This is good. An entire thread of n00bs experience the free-fly event.
I think the usage of the word ‘scam’ here is problematic. You can step through the motions of a ‘scam’ without ever having ill intentions, and I think that’s what’s happening here. Even if the game stays as it is now, it’ll be a ‘game’ – it’ll accomplish virtually none of its objectives and won’t be any fun to play, but plenty of games/kickstarters have gone wrong before. The problem here is that they’ve found a way to keep funding their bad habit, and that allows their insanely over-optimistic ambitions to keep growing, which forces them to need more money. If you’ve seen the Double Fine Adventure documentary, imagine if Double Fine had found a way to keep getting money by adding more features – its ambitions would also have increased exponentially and outpaced its ability to create anything. The big question in my mind is, are the people at the top knowingly acting out of malice at this point? Do they know that this isn’t going to work out, while still taking people’s money? Because I think that’s the point at which it switches over from being just a train wreck to becoming a ‘scam’.
Brutal Legend, in other words.
To be honest, the video shows an interesting and unique player experience within the game. Kind of an unintended consequences or happy/unhappy accident. If it is a good open world game, such unique experiences should be common enough to be experienced by all.
This is the first time I have seen anyone report anything interesting like this over the entire development period.
I agree with all of this because it completely encapsulates what’s going on.
To me, the “scam” is more about them taking money knowing they could never deliver on promises. There are other aspects of the scam. e.g. how they they sell a ship, don’t implement it, but then release a similar one to sell, while not implementing the original. It’s basically the engineering version of a Ponzi scheme.
Just days ago, I wrote a Tweet about their latest scam effort. The Idris, an eagerly awaited $1,000 - $1,500 capital ship they sold YEARS ago and which isn’t IN the game, is now getting a PAID upgrade (guns). Here’s the letter that went out over the weekend.
https://i.imgur.com/bImMIDr.png
They do crap like that. Also, selling land for a game that doesn’t have ANY such mechanics for it. Selling ships for which their core functionality (e.g. independent radar, turrets, drink mixing etc) doesn’t exist - and never will. The list goes on and on.
Chris found a way to monetize scope creep. And in doing so tapped into the broken-brained mentality of a few whales who are basically “hooked” *(see Scientology, Flat Earthers etc) into something they truly believe in. That’s how scams work; they prey on victims.
IMO it’s definitely a maliciously fraudulent scam at this point. Early on, the eager sale of useless garbage like unimplemented ships and pictures of unimplemented ships and virtual land – all that might arguably have been semi-legitimate in the sense of not deliberately offering things that couldn’t possibly be delivered, but rather things that were honestly hoped to be delivered on some reasonable schedule. I mean, I doubt it, I think it was a bad joke since inception, but at least you could say that to some extent they deceived themselves about what they could and couldn’t do.
But even with some slight degree of initial sincerity, they have certainly known for quite some time now what state their game is in, and how they will never deliver on the majority of their promises. So since that early realization, every continuing attempt to sell these silly unimplemented features has been straightforward fraud.
Interesting that you wrote that. Read this lengthy post from a guy trying the game for the first time during this free-fly
If nothing more, at least during this thread I’ve learned a lot about the in’s and out’s of game (non) development.
The best part is someone’s reply: “You clearly don’t understand game development”.
Yeah, that’s a sarcastic take on what the usual suspects tell dissenters who question the viability of project. “It’s only alpha” is another fan favorite.
Gawd this is so overused with a lot of titles, especially those in EA for multiple years.
Sounds like my experience in Elite Dangerous.
The most dangerous thing was picking the wrong landing spot and getting shot by Space Copz™
You lack vision. While sitting in your hi-def pixel space ship you could be listening to Steely Dan, or checking your twitter, or playing word games with the license plates of ships you see, or playing Star Citizen on the PC you have installed in your cockpit!
Get out of bed, walk around, find ship terminal, ask for ship, get in ship, try to find out how to actually get somewhere with the ship. Had to stop playing for a while so I exit the game. When I go back I’m in bed at the station, not inside the ship anymore. Ok, go back to the ship terminal and… I have to wait 15 minutes?! Alright, I’ll muck about the station until it’s ready. Get in the ship spend another 15 mins trying to land on the planet right next to the station, get disconnected. Get back in and I’m in bed again. Get to the ship terminal and… 15 mins to get my ship again.
Nope, I’m good. You guys have fun.
Well I tried the new freefly weekend this weekend and I had originally gotten a refund because it wasn’t nearly finished enough last time I tried. That was ages ago. I’m talking years. I figured hey they’ve had a lot of time to build the game up here I was wrong. I regret wasting time downloading the game I could have been playing another game. I sat in my high-def cockpit trying to figure out how to take off. When I finally looked up what key to hit to do the systems ready and launch. The key bindings wouldn’t even work. Also game terribly choppy even on low graphical settings. No helpful information at all. No tutorial. Nothing to help you get started. Even the graphics didn’t look like anything too special or different. My son and I wasted four hours trying to figure out how to take off once we actually found how to summon and get to ships. And yes I know the game is in beta but as much money as they have in as much time as they have had? Get real. I think they made a mistake by letting everyone into the game this past weekend. Know everyone’s going to know how much it sucks after all the times I’ve had to work on it and all the backing money that they’ve had. Millions of dollars seemingly gone to waste. I feel sorry for the people that committed more money than I did. Peace.
Sounds like Chris Roberts made 3D Groundhog Day game.
I’m not interested until
I like how “close interaction with Derek Smart” is a bannable offense on the Star Citizen subreddit!
Comedy gold from that subreddit:
They just sold a large number of Krakens to all the the whales during citizencon. Selling upgrades to the Idris seems to be a terrible idea. They should be given out free instead to rebalance the Idris against the newer kraken which is also ridiclous that ships not in game yet are being powercreeped by newer ships which also arent in game.
Powercreep of an unimplemented concept ship by another, newer, unimplemented concept ship is truly an innovation in gaming.
jpeg nerfing.
There just has to be some new memes to come out of all this.