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Yeah, looks like they’re scrambling to remove it. Anyway, someone made a video.
Also, a thread (archive.is) that appeared on CIG website was completely removed.
GAME WISDOM TALKS TO SPACE GAME JUNKIE
This week on the cast, returning guest and owner of Space Game Junkie Brian Rubin stopped by to talk about games, Star Citizen and we got to share some war stories of running ever-growing game sites.
Talking Shop With Space Game Junkie
It’s been awhile since we had a low key cast, but Brian and I spent the time talking about as many game-related tangents we could think of: From Star Citizen and the space genre, to the challenges of being an Indie developer and early access, and even getting on the subject of the ravages of age. We did talk about some games we were playing as I brought up Duskers and SPAZ 2 and Brian talked about the game Iron Sky Invasion and Elite Dangerous. We also talked about some of the different games that attract or push us away, including our mutual dislike of the visual novel genre.
Make sure to listen to our very special moment, when we both confronted the enormity of our Steam and GOG addictions. Will it stop us from buying more games? Probably not, but at least we know we have a problem.
We did manage to get on topic at least once talking about the debate of long-term game design and what it means for games like Payday 2 and Star Citizen. This also brought up the topic of Stellaris and Paradox Software’s method of long-term and DLC-focused design with their games.”
http://game-wisdom.com/podcast/space-game-junkie
https://www.spacegamejunkie.com/oped/come-friends-discuss-star-citizen/
TRANSCRIPT:
Someone asked me this the other day, why don’t you have more STAR CITIZEN videos on your blog? And I answered them, ‘because I can’t download it’. Because every time I try to download it, it just STOPS. It just STOPS and I’m like ‘I’m DONE with you, I’m done with your LAUNCHER, I don’t want to sit here for 30 hours just to download ONE GAME’.
Someone actually emailed me and said, “You know what? If you turn off everything that uses the internet so that nothing can interrupt it, it’ll be FINE”, I’m like NO! I’m not doing that for one game! I’m not turning off my STEAM and my whatever to… NO! You’re RIDICULOUS! I appreciate the advice, but NO! So I haven’t played STAR CITIZEN in about… a year? And… um… I’m gonna make a CONFESSION to you, I bought a few SHIPS for it, and then I sold them at a PROFIT like six months ago… and then I bought a LIFETIME KEY for ELITE DANGEROUS! Because ELITE DANGEROUS is a game I can play RIGHT NOW.
And someone will be like, “oh you can play STAR CITIZEN”, noooo not really, I saw… have you ever heard of BAD NEWS BARON? He’s a streamer? He’s a FULL TIME STREAMER, it’s what he does, and he’s a big STAR CITIZEN proponent, so I watched a stream of him and a bunch of people playing STAR CITIZEN the other day and I’m like, ‘aaaaaahhhhhh… this game’s not gonna be done until TWENTY TWENTY TWO… MAAAAYBE…’
I… I mean I still have bought into it, so I still have a SHIP and everything once the game is READY, I’m just like, ‘I’ve got other stuff to play you guys… like ELITE, which ACTUALLY WORKS RIGHT NOW’,
Q:
What are they doing like FUNDING WISE, I just went on their SITE for the first time and I see that there’s…
They’re still selling ships! They’re still selling ships, they’re still selling… having SALES on SHIPS, ships that aren’t even DONE YET, ships that you can’t even FLY… people are still buying them! Man if that’s… that’s… you know, how your COOKIE crumbles that’s GREAT, that’s not how I’m… that’s not how ME works… wow I can’t even talk anymore… But like um… like… like… I don’t… I mean… and they’re still… you can still BUY, I think, you can still SPEND MONEY for IN GAME CREDITS I think… I think I saw a video were now you can buy PANTS in the game… for your CHARACTER…
It’s a CLOTHING STORE, it’s like a FUTURISTIC GAP and you can actually buy… So yeah, I’m at my… I used to be a huge like ‘oh my god this game is gonna be great’, but as it gets FARTHER and FARTHER away from the date they gave us in KICKSTARTER, back when we got it… like, it was supposed to come out in 2014, and they just kept ADDING STUFF and ADDING STUFF and ADDING STUFF… like I think one of the stretch goals was a FISH TANK for your hangar at one point… it was like sixty some million or something, and they PASSED IT, of course they did, and uh… and it’s like, OK, I don’t… I don’t… I’m just gonna… I’m just… I’m just gonna put you in the back of the ROOM for now, I’m gonna deal with the people… the GAMES up front here, that I can PLAY right now and that actually WORK… and I’ll come back to you! Later! I’ll check in on you… NEXT YEAR… when I’ve UPGRADED, that’s probably what I’ll do, when I’ve upgraded my computer in a year or two, I’ll try you again. Like even before I install STEAM or anything I’ll install THAT just to see what it’s like.
But… last time I tried it, I couldn’t configure my JOYSTICK. Or my THROTTLE. Or my PEDALS. Or my HEADTRACKING. Uhm… and… and… like… it took FOREVER to get into a match, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t ENJOY it. So, I just like… ‘yeah, we’re DONE. For now. We’re just DONE.’
It’s just… it’s such a SHAME.
Q:
I’m looking at these STRETCH GOALS and there’s a voice in my head saying, ‘this is just all BULLSHIT’. I’m looking at the SIXTY FOUR MILLION DOLLAR STRETCHGOAL, which is the PET ONE that you were just mentioning. You’re telling me that it costs ONE MILLION DOLLARS to add a PET SYSTEM in the game? That doesn’t make sense.
But all those FISH are INDIVIDUALLY MODELED and they have their OWN AI and… and.. each SCALE is individually RENDERED and… I don’t know…I have no idea any more…
Eventually I believe they stopped adding stretch goals, I think they did that a while ago but… I got other stuff to PLAY right now, I mean there’s ELITE coming out with NEW STUFF and they’re already, you know, past 1.0… there’s just a TON of games out that I can play RIGHT NOW. Or look, I can go BACK and play WING COMMANDER, or I could play FREESPACE 2, you know, if I want that EXPERIENCE. I don’t… need you right now, it’s so… it’s so… it’s so FRUSTRATING. It’s SO FRUSTRATING.
Q:
This is just really showing those tell-tale signs of a game that’s GOING to CRASH AND BURN. Cos it just feels like there’s no, like… PLAN… like they’re just like ADDING STUFF by throwing darts on a BOARD. This is similar to what happened with PLANETARY ANNIHILATION, and how they hit ALL their stretch goals and I think it just OVERWHELMED them and… I know earlier this year they announced for STAR CITIZEN, there’s now going to be a complete STORY BASED SINGLE PLAYER CAMPAIGN, I think MARK HAMILL and GARY OLDMAN are gonna be in it?
I mean that was probably the original THING, was that there was gonna be SQUADRON FORTY-TWO and it was gonna be the more WING COMMANDER-Y single player portion of the game, I mean that was there from the get-go but then… MARK HAMILL? And… and… GARY OLDMAN? And… and… the… the woman I… from the X-FILES, I can’t remember her name… GILLIAN ANDERSON… yeah SHE’S in it, it’s like, ‘Oh! Yeah, yeah, like BIG NAMES’, it’s like oh, so THAT’S where our MONEY’S GOING.
And then you see like VIDEO of their OFFICES, like they’ve got… one of their offices has a DOOR that looks like it’s from a SPACESHIP. Like… CUSTOM DOOR. It’s like, is that what our… yeah. Is that REALLY what our money… when I saw that I was like ‘OK, I… I’m just gonna… IGNORE this’
COMMENTARY:
For those who aren’t familiar with Brian Rubin, he is the blogger behind “Space Game Junkie”. He was an early enthusiast for Star Citizen, and conducted a lengthy interview in March of 2013 with the always-gracious-with-fanboys Chris Roberts. (I’m not being snide here, btw– whatever his faults, he’s always been gracious with his fans.)
In July of last year, Rubin decided to stop featuring Star Citizen on his Space Game blog, and wrote a post explaining why he wasn’t giving the game more coverage:
SPACEGAMEJUNKIE.COM: “Come, My Friends, We Need to Discuss Star Citizen”
Rubin recently was a guest on the Game Wisdom podcast, and a discussion of Star Citizen ensued.
Star Citizen discussion begins at 1:31:37.
I highly recommend listening to this dialogue.Â
Rubin could hardly be accused of being a Goon or Derek Smart devotee– he is just a hardcore enthusiast for Space Games. He loved Wing Commander games, considers Starflight one of the greatest games of all time, he features indie games constantly on his blog and YouTube channel — yet he has arrived at the same conclusions about Star Citizen that we’ve written about since last year, as has his interviewer.
They touch on several Star Citizen topics– the huge download size, joystick issues, lack of depth, BadNewsBaron, space pants, missed release dates, his sale of his ships at a profit, Squadron 42, reasonable development cycles vs. open-ended ones, fish tanks, ludicrous stretch goals, the cyclical nature of Space Game enthusiasm, and his fears that Star Citizen’s possible failure down the road might bring another long winter to the game genre he loves most.
New evidence of Sandi using backer-funded CIG premises for her acting stints. This time, it’s Xanthippe.
Greg Mantell’s Facebook page of shorts from earlier last month . There is also a handy imgur album online
Sandi’s recital in the promo video
Greg’s video of the CIG space door
For sometime now, the notion that she was using the LA office – and backer money – to fund her flailing acting “career”, has been bandied about. Just last year, several pictures from the old office emerged, along with accusations that the movie at the time, was funded with backer money, filmed with CIG cameras (bought with backer money) etc. She denied it.
This is the same lavish office where they’ve spent a fortune of backer money. Money that’s not going into the game’s development. Office that’s now regularly used by Sandi for her acting sessions.
Nothing wrong with that at all. Nope, not at all.
So much for that then.
“As a crowd funded project, Star Citizen’s scope is based directly on the support provided by our backers. Money pledged goes directly to the game’s development.”
CIG started tagging backers. Didn’t believe it at first. This is a shot from a backer I know. In a hilariously inept (it’s CIG!) move, they didn’t realize that Zendesk tags are public facing. THIS is how they treat backers now. To see if you have been tagged, go to support and open a new support request. the dropdown should be there if you have been tagged.
Someone with a tag made a video of it because some Shitizens (abusive &Â toxic anti-social Star Citizen fans) were claiming the whole thing was fake.
A forum thread (archive.is) “Publicly tagging customers in CIG CS?” that appeared on the CIG website was not only closed, it was completely removed. So naturally, they created another one.
I have a tag. This is a dump direct from the page via Javascript and JSON. From the main CS page, just go to the page > View Source > search for “Greetings sourcecode lurker!”
This  comment pretty much sums up CIG:
“Under normal circumstances it would be hard to believe that a company with funding of $114m had taken the time to link customer accounts to social media and discussion boards and felt this information was important enough to record. But then this is Star Citizen so it is not very surprising. It barely even ranks on the long list of bewildering things they have done. But it is another yet another indicator that something is rotten in Chris Roberts’ house.Â
The narrative from diehard sc grognards has always been that this stuff is fake or exaggerated. Part of a plot (with as yet undetermined goals) orchestrated by the hated Derek Smart and his minions. But the more that’s revealed about the people working at CIG and the way they operate the less water this holds. The Escapist article was dismissed as scurrilous rumour because they used anonymous sources (even though this is a common and normal practice). There was no way Sandi was as crazy as the article claimed, nor could the company’s culture be as poisonous as it appeared. Ridiculous.Â
Then the beer emails reveal that the VP of marketing can’t even conduct herself professionally in communications with a customer. Those again were dismissed as fake, never mind that would have been a lot of effort for something that could have easily resulted in legal action. Just like was threatened with The Escapist. So far there have been no legal repercussions for either case.Â
Now we discover that CIG is tagging its paying customers to track their identity across the Internet. The only reasonable conclusion is that this is done so they don’t expend unnecessary effort on certain groups of people who are viewed as being harmful to the project. This has parallels to the behaviour of cults like Scientology.Â
And surprise surprise, one of the categories is “snowflake”, a term used by Sandi in an email as a derogatory term for people she feels are entitled and unnecessarily demanding. Never mind that they’ve funded her and her husband’s extravagant lifestyle for the past four years.Â
At this point anyone who can’t see that there’s something very wrong with CIG’s culture which affects both its employees and customers is being wilfully blind.“
…and there’s Major Tom 🙂
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFF-GwupmCY[/youtube]
Discussion / Before you Pledge – Buyer Beware: The Real Ship Status and Concept Sales
As was said officially recently, (RTV 89) all ships, which concept sale was or will be, after September 2015 (after Endevour), won’t be in the game release. This might even be revised again as Chris Roberts also talked about a “Minimal Viable Product” which could mean more cuts. Please think about that before you pledge!
More than half of the ships are not flight ready. Flight ready means they somehow work in the PTU but most are still missing one or some combination of HUD, Instruments, Consoles, full flight model, mass (yeah, they all have no mass/the same mass) and many more. So take “flight ready” with a grain of salt as it only means you can get into the cockpit (if you don’t glitch out) and take off.
One Example is the recently added Starfarer which is “flight ready” but none of it’s core functionality is working (like refuelling). The cockpit is bugged for everyone. Seats are broken. You fall through floors. Nothing internally works (except doors and even those bug out sometimes).
Here is a nice picture illustrating the real Engineering debt that CIG has (as of May 22nd). Everything not completely BLUE is not done yet:
If you intend to pledge pick at least a ship that is already in the PTU and more or less working!
WARNING: There are no loan ships even if some people say there are!
There are no loaners any more according to the Lead of Ship Designs and Developer Ben Lesnik as of Jun 2, 2016.
Ben Lesnick, Developer:
“We don’t, uh, specifically do hangar LOANERS any more I mean we… we haven’t even done the MATRIX for the… for 2.4 so… ahm, not a worry there… ahhm… yeah… just something that’ll…
Yeah it’s just that 2.4 is still on the PTU so we don’t have the… LOADOUT LOADOUT… LOWER LOAN… LOADOUT MATRIX so uh we’ll…”
SOURCE: Bensday with Batgirl and Ben Episode 54 Jun 2, 2016
Carry on Commandos!
Direct link to Zhit’s comment
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/6711109/#Comment_6711109
