SelenicMartian posted:

They kept this in the YT upload.

Dooguk posted:

"Early days"

Chris Roberts

Bofast posted:

I played that game on the C64, so I'm kind of curious what part of CIG's presentation you are referring to here.

Rotten Red Rod posted:

I only watched the live stream for a bit, and I'm sure as gently caress not wading through the recordings, but can anyone tell me if they showed ANY live footage of theaters of war?

Did they interview anyone other than that one player who basically just summed up basic gameplay stuff and said "it's good!"?

Did the general attendee population get a chance to play it, or was it only that highly curated group?

SelenicMartian posted:

This is a sneaking mission.

WaltherFeng posted:

Looking at the dreadfully boring footage it occurred to me that a company like Ubisoft could make a complete open world space game like this in fraction of the time and it would probably be half decent.

Zadda posted:

Only thing I remember from the opening is that I think the crobear mentioned that about 330 people are currently working in their UK studio? Still nothing to show for it though.

Dementropy posted:

Rotten Red Rod posted:

I only watched the live stream for a bit, and I'm sure as gently caress not wading through the recordings, but can anyone tell me if they showed ANY live footage of theaters of war?

Did they interview anyone other than that one player who basically just summed up basic gameplay stuff and said "it's good!"?

Did the general attendee population get a chance to play it, or was it only that highly curated group?

SelenicMartian posted:

In case you were wondering how they got the ramp to work. Watch closely.

iron buns posted:

"Fund comes first, game maybe later"

SelenicMartian posted:

ATP_Power posted:

I love how it's a howling blizzard, they're talking about the fidelity of their wind model during the demo, and the tarp's acting like it's a mildly breezy day.

Rotten Red Rod posted:

I only watched the live stream for a bit, and I'm sure as gently caress not wading through the recordings, but can anyone tell me if they showed ANY live footage of theaters of war?

Did they interview anyone other than that one player who basically just summed up basic gameplay stuff and said "it's good!"?

Did the general attendee population get a chance to play it, or was it only that highly curated group?

Dark Off posted:

to support that there is end day's feels going on at citcon.

listen to Cr's voice crack up during early day's speach.
https://youtu.be/n9fKOwXIMx4?t=304

https://youtu.be/fCDOM2UULhE?t=1673 this the end of citizencon and the roadmap. That is most vague/realistic roadmap they have done. No dates etc..

Megalobster posted:

That's not even taking into account that the Crytek lawsuit is currently in discovery, and trial is still scheduled to begin June 16th 2020. In legal time, 6 months is like 2 weeks.

mjotto posted:

It sounded as an apology for the bad news that is coming, maybe even already about to break. The news being the end of SC/CIG. One of my employers went bankrupt and I've seen this before. The knowing that you're about to let everyone down. Your staff, your customers, your investors/financers, the lot. So thanking them for all the support over the years, being nice and kind etc.

It's over. The BDSSE will never see the light. The dream is gone. And Chris knows it. Once he starts announcing that there will be drastic cutbacks and layoffs, backers will realise the money is gone and he's doing this to keep afloat according to his Kickstarter promise and thus can't be sued (yet). That'll be the end of sales. Which will be the end of it all.

At the least, he knows this was the last Citizen Con. There won't be a 2020 edition.

Scruffpuff posted:

I got the same vibe from it.

Virtual Captain posted:

They didn't show any "theaters of war", just a sizzle-reel that was maybe 2-3 mins. I didn't hear any other reviews other than the one awkward interview. I swear the guy said it had "potential" which is never a good sign.

G0RF posted:

I wonder how the board meeting went, and what the Calders are thinking about their $46 million dollar experiment about now?

G0RF posted:

I relistened to the wrap up. Chris thanks some woman named Leah for all the CitizenCon planning work. So it’s not just that Sandi is out, it’s that other individuals are being acknowledged for doing what was formerly her job.


The movement on the Cryrekt lawsuit may be why Squadron had to pull a disappearing act again.

A WORKING THEORY OF THE PRESENT

This is sloppy but figured I’d throw it out there.

Squadron was the centerpiece of Citcon 2015 and 2018. It completely and conspicuously vanished in 2016 (thanks Infinite Warfare!) and 2019.

I’m going to assume the Calders invested because they were sincerely sold on the pitch of a can’t fail, celebrity packed single player game from the creator of Wing Commander. There’s a chance they had more nefarious reasons, of the sort that Cayman Island money is famous for, but the Holiday 2017 Livestream sure looked like an earnest, maybe desperate all-hands-on-deck sales pitch from Chris and his entire leadership team. The awkward nervousness of it, the weird unsolicited assurances (like Chambers assurance that the cinematics team was exclusively a Squadron resource and not used on Star Citizen), it felt pretty authentic and a little desperate.

So if you’re a reclusive and historically ruthless billionaire dropping $46 million into what you think is going to be a single player movie game, you’re not doing a handshake deal. You’re going to protect yourself and your filmmaker son from getting chumpatized.

Only weeks after the check clears, CIG has a string of big publicity problems. If the Calders weren’t familiar with its notoriety before this, they sure are now. Chris stumbles through them all summer, but decides, in the interest of proving to the Calders that CIG is the next big thing, he’s going to stage the biggest CitizenCon ever. He’s even going to throw some money at the Redbull infotainment team and have a slick advertorial doc shot during the show. Chris buys a full marketing package from them to do what Sandi can’t. As part of the deal, Redbull is also going to deploy a battle-tested, high octane streamer to hype this turkey to the max after the documentary drops at year end, and they’ll pump more advertorials about Rex In 2019 to Newsweek and Polygon and anyone else selling adspace designed as light news. This will serve to reassure backers and the Investors alike eventually. (No Jade, Rex didn’t play 6 hours a day for months on end in 2019 because he didn’t have anything better to play. Sorry, Astro girl!)

Back to the summer of 2018.

Because Chris is spending so very much on this whole confidence projection effort (huge venue, slick doc, future streamer and advertorials), he gets the brilliant idea he should paywall the Citcon event and get some of that money back. This brilliant idea outrages fans and average gamers alike and thrusts CIG right back into the self-own spotlight Chris was trying to get out of. It produces even worse PR than Chris got in the summer and eventually he’s forced to back off the plan. So CitCon turns out costly both to the company and to its reputation with its new billionaire investor.

“Get your crap together, Chris.”

Stuff happens. Controls are asserted. Sandi’s on the way out by the end of 2018, though no official announcement has been made even a year later. 2018 sees Chris downsizing their weekly fan content, with ATV turning into a dimlit, low-budget Landoshow. 2019 crawls along, with CIG missing their less ambitious targets and Squadron stalling and entering radio silence mode one year after it was the centerpiece of CIG’s marketing AND investor pitch. But Chris did at least task his Devteam at the end of 2018 with building a new game mode just for Rex and future Rexes. Chris wants and needs a better game for hucksters for hire to pitch, something that cuts out all the bloat of SPAAAAACE! and keeps the tempo up for viewers. We got a glimpse of this nearly yearlong development priority at CitCon and, well, if it isn’t exactly Planetside 2 level fun yet, it’ll at least solve design problems made obvious during Rex’s year of streaming. (The dude spent more time pacing the decks of his ships while in transit to battle zones than actually fighting).

Crytek’s lawsuit moves slowly in the background, presenting its own battery of risks, including to Squadron’s release. But like Sandi’s forced removal, it’s unspeakable, so he takes the stage and pretends two of the most important things of the last 7 years of CIG’s life don’t exist and he hypes their tailored made streamer game that nobody expected or asked for. (He’s going to need it in 2020 because his hucksters for hire will if they’re gonna talk new backers into this psychological macrotransaction trap.)

Whatever is really going on behind the scenes at CIG, it seems like we’re seeing a weakened Chris. Controls are being asserted and risks are finally being felt. After years of chest pounding and crap talking, years of date hyping and target missing, a humbler Chris has emerged.

I wonder how the board meeting went, and what the Calders are thinking about their $46 million dollar experiment about now?

ATP_Power posted:

I love how it's a howling blizzard, they're talking about the fidelity of their wind model during the demo, and the tarp's acting like it's a mildly breezy day.

Fidelitious posted:

Yeah I think y'all are being oversold on how 'bad' this was for CIG. Obviously it was the usual disaster but I expect that their annual funding will not crater, but just be a bit lower than usual.
The last time there was a finances analysis the understanding was that with the Calder's investment and assuming roughly normal pledge levels they can go at least another 2-3 years before their finances hit crisis level.

I see no reason for them to pack it in until they absolutely have to as it allows them to extract the most cash possible from the husk of the company.

iospace posted:

I think it's more the cracks are really starting to show. I agree mostly that it's still got a year or two left, but the bottom cards look extremely shaky.

Fidelitious posted:

Yeah I think y'all are being oversold on how 'bad' this was for CIG. Obviously it was the usual disaster but I expect that their annual funding will not crater, but just be a bit lower than usual.
The last time there was a finances analysis the understanding was that with the Calder's investment and assuming roughly normal pledge levels they can go at least another 2-3 years before their finances hit crisis level.

I see no reason for them to pack it in until they absolutely have to as it allows them to extract the most cash possible from the husk of the company.

MedicineHut posted:

Unless we have grossly underestimated CR level of ineptitude and funds wasting of course.

quote:

As we look forward to the holidays, I wanted to give you all a couple of updates. The first item of news is the Squadron 42 public roadmap is going live today. As with our Persistent Universe roadmap, this is linked to our company’s internal JIRA tracking system, so you can see at a glance the work remaining to complete the game. It was a lot of work to make sure every remaining task was broken down in detail and estimated to the best of our ability, and the same caveats will apply to the Squadron 42 roadmap as they do to the PU one, but our plan is to be feature and content complete by the end of 2019, with the first 6 months of 2020 for Alpha (balance, optimization and polish) and then Beta.

Agony Aunt posted:

Baiscally its Star Marine with added vehicles. Like nobody has done any sort of arena with vehicles before.

Its basically just Star Marine v2.