aleksendr posted:

Beer can be the straight man and you can be the mischevious, roguish one. All we need now is a foil and a love interest !

peter gabriel posted:

In the latest Staff Vs Backers stream of Star Marine the staff are sat watching a screen that says 'waiting for players' - The players never come.
A soft applause erupts and the screen fades to black.

Colostomy Bag posted:

lmao, cut her down to around 22 minutes.

Mirificus posted:

Thoatse posted:

Maybe we can build a fire, sing a couple of songs, huh?


https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/5t0m5g/evidently_a_generic_lesson_in_startup_companies/

peter gabriel posted:

In the latest Staff Vs Backers stream of Star Marine the staff are sat watching a screen that says 'waiting for players' - The players never come.
A soft applause erupts and the screen fades to black.

Samizdata posted:

I've got dibs on the derpy comedic pratfall type! (Except please don't make me fall down. That hurts.)

Tijuana Bibliophile posted:

Startup companies are risky ventures. Mostly because they start with nothing but an idea. They have no supporting infrastructure at all. Most startups can have great ideas - but without a management team that investors believe in it will find startup capital very scarce and hard to come by. Banks and angel investors won't be interested unless they believe in the management team. In fact, 90% of startup companies fail. It's why investing in them is considered very high risk. But that is just the raw numbers - if you have a good sound idea with a solid management team behind it those odds can go significantly down. Star Citizen started out with CR in charge and a desire to prove to investors his idea could be profitable. He used the fundraising campaign as a vehicle to prove his product had a market. But it took an odd turn - where the fundraising actually became the source of startup capital instead of the lever to get more traditional sources of capital.

That is how SC got where it is in terms of startup capital for the company. It by no means implies they do not have actual stockholders and investors who own the company - or sources of capital they can tap if they need it. They just don't really need too much of it now from traditional sources. Especially with the ability to generate alternate streams of revenue other than pure game sales (technology, use of their name on other products, etc.). Note I'm staying completely out of the "gamers" viewpoint of the game and sticking to the "business" side of things.

Now when a startup company has obtained capital it has to start building it's infrastructures. This is office space - accounting - legal - marketing and sales - human resources - development - and of course support. These all usually go through a lot of gyrations and morphing as humans - make mistakes - they learn - and they adapt - or the company dies. Part of any startup companies painful first few years of growth. Now once the infrastructure described above is actually working and in place - the company can start really becoming productive. This usually takes about 3 years to get to a stable product generation stage past the growing pains. At this point - depending on the complexity of the product - it can take 2-4 years to get it out the door. Thus most startup companies take 5-7 years to become profitable or they have suffered some bad planning or unforeseen setbacks that usually kill the company.

In our case here "backers" are not investors in the traditional sense - where they own shares in the company. They own rights to the use of the game and certain assets access within it - but nothing more. If the company goes belly up and sold to repay investors what remains - they will not be first in line for payback. The company would probably go bankrupt and even the European odd laws could not get any money back for backers. I only note this as an example of how backers are not shareholders - which seems a common misconception for some odd reason.

That is how generic startup companies life cycles usually go. I've never expected anything different from Star Citizen. Starting in 2012-13 (debatable when they ended funding and started infrastructure build up) I've expected product delivery 2017-2019, regardless of community expectations or the typical startup companies fits, starts, and restarts and the confusion that can entail.

In any case, I see a lot of generic statements that come out of CIG that have reflected the usual confusion of a startup growing stage gradually taper off in the last year. But I still see backers taking these statements and messaging them to conform to their desires and wishes of what they "want" and try to convince themselves something has been said that has not been said. Or that they take the normal chaos periods of a startups growth and apply some perfect ideological non-existent business theology where companies make no mistakes while they go through the fits and starts of the growth period. Where the company finds things they thought could work have to be tossed out and started again.

Startups have to adapt or die. Star Citizen seems well into the last few years of the startup life cycle where the infrastructure is in place and the product is actually fully being worked on. I see nothing odd in this.

Though I do marvel at the life cycle of the backers seemingly to be stuck in "gimme it now you lying bastards" mode. Lying - and finding out something didn't work and you have to adapt - two different things.

While there is a never ending supply of backers picking up torches and pitchforks to charge the CIG castle claiming Dr. RobertStein has created some kind of monster, I shall not be joining you till after 2019. Which I have confidence will not be necessary

Mirificus posted:

serious norman posted:

Tane

DapperDon posted:

Player 2 has entered the game.

Thirsty Dog posted:

You're really hard to distinguish from other redditors to be honest

DapperDon posted:

Your words wound me good sir.

Raskolnikov posted:

DapperDon posted:

Your words wound me goon sir.

Hobold posted:

Stare too long into the abyss abcess.

Truga posted:

This reminded me of you guys. Stay safe Amerigoons.

Truga posted:

If you haven't already, check out the trump thread in c-spam, it owns.

starkebn posted:

What happened to Money? Haven't seen his beautiful smile for a while.

Thankfully I noticed we haven't heard from the FYAD crew recently either.

DapperDon posted:

Where is that??

starkebn posted:

What happened to Money? Haven't seen his beautiful smile for a while.

Thankfully I noticed we haven't heard from the FYAD crew recently either.