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  • Locked thread
3
Aug 26, 2006

The Magic Number


College Slice

Agrajag posted:

wait what? i want more deets

In the Tanker chapter of MGS2, there's a bucket of ice that when shot, spills ice cubes everywhere that are programmed to melt realistically based on size and distribution. It is the only part of the game where there is any ice at all, and has literally zero bearing on the rest of the game, Kojima just put it in because he thought it was awesome. And it was.

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Sedisp
Jun 20, 2012


CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:

Why are we still here? Just to suffer? Every night, I can feel the backers... and the faithful... even the goons. The funding I've lost... the deadlines I've missed... won't stop hurting... It's like they're all still there.

You feel it too, don't you? I'm gonna make them give back our 'verse!

The Escapist tour was just a smokescreen... I heard Sandi scream human being and then....

Blue On Blue
Nov 14, 2012

3 posted:

In the Tanker chapter of MGS2, there's a bucket of ice that when shot, spills ice cubes everywhere that are programmed to melt realistically based on size and distribution. It is the only part of the game where there is any ice at all, and has literally zero bearing on the rest of the game, Kojima just put it in because he thought it was awesome. And it was.

I think the first Medal of Honor game, had something similar

With oil barrels, if you shot them near the bottom so they leaked out all the oil, then shot the top, nothing would come out because it had already leaked out

Why bother with a complicated fluid system for oil barrels... something your average player wouldn't give a poo poo about

CHICKEN SHOES
Oct 4, 2002
Slippery Tilde
I'd imagine its one of those things where the designer, for creative reasons or whatever, wanted to see if he could make it work without disrupting the rest of the development of the game.

Instead of a game consisting entirely of those "lets see if we can do this" without any game making going on,

Tarranon
Oct 10, 2007

Diggity Dog

Sedisp posted:

The Escapist tour was just a smokescreen... I heard Sandi scream human being and then....

ur all fuckers

Sushi in Yiddish
Feb 2, 2008

3 posted:

In the Tanker chapter of MGS2, there's a bucket of ice that when shot, spills ice cubes everywhere that are programmed to melt realistically based on size and distribution. It is the only part of the game where there is any ice at all, and has literally zero bearing on the rest of the game, Kojima just put it in because he thought it was awesome. And it was.

Yeah this has more of these insane details: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything/MetalGear

Kakarot
Jul 20, 2013

by zen death robot
Buglord

Ramc posted:

Your channel led me to Dankwrecked Smart. Magical: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BV7rc9CJvc

hmm...I never saw that before and it was obvs made by someone here

Truga
May 4, 2014
Lipstick Apathy

3 posted:

Wow okay I wasn't expecting to record another thing so soon, but Beer wrote me a thing and well...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0RvCN3gYJA
"The game will come out in just a short time. Yes, yes, I know. You would like to know how long. I'm afraid it'll be... two weeks"

MP3 here

Why. Why are you guys so good at this.

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week
The thing about Kojima is, he's at least consistent. I'd trust him with $90 million, or 9 million, or $900 thousand. He's gonna go over budget on any of those options, but a game will exist once someone came up with an extra 25% more to finish it. I don't think this is what will happen, but if he went to kickstarter I could absolutely see him saying he wanted to make a spiritual sequel to Snatcher, with a low budget and a small team.

Chris Roberts, at some point between the early wing commander games and now, turned into the type of huckster that is totally ok with turning a game studio into a jpeg sales machine. "Money now, fix it later" is how he's been running the whole operation.

Mr SoupTeeth
Jan 16, 2015

Klyith posted:

Chris Roberts, at some point between the early wing commander games and now, turned into the type of huckster that is totally ok with turning a game studio into a jpeg sales machine. "Money now, fix it later" is how he's been running the whole operation.

Well he did stop making bad videogame movies to leave for Hollywood and start making bad movie movies, being a huckster comes with the territory.

Deki
May 12, 2008

It's Hammer Time!

3 posted:

Wow okay I wasn't expecting to record another thing so soon, but Beer wrote me a thing and well...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0RvCN3gYJA
"The game will come out in just a short time. Yes, yes, I know. You would like to know how long. I'm afraid it'll be... two weeks"

MP3 here


This put a big goofy grin on my face. I love it.

thatguy
Feb 5, 2003
No Man's Sky was just demoed on The Late Show and the dude absolutely killed the presentation. It made me think of how terribly things would have gone if instead Roberts was showcasing Star Citizen.

Ragequit
Jun 1, 2006


Lipstick Apathy

Hal_2005 posted:

Remember that scene of the trucks infront of Archer Anderson when the Enron Scandal first broke ? I speculate Chris Roberts is trying to remember Iron Mountain's emergency shreddit 1-800 number while still tripping on a coke high

I doubt much was written down. I imagine Chris hosts meetings on a whiteboard. At the end of each meeting the board looks like John Madden breaking down a replay while having a stroke.

Amun Khonsu
Sep 15, 2012

wtf did he just say?
Grimey Drawer

Between the original escapist article and this podcast, I imagine that Santa Monica is a radiation zone atmo

Sushi in Yiddish
Feb 2, 2008

thatguy posted:

No Man's Sky was just demoed on The Late Show and the dude absolutely killed the presentation. It made me think of how terribly things would have gone if instead Roberts was showcasing Star Citizen.

Well my dreams are pretty big Stephen, it's like WHOOSH WHOOSH

*does swooping motions with hands for 10 minutes*

big nipples big life
May 12, 2014

http://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2015/10/02/the-excess-of-star-citizen-is-the-price-gaming-pays-for-upholding-the-great-man-myth/

Bolow
Feb 27, 2007

thatguy posted:

No Man's Sky was just demoed on The Late Show and the dude absolutely killed the presentation. It made me think of how terribly things would have gone if instead Roberts was showcasing Star Citizen.

Too bad No Man's Sky is going to be boring as poo poo

thatguy
Feb 5, 2003

Bolow posted:

Too bad No Man's Sky is going to be boring as poo poo
Ya, they don't even have drink dispensers in that game.

EminusSleepus
Sep 28, 2015


CR is micromanaging and spergs will say he does not. But if you ask the developers they will say it in front of your face that the final call is from CR.

You have leads in each department to offload the decision making from youyou. Leads are useless if they will await all the decision making into one man

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

Sushi in Yiddish posted:

As much as I'm curious about seeing what he'll do post Konami, Kojima would probably be the worst game developer possible to be given the gigantic amounts of time and money that Kickstarter can provide.

In other words...a Kickstarter to surpass Star Citizen! :unsmigghh:

spit on my clit
Jul 19, 2015

by Cyrano4747
So, what happened to make the OP turn into..what it is? Did the game go rear end-up before it was even released?

No Mods No Masters
Oct 3, 2004

BillmasterCozb posted:

So, what happened to make the OP turn into..what it is? Did the game go rear end-up before it was even released?

I'm glad you asked; yes

EminusSleepus
Sep 28, 2015

BillmasterCozb posted:

So, what happened to make the OP turn into..what it is? Did the game go rear end-up before it was even released?

There is no game but you got those mini game like those freeware/shareware in the 90s.that is what arena commander and social module is right now

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

Star Citizen is the price gamers pay for being weak-minded simpletons who buy into hype like it's water in the desert, jump on f2p mechanics for a game that doesn't exist, and somehow haven't noticed that their fun little hobby has become a multi-billion industry that is constantly inventing new vacuums to suck cash from their pockets.

It's the price games media pays for being just as consumed by hype as its audience, never having fully broken from its history as a organ of advertising more than information, and ready to believe every game will be the best ever until -- surprise! -- it comes out and is poo poo.

It's the price Chris Roberts pays for being egotistical enough to think himself a genius who doesn't need a producer to tell him no. (Or possibly being immoral enough to commit fraud or near-fraud with the money entrusted to him.)


It's the price we all pay to have something as magical as Derek Smart in our lives.

corn in the bible
Jun 5, 2004

Oh no oh god it's all true!

Klyith posted:

Star Citizen is the price gamers pay for being weak-minded simpletons who buy into hype like it's water in the desert, jump on f2p mechanics for a game that doesn't exist, and somehow haven't noticed that their fun little hobby has become a multi-billion industry that is constantly inventing new vacuums to suck cash from their pockets.

It's the price games media pays for being just as consumed by hype as its audience, never having fully broken from its history as a organ of advertising more than information, and ready to believe every game will be the best ever until -- surprise! -- it comes out and is poo poo.

It's the price Chris Roberts pays for being egotistical enough to think himself a genius who doesn't need a producer to tell him no. (Or possibly being immoral enough to commit fraud or near-fraud with the money entrusted to him.)


It's the price we all pay to have something as magical as Derek Smart in our lives.

what price, exactly, is chris roberts paying

is it the price of getting to live in a mansion paid for by idiots

Justin Tyme
Feb 22, 2011


Reminder that Doobie managed to stay in business and deliver more products than SC ever has

No Mods No Masters
Oct 3, 2004

corn in the bible posted:

what price, exactly, is chris roberts paying

is it the price of getting to live in a mansion paid for by idiots

I guess it's the price of having to micromanage the development of an imaginary mud dream game all day when he probably should have just taken the money and ran early on. More profit for the same end result

LumberingTroll
Sep 9, 2007

Really it's not because
I don't like you...

bres0048 posted:

I had $5200 into this, started the refund about a month ago. Got 3300 back from cig and sold the remainder to silly redditors. They like going down with the ships

Did you do anything besides send an email asking for a refund?

lamentable dustman
Apr 13, 2007

🏆🏆🏆

Just send the email and yell if they reject the request

Also the Man Who Sold the World parody is loving hilarious

Jethro_E7
Dec 11, 2014

G0RF posted:



The Emperor's New Clothes

A vain Emperor who cares about nothing except wearing and displaying clothes hires two swindlers who promise him the finest, best suit of clothes from a fabric invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or "hopelessly stupid". The Emperor's ministers cannot see the clothing themselves, but pretend that they can for fear of appearing unfit for their positions and the Emperor does the same. Finally the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they mime dressing him and the Emperor marches in procession before his subjects. The townsfolk play along with the pretense, not wanting to appear unfit for their positions or stupid. Then a child in the crowd, too young to understand the desirability of keeping up the pretense, blurts out that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all* and the cry is taken up by others. The Emperor cringes, suspects the assertion is true, but continues the procession.

* You are here.

Love it.

Escapist podcast also interesting. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escapist-podcast/57500-Crowdfunding-Podcast



TLDR

- FTC hit card game, due to failing to deliver on promises in campaign, involved in class action and FTC sided with consumers, determined that they had obligations, did not fulfill promises and had to compensate.
- Gravely concerning that failed projects cause collateral damage on other projects that they become worse that preordering.
- SC looks like it could be a catastrophic failure with 1 million backers
- Lizzy featured, stated backers have tends of thousands "invested".
- Looks and sounds awesome but that is all it will be.
- 90 million raised to to continuing crowdfunding post kickstarter
- DS posted blog posts (long ones) DS predicted firings because Austin office closing, and people leaving drew attention of Lizzy to possible legitimacy of DS posts leading to her starting an investigation.
- What struck lizzy was the changes to the terms of service which entirely changed structure of refund, release date
- Went from 18 months to delivery, yet it was Nov. 2014, and in 12 months from that you are entitled to a refund. The anticipated release date changed to 2016 and 18 months of that, so cut out people of refunds for next month which they should have been entitled to a refund.
- Original delivery date Nov. 2014, Feb terms of service new refund date MAY 2018.
- Major concern s- if you miss games delivery date by more than a few weeks esp. if you don't tell, anyone who wanted game and doesn't want it any more should have a refund due to a failure to meet an agreement.
- Liz checked for release date on website and IT WAS GONE or buried very hard to find, nothing was coming out.
- Inclusion of completion date mentioned in terms of service was up on Friday when the story went up last week and is now gone/buried. Seems deliberately obscured and dodgy marketing at best. (11:45 in).
- Wikipedia 2017 release date. Different websites have different dates.
- Images of original release date is Spring 2015 release of FPS, Fall 2015 SQ42 1st episode, Commercial launch 2016. And THAT is not kickstarter, but due to feature creep.
- Firings Concerning. Was 11,000,000 stretchgoal if the office is shut. People pledged for that office, what is going on with that?
- Some people are under definite impressions it is closing. Worth watching.
- Some people hate DS, smarmy bastard confirmed. But just being an rear end in a top hat means facts can still be correct. DS personal attacks do not change the facts. Just because he pointed at the facts does not make it wrong. You don't need to like someone to recognize the truthfulness of the statement/s (15:00).
- (Lizzy) careful with sources and ensures that she worked around him. Any info she provided linked to document had second source that was corroborating it. Even with that, article was detached. It was amazing to see people being even unwilling to look at link because DS was linked to this.
- Suggests some people don't want to believe it as people had sinked $1000 in it. As of now, Liz has additional comments from sources all corroborating and bunch of new information (17:20).
- Still money pouring in feeding into this. Latest ship could be seen as DLC for $900. Community Manager there struggles with understanding the "excess selling off the inventory" of LTI ship that did not sell originally.
- As sources were anonymous, credibility is discussed. 1 anon. is interesting, but generally dismissed as crackpot. 2 Anon telling the same thing compelling as a matter of interest. Liz has 9 sources. 6 not anon. to Liz., 3 unknown to liz other than confirmed relationship to project. Liz confirmed true almost certainly happening. 9 could be considered lawsuit material.
- Could they be communicating amongst themselves. Name had been spread to get in touch with her, unsure what contact before then, none were speaking specifically to each other, though one had passed her name on.
- The idea that they had gotten together, concocted the story and then come to her with falsehoods is not at any point something that was conceived as reasonable, probable or possible. The impression Liz had is that they felt quite guilty about their role there. People from different offices involved.
- Liz got a lot of specific, independent stories personal to each one. There was a LOT of information that was intimate and personal that was even more concerning that what she had shared.
- Barebones essential on what everyone should know is:

1. Allegations of mismanaging money (top) (CR/Gardiner paid for with company money, cars/leases and vacations with company money. Platform developed with Turbulent to make money with crowdfunded money being injected.
2. Reports of how employees are being treated

Irresponsible spending of money also mentioned. Hollywood A class actors for commercials for instance and 4 months of shooting with FULL A class actors again, unnecessary and something sources were concerned with.

- Point 1 (money mismanagement) is the public interest element of this story and the most concerning from her perspective. Embezzlement.
- Sources reporting COMPLETING entire sections of the game and CR would say "Why don't we try something different?" Utter disregard for advice of people who have been in the industry for 12 years non stop. They would tell him "No, this is not going to work, that is not possible, don't do this" but he would spend six months doing something just to prove that it is possible. It wasn't, then they would have to go back and redo it (26:18).
- Issue does not really need opinions, if this is proven, if CR and wife leased items with crowdfunding money there is no other word for embezzlement and a crime in the US. Unless CR has political connections, SC could set a good precedent for holding people accountable.
- What crowdfunding needs is an example, and CR could be it.
- Escapist views the Austin studio shudown as money problems.
- Gradual layoffs seems to be the technique ("eliminating unnecessary positions"). Terms being used are significant layoffs. 10 people = a department, not restructuring. PR is excellent from CIG and utter lack of people looking closely at the situation.
- A lot of jobs listed at the jobs all pulled (available 2 weeks ago, not now). People paid for that office to ramp up production.
- 2012 kickstarter said that higher cost of stretch-goals is to ensure that they would still make the game by 2014.
- Prior to KS, there was development occurring.
- CR was out of industry not sure what he could do with money and technology / CR may have thrown a figure out there without knowing what would be required or how to spend it.
- General commentary of CIG startup at kickstarter
- Studios take time to gear up, people can't work together immediately and affect production, assumption naive.
- Mistakes were made, circumstantially CR's movie studio was sued by Kevin Costner for millions - promised movie going ahead, then not. Breach of contract.
- CR compared to Tim Schafer who ends in in position where something takes forever to take.
- Liz - You can't sell me a car, then decide to make it a flying car and then not give to me because it's now a flying car.
- Many C issues raised fall under FOI act as matters are in the public interest.
- Internal environment bad - Liz - Personal insults very publicly, HR complaints and reports useless and HR was reporting to people that were doing it. Needs to be external HR department perhaps.
- Insults included questioning manhood, sexuality, race, competency all in a public setting. Some people became physically ill while working there due to the stress of it all.
- Discriminatory hiring practices also mentioned.
- Toxic work environment is toxic to project. Spending time worrying about how to word an email to your boss telling him that his ideas are stupid and not able to be implemented, that is hours of work time that could have been spent working on something feasible.
- The idea that employees were fearful of telling boss what they thought about the basic plans / If you can't say "I, the person doing this work think that this is unfeasible" and then have stress and fear that you will be targeted in a public email for questioning, it steps beyond management issue and goes into mental health and bullying territory.
- Commentary - CR/TS have previously been in charge, but never in charge of companies. Taking someone who has always had a publisher go free, and remove the control and this can happen.
- Hiring practices - Multiple people reported this and had been taken to HR. Sandi when advising people on hiring was to check education if too long ago not to call for an interview as they are over 40, protected and harder to fire.
- Incident where someone came in and not hiring her, she's a black girl. Other ones such as she has a hairy "you know" Liz struggled to include as it was so offensive.
- Read stories in links below.
- One area where people were uncertain is whether it is coming out, just that it may not come out with this company.


Massive personal and general attacks from CIG loyalists follow in comments section screaming it is clickbait.

Particularly funny was this comment :

Alex Werges · Elgin, Illinois
One of your previous articles on CIG mentioned racism and something about not hiring black employees. Please check out the beginning of "Around the Verse: Episode 2.01"
In the first 50 seconds, there is a black person. The video was posted yesterday. I'm pretty sure sifting through their video archive for around the verse would result in several more instances of various different ethnic and racial groups.

This exchange was interesting between a White Knight and Paul Brown

Michael Espebu · Prosjekt Ingeniør at Vinje industri as
Paul Brown are you retarded or something?
"extra features and development" what do you think that is?
what about the TOS do you exactly think is violated
Like · Reply · 8 hrs

Paul Brown
Michael Espebu If you actually listened to the podcast or read the first Liz article you would have know the Terms of Service have been changed twice. Removing the release date of 2014 and the offer of refunds.
"Extra features and development" doesn't mean it will take longer. Chris Roberts estimated he'd have 60-70 staff in an interview, they now have 260. That's "extra deveopment".
Extra development doesn't mean delay. And ultimately the vote is "keep it up" as in "keep taking in money"

Also

BrutalistMcDonalds
Oct 4, 2012


Lipstick Apathy
^ thanks for that.

Roberts is an auteur (someone else compared this to Heaven's Gate earlier) but the problem is that auteurs rarely ever succeed in video games because it's a collaborative industry by necessity. So he's another Romero, and Star Citizen is turning into maybe a bigger disaster than Daikatana. Maybe the biggest disaster ever, since it's not the publisher getting screwed but hundreds of thousands of ordinary people. Maybe I'm wrong but Derek Smart has been right so far. That's true!

The thing is, Smart is an auteur too which is why he's seen right through Roberts. But I respect Smart (in an Ed Wood kinda way). When he says "this stuff Star Citizen promises? I did that in the 90s with Battlecruiser 3000AD," he's ... right. It turned into Universal Combat which is barely playable and one of the ugliest looking games ever, but it's still a game of surprising scale and ambition. I downloaded it and was really impressed at the detail. It's nearly impossible to figure it out. The manual is written in his unedited, stream-of-consciousness style and he gloats about why you need to leave the game running for hours and hours just to wait for your ship to upgrade (no alt-tabbing! No speeding up time!).

But even today, I'm impressed by his mad vision.

He had a vision, he stuck to it, did most of it himself with little money, and he never scammed people out of their life's savings, which is ... my god.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAt0p4EPCmo

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Oct 3, 2015

snipermonkey
Jun 30, 2010
So what's the connection between Star Citizen and Derek Smart? Why is he talked about all of a sudden?

No Mods No Masters
Oct 3, 2004

snipermonkey posted:

So what's the connection between Star Citizen and Derek Smart? Why is he talked about all of a sudden?

Broadly speaking Derek Smart was the one who publicized and gave a platform to the growing concerns about star citizen development being a mismanaged fiasco. This in classic Derek Smart fashion, using unceasing 10 trillion word blog posts

CHICKEN SHOES
Oct 4, 2002
Slippery Tilde
It turns out Chris Roberts didnt have much to do with this and you actually play as Derek Smart the whole game

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

corn in the bible posted:

what price, exactly, is chris roberts paying

is it the price of getting to live in a mansion paid for by idiots

well, at the moment not much. Though if you can read that giant crazypants response letter to the escapist and think he's in any kind of comfortable mind state these days, I don't know what to tell you.

He has $90 million in failed promises hanging over him. unless he has a plan to disappear completely when this shitshow crashes to earth, he has many uncomfortable days ahead

Mr SoupTeeth
Jan 16, 2015

Klyith posted:

well, at the moment not much. Though if you can read that giant crazypants response letter to the escapist and think he's in any kind of comfortable mind state these days, I don't know what to tell you.

He has $90 million in failed promises hanging over him. unless he has a plan to disappear completely when this shitshow crashes to earth, he has many uncomfortable days ahead

If they're as lovely as everything seems to indicate, they've burned through the bulk of their working capital counting on ship.jpeg sales to keep things moving. Conceivably enough refunds could push it all past the threshold and I'd bank on them halting them instead of you know, actually giving people their money back even if it dooms the whole endeavor. Crobert's entirely level headed and rational response seems to reinforce that poo poo is probably precarious as hell.

But who knows, maybe if enough Redittors flood TheEscapist's comments section calling the editor a cuntwagon all this will just go away and the sunk-cost-fallacy-express will keep hurtling through space.

Mekchu
Apr 10, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

sorla78 posted:

I just have this feeling that either Chris R or Sandra R might crack on stage during their Citizencon presentation. You know just like in them movies, something will go wrong, he tries way too hard, he will rage on and curse like a loving seaman and insult the backers live on stream.

Can't we crowdfund a trip for Derek Smart to Manchester - let's smuggle him in and see them clash against each other - live.

The best example of watching Chris Roberts try to repress his anger towards his staff in public was at some PAX event showcasing the Dogfighting module and it loving up for a solid 30 minutes while staff ran around trying to fix it while they were livestreaming etc.

Ash1138
Sep 29, 2001

Get up, chief. We're just gettin' started.

No Mods No Masters posted:

Broadly speaking Derek Smart was the one who publicized and gave a platform to the growing concerns about star citizen development being a mismanaged fiasco. This in classic Derek Smart fashion, using unceasing 10 trillion word blog posts
He claims that when he first started asking questions about financial shenanigans, his account was closed and pledge refunded with no explanation. It seems like too petty and shortsighted a move to be true, but then again so was Chris Roberts' response to that Escapist article.

Hal_2005
Feb 23, 2007

No Mods No Masters posted:

Broadly speaking Derek Smart was the one who publicized and gave a platform to the growing concerns about star citizen development being a mismanaged fiasco. This in classic Derek Smart fashion, using unceasing 10 trillion word blog posts

I suspect, like most burned out developers DS noticed just how easy people were backing KS's with no real business plan or timeline. After a bunch of KS's launched and a few crashed & burned a few dev's like CliffyB and Garrott voiced concern that just like capital markets the model is pretty easy to run a scam through and it would only be a matter of time before a project blows up, taking down industry cred.

One of the early posts on SC referenced the fact RSI was pulling down so much funding it was no longer an issue of single project execution but industrywide reputation risk. RSI was starting to become "too big to fail" both in how many A-list talent and art assets were being dragged into the RSI blackhole, and how much coverage SC was getting as the 'new' face of the industry. Particularly at risk were new dev's and indie gaming which since that initial 10mm investment and many were citing SC as a leading factor for this mania. In this mania and after that initial SC raise, KC has had more than a few ponzi & halfbaked project scams come to roost. Which has led to a pretty sharp falloff in both KC success and total closing deals since 2013. A major event like RSI going down may force government scrutiny, much like in 1998 when anyone over the age of 18 could incorporate a dot com public listing and many did; with salty tears for many financially illiterate spergs once endless cash liquidity dried up to paper over the capital intensive ponzi's.

So, I think despite DS's word salad, he raises a legitimate point. Unlike conventional equity or securities law, kickstarters have zero obligation to really deliver a quality controlled product and should something this big be indeed a fraud, we're talking a stupid number, over 2 million of the total 14 million people who invest in KS who will suffer a fraud. As 2008 and 1998 showed, people who suffer a massive 'correction' rarely ever recover for the next 5 years and psychologically it takes about 15 to 20 years before they ever "trust" the market again. Given the state of the gaming industry today, which literally makes its end of year numbers based on maybe 25 "A-list" titles, a major shock like this could very well be this generations "ET the Extraterrestrial" which sank Atari, and nearly 70% of all studios in the subsequent fallout.

Hal_2005 fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Oct 3, 2015

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Mr SoupTeeth
Jan 16, 2015

Hal_2005 posted:

As 2008 and 1998 showed, people who suffer a massive 'correction' rarely ever recover for the next 5 years and psychologically it takes about 15 to 20 years before they ever "trust" the market again. Given the state of the gaming industry today, which literally makes its end of year numbers based on maybe 25 "A-list" titles, a major shock like this could very well be this generations "ET the Extraterrestrial" which sank Atari, and nearly 70% of all studios in the subsequent fallout.

That might be a bit of a stretch since crowdfunding is pretty far removed the rest of the industry and constitutes a very small part of it. However with recent debacles like Halo MCC, Arkham Knight, and pretty much anything half digested Ubisoft and EA has dropped from their proverbial butt cheeks in the last several years, it could be the perfect storm to erode consumer and investor confidence. I wouldn't count on it though, consumers have proven themselves incredibly myopic time and again and there's a big difference between dropping thousands on a ship.jpeg/house/stock investment/.startup and a $50 videogame.

Mr SoupTeeth fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Oct 3, 2015

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