Star Citizen - media blowout, Chris Robert's new game

I can tell you that anyone with money tied in through the Kickstarter campaign from many years ago can still get their money back. Any other money paid after directly to RSI you're screwed though.
 
If anything I'm little surprised throughout this some other large studio hasn't similarly tried to milk the apparent demo that enjoys throwing money at space sims. Like, there have been smaller scope indie games (that have actually released) in the same time frame and even a AAA game like Starfield (not a space sim though) yet with SC whales came out of the woodwork to spend absurd amounts on macrotransactions and hopium, like it was some uber GaaS.
 
I'm starting to think these people should go to jail for fraud. They are never going to release it.
 
The citizen”con” is hilarious. They showed off a full scale hornet model. The entire crowd and twitch were just silent and/or asking why their money was wasted on a model.

I just can’t fathom why people keep giving them money. If you stop giving them money they’ll be forced to release a game.
 
Flogger23m said:
Legally it is likely fine in most countries. Though like I said it is poor form. If something is delayed by around a decade and they aren't spending money well that is a problem. I don't think anyone cares if someone else blows another $10,000 on it. Their money their decision. But the people who put down money hoping for something to be released a number of years ago get to see them inefficiently spending money on office decor while waiting for a finished product.
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I'm split on this. I've worked in software for the better part of 2 decades now. You want to attract the right talent, and that is not easy or cheap. You either pay higher salaries, or better benefits, or some sort of compensation, perk, "cool" factor that makes employees want to join and stay. (This is just from my observation, I have been on both ends, looking for new team members, and looking to join a new team). Something like office decor is pretty cheap compared to having to pay lets say, 100 employees, $25,000 more per year. Not saying that someone would take a 25k cut to join because you have a spaceship theme in your office, but it would probably play into the decision making process. Overall, I really don't think it would cost them much more to do the themed look, vs standard office decor. In this case, I would say, a company that cares about creating a "culture" that is in tune with their overall mission is a positive for a potential employee. Some companies won't care about their employees morale or opinion of their workplace, and the people that work there know, there is high turnover, and that is also costly to the business.

One thing I have learned over the years, is not to someone's decisions. I don't know all of the circumstances that went into making that decision, we don't know what the cost was, the benefit, or the reasoning behind it etc.
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
I'm split on this. I've worked in software for the better part of 2 decades now. You want to attract the right talent, and that is not easy or cheap. You either pay higher salaries, or better benefits, or some sort of compensation, perk, "cool" factor that makes employees want to join and stay. (This is just from my observation, I have been on both ends, looking for new team members, and looking to join a new team). Something like office decor is pretty cheap compared to having to pay lets say, 100 employees, $25,000 more per year. Not saying that someone would take a 25k cut to join because you have a spaceship theme in your office, but it would probably play into the decision making process. Overall, I really don't think it would cost them much more to do the themed look, vs standard office decor. In this case, I would say, a company that cares about creating a "culture" that is in tune with their overall mission is a positive for a potential employee. Some companies won't care about their employees morale or opinion of their workplace, and the people that work there know, there is high turnover, and that is also costly to the business.

One thing I have learned over the years, is not to someone's decisions. I don't know all of the circumstances that went into making that decision, we don't know what the cost was, the benefit, or the reasoning behind it etc.
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Chris Roberts is a micro managing idiot. That’s the decision making.
 
My problem with the development, as of now, is they have enough with the one solar system to make a fun and big game. Four planets with plenty of moons and plenty of opportunities for real gaming. But the quests are buggy and flat. Go here, get this thing, bring it back. Salvage this ship. Kill this one guy. The NPCs barely work, it’s not obvious how to get into the meat of the game, it’s not clear if there is any meat to the game. It’s flight sim in space. Alright, but not what I was hoping for. I wanted to be a space merc playing both sides of the law, not an alpha tester desperately trying not to blow myself up when I load a hoverbike.
 
Image what kind of game we'd have right now if even a quarter of what Roberts has blown on Star Citizen's development had instead been poured into a more solid developer that can actually deliver... someone like Frontier Developments plc, makers of Elite Dangerous.

Hell, Bethesda spent an estimated $400M on Starfield... Think how much more they could have delivered if given almost twice that budget!

Star Citizen isn't a game that is being developed with the intent of ever releasing it - it's simply a Robert's and company cash cow that exists to fund their careers and continued lifestyle.
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
I'm split on this. I've worked in software for the better part of 2 decades now. You want to attract the right talent, and that is not easy or cheap. You either pay higher salaries, or better benefits, or some sort of compensation, perk, "cool" factor that makes employees want to join and stay. (This is just from my observation, I have been on both ends, looking for new team members, and looking to join a new team). Something like office decor is pretty cheap compared to having to pay lets say, 100 employees, $25,000 more per year. Not saying that someone would take a 25k cut to join because you have a spaceship theme in your office, but it would probably play into the decision making process. Overall, I really don't think it would cost them much more to do the themed look, vs standard office decor. In this case, I would say, a company that cares about creating a "culture" that is in tune with their overall mission is a positive for a potential employee. Some companies won't care about their employees morale or opinion of their workplace, and the people that work there know, there is high turnover, and that is also costly to the business.

One thing I have learned over the years, is not to someone's decisions. I don't know all of the circumstances that went into making that decision, we don't know what the cost was, the benefit, or the reasoning behind it etc.
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The major problem here is their source of money is their customers. Usually investors expect a return on their investment. In this situation they don't really have to deliver anything. And it seems like they are deliberately dragging things out, as long as the money flows. I think most people put money with the idea it goes towards development and a released product comes out. In this scenario there seems to be little reason to do so. Not only do they get their salaries paid, but they seemingly have more money to throw around towards extravagant decor and other things than most AAA game studios. I have to assume once the money dries up they will just drop whatever alpha/beta they have without any plans of polishing it up.

If they released it 3 years ago, they likely would have made less money overall than keeping it in development. I have to assume most people who wanted to put down money for this game already did a long time ago. So their potential sales may produce less revenue than keeping it in development. Squadron 42 may be the outlier though. But for Star Citizen, they clearly enjoy the pay to play scheme even though it was advertised as not being that way. If they release it, they would have to scrap the pay to play aspects (over priced ships, plots of land, etc.).
 
Ill just keep enjoying my "tech alpha that has no gameplay and isnt fun" while others continue to have a strangely passionate hatred for it.

🤷‍♂️
 
socK said:
30-40 hours lol

shit is as long as a full blown final fantasy game

or is that estimate with crashes included
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I don't mind if that is 30-40 hours of fun. Star Citizen itself seems to be full of boring things and seems like it will be a grind. But if Squadron 42 can cut out the BS and while keeping a good length I don't have an issue. We can see some hitching and slow downs in the reveal. Yeah it is an alpha build, but I fear this game is so old it will never run quite so well.

Though I do think it looked quite nice. That being said the little gameplay we see doesn't really seem that unique. Even the alien designs and their space ships with spikes on them (lol) seem kind of generic. It does look fun and looks like something I would absolutely play but it makes you wonder how it took 14+ years to develop that. Nothing really stands out as innovative. I'll take any modern vehicle shooter at this point but this doesn't look all that different from gameplay from the mid 2000s.

For the story hopefully it is good. I fear it will be like a lot of modern games, high profile actors, good acting/delivery, but just a bunch of word salad and dialogue without much meaning or something interesting enough to catch my attention.
 
Literally the first hour was almost all cutscene. On one hand if this was any other game developer i'd be impressed. On the other hand, i'm not impressed given this is what it is. I basically saw no real gameplay in that entire first hour of SQ42 outside of a very lackluster FPS portion. RSI does an amazing job with cinematics, but not showing any real gameplay is very telling. I don't see anything here is that is any different from the original video that was amazing 12 years ago, and we all wish came out like 8-10 years ago. It is also highly likely the entirety of SQ42 right now is just that first cutscene portion we saw. It's almost insulting how they can say the game is 'feature complete' when it's obvious they aren't anywhere near a MVP.

I still think they're intentionally doing this because they're trying to find a buyer like Microsoft to take over at this point. Additionally, i'm really scared if SQ42 does release it's basically going to be like a Battlefield 3/4 / Battlefront style game that DICE did where you basically just get some super heavily scripted action sequences with cinematics sprinkled in, and there will be no real substance. Laughably, it will likely have less real open world gameplay elements than Freelancer did.
 
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Mchart said:
Literally the first hour was almost all cutscene. On one hand if this was any other game developer i'd be impressed. On the other hand, i'm not impressed given this is what it is. I basically saw no real gameplay in that entire first hour of SQ42 outside of a very lackluster FPS portion. RSI does an amazing job with cinematics, but not showing any real gameplay is very telling. I don't see anything here is that is any different from the original video that was amazing 12 years ago, and we all wish came out like 8-10 years ago. It is also highly likely the entirety of SQ42 right now is just that first cutscene portion we saw. It's almost insulting how they can say the game is 'feature complete' when it's obvious they aren't anywhere near a MVP.

I still think they're intentionally doing this because they're trying to find a buyer like Microsoft to take over at this point. Additionally, i'm really scared if SQ42 does release it's basically going to be like a Battlefield 3/4 / Battlefront style game that DICE did where you basically just get some super heavily scripted action sequences with cinematics sprinkled in, and there will be no real substance. Laughably, it will likely have less real open world gameplay elements than Freelancer did.
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That is what I think as well. I don't think it looks bad, but it isn't a 12+ year development game either. I know this is seemingly the intro but the gameplay looked like every other vehicle shooter we've played since the 2000s, with some FPS portions. I'm also not sure why they bothered with an on foot portion for the campaign. The whole point is to play a space combat game because there are so few of them, but it seems like a large portion of the game will be an FPS. Which kind of kills the whole point of the game existing. Though I just can't get over how basic it looks. Aside from the long cinematics and actors it looks like something a AA game would put out. Which wouldn't have been bad if it was released a long time ago and didn't cost $400 million or whatever to develop (I assume the rest went to the online portion).

Though I do think the campaign is supposed to be linear, with branching parts if I recall. I much prefer that to open world stuff. Star Citizen is where the RPG part is.
 
Flogger23m said:
That is what I think as well. I don't think it looks bad, but it isn't a 12+ year development game either. I know this is seemingly the intro but the gameplay looked like every other vehicle shooter we've played since the 2000s, with some FPS portions. I'm also not sure why they bothered with an on foot portion for the campaign. The whole point is to play a space combat game because there are so few of them, but it seems like a large portion of the game will be an FPS. Which kind of kills the whole point of the game existing. Though I just can't get over how basic it looks. Aside from the long cinematics and actors it looks like something a AA game would put out. Which wouldn't have been bad if it was released a long time ago and didn't cost $400 million or whatever to develop (I assume the rest went to the online portion).

Though I do think the campaign is supposed to be linear, with branching parts if I recall. I much prefer that to open world stuff. Star Citizen is where the RPG part is.
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I'm just completely not interested in a SPACE game that basically looks like Battlefront 3 if that came out right now.

I want my SPACE game to be basically like Freelancer. That's all I want. I want a 2024 Freelancer with some procedural generation outside of core systems, and I want a tad more complexity than they could do in 2003.

Freelancer was a great blend of a cool story campaign that brought you around the game universe, but they let you off the leash enough during the campaign to explore and just completely ignore the campaign if you wanted. Of course, once you finished it was just an open world game anyways.

If SQ42 is just an on-rails DICE experience I'm pretty disappointed.
 
Ranulfo said:
It is a heck of thing that Derek Smart and BC 3000 have more legitimacy these days than Roberts and co..
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Flogger23m said:
The major problem here is their source of money is their customers. Usually investors expect a return on their investment. In this situation they don't really have to deliver anything. And it seems like they are deliberately dragging things out, as long as the money flows. I think most people put money with the idea it goes towards development and a released product comes out. In this scenario there seems to be little reason to do so. Not only do they get their salaries paid, but they seemingly have more money to throw around towards extravagant decor and other things than most AAA game studios. I have to assume once the money dries up they will just drop whatever alpha/beta they have without any plans of polishing it up.

If they released it 3 years ago, they likely would have made less money overall than keeping it in development. I have to assume most people who wanted to put down money for this game already did a long time ago. So their potential sales may produce less revenue than keeping it in development. Squadron 42 may be the outlier though. But for Star Citizen, they clearly enjoy the pay to play scheme even though it was advertised as not being that way. If they release it, they would have to scrap the pay to play aspects (over priced ships, plots of land, etc.).
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Speaking about investors, whatever happened to the money that outside investment group supposedly put into the project about 4 years ago?
Was that just not true, or have they somehow gotten a ROI on it already since you never hear from them? 🤔

If they have gotten a ROI on it without anything having been released, I'm pretty sure that would be illegal.
 
Mchart said:
I'm just completely not interested in a SPACE game that basically looks like Battlefront 3 if that came out right now.

I want my SPACE game to be basically like Freelancer. That's all I want. I want a 2024 Freelancer with some procedural generation outside of core systems, and I want a tad more complexity than they could do in 2003.

Freelancer was a great blend of a cool story campaign that brought you around the game universe, but they let you off the leash enough during the campaign to explore and just completely ignore the campaign if you wanted. Of course, once you finished it was just an open world game anyways.

If SQ42 is just an on-rails DICE experience I'm pretty disappointed.
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It will be mission based if I am not mistaken. The problem is what we see looks more like a Call of Duty campaign (extremely linear). The missions need to have a more dynamic structure, like Ace Combat 6 where a number of missions had sub operations that you would partake in. Example you could escort bombers to attack an airfield, or do air support to help advance ground forces. That would result in some differences, like having an airfield to land at to rearm partway through or having some support units. So good mission design is important.

The combat and whatnot looks like every other shooter. That isn't bad, it just makes me wonder why it took over a decade to make it.
 
Flogger23m said:
The combat and whatnot looks like every other shooter. That isn't bad, it just makes me wonder why it took over a decade to make it.
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That's what everyone is going to be wondering at this point. Why wait a decade to release something that from a technical perspective you could have done a decade ago with CryEngine anyways if you're going to keep things that linear.
 
Mchart said:
That's what everyone is going to be wondering at this point. Why wait a decade to release something that from a technical perspective you could have done a decade ago with CryEngine anyways if you're going to keep things that linear.
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It isn't the linearity, it is the combat and flight and whatnot. The turret sections look like every turret section of every video game from 1998 to today. Just point and click. There is no real weapon systems management at all. Which is fine if they're going for a regular shooter game. But it should have been out by 2016 if that was the case.
 
Flogger23m said:
It isn't the linearity, it is the combat and flight and whatnot. The turret sections look like every turret section of every video game from 1998 to today. Just point and click. There is no real weapon systems management at all. Which is fine if they're going for a regular shooter game. But it should have been out by 2016 if that was the case.
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That's why i'm saying 'Battlefront 3', and really, they didn't show anything that Battlefield 3 didn't do in 2011.
 
Mchart said:
That's what everyone is going to be wondering at this point. Why wait a decade to release something that from a technical perspective you could have done a decade ago with CryEngine anyways if you're going to keep things that linear.
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The longer this project takes, the more money Chris plus his friends and family will get. I'm hoping that someone will look into what the people on the top is actually paying themselves.
 
Eivind68 said:
The longer this project takes, the more money Chris plus his friends and family will get. I'm hoping that someone will look into what the people on the top is actually paying themselves.
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They aren't wildly illuminating, but CIG's accounts are publicly available on the UK Government website. Should note that there are 3 companies under the Cloud Imperium umbrella in the UK - Cloud Imperium Games Limited, Cloud Imperium Rights Ltd and Cloud Imperium UK Ltd (the last of which is the parent company). All three have to disclose their accounts every year, so you can have a look here: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/search?q=cloud+imperium - go to Filing History and look for "Full Accounts" - the most recent are for the year to 31 Dec 2022. By law they have to disclose how much they pay to Directors (and to the highest paid individual Director) each year - looks like for CIG that was £372k in the year to 31 Dec 22. Total paid to "Key management personnel" which includes Directors, was £880k.

The directors (for the year to 31 Dec 22) were Chris & Erin Roberts.

Accounts are here if you're interested. Not sure if these links will be geoblocked - I can access them but I'm in the UK.
 
Bawjaws said:
They aren't wildly illuminating, but CIG's accounts are publicly available on the UK Government website. Should note that there are 3 companies under the Cloud Imperium umbrella in the UK - Cloud Imperium Games Limited, Cloud Imperium Rights Ltd and Cloud Imperium UK Ltd (the last of which is the parent company). All three have to disclose their accounts every year, so you can have a look here: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/search?q=cloud+imperium - go to Filing History and look for "Full Accounts" - the most recent are for the year to 31 Dec 2022. By law they have to disclose how much they pay to Directors (and to the highest paid individual Director) each year - looks like for CIG that was £372k in the year to 31 Dec 22. Total paid to "Key management personnel" which includes Directors, was £880k.

The directors (for the year to 31 Dec 22) were Chris & Erin Roberts.

Accounts are here if you're interested. Not sure if these links will be geoblocked - I can access them but I'm in the UK.
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Okay, didn't know that personal info was actually available to the public. Could be something buried elsewhere in the complicated company structure, but that wasn't as bad as I suspected.
 
I don't think there must be any fraud ongoing.

Messy software projects are common enough.
 
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