Nihm
5495
This 312K view thread of an unreleased game has always piqued my curiosity when I see it at the top of the new threads. What exactly is the gist? Are some of you playing a beta of this? Does everyone here really hate this developer, or is it a bit tongue in cheek? I’ll sometimes skim the newer posts, but I can’t really make heads or tales of it all.
Don’t try. Just let the fetid wave wash over you.
Well, there is a really interesting story here, in relative terms. This game, Star Citizen, was put up on kickstarter by Chris Roberts, well known for his wing commander series. Release dates kept (keep) slipping with massive feature creep on a massive bed of backer cash. I believe over 100 million dollars! That’s a lot. Derek Smart, who is well known on internet gaming forums such as this one became interested in the project, likely as it was similar in nature to his own projects. He became skeptical of its viability and started documenting reasons why. He’s been posting a lot here, which has helped keep the thread to the top, and has likely drawn many views. I for one have really enjoyed his posts because he takes the time to polish them. That is mostly why I read the thread. Also it’s neat to see how flameless it all is, given the subject matter. I’m not really sure why that is. Worth studying.
It’s mostly flameless because I think all of us have a fairly united opinion. Some of us find the whole thing hilarious, some are optimists and backers worn down into realists, and some of us are more… militantly opposed. But I don’t see anyone from the other side popping in to let us know how stupid and poor we are for not tithing to what will prove to be the greatest undertaking in electronic entertainment EVAR. If we could get some of that traffic, I think this topic would devolve pretty quickly.
meeper
5499
We had some of that traffic and drove them off.
I’m just here to watch the wreck evolve!
I kinda used to be one of those people. Kinda. I had hope. Once.
Galadin
5502
I have some money invested into a pair of ships and still watch the developments of this. Sadly, it is now with dread about how the next milestone won’t be hit. I am hoping that a decent space arena sim comes out at this point, I would love the rest but really just want anything stable to play even if it is just the arena piece. I like the ships and the style, the flight model is interesting and different enough from Elite to make it worthwhile for both to be installed concurrently.
I am really sad though that I can’t see any possible avenue for them to develop a full game. They have build a studio system dependent upon a significant revenue stream instead of developing a game with the base revenue they had generated. I just can’t see this revenue stream continuing into the future too much longer. Even whales have a breaking point.
I don’t know how typical my case is. I (finally) joined the forum a short while ago and had an interest in finding out what the hell was going on right about when Derek had pretty solid evidence that it was not ever going to be finished.
I avoided saying much for all the good people with hard earned cash “invested”, since I’m not a very good speaker, I didn’t want to be callous, but it’s impossible for me not to follow the train wreck slowly being turned into/revealed as a scam. It’s an interesting study seeing the reactions in real time, because it will have a big impact in the industry
dsmart
5504
Thank God that twerp Croberts doesn’t read this thread, because stuff like this is how we got here.
dsmart
5505
How I got involved in the greatest heist of gamer money in the history of video games
Nihm
5506
Interesting thanks. So the guy behind this massively funded game hadn’t helmed a game since '96? So much has changed since then… What had he been doing during the intervening years?
What percentage of people believe this is full on scam now and not just catastrophic mismanagement? And if you believe it is a scam, do you believe that it was intended as such from the start or that once the millions of dollars rolled in, it just pivoted to one? I’m curious as to what the initial intent was and when the corruption started.
I’m not sure. Making films?
dsmart
5509
He went to Hollywood to make a string of bad movies - starting with Wing Commander. He did that until Kevin Costner sued him into the ground and shut his studio down. And those movie ventures were also linked to the German movie fraud that had people sent to jail. Then he was selling exotic cars.
Little known fact, my research led me to link most of them to the Gizmondo fraud where people went to jail. If you don’t know what that is, oh boy, read my article on that.
And the feud between Roberts and I, is just the thing of urban legend. Kotaku has a massive article on that.
And for those long journeys, this handy page has all my Star Citizen blogs linked.
dsmart
5510
Hard to say. But we’ve cataloged and tagged the zealots (aka Shitizens) who are waging an Internet wide war of attrition. There are still some believers left who, at this point, just want something - anything - to come from this.
I have no reason to believe that it was intended to be a scam. It just sorta evolved into one as time went on and they realized that by selling bullshit, they had tapped into people who were willing to pay for it.
There’s too much money and too much risk for it to be a scam from the start. There’s also a lot of hard work put into it from people who are likely just interested in making the best game ever and/or don’t look at the financial side, because it is too complicated. And some of it is just capitalism as usual and not proof of illegal activities anyway, just icky.
The pattern for shenanigans is there and it’s becoming a bit obvious that they’re milking it, but I don’t know if it crosses legal lines or not.
dsmart
5512
There are a lot of White collar criminals sitting in jail or on the lam. Some of them had international operations with offices, employees, contractors etc. It’s always the execs who are in on it, not the worker plebs pulling a paycheck.
And a lot of them who were just too dumb to believe it would last forever instead of fleeing with millions. I don’t know, a 5 year scam seems like too much of a gamble, at least outside the financial market, but who knows for sure.
I thought Lord of War was a good movie; I bought it on DVD without paying much attention to the end credits or back of the jacket. The Wing Commander movie came out when I was in high school and I remember some of my classmates making fun of it; it has legendarily bad physics.
When the Hornet commercial released it became apparent CR hadn’t brushed up on his Newtonian mechanics much - I could go on and on about this one: aerobraking without any atmosphere, remaining in the most vulnerable position without anything preventing the pilot from just turning around.
CR seems to have a charismatic personality and generally good aesthetic sense; I guess that can be a double-edged sword for someone who loves to be involved in all aspects of a given project, and this is without a doubt Roberts’ baby.
Anyway, I’m glad you said something, because Lord knows I tried back in 2013 over on massivelyop.com and got shouted down from all sides, moderated, etc. I think my objections were relatively tame compared to comments about the project nowdays. Weird how that is, sometimes.
