Star Citizen - Chris Roberts, lots of spaceship porn, lots of promises

Speaking of which, CIG’s accounts are still overdue.

Yes, aside from the fact that we know for a fact that the funding chart as well as the “citizen” count are bogus (designed to show interest in the project), our metrics show that it’s basically handful of whales still funding this train wreck. I have an entire forum dedicated to this. Below are numbers run during CitizenCon 2018.

https://imgur.com/iUtADE0.jpg

https://imgur.com/sHUwPAD.jpg

Considering my coverage of the 2017 numbers for F42-UK, which showed that the studio was insolvent, that they recently filed accounts for RSI but not CIG (the parent that owns all the other companies in the group) is expected. I didn’t think they would file before CitizenCon or even the anniversary or holiday sales because I expect there to be some more eye-openers in the CIG filing.

For those of you who like numbers, I have updated my latest article with a new section covering the 2017 financials of RSI.

Your obsession against SC is to me actually more baffling than people who are obsessed with SC. I can at least understand those to a certain degree but building a whole community around the idea to see another game and it’s community crash and burn is somewhere between destructive and sadistic.
Besides that I can’t be the only one to see the irony around the fact that you are exploiting the whole “SC outrage” angle for your personal gains.

LOL!! OK.

Well, we’re now in criminal behavior territory as they haven’t filed accounts for CIG (the parent company that owns/runs/funds RSI and F42)

It’s a criminal offence not to file your statement within 14 days of the end of the review period. If you don’t file, your company and its officers may be prosecuted. Your company may also be struck off the register.

Huh. I’m used to this being a non-prosecuted crime — back in the day football clubs were notorious for never filing accounts on time, and usually nothing came of of it. But it seems like they’ve started taking it more seriously in the last few years.

Really? Because he’s a guy that’s been making games in this space (no pun intended) for decades, and has received a lot of flak for his ambitions when they haven’t panned out. Then along comes this charlatan promising ridiculous things Derek knows very well aren’t realistic or feasible, bilks $200 million dollars out of fans of the genre, and basically poisons the well behind him.

I can totally see why Derek has an axe to grind when it comes to Chris Roberts and RSI, especially when they slagged him when he was one of the first to begin raising concerns. And knowing the Internet, I’m sure with that came a whole lot of backlash from RSI fanboys as well. If I were in his shoes I’d sure like some vindication at the end of all of this.

For us it’s just a train wreck we can shake our heads over. For him, it has to be a lot more personal.

Hey now.

But on the topic of Derek’s “obsession” with RSI/Star Citizen, I have to say I appreciate the critical eye he brings to the topic. Whether or not he has an axe to grind I don’t care - he’s pointing out the massive fraud as it goes on and on. This kind of crap gives the industry a bad name, and people should be held accountable when they behave like this.

Some sites, such as arstechnica.com, began in favor of the project (albeit with some early warnings from yours truly), a senior editor boldly stating “I’ll fight anyone who says there’s been a good space combat game released since [Freespace 2], because they’re dead wrong.” (uhh… no, there was at least one great one in that interim). The community latched on to this perspective, embracing Elite: Dangerous as well, although they have acknowledged criticism of the project with greater-than-average maturity. Such criticism has accumulated over time, and seems to carry greater weight now than in 2014.

Other sites like Penny Arcade seem to lean in favor of ignoring anything gone wrong with the project; take a look at the latest Star Citizen thread and it’s mostly business as usual. You probably wouldn’t garner there are very major problems unless you were acquainted with the project from a different perspective.

mmorpg.com resembles a battlefield when it comes to Star Citizen. Numerous people criticize the project from many different angles, yet there are a trio of posters (the pig, the bunny, and Nelson Muntz) who seem to have supplicated themselves as conduits to Chris Roberts himself, either posting every glossy video spot they come across or continuously promoting the game as well as taunting or smacking down anyone who dares object. It resembles astroturfing; indeed some have wondered if they are in fact in the pay of RSI. It’s so obvious, though, anyone above a room temperature IQ ought to see right through it. There are also occasional head-scratching comments like this one yesterday: “[Star Citizen has] been in development an actual total for 4 years (2 years to even start a company and get good staff)”. Retconning, much?

Then there is Quarter to Three, which I’ll unabashedly say has the sanest approach to Star Citizen I’ve seen on the web.

I think that it’s a fascinating project to observe for anyone who has ever worked on a large project regardless of whether it was specifically a game.

While they are opaque about so much of the actual progress, the volume of minutiae presented is so transparent to how little they have done and how they have no idea how to do much of it.

It’s the programmer mumbling about unit tests for the code he or she hasn’t started yet. It’s the manager complaining about another group’s delivery for integration having minor problems to distract from the fact that their group is half done.

It’s the literature student trying to sound like they read the chapters being discussed.

He received a lot of flak because he made poor (and buggy) games noone cared about and still thinks he is the Sid Meier of space sims (or an expert on tech related questions in the 2010’s). He is the last person on earth who should run such a campaign BECAUSE it’s kind of obvious that his objections come from his ego and not because he cares about people being exploited or even the game industry at large (he isn’t Jim f’cking Sterling).
Let’s be honest here, he isn’t a voice of reason, he is a fanatic at the other end who makes it impossible to discuss (including sensible critisism) this game in an actual meaningful way and his shameless self promoting of his content/community is groan worthy at this point (and only serves to grow his own personal brand).
I know we have been since quite some time at a point where you either have to think it’s going to be the best game in human history or the biggest scam ever invented but usually you get more balanced opinions around here.
Those are the ones which are interesting to me and let me risk a visit in this thread from time to time but those get drowned out by forced drama.
I mean there is a reason why I personally wouldn’t invest in a project like SC (and why I don’t preorder games) and I see a huge amount of issues with this whole thing but even someone like me can see the progress they made (while not ignoring that a lot is still missing) and the technical challenges they tackled/solved. Yet you can’t even talk about a lot of this because “SCAM” and that gets boring pretty fast.

Great claims require extraordinary evidence. I don’t care enough to look for more details, but all their communications I’ve seen fumble at explaining how they’ve solved fundamental architectural issues. It always optimistically glosses over issues anyone with a clue knows they have to face and are incredibly hard to deal with - not fix, because there’s limitations whatever you do. It gets worse when you start thinking they’re selling the idea that everything’s possible, which is when it stars sounding like a scam.
As to Derek, of course he’s not objective, he has a whole post saying how he got in this mess which explains how he can’t be (which he links often enough). I doubt he has any gains to make, though, he’s retired and his old games’ reputation isn’t going anywhere.

Maybe to you, but to the rest of us, we’re FASCINATED with this slow moving wreck of a super star destroyer crashing into the death star. Which is what this “game” is.

You should sell a jpeg of that picture you just painted with your words.

I’d make millions! And still deliver a better product than Star Citizen.

which game are you referencing?

Freelancer, I Imagine.

Ohhh, I too am DYING to know.

adjusts collar uncomfortably

Well, it’s… uh… the only space game I was really playing at the time, so not a great sample size, but… considering this…

looks at feet and blushes

Vendetta Online