Sounds like a cult to me.some interesting parts of that article:
- Between May 26 and June 1, 2020, Star Citizen backers pledged around $8 million. That is less than one week, meaning it was significantly more than $1 million per day (I guess a lot of rich people are backing this game)
- Overall, it shows that the Star Citizen community still has confidence in Chris Roberts' vision and that the game will release properly
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Star Citizen - media blowout, Chris Robert's new game
- Thread starter LeviathanZERO
- Start date
it fits my description of one.
i spent a bit of time trying it out again just to see where things are for myself over the last week. it's one thing seeing videos and reading thoughts on this and another to see it first hand. after nearly eight years and a few hundred million they have one system that believers like to call "the 'verse" (despite it being one broke ass system). in the limited time i spent giving myself a headache i was dying randomly while walking around, had my starter ship blow up randomly a few times, fell out of my ship twice and became stuck in space requiring suicide, random disconnects, and more crashes than i can count. not to mention the myriad of other issues like being unable to retrieve your ship at a console, unable to get a waypoint to reach a destination when plotting a route, etc. to think some people are throwing bills at these guys seems insane - now $300,000,000??? the planets and stars have to align just to complete a mission. and here's the thing, even if i looked out my window and pigs were flying by and robert's was able to offer a complete game, then you have all the issues regarding the advantages some people will have having thrown money at the devs like they were dancing on a pole - versus working for stuff in the game. as far as i'm concerned, for me, it's over. if the game came out two years ago you can't undo that kind of damage, and what it can do to a pvp game, brought about by their cash cow model. sticking with elite.
Comixbooks
Fully [H]
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They have that niche market nailed I think Lord British spent like 30 million to actually go in space orbit in Russian.
There's a bug that's been in forever where; if you stand too close to one of your ship windows, you suffocate because your limbs clip through the ship.
$300 Million
Obviously it's impossible to audit these figures, but that seems like a lot of money to pull in in a week. What would the catalyst for that have been? I know they get funding spikes in line with certain events, but what happened at the end of May to trigger such an increase in pledges?some interesting parts of that article:
- Between May 26 and June 1, 2020, Star Citizen backers pledged around $8 million. That is less than one week, meaning it was significantly more than $1 million per day (I guess a lot of rich people are backing this game)
- Overall, it shows that the Star Citizen community still has confidence in Chris Roberts' vision and that the game will release properly
I do wonder how many active backers there are currently, and by that I mean backers who are currently actively putting money in. If there are 2.7m backers altogether, I'd imagine that the vast majority will be in for the minimum spend, so it would be fascinating to see how this money in is distributed amongst the entire population of backers. On average it's about $110 per backer but once we remove those minimum-spend backers, that average will shoot up. I just wonder how many active backers have contributed to that $8m collected in the last week of May.
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Stats would be interesting to see, I am in for a Pirate pack that was upgraded to Cutlass Blue, and a Penguin. Both were on the lowest sales so I think it's about $225 to $250 for me...
I'd also love to see numbers of in game time. I've got to be at least a couple of hundred hours.
I'd also love to see numbers of in game time. I've got to be at least a couple of hundred hours.
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I would like to see CR show how he has spent $300+ million like he said he would.
N4CR
Supreme [H]ardness
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Please do this or just join forces and turn NMS into it...
Damn straight, I might even do something crazy and make sure I can support 1000+ low latency dynamically controlled objects in the same coordinate space before I worry about charging people money for a picture of an internet space ship that won’t be more than an art asset for longer than Tik Tok has been around, heck its almost as old as Instagram.
N4CR
Supreme [H]ardness
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Wow, actual foresight before taking peoples money!
What do you see is their biggest fuckup? What you mentioned (object control etc) or engine being basically an FPS engine that's tried to be turned into a open world/space engine?
As a non-programmer, what pisses me off is seeing even most recent videos with piss-poor movement, mid-early 2000s ship physics/rotation/janky jerky shit - it just looks like a high school machinima project with fancy graphics.
Then all the weird bugs which I think will be very interesting to read about if there is a write up of them somewhere.
Overall having played NMS since launch and seeing what can be done in similar fashion on a much, much smaller budget - it makes SC look like an absolutely poorly managed debacle and I really wish it wasn't; I had hope when it was first proposed, each year and each video my skepticism grows.
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That is it for me. What does it tell you when they brought Crytek's own people in and even they couldn't get it to fucking work.
My background isn't games but I've been across software for 20 years, it still surprises me how many relatively big / popular things are actually quite janky. I remember bundling up an Eve Online producer and telling him what I reckoned was happening in their system based on observations about playing and why it led to the massive lag spikes when heavily loaded. Nailed it. 100%. Even told them how I'd fix it, took them about 4 years to make equivalent fixes.
Some parts of game development has massively specialised skillsets, some is just just high volume or HPC system work that's recognisable to a whole bunch of other people. In CR's case, he's just a crappy Software Leader, can't manage scope, can't manage execution, didn't have a proper plan for how to do the system architecture before pivoting from a simple and 'known' one player game to bring forward the bigger, much more complex problem. There's been some genuinely interesting developments in what they've done, but it's overwhelmed by general incompetence and shady business practices. One of the most powerful and useful skills in technology is just saying no, enough.
Pisses me off, I would actually like to play my copy of the game one day. I check in every 18 months or so (crazy in itself) and generally last about 30 minutes.
What would really be interesting is if no one pledged/backed anymore money to CIG. I wonder what they'd do if their source of money was completely shut off? Not that its going to happen anytime soon apparently. Everytime they say 'sale' people cant throw money at them fast enough. lol
That won't happen though. There are too many people who are committed backers that keep buying ships, or continue to contribute via the monthly subscription plans.
The real question would be what they will do if/when the money stream slows down below sustainable levels.
Unless some third party steps in and shuts them down, they will continue to rake in money.
I frankly still want the game succeed, especially SQ42. But given it's current state, and the problems they still cannot fix, I'm not holding my breath.
Apparently the "it's in alpha" is still a valid excuse after 8 years.
Yeah, for now there are enough people sufficiently invested to keep putting more in, but realistically, how long can that continue? As long as income > expenditure they're golden, but eventually all but the biggest whales must get to a point where they become unwilling or unable to continue to put in the cash.
Again, this is where I'd love to see how many of 2.7m backers are actively funding the game, and what the distribution of pledges is amongst that population. How many subscribers do they have, for example?
Nothing about the backers at this point is remotely realistic. Its a cult and funding could very well continue at infinitum until someone hands out coolaid.
Gotta hand that to CR at this point, guy is getting rich off a product that most likely will never be completed. Any other industry would be sweating bullets at being sued into oblivion.
definitely agree. it's more than safe to assume most people opted at some point for a simple starter package and don't even bother checking in anymore within the 'game'. the ones throwing out hundreds and thousands of dollars are surely a small minority but they are fanatical. cig also targets youtube channels like that cobra tv guy and keep them hyped by giving them those same ships others coughed up all that money for. the last time i was in the 'game' there was talk in global chat regarding its development; initially a lot of speculation and criticism which quickly elicited a response from the wallet warriors. i saw all sorts of shit like 'well, you can't compare them to bioware or rockstar because they started from the ground up' to talk of salaries (the average salary is about $100k from what I've read). and here's the funny thing; people go crazy when a company like ubisoft has a game and offers tiers (gold for $80, etc) for a game that is concrete and fully developed - no doubt some cig wallet warriors are among them.
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Or that they are lying through their teeth to keep the income as high as possible.some interesting parts of that article:
- Between May 26 and June 1, 2020, Star Citizen backers pledged around $8 million. That is less than one week, meaning it was significantly more than $1 million per day (I guess a lot of rich people are backing this game)
- Overall, it shows that the Star Citizen community still has confidence in Chris Roberts' vision and that the game will release properly
IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
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I'm wondering if it hasn't just turned in to a money laundering scheme.
twonunpackmule
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Here's hoping that the VR portion is a "worked on" feature for the expansion. It'd be odd to take off a headset after landing. Though, it could be worked into the experience...
Right no way people are still spending that much money on this thing...least I hope not
N4CR
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It's nice to discuss aspects of funding but what is most revealing, is the coalface where long term users try to hide their gripes. Reporting an identical issue again will often cause a separate bug report to be filed, so that true prioritisation of bug fixing isn't possible, as the data is not very accurate unless you read and sort each one..
The most concerning aspect for me is the very long term, immersion or game-breaking bugs, especially persistence or hangar/ship/clipping/physics related. They are not fixed after quite some time.
I present below: 'the coalface'
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/.../thread/3-9-live-feedback-most-irritating-bug
The most concerning aspect for me is the very long term, immersion or game-breaking bugs, especially persistence or hangar/ship/clipping/physics related. They are not fixed after quite some time.
I present below: 'the coalface'
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/.../thread/3-9-live-feedback-most-irritating-bug
Well, this has been Chris Roberts MO since the Wing Commander days. Without anyone to oversee him, you see the development hell he's created.
Again, none of this is shocking; I called it as far back as the original kickstarter.
N4CR
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Wonder when a pissed whale will manage to obtain the information about how much CR or his wife paid themselves, plus how much they put into external businesses owned by themselves. That would be the soft spot to look, but if they're smart it's very hard to find them.
Yep, someone should really look into this. As far as I know they have registered a LOT (I think it is north of 30) of different companies that monies can move between, making tracing them extremely difficult. I'm guessing Chris, his wife and brother are on the board of every company, which I guess entitles them to be paid for their services.
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Ya think?!!
defaultluser
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Much like every aspect of the accounting of this cluster, we have to take that On Faith (because they had to be taken to court to get any financial feedback). Did he lie, just like he lies about the current status of the game, or that lie about "we have enough money to finish the game"
I'm leaning more on the side of "lied to give people the idea he has enough faith in this business tio invest his own money, while doing no such thing."
I mean, it's not like that has ever happened before, has it?
Just because you tel the old ladies you're investing your own money doesn't mean you're actually going through with it.
Also, content: yet another space game is shipping before Squadron 42!
Gotta love that Titlecard pun!
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N4CR
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Surprised they've been able to keep the 30 companies under wraps.. that surely would raise eyebrows from even the most captive fanboys.
Looks like CR had drained nearly all raised money by 2017. Just read this Forbes article on the disaster that is Chris Roberts (yeah I'm late to the SC party):
Exclusive: The Saga Of 'Star Citizen,' A Video Game That Raised $300 Million—But May Never Be Ready To Play
I like that he at least spent some money, however small, on cool little Star Citizen toys and posters, etc, for himself.
Exclusive: The Saga Of 'Star Citizen,' A Video Game That Raised $300 Million—But May Never Be Ready To Play
I like that he at least spent some money, however small, on cool little Star Citizen toys and posters, etc, for himself.
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yup i do and i remember going "where the fuck is luke?!" guess hamill knew better. did not know it was CRs baby though but its right there in the credits.
Wing Commander (1999) - IMDB
Wonder what CR plans to do for the nine year development anniversary this fall.
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Chris Roberts was a producer or otherwise involved in several movies. Besides Wing Commander (which of course makes sense), some of the bigger films he produced included the crime thriller "Lucky Number Slevin" and "Lord of War", both of which had well known actors and were overall received well by audiences and critics alike. I had no idea that he was involved in these (among smaller or lesser known films) until after Star Citizen, but his film industry connections are a significant reason why he chose such cinematic elements for the game such as performance capture, not to mention the various actors involved with Squadron 42.