in something we support. There are so many inflammatory posts, remarks, and comments on both sides of this fight. I tend to mentally toss out the worst from each and keep in the middle ground. Again, my lean towards SC shows. I don’t know Mr. Roberts and don’t personally endorse him, but I do endorse the dream he has…. goodness this could be such a great game… ok, ok, my mind drifted.
Please excuse my negative lean against you. I would leave that side of me out, but then I’d be hiding a piece of how I feel. I know CR/CIG and yourself have a “beef”, and this entire situation has affected you both on higher levels than 99% of the people on both sides. This just seems like such a great opportunity for the PC gaming culture, and even more the space/sim PC gaming community to grow through. I’m sure this isn’t a new thought. Have things progressed so far that a relationship is not salvageable? CR has his achievements; You have your drive and accolades of your own. Obviously you are both super knowledgeable in game design and know what it takes in your opinions, to create a game of this scale. Another question is, do you want SC to fail? I would guess not because, of course, you did back it at one point. Do you want CR to fail? If this is purely because you believe there is a huge scam or fraud about an unmakable game and money stolen from backers, why do you want to go as far as prosecution? I guarantee 99% of SC backers (unproven, lol) know of these claims and don’t care, so why do you? Most of us want this scope of a game so badly that we’ve already written off what we’ve spent (some people have a much higher spending limit), it just so happens that records have been set with the amount of money that has been raised.
A lot of negativity has spewed out of every orifice from both camps (not necessarily from DS or CR). This includes huge amounts spewed towards you from those that want SC to succeed so badly. I think it’s all stupidly wasted energy that should be directed to getting the best minds available aboard the ship, or back aboard the ship and egos are put aside to create the greatest game ever. Let be realistic here all this goal is going to accomplish is destroying, literally, 1-million plus dreams. Those who want their money back can have it just like you.
In the end, what I see is a man in Derek Smart that needs to be a part of SC, (this is just my opinion). Again, though I’m inclined to back CIG on this, I can’t help but believe that they need your expertise (or at least positive support) on this endeavor. Strictly as a gamer, I know you would love to see this thing actually accomplish what is being proposed. As someone else mentioned, if this fails, PC space gaming could be setback 10+ years. So much progress and developments have been made on SC that I don’t think it’s in the best interest for anyone to have this fail.
@ Michael Mikoriad
It’s ironic how Derek never asked for a $250 refund, yet got one, because of his blog. I ask for my $2,500 through concierge and get ignored past the second confirmation.
Egos are not being put aside to create the greatest game ever. Chris insists on having track balls on the Saitek HOTAS. Track balls are dirt terrible for aiming, and are even worse to use on a joystick as you move it around. Chris and Ben indirectly insult everyone that do not enjoy the “interactive mode” for mouse flying, and dump all outbursts and constructive criticism in the Katamari Damashii Controller vs Controller.
Derek has paid others to search through CA public records to determine what Chris and Sandi have done. Their change of residence and the inability to locate Sandi’s UCLA degrees are suspicious.
Chris has a history of epic failures. The Wing Commander film… Freelancer was bailed out by Microsoft, at the cost of Chris’ Digital Anvil company. His film studio Ascendant Pictures gets sued by Kevin Costner for breaking contract and $8 million. The film company is sold to Bigfoot…
1. http://www.ascendantpictures.com/team.html
2. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/people/2005-11-30-costner-lawsuit_x.htm
3. http://www.dailynews.com/article/ZZ/20080305/NEWS/803059903
4. http://www.bigfoot.com/up-press-releases-172.phpChris Roberts is repeating his failures and cannot be trusted. He knows how to put up a friendly face in public and with fans, but once he goes back to the office… we eventually get to read his amazing public rants that take 8 hours to write. Blame it all on Derek Smart cuz he da internet warlord.
Ego, arrogance, lies. It’s all catching up. This time, there ain’t no publisher to bail out the game.
Hi everybody, I’m new to this forum. I just want to get involved in this discussion, have some civil arguments.
Full disclosure, I’m one of the OG backers, who backed in the first month of the kickstarter, and I have spent 95$ on the game, the cheapest aurora package in the kickstarter, and then I bought the avenger when the dog fight module came out. So far, there have been many things CIG have done that I disagree with, but overall, I am not worried that the game will fail or that my money has been wasted.
Just wanted to get that out of the way so you guys know where I stand.Anyway, the main point I wanted to discuss is the development time. Why is everybody so worried that there is so little playable gameplay at this point of development? The game has been in development for 3 years. 4 years ago, there was only a tech demo that Christ Roberts(yes, he does give off a creepy culty vibe, I get that) made basically by himself, which had to be scrapped because it was not a proper base to build an actual game on. 3 Years ago, the funding was just starting to come in, and development started, but keep in mind, they were also building the company from the ground up at the same time, so development was at a MUCH slower pace than it supposedly is today. So development has only been going on for 3 years really, and it was not anywhere near the pace that an established game studio would be at for the full 3 years.
3 years is not a long time in the development of a AAA game. Fallout 4, which was made by Bethesda, an experienced and established company, and was made based on an engine that they already made for a previous game(the creation engine), had been in development since 2009. 6 Years for an established company to make a game built on an already completed engine.
It takes 3 years to turn any given COD x into COD x+1, and that is like the least amount of work a game dev could possibly do.
It took 7 years to develop elder scrolls online, another MMO, although to be fair, it was the first project by zenimax studios, putting them in a similar situation to CIG.My point is, 3 years is a little too soon to say that development is taking too long. If Fallout 4 was kickstarted, then would we have had to put up with 3 full years of people saying that the game can’t be made, and that bethesda is scamming its customers? If Elder Scrolls Online was kickstarted, would people have come to the conclusion that the game should have been finished 4 years before it actually was? Is Star Citizen being held to a higher standard than most other games, or is it simply that non-kickstarted games don’t get announced until they have already been in development for several years?
Sure, 3 years is longer than people might have expected based on CR’s insanely optimistic predictions, but the ramblings of a crazy person shouldn’t matter as long as we see that the game is being made at a pace comparable to most other games. In my opinion, what we have seen so far in terms of the 2.0 pre alpha build that they showed at gamescom, development is going at a reasonable pace, or maybe a slow pace. But either way,in half the time it took to make Fallout 4 they have created a working internal build that ties all of the “modules” together, albeit in a buggy and incomplete way that they don’t want to release yet. Unless that presentation was a complete fabrication(which seems like it would be nearly as difficult as actually doing it for real), then it looks like the game can be built, and it is only a matter of time. Unless the money runs out. I’m not going to make any points about the money, because I’m not qualified to do so.
Thoughts?
@meat Hi and welcome to the forums. Any yeah, we tend to have civil discussions on my blog site because people who break the rules, just get IP blocked/banned.
Anyway, I understand your argument and I’ve addressed it time and time again. It’s really not that important to compare 3yrs vs 4yrs. And most of the people making that argument are not game developers. Gamers are in no position to determine what stage a game should be in, after 3 or 4 years. Only devs get to make that call. And even so, even the best of us experienced devs, get it wrong. All the time.
The fact is that 3 or 4 years in, they do not have any form of a “game” to show. That’s the problem. And if you’re at that stage this far in, wherein you are still calling it pre-Alpha, when all you have is a glorified tech demo, that’s why I for one have always said that this game is another 2 to 3 years out.
Aside from that, they promised to deliver the game in Nov 2014. There is no getting around that.
ps: https://twitter.com/RAZ0RFIST/status/664111552291717120/photo/1
@mikoraid As I’ve said time and time again, I do NOT want to see the game fail. That doesn’t mean that I can’t call them out on what they are doing, how they are wasting backer money, lying to backers continuously etc.
@ meat
1 year of work before the kickstarter, 3 years after, so a total of 4 years. The main point is that 1 year of early work has been thrown out.
Arena Commander was released in June 2014. It was delayed by 1 year in order to write new netcode, and not use the stock CryEngine code. The new netcode is problematic, fails to do anything better. AC has always been hellishly buggy in online play. The AI for solo or coop is glitchy and bugged out. The tech foundation to run AC is still not in place after 3 years. Money has been poorly spent, based on results of AC. Generally, the core gameplay and technology, which consists of AC, should be close to nailed down, so that everything else follows on polishing.
Switching to 64 bit CryEngine should have been done earlier, but it is true that CIG needs to hire people for that ordeal. One of the needed, but poorly planned changes which affects everything else.
What we have now is an incomplete and still changing flight model. Chris Roberts doesn’t have any idea on a finalized flight model, and the features that it should support, which leads to more AC scope creep. I’m not gonna get into the whole realistic physics with fictional spaceship design that has destroyed the Cutlass. The point is, the core gameplay, the space flight, is still going through massive and fundamental changes this late into the project, which affects everything else.
In the middle of all this, they changed the sound middleware system from FMOD to Wwise. It may lead to better sound effects later on, but doing it this late, having to refactor and reengineer audio from the previously working format, is extremely costly. They still cannot get Wwise working properly, and it even affects playing music in the launcher for starting or installing SC.
I will leave the whole staged demo thing to others.
3 years of mismanaged time. 3 years of engine technology scope creep. 1-2 years of Illfonic Star Marine work thrown out due to not being 64 bit mergable. Star Citizen can be salvaged, but only if Chris Roberts stops with the expensive changing of decisions in the middle. Constant reiteration costs time and money. Even if customers can wait a decade, money is always an issue. Unfortunately, Chris is displaying his unpleasant habits, which leaves little hope to those that know his history.
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