Star Citizen: Big MoMA's House

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The Titanic: Sep 15, 2016; Unsinkable

D1E posted:

I'm pretty sure he has three more Porsches than you, and probably sleeps on six-thousand thread count sheets with a famous actress by his side.

And vacations ten times per year.

Sounds like a case study on exactly how to do things.

And this is why Star Citizen must go on. It must, because it can.

It will also have many attempts to duplicate its success.

The long con is that Star Citizen is only the first of many like this.

So long as there are Star Citizens, there are never ending escapades of failure waiting to be had.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 22:55

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# ? Jun 11, 2024 04:33

D1E: Nov 25, 2001

Ugh, no one even asked who the famous actress might be.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 22:56

Wiz: May 16, 2004; Nap Ghost

Bofast posted:

If you manage to fit a Vorlon-esque planet killer in Stellaris, I'm sure we can find it in our hearts to forgive you

I will say this, since I took charge of Stellaris I've really started to understand the allure of throwing all your resources at graphics. I go 'I want a space dragon' and the artists go 'gently caress yeah' and then I go 'and I want it to shoot death beams from its mouth' and they go 'gently caress yeahhh here's a mockup that's ten times better than what you envisioned''.

The ten year old in me is having the time of his life.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 22:56

Mirificus: Oct 29, 2004; Kings need not raise their voices to be heard

Edit: Imgur is being screwy.

Mirificus fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Sep 23, 2016

# ? Sep 23, 2016 22:56

Drunk Theory: Aug 20, 2016; Oven Wrangler

Wiz posted:

I will say this, since I took charge of Stellaris I've really started to understand the allure of throwing all your resources at graphics. I go 'I want a space dragon' and the artists go 'gently caress yeah' and then I go 'and I want it to shoot death beams from its mouth' and they go 'gently caress yeahhh here's a mockup that's ten times better than what you envisioned''.

The ten year old in me is having the time of his life.

I can see the appeal. Sucks to have to go talk to the programmers and start getting into what is technically feasible.

Edit: Oh hey, new thread title. Thanks Derek, this one is better.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 22:57

Winter Stormer: Oct 17, 2012

hey this Kotaku article thing is cool and good ~~but so is the new thread title~~
edit: STRIKE THAT, THREAD TITLE CHANGED AGAIN

Winter Stormer fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Sep 23, 2016

# ? Sep 23, 2016 22:57

A Neurotic Jew: Feb 17, 2012; by exmarx

http://imperialnews.network/2016/09/drilling-to-the-heart-of-kotaku/

quote:

Greetings fellow Citizens! Today I will discuss my thoughts on today�s Kotaku article and Star Citizen development as a whole.

First off I would like to take a moment to be clear about something. I am a fan of Star Citizen and I believe in the project. You might think that is obvious but it�s also relevant.

Today, September 23rd, Kotaku published an article titled, �Inside the Troubled Development of Star Citizen�.

First off I would like to express some irritation with Kotaku�s continued insistence on clickbait titles. A much better, more accurate title would have been �Star Citizen: Inside the Development of the World�s Most Ambitious Game� or simply �A View Inside the Development of Star Citizen�.

Regardless, I am much more interested in discussing the content of the article.

The Kotaku article is long, well researched, and balanced. It certainly has a skeptical spin but not in a way that was unfair. They had plenty of comments from Chris Roberts, Erin Roberts, Tony Zurovec, Paul Jones, and others.

When you drill down through the article you find some key, condensed, conclusions that can be drawn:

CIG took time to become properly formed as a global group of well-operating studios since the company had to be built from scratch.

CryEngine has taken a lot of work to take it from FPS engine to an engine that can actually work for Star Citizen.

Chris Roberts is a demanding leader who expects the best from the people working with him.

CIG has assembled an incredibly talented and driven group of developers.

Star Citizen�s development has been full of fits and starts but appears to be going consistently in the right direction now.

Building Star Citizen is hard and things haven�t always gone to plan.

Some comments I would like to make about the article�s content:

I give Kotaku a lot of credit for taking what could have been a biased article and balancing it with quotes from the leadership at CIG and current CIG employees.

Using former employees as sources leads to getting a very specific type of answer. Those employees are no longer working for the company and are very likely to be negative on it, often in unfair or undeserved ways, because of the circumstances of their departure.

A lot of effort is expended in the Kotaku article to go through things that are pretty well understood by the majority of the Star Citizen community:

CryEngine is not ideal but no other suitable engine existed at the time Star Citizen was born.

Global production and the formation of a new gaming studio are difficult things that have taken time to get into a good state.

Star Citizen is not other games. Elite: Dangerous is mentioned as a success in the article and it is suggested that Star Citizen should have followed its development route.

Elite: Dangerous has been criticized by its player base and some in the gaming media for its lack of content and gameplay. I believe that this deficiency resulted from the development process that Kotaku praises.

Kotaku also praised Frontier for getting a game out and for patching and improving it as time went on. However, it should be noted that the base game for Elite was expensive, as were the betas, and the ongoing expansions are each expensive as well. Often this patching and expansion is to add features that the game should have had in the beginning, and many players are upset that they are being charged an exorbitant cost to get what they should have had in the beginning.

Star Citizen is constantly criticized for its business model but at the heart of it, it�s still just $45 USD for the game.
A lot of criticism is leveled at CIG in the article for trying to build a singleplayer game, a massive online universe, and operate a live product demoing the project all at once.

The fact is that Star Citizen couldn�t be built any other way. There are suggestions in the article that the singleplayer part should have been built first, released, and then used to build the online universe. This would have created a game that was built very specifically and narrowly for singleplayer and would have led to its own set of massive headaches trying to fix everything that was specifically built to work in singleplayer but would never work in multiplayer, and would likely have limited the long term scope of the online universe.

The other main topic being the live product. Yes, it is difficult having a live product and full scale development simultaneously. However, that $124 million doesn�t exist without it. This is a massive crowdfunded project but Kotaku seems to gloss over this. The money, this huge amount of money that no publisher would ever have given for this project, is contingent on a community that needs to be kept in the loop � just like a publisher would be. The benefits to this being a constant income that supports development without needing to take on significant debt, a large group of fans who will thoroughly play test for you allowing your QA resources to go further, a group of people who act somewhat as a publisher but also actually understand what you are trying to do and want to help.

A lot of criticism is leveled at Chris Roberts in this article for being overbearing, difficult to work with, and stubborn. Remember when I mentioned the issues with using former employees as sources?

My view of Chris Roberts is that of a visionary. Not a saint. He is an incredibly talented game developer and director with a clear and unwavering vision of the universe he wants to create. His insistence on high quality, pushing the boundaries, and getting the most from people has led to groups of people, such as former employees, who view him as a tyrant.

I would much prefer someone who pushes people to do their best work, and often to try to accomplish things no one else has, over someone who gets along well with everyone but also accepts a lower standard of work.

This is addressed in the article but it needs to be reiterated: Star Citizen is a project being done not because it is easy but because it is hard. Star Citizen is attempting to do things other games have never done, or never all in the same game. This is difficult, it causes tension and stress among the people doing the work. It leads to a long process of weeding out those people who can not or will not strive to consistently raise the bar for the quality of their work, or will not work with others effectively.

As an aside, I have noticed a lot of parallels between Chris Roberts and Elon Musk.

For the uninitiated, Elon Musk is the founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX. He is often criticized by those in the industries his companies serve (automobiles and rockets) for trying to do things in ways that are new/foreign or difficult. His companies tend to have an atmosphere of incredibly talented people working incredibly hard to do amazing things that no one else has done. There are also lots of former employees who complain that Tesla or SpaceX are too high pressure, too demanding. Seem familiar?

I can already hear people telling me, �But SpaceX and Tesla have actually done things! They have launched rockets, landed rockets, and produced incredible electric cars.� SpaceX formed in 2002 and Tesla in 2003. Both companies nearly collapsed entirely in the interim.

Elon Musk is involved in basically every design and engineering decision for Tesla�s vehicles and SpaceX�s rockets and spacecraft. Again, seem familiar?
Amazing things are hard and take time.

I would like to say, to sort of cap off my ramblings, that I am 100% confident that Star Citizen is possible to build. Will it be easy? Will it be done quickly? Will things always go smoothly? No, no, and no.

What Star Citizen promises to be, if it even comes somewhat close to its goals, is a universe whose like has never before been seen in gaming. The really cool thing is that we get to watch it happen.

A Neurotic Jew fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Sep 23, 2016

# ? Sep 23, 2016 22:58

Wiz: May 16, 2004; Nap Ghost

Drunk Theory posted:

I can see the appeal. Sucks to have to go talk to the programmers and start getting into what is technically feasible.

That's such small-minded thinking. Who needs their opinion anyway?

# ? Sep 23, 2016 22:58

D1E: Nov 25, 2001

Drunk Theory posted:

I can see the appeal. Sucks to have to go talk to the programmers and start getting into what is technically feasible.

Why not just target 10-15 fps with insane fidelity instead?

That's what all the cool video game designers are doing nowadays.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 22:58

Beer4TheBeerGod: Aug 23, 2004; Exciting Lemon

Wiz posted:

I will say this, since I took charge of Stellaris I've really started to understand the allure of throwing all your resources at graphics. I go 'I want a space dragon' and the artists go 'gently caress yeah' and then I go 'and I want it to shoot death beams from its mouth' and they go 'gently caress yeahhh here's a mockup that's ten times better than what you envisioned''.

The ten year old in me is having the time of his life.

The problem with Star Citizen is that Chris never reaches the "better than you envisioned" state because he is pathologically incapable of seeing other people's work as anything but a translation of what he wants.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 22:58

big nipples big life: May 12, 2014

D1E posted:

I'm pretty sure he has three more Porsches than you, and probably sleeps on six-thousand thread count sheets with a famous actress by his side.

Did anyone tell Sandi?

# ? Sep 23, 2016 22:59

a whole buncha crows: May 8, 2003; WHEN WE DON'T KNOW WHO TO HATE, WE HATE OURSELVES.-SA USER NATION (AKA ME!)

quote:

This is addressed in the article but it needs to be reiterated: Star Citizen is a project being done not because it is easy but because it is hard. Star Citizen is attempting to do things other games have never done, or never all in the same game. This is difficult, it causes tension and stress among the people doing the work. It leads to a long process of weeding out those people who can not or will not strive to consistently raise the bar for the quality of their work, or will not work with others effectively.
As an aside, I have noticed a lot of parallels between Chris Roberts and Elon Musk.

For the uninitiated, Elon Musk is the founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX. He is often criticized by those in the industries his companies serve (automobiles and rockets) for trying to do things in ways that are new/foreign or difficult. His companies tend to have an atmosphere of incredibly talented people working incredibly hard to do amazing things that no one else has done. There are also lots of former employees who complain that Tesla or SpaceX are too high pressure, too demanding. Seem familiar?

I can already hear people telling me, �But SpaceX and Tesla have actually done things! They have launched rockets, landed rockets, and produced incredible electric cars.� SpaceX formed in 2002 and Tesla in 2003. Both companies nearly collapsed entirely in the interim.

Elon Musk is involved in basically every design and engineering decision for Tesla�s vehicles and SpaceX�s rockets and spacecraft. Again, seem familiar?

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:00

a whole buncha crows: May 8, 2003; WHEN WE DON'T KNOW WHO TO HATE, WE HATE OURSELVES.-SA USER NATION (AKA ME!)

at the top you can see the executive ejector seat

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:01

Drunk Theory: Aug 20, 2016; Oven Wrangler

A Neurotic Jew posted:

http://imperialnews.network/2016/09/drilling-to-the-heart-of-kotaku/

sorla78 posted:

- INN is going to have a long rear end livestream and is to conclude with dead eyes "we told you everything is awesome - this is fine really - it's all going to be different now".

Well that certainly didn't take loving long. You were a bit off, but I'm sure the livestream is coming.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:02

D1E: Nov 25, 2001

FYI Chris Roberts is equivalent to Elon Musk.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:03

Beer4TheBeerGod: Aug 23, 2004; Exciting Lemon

I hope those guys are well paid.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:04

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

D1E posted:

Don't ever tell Derek what is or is not a good idea.

It just reinforces his belief that he should do it.

why give the game away? :negative:

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:06

D1E: Nov 25, 2001

Derek stop being mean to Chris Roberts.

Or when he develops the colony ship to Mars he won't let you onboard.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:06

Tokyo Sexwale: Jul 30, 2003

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

The problem with Star Citizen is that Chris never reaches the "better than you envisioned" state because he is pathologically incapable of seeing other people's work as anything but a translation of what he wants.

Yeah to him his vision is perfect and it's reality that fails to reach the same heights.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:06

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

tuo posted:

Derek, we totally let you loving change the thread title!

Yeah, I collect suggestions, then change the thread title when I remember

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:07

spacetoaster: Feb 10, 2014

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:07

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

GarudaPrime posted:

The best part of the 38 Studios fiasco, is that nobody really expected a retired baseball player and a middle tier scifi/fantasy author to successfully create the next world of warcraft.

However they did manage to create a pretty decent middle of the road action RPG before burning through 100 million taxpayer dollars.

Compare to Croberts and crew who everyone expects to be the messiah of space game mmo's, who will most likely only manage to squirt out a bug ridden 2-3 mission prequel game by the time he burns through 150 million backer dollars (maybe 200 by the time it releases).

I guess my point is Croberts has made Curt Schilling look good by comparison in the video game developer pantheon.

They didn't created it. The RPG was created by Gas Powered Games.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:08

Nancy: Nov 23, 2005; Young Orc

There's something I don't understand.

Why does CIG need a global set of studios with 300+ employees anyways? People talk about how SC has had it tough cause it takes time to establish the studios, company, and staff, but was that really necessary or a good use of CIG's time and resources? It sounds like Erin's Foundry 42 staff makes the lion's share of the work product anyways and that's just 30 or 40 dudes.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:09

A Neurotic Jew: Feb 17, 2012; by exmarx

derek pls rename thread "Star Citizen: Inside the Development of the World�s Most Ambitious Game"

edit; ok this is good too

A Neurotic Jew fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Sep 23, 2016

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:09

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

I think the best part is that there are absolutely CIG employees who are reading that article and just now finding out about something.

You have no idea. I was on a call with one of them today.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:11

Mirificus: Oct 29, 2004; Kings need not raise their voices to be heard

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:11

a whole buncha crows: May 8, 2003; WHEN WE DON'T KNOW WHO TO HATE, WE HATE OURSELVES.-SA USER NATION (AKA ME!)

Charles Get-Out posted:

There's something I don't understand.

Why does CIG need a global set of studios with 300+ employees anyways? People talk about how SC has had it tough cause it takes time to establish the studios, company, and staff, but was that really necessary or a good use of CIG's time and resources? It sounds like Erin's Foundry 42 staff does the lion's share of the work anyways and that's just 30 or 40 dudes.

chris had a simple idea to bring his game back in austin, sandi needed to be in hollywood and then he needed his brothers help (uk) and cryteks help (ger)

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:11

Wiz: May 16, 2004; Nap Ghost

Charles Get-Out posted:

There's something I don't understand.

Why does CIG need a global set of studios with 300+ employees anyways? People talk about how SC has had it tough cause it takes time to establish the studios, company, and staff, but was that really necessary or a good use of CIG's time and resources? It sounds like Erin's Foundry 42 staff makes the lion's share of the work product anyways and that's just 30 or 40 dudes.

This is another common thing that happens to studios that unexpectedly end up with a ton of money: explosive growth, followed by organizatorial problems, followed by further growth to try and solve those problems. The fact that manpower does not scale linearly is not a commonly understood fact.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:12

Complaint Compilation: Apr 8, 2016

Crobblet posted:

�That is someone who has their preconceived notions and will settle for something that isn't good enough," he explained. "With the character stuff: I said we need to do it. And the inventory� it happens right now in [version] 2.4. You can put jackets and trousers on, and caps. There's layering with the armour. So everything that that person told you that couldn't happen, it's all in the game now and it's all at the quality [I asked for].

And how does it run?

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:12

Cao Ni Ma: May 25, 2010

In large scale published games, there isn't a single person that you can put the blame squarely on for the failure of a game. Thats usually what happens in small scale dev teams. If SC falls apart, it will be exclusively his fault.

Like Matsuno from FFT, VS and FFXII. The dude was used to small scale teams, and he liken the development of small scale games to a dictatorship. You had way more control as an individual director in these cases. When he was working on FFXII he said that everything had to go through a consensus. Executives would control a lot of the decisions that would be implemented in the game, delegation of authority happened far more frequently. In the end he couldn't deal with it and left some point late in the production.

Chris runs a large team like he would a small one and its horrible.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:14

a whole buncha crows: May 8, 2003; WHEN WE DON'T KNOW WHO TO HATE, WE HATE OURSELVES.-SA USER NATION (AKA ME!)

i want a funny title

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:14

D1E: Nov 25, 2001

Charles Get-Out posted:

There's something I don't understand.

Why does CIG need a global set of studios with 300+ employees anyways? People talk about how SC has had it tough cause it takes time to establish the studios, company, and staff, but was that really necessary or a good use of CIG's time and resources? It sounds like Erin's Foundry 42 staff makes the lion's share of the work product anyways and that's just 30 or 40 dudes.

OK well first of all they get a huge benefit from having studios around the world: instead of having 325 employees in one location working for eight hours, they have employees in various facilities working for eight hours in each respective time zone. This means their employees are actually working 24 hours a day, and are thus four times more productive.

Furthermore

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:15

A Neurotic Jew: Feb 17, 2012; by exmarx

nooo derek the lethality one is better.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:15

Complaint Compilation: Apr 8, 2016

Nation posted:

i want a funny title

What I say goes, and if it doesn't work it's everyone elses fault.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:15

Blue On Blue: Nov 14, 2012

The article is great , only citizens can turn most of it into positives

He beats us with sticks but only because he wants the best out of us !

gently caress even the military realized that is a horrible way to train and use people

Crobbers is worse than the military

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:18

Nancy: Nov 23, 2005; Young Orc

Nation posted:

chris had a simple idea to bring his game back in austin, sandi needed to be in hollywood and then he needed his brothers help (uk) and cryteks help (ger)

Wiz posted:

This is another common thing that happens to studios that unexpectedly end up with a ton of money: explosive growth, followed by organizatorial problems, followed by further growth to try and solve those problems. The fact that manpower does not scale linearly is not a commonly understood fact.

It's just hard for me to grasp the reasoning I guess. And the article and facts about Foundry 42 make it seem like he pretty much wasted a bunch of fundi-

D1E posted:

OK well first of all they get a huge benefit from having studios around the world: instead of having 325 employees in one location working for eight hours, they have employees in various facilities working for eight hours in each respective time zone. This means their employees are actually working 24 hours a day, and are thus four times more productive.

Furthermore

Oh wait nevermind it's 4-day timecube i get it now

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:18

sorla78: Oct 11, 2012; EAT THE PAIN AWAY!

Nation posted:

It's so cute how INN seems to feel they speak with the authority of a realistic journalistic medium.

quote:

It leads to a long process of weeding out those people who can not or will not strive to consistently raise the bar for the quality of their work, or will not work with others effectively.
As an aside, I have noticed a lot of parallels between Chris Roberts and Elon Musk.

- It just boggles my mind how people can stand behind such a statement. it's so convenient to forget CIGs constant state of perma-crunch due to roberts modus operandi to sell emotions on his conventions. hard to assume game developers happen to be people coming with the caveats of social life. but INN is right - it must be their skills or will that is to blame to not raise along the bar. it's never the head that is at fault.
- Also putting Roberts (48y) name next to Musk (45y), Jobs (56y) or Bezos (52y)... kinda shows, while roberts is still struggling to get noticed outside of the realm of game journalism and hasn't much to show except for past games - the latters were already years in for shaping history with their corporations.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:18

D1E: Nov 25, 2001

Oh god Derek can we get FactsAreUseless or some other real mod to rename the thread again?

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:18

Beer4TheBeerGod: Aug 23, 2004; Exciting Lemon

Chris Roberts blocked me on Twitter.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:20

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# ? Jun 11, 2024 04:33

Nancy: Nov 23, 2005; Young Orc

sorla78 posted:

- It just boggles my mind how people can stand behind such a statement. it's so convenient to forget CIGs constant state of perma-crunch due to roberts modus operandi to sell emotions on his conventions. hard to assume game developers happen to be people coming with the caveats of social life. but INN is right - it must be their skills or will that is to blame to not raise along the bar. it's never the head that is at fault.

Hey now wait a second Roberts doesn't have any of his employees work crunch he said so himself in the article. He just houses them on site generously and refuses to feed them if they don't turn in those new hat stitching specs on time like the cowards and traitors to his vision that they are.

# ? Sep 23, 2016 23:21

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