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

[Kolbex]

On the one hand, I’m so glad I resisted putting any money into this way back when the Kickstarter was happening. I think I was in KS fatigue even that long ago, but it’s been so long I can’t be sure. On the other hand, what did I even do with that $40 instead? Probably nothing great.

[midnight.mangler]

Yes but at least you didn’t buy into the self loathing and festering resentment which we know would have ensued! So there is that.

[Kolbex]

I guess that’s worth something, and I didn’t even have to spend anything to get it.

[Perky_Goth]

@TheWombat

is this a reasonable example of how the programmers would describe what they are doing, or is it just a bunch of jibberish?

Maybe, if they’re a contractor for a big company/government…

[Charlatan]

Sounds sort of like the stuff we write when we are forced to provide a weekly status update but we haven’t done a whole lot of real work.

[sharaleo]

haha that newsletter. If any of that is to be believed, they are so far away from beta launch. If none of it is to be believed then, well, they are so far away from beta launch. lol

[instant0]

I’m sure any minute now they’ll announce that with the addition of flux devices they have attainted 88 flops in their custom SSE shader engine for Junkyard.

edit: Ah, Lumberyard is the name of the engine, not Junkyard, my bad.
edit: CryEngine really.

[SadleyBradley]

@instant0

Ah, Lumberyard is the name of the engine, not Junkyard, my bad.

A Freudian slip, no doubt.

[dsmart]

@TheWombat

Thanks, I was beginning to wonder about my reading skills. I mean, I have worked with programmers, and I teach in a Game Studio where we have young programmers, some of whom are damn good. And I’ve never seen stuff quite that obtuse from anyone doing actual coding on a viable project. I have seen this sort of prose from people who are desperately behind or whose sprints are epic fails when they try to cover their asses, though…

It’s precisely as you understand it. All smoke and mirrors under the guise of “yeah, we’re totally working on two games. See?”. They know that their backer base will swallow anything they post - bs and all. And they’re not even trying to cover it any more.

[dsmart]

@instant0

I’m sure any minute now they’ll announce that with the addition of flux devices they have attainted 88 flops in their customer SSE shader engine for Junkyard.

edit: Ah, Lumberyard is the name of the engine, not Junkyard, my bad.
edit: CryEngine really.

No. They’re NOT and NEVER were using Lumberyard. I said this years ago, and the Crytek lawsuit confirmed it. They are still using their custom build of CryEngine called Star Engine. The Lumberyard “switch” was in license name only because they didn’t want to pay Crytek for a SQ42 license. And that got them sued - and ended up costing them more than a license would have. It’s free money from backers, so who cares, right?

[instant0]

Not to worry. Whatever engine or trash pile they are using, it is the wrong one for their purposes :-)

[Calelari]

There’s an ideal engine for rendering jpegs?

[instant0]

[Quaro]

So if you wanted to launder money, wouldn’t it be 10x or 100x more effective in any F2P game? Just make a company based in Russia or something as a front. Then buy a failing/failed game that already exists. It’s totally normal for players to spend 1000 dollars every month on essentially gifs and temporary power upgrades in games like that. So you just send the dirty money to the game in gigantic micro transactions and hey, you are indistinguishable from any other terrible F2P game with 95% profit margins.

Edit: A bit of research shows this is done in Counter Strike at lower monetary amounts, in the second way described in this thread, player to player sales. That hardly seems something you can pin exclusively on SC though.

https://www.ft.com/content/4658d340-24f6-11ea-9a4f-963f0ec7e134

How microtransactions and in-game currencies can be used to launder money

[dsmart]

@Quaro

That hardly seems something you can pin exclusively on SC though.

I don’t think anyone said it was a new thing or that it was unique to SC.

[dsmart]

Meanwhile, over there

After reading these posts and sitting down and thinking about it, I don’t think this game will come out for a long time. Even if SC comes out, it’s unlikely to be the game that I originally backed and wanted to play. I was really disheartened by the pace of development, it’s unimaginably slow. I also really didn’t like the constant Youtube videos that CIG kept releasing without actually showing anything, just a bunch of guys talking about future content which never arrives. I hated the aggressive marketing and the entire LTI ordeal. I’ve become really sick of the bugs in the game, never ending and seemingly increasing. I also feel like once the game actually does come out, it will look dated, other engines and games are catching up. Lastly, if they are charging $10-20 for skins now, then that’s a sign of an even more aggressive marketing strategy in the future. I didn’t sign up for this, to make Sandy Gardner’s acting ambition come to life and Chris’s single player game. I just wanted the PTU and to be honest they haven’t even finished one system, it’s trash, I don’t want to defend this anymore, I want out. I feel embarrassed that I referred 12 people to the game, I fell into the mess that SC was. I even bought Grey Market ships to get a better price, and I can’t gift them away now. I spent nearly $1500 on the game, and I need to try and sell my account and get out. I might wait until more of my ships that I pledged for are released, so that it slightly increases the value of the account before selling it for what I originally spent. I’m also trying to convince a few of my buddies to do the same, they will probably gift away their ships through the Grey Market. I don’t feel that Star Citizen will ever be a game, it’s an ongoing tech demo, sadly that’s the truth. There is nothing “game” about it or fun! They also can’t realistically do any of the things that they promised, chances are that it’ll be highly watered down or non functioning. Redesigning ships is just a sign of very poor and bad initial planning, this game was never thought about properly from the ground up, and this method of development will never turn come to fruition. It took me playing other games to see just what games were supposed to cost and what a $1500 investment actually was. I feel really stupid now, I was hoping for this to the be all and end all game, I ignored what people were saying, I even rejoiced in the funding goals, I held out hope, but it was all for nothing.

[Bluddy]

Do the insanely high ship prices make SC a better target for laundering than other games? Transaction costs and all that?

[Kolbex]

@dsmart

I need to try and sell my account and get out. I might wait until more of my ships that I pledged for are released, so that it slightly increases the value of the account before selling it for what I originally spent.

Ha, good luck.

@dsmart

I was hoping for this to the be all and end all game

Funny, that’s how I felt about Spore.

[dsmart]

@Bluddy

Do the insanely high ship prices make SC a better target for laundering than other games? Transaction costs and all that?

Yes - pretty much.

[dsmart]

About that money laundering thing…

r/starcitizen - Crowdfunding prevision (July version)