snoremac posted:

I like to think of it as a simulation of painful medical verification methods, in which arteries are severed without pain resistant, operated entirely by machines.

Daztek posted:

This is the most amazing star citizen article ever released

quote:

Still, Erin insists the lengthy procedure of making Star Citizen isn’t that unusual for large-scale game development. “I can see why someone who doesn't understand development or the industry would think there were issues. But in reality, the process we're going through as a group happens all the time as a part of the process of building something,” he explained. “Sometimes you do something that works and sometimes it doesn't, so you improve, make changes or go down certain paths.”

quote:

“We may not have 100 star systems yet, but just wandering around this one star system is more content than almost every game that has detail to this level,” Chris described. “I feel like my gift has always been the ability to see something in my head and then work to pull it together. Once everyone else sees that final vision, I feel like a larger group of people can see the big picture rather than just the small bits. We get closer to that with every release, and this one was a big milestone for us.”

quote:

When asked if he considers himself a perfectionist, Chris begrudgingly agreed. “If that standard in attention to detail isn't there, then it drives me nuts,” he admitted. “If we want to have something out, you have to balance quality, cost and time. We almost always pick quality.”

Read the article, it has many more amazing quotes

big nipples big life posted:

Erin Roberts: "you don't understand game development."


my life feels a little bit more complete now

peter gabriel posted:

Sarsapariller posted:

New patch, time to see how those major content pipelines are kicking in-

quote:

3.3.7 Updates
Feature Updates
​Updated some NPC facial animations.
Removed anniversary hall content.

Bug Fixes
​The Anvil Arrow should now have zero-g animations.
NPCs at Lorville should no longer become stuck in lines.
AI ships should now consistently move and respond correctly.
AI at Kareah should now properly search after reacting to sound or being shot.
The wallet balance should now properly update when using service beacons or other mobiGlas purchases (no more negative UEC).

Hmm, let's see, graphical tweaks, couple of extremely minor bug fixes, and they removed the one economy exploit that was allowing anyone to actually purchase ships in-game. Likely the final patch of the year, given upcoming holidays.

Yep! We're really rocketing upwards now!

quote:

https://youtu.be/mJOC033pp8I (Worth Clicking: TWO WEEKS)

Scruffpuff posted:

(VC's Note: This is not a real tweet but rather a prophecy)

Quavers posted:

Twinfinite: here's why Star Citizen fans keep supporting it with millions of dollars

quote:

Chris Roberts isn’t becoming rich by making Star Citizen. He was already rather well off before he started.

quote:

We don’t know whether the Star Citizen project will ultimately be successful, or will eventually run out of money and fizzle. Yet, even in the latter case, the game still wouldn’t be a scam, but simply an overly-ambitious project that was attempted and failed.

quote:

A popular meme among detractors of the game accuses Cloud Imperium Games to sell pretty starship jpegs, but with every update of the alpha, this becomes more and more akin to misleading hyperbole. More and more of those starships have been made flyable

Virtual Captain posted:

Uhh a 3D jpeg is still a jpeg. 3D assets and the world's largest (and emptiest) CryEngine map does not a game make.

posted:

I just realized that I am arguing with a low karma alt account. We are done here.

Beet Wagon posted:

gently caress I gotta say how it's very cool and awesome how a thirteen minute jump to Hurston ends with my next jump dropping me through the planet and killing me. It rules and in no way am I mad red and nude online right now

DigitalPenny posted:

In second place of blatant ignorance is the BDSSE.

What is simulated? show me the simulation.

economy? nope

the solar system ? nope doesn't move

Planets? static mesh ... nope. top notch sunset skybox is not a simulation.

The player? you have a stamina bar represented with a heart monitor, your run speed changes depending on what you are wearing. ok half a point.

Full Newtonian flight model then? - nope, we made it less real for the sake of gameplay.

Will loading my ship up with cargo/weight affect it? - nope

SC bearly qualifies as a simulator, piss off with your BDSSE. Don't give me oh its coming they will add all this stuff in, its been 7 years.
This is like calling a 5 year old making a paper plane, the best up and coming aerospace manufacturer when all you have to support this claim is scrumpled up a piece of paper that was once a below average paper plane.

A Commando posted:

The infamous cult we are becoming

The cult community of Star Citizen. We are sadly making a negative name for ourselves. Many outsiders and new people feel alienated. Many potential future players and many Investors are turned away by our aggresivness on this platform.
At this pace, I am afraid we will scare away new backers and ruin Star Citizens reputation before it is even released.

Currently, many posts with even a tiny bit of criticism is bombarded with facepalms and the classic “If you don’t like it, go away”.
This is devastating for the health of the game. Criticism and feedback is the foundation of a successful and healthy game.

Fanatics in these forums seem to think that everything Chris Roberts says is the word of god and that everything CIG does is the right thing.
This is naive, and this is wrong. Game developers are human beings, they make mistakes, they are sometimes wrong, CIG and CR need our voices so they don’t stray of the path.

Sure, CR and CIG are ultimately the dictators when it comes down to it. But we are the judges. We are the investors. We are the ones that are gonna eat the dish.
Without voicing our concerns early and often, stuff will go wrong. A few examples of this is the 600i ship that is an utter failure.
Luckly, the millions of screams and lamentations on the 600i have forced CIG to update the ship. This is proof on how important our criticism is. Without us, the 600i would have always been useless.

I hope that all of you fanatics, insta-facepalemers, CIG/CR-mega fanboys, Please, learn to take criticism.
Understand that us criticising CIG/CR can only be good in the long run. Understand that what you are doing right now, is destructive for this game.
Your barking at new players and at criticism is shoving a big part of this games future away.

Remember our criticism and feedback is the wind and tide that will dictate where Chris Roberts, our captain, and CIG, our ship, will go.

Combat Theory posted:

Im still amazed how cig managed to distill the worst parts of reddit, forums and discord into one dysfunctional platform.

Beet Wagon posted:

lol

Beet Wagon posted:

Literally "not liking Star Citizen" counts as hate to these people lol. It's a really common sentiment among the dumbest backers. The logic goes "Well I have plenty of things that I don't like, but I just move on and forget about them, you guys keep posting about Star Citizen so you must really hate it/be mad at CIG/feel betrayed/whatever." It's the same kind of logic where "posting in a thread making jokes with your pals = obsession about a topic and having no life"

On its face it kinda makes sense, because why would you keep talking about something you don't like, but it falls apart A) because we actually do like Star Citizen, and B) because Star Citizen's trainwreck is currently ongoing and hilarious. Like... I think Applebees sucks, but you'll never see me post about it because yeah, they're not doing anything funny. Star Citizen sucks, but is hugely entertaining, so I keep making jokes about it.

Beet Wagon posted:

https://clips.twitch.tv/ShakingTacitBaconFutureMan (Worth Clicking)

Pixelate posted:

LADDER DEATH

Scruffpuff posted:

quote:

Some ships definitely have a more procedural damage model. I think it's basically just hit points on individual parts, but still- they can get blown off, and losing them makes you turn and maneuver funny. But like 90% of the ships I've seen have nothing like that. Basically just the Gladius and Hornet models have it. Makes me think they started implementing it and then gave up, or the person doing it quit, or something.

This is practically the explanation for the entire game. Nested physics grids is hard - let's make a FPS. FPS is hard, let's make planets. Planets are hard, let's put in mining. Mining is hard, let's put in procedural whiskey ice cubes.

The entire project is inept unfinished attempts all glued together into an abomination of almost.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

Making a functional game is hard. Making a functional MMO using an outdated and inappropriate engine on a bed of hacked code programmed by rookie developers while being mismanaged by a "visionary" whose primary claim to fame is dreaming big and falling flat is impossible. Hiring artists to do concept art and make 3D models, and hiring other artists to convert those models into literature and real world models, is easy. Everything we're seeing here is the kind of stuff "real" game companies do because they've released a product and want to maintain enthusiasm for it. For Star Citizen the enthusiasm is the product.

Scruffpuff posted:

This is how they walk the tightrope over fraud. See, it's ok to let you pay for this ship, here are its traits. Oh, wait, we changed it. What's this? You already paid for it based on what we said the traits were previously? Don't you understand game development? This is in pre-alpha! Everything is subject to change!

The idea that maybe CIG shouldn't be taking money for things that are subject to change rarely gets brought up. When it does, backers say the ships are merely an incentive and you're just pledging money. The ship is a bonus when you pledge.

If that's true, I'm 100% certain no backers will mind if CIG wipes the slate clean and gives nobody any ships if/when the game goes "live." It was just a pledge anyway!

Chris Roberts, you're a thief and a fraud.

Scruffpuff posted:

Comparing a still screenshot of an overdetailed impractical CGI monstrosity to an actual functioning game. It's the same poo poo that allows them to compare, without irony, what another game has accomplished to something Chris Roberts said he would do.

Wise Learned Man posted:

quote:

There's more statistical analysis on the ship prices then there is about actual gameplay.

They can only analyze the data they have access to.

Chin posted:

Never underestimate the gullibility of the core SC fuckwit whale base. They watch a demonstration with no AI spaceships flying anywhere and pedestrian NPCs that can't even board a train and feel confident that their life replacement universe simulation is coming along nicely after seven years of development.

A shocking number of these idiots will have purchased multiple Krakens for their JPEG fleets. 1,500 to 2,000 sold would make perfect sense.

Tokamak posted:

quote:

Lol why the gently caress does Hurston have city walls? That is absolute nonsense in a world with space bombers and planet destroyers

To keep the bugs out

TheAgent posted:

I loving cannot wait for a goddamn release, chris roberts is like some kind of edging master

Pixelate posted:

Cultist Rant posted:

people have been very eager to cherry pick the goofier parts of SC's development over the past years, though they're only able to do so because the dev's been fully in the public eye for most the entirety of the process. the arguments about how long it's been worked on fall flat considering how long most high-end products are silently worked on before being unveiled. not to mention that much of the tech, which CIG for a time themselves thought was impossible, has been implemented and steadily improved upon within recent months alone, most notably the dynamic physics instances that lets players roam around their own ships with unique gravity while flying around. so you'll have to pardon me if i'm not looking to buy into the "SC is dead" meme when it ain't even finished yet

lofi posted:

What does not live can never die.

G0RF posted:

A random sampling finds the pajama-clad, spaceship-collecting man-child Erris lamenting the corrosive impact of Fortnite on children, due to its supposedly megatoxic community. He goes on to also complain about their microtransactional business model, which exploits vulnerable youth.

If only more games were like Star Citizen, right Erris?

Elsewhere, he exclaimed Fallout 76 was absolutely amazing and a better game than God of War. One of these days I expect he’s going to drop the facade and reveal himself a master meta-troll running one of the longest straight faced cons in streamer history.

The Titanic posted:

I'm glad CIG stood up to the goons demanding "a game" and shut them down. Ungrateful losers and whiners.

Beet Wagon posted:

There’s a million things to do, I shout, while looking at a picture of a plant

TheAgent posted:

everyones too busy dunking on fo76 to give a poo poo about star citizen right now

Ghostlight posted:

quote:

Finally an HD remaster that improves on the original

Amazing Zimmo posted:

https://twitter.com/discolando/status/1071538682622951424

Morphix posted:

7 years in, and ships still being designed and redesigned

posted:

Game development is expensive, CIG has to pay 500 people. It is not too bad to buy a ship once in a while. Dont be cheap.

Mr.Tophat posted:

*lights cigar with a dollar bill*

Don't be cheap. Give me a dollar.

Scruffpuff posted:

Backers are always imagining that their purchases will allow them to fill an invaluable role that will place them in demand for their services. Normal people find the company of others by not being repulsive, toxic shitstains; backers don't have that luxury. They need to game to force people to "need" them.

Backers like to imagine themselves as brave captains visiting seedy bars to get black market deals from a disgusting, shady, creepy gently caress in the corner. I have a very unfortunate news flash for the backers: you are the disgusting, shady, creepy fucks in Star Citizen. The handful of normal people who might someday try to play this game are going to hold their noses and grimace while interfacing with you, not some generic, poorly-named NPC from the addled mind of Chris Roberts.

Assuming they can find any of you, since it's a 99% chance at any given time you'll be sitting at a loading screen, courtesy of a well-timed Goon laser salvo.

Daztek posted:

Anyone looking for a COOL JOB?



Responsibilities:

Define, communicate, and maintain the highest standards of customer loyalty by providing a luxury lifestyle experience
Create and implement established competitive promotional plans with marketing leadership
Help develop business model for our customers based on their needs and our current business practices by providing complete and accurate information
Stays in tune with latest industry trends and interests ensuring that promotions are in line or exceeding current
Focus on both new customer development and maintain potential clients
Act as a final point of escalation for all Concierge service issues, concerns and suggestions
Actively participate in meetings to represent the voice of our Concierge; take on new initiatives as required
Provide training and knowledge; communicate regularly with stakeholders to ensure that the staff are well-informed and have the necessary tools to complete their job
Attend regular staff meetings to provide key insights about the VIP Concierge experience, including feedback, concerns, and customer needs
Coordinate and facilitate weekly meetings with Concierge team to ensure timely updates and make sure that staff is “in the know” on all issues
Resolve complaints and anticipate problems by reviewing and monitoring operational issues, business flow, and associate performance
Review correspondence and communication logs; direct staff according to information obtained
Create specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely action plans to remedy service deficiencies and continually enhance excellence within Concierge operations
Be the expert. Know the ins & the outs of product offerings & optional packages
Build relationships & create customers for life by assisting them through asking questions, listening carefully to their responses and taking appropriate action
and such other duties and responsibilities assigned by Cloud Imperium Games reasonably consistent with employee’s skills and experience

hot balls man no homo posted:

So they're looking for a whale-tender? Does anyone know someone with a degree in marine biology? Maybe in marketing too?

Fleetwood Crack posted:

DapperDon posted:

Now this is what makes my back teeth itch. If CIG were a contractor working on a project for me and they said it will cost "X" to complete and I agree and pay for it in advance then that should be the end of it right? Well, then the contractor says, hey, what if you were to add some things? Sure it would cost more, but okay and I agree to pay for that in advance as well. When that same contractor continues to not make progress on my project while continuing to ask for more money for parts of the project that I already funded, I have to ask myself who is the bigger idiot. The contractor that does not have a clue as to what he is doing, or me, the idiot that keeps agreeing to and giving them more and more money. This dumbass game and everything about it has been PRE FUNDED UP TO ITS EYEBALLS so whyyyyyyy do they need continuous revenue? The game, staff, salaries, everything have been pre loving paid. Why do they STILL need more?

Scruffpuff posted:

posted:

reddit: "From now until December, we are getting almost 11 planets/moons/major cities. Don't sit there and act like nothing is happening."

WTF is a "Major City?" Jesus jumping Christ, even the backers have picked up on CIG's pattern of lying by implication. Major cities means there are also minor cities, and maybe even other categories! And the existence of categories for the cities means that there are qualifiers for those categories, like population, economy, or industry, and at the very minimum, size! Which implies even more fuckloads of things that are not in this game! It's all copy-pasted generic non-functioning Potemkin-village backdrop bullshit with smoke coming out of the vents.

In fact, this poo poo is so bad, that the more you copy/paste it, the worse the overall product becomes, not unlike Chris Roberts's own recursive genetic code. So yeah, I'm not going to pretend nothing is happening, because something's happening here all right. CIG is lying and backers are drinking their poo poo through a straw and taking out second mortages to make sure the supply never dries up.

Virtual Captain posted:

Still nothing to do in the "BDSSE" after several additional years to get things on track.

Maybe it's time to take a look in the mirror and ask some tough questions:









lol

:reddit posted:

My day of playing Star citizen ended with me rage quitting.

Check the topics of the last Ask the Devs....

“Adjusting seat height of pilot's seats” …

This was upvoted?

That was it. I turned off the PC and took a walk.

posted:

Note that "Release" isn't on the roadmap, isn't discussed, and isn't planned. This game will be in early access for the rest of the company's existence. Note that whenever this question is raised, a lot of posters around here rush to defend the idea of leaving the ship store open even after release. As if the idea of just paying for the game and playing it has become completely alien to a lot of them.

The community's willingness to give CIG a hard pass on the frankly insane ship prices and not hold them to any kind of standard regarding promises, or pay-for-power b.s. pretty much guarantees that this game will continue selling ships for a long, long time.

posted:

The SA forums is probably the worst and saddest shithole of the Internet. A bunch of chronically cynic manchilds who still thinks that being chronically cynic is "Oh so cool". It's probably the last home of those who have utterly failed in life.

How pitiful.

Beet Wagon posted:

Man all this archiving going on reminds me of the time they thought we had control over the paywall, and were strategically putting it up to hide our nefarious scheming right when they were catching onto us.

Mr.Tophat posted:

Simulations should be accurate, otherwise they are not simulations.

Star Citizen is something else because it's not simulating something accurately, apart from the worst kind of electricity.

Peter.Quint posted:

The only viable argument for having criminal erotic gameplay in Star Citizen is to laugh at B'Tak's reaction to it.

B'Tak just wanted a gentle cruise through the stars on a Sunday morning, see a few sights, maybe chat to some fellow citizens, wish them well.

Little did he know he had a stowaway in his cargo hold. Lust is on the stowaway's mind. Anything could happen.

Sarsapariller posted:

Look, it's only single digit frames if you get more than a dozen people together. The MMO of your dreams is right around the corner!

TheAgent posted:

these people want a poo poo meter and a piss meter and a "I got a cut and didn't put neosporin on it" infection meter. they want thirst meters and air meters and the right balance of oxygen to argon. they want a criminal system where you have to go on trial and defend yourself and then get thrown in prison, break out of prison and have to survive on the outer rim of lawless worlds as an outlaw and can't interact with players anymore. they want you to load up each individual magazine for your rifle into your inventory (which is already in the game lol) and have a realistic weight limit and real time physical degradable equipment that another player created for you from hours and hours of grinding. they want their glasses of whiskey with their ice cubes to react correctly to gravity shifts, and their tarps to react fully with gusts of wind. and that wind? that wind isn't just a fake wind, but a wind created by actual, planetary physics and storms and atmosphere

what they are going to get is a waiting simulator with a huge amount of griefers and missiles that blow up your own ship

Suspicious Dish posted:

one day jeffry bezos wakes up and realizes that HOLY CRAP theres a lot of money in games!!! and so he buys twitch and curse and a studio called "double helix" that made some middling licensed titles and starts an empire: amazon game studios.

double helix is full of a lot of engineers who prefer to be slow and methodical about their engine, make sure it's architected properly, does things acceptably, and so on. bezos slices in six levels of management above the studio, and they're still making their own games, and suddenly a request comes in from up high: "amazon NEEDS a game engine", and they ask twice spiral how long it would take and they say "hmmm, a competitor to unreal engine? we could probably do this in about 3 or 4 years", and then a plan is put in place: amazon will have a game engine and it will be great.

about a year later bezos asks where his games are and management gets worried, and they ask double helix where their games are and double helix says "in a few more years, like we said, here's the roadmap". management does NOT like that response. so on one fateful weekend, some executive goes and shops around. they ask Epic Games if they could buy an engine for Amazon to release and they say "wtf no", they ask Unity and they say "wtf no", they ask various other companies, and eventually they ask Crytek, a company that was in bankruptcy at this time and was happy to take literally any money ever and they're like "HELL YEAH"

now i'm not sure if you know much about cryengine but it's very much the antithesis of "carefully planned". it's very much ship-it code and like a lot of engines that have shipped games, there's game-specific hacks, there's large parts of code that were rewritten into a giant do-everything loop for performance reasons. it's german engineering and it's crazy but drat hell it works.

so some amazon executive buys this engine and on monday, double helix employees show up to hear that that engine they've been building for the past year is now obsolete and replaced by cryengine. and this was supposed to make lumberyard come out faster.

so double helix now is trying to jam these two codebases together. and almost 5 years after amazon bought double helix, the engine is almost ready for production.

almost every single person i know of at amazon games has left by now. except two. they're on a game team and they're the only amazon game to possibly ship and they're winning by basically using lumberyard as little as possible.

Scruffpuff posted:

I had a few kids with no costumes on. They explained they were Tier-0 implementations, but if I gave them extra candy, next Halloween the costumes would be incredible.

AlmightyPants posted:

I teach robotics classes to kids, where they build robots out of LEGO and use a basic drag and drop programming thing to get their robots to do things. It's pretty cool and fun. One of my favorite things is when the kids decide they're going to have their robots race or battle. Sometimes they spend a whole class customizing their robots for these events.

How does this tie in to Store Citizen?

My absolute favorite part is what happens when the kids actually have their robots next to each other and are about to start. This is when they begin to legislate. Since they all put all this time and effort into their robot, they obviously want it to be the best. So they come up with these incredibly elaborate rules, often disagreeing and regularly taking a comically long time to do so. They envision grand battles with their cool weapons and epic races.

What ends up happening is two LEGO cars slowly bump into each other while they scream. Then both sides declare victory or demand that the rules be changed.

Right now, SC appears to be somewhere in that first phase, where everyone imagines these cool scenarios and fun times to be had. However, unlike my students, they also have a clear indication as to where it's going, as the actual game is pretty much the same as a pair of LEGO cars slowly bumping into each other. Only when JPEGs bump into things the entire game crashes and you have to sit at a loving loading screen for 10 minutes.

Citizens are functioning at roughly the same level as 2nd graders.

Ghostlight posted:

is this a real game or is this just fantasy? cash in a landslide for an escape from reality. open your eyes, look up to the skies and see. i'm just a poor chris, i need your piety. because i'm easy come, easy go, always high, sometimes low. any way i get blow doesn't really matter to me.

Zazz Razzamatazz posted:

posted:

I spawn my ship buy stuff got back to trade it for profit get griefed loose most of my money and i can wait for the next patch. This time even CIG folks attacked me at olisar. I just loving love it.

posted:

Cause i get ganked each time i launch my andromeda. People see a big ship and attack it. For me it was at least like that every patch and ptu patch since forver.. only time i got peace is on the crashy builds nobody plays.

I genuinely, honestly, hope this game gets finished because the industrial levels of salt that will pour forth from the folks who spent thousands of dollars on ships- only to get blown up will be glorious.

Blue On Blue posted:

Truth.

Look at mining. They sold a ship to be used exclusively for mining

They released the ship with a bare minimum effort for a mining activity

I think they put maybe 2 patches worth of effort into making it not totally janky and sucky

And now it's been quite some time so they've already moved onto the next hot thing and hoping everyone will totally forget about mining

poo poo when was the last time the FPS module was updated with anything besides : changed the color of one pixel from brown to a deeper more realistic shade of brown

Scruffpuff posted:

I'm starting to remember that Tribes has different flying vehicles - these bikes, and heavier platforms where people could basically be turret gunners, and something in between, and all the poo poo worked seamlessly. You could use the lasers on the bike to strafe and shoot people fighting on the ground, you could use your jetpack to hop off your troop transport and land on the enemy's and shoot them up, everything that Star Citizen can't do on even the most basic level, that game was doing it effortlessly in 1998. It absolutely boggles the mind trying to get your head around just how much Chris can't do.

Foo Diddley posted:

"probably the best stablest patch in a long ti--"
*falls through the floor*

Quavers posted:

277 replies, only 63 not deleted

TheAgent posted:

no one actually plays star citizen

they look at their pretty ships and maybe try and set up "combat encounters" with each other, but thats about it because every single facet of the game is broken and continues to be broken and there's no progression or anything to actually do

I try to play it every single goddamn patch in my little starter ship and its the same loving thing every time, a horrible experience that you can see coming from miles and miles away that's going to have some people who are heavily "invested" into this going into chernobyl style meltdown posts on spectrum (deleted by nightrider-cig)

Wise Learned Man posted:

posted:

The Kickstarter ended in 2016 and there is no way a game could be delivered years ago, nor even a year ago. Games don't ever get created that fast. It takes years to finish a standard game with no real innovation and one with actual new features takes even longer.

"The Kickstarter ended in 2016"

Grubby Hobo posted:

You say "memory leak;" I say "backer who didn't buy enough memory and had better get with the program."

Anyway, what is a "memory leak," really?

ewe2 posted:

Cargo-cult Theory of Star Citizen

Disclaimer: I am not a sociologist/anthropologist. I am an autodidact with a bad case of effortpost. I welcome any empirical evidence to disprove the foregoing, which is mostly theoretical.

What is the gaming culture and how does SC disrupt it?

SC backers appear to believe in a number of things about games and gaming culture that predispose them to cult-like behaviour around The Game. SC is a solution to the problems they believe plague gaming. So from their perspective:

* gaming is tired and repetitive.
* gaming is corrupted by the undue influence of publishers and media.
* gaming is also corrupted by haters and other forms of social justice warriors.
* gaming does not value community contributions.
* gaming is secretive about its production and hides its failures.
* from the previous points, it follows that the gaming business will not make The Games they want.

For these gamers, SC is a disruptive force to this culture, and to their own experience of gaming. They believe:

* The Game is directly funded by gamers.
* It is The Game they want.
* It is completely open development and always has been and always will be.
* It values their contributions with special extras.
* It does new things that other games will not do because they are inferior.
* ipso facto it will transform the nature of gaming.
* Implicitly 'might is right' vs 'social justice' underlies the true hierarchy of gamers.
* SC is a community as well as a game.
* More money spent equals higher social status and worthiness.

I would argue there is substantial empirical evidence for these, many of these points have been made explicitly by SC gamers on reddit and elsewhere.

What do SC backers do in relation to The Game?

* They defend The Game at every opportunity no matter how obscure the attention.
* They buy anything related to it with a price tag.
* They fetishize related objects and create their own objects for the purpose of ritual.
* They make up a lot of weird poo poo about it and suggest their creations to the developers.
* They acclaim Chris, Sandi or anyone else who promotes The Game as heroes.
* They make up a lot of weird poo poo about their heroes.
* They discuss The Game daily, obsessively.

Ok, that will do for a start, but again there is easily enough empirical evidence to back those assertions, just look at the threads in this subforum for that.

What do SC backers say about their cult?

This is where we begin to make observations based on the evidence, seeking to link them in a theoretical unity.

* They implicitly accept a hierarchy based on level of backing The Game and/or in-depth knowledge about it. This is an attitude of servility and respect. One only has to be seen to disagree with this hierarchy to be viewed with suspicion. Hence, those who wish to critically discuss The Game must preface their discussion with evidence that they accept the hierarchy. The hierarchy is implicit in social organisation based around The Game, including guilds, groups, streaming channels, forums, and particularly the Evocati.

* We see these assumptions repeatedly in their proselyting of The Game, particularly in the negative when they attack perceived enemies of their hierarchy, be it goons, haters, Derek Smart, or media enemy of the month.

* The disruptive use of crowdsourcing The Game leads them to believe they aren't merely consumers, but partners in The Games production and eventual retail. It is practically a truism for anyone to say that SC is a unique test of the crowdsourcing model. SC backers make repeated assertions about the different nature of The Game and the power of its community. Detractors will say they're a cult in an attempt to divide them and SC backers must be vigilant against this.

* SC backers believe they are creating a new kind of gaming community that will be free of corruption from SJW's griefers, goons etc. because The Game will prevent such corruption. Detractors say scary things and this calls for new alterations to The Game.

* Necessarily the creators of The Game are completely trustworthy, hard-working, imaginative, generous, and methodical. Detractors say horrible things about them and need to be arrested for many reasons.

* SC backers believe that if they keep believing and sending money, The Game will be good and everything surrounding The Game will be justified and by extension they too will be justified and acquire elevated social status when The Game is released. Detractors play this down because they are secretly jealous and fear The Game will be popular when released.

* The game will be released when it's ready and any perceived problems are minor, insubstantial. Detractors say it will never be released and has big problems because they are in league with publishers and bad websites or are controlled by Derek Smart and Goons.

* Detractors manufacture lies and distortions and are simultaneously stupid and extremely-well connected and powerful. This is because they too recognise the power and distinctiveness of The Game and must fight against it.

* Inventing lore, gameplay elements, artwork and game mechanics is the backers way of contributing to The Game, participating in its community, demonstrating their hierarchical value, and are a source of comfort and ritual while awaiting The Great Day of Release. Detractors simply do not understand this because they prefer to wreck things.

Conclusion:

Star Citizen is a cult-like hierarchical disruption to a status quo; for its backers it is a disruption of that status quo which frees them from its precepts and allows them to create a new hierarchy based upon themselves. "I reject your reality and substitute my own!"

Scruffpuff posted:

My favorite part of these free-fly events is that they're all unmitigated clusterfucks that prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that CIG is a toilet-tier "game" development company that's so inept they can't get even the basics right, YET, like clockwork, the tweets and other reports from CIG during and after the event will imply that it was a great success that went off without a hitch, despite all available evidence to the contrary.

And those reports will bring in more money.


The free-fly events remind me of the time Sandi ate cookies while staring directly into the camera after catching a rash of poo poo for dumping boxes of donuts in front of a room full of fat people on diets.

It's like an open challenge. "Check it out, assholes. We're cheating, we're lying, and we're showing it to you openly. What are you gonna do about it?"

a mysterious cloak posted:

Finally got the free trial downloading. I have my monitor turned so my family can't see what I'm doing.

My wife probably thinks I'm looking at porn, but what I'm actually doing is far, far worse.

Colostomy Bag posted:

Hell when it is downloading there is no way to watch internet porn so you are safe.

Sarsapariller posted:

Check it nerds, I passed the promotional marketing quiz and am now a certified Ship Master. I get a badge on the Spectrum and everything. Now my reviews come with the weight of authority, and I can say with 100% confidence the game is trash.

Scruffpuff posted:

Those are stunningly realistic atmospheric flight physics, particularly when the enemy plane stops and rotates in midair.

English is a very flexible and extensive language, but even so it lacks a word for how loving inept Chris Roberts is.

trucutru posted:

Sarsapariller posted:

There's a new Jpeg for sale Citizens. SPEND SPEND SPEND

(It is 195 dollars NEW MONEY ONLY)

Tastes the ground "it's salt".

I guess I know what movie CR was watching lately.

Colostomy Bag posted:

AlbieQuirky posted:

Colostomy Bag posted:

I just want to thank the previous posters setting the record straight in regards to the alien races.

Xi'an: Turtles.
Tevarin: Birds.
Banu: Groots.
Kr’Thak: Apparently from the Krell System according to Roberts.
UEC: Humans, but only males. Females need not apply.

You forgot the Vanduuls.

So did CIG.

Sarsapariller posted:

Apparently you don't even need to disconnect to get inside the no-fly zone at Lorevill. You just need to go real fast.

video

This is retarded.

Quavers posted:

Twitch mega streamer CohhCarnage is now playing X4 Foundations to 13000 viewers, and throwing out comedy ("this works!", "this is better than SC") comparisons to Star Citizen, and chat are loving it

posted:

Its 2028. Star citizen has been out for a while now and CIG is using their modified engine to make other titles now. What kind of game should they make next?

posted:

I actually pitched this to Erin at CitCon. You know when Star Citizen is all said and done and there's resources to experiment or try other things.

posted:

It won't happen but...I can dream.

Sarsapariller posted:

https://i.imgur.com/yTx5wMK.mp4

Scruffpuff posted:

English is a very flexible and extensive language, but even so it lacks a word for how loving inept Chris Roberts is.

Dark Off posted:

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08815227/filing-history
confirmation statement is up.

i really dont know what to make of this. some building revovation/asset management company owns a piece of star citizen? Must be a wrong company.

shrach posted:

This... It was a funny joke before but... I can't even process right now...

The two companies that look like UK companies aren't. I think "Indus Management Ltd" and "Erloch Ltd" are literally companies registered in the Cayman Islands. These are the only results from google:

https://www.datocapital.ky/companies/Indus-Management-Ltd.html
https://www.datocapital.ky/companies/Erloch-Ltd.html



4th result highlighted just for fun.

It is much the same with "Indus" except for a few similar results for a similarly named company in India.

Bofast posted:

This just gets more bizarre by the month

Aqua Seafoam Shame posted:

Here's a fun discovery: add up the shares transferred by Chris, Erin, and Ortwin, and you get 18,500. That's the exact number of shares that belong to "Infratrade Group Corporation", an entity that does not come up on any Google search. Huh.

Virtual Captain posted:

Here is a sorted list:




I wish there were more numbers because I wanna at how much some idiot paid for only 10% of a shell company.

shrach posted:

I feel like Chris Roberts might actually be a goon and he's plagiarising this thread for ideas for his own scam development at this point.

shrach posted:

Okay so, now we know how much the Cayman companies are in for. It's some £17,037,021.43. (That's £17m).

The new issue of 113,861 shares with nominal value of £0.0001 but they paid £149.63 each. So 113,861 x 149.63 is the figure given above.



Can find it in the usual place, https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08815227/filing-history

shrach posted:

And for the record, that values the cash out to the BVI company (Infatrade) as follows:

Chris with 14,598 shares @ £149.63 = £2,184,298.74
Ortwin with 2,601 shares @ £149.63 = £389,187.63
Erin with 1,301 shares @ £149.63 = £194,668.63

So that's not a bad little reward for these guys.

The Infatrade one looks like they are letting in someone they knew to get a piece of the action while pocketing some cash for themselves. It's all personal transactions that do not affect the profit and loss/balance sheet of the company at all. This one is purely about cutting someone in and taking personal profits out.

The two Cayman Islands companies (Erloch and Indus) are getting a piece of the action, ~10% of the company but for that they have put actual cash in to the company, to the tune of £17m. It's not a loan, it's share capital in the share premium account. This one is about funding the company, not taking personal profits.

The new shares were allotted 23 May 2018, which is the same day that the guys sold their shares.

TheAgent posted:

lol we were talking about this in june on the argcast and in this thread about the rumors they were selling shares to either backers or angel investors or both and I remember one dude on the Frontier forums went on and on and on about "where's the proof? WHERES THE PROOF??" and well here is your goddamn proof

also lol that a $30m~ a year company without a shipped product (although Chris would debate that I'm sure) is worth roughly $3b in stock lollllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

Virtual Captain posted:

They got 10% for £17,037,021 !?

Star Citizen valued at £166,667,021 or 209,801,112 USD !!!!!!!

Virtual Captain posted:

I hope reddit or thousands of citizen discords nitpick the hell out of that post .
Since GBP/USD was 1.34 on May 23rd I guess that means.

166,667,021 * 1.34405 = 224,008,809

TheAgent posted:

hello

• there's some serious issues with the faceware camera, including legal troubles
  
• camera was originally manufactured by gopro
  
• due to price mfg concerns, they may have switched to logitech
  
• ^both were mentioned with some degree of problems with production and clearance, still might be with gopro
  
• there's a rumor it's been cancelled completely, but presales will trudge along anyway
  
• price point was $299, the new sale price is supposedly $599 (or higher)
  
• this $599 package includes a new ship (or variant)
  
• the new package includes additional features that the people without the camera cannot access
  
• this restriction is software limited not hardware limited (whatever that means?)
  
• "Be real. Be there." was floated as a tagline (which sounds stupid as hell lol)
  
• has some sort of interaction with SQ42, but *only* if you have the faceware branded camera

TheAgent posted:

(and lol because wtf if this is real)

quote:

We have to put out patches at the scheduled quarterly dates, no matter the content in them. What was told to me is that we have to hit those dates, otherwise there will be Hell to pay. I'm not sure what kind of Hell, but it is tied to the financial health of the company. We have to show "continued growth and progress," and how we do that is by consistently hitting those dates. Internally, we no longer consider them "patches" but "milestones."

btw star citizen chatter (to me anyway) has increased like 5,000% in the last few days and I'm not entirely sure why

Lladre posted:

I find it's best to not try and interpret any meaning into anything that happens with this fiasco.

It's all just dumb coincidences on top of random cock ups.

quote:

Hi everyone,

Today we have some exciting news. In an effort to keep communication organized, streamlined, and in one unified location, we ask that you keep your discussion on these topics within this thread.

Squadron 42 Roadmap: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/board/2-Squadron-42
Around the Verse: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/16916-Around-The-Verse
Letter From the Chairman: https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/letter-from-the-chairman/investment-news
Board Members Post: https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cloud-imperium-games-appoints-two-new-board-members
2012-2017 Financials: https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cfo-comment-2012-2017-financials
Investment Fact Sheet: https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cloud-imperium-investment-fact-sheet

SPECTRUM posted:

Rant incoming...

OK, what the actual gently caress is with this roadmap for SQ42? What happened to SQ42 between 2011 and now? I mean wtf, they were presenting the cast in 2014 or something. Two years ago, all missions were supposed to be "greybox or better", now we find out that none of them are in greybox, let alone "better". None. Nil. Zero. Nada. 0%.

Then the fact that the carrot they're dangling from a - very long - stick for us now is "SQ42 beta". I always thought there wasn't supposed to be a beta, let alone an alpha, for SQ42? Because spoilers, remember... What's the matter, did marketing stop you from just plain out putting a live release projection on the roadmap, because "2023" would have looked too bad?

This roadmap, more than any "Answer the Call - 2016", raises the question of what the gently caress CIG were actually doing these past years in regards to SQ42. And why CR and others lied to us on multiple occasions - at GamesCom, at CitizenCon, at other events - about the state SQ42 is in.

And to think I was almost ready to give them some more money during the Anniversary Sale...

SPECTRUM posted:

So are the financials saying, basically, that you're spending approx $48m per year. All the money already raised is already spent and with $14m on hand at the end of 2017 the company would be bankrupt in 3 months if pledges stopped tomorrow?

I feel like this puts the community over a bit of a barrel, if people don't continue to buy ships the project is over but that's a lot of ships they need to buy.

So much for "we have enough money to finish the project if funding stops tomorrow," I guess that's another Chris Robertsism like "Answer the Call 2016."

SPECTRUM posted:

Yeahhh no. 2011 backer here. I'm glad I only put down $70, and really dont have any expectations for this anymore. Im done testing it, checking up on it, and wasting my time with it. If over $200 million crowd funded was not enough to market a game that is already known by most of the gaming world, and a project with millions of people ALREADY involved, then your project is crap and doesn't deserve my time.

THEUNITEDSTATESOF posted:

Can we get a post/image compiling all the different times SQ42 has been "right around the corner" with key quotes from Chris? I distinctly remember Chris being on a stage several times talking about how some of the beginning episodes are on the verge of being released. What is the narrative now that this roadmap apparently shows that the first 3 chapters aren't even in a playable whitebox state?

Virtual Captain posted:

Saying SQ42 is in the whitebox/greybox phase is so bonkers to me that I do that Jackie Chan confused brain hurting pose in real life.

Nobody here, or anywhere doubts that CIG can spend a hundred hours in 3DS Max and make a 3D asset. Levels, props, ships; this is the main thing they've pretended to get good at. Measuring those things with whitebox/greybox/textured/done makes perfect sense. But when you take that and try to measure the whole game's completeness, you're only fooling gullible backers, and possibly Chris.

Tokamak posted:

White/Grey Box are loosely defined terms that can mean different things depending on the studio and game being developed. Roughly, a white box is a level made out of simple shapes/placeholder assets that fleshes out the route the player takes through a level, a rough sequence of areas/events and physical proportions. A grey box is a level that details everything that is supposed to be in a level (in various states of completion). A building should look like a building, a bedroom should have a bed, closet... in it, a puzzle room should have a functional puzzle, scripted events should roughly work etc. For some games a white box might be closer to a grey box, a grey box is closer to a release state, or use a completely different set of metrics.

How CIG uses it has always been ambiguous. Even on the current schedule, the descriptions leave a lot to the imagination. When they announced everything was grey box or better a few years ago, people wondered what that meant. Someone clarified that grey box was closer to release state than typical grey box... turns out at CIG you can throw out near-final work and redo it.

Everything is listed as v2 because the second version of a thing sounds better than the first. Clearly there is already stuff like walking, swimming and AI that comes with the engine, so whatever they are working on will not be the first version. Why is it v2 and not v3, v5 or vWhatever? Because you aren't supposed to think about it too hard, and only looks silly when you point it out. Stuff that goes into the game is always 'tier 0', a first pass, or an early iteration. Everything you have a problem with will be solved with a second pass, a rework, 'improvements', a polish pass, etc. The way the state of the game is described is fluid and doesn't really mean a whole lot.

The final version will be the best version, and that is the only thing backers really care about. When CIG hand waves scaling back or dropping features, the backers get mad because it implies the final version won't be the best version. They tend not to acknowledge the things that have changed, or the downward trajectory of many features (there have been too many dumbed down features to list). As long as they can picture it all being fixed in a later version, they'll put up with being milked for cash and being hosed around with for another ten years.

Colostomy Bag posted:

Whew...thought we were going into the holiday without a clusterfuck.

Thanks CIG.

shrach posted:

There's a special note about how their marketing and publishing costs are rapidly rising and they expect that trend to continue. Over $7m in 2017.



You can also see the major mocap bloat in the 2015 cyan section for Contracted dev costs. 2014 I would assume is bloated by their bigger use of sub-contractors, which to be be fair they explain the sub-contractors in a note.

I would consider this to be delivering on the promise of the financials. I would have liked to have seen a breakdown on executive salaries but at the same time, this is a better breakdown that I would have expected.

It reflects what I suggested before. They are running at a deficit of some ~$6m+ per year currently, that can inflate a bit, but the new $46m investment only has to cover any shortfall between around ~$50m expenditure and ~$36m pledges, $3m subs, $6m tax breaks = ~$45m "income" per year, so this thing could potentially continue on some 46/6 = 7 years. Of course, there's a lot of ifs that would go into that assumption.

On the plus side, there's some money in this for a few years for Crytek/Skadden to pursue.

Lladre posted:

Remember when they said they had plenty of money to finish the game.

Ahahaha.

trucutru posted:

Define "finish"

-Chris Roberts.

Tokamak posted:

SPECTRUM posted:

in my count 2015 / 2016 IS the actual start of the proper development with all its faults and problems mid development.

shrach posted:

What the gently caress is this poo poo? Can't call them CIG anymore because they no longer do games and are dropping it from their name.

Citcon posted:

lol they released a ton of info that people said for years here if citizens knew ANY of these for sure there would be a revolt.

- Outside investment for a share in the company and voting seats on the board
- crazy executive bonuses for a startup. Most execs at normal startups take upper middle class level salaries. Anything more would royally piss off investors. The crazy salaries come in after commercial success or certain actual advanced deliverable milestones. It literally shows the top end guys are all multimillionaires off this already extracted.

- Backers were actively lied to about the state of SQ 42 at multiple points over years. Grey box, etc.
-There is no secret near complete build of anything.
-There will now be a beta (they said they wouldnt do this cuz spoilers)

- They had spent 90+% of the money they've taken in.
-CIG operates at a loss.
-They have <3 month cash reserve cushion (if funding stopped or slowed significantly) and are now utterly reliant on future investment to continue development.
- If funding stayed the same they'd have been bankrupt in about 18 months.
- the 46 million is earmarked for a (for its ambition) undersized marketing effort. So CIG needs to actually maintain current funding and monetize the SQ42 beta to the tune of about 10 million or go literally bankrupt. If they draw on the 46 million for non marketing it destroys long term future of the game.


And with CIG as the official source so theres no doubt, backers STILL couldn't be happier.


Y'all got corncobbed again. Many of you are consistently more wrong than most citizens are.

Baxta posted:

They're all saying they're ok with it.

I honestly don't think there's a line with these people. This is amazing.

I wonder what they will say about the executive salary line items.

posted:

Yeah I do think it will make it into Beta.... and?

Of course the project can fail. If it fails it does... and that will suck, but the world will go on.

But I think it will release and be an overall good game.

Sarsapariller posted:

yeah I'm sure he managed to retain total control over the property when they wrote him a check for 5 times the amount of cash he had on hand

Sarsapariller posted:

Next year:

Chris: "I'm carving Star Citizen up into independent warring donation-states. Please give more money to the tribe you want to win- griefers or honest Citizens. I will honor the result."

Backers: "Look show me where he ever said explicitly that he wouldn't just straight up start robbing us."

Megalobster posted:

For the people surprised or not understanding why at this point no backers still in it are realizing they've been bamboozled no matter how bad the news are, even worse, bad news cements even further their faith in the project, I invite you to read this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disconfirmed_expectancy

quote:

Disconfirmed expectancy is a psychological term for what is commonly known as a failed prophecy. According to the American social psychologist Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, disconfirmed expectancies create a state of psychological discomfort because the outcome contradicts expectancy. Upon recognizing the falsification of an expected event an individual will experience the competing cognitions, "I believe [X]," and, "I observed [Y]." The individual must either discard the now disconfirmed belief or justify why it has not actually been disconfirmed. As such, disconfirmed expectancy and the factors surrounding the individual's consequent actions have been studied in various settings.

quote:

Festinger stated that five conditions must be present if someone is to become a more fervent believer after a failure or disconfirmation:

-A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he or she behaves.
-The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual's commitment to the belief.
-The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief.
-Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief.
-The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence that has been specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, the belief may be maintained and the believers may attempt to proselytize or persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct.

Krycek posted:

Don't blame the devs, nor Chris, nor anyone within CIG. Star citizen can not fail, it can only be failed. This is all the backer's fault for not believing enough and pledging more.

TheAgent posted:

chris roberts will take on even more and more cash from VC's and private investors. ship and land sales will become even more predatory. cuz realistically to finish both games in a decent state (not alpha or beta but actual release) he'll need about 4 to 5 more years and hundreds and hundreds of millions more

saying "beta in 2020" is a huge red flag for several reasons. that means it'll be an early access title for at least a year or more, so don't expect a full release of even the most basic chapter (prelude) until 2022 (that's a full decade spent in dev. jesus christ).

what that also means is they are, without a doubt in my mind, trying to position themselves on the next set of console hardware in 2020. MS already has sent them dev kits (way back when scorpio was a thing) and they probably have the newer kits that were sent out in early 2018. MS has already eased up restrictions on early access games on their system; PS might do the same, but it's doubtful.

so they can poo poo out a terribly performing, crashy mess on a console and call it early access and let it languish there for years. backers will probably go out and buy their first xbox console, just so they can double dip to support the company. honestly that's what this money feels like its going towards -- getting sq42 up and in a basic state (lotta cutscenes, some places to visit, padded out gameplay with excessive travel times) to get shoved out on consoles

Bumble He posted:

if as a backer you dont feel betrayed at this point you have severe stockholm syndrome.

Bootcha posted:

Bootcha posted:

Hey guys, I know today's been hard on y'all.

So I want to let you know I'm here for you.

Merry ChristRobertsmas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCG7g9K3X4Q

Beet Wagon posted:

Who could have guessed that in TYOOL 2018 we'd find out
A) there is a publisher now
B) SQ42 isn't coming until 2020 (maybe)
C) they've been losing money every year for three years and
D) citizens are so loving stupid they're actually on board with all of this.

Hey you absolute drool-soaked imbeciles, you should have gotten a refund when you could have. We tried to warn you.

Beexoffel posted:

https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/20/star-citizen-interview-why-chris-roberts-raised-another-46-million-to-finish-sci-fi-universe/3/

Goons posted:

[laughs]

posted:

Is anyone else less interested in the ships and more interested in the technology and innovation coming from CIG? They fairly consistently amaze me with the quality of their engines, and clever solutions to problems, not to mention the passion for doing better. Hence why I backed the game.

posted:

It's considered by some that Roberts long term plan is twofold, he's going to polish up the engine once it's "finished" so he can license it out (actually competing with Crytek), and of course leverage his production studios in pumping out more content and games directly.
He won't have any issues attracting more private investment money (some suggest this is already happening) after demonstrating $210M worth of public fundraising. Of course he's probably going to play it safe and get SQ42 on shelves before selling the next big thing, but he's positioned to produce more than one AAA game off the backs of the company he's built to develop Star Citizen.

Sarsapariller posted:

To be a backer of CIG in the post-investor era is to be in a state of zen. It is to transcend shame, and humiliation, and fear, and exist in a sort of timeless absence of self-awareness that can only be described as divine. Your aura of pure and saintly cluelessness will become so heavy that people who have never even spoken to you are momentarily stricken as you walk by. "Holy poo poo," they will think, "I just met the biggest dumbass I'm ever going to meet, and I don't even know his name."

To give money to Chris in winter '18 is an act of total self-disregard, rivaled only by shooting heroin, or transcendental meditation. Unlike those pastimes, however, giving money to Chris fosters a much deeper sense of well being and satisfaction. God's in his heaven and all's right with the spaceships, they will think to themselves as they hit "YES GOD YES" on the purchase button. And the knowledge, the certain surefire knowledge, that the ship they have pledged for will come out, and it will be good, and by all that is holy on this earth it will punch above its weight- that is just the icing on the cake.

To talk about Star Citizen on the internet in this, the winter of our content, is to wade through a sea of FUD that can no longer touch backers. They've heard it all before- Star Citizen is out of money, the game is going to sell out to investors, the game is going to sell out to consoles, Squadron 42 isn't even being produced, you're throwing your money down a hole. And look! All of those things turned out to be true. How funny! But the very act of faith in the company itself has sustained it. By not believing the things that were clearly and plainly true, Citizens have managed to keep Chris going. By disregarding the six million waving red flags, they have uplifted him from his own incompetence and terrible management, and lo- all the bad things about Star Citizen are true and now, none of them matter. The 2018 backer finds that their faith in the game has not wavered even a millimeter. No matter how bad things actually are the game is still very real, and very very good, and so all the future FUD in the world finds no purchase on these purified souls.

ewe2 posted:

gently caress all that, Merry Parpmas! Let us all rejoice at this time of giving and hilarious mayhem!

Now, hymn number 42:

Marks! The Nerdy Backers Whinge

* lyrics

Here are some other Xmassy parps of yesteryear:

* Silent Parp
* Jingle Parps

shrach posted:

So here's something else I noticed in the work of Simon Elms' financials.


That's fair enough. It's a sort of hybrid cash flow but is there anything that sticks out here?

Let's take another look at the income.



I've highlighted with red, the note for Other Income. "This also includes timing differences". What could that mean? So I've added in black above the chart the UK tax credits converted into dollars. However, those are always received a year later than the period they relate to. A timing difference if you will.

So using their own figures, that means, at the end of 2017 CIG actually either had cash of ~$9m or they had cash as they state of $14m and they had a bank loan of $5m. Also that is year end. Because of the seasonality of the sales and consistency of expenditure, cash position would only get worse in the first few months of the year afterwards.

Which brings me to the point that these financials have no balance sheet, so you cannot see the loan(s) and you cannot trust the net cash position as stated, which to be fair to the Elms man he never states was actual cash for this reason. Kinda starting to appreciate the work he's done in these "financials".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSK0v0vTgXA&t=25s

Beet Wagon posted:

posted:

of course I think that CIG could finish SQ42 with $14 Million. By that I mean that they could release a finished and complete game. How is that possible? Just adjust the goals and the resource to match the budget over the estimated remaining production time.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

quote:

the final entry in our list of shame is what inspired me to make this video in the first place logo of the United Empire of Earth from star citizen design wise it is completely adequate but just like it some of our previous examples the symbolism here is terrible and boring

Scruffpuff posted:

Am I correct in the conclusion that now that they have investors with this level of ownership, the backers are in the back seat? Just because they still need whale oil to keep burning, doesn't mean the backers can call the shots. Seems to me the new investors have more direct influence and power than the suckers backers ever did. I mean, the backers actually did have power, but never exercised it because they were weak pathetic little pussies who were too busy crying that if someone questioned their space game they might not play it *sob sob* instead of cracking Chris Roberts's head in until he released something worthwhile. So they more or less ceded their power.

Ed: And now that I think about it, that makes this even worse - the investors have no interest in seeing a game come out - they're interested in a return. The manner of that return is immaterial. If it comes from a release, fine, if it comes from skimming whale donations, fine. If it comes from liquidation, fine. If it comes from selling the "IP" () to a Chinese smartphone game company, fine. The people in charge are the only people who aren't interested in a game releasing.

@ backers for "defending" Chris instead of demanding the competent performance that they paid him for.

G0RF posted:

quote:

I know there are elements — whether it’s God of War or Red Dead Redemption 2 or Last of Us 2, other games have similar elements to this. I feel like we’re at a level that’s above that, a level of connection and acting and characterization.

Yes Chris, you’re making the greatest single player game of all time. We know.

peter gabriel posted:

Look at Fallout 76, look at what has happened, then look at the videos people post about it, look at these things and think of this:
Fallout 76 is being ripped apart. Rightly so, but look at what people are ripping it apart for:

The videos showing horrendous bugs - These bugs are NOTHING compared to the absolute heap of poo poo that is Star Citizen, in a single 5 minute video of mine there are more bugs, broken poo poo and ridiculous glitches then your average hour long video about Fallout 76 - These have been there for years and are getting worse.
People are losing their minds over enemies not taking damage, like going on and on about it, but a bug like that in Star Citizen wouldn't even register to most long time players.
Todd LIED!!!!! - Put it in context, people are losing their poo poo about Todd lying, yet he told what, five or six lies? He deserves to be ripped apart but again, compare to Star Citizen - it's nothing - the weekly bullshit Chris spouted for years and years, these lies will come back to haunt him - lies, bullshitting, over optimism, call them what you like but they will be absolutely edited into multi hour long rants by nerds on Youtube for years to come.
Fallout 76 is getting poo poo for apparent micro transaction code hidden in the game - Star Citizen has for years pounded at people's wallets and absolutely will contain so many micro transactions it'll make EA look like a benevolent fund for gamers - there are already ways to buy credits for cash in a loving pre alpha tech demo.
Fallout 76 is getting poo poo for sending out nylon bags instead of canvas, this is the level they are at - Star Citizen backers have still not received their USB sticks and other crap they were promised, here is that page now: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/Spaceship-Usb/16GB - 404. Or a game.


Chris has unwittingly herded the best audience he could ever herd - loving nerds. Nerds are two things: Gullible and Smart arses.
This means they are easy to milk, yet will never admit they are wrong. So for any gently caress up CI not G make, a nerd cannot ever, ever admit it, they do the nerd thing and justify it. Be it selling the company, being sued, stealing artwork, missing deadlines, breaking promises, whatever it may be a nerd cannot say this is wrong, because it would mean they are wrong, and gently caress that - they will post 'logical fallacy' this and 'cognitive dissonance' that and 'controlling the narrative' and blah loving blah instead of admitting a $200 million corporation that shits on their dreams daily is even slightly in the wrong.

tithin posted:

Is there any movement on the legal case?

Hav posted:

I could have sworn that i posted that there was an extension granted on amending the complaint until after Christmas.

The courts dismissed a couple of claims based around the engine, pending amending the complaint according to the weaknesses that the court itself pointed out. You get 21 days to amend, but that put them into Christmas, so they requested and got an extension.

Scruffpuff posted:

I know I keep harping on this but people really need to dig into Chris's real history, not his self-referenced one. The man is an inept piece of poo poo whose only successes have been related to him taking credit for the work of others.

He's stumbled rear end-backwards into one situation after another that let him pretend to make things. WC 1, 2, 3, badly directing that stupid film, etc. - Chris Roberts is basically Forrest Gump in reverse. It's no coincidence at all that nobody will work with him twice, except the small number of people who follow him from grift to grift.

Bofast posted:

https://i.imgur.com/AKlwGpE.gifv

Aqua Seafoam Shame posted:

I know it's been a cavalcade of guffaws over these past 36 hours, but we can take a moment to revisit the hilarity of non-transferable gift cards? I swear, they deserve all the Christmas cheer for the creative ways they screw up.

Scruffpuff posted:

Let us also our heads in thanks this Chris-mas for the laughs CIG has brought through the years. I would like to revisit their "shipping" rules for t-shirts and various bric-a-brac that not only charged absolutely exorbitant shipping fees, but required each item purchased to also charge a separate shipping fee. Want to buy 10 shirts? Pay for 10 shirts and pay for 10 shipping fees. I never knew if they went the extra mile and actually put them in 10 separate boxes, because I don't know anyone stupid enough to have purchased actual physical items from this absurd tire fire.

peter gabriel posted:

If you want some kind of gauge on how late this loving game now is, the space ship shaped USB stick they offered backers was 16gb

Fangrim posted:

Reaction to people saying that SC and/or SQ42 would release in 2020:

2015 backer: "Shut the gently caress up dirty goon FUD-spreading troll!"

2018 backer: "I don't think that's enough time..."

Sectopod posted:

I fondly remember people getting banned back in 2015 on the old RSI forums for suggesting that the game might be delayed into 2018.

Bootcha posted:

On the other hand, the financials have revealed just how over the barrel the backers are. With this revelation, and with convention being turned on its head, it's better to wait and see what happens rather than predicting. I will stand by my word that I say, that I believe that 2019 is when the dream dies. I'm making assumptions based on old market behavior coupled with my knowledge of just how on fire the dumpster fire is. I'm better at risk assessment than soothsaying. Risk assessment says abandon loving ship. My soothsaying's been hit or miss.

It's really CI(G)'s ball now, it's their feast to spoil, their fuckup to commit.

And it's the backers' ball too, but at the same time I don't know at this point how much CR is going to rely on new Daddy Warbonds over the brown sea to prop the game's development from here on forward.

At this point, there are only 3 things standing in the way of the MVP.

1) CryTek. We'll have to see if Skadden can argue 2.4 back in, or if they can argue the other points as being more grevious than the initially dismissed section section. I don't know how much longer this can go on from a sane person's perspective, but this poo poo can easily be dragged out to 2021 from a legal perspective.

2) Money. Will backers welcome their new Cayman Overlords? Will sales drown enthusiasm? Will there be anything left to sell? Star Citizen has surprised everyone time and time again. And to be fair to them, the faithful have surprised us as well by big event sales.

3) Development success. All of this effort is for naught if money runs out and the game ain't playable. Billionaires can't stop a recession, and they rarely stop a company from going under. People joked that CryTek couldn't pay employees three years ago, but what happens if that's the case with CI(G)? What happens when OCS and the flight model lie a broken mess no one can comprehend? What happens when let go of your server team? 60% of your artists and animators? What happens when only Sandi can shoot, produce, edit, and publish a positive RtV?

Again, I gotta say, I have no loving clue what the end game is.

Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarp.

Wise Learned Man posted:

"How dare you demand what you paid for? The game isn't finished yet!"

"How dare you ask for a refund? You already got what you paid for!"

Quavers posted:

I asked the INN Relay podcast a question about Erris' January 2017 "where's Sq42" meltdown, and they responded...

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/352746660?t=01h25m19s

Quavers posted:

It's like watching someone go through the 5 stages of grief in real time

Scruffpuff posted:

CIG has demolished that 5 stages trope. Backers actually experience all 5 stages, along with a 6th stage, "eager taking it up the rear end," and they experience all 6 stages simultaneously at all times.

Virtual Captain posted:

posted:

If Squadron 42 releases within the next nine months, as I strongly suspect it will, then a full Stanton in a similar timeframe would probably buy them another two years of minimal, incremental updates. I suspect they could get away with simply adding functionality up to that point, even if we still only had Stanton.

5 Stages of Grief
Denial
Anger
Bargaining ◀
Depression
Acceptance

colonelwest posted:

I think we're starting to see the minimal viable product take shape. While Chris would be perfectly happy developing his masterpiece for the next 10 years, endlessly increasing the scope and imposing his bumbling will in arbitrary and detrimental ways; the cash situation as we've long suspected is putting pressure on them to release something. Even if the pledges continue at this level indefinitely, CIG's days are numbered.

Chris waxing poetically about "this is the game' and "what is release?" at Citcon was the culmination of a year of quietly scaling back expectations while still stoking the dreams of the faithful with new ships and vague promises of scope busting features pushed back more and more into some hazy and possible post-release future.

Like every other failed early access/crowdfunded project there will be release when the money dries up, an empty shell of what was promised. The MVP is an exit strategy, a way to pop smoke and slowly fade away. You "released a game" which shields you from legal and some public backlash, and you can always string along the faithful with promises of amazing post-release content.

For SC the timing is hard to nail down, but I think we're going to see the first few chapters of SQ42 only, they've already made their roadmap in such a way to support and justify this. It will probably just be a boring on rails shooter with all of the cool stuff happening in interminable hours of cheesy cut scenes. If they really are concentrating on SQ42, the PU will suffer even further. I think a "finished" Stanton system with marginally more to do but missing almost of the promised spaceship mechanics and gameplay loops, will be pushed out the door as an "Alpha" and linger in that sorry shape indefinitely.

Chris needs some sort of "graceful" exit from this, I still think he has delusional visions of being an entertainment mogul and may even be eyeing other projects, but the reality of the hole he is in seems to be setting in. He even admitted that he already owes a copy of both games to everyone who is or will likely ever be interested in this mess.

I don't think 2019 will be the end by any means, I think they still have a few years left in the tank. But I think we'll see even more scaling back of expectations and desperation for more cash. The most interesting thing will be how the remaining backer base, already boiled down to its lunatic core, will handle the calvacade of disappointments and marketing sleaze that is surely coming. The game will continue to be forgotten by the general gaming public and fall hilariously behind the technological curve.

Scruffpuff posted:

I was pondering this just now - why CIG is suddenly comfortable giving not only a release date, but one years away. And it occurs to me - this isn't a CIG projected release date: it's a deadline imposed by their new shareholders and board members.

I'd like to see Chris play the "but I made that promise so long ago, why are you holding me to it all these years later" card on a loving shareholder agreement. We're going to see CIG gesticulate and gyrate in lots of exciting new ways to redefine what "beta" means.

Shareholders: "Chris you missed the deadline, this is not a beta quality product."
Chris: "Uhhh, uhhhh, well what does 'beta' mean exactly, uhh, uhhhhh, *waves hands* you see that's the old way of uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh saying 'beta' and what it uhhhhhh means, but I'm not beholden to..."
Shareholders: "We're liquidating your company."
Chris: "Uuuhhh uhhhhh hahaha jokes on you, we already have a coffee maker."

posted:

People play SC much more than other games and enjoy it too. I play 20 hours a week. It's a lot of fun. More fun than I have in other games. We trade, upgrade our stuff, do fleet battles, explore new areas and its different each time. SC is a great sandbox to do crazy stuff in. No other game allows you to have the kind of emergent and first person gameplay you can have in SC.

Icochet posted:

SC sure makes christmas shopping easy. I told my kids that Santa might just bring them their very own spaceships. They're absolutely stoked. Can't wait to see the look on their faces when they open their envelopes. Printed on extra glossy paper too.

Blistex posted:

Those are the number of shell companies that might be normal for Imperial Shell, not Cloud Imperium Games. There might be a few of them that work on different aspects of the game, but I've been led to believe that pretty much everything game wise happens within a 15 second walk from Robert's desk. The only reason why you would have that many companies is to siphon off the initial pot and gradually make the money "legit" for Chris to pocket.

Start with 100-200 Million Bucks.
<routes 5 million through a company that manages their building. This company pays the rent, but it also pockets a good chunk of change for "operating costs">
<funnels 5 million through a HR company that manages their payroll and benefits. This company does that, but also pockets . . . >
<moves 5 million through a licensing company that deals with the game engine license, the licensing or CIG's own work, etc. This company takes a sizeable cut>
<moves 5 million through a company that deals with office and travel expenses, which takes a cut>
<moves 5 million through a company that manages PR, but they take a sizable cut . . . >
<moves 5 million through a company that maintains their European office (Timeshare in Italy). Which takes a cut>
<moves 5 million through a consulting company that manages promotion, sending Roberts and his wife to the Caribbean for . . . reasons?>
.
.
.
<moves 5 million through a consulting company that . . . they don't even bother to give an explanation at this point>

In a regular company with the number of employees that Roberts has, the first 3 responsibilities would be taken care of by a part-time employee or a company that you pay a small monthly fee to. A company with the staff and responsibilities of CIG doesn't need that many for any legitimate reason. The number of shell companies he has is strictly to create a paper-trail to explain how all of the missing cash ended up in Robert's accounts or accounts that he controls (since he's obviously the CEO/Controlling partner in all of them.

Scruffpuff posted:

The Chris Roberts game development pipeline:

"I know I can do this."
"I know what I want to do."
"I think they can do this."
"I think I know what I want them to do."
"Hopefully they can get something good out."
"Hopefully they can get something out."
*lies to potential investors about state of game, gets cash injection*
"I know I can do this."
(loop)

PederP posted:

In my experience (a few years in finance), profit isn't really the most important thing for banks. They care about about collateral - banks will happily provide credit for failing business ventures, as long as the bank has dibs on tangible assets covering all liabilities. In most countries, increasing the amount of credit given without proper collateral will in turn increase the required core capitalization of the bank. And that's something that hits profitability for the shareholders right in the moneysacks. If banks want to invest in tech and gaming they buy stocks, either directly in the relevant companies, or through hedge funds. They don't directly invest in privately held corporations. Something like the Coutts loan can only happen because there's a very tangible and liquid tax credit coming up. Banks will happily take a cut from acting as an intermediary for less risk-averse investors, especially if the investment comes in the form of something that doesn't provide immediate liquidity. So I wouldn't be surprised if the $46 million (probably not delivered as a lump sum) were immediately ponied up as collateral for cash needed to fund day-to-day operations.

Banks make a profit through their ability to provide credit and acting as intermediaries - not through investment. They are among the most rational of operators in the financial world - they are all about externalizing risk. The bank always wins, irrespective of whether clients win or lose. Sudden and unexpected events that shortcircuit their ability to offload and/or kill any risk are among the only things that can hurt banks (e.g. stock crashes, housing market crashes, unexpected forex events). That and when they get caught doing money laundering.

I am less savvy when it comes to VCs, but my takeaway from others in the tech industry is that they're usually not friendly, hands-off money - and they very much like having their own people at the apex of power. I wouldn't be surprised to see some changes in top management during 2019. If the investor gets spooked there will be consequences. That's if Ortwin isn't already their man.

Scruffpuff posted:

The removal of Chris Roberts is my dream scenario here, as it pits the backers against themselves for the final fight: the lie of Chris Roberts being a visionary game developer is why they pledged, but his ineptitude is why the game is in the state it's in. If that happens these narratives will be an odds and backers will have to choose what they really funded: the fraud, or the game?

Scruffpuff posted:

quote:

I think you fail to understand them. If CR is removed and the game is released in some form, then the faithful will proclaim it would have been even better if CR hadn't been removed. They will claim CR's removal was a mistake and a lesser product will result.

I guess they could also claim that without CR's spark of genius the game would never have been made. It seems you can't win against insanity.

SomethingJones posted:

It took them 6 years to realize their engine would never ever work

You think they'd have hired experienced devs to work on that engine? Or the new UK manager who is a very highly regarded industry veteran? When his predecessor noped out because he realized it was a clusterfuck from start to finish?

They've pulled people in to build this thing from scratch on its own engine.

I don't see anybody anywhere saying that, but there it is, that's what they're doing.

The PU is scrap, they can't hire anyone to work on it and the whole industry knows how bad it is.

posted:

Its sucks that an $80 microtransactions is called cheap.

AcidRonin posted:

It's ironic that as a kid I really loved freelancer and fro folowing this saga it seems the only way I got that game was Microsoft removing CR.

AcidRonin posted:

It's ironic that as a kid I really loved freelancer and fro folowing this saga it seems the only way I got that game was Microsoft removing CR.

Byolante posted:

It's a miracle a game came out of it that was almost good considering when something like that normally happens you get agents of mayhem or duke nukem forever.

tithin posted:

I'd heard AoM was good? what's the script - why is it bad

Scruffpuff posted:

You get a gold star and free ice cream for actually realizing it. You also get to save thousands of dollars, because the people who didn't come to the realization you did are still giving Chris free money, not comprehending that he can't make games.

Hav posted:

It’s just not that good; the jokes are flat and the overall thing could have been handled better. Worth $15 for the city, which is impressive, but they managed to step backwards from the high that was SR3/4.

tithin posted:

That's honestly pretty disappointing - sr3/4 were good and the way I'd heard it was that AoM was meant to be a "soft reset" of the Saints Row universe, so pretty sad it didn't work out.

AcidRonin posted:

drat wish I knew how to play freelancer in 2018 ha.

Hentai Jihadist posted:

I really hope virtual captain hasn't found something better to do. I need my fix!!

Thoatse posted:

A recap of Star Citizer in 2018:



Ahi!

Virtual Captain posted:

posted:

Out of 15 contracts I attempted today, I could only complete 3.Most of the time the server just up and DC'd me.

Once my entire PC froze.

Once the package I was holding in my hands just vanished while I going to the drop off point on foot.

The other 3, nothing was able to figure out a way to fail, so I was able to complete the contract.

It's so infuriating to just keep running into failure after failure with no other option than to try again and hope for a better outcome.

Star Citizer: Running into failure after failure with no other options

”Derek Smart” posted:

I just don't see any feasible way for them to go anywhere with Star Citizen in its current form. They will of course keep adding broken stuff on top of a broken stuff and spend more time fixing layers of broken stuff than working toward an end goal. They have to do that in order to keep as close to promises as possible. It's why they sell JPEGs, make the ships, throw it in - regardless of functionality or required gameplay features being implemented. And it's precisely why they seemingly don't have a closed game loop - of any kind - over 6 yrs later.

Now it's going to get worse because croberts is $46M (that we know of) in the hole to third-parties and seeing as they're NOT profitable, money to pay that back has to come from somewhere. That's through cut-backs so that they can stretch backer money, and also through sales of something new. That being SQ42 - which is now probably two whole years - according to them.

I have to say that it's astonishing to me that they're touting SQ42 as coming to Beta in 18 months (which probably means about 24 months to "completion"), and very few backers blinked. Aside from being a massive five alarm fire proving me right that they've been lying this whole time. It's even more astonishing that those same backers look at the financial brochures and immediately proclaim that everything is fine!

G0RF posted:

The first time I watched this, Sandi’s disses were the standout.

But in rewatching it again, I’m drawn more to Chris’s uncharacteristic cautiousness. Just listen to his hedging, his emphasis on the risks. We’re heading into year 7, four years past his original target release for Squadron, and he’s actually nervous and non-commital for a change.

Contrast that with the idle making-it-up-as-I-go yammering of a few years back and a hundred million dollars less.

Seems like Chris discovered the virtues of circumspection this year. At least when discussing timeframes. Maybe next year he’ll dial back the competitive smack talk, too?

Sandi posted:

well you just gotta hurry up and finish already

Dementropy posted:

Virtual Captain posted:

Razorfist:
"did I miss a loving meeting folks? Are you allowed to skate past 'nothing is wrong go back to sleep everything's fine’ right to 'we secured alternate funding and are delaying the game to 2020' without once admitting you hosed up in the interim?"


"I've seen folks claim Chris Roberts is a master manipulator a Jonestown Ian cult leader inciting his frothing followers to swell the proverbial flavor aid as they're utterly steeped in stupidity but that's a false assertion and the sooner you abandon the narrative the sooner you'll snap some of these saps out of it.”
“Chris Roberts isn't taking advantage of people's stupidity he's taking advantage of their common sense; any human being with common sense sees here's someone pitching a game, controller in hand, watches him crapping around with cockpit switches in a goddamn spaceship and logically assumes ‘well poo poo, interactive demo it's practically already loving here I better get it on the ground floor of this phenomenon’"

"maybe, just maybe between shrieking at the government to regulate your loot boxes, and impelling your audience to bend over for a Belgian butt loving you could oh I don't know turn your gaze to a game that was teased in 2012, hasn't delivered more than a third of its overall runtime, that couldn't hit the framerate of a flipbook at or a loving strobe light if it was running on the bat-computer, that's refused refunds for half a loving year yet continues to court donations in the multiples of thousands for a game that to date has the corporeal essence Casper. Today's video is brought to you by selective outrage being cranky for clicks since 2012 patreon.com slash bought out bitch; granted between all the unboxing bullshit some of these poo poo bags are actually beginning to discuss Star Citizen now that you can see the financial crater from loving space"

"the difference between Chris Roberts and a snake oil salesman is a sink oil salesman actually possesses loving snake oil chris roberts sells you a jpeg and a promise"

"I'm RazörFist, see you in the 'verse Commandos"

Scruffpuff posted:

https://clips.twitch.tv/SparklingHandsomeSnailTinyFace
What gets me every loving time is that these "seasoned gamers" are sitting there, trying in earnest to play something that's very, very obviously a tweaked model-viewer masquerading as a game, yet they just play it straight. "Oh it's in alpha, oh it's not optimized, oh you have to expect bugs," and you can see right on the loving screen that this poo poo is well beyond just having bugs. Everything's spinning in whatever way, there's no physics operating or combat mechanics functioning in any reasonable way, it's just kids with X-Wing toys in their hands running around the yard together.

It's yet another case of leading people off the cliff by acting normal around poo poo that's far from it. There's nothing about that clip that doesn't drat CIG, but nobody will speak up because if these fine fellows playing it here look like they're having fun and aren't pointing out how this isn't even a foundation to fix bugs from, well they're the experts so this poo poo must be normal.

Beet Wagon posted:

I saw someone on the refunds reddit arguing with someone else about whether or not planets rotate in SC right now. I was pretty sure they do, so I thought "Hey, there's an easy video to make while I go clean my kitchen!"

25 minutes of wresting with their stupid loving quantum drive system so I can get far enough away to not rotate with a planet but close enough to see it, the server shits itself and I get this and a hard freeze:



absolutely great fuckin game

Gosts posted:

Mr.PayDay posted:

A Commando posted:

They have the scale and the engine and the procedural tools to do something crazy like procgen a full-scale Death Star, albeit one filled with lots and lots of fairly samey rooms.

But when you consider the actual size of the Death Star, and the fact that a million people were on board (and died) when Luke blew up the completed one, it's a little less fun to actually see as an implemented in-game place. Mostly it'd be a place to get lost in.

While typing this up I had a wild idea, and I'm calling this Chris Roberts' secret endgame goal as the final finishing touch on SC's legacy before he finally retires from the project and from major game development in general: A ringworld. A big one.
Doing this would require shittons of work on the engine's already-homebuilt procgen terrain system to handle the sheer scale of the Ringworld and tuning the LOD detail levels so actually rendering the Ringworld is a reasonable task for computers built by mortals. Reminder that the original Ringworld in Niven's book was 1AU in diameter and 1.6 million kilometers wide, resulting in a total surface area 3 million times that of Earth. You wouldn't be able to even view more than a small segment of the Ringworld at a time when close enough for the terrain to be at more than simple LODs, so it's not crazy to imagine StarEngine attempting to do it.

The Ringworld alone would represent hundreds of thousands of times the amount of surface terrain available in the entire rest of the game. I'm just imagining that the final content update to SC is this, and then CIG keeps the servers open for as many years as they can while people colonize the ringworld and stake out territory.

Yes, it's absolutely insane and over the top, and this is why I believe that it's possible that somewhere in the back of his crazy mind, Roberts is holding onto this as a late-game surprise. We all know he wouldn't turn down the chance if someone even suggested it could be possible to do it.

I am glad that this type of blinded and dreaming idiots keep buying jpegs lmao

The Saddest Robot posted:

Building a universe takes a lot of time.

I mean the current universe has been in development for 13 billion years. It is not unreasonable to expect a universe with Star Citizen's level of detail to take twice that.

Cameroon_TLPC posted:

Happy New Year everyone. I know there's been some talk of our financials lately, but please let me assure you that everything is absolutely fine, wonderful and amazing here at Team <3Pledge. We have plenty of your money left!
https://twitter.com/PledgeTeam/status/1080186566490783744

posted:

Yeah truly, i've never really been one of those "screenshot-guy" but this games is just so beautiful. It's a child's dream coming to life

posted:

Its really annoying to grind for 100k aUEC to spend on ship gear then instantly loose it with server crash

posted:

the levels of hypocrisy at CIG of the charts. All the bragging about no smoke and mirrors and not fakeing it, and then they also do it and keep quiet about it. I'm not at all bothered by takeing shortcuts if it saves time and budget, but i just fcking hate hypocrites

posted:

it's been 5 years with this community becoming progressively more delusional all while the game is still broken as loving poo poo in the simplest areas.

colonelwest posted:

https://twitter.com/Jorunn_SC/status/1080192871163154433

13. Fire Sale of the company to a lovely Chinese MMO publisher.

Scruffpuff posted:

quote:

Meanwhile, Reddit is convinced that the CI(G) tech is so glorious that they will be able to sell it to other studios someday, and Crytek is slavering to get their hands on it. Chris Roberts is the guru they deserve.

This may be the funniest lie in the entire project. Their endless and hilarious failures attempting to create bog-standard technology, then hacking in hilariously ineffective workarounds, is pretty much this company's thumbprint. The conceit that other companies, that already have the working technology CIG is attempting to build from scratch for dumb reasons, would pay them for the privilege of using their much worse, much more stupid version, is beyond insane.

What I really think is happening with Reddit is information warfare. They're flooding the forums and offsite chat areas with misinformation to help Chris trick people out of their money. Basically, his fraud has extended beyond his company and to his backer base. They figure if enough people read that Crytek wants to buy CIG tech, and they read it from enough places, then they start repeating it, it takes on a life of its own and becomes The Truth.

CIG has been running this information warfare campaign since its inception. And it goes so, so far beyond lying. Their screenshots, marketing videos, every Tweet is carefully constructed to use the past tense to imply the game has been out for years, and "where were you when" polls to make it look like there's a healthy, active community. They never say those things are true, they just act as if they are and let the snowball roll itself down the mountain. Same with ships, things like bounty hunting and piracy, things like missions and trade, it's all complete bullshit. Star Citizen still is a tech demo model-viewer at best, and if all the planets line up just right and you don't crash, you can move a box between two places and role-play in your head that you just "smuggled" something.

Ironically, the glue that holds this lie together is the gap itself - the incredible gulf between what Star Citizen is, and what it's been implying that it is for years now. It's too wide a gap for some people to get over. "Are you telling me that all these streamers are stupid and/or completely full of poo poo, and CIG's videos are all bullshit, and the 'game' isn't even designed yet, but they're charging hundreds, even thousands of dollars for ships that have no designed or functional purpose, and you want me to believe people are paying for this even though the game is completely loving broken right down to the foundation?"

"Yes."

Virtual Captain posted:

This week I encountered at least two new backer threads. Wish I had them handy because some of the dreamscaping in the comments is so far disconnected from what you know they actually played is just so over the top you have to shake your head. I believe in both instances the conversation eventually ends with the newbie being convinced into buying a larger jpeg than the Aurora they were planning on.

Of course, the mechanics of reddit/starcitizen play into this as well since any effort to call out this astroturfing is easily stamped out through means of karma or shadowbanning.

Scruffpuff posted:

What CIG has done, and continues to do, goes so far beyond astroturfing that it needs a new name. Astroturfing in the literal sense is turning something mostly green and imperfect into something uniformly green and perfect, if fake.

What CIG is doing is the same thing Wile E Coyote does when he makes a painting of a train tunnel on a rock wall - the presentation is literally the opposite of the reality. And the backers hit that wall every time, assuming the next time they try they'll zoom into the painting like the Road Runner.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

That's because backers are incapable of differentiating the game as it is right now with what the game "will" become once CIG gets all those pesky blockers out of the way. That particular attitude has not changed since 2012, and is fundamental to the success of the program. That GIF of Chris Roberts writing "DREAMS" on the white board is not a joke; he knows full well that the success of his program (defined by continued funding) is reliant on the dreams and aspirations of the people he exploits. I have no insight into the actual workings of CIG, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if Chris is using the same tactics on his employees that he used on his backers. The backers have the dream of playing the next great space opera simulation, being a part of something revolutionary. It doesn't take much of a stretch to imagine that Chris is getting his workers to fall for the dream of developming that great game; of their time at CIG being a major milestone in their career instead of millstone around their neck.

Rad Russian posted:

When given the choice of:
1) A small indie dev who has no connections whatsoever to even get into a publisher's office, who is asking for 50K on Kickstarter to finish the game they've been working on for years
2) A rich millionaire gently caress living in a castle who knows everyone in the industry, has talked to 20 publishers already and they all laughed him out of their office, who is now instead begging for several million on Kickstarter instead of getting actual investors

Instead of throwing $5 at #1 (and helping kickstart 100s of neat games!), a bunch of morons spend 10s of thousands each on #2.

G0RF posted:

GamerMax is getting PISSED about CIG’s greed. Dude really regrets buying the Idris P.

“I have done a LOT for you, CIG!!!”

posted:

They get about 100k a day of income. With very large spikes now and then. I'm inclined to believe the statement about accepting the investment
for advertising. CR always stated backer money was for development only... Now I may be terribly naive but I see no trouble yet.

The Titanic posted:

Alright, got the tattoo done. It's a with Vertisce on top of it and a "In the last 500 years..." underneath it in a circle pattern. I'd totally show you but it's very so you'll just have to use your imagination and know I've forever shown my inner love for Star Citizen for all time.

Feel free to get your own tattoo too!

MilesK posted:

juggalo baby coffin posted:

this is the derek smart fan forum and here we all love line of defense and get very upset if anyone says its bad

Beet Wagon posted:

I’ve jokingly considered reaching out to CIG and offering to help put a cap on their FUD problem for a fee just to see what they said, but tbh the longer this goes on the more I think they’d actually take me up on it lol

Gort posted:

For Star Citizens, this is the game - talking about it online and fantasizing about what's to come. The end of the game is when it's released, all of the fantasizing comes to an end, and it turns out writing a lot of words on Reddit doesn't make you the King of Games.

BurtLington posted:

It may no longer be Christmas, but I made a song. Here's the original, sing along everyone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv0hlbWpa1w

It was GDC day
Wearing a turtleneck
On the stage I said to you, it’s unlike any other game
And then I showed the game
And Squadron 42
I linked a kickstarter
And took money from you

I scammed the citizens
We raised two million
I've got a feeling
That I can take more money from you
So see you in the ‘Verse
I love your money
I can see a better time
When my dreams are paid by you

They've got ships for payslips
They've got ships you can board
But the you noclip right through them
And I cannot afford
When you first showed me gameplay
At an old GDC
You promised me
The ‘verse was waiting for me

You’re a liar
You are funny
And I made off with your money
When the slides finished playing They howled out for more
Even though we were lying,
All the nerds they were crying
They opened their wallets
And now they are poor

The cultists of the reddit forum
Were crying "Two more weeks"
And the Goons were getting banned
For FUD

It’s a scam
It’s a farce
You're can kiss my rich arse
Demanding a refund while I sail on my yacht
You scumbag, you liar
A refund a desire
Your scam is so vast
And the ‘verse it won’t last

The cultists of the reddit forum
Still crying "Two more weeks"
And the Goons are getting banned
For FUD

I could have made a game
But you just wanted fame
You took my dreams from me
When I first backed you
I still have your money whale
And even though I’ve failed
To meet the deadlines
You’ll have the game in 2032

The cultists of the reddit forum
Still crying "Two more weeks"
And the Goons are getting banned
For FUD

shrach posted:

Was on a yacht with my friends Clive and Keith Calder. Heard a great joke.

Q: What is the quickest way to become a millionaire?
A: Be a billionaire and invest in Star Citizen.

Kosumo posted:

Does anyone know if the 46 million came with LTI?

Sarsapariller posted:

Hav posted:

I hold out hope after Gat out of Hell, but they might have peaked.

Bootcha posted:

quote:

If you woke up tomorrow, and were appointed CEO of CI~G, with Chris a mere creative consultant, powerless but highly visible, what would you do to save the company, and the dream?

I answered this long ago when there was scope that could be cut, but considering we're in the SQ42 sprint, here's an updated semi-serious answer:

1) Settle CryTek lawsuit: Gentlemen, there have been some transgressions in the past I was not present for we need to rectify. We have 2 games in development, and a long line of engine improvements we need to share. Let's be done with this.
2) Service the Moneybags: Gentlemen, thank you for the settlement money. Here's an extra 10% of the company.
3) Offer a 2 week special dispensation refund event: Gentlemen, those of you who wish out, here's your chance.
4) Fire Sandi and Ortwin: Lady and Gentleman, your services are no longer required. Hire a lawyer that has no vested interest.
5) Press Tony Z and Erin under a Thumb: Gentlemen, you have some ability. Now is the time to stop dreaming and start working. If you can't, you can return to obscurity while someone else with more knowledge and ability takes your jobs.
6) Take Stock: Gentlemen, what works, what doesn't? Time to prioritize functionality and gameplay. I want 40% of this pipe-dream in the bin.
7) Marching Orders: Leads, you are now Leads. You and your team have authorship of your departments. This is what we need, give me that and we'll keep tasks rolling.
8) Peacock Plucking: Chris may have given some of you leeway to strut like you're the cock of the walk. No more. We're all in this together, we're all on the same page, and if that ruffles your feathers you can show yourself out.
9) Split SQ42 5 ways: We need to put something out within 2 years. Episode 1 has 5 chapters to fulfill 50 mission promise. 160 of you get that moving. 40 of you get Chapter 2 prepped.
10) SC/SQ42 Concurrency: UK directs SQ42 development. Austin is in charge of integrating SQ42 tools and improvements to SC, as well as gameplay design and mechanics skunkworks. LA is in charge of art and assets. GER will develop tools for all departments.
11) Open Development: Full disclosure to the public, these are our sins. We are moving forward.
12) Rub.
13) Cease New Spaceship Ideas: All we are selling now is $10 to $50 skins for sold spaceships.
14) Hire Derek Smart.
15) Resign.

Daztek posted:

psa: The number of weapons you can equip is broken

Scruffpuff posted:

I think some of the now vitriolic "haters" became so specifically because there were early backers, and watching how Chris completely squandered the biggest free lunch in the history of gaming is loving infuriating. If he had created 10% of the behemoth he eventually promised, and cut out his moronic storyline, motion capture, and fidelity poo poo, we'd all be playing the loving renaissance of space gaming right now. And it would have been popular enough to fund patches and improvements over time. At worst, it could have become a private server and mod community.

What actually got developed exceeded the negative expectations of the world's most pessimistic people. I'm in awe of how bad every single decision is, and how flawed the execution is on literally every level. It's like handing the cure to cancer to a father with a dying child, and watching him lock eyes with you while he pours it down the sink in view of the kid. That analogy works because according to Reddit, video games are more important than life or death.

Virtual Captain posted:

"Star Citizen is a murky money deep hole that everyone is stuck down right now; we have put all our money into a fraudster, a con man, a silver-tongued lizard."

"The jig's up; Star Citizen while CIG and Chris Roberts is at the helm, is never going to actually come out."


haha owned.

Virtual Captain posted:

"if and when this project fails, everybody who has spent a stupid amount of money in this is going to hate themselves because they got sucked in by conman Chris Roberts. I have spent a stupid amount of Australian dollars on this game myself okay, I'm one of those people that are gonna hate myself forever if this project fails. I have to have it succeed"

uhhh..

Quavers posted:

Chris Roberts explains what went wrong on the Squadron 42 game

I recently spoke with Chris Roberts about his in-development-limbo game Star Citizen, but as a fan who grew up playing Wing Commander it was hard not to pick his brain about the classic gaming series. Roberts said he’s most proud of the first and third Wing Commander titles, although he thinks the game was the best in the first title and the narrative was handled well in the third.

In fact, the first Wing Commander game was the only title he’s released where he wouldn’t change a thing. Roberts spent around a year prototyping the game by himself, he brought on a small team for the last six months, and the game he had imagined became the game we played. “We hardly did any balancing on the game. We designed it on paper, all the missions and everything, and it came together the way I saw it in my head,” he said. “It’s amazing, because maybe we tweaked one mission and that’s it. We put it on paper, and then we did it and it worked.”

There was something else I wanted to ask about, but I didn’t want to poke at old wounds. Looking back, what did he learn from the Squadron 42 game? There was a long silence, long enough for me to grow slightly uncomfortable, and then he began to laugh.

A learning experience
I don’t want to attack the man or mock the game, because even though Roberts was inexperienced when it came to this generation's AAA games, he went in there and got that thing made. It takes guts to step up to that kind of task and take your best swing at it, and I have nothing but respect for someone who was able to bring a world to both games and movies, even if the final result wasn’t as good as it could have been. Roberts was candid about the experience, and seemed more than comfortable talking about what went wrong.

“Squadron 42 was very frustrating for me. I saw the game in my head, and the game that was made was not the game I saw in my head,” he said. “I learned a lot making the game, I think if I was making a game again it would be very different, after the ten years I’ve spent making this game.”

Roberts wrote and directed Squadron 42, but his career in gaming didn’t stop there; he’s since worked mopping floors on a number of yachts, including the wonderful Lord of Stimperor with EightAce, The Agent and Major Tom.

So why wasn’t the game. How do I put this… very good? “There’s a litany of reasons. I was a first time crowdfunding developer, and even though I had directed live action in Wing Commander 3 and 4, directing mocap is a different level of subtlety. There are many small things and small moments that you need to pay attention to when you’re doing a game scene that you don’t need to doing vignettes for a movie,” he explained.

“Squadron is all about the quiet moments, and the visual moments, and as a visionary game director you’re looking at a script and you see all this dialog, and naturally that’s taking up 80 percent of the page,” he continued. “And you just think you need to create that and you’re all good. But it’s the reaction shots, it’s the staring off in the distance, or just the texture of the models to give you a feeling. You need to think about that, and now when I go back to building Star Citizen, I do think about that.”

He worries about fans who think he doesn’t care about the multiplayer Star Citizen, because he’s bringing what he’s learned making single player games to making the MMO its own game, apart from the PvP slider.

A short production schedule
“You have to prepare correctly,” Roberts told the Penny Arcade Report as he listed what went wrong on the Squadron 42 part of project Star Citizen.

One of the problems with Squadron 42 was that the deal with the Calders happened before the company had repaid the many bank loans. Calder then told Roberts that Squadron 42 had to be done to release the Christmas of 2020, which gave him only another two years of production, nine in total.

That’s an incredibly tight turnaround for any game, but it was even worse for a fidelity-driven production. Ten years or so would be closer to the standard, and many games are in the planning stages for much longer. With only two years to prepare for release, there wasn’t enough time to do things like mocap the design of the females. The budget was also an issue, as they were only given $290 million, a record-breaking budget for a science fiction game (and later MMO) that would rely so much on fidelity and immersion sequences.

“That’s why the Vanduul sucked and they were basically cut out of the game,” Roberts said bluntly. “If we had the proper pipelines we could have prototyped, and had some time and make sure it was done well. These are all things I learned so when I produce games for other people I can apply what I’ve learned and hopefully help some of the other directors in the way I wish I had been helped out when I made a game. But it was a learning experience.”

The pressure was also intense. He was already a well-known person in the world of classic gaming working on a well-known property. He didn’t have much room to learn, or to fail gracefully. “My first game wasn’t Wing Commander,” he said. It took a while before he understood what makes a good 16-bit game, and then he created Wing Commander. He didn’t have the same luxury with the modern games. “There’s a little bit of learning the craft and I went right in there in a visible position.”

So if anyone asks what went wrong with the Star Citizen project, there you go. You had a first-time crowdfunded developer dealing with a scope-creeped schedule, and a record-breaking budget for two fidelity-driven science fiction games. Roberts said he wished someone had sat him down, forced him to pick four or five things that it was important to do well, and focus on those. Instead he tried to do too much, and didn’t have the budget nor time to do any of it particularly well.

Still, if someone were to give him a dream budget to make either a Wing Commander game or film, after having created both, he’d much rather go back to the movies. With games the trick is to get the player to immerse within the main character, where the movie allows you to visualise the main character. The viewer looks in on Roberts' world.

“So then the trick is how to draw the rest of the world with such a level of detail that it suspends your disbelief and you’re in this world,” he said. “That’s what our industry is trying to work out, and will work out, and once all is said and done movies are going to be the powerful immersive entertainment medium moving forward. We’re just in the beginning of it, and that’s exciting. Who doesn’t want to save the world?”

quote:

I just desperately want SC to succeed! Though we do have that much power, we're just lead to not believe that. I think we need to do investigations into how much power we actually do have as we have kind of been defrauded already yeah?

I do think that removing Chris would be a good first step though

There needs to be over sight then, a third party business managing him/buy out CIG and lead him. He's out of control currently. Nearly 7 years.

Time lines, deadlines and promises need to be kept.

We need to have perspective and people white knighting is killing SC Not to forget to mention the toxic community members


I got lied to
We all did

TheAgent posted:

CIG on posted:

Lando is indeed on a well deserved vacation - but we're also taking a look at all of the content we put out (not just CAD) and looking for ways to keep making things better.

just taking a totally normal 4 week vacation

I'm sure that won't somehow turn into Jared leaving the office and working remotely from some no-name town in Georgia

Golli posted:

Yep, completely normal for the Global Head of Content Production to deliberately absent himself from discussions about how to revamp Produced Content.

Scruffpuff posted:

there will always be people who think that Reddit matters. I guess for them it's something of a side-show to all this; I personally think CIG is plenty hilarious all by themselves.

Bootcha posted:

Roberts was a successful single-person indie dev from 1983 to 1986, when he was a kid.
Roberts was a successful Origin associate from 1988 to 1992, when he made Bad Blood, Times of Lore, and Wing Commander.
Roberts was a successful EA employee from 1992 to 1994, when he made Wing Commander 3.
Roberts was an arguably unsuccessful EA employee from 1994 to 1996, when he filmed Wing Commander 4.
Roberts was an unsuccessful indie dev from 1997 to 2000, when out of 6 total projects promised, only delivered 1: StarLancer.
Roberts was an unsuccessful film director from 1998 to 1999, when he made the Wing Commander movie.
Roberts was a successful film producer from 2004 to 2006, when VIP Meinfolds was the primary money investor.
Roberts was an unsuccessful film producer from 2006 to 2008, when VIP Meinfolds was shut down due to massive tax fraud.
Roberts is a successful fundraiser from 2012 to early 2019, when he and his company made promises to ship Star Citizen and Squadron 42 within a 2 year dev cycle, then promised to deliver SQ42 in 2016, and now promises a beta in 2020.
Roberts has been his most successful when he has played with other people's money, and was supervised.
Roberts has been his most unsuccessful when that money faucet is turned off, and was in charge.

Nyast posted:

Store Citizen is the Schrodinger cat of game development.

It is both released and in alpha at the same time.

It depends on the observer.

Until observed, it coexists in both states at the same time.

TheAgent posted:

I'm sure some of the pressure is off for the moment since they got a near $50m cash injection but this year is already running out fast. to hit a full blown 100+ hour single player game alpha by Q1 2020 you'd have to staff up to around 1,000 people and whip your team into a frenzy with almost zero time off. not like "oh you have to work this holiday" kinda thing, but I mean like everyone there is pumping 16 to 18 hour days 7 days a week

you'll have zero time to train anyone or bring new members up to speed, if you lose a single employee in a senior position you're hosed, you have to staff up a whole lot of loving CS reps to handle what you're hoping to sell (several million copies, at minimum, not including the ones already pre-sold), and you're still left hanging with the super large MMO portion of your game and trying to figure that whole thing the gently caress out

now you can massage that by throwing out the prelude and hoping to run episodic content but that means funding will have to continue at record levels just so you can continue to operate at a loss of about 15/20% of your total revenue a year. and that still leaves the mmo portion completely hosed

I get it, you can try and streamline the process by creating new content for both at the same time, but that creates a problem with all the other poo poo you pre-sold over the years working in an MMO environment which is not and cannot be anything like the goddamn single player hack you put together to appease you new investor buddies

getting that cash injection kicked the jpg down the road and even 2020 beta is a loving pipe dream unless the entire loving game was -- as tyler witkin said "playable" -- already in QA and pretty much in the final stages of the alpha process now

so yeah, everyone that has a decent resume is going to run from this poo poo, the red flags are everywhere and game people who talk to me have talked with each other way longer and everyone knows this goddamn thing is going to end with a lot of handwavium from chris roberts

Tarquinn posted:

Giant Bomb spreading FUD about Star Citizen for five minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVY6JJObXps&t=4369s

Mr.Tophat posted:

*slams three whole gold bars into the toilet and flushes*

Pixelate posted:

Keep Doing What You're Doing:


RESPAWN INVISIBLE UNABLE TO USE MOBIGLASS

posted:

I like Star Citizen even in its current state. However the community seem much too "cult like" at the moment, when making complaints about the game why do you pander to the developer/community as if you're afraid of criticism.
Whenever I see posts about issues etc, they are never straight to the point, they're always 2 paragraphs of dev/community pandering and then issue, not to mention the toxic response in the comments if someone is even a little harsh/truthful about the game's current state.

posted:

Keep in mind the gameplay is one of the last things they will likely be implementing.

Beet Wagon posted:

https://twitter.com/Macher_Gaming/status/1086355779203055618

Lol is that real or just some weirdo daydreaming on twitter? I can no longer tell reality from parody any more

posted:

Im more than willing to wait 5 more years.

colonelwest posted:

https://twitter.com/RobertsSpaceInd/status/1086772681100443648

I didn't think a photograph could smell so bad.

Pixelate posted:

Yay, NPCs are turning into balls too!

posted:

There is in particular two groups of haters; refunds and somethingawful goons. And there is a huge overlap here. These are the only "active" haters and they are everywhere and they frequently stalk star citizen fans and go around on any media channel they can to attempt to discredit CIG and Star Citizen. They go to extreme lengths to do so. Including sending fake death threats, faking their own death, creating fraudulent refund requests, convincing others to sell their accounts to them, encouraging people to file (frivolous) lawsuits against CIG, encouraging people to commit credit card fraud against CIG, creating fraudulent reports to BBB, faking GlassDoor reviews, lying to reporters, posing as disgruntled ex-CIG employees, slandering CIG employees - and many many more things.

The haters aren't as numerous as you might get the impression of, but they are extremely vocal and dedicated with a level of obsession that is hard to imagine any normal individual without some sort of underlying mental condition would commit to.

Somfin posted:

I played the tech demo for less than an hour and I was floored by the fact that they use touchscreens with military green vector UIs for their in-world ship interfaces, hovering 3D text for their non-diegetic player controls and visibly pixelated displays for shops. And that all three of these user interface systems were hilariously easy to break, entirely by accident.

”A Commando” posted:

CIG is not new to game development. they know how much they need to make per month to pay there staff and they have scaled there staffing numbers and stuff to be within the limits. When I read the forever financials they released at the end of the year I was actually very relieved and I saw that they were managing money responsibly and not in danger of going bust.

Flared Basic Bitch posted:

Disco Lando posted:

Star Citizen: We do actually crash on purpose

Holy poo poo. They can't figure out how to tell if a client connection has been compromised in some way (or if the client has just gone quiescent maybe), so they intentionally have the client poo poo the bed and let its OS close any open sockets. Bravo you goddamn idiots.

The "we make it crash so we can get crash dumps" defense is also the saddest thing ever. A crash dump can be useful in the direst extremity, but god drat that 30007 error thing has been a problem since at least 3.0 and they haven't bothered, or been competent enough, to put any kind of useful discovery diagnostics around this thing? They could even justify putting logging in the client if they had to since it's in alphaaaaaaaaa.

God bless these incompetent amateurs. Keep doing what you're doing.

Rutibex posted:

pfft, Scientology has been selling rubes imaginary space ships for 60+ years now. Chris robberts has a lot to learn.

”canardpc.com” posted:

https://www.canardpc.com/391/panier-garni-star-citizen (Translated from French)

Following the enthusiastic reactions to our article on Star Citizen in the last issue of Duck PC and in particular the many letters, emails and tweets sent to us by Chris Roberts' French fans, we decided, in an exceptional way, to devote a basket of fresh ideas for fans of a game not yet released. But who will come out one day, eh, or something, don't make us out to say what we didn't say, you overinterpret everything, that's crazy. So here you will find a choice of activities related to Star Citizen that we hope will allow you to kill time while waiting for the game to be released. Don't let anyone say that we don't care for the well-being of Cloud Imperium customers.


Eat lemon in a salt crust:
Before launching Star Citizen's latest wobbly alpha, why not awaken your taste buds with a recipe that is both simple and delicious? You need:

- a lemon picked from the ground.
- coarse salt used to clear the city's streets of snow.
- an egg white.

Mix the egg white with the salt. Moisten the unpeeled lemon by quickly immersing it in toilet water. Roll the lemon in the salt paste until it is perfectly covered. Put in the oven for 30 minutes at 180 °C and enjoy hot! First you will have the stunning taste of salt, then the powerful bitterness of lemon, the two favorite sensations of Star Citizen's backers. Note that the recipe will be even better if you have spent more than 200 euros in virtual ships!


Practice meditation:
Being a Star Citizen fanboy is not something you decide to do lightly. It takes a sharp mind to be able to type a 20,000 character message at any time of the day or night to this Internet user who has dared to criticize the game on which your entire identity is based. In order to hold out for the next five or ten years, there is nothing like a regular practice of meditation after each crash of the alpha version. Close your eyes, concentrate on your breathing, visualize Chris Roberts bare-chested floating in space and repeat a thousand times "I was right to slap a goonie-cuntiflas over a game that doesn't exist". Calmness overcomes you. Your cosmic chakras are opening. So is your wallet. You buy the Turbinator Heavy Fighter 3000-XS for 250 euros which has just appeared on the Star Citizen store. You look good.


Read a little study on manipulation:
How can an individual of normal intelligence end up buying dozens of non-existent ships in a game that may not keep its promises? Some psychologists have tried to understand and have given a name to the mechanism that makes this possible: the abstruse trap. It is simply the bias caused by being engaged. The more effort, time or money has been spent on something, the more difficult it is to give up and therefore to reduce the total investment to zero. Worse still: we even tend to want to spend more to justify our previous choices. As you will learn from reading "The Little Treatise on Handling for Honest People", everyone is constantly falling into abstruse traps. Yes, even you who have never touched Star Citizen but who have probably already waited for a bus that has never arrived for dozens of minutes. Of course, the book won't stop you from buying a third $200 ship, but at least you'll know why you're doing it.

Pixelate posted:

Dementropy posted:

El Grillo posted:

as croberts and co come to the realisation

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

I like how with the Fyre Festival Netflix documentary interviewed a lot of the professionals who flat out knew better, told them not to do it, get nowhere, and then get hosed over when the whole thing turns out to be a scam with no money.

I think the major difference between Fyre and Star Citizen is how they used social media. Fyre made this massive media blitz featuring paid influencers and then failed to share anything new. If anything they reduced how much info was available, such as when they removed images of the villas when it turned out they would be tents.

Star Citizen went the other direction. An absolute deluge of information and progress, with most of it being bullshit. A hangar you can walk in, playable modules, pre-Alpha access, everything. They fed the customer base with a fire hose while pushing for more and more sales. For anyone who is invested and wants it to succeed there would be ample evidence to justify spending more. For anyone who was skeptical there was an excuse and something to point to. It's not a scam when everything is right there.

That's the genius of Star Citizen. It's not a fraud, unless there are things they aren't telling people or Chris is loving stupid enough to outright lie to investors (I don't think he is). I believe that Chris genuinely thinks he is doing everything right and all of his issues are solvable. The parallels to Billy McFarland are astounding, down to the need to present the image of wealth.

The first time I met Chris was at PAX East when they revealed Arena Commander (the famous "This is bullshit!" line). The show ended, people started winding down, and I walked up to shake his hand and congratulate him. His response was to talk about how the screens in the front were supposed to be bigger. He didn't even acknowledge what I said, just started complaining to me as if I was an employee. It was the weirdest thing, and I think it says a lot about how he's wired. I wouldn't be surprised if he was a sociopath or autistic. He doesn't see things the way most people do.

A lot of people got hosed over because of Fyre. Workers and contractors were never paid, the people working on the Fyre app were fired, it was a mess. I think that when SC fails the damage will mostly be on the backers. A lot of people will lose their jobs, but at this point none of the backers can say they don't know what they're getting.

ewe2 posted:

Scam (parody of Stand by REM, lyrics by ScruffPuff)

* lyrics
* parps
* scams
* falsetto parps!

monkeytek posted:

What it means to be a citizen:

Get mad if someone questions Roberts
Get mad if other games succeed while you are waiting for SC
Attack other games claiming they are frauds or cash grabs
Get mad if someone is more successful at streaming the game, because they weren't there from the beginning
Get mad at noobs because they ask noob questions
Get mad at people wanting PVP and ability to destroy your totally not pay to win ships
Get mad at SJW's for having the audacity to ask for female avatars
Get mad at people wanting playstyles that don't exactly match up with yours
Get mad at CI not G for a few minutes and then immediately forgive them
Get mad at other game communities when being laughed at for obvious theft of ship designs
Get mad when confronted by facts and actual documented proof, then claiming they are trolls and DS alts.
etc.

Foo Diddley posted:

https://twitter.com/SandiGardiner/status/1091457204312526855

The Banu doughship

Carrier's just a big pizza oven

The Titanic posted:

Thought, but probably not reality:

The law suit is proceeding forward. Skadden stopped messing around and now things are starting to look more realistic.

CIG is trying to play Good Samaritan but it's going to be too little too late. They have some bad misappropriation of funds, Skadden is half doing this for a boatload of money and half doing it to get their name on legislative action associated with controlling crowd funding better so they can be some leaders of people vs crowd fund scams and aim to make some extra money for the future beyond CIG once they create the precedent.

Skadden is looking to the future cases, some even bigger.

CIG realizes not only will they be made an example of but there is some real potential for people to get into real genuine no joke trouble.

There's a good chance they know this is also what Skadden is going to try to round-about achieve, because nothing sounds better at a mediation table than "yeah the last guys doing what you're doing right now are currently in federal prison thanks to us. So what kind of offer would you like to make?"

They're trying to share everything, open it all up as best they can, pull back on the "obviously scam-like and misleading behavior", and try to "be good" as the law starts to shine a bright light on them.

We're basically seeing the scummy business equivalent of "oh poo poo it's the cops dude throw the weed out the loving window!" action happening.

posted:

I mean this respectfully: I've spent a few days playing and trying to get into the game and I am having the worst luck. It appears that the missions I accept break half way through and I am told "Yea known bug, been there a while" on just about everything.

I go Hurston for the first time and explode in the atmosphere "Yup known bug".

I exit my ship at a location and instantly wake up back on the station "Yea that's a known bug too".

On delivery missions after I pick up the package the contract is withdrawn "It happens sometimes".

On a hacking mission I reach the satellite and the missions vanishes "hahah yea that's been known for months".

Given that everything in the game takes a long time to do I am looking for advice on things that actually work.

Pixelate posted:

MISSILE FLIGHT PATH DRASTICALLY DROPS

posted:

If you have to describe SC with a picture, which pic would you choose?

Do you have a picture of a little kid playing in his cat-turd infested sandbox with spaceship shaped rocks while wearing a bucket on his head? Because that would be it

Scruffpuff posted:

quote:

loving at the zero interest in the only product they're working on, the only one they've already been paid for and stand to raise 0 dollars from, and won't be out until 2020 at the earliest and is how they're burning their final wad of fraudulently obtained cash.

Goddamn I love Chris Roberts.

quote:

Garriott might be past his prime but he’s also a douche. He sold his blood and hair to nerds. He sold shares in a company he knew was going down for thousands of dollars in exchange for gold versions of unity crap. He attends meetings as an iPad on a stick. The guy has a rat tail ffs.

Daztek posted:

https://docdro.id/WPfo6Rw

Pixelate posted:

quote:

...or that Defendants’ success is attributable to Crytek’s alleged efforts, or anything other than Chris Roberts’ authorship and Defendants’ unique and unprecedented approach to involve the community in the creation of “Star Citizen” and its related space fighter game “Squadron 42.”

They're going for the 'Chris is a genius' defense. (With bonus 'our players make the game').

Scruffpuff posted:

Spite Pledging

Hey little grifter your game's not fun
Hey little grifter where's your second sun
Hey little grifter it's an epic scam
Hey little grifter you're the one who can
Crash servers with a shotgun

It's a nice day to buy back in
It's a nice day for a spite pledging
It's a nice day to buy back in

Hey little grifter your vision is pure poo poo
Hey little grifter you can burn your script
Crash servers with a shotgun (oh yeah)
Hey little grifter you're the one who can
Crash servers with a shotgun

It's a nice day to buy back in
It's a nice day for a spite pledging
It's a nice day to buy back in

Load it up
Spawn in my wank pod

Hey little grifter poo poo's still not done
Hey little grifter costs are overrun
I haven't paid for so long (so long)
I haven't paid for so long (so long)
I've let it go for so long

It's a nice day to buy back in (come on)
It's a nice day for a spite pledging
It's a nice day to buy back in

There is nothing fun in this verse
There is just one sun in this verse
And there's nothing sure in this verse
Because nothing works in this verse
And it's gonna get so much worse

Buy back in

Come on
It's a nice day for a spite pledging
It's a nice day to buy back in
It's a nice day for a spite pledging
It's a nice day to buy back in

peter gabriel posted:

Sign language leak, apparently this is 'hello redit' in game


....................../´¯/)
....................,/¯../
.................../..../
............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸
........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\
........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...')
.........\.................'...../
..........''...\.......... _.·´
............\..............(
..............\.............\...

posted:

Lol another year of absolutely NO gameplay what so ever. You have to be a real dumb dillhole to believe this project won't fail. A WHOLE year and THIS is what they come up with? PATHETIC. It's time people stop giving money to these hacks and let them show us something in return. Because even the loving ships they release are ALL bugged to hell.
This is pathetic.

posted:

I'm personally sick and tired of feature creep this late into the development. Time and resources need to be put towards things that are vital to the completion of both games.

shrach posted:

I appreciate this isn't a revelation to anyone here but there is a rather obvious hole in the current story with the outside investment being purely for the marketing of Squadron 42.

Foundry 42 Ltd in the UK is supposed to be where all the top secret Squadron 42 work is done. Legally, they are supposed to be solely responsible for it in order to qualify for UK tax credits. Why then is the outside investment of $46m split $23m in the UK and $23m in the US? Why wouldn't you put it all into the company which is actually responsible for Squadron 42 and on which you can get a generous 20% tax credit once you spend it?

Either the story is true and they straight up wasted an opportunity for a $4.6m tax credit or it's just another wasted opportunity for Chris Roberts to tell the truth.

Beet Wagon posted:

Good to see it didn't take long for this new promotion to get weird

https://twitter.com/Oogerohasgerloi/status/1095178559457509376

Dogeh posted:

Scruffpuff posted:

Dogeh posted:

Sarsapariller posted:

big nipples big life posted:

SoftNum posted:

Scruffpuff posted:

tithin posted:

Has there been much in the way of legal movements? It seems to have fizzled.