Beet Wagon posted:

In case you're focused on his weird use of 'etiology' which is sort of correct but not nearly as correct as 'etymology' would be, please also note that the reason that dude was making fun of him in the first place was probably because he wrote "panzerkampfwagon" instead of the correct "panzerkampfwagen" so it's like a seven-layer-dip of self-owning.

trucutru posted:

And remember that all that was because he mistook an almost caricature-perfect French accent with a Germanic one, of all things.

Sarsapariller posted:

So that reclaimer ship is playable, for some people I guess. Walkthrough/verbal fellation video here. Kind of looks like they've hacked it into the arena commander map instead of loading it in the main game. Commentary below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeyimocPIOs

@0:44- So about half of the ship is the landing gear. Deploying it immediately breaks the particle effects on the engines.

@1:27- Oh they've started adding "Auto-turrets" since it became apparent that nobody will ever crew turrets on their ships. I wonder if they've actually got the turrets working? My money is on no.

@4:00- Massive salvage arm! Doesn't work. But it's gonna be really cool! <Proceeds to imagine how cool it will be>

@5:00- Tractor beam operator seats! Don't work. <Proceeds to imagine how they will work>

@6:00- Scanning station! Remote Turrets! Don't do anything. <Talks about what these might be for>. An engineering station! Doesn't do anything. But look at all those particle effects in the grinder!

--I'm beginning to detect a theme here. --

@7:15- Escape pods, that don't work

@8:35- Drooling over detailed wires in the elevator shaft. I honestly do not understand how any of these sperglords can give a poo poo about the fidelitous loose wires when nothing on the ship works. He shows off the turret access ladder- "Unfortunately I can't go in it right now"

@9:30- Gravity generator, I guess this makes the goo.

@9:50- "This is the drone room. Now they don't have the drones in here yet..." OH YOU DON'T SAY. Look, an operator seat for a thing that isn't in the game! Thrilling.

Anyway this goes on for 30 minutes but I'm bored now. gently caress you, Star Citizen.

iospace posted:

Here's my "hindsight is 20/20 take". Roberts should have made SQ42 and SQ42 ONLY, and then depending on that, pitched Star Citizen. CryEngine would be good for a "YOU NEED TO SPEND 9001 DOLLARS ON A COMPUTER TO PLAY THIS GAME, PLEB" game, and if he could prove that yes, he could make a game out of it, I'm sure Crytek would be more than willing to let him get another license for a 2nd game at a discount.

CrazyTolradi posted:

The realistic scenario would be they actually charge him more for a second license because CIG, swimming in money, could afford it. Why get pennies when you can get dollars?

iospace posted:

When you're broke as gently caress and need a second quick hit of cash, you take what you can get.

Or what lead to the first GLA and the lawsuit

doingitwrong posted:

When they say certain new ships are flyable in game, what does that mean?

iospace posted:

The true believers are screaming that IT'S ONLY AN ALPHA, and yes, they're right. Alphas are more or less the first "playable" builds, and a fuckload of bugs are to be expected.

But if you look at the alpha of any other AAA game, it's a lot smoother and a lot more playable than what SC is right now.

G0RF posted:

He is the chief emitter of this distorted view, though, due to his amoral character and his myopic biases towards Assets against Mechanics. He’s pathologically addicted to the game loop of selling high poly ultra-fidelity in game assets and robbing his own artists of their design agency by micromanaging even the most trivial details to the Nth degree then telling himself “I am the Master and by my touch I have elevated what began as mundane object into priceless art.”

It’s not that he believes his sycophants, its that he demands conformity to his narcissism and micromanagement impulse and organizational survival demands obedience. It drove guys like Jennison out, it’s driven lots of talent out. The talent that remains like Paul Jones or Dearsley or whoever is willing to indulge this fiction of Chris’s transcendent artistry but it is a fiction. The same is no less true of Sandi, who is even less competent — a figure of the highest symbolic power yet utterly inessential to her high station. So inessential that this VP of Marketing for a $180 million dollar gaming studio doesn’t even know basic details of the demonstrations her husband is presenting at their biggest externally-facing marketing event of the year! If only prickly Pete Hines had it so easy!

Utterly inessential, yet it goes without saying inside CIG that anyone in the organization who might cross this personified hood ornament is out the door. Sycophancy is demanded by Chris and Sandi both and the history of the entire project is a testament to just how malformed organizational processes become under the nepotistic rule of unhinged narcissism.

The fact that lower ego artists yield to Chris’s vanity and engage in a mutually agreed upon act of collusive fiction that in turn justifies the incredible wastes of dev time and backer money is one example of how the pathology of Chris is systemic inside Cloud Imperium Games. It is now and has always been one of the biggest taxes backers pay and just as “The Road To CitizenCon” glamorized one set of pathologies Chris should be profoundly ashamed of, so too “The Origin of Spaceships” glamorized another set. They are proud of that which they should apologize for because it has been demanded of them for so long that the dysfunction has been normalized.


If 2017 has kept a steadyish pace month to month I’d have believed the Tracker reflected natural ongoing demand, even if it was difficult to believe. But we saw a turnaround miracle in the span of the last 5 weeks that really does suggest manipulation even while an unplayable 3.0 was dumped at the 11th hour. While it’s possible the most far gone of the whales might account for it the sums are such that it’s far easier for me to imagine yet another pathology — an invisible one — very rooted in Chris Roberts precedent (misallocating development money for film FX in the good old days). It would be perfectly in keeping with organizational deviance already made visible elsewhere through close scrutiny.

I can only assume the scoffing from some of the silent observers always in our company that we might posit such a thing. Madness.

There is infernal, nearly invisible machinery guiding logic and action within Cloud Imperium Games in accordance with the indomitable will of dishonest, vain people. The backers only rarely see it not because it can not be seen but because they do not wish to see it — for once it is fully stared at in all its ghastliness, it cannot be unseen. So too the metronomically grinding gears of this machine, a crunching easily mistaken for some ambient hum of room noise, are made distinct from it with cautious ears and they can not be unheard once discerned.

Do you silent lurkers want to see it? As you sit there shaking your heads, closing your minds and telling yourself it’s not really true, it’s too harsh a view. We can show it to you, but do you really want to see it? Hear it?

If you do, watch this. Closely.

Watch a man laugh to tell a brazen lie he does not believe and ask his brother to confirm it for an audience of thousands. Watch the reflection of his wife’s head as she turns in surprise to hear that request for confirmation go out to the brother, and hear their chuckling as that confirmation is given. See the faces of a team of developers who mostly know it can’t be so — they are half a year from even shooting the motion capture and God knows they haven’t got their AI working nor their missions fully built and there are assets required that haven’t yet been begun and will not for the entire year ahead.

See the discomfort of some, the knowing smiles of others? And hear it conclude as Ben Lesnick of all people blurts out “No more dates!”

Why, you might wonder, did he do so after a room full of people jointly smiled their agreement with the Boss’s ambitious claim for an audience of thousands in the very season of goodwill towards men?

Because he knew it wasn’t so. They all knew. They knew it was wrong and they nodded along anyone because it was asked of them and to defy it would be subversion. And Lesnick knew it was wrong, he knew it wasn’t so, and while he could not defy it he could at least plead for it not to be repeated.

This was but a glimpse of the machinery and it is hidden everywhere in plain view should you wish to see it. It is not hatred or trolling to call it what it is for it is monstrous. It is wrong and you know it’s wrong and to root for that which you know is wrong to succeed for the sake of the game you desperately wish to play is to become yet another gear in a hellish machine yourself. So lurk silently if you must but don’t delude yourself that this is all some chattering sophistry from losers who can not see the Grand Design. We see it better than you think, only we call it what it is, and if you can’t you’re a fool and if you won’t you’re a liar.

AbstractNapper posted:

The true believers alternate between "it's only a (pre-)alpha" and "even in it's pre-alpha state the game is better than most AAA PC titles". Don't point it out to them though because they will probably transform to bats and fly into some cave to live out the rest of their years.

CIG is doing things backwards. This is not because they thought that noone tried the top-down approach, starting from great graphics and detailed models and then working out the mechanics of performance, networking and general gameplay. It is because there was no plan in place for the actual development. Just for the selling of the idea/ image of one.

Now traditionally an alpha version of a software is supposed to be some implementation that can work as a proof of concept even if it's riddled with bugs (and it's going to be). It doesn't have to be playable, not consistently anyway, but it usually has to be convincing that some kind of tech is in-place to build upon and expand.

Arguably you can say that this is compatible with the pre-alpha crap that CIG dumps out (although it's really not how you typically work on alphas). Of course none of the believers really gets into why this pre-alpha state is maintained for 5 years (or more). Because that makes the game untouchable to any critics and helps the shitizens keep it together and not fall into depression or meltdowns.

Mirificus posted:

Dementropy posted:

Virtual Captain posted:

My favorite brine pool video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZYJAmAmFPw&t=82s

Toops posted:

They don't have a playable alpha, Cymelion. They have an unplayable tech demo. Bro, I love your passion, but you clearly are passionate for passion's sake. Reality is, this is a tech-demo. Trust me, it's a tech-demo, I've been paid real dollars to make these. CIG still, after all these years and millions, don't even know if they can technologically achieve a proof-of-concept. They haven't proven their concept. Because, and seriously, ask yourself this and ponder it objectively: What is their concept?

tuo posted:

Their concepts are so good, they sell them for millions! When's the next concept sale?

Scruffpuff posted:

I've read all your effortposts recently and agree with the underlying source: something about 2018 feels different, but it's difficult to determine exactly what and why. Something about the tone of things.

I have my own pet theory as to what's happened in CIG, I'll outline it here in my own inferior effortpost.

Preface: Star Citizen was never going to succeed as envisioned. I think everyone who knows Chris Roberts and his history knows why. It has nothing to do with the technical aspects of the project, The Blog™, his fixation with Hollywood, etc. It has everything to do with the fundamentals of his personality: the same hubris combined with ineptitude and inability to shoulder blame which underpinned the Freelancer saga was simply going to play out again with Star Citizen. It was essentially Freelancer 2.0, and that's what the backers were originally going to get. It was moving towards that point in 2014. It would fall short of expectations, sure, but there was something there to build.

What happened? I think we saw two major signs of decay hit a few years ago - the elevation of Ben Lesnick as community manager, and the sudden rise of Sandi Gardiner as the unofficial face of the project. We know enough about Ben, who he is, what he is, and what he's done. His culpability in creating and sustaining one of the most toxic and hateful communities the internet has ever seen, if not the most, is documented more than thoroughly here and elsewhere, and there's no need to belabor it here. That takes care of the community's decay into a cult.

The other half of the problem is "Boss's Wife Syndrome." The older backers will remember the early days - Eric Peterson and others, with the Wingman's Hangar videos, friendly and cool community discourse - you got a sense of excitement and anticipation. Then, starting sometime in 2014, this strange, emaciated woman started grinning maniacally into the camera, speaking woodenly and emotionlessly about a product she neither cared about nor understood. Was this a shallow ploy to get to plug the game to their lonely nerd constituency? That wasn't really consistent with their behavior up to that point. What gives?

My theory hinges on this point. Sandi smelled her opportunity: this was it - the money was real, the long shot that was Star Citizen paid off in spades. The time to strike was now - if she was going to be a famous "actress" then the company focus needed to change immediately. She remarried Chris but it was all to be a "secret" until the day it wasn't. All cameras would now point to her at every available opportunity. It was time to bring in the A-List Hollywood actors - gently caress the game development, it was time for motion capture and selfies with Gary Oldman and Gillian Anderson - a demand Chris was all too eager to acquiesce to given his propensity to also miscast himself as a director. Disdain and abuse of the staff became all the rage. Strange internet popularity contests and the incessant "Anna-Boo Huxley" emotional abuse and out-of-place plugs for Star Citizen were all over the internet. Goons, butt-hurt snowflakes, high-maintenance, etc. "Check out all of us working for realsies" after-hours tweets. All the signs of the inept but forceful company manipulation by the best marketer ever since she was a very small girl.

Now the most obvious retort for this theory is the "Sandi is one person, and simply inept anyway: she has nothing to do with game development, and couldn't possibly have hurt the company that much. You're just demonizing her." In other words:



"I think we can handle one little girl."


In my experience people fall into one of two camps on this subject. Those who believe a non-entity like Sandi couldn't possibly harm a $180 million company, and people who've witnessed Boss's Wife Syndrome firsthand. I have, in my time consulting, personally witnessed multiple multi-million dollar companies reduced to insolvency by this very real effect. (And for fairness: it's less common, but it can just as easily be Boss's Husband Syndrome, and it's just as destructive.)

It doesn't take much research to find out why many of the top minds left this project. One of the early letters talks about Chris's usual missteps - the ones that meant the project was doomed from the get-go. But as the Escapist revealed, this was not the only cause of the company rapidly becoming a queen bee cult. One of my favorite quotes regarding this:


No long-time top-shelf professional developer is going to fail to recognize this pattern and jump ship to a better company. Her presence alone - the de-facto CEO of the company - omnipresent, unfriendly, unkind, unanswerable to authority, and completely immune via her position as "wife of CEO" - was enough to guarantee CIG's future as a foot-in-the-door boot camp for industry first-timers. Which makes it rather difficult to push boundaries.

Between Sandi and Ben, throughout 2015 and 2016, CIG became a non-stop cavalcade of self-owns and unforced errors. Then, in early 2017, the reality curtain finally dropped: Sandi's movie debut as "Vic's Mom" in the completely unknown film "American Satan" was completely cut from the film, revealing the reality of her star potential once and for all. Her interest in the company dropped precipitously, resulting in months of robotic tweets and the occasional "look at me I'm still here" appearances, but her heart was no longer in it. The public opinion of the project was making a critical turn during this period, and although we didn't know it yet, CIG was fully aware that they were courting a possible lawsuit from CryTek. CIG was desperate for damage control, and, at the very least, to give a more serious appearance of a game development company in time for the inevitable court appearance.

Here is where Ortwin steps in. I can think of nobody else with the clout and control over Chris to make this change. He advises, if not demands, the removal of Ben from any public-facing appearances and responsibilities, and forces a severe dial-back of Sandi's. Advises a change in their public communication strategy, and revises their shows to more closely resemble the honest and charismatic early years approach. If nothing else, CIG will be able to run out the clock acting like a proper studio, so when the inevitable depositions arrive, there will be something reasonable to show.

Had the Sandi/Ben effect not occurred, and Star Citizen as a project had made the procedural jump from 2013 directly to what they're doing now in 2018, I believe at some point they could have had something. Not what they promised, not what Chris "envisioned", but something. But the perfect storm of the exact wrong people, in the exact wrong positions, with too much authority and zero oversight, managed to usurp the company temporarily to fulfill their own personal goals. For Sandi, it was becoming a "famous actress." For Ben, it was becoming the Creator-endorsed "Eternal Emperor of Wing Commander and Associated Properties."

And above it all was the inept, impotent hand of Chris Roberts himself, making sure any mistakes that could be made, would be made, and without which all this humor would not have been possible.

Toops posted:

I agree with you until your 3rd paragraph. An alpha is supposed to be feature complete. Period. And what I mean by "feature complete" is "core gameplay systems are all present." Not a few. Not most. ALL. Now, maybe you only have a couple levels done. Maybe your boss fight mechanics are overly simplistic. Maybe your art assets are placeholder. Maybe you need to hire some hotshot to write genius-level shaders to bump the graphical fidelity, or pull in top-level artists to build production-ready models. But the purpose of an alpha is to experience the philosophy of your game and answer one question: "Is this fun or not?" Is this gonna work? Will this foundation support the weight required for a memorable experience?

If Chris Roberts truly was the visionary he says he is, Star Citizen would be fun already. It would be obvious.

But Alpha isn't a terminal state in development, and that's why the term is confusing. If the answer to "is it fun?" is demonstrably "no" or even "not quite," you need to figure out why and iterate. That might mean tweaking existing systems, scrapping some, adding others, or (most likely) some combination of those. But when you say "We hit alpha!" you are saying "This is the game! It will be longer than this, but if the game is to be good and fun, you will feel it, now."

This is where your code, your process, and your culture dictates your game's success or failure. If you have talented managers and engineers, they will have already designed the game in a way that's iterable. Changing code is destructive. Re-doing models is destructive. These activities all have a time-cost. If your code is a messy, incomprehensible, tangled, panic-ridden, crunch-driven, tightly-coupled acid trip, where "everything's like, connected man!" and touching one tiny part breaks the whole machine, you will fail. Straight up, you're done. What you got is what you got. This is the point at which publishers pull the plug on failing projects. Your first shot at it was way off, and it's clear that starting over would be faster than fixing this mess. And I'm telling you right now, Star Citizen is a perfect diamond bullet of engineering failure in that regard. You're seeing it play out in real time. That fact was evident to anyone with experience in this industry as early as 2015.

When I heard Illfonic on ATV, visibly and audibly dejected, week after painful week making no progress after months-long merge-hell, I knew that Star Citizen was a complete failure, because how did they get there? I knew CIG would go dark on Star Marine, because how could they possibly be honest about their complete project management incompetence and uphold "the vision" that fueled their very existence? And whaddya know, CIG went dark.

I'm saying this as a means of strengthening your thesis that CIG is doing things backwards. It's very evident to me that CIG still has absolutely no idea what the game called "Star Citizen" is supposed to be.

The tragedy for me, and what makes this so hard to stomach, is that CIG is literally exploiting every heartless technique in the book to trick people into giving them more money, just so they can continue to fail at everything they attempt.

Edit: I think most of the confusion around the term "alpha" comes from this era of "early access." If you're playing an "early access" build of a game, you are playing a pre-alpha build, by definition. It's just that "pre-alpha" has a slightly negative connotation that roughly approaches "early" which, in turn, implies "we're not quite sure just what the hell we're doing yet." This is not a scary word for developers, because they spend almost the entirety of their professional lives in this state. But it's scary to paying customers. I love early access, because to me, it's fun to participate in the process. When I worked in this industry, I was a part of both successful and horrible games, and from that vantage it's endlessly fascinating to watch the humanity (of both developer and consumer) behind the immensely complex process of building a technological work of art. When it comes to Star Citizen, the entire endeavor: manager, engineer, HR rep, executive, backer, fan, media representative... ALL of them, almost without exception, are worthy of ridicule and scorn. This is, beyond any doubt, the worst game development project I've ever seen.

Toops posted:

I agree with you until your 3rd paragraph. An alpha is supposed to be feature complete. Period. And what I mean by "feature complete" is "core gameplay systems are all present." Not a few. Not most. ALL. Now, maybe you only have a couple levels done. Maybe your boss fight mechanics are overly simplistic. Maybe your art assets are placeholder. Maybe you need to hire some hotshot to write genius-level shaders to bump the graphical fidelity, or pull in top-level artists to build production-ready models. But the purpose of an alpha is to experience the philosophy of your game and answer one question: "Is this fun or not?" Is this gonna work? Will this foundation support the weight required for a memorable experience?

If Chris Roberts truly was the visionary he says he is, Star Citizen would be fun already. It would be obvious.

But Alpha isn't a terminal state in development, and that's why the term is confusing. If the answer to "is it fun?" is demonstrably "no" or even "not quite," you need to figure out why and iterate. That might mean tweaking existing systems, scrapping some, adding others, or (most likely) some combination of those. But when you say "We hit alpha!" you are saying "This is the game! It will be longer than this, but if the game is to be good and fun, you will feel it, now."

This is where your code, your process, and your culture dictates your game's success or failure. If you have talented managers and engineers, they will have already designed the game in a way that's iterable. Changing code is destructive. Re-doing models is destructive. These activities all have a time-cost. If your code is a messy, incomprehensible, tangled, panic-ridden, crunch-driven, tightly-coupled acid trip, where "everything's like, connected man!" and touching one tiny part breaks the whole machine, you will fail. Straight up, you're done. What you got is what you got. This is the point at which publishers pull the plug on failing projects. Your first shot at it was way off, and it's clear that starting over would be faster than fixing this mess. And I'm telling you right now, Star Citizen is a perfect diamond bullet of engineering failure in that regard. You're seeing it play out in real time. That fact was evident to anyone with experience in this industry as early as 2015.

When I heard Illfonic on ATV, visibly and audibly dejected, week after painful week making no progress after months-long merge-hell, I knew that Star Citizen was a complete failure, because how did they get there? I knew CIG would go dark on Star Marine, because how could they possibly be honest about their complete project management incompetence and uphold "the vision" that fueled their very existence? And whaddya know, CIG went dark.

I'm saying this as a means of strengthening your thesis that CIG is doing things backwards. It's very evident to me that CIG still has absolutely no idea what the game called "Star Citizen" is supposed to be.

The tragedy for me, and what makes this so hard to stomach, is that CIG is literally exploiting every heartless technique in the book to trick people into giving them more money, just so they can continue to fail at everything they attempt.

Edit: I think most of the confusion around the term "alpha" comes from this era of "early access." If you're playing an "early access" build of a game, you are playing a pre-alpha build, by definition. It's just that "pre-alpha" has a slightly negative connotation that roughly approaches "early" which, in turn, implies "we're not quite sure just what the hell we're doing yet." This is not a scary word for developers, because they spend almost the entirety of their professional lives in this state. But it's scary to paying customers. I love early access, because to me, it's fun to participate in the process. When I worked in this industry, I was a part of both successful and horrible games, and from that vantage it's endlessly fascinating to watch the humanity (of both developer and consumer) behind the immensely complex process of building a technological work of art. When it comes to Star Citizen, the entire endeavor: manager, engineer, HR rep, executive, backer, fan, media representative... ALL of them, almost without exception, are worthy of ridicule and scorn. This is, beyond any doubt, the worst game development project I've ever seen.

doingitwrong posted:

When they say certain new ships are flyable in game, what does that mean?

Sarsapariller posted:

@9:50- "This is the drone room. Now they don't have the drones in here yet..." OH YOU DON'T SAY. Look, an operator seat for a thing that isn't in the game! Thrilling.

Toops posted:

salad

tuo posted:

Their concepts are so good, they sell them for millions! When's the next concept sale?

no_recall posted:

I'm sorry to break this out to you Toops, but you know nothing about game development. Star Citizer has always been good. You clearly haven't seen how good it is yet.

Tijuana Bibliophile posted:

How're the bees doing

Xaerael posted:

I'm trying to not sound big headed, but I pulled and kept an audience of well over 100, with a talk about how tough being in a fandom was in pre-internet 90's. It was the first time I ever spoke publicly about a topic that wasn't about crafting, and was to an audience of mostly people who didn't really know me, just that I'm that one person who makes crazy, over ambitious costumes.

I guess good job Lando on your lovely dozen or so emotionally and financially invested idiots.

Dementropy posted:

Aeka 2.0 posted:

Jeff The Drunk from Howard Stern pulled more people by cooking some pasta and singing a few tunes to his phone's music.