I seriously and truly don’t know how you guys (@Timex, @Ryan_Kelly) hold onto your faith for this project. I live and breathe space games, and I gave up caring/having faith at least year ago. My best hope is that it doesn’t bomb so badly as to take crowdfunding and space games down with it.
Please don’t think this is a criticism, I just truly don’t understand.
Timex
3866
It doesn’t really cost me anything to do so. At this point, it’s just waiting to see what happens.
If a game comes out the other end, that’s cool. If not, it’s not really gonna break my heart.
Speaking of mods is a big red herring really, but let’s try to reason over it.
To use their assets in your mod, whoever made Half-life has to allow you to use them. If the assets to both Squadron 42 and Star Citizen belong to the bank, it could sublicense it to CIG, sure. Or it could not, in which case Star Citizen would be dead in the water, since it would be forced to create new assets from scratch.
According to the definitions in item 5.1.2, the collateral seems to include the source code for the game, including even the modifications they made in CryEngine (aka StarEngine). If they default and the bank doesn’t sublicense those to them? They have to start over.
Yet you defend the game seemingly every chance you get, so that doesn’t fully jive for me. Regardless, if you can hold onto some shred of optimism for this, I guess more power to ya.
Timex
3869
It’s just an attempt to put something into terms that gamers here would understand easily enough.
If you want a more concrete example, I can provide one, but it may not resonate as well.
We make a bunch of different software products. Some, the government gets rights to. Some are privately developed. Sometimes, the government licensed ones leverage libraries developed privately… sometimes, even libraries which we don’t own. The government’s rights to the top level product does not necessarily extend to all of the underlying assets it uses.
No, because it would just include stuff that sat on top of the overall star citizen game. The end result would be that the collateral would indeed be useless, as it would depend upon the core start citizen game, but the inverse would not necessarily be true.
I defend it here just because I find the arguments made against it to be specious.
In terms of optimism, the stuff that is seemingly already developed and coming in 3.0 looks pretty badass to me.
Understanding the hordes of CSI supporters does not require an advanced Ph.D. in n-body orbital mechanics.
There are two problems with that interpretation of yours. First, this is what item 5.1.2 says:
all that copyright in the Game, programmes and any sound recordings made in the course of the production of the Game or pursuant to any right acquired in connection with, or arising from, the production of the Game
Code is protected by copyright, so that includes all code ever written related to the production of the game, and since the engine was acquired in connection with the production of the Game, it also covers modifications to that engine. Now, were the code for Squadron 42 completely isolated from Star Citizen, that wouldn’t be a problem (well, it still would, but let’s pretend). But CIG has already revealed that they are connected in terms of code and assets, so yeah.
The second mistake in your interpretation is assuming that the bank would accept or propose a useless collateral. Considering the terms of this agreement, they’ve not only done this before, but they know what they’re doing. As @anonymgeist said above:
Timex
3872
No man, you are making unfounded assumptions. There’s nothing in that snippet which suggests that it applies to all of the code that CIG as a whole, across all of its divisions, has produced.
I’m not sure you’re really understanding what “connected in terms of code and assets” means. The fact that SQ42 uses assets developed as part of star citizen does not mean that those assets would fall under this agreement. I’m not really sure why you assume they would. Just because SQ42 uses assets from Star Citizen, doesn’t mean those assets are part of SQ42, from a IP perspective.
Well, no. It technically wouldn’t be totally useless collateral. But your presumption that it would automatically include all of the other assets developed by CIG at large, and thus usable in the complete form, is unsupported by the evidence.
I mean, the other part of your argument was, “Holy shit, why on earth would they make such huge concessions in terms of collateral?!” and the answer is likely, “they didn’t”.
Ultimately though, I don’t think I’m going to convince you of anything, so I’ll leave you to your own devices.
Here’s my down and dirty on Star Citizen: I have no skin in the game, so I’m just watching from the sidelines. If it does ever launch and some people I trust say its awesome, then maybe I’ll buy in. If the project dies while a work-in-progress, then I guess I’ll be sad for some folks, but caveat emptor.
My longer take is that this is one of those subjects that’s very tough for people to discuss without getting entrenched in their prediction. Like the sunk cost fallacy that some Star Citizen supporters exhibit after buying literally thousands of dollars worth of virtual ships, some detractors have gotten very invested in the idea that this game is a boondoggle. Neither side wants to back down from their position, so you get situations like this one.
I have no idea whether or not this tax loan security is an indicator of something hinky. I know I sure as heck wouldn’t do anything like this with my finances, but I’m also not the head of a multi-million dollar company trying to take advantage of a tax refund in the UK, so ehhhhh. I wish someone would get an actual banker to go on record and parse this thing out. But then again, my investment is zero, so whatever.
Eventually, one way or another, we’ll all see how Star Citizen ends up.
I think most of us, if I can cast aspersions with any accuracy, secretly hope that Chris is, indeed, going to become the Incarnation of All That Is Good In Space Sims (again), and that SC is The Last Game We’ll Ever Desire.
Which means lots of salt when the sausage-making factory is only selling JPEGs of delicious sausage.
Yeah, if Star Citizen comes out and it is indeed the BDSSE, I’ll likely buy it. I can’t see that happening ever for a lot of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with loans of any kind. But hey, if it comes out, and it’s good, I’ll play it.
Personally I don’t know what is so unbelievable about SC coming out. Yeah it is taking time, but that’s what making ambitious games with ton of R&D is all about. Especially when having to build studios from scratch to support it. People are flawed so tons of mistakes get made. That’s the case with any ambitious game ever.
I haven’t paid a penny yet since I do not like playing unfinished builds, but it is on my list of most anticipated games, Squadron 42 in particular. They release so much footage, docs, those playable builds…I don’t get the constant scepticism from so many people.
For me, there are a lot of red flags. On the software development side: inflated feature list, constant rework, engine limitations, unrealistic features (considering current tech limitations), missing more deadlines than hitting them… a lot of things.
Then there’s the business side. Their current income depends on the game not being finished, which is the very definition of a conflict of interest. The constant ship sales before gameplay is even in place. The many technical problems with their releases (for instance, having to redownload vast parts of the game on even a small update due to the absence of a proper patcher, which can’t be very gentle on their bandwidth costs). The fact that the game is now built over a “MMO-lite” structure of servers which will have costs to keep up, and the fact that income may be complicated or limited after the game is out unless it’s made P2W or heavily reliant on cosmetic microtransactions. And so on and so forth.
Maybe they will manage to make something good and memorable, and maybe it will manage to survive for longer than a couple years after release somehow. But judging from my experience with software projects and my 30 years of following gaming, I just think it’s unlikely. It’s possible (and costly) but unlikely.
But hey, what do I know?
Yeah but how long until the folks who bought the hydroponic cruiser jpeg get to experience the ecstasy of having their RPG science efforts brought to an abrupt end when the ship is ganked by the dread pirate XXXSH1TC0CK420XXX?
All that is par the course for any ambitious envelope-pushing game…
The business side…how does their income depend on the game not being finished? I mean…when they finish it and release it and the game is good, then it will sell and they will make money from that too. Possibly lot more than they make now. Doing ship sales…if people want to support the development by buying them, so what ? It’s not that different from kickstarting something. Lot of people bought 10000 dollar kickstarter tiers on various games and yet, nobody got told about getting scammed.
What gives me the greatest hope though are simply the people behind it. Christ Roberts is a legend and for a good reason. Tony Zurovec is a guy I have had a crush on since I played Crusader in 95. And he came out of retirement for this. Erin Roberts is a go getter who had comfy career in gamedev and went and done this. Then they have ton of people from Crytek. Amazon engine.
He really isn’t. And he’s not Jesus, either.
KevinC
3881
Would you go so far as to say he’s the Mungo Jerry of video games?
He really is, legend that is, in my opinion. Guy who made Wing Commander series easily deserves that.
(yes, I know he didn’t make them singlehandedly…)
Who was talking about Jesus ?
And a big part of why many of them fail.[quote=“Paul_cze, post:3879, topic:74635”]
The business side…how does their income depend on the game not being finished?
[/quote]
Their monthly income now comes mostly from selling ships and game packages (mostly ships). When the game is released, they won’t sell ships anymore, or so they said. So that income is out. Game sales may be a source of income, but for how long? How many people interested in the game have already bought it?
Just for the record, I don’t think SC is a scam. I don’t think there was ever ill will. I just think it’s more likely to fail than to succeed, just like many kickstarters failed.
Well, it has the opposite effect on me. Chris Roberts is a legend and made great games? So is Peter Molyneux, and look where he’s now. The issues with Freelancer are well known, and they’re usually associated to Chris Roberts and his penchant for feature creep and management issues. Also, let’s not even talk about the Wing Commander movie.
I know a guy on Blue’s News who worked on Digital Anvil when Freelancer was in development, and he had numerous issues with Erin Roberts (in fact, he attributes most of the problems with Freelancer to Erin, not Chris). Crytek went essentially bankrupt. And Amazon bought its pieces to try to sell more of AWS.
But perhaps Chris Roberts’ genius will shine through now. Perhaps Erin will do a good job. Perhaps CryEngine was a good choice and perhaps Amazon will help somehow. I don’t know. I hope so. I just think it’s unlikely.
You did a typo there, writing Christ Roberts instead of Chris. ;)
