dsmart
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
LATEST MEDIA STREAMS/INTERVIEWS
16-09-06 The Great Game Debate
16-08-23 Cranky Canuck – Coffee with Derek Smart
ON-GOING LAWSUIT AGAINST CIG/RSI
This has been in the works since last year, and I even mentioned this building in my “Star Citizen Year Four” blog (search for ‘building’) where I said:
Through all this, the wasteful spending of backer money continues. Ranging from repeated iterations of once completed game assets and tech, to relocating teams to more expensive States; building new offices; spending millions of dollars on the same tech (MoCap, fps module) which bears very little relevance to the game being made; paying late filing fees for UK studios financials ( e.g. Foundry 42); spending money on investigators and legal in taking actions which amount to intimidation and harassment etc. It is a very, very long list we’ve compiled.“”
So earlier this week, a Gameranx writer uncovered the public case filing, and got up to speed with the latest case filings. Last year, sources had told me that CIG/RSI were building a new location in LA in order to move. That location was to have a custom made entrance and/or foyer which would depict one of the larger ships in the Star Citizen universe. Apparently there was a dispute over the location build-out with the builders, electricians etc. In the end, it all fell apart. And as these things go, it looks like the builders ended up suing CIG/RSI, as well as the owners/investors of the building, over payment for services.
Lawsuits are sometimes the unavoidable costs of doing business. So on the face of it, this isn’t such a big deal. Except for the fact that CIG/RSI is a company funded partly by crowd-funding (to the tune of $123 million to date), investor money, as well as various investor/bank loans – all of which make that $123 million public number way higher if you believe (most of us don’t) that it’s accurate.
This, in addition to the on-going marketing and other frivolous expenses, is all part of the money that’s not going into “game development” as promised by CIG/RSI. For a company that’s rumored and estimated to be burning approximately $3m per month for it’s four worldwide studios which have over 350 employees and contractors, you would think that saving money would be a key goal. But hey, if you have an average of 2000 whale backers still funding an on-going train-wreck, you can basically do what the hell you want with their money. Especially if, despite promising financial accountability, you have thus far failed to provide it; and to the extent that you remove such promised accountability entirely from a ToS.
But look on the bright side; backers eventually paid for a makeshift space door (completely unrelated to this legal action) at the new location.
It’s interesting to note that amid all the controversy, the first lawsuit against CIG/RSI, comes from builders who, aside from wanting to get paid, aren’t even part of this on-going train-wreck.
UPDATE (16-09-09): Gameranx now have more details about the lawsuit.
LATEST CHRIS ROBERTS STRAIGHT UP BULLSHIT
It never ends.
Yet another German interview from this past GamesCom 2016 event has surfaced. If you thought the last one was bad, wait till you watch/read this one. Here are some choice excerpts from 26:24
See his response about financial accountability? Yeah.
Gamestar.de interview with Chris Roberts
Sept 7 2016Q: Just playing the devil’s advocate a bit there in the last question, there’s been some criticism by some people, some from shady sources, let’s not talk about that, about you spending your money for different things and nobody really knows what for… I don’t know… um… Now there are some Kickstarter projects who kind of put a price tag to anything they do for people to know what their money is being spent on, have you ever considered doing that for Star Citizen?
CR:
Ehrrr no, that just sounds like, that sounds like a… a NIGHTMARE… I alre… I… I already have… you know… a lot of ARMCHAIR DEVELOPERS and all the rest of the stuff and ARMCHAIR CEOS… uhm… and yeah, you know… the input’s appreciated and good but you gotta… you gotta… run a project and you… you know… you can’t have a committee of one point four million people DESIGNING STUFF. We… we… put all the money we raise into the game, I mean we have three hundred and thirty people around the world, there’s four studios… aahhh… you know we do… I mean… hell we did VIDEOS where you walk around the studios!I mean… THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY PEOPLE, they all need to be PAID you know, it’s like, ADD IT UP, like it’s going… it’s going in the GAME, we’re contantly adding STUFF and building STUFF so ah… I think some people… like ATTENTION and so like to… say things… ah, but… ah… you know… we just… we focus on what we’re doing, we care about making the best game possible, and every dollar that we raise goes to making the game better, and that’s KINDA the pledge I made, I said that until the game’s COMMERCIAL we’re… all the money we’re raising is essentially going in and getting reinvested into the GAME and we sort of DETERMINE, ah… you know… how POLISHED and how BIG and how AMBITIOUS and EVERYTHING IS based on THAT and that hasn’t changed
I mean the… you know… we did last year, you know, better than we did the year before despite, apparently, you know, having some CRITICISMS ah… so… I… I think the MAJORITY of people are… are HAPPY with eh… what we’re doing because, you know, they just want… I… I think MOST people got into this because they wanted something that wasn’t gonna be they’d play for a week and put away. I think most people got into this to have something that they could play for YEARS and so they’re like, ‘OK if you’re gonna build something build it RIGHT because I wanna play this for YEARS’, and so I’ve… for me that’s kinda what I hold true to… errhh… and that’s important for me…
Because I also wanna play this game, I wanna be in this UNIVERSE and I want it to be RIGHT and you know you can SEE it when we were showing you the DEMO and I’m calling out to Erin, ‘THERE’S THIS THING AND THIS AND ALL THESE LITTLE DETAILS’ and then maybe on your side you’ll be like ‘alright, I didn’t… I don’t… I didn’t notice that’, but you know for me that’s kind of IT, it has to be this VISION so that’s… ummm… what I’m focussing on and uh… it’s the best way and the COMMUNICATION that I talked about SHARING what we’re doing goes on and the rest of it’s up to the PEOPLE but I don’t really wanna get into a situation where it’s ‘DO YOU WANT THIS FEATURE FOR SO MANY DOLLARS OR DO YOU WANT THIS FEATURE FOR SO MANY DOLLARS’, because I think at that point you’re gonna loose control of a singular vision and a really cohesive world ah… and ah… you know…
I can tell you there’s a… you know… ah… there’s NOTHING SHADY WITH US, we’re straight up, I think… people that say things like that, they… you know… people was it… look in a mirror… something like that
Q: Well I am looking forward to seeing where the game is going to be in one year, and if the HULL CLASS has not been released I’ll be bringing a certain UNCLE and we’ll talk some more
CR:
I actually think there’s a… there… there… there’s a GOOD CHANCE by… NEXT YEAR that there… could be a HULL CLASS… because we’ve got the MISC SHIPS, we’ve already got the STYLES and the basic, I mean once we’ve built one or two of the ships at SCALE like the STARFARER’S a big scale MISC ship, it’s much quicker for us to build the first, when we build the first one because there’s a whole STYLE and MATERIALS and SHADERS that you build for the different MANUFACTURERS… so the MISC… so the ahh… HULL CLASS is uh… I think… by the next time… by next GAMESCON… will be… you know… it… whether it’s FLYING right then it’ll be VERY CLOSE TOSo…
SANDI IS BACK ON SOCIAL MEDIA
So a few weeks back, Sandi, the controversial CIG/RSI “VP of marketing”, posted that she was quitting social media due to harassment. That was odd. Especially considering that nobody had then seen any evidence of social media harassment. To the extent that I even wrote two (1, 2) blogs about it. Serious stuff.
Amid all that, she was actually still on social media, liking and re-tweeting (mostly the same stuff she was apparently decrying) on social media. Not finding any such evidence, in what we believe to be a False Flag op, some idiots (1, 2) with new accounts (which I was instrumental in having yanked by Twitter) decided to start Tweeting her threats; no doubt in order to give the claims legitimacy – after the fact. But as these things go, I put a stop to that in short order. Harassment, real or imagined, is not cool. Period.
But no worries though, the “Mother of Star Citizen” and “Leader Of Shitizens” is apparently back on social media. And that reminds me of an old Rodney Dangerfield joke he used to tell:
“To give you an idea how well I was doing at the time I quit [he had given up on show business in 1949], I was the only one who knew I quit.”
I get death threats from Shitizens all the time; but that’s not important, right?
SHITIZEN #1 IS HELPING WITH SECURITY FOR CITIZENCON 2016
Because of course he is. Makes perfect sense.
Yes, you read that right. Wulf Knight aka Dick Wulf aka The Wulge (that’s him in the back!) a married man, who was said to have been caught (and reported to CIG/RSI) sending inappropriate images (read: dick pics) to a female member of the Star Citizen community, while engaging in questionable chat conduct – and manipulating the game’s ship sales, is now somehow helping to organize the security for the upcoming Oct 6 event.
That went over as expected; to the extent that following the outcry (which probably fell on deaf ears back at CIG/RSI, seeing as him and Ben Lesnick are buddies from back in the day), he protected his Twitter feed.
Then there’s this gem. And then there’s that.
Naturally, it didn’t take long for the veiled threats to materialize once I jokingly posted that I was going to attend the event.
Just read this shit. READ IT!
I even once wrote an entire blog about him; so I’m guessing he’s still pissed at me.
This incident is just another fine example of how CIG/RSI simply have no control over their own community’s messaging; and that the toxicity that is now widely known and written about, comes from within, due to the very people who are the direct link to said community. But don’t worry though, before long, none of this will matter. Wait and see.
THE CHRIS ROBERTS THEORY OF EVERYTHING
Last week, Gameranx wrote a massive article, The Chris Roberts Theory Of Everything. It chronicled previous patterns of conduct related to the handling of his projects. It’s an incredibly well sourced read.
A Swedish magazine, LEVEL, did a similar article back in July, and which, last we heard, was picked up by a leading English media outlet for re-publication; with the Swedish author doing the official translation. As that has been some months now, some are of the opinion that the article may have been bought and buried. But as these things go, there is an unofficial translation floating around from back in July.
SQUADRON 42 DELAYED (AGAIN)
Then, just a few days ago, it became official that Squadron 42 wasn’t going to be released in 2016 – as I have said in four previous blogs – it’s clear to see that neither of these games is likely to see the light of day. At least not in the form promised.
The latest fiasco started over the weekend with the #1 Shillizen media, Gamestar in Germany, posting an interview with croberts. Lots of arguments (1, 2) erupted over that one; forcing the writer to acknowledge his error and confirming basically what most of us already knew. SQ42, like Star Citizen, is not a 2016 release. In fact, someone translated the entire article.
Naturally, the media have started reporting (1, 2, 3, 4) the same thing, while using Gamestar as the source.
Here’s the thing with this. BOTH Star Citizen and SQ42 games were supposedly to be created with $6m as per the stretch goals for this project. He says so right here and here.
This is the SQ42 breakdown by itself.
- $2m, 30 missions
- $3m, 35 missions
- $4m, 45 missions
- $5m, 50 missions + pro voice over
- $5.5m, pro mocap sessions
- $6m, mission disk for all backers up to this funding point
Ignoring the year (2011) in which croberts claimed that the game was already in development prior to the Q4/2012 crowd-funding, that means, four years and $123 million (as of this writing) dollars later, they still can’t build a smaller game, for $6 million. A game for which they’ve not only removed some features (e.g. drop-in/drop-out co-op), but also in the aforementioned Gamestar interview, it is now revealed that croberts also increased the scope of SQ42; just like he did with Star Citizen proper.
Note that the website still says that SQ42 is coming in 2016. They didn’t announce any delay at the recent Gamescom event; and with CitizenCon 2016 barely a month away, he may or may not even discuss a release date. Sources already say that SQ42 doesn’t even exist as a game; and that they’re busy working on a presentation, similar to Gamescom2016 for the show. And if even croberts is quoting a Q1/Q2 2017 release date, it’s safe to assume that it probably won’t release until the end of 2017. If ever.
Not to mention that the likes of COD:IW, Titanfall2, Mass Effect: A etc, are all scheduled for Q4/16-Q1/17 release dates.
UPDATE: They gave PC Gamer a non-denial-denial.
GAMESCOM 2016 INTERVIEW (ITALIAN MEDIA)
While we’re at it, I want to share something else with you guys so that those of you who aren’t up to speed on this train-wreck can have another glimpse of the ridiculousness of this whole thing.
After the staged Gamecom 2016 presentation which was riddled with R&D (I wrote about that here), croberts did an interview with an Italian media.
And it’s mind-boggling. Truly.
Not only was he clearly lying, the whole time, but he was talking up tech (VR, 10 million multiplayer clients, procedural generation etc) which he clearly doesn’t even understand, and features (base building!, colonization!) which were never – ever – even part of the game’s original design. This amid the fact that, thus far, five years + $123 million later, they still don’t have 15% of the Star Citizen game done; let alone SQ42.
Below is a transcript (courtesy of Goons) of that interview.
Chris Roberts Interview Gamescom 2016 SCIC
26 Aug 2016Q: Organisation 2.0. When will (it) arrive and what gameplay features can we expect?
CR:
Uhhh OK… so… CITIZENCON we’re gonna… we’re gonna SHOW and TALK about some STUFF. So… now is too early to talk about it, but we have… we have our WHOLE THING there I think everybody’s gonna like at CITIZENCON. It will be VERY COOL.
Q: Modding. What are the future plans for modders, have you envisioned any tool to support the community?
CR:
Ehhh no no we’re definitely gonna do TOOLS to allow people to like do CONTENT CREATION AND STUFF, so… again that’s sort of uh… the FIRST LEVEL is like our… we’re still building our TOOLS to like… like… build out like… the… like… PLANETS… and the STAR SYSTEMS… USING NEW TECHNOLOGY WE’RE USING… so eehhhh…. once… uh, we get… those WORKING then we sort of work on USABILITY AND STUFF and then… we’ll be able to… PUSH the tools out for everyone… so it’s NOT gonna be… you know… unfortunately in the next few months or in the next YEAR but uh… but after that it is… you know it is part of our PLANS, it’s like… we gotta get our internal tools at a level… uh… good enough for our guys to use and then… make them sort of more USER FRIENDLY and then the SYSTEM that we could like have people create STUFF and then we could CURATE it and put it in the main game or allow people to run sort of their own sort of limited version of the game.
But… I will say that… the LIMITED… the PRIVATE SERVER ones are, you know… they will not be able to do what the… like our FULL CLOUD THING will do cos… that’s got MULTIPLE MULTIPLE SERVERS running at… and we’re gonna have them MESHED TOGETHER so there can be lots of people in the same instance so… that part’s gone more… it’s become BIGGER since when… when… they first started it. So. But you know you should be able to have… you know… like a… like the way FREELANCER did, you can run a server, you can have A HUNDRED PEOPLE ON IT OR SOMETHING and you can go around… uh… you know… uh… eh…. AN AREA YOU DESIGN OR WHATEVER.
There you go.
Q: A lot of people want to know how Virtual Reality will be implemented, have you got any issue with the animations?
CR:
NNnnn….. NO ACTUALLY SO…. aahhhh…. on… on the VR front we’re… it’s pretty EASY for us cos we… we UNIFIED everything so we don’t have like you know, how a lot of games will have like first person view… but they’re not really first person right? But they… you know, it’s two hands floating in front of it… so we just have one… one animation, one character, one… RIG… that runs in first or third person… n-n-no cheating for it at all… ah… in the first person view we stabilise the view the same way that your brain stabilises the images coming from your eyes… yeah like you turn here it’s still UP and if you had a GOPRO on your head and you went like this it would actually go like that and we do all the… yeah we do all the same stuff like your EYE LIKE FOCUSSING ON SOMETHING and… ehrm… so… that’s actually… us for VR’s very eas… it’s like LOOKING OVER and you see, you know… the person you’re flying with DOING STUFF and you can actually see him and it’s all the right… and then if you’re in his point you can see it too so…
Yeah yeah and then also we’re building like all our displays, our UI… uhm… we’ve gotta REFACTOR the UI longer term but… the whole goal is everything’s (inaudible) in the world in 3D which again is more natural for VR… so we did have a VR… we had… early… before everyone changed their SDKs… and we just… like the ENGINE… like the ENGINE GROUP are the ones who would change it and they’re actually some of the guys that wrote uh… VR support for CRYENGINE before they… the guys who wrote the original engine they also did all the VR stuff… that IS in Cryengine now that they were using before they joined us but we just haven’t had time to implement to the most recent SDK and get it working… takes you know, maybe a MONTH’S time for someone? And they’re all very busy doing things like… the PLANETS and stuff like that which EVERYONE can experience.
Q: A game like No Man’s Sky is using procedural generation of planets, how will Star Citizen be different in that aspect?
CR:
EHHHH WELL because we’re not… we’re not… we… we have a TOTALLY DIFFERENT APPROACH… so uhhh… star… there… there’s like… I’m not interested in having a BILLION or a QUINTILLION or EIGHTEEN QUINTILLION star systems that are all RANDOMLY PUT TOGETHER so… all we do… so the PROCEDURAL… PROCEDURAL PLANETS is a BAD WORD FOR IT, what it is is… they are ARTIST AND DESIGN DRIVEN PLANETS THAT USES PROCEDURAL TECHNIQUES TO EHM LIKE BUILD OUT AREAS QUICKLY. So… but in terms of the planet like specify… like HOW YOU BUILD it… like where the mountains will be where the oceans will be where the desert will be where the forest will be… that’s all SPECIFIED by an artist at a higher level… and then they build, ehm… sort of TEMPLATES COMPONENTS where procedural tech can take all the higher level, uhm, like… kind of WORLD… and the WORLD HEIGHT MAP… and it applies the SETS of like ‘OK, here’s the… here’s like a FOREST BIOME or here’s a MOUNTAIN BIOME or here’s a DESERT BIOME’ and the it puts them, paints them in areas somewhere the artist has specified…
So what it really is, we’re using procedural tools to allow an artist to build something at a fidelity of CRYSIS but at a PLANETARY SCALE very quickly. And then they can… they can… DECIDE, ‘Oh, I’m making these areas like THIS’, or they can ZOOM IN to areas and change and edit them around to how they want.
So essentially we’re using the tools to allow artists to RAPIDLY GENERATE really interesting locations so all the locations we have, we’re not hitting a button that GENERATES RANDOM NUMBERS… Wow! That planet! Or that planet! So it’s completely different from NO MAN’S SKY which does it that way, which is also kind of the same way that ELITE does it too… so ours is specifically built to construct and design the worlds and we’re just making it so an artist with the right… with all the TEMPLATES DONE RIGHT can create a world IN LESS THAN A DAY… then… then it’s just a matter of how much time he wants to put, like, certain areas he sort of wants to really CRAFT or just leave it the sort of the way it was sort of done
And that’s what we use, that’s what we’re using the tools for… the IDEA and that’s I think the DIFFERENCE between like STAR CITIZEN and the OTHER GAMES is that like… you know I’ve always liked WORLDS and STORIES and that’s how you know WING COMMANDER sort of you know… felt GROUNDED and… you know the old ORIGIN MOTTO was WE CREATE WORLDS and so… uh… that’s important for me, we already read now that STAR CITIZEN’S got lots of LORE, we’ve been writing lore for it for FOUR YEARS, the systems are… you know… you know have a quite a lot of DETAIL, PLANETS have quite a lot of detail, we have LOCATIONS, CHARACTERS, all spread through our UNIVERSE that we’ve been working on, uh.. not… I mean you guys haven’t even seen a whole bunch of this stuff, but that’s so we can build out the world where it feels like it’s a… a REAL WORLD THAT YOU CAN EXIST IN and go out ADVENTURING
And it’s all gonna be in MULTIPLAYER and see a… you know DO THINGS TOGETHER and ADVENTURE TOGETHER and… you know… it’s… it’s… it’s… so… it’s quite… it’s quite a bit different that way.
But you know… we still gotta finish it so you know… they’re already shipping and out so… I mean I have to say that NO MAN’S SKY’s a pretty impressive technical achievement and… you know… so…
(CR is asked a question which is inaudible on the recording)
That’s… that’s… that’s… DIFFERENT from being a technical achievement… so I mean I’m just… you’re just… you’re… you’re… the ISSUE that you’re having is the general issue that you always get with procedural generation, because it”s… at some point you’re gonna see the patterns and it doesn’t seem to have a rhyme or a reason, uh, and… you know I think maybe… maybe one day? There could be some super formula that could move away from that, but it’s just HARD to do that so… technically it’s pretty impressive and it’s a pretty small team that did it, eh… so, you know, it’s pretty cool, but we’re going in a totally different path which is much more a constructed world with a much more level of detail but I mean, in MY OPINION, we’re gonna try to get the STANTON SYSTEM FOR EVERYONE AT THE END OF THE YEAR with a big release at the end of the year… and you know that’s got FOUR MAJOR PLANETS and a bunch MOONS and secondary areas like OUTPOSTS and stuff, like FORTY SPACE STATIONS and a HUGE AMOUNT OF AREA… and that I think is plenty… HUNDREDS OF HOURS OF GAMEPLAY going between… just because of the amount of DETAIL and… you know, the THINGS THAT YOU CAN DO versus otherwise… just go to STAR SYSTEM after STAR SYSTEM it’s just kind of the same thing again and again
So uh… so YEAH… I mean you’ll see we got… we got… we’re gonna… SHOW… a… like a little bit of a TEASER of some STUFF on Friday at the EVENT, ahhh… ahhhh… so ahhhh…. ahh… you’ll… kinda see a little bit of what I’m talking about and hopefully you guys will like it, sort of like the NEXT STEP, or the EVOLUTION.
Yeah it’s gonna be PRETTY COOL.
Q: How will gameplay differ from single player, from small sized organisations up to bigger ones?
CR:
Eh I think we’ll just… we’re… we’re… DEFINITELY… gonna be DESIGNING gameplay that’s like… SINGLE PLAYER STUFF or YOU AND A GROUP OF FRIENDS or you’re part of a BIG ORGANISATION… and it’s just DIFFERENT THINGS you can do so one of the nice things with the PROCEDURAL… tech, ah… the… that I was thinking… ah… that we wouldn’t be able to do for quite a while but now we’re PROBABLY gonna do is, we’re now gonna have a lot more sort of… PLAY AREAS and since we’re planning to put everyone in the SAME INSTANCES so they’ll just, there’ll DEFINITELY be a case where you and your organisation could like pull off… find a place you like on one of the planets and then bring in some HABITATS and build your own little BASE and then SHIELD, put a SHIELD so it can’t really be seen by other people and then give out LOCATIONS for them to JOIN YOU and then some OTHER ORGANISATION will be cruising around and will be scanning stuff and then will find your PLACE and there could be a BATTLE…
I mean that’s the kind of stuff that… because we’re now letting you go… it’s not… ‘Oh! There’s a planet and now I’m gonna do an automated landing to go down’, there’s just a whole bunch of more gameplay that opens up in terms of… TERRAIN that you can go on and you know whether it’s other players or… you know, AI ENCOUNTERS you can have, you know… whether there’s, you know… PIRATE CAMP spawned down on the planet and you go down and VISIT or there’s a pilot that STRANDED and you gotta go rescue him or whatever
There’s a whole OPTION of different sort of content and gameplay beyond sort of what you would normally be able to do just with SPACE
Q: So will we be able to colonise planets, asteroids, moons, and make our own little settlement?
CR:
Depending on where it is, YES.
So there… there… the… SO. With the tech that we’re DOING, uhm… that’s much more POSSIBLE now than it was before, and we’re also TRYING to have this MESH OF SERVERS so we can have a lot more people in the same instance, so it won’t be so INSTANCED as we were thinking before, so… uh.. the… the goal is… that we’re gonna have a lot of… that’s what I was… I mean if you think about like EARTH, there’s seven billion people on EARTH, there can be areas you can walk, you can walk and never see another person… and… you know… in our WORLD… if we have… TEN MILLION PLAYERS, ten million people that have bought STAR CITIZEN and will play it, then you’re likely to have about a million people concurrent, that’s sort of a TEN PERCENT… so that’d be amazing cos WORLD OF WARCRAFT has done that… ahh… but a MILLION PEOPLE and you’re spread out across hundreds of star systems which each will have multiple planets so you’re talking three, four, five, six hundred planets, the MOONS, there’s a HUGE, MASSIVE amount of TERRAIN so there’s… I think there’s an opportunity and plenty of places for people to sort of make their BASES or set up
So that’s kind of one of the COOL THINGS I’m set about because of the planet stuff that we’re doing… increase the… the PLAYSPACE, the PLAY AREA, now you have these worlds that you can go DOWN ON as well as SPACE.
So YEAH, we’re GONNA DO IT
End title:
A big thank you to Chris Roberts for his kind disposition and David Swofford for his professionality and all the rest of the great staff
Posted here for posterity, as year four (if you go with the 2012 start date) draws to a close with neither Star Citizen nor Squadron 42 being released.
A lot is lost in the noise. But if you go back to my blogs and comments (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) about this, specifically where I said that their 64-Bit positioning was bullshit and will wreak all kinds of havoc (which it is still doing) in the end, you will find that is precisely what has happened.
I also stated – clearly – that Gamescom/CitizenCon 2015 were all smoke and mirrors, that neither Star Citizen nor SQ42 would see the light of day in 2016 etc. There is a long list of my predictions sitting squarely in my blogs. That’s why I write them so that the history isn’t lost in the noise.
It is now Sept 2016, and there is NOTHING that has happened since Gamescom/CitizenCon 2015 that even remotely looks like a fucking “game”. It is still a glorified CryEngine mod masquerading as a tech demo. And not even a vertical slice at that.
Sure they’re trying to make a game. But that’s not the point. It was never – ever – the point. The point was that they are wasting money trying to make a game they simply CANNOT make; and which I stated back in July 2015, couldn’t be made, once it was over-scoped.
All they are doing is finding ways to make money (e.g. the stunt they just pulled at Gamescom 2016 with a staged/scripted demo, and which sources are claiming will never make it into the game) in order to prolong the inevitable disaster that is now fermenting. That’s the logic behind the ship and concept sales, as well as the implementation of an in-game clothing (!) store, even as they don’t have a mission quest, mining, trading or any vital GAMEPLAY elements promised. Currently, what passes for missions, is the same ganky flipping a switch bullshit, coupled with AI generated pirate ship fodder. And that’s been in there since Q4/2015. Meantime, they’re now showing grabby hands cargo manipulation (which btw, they showcased back in 2014!) whereby a designer really thinks that players are going to be manually hauling fucking boxes in the name of realism – because that’s somehow fun.
With year five (or four, if you give them a 1yr pass to get their shit in gear) coming to a close, every aspect of the tech demo, is flat-out broken. All of it. And the saddest thing? There is NOTHING innovative or ground-breaking about ANY of it. The novelty of waking up in a wank pod, going to a ship, running to a platform, hoping your ship is there, then getting in – all in fps mode – is over and done with. Heck, even COD:IW is doing that now. And besides the wank pod part, I’ve been doing it in LOD since 2011 – almost one year into development.
Go ahead and ask anyone (Shitizen or not) to point out ONE single innovative thing about Star Citizen, and which has somehow justified $120 million of crowd-funding.
If the schedule seems haphazard, it’s because it is; as they are – in between the blatant cash grab – basically just going through a check-list in order to probably justify an MVP as a vertical slice in order to avoid liability in the long term. In software, there is zero liability if you deliver a product that doesn’t function as expected. As long as you deliver. That’s why companies like Sony, WB et al get hit in the media (and on Steam), and rarely does legal action comes out of it. Look at what’s happening to NMS, then compare to the Batman game, Aliens Colonial Marines etc. It’s a cycle; and Star Citizen is going to end up right there with them – but it will be worse since this was crowd-funded. Unfortunately for them, some of the promises (e.g. the size of the world) made for Star Citizen aren’t just going to get waved off and implemented from a check list.
I have repeatedly said that I have my own selfish reasons for NOT wanting to see them fail. But denial is not a river in Egypt; and so hostilities (they started it!) aside, cheering them on when, as a tier 1 engineer I know the game can’t be built as pitched, is the sort of bullshit that Shitizens are made from.
**BREAKING NEWS**
Investigators in LA county have been contacting some complainants. All should file complaints here. Even if you are not a US resident, you can file this complaint since CIG is a US company.
Yeah – none of that surprises me in the least. And there’s a lot more than that going on in the background.
ps: If you are not on my Discord channel, please get in touch with me there using this invite (0sasVA7SRFEX9raG) code.
They have already started doing it.
The regular ship sales, the push for subs as I mentioned in my latest blog, as well as the focus on shopping which is going to end up with people having to buy UEC to spend. They have absolutely no other ways of raising money to finish this game.
SQ42 isn’t going to do anything because the majority of those who want it, already entitled to it. And with the likes of COD:IW, MA:E etc all coming out, there is no way in hell they are going to make enough money from SQ42.
Mass layoffs are coming. That’s a foregone conclusion.
Yeah, the forum plugin for WordPress is horrid. That’s the issue. I am planning on setting all the forums to read-only this weekend and installing proper forum software.
