AP posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0-QE4UgR4U

Virtual Captain posted:

I skimmed through this.

[x] years in and now they are now thinking about putting together a gameplay team; while it appears their focus remains on art. Unbelievable.
I don't really follow the purpose of each office but it sounds like they are PU and a little bit of S42 stuff.

Mirificus posted:

Strawman posted:

Then what happened to the watertight compartments?

MinorInconvenience posted:

But wait, I thought S42 was almost done? How can they not have already done this? How is it possible that backers don't understand how bad this is?

Decrepus posted:

Remember when Chris pretended that the demo player went "off-script" by shooting the sand worm, causing it to attack?

lol

MinorInconvenience posted:

But wait, I thought S42 was almost done? How can they not have already done this? How is it possible that backers don't understand how bad this is?

MinorInconvenience posted:

But wait, I thought S42 was almost done? How can they not have already done this? How is it possible that backers don't understand how bad this is?

Virtual Captain posted:

I skimmed through this.


"I have 4 AI programmers"
"We're now building up a small gameplay team, so gameplay programmers"
"We have a large push on design here" (systems and levels)
"We have a large environment art team here" (9 people)
lighting artist
engine team
tools programmer
65 people

[x] years in and now they are now thinking about putting together a gameplay team; while it appears their focus remains on art. Unbelievable.
I don't really follow the purpose of each office but it sounds like they are PU and a little bit of S42 stuff.

Xaerael posted:

Most games have super rough looking pre-alphas while they get the meat and potatoes mechanics of the game sorted, then they make pretty graphics to go with the solid base game.

CIG literally wallpapered the house before it was built. Now they're frantically trying to build a house around sagging wallpaper that idiots spent far too much money on.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

If they advertised a 2016 release date but had never even hired gameplay programmers that's loving fraud.

Virtual Captain posted:

I love the wallpaper house analogy so much because it explains CIG to a tee.

Virtual Captain posted:

I skimmed through this.


"I have 4 AI programmers"
"We're now building up a small gameplay team, so gameplay programmers"
"We have a large push on design here" (systems and levels)
"We have a large environment art team here" (9 people)
lighting artist
engine team
tools programmer
65 people

[x] years in and now they are now thinking about putting together a gameplay team; while it appears their focus remains on art. Unbelievable.
I don't really follow the purpose of each office but it sounds like they are PU and a little bit of S42 stuff.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

Here's my theory on how things are going:

1. CIG doesn't encourage its employees to buy ships, or do anything other than take a paycheck and work on the game.

2. CIG does gently caress around with the funding counter in order to fraudulently maintain the impression that the project is continuing to bring in money so that backers will feel confident enough to spend their own cash. The people responsible justify it through some convoluted explanation about how funding is received (such as tax breaks becoming income) or about the need to avoid controversy (such as by adding ten million in one day because a new loan was secured).

3. Chris does not believe for a second that the gross mismanagement and failure to deliver is his fault, and instead blames the backers for constantly pushing him to increase the scope of the game. In his mind the opportunity for refunds absolves him of any wrongdoing should CIG fail, as those who are left know that game development is risky. This is a similar attitude shared by Bernie Madoff (and I highly recommend listening to that episode of Radio Lab).

4. There are three groups of people who work at CIG. Those who live within a reality distortion field and believe that CIG will deliver, those who are too low on the food chain to know how things are going, and those who know things are hosed but have checked out and don't care so long as a paycheck is continuing.

5. "The backers will never know" is a central tenant of the company culture.

6. Development is more about avoiding Chris's attention, or about meeting whatever idiotic spontaneous demand he spouts in as timely a fashion as possible, than providing a game with mechanics. This translates to an almost pathological desire to avoid any kind of negative feedback due to Chris's inability to handle hearing the word "no" from anyone.

XK posted:

I think it's funny that shitizens have been making like it's a big deal that Amazon is partnering with CIG, and it's some sort of really important development relationship for Amazon, while at the same time Amazon payments strictly disallows use by crowdfunded developers.

https://pay.amazon.com/us/help/201457400


The only third-party provider they specifically mention permitting, Crowdrise, is a crowdfund site specifically for charitable causes only.

hot balls man no homo posted:

With the "crowdfunding" numbers, the expensive DLC ships that you can buy, the ease at which CIG can create ships to give out, the ease of selling and trading ships, the complete lack of oversight... Something fishy has to be going on. It's just too easy to manipulate the system CIG created and controls.

Apple can't create a bunch of iPhones out of thin air to give away or sell to employees, but CIG can with their own marketplace. Their digital goods are something I've never seen before. Fully stocked WOW accounts can't net the kind of money space ships can. Even giving out free game download codes nets you only fifty bucks a pop if you can manage to flip it somehow. What kind of other game content can be pulled out of someone's rear end and sold for straight cash? And nobody can tell them not to?

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

If they advertised a 2016 release date but had never even hired gameplay programmers that's loving fraud.

Virtual Captain posted:

Sure all that stuff in my post starts at 17mins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0-QE4UgR4U&t=1025s and goes for about 2 or 3 mins.

MinorInconvenience posted:

I get that I'm really late to this drama, but I ran across this article from last month. In it, Mr. Roberts admits that current development is funded from the monthly ship picture sales with a reserve to finish S42 if the monthly backer contributions dry up:

"Roberts explained:
'First of all, we always have a decent amount of money in reserve, so if all support would collapse, we would not suddenly be incapacitated. We plan the scope of the development based on what arrives monthly by the people to support. I’m not worried, because even if no money came in, we would have sufficient funds to complete Squadron 42. The revenue from this could in-turn be used for the completion of Star Citizen.'”

Isn't this a crazy huge admission? Maybe I missed it earlier in this threat, but drat! He admits they have almost no money left? Why did this article not create a shitstorm of Biblical proportions??

D_Smart posted:

Yeah, but maybe they all quit?

Virtual Captain posted:

I think when Chris got the dollar signs in his eyes he lost sight of the game and started chasing his movie dreams again. 20 mo-cap sessions later with a dwindling budget he decided maybe they should start making the game part soon. Except he built the whole company around ~ fidelity ~ and is now playing catchup with the game mechanics. It's 2017 and they are hoping to get some basic features like mining and cargo this year; those should have been done in the first months.

The Titanic posted:

This is not anywhere near comprehensive, but none of it is a lie. This is 5 years and $140 million. People who have faith in this are astonishing. People who defend it need to go into the Guinness Book for something.

The Titanic posted:

I'd like to err on the side that they got both greedy and continue to have no idea what they're doing. CR is an out of touch, way out of his league ex programmer from the early to mid 90s, trying to build the impossible by not doing anything right except graphics. Not even animation, just graphics.

I'm pretty confident that I think his understanding of the 90s and what he was told by the CryEngine guys have caused a misfire of the project.

The CryEngine guys were told that this was basically an arena space game with trading and stuff like Freelancer. Some walking around in FPS levels. The hardest part was going to get people walking around inside space ships, but it's been done before with magic.

At that time, they probably reviewed the project and advised Chris that graphics were going to be the hurdle, because of the amount of stuff he wanted to have. The gameplay loop wasn't that tough.

Well.

Fast forward to today where the gameplay loop is an impossible dream of confusion. The scope of the game itself may as well be The Matrix. While the CryEngine guys apparently failed, and Chris never listened to the cries of his internal programming teams, he's since bled any talent that may have been able to bring a fraction of the vision to life.

Now he's working with middle talent and probably mostly fresh out of college graduates. He can't convey an idea to save his life. There is no design documentation to speak of. One day you're working on the game, the next suddenly you need to build a fake 3.0 level, or a loving sandworm fever dream that makes no sense.

All the while Chris has no understanding of how difficult his ideas are to make, and seriously believes that having an idea is more valuable than the people capable of making an idea into reality.

So what does all this net you?

Basically exactly everything Star Citizen is.
- Missed deadlines everywhere
- Features promised being pulled due to impossibility
- Features promised delayed far into other updates
- No honesty or understanding of what will be in a deliverable
- Customers who have no clue what to expect
- Totally disconnected games which will never merge together
- Zero progress on an actual MMO system
- Bugs galore

This is not anywhere near comprehensive, but none of it is a lie. This is 5 years and $140 million. People who have faith in this are astonishing. People who defend it need to go into the Guinness Book for something.

MinorInconvenience posted:

I get that I'm really late to this drama, but I ran across this article from last month. In it, Mr. Roberts admits that current development is funded from the monthly ship picture sales with a reserve to finish S42 if the monthly backer contributions dry up:

"Roberts explained:
'First of all, we always have a decent amount of money in reserve, so if all support would collapse, we would not suddenly be incapacitated. We plan the scope of the development based on what arrives monthly by the people to support. I’m not worried, because even if no money came in, we would have sufficient funds to complete Squadron 42. The revenue from this could in-turn be used for the completion of Star Citizen.'”

Isn't this a crazy huge admission? Maybe I missed it earlier in this threat, but drat! He admits they have almost no money left? Why did this article not create a shitstorm of Biblical proportions??

D_Smart posted:

Yeah, it is. We couldn't believe it either. But just like the MVP statement, this one too is a doozy.

The Titanic posted:

I'd like to err on the side that they got both greedy and continue to have no idea what they're doing. CR is an out of touch, way out of his league ex programmer from the early to mid 90s, trying to build the impossible by not doing anything right except graphics. Not even animation, just graphics.

I'm pretty confident that I think his understanding of the 90s and what he was told by the CryEngine guys have caused a misfire of the project.

The CryEngine guys were told that this was basically an arena space game with trading and stuff like Freelancer. Some walking around in FPS levels. The hardest part was going to get people walking around inside space ships, but it's been done before with magic.

At that time, they probably reviewed the project and advised Chris that graphics were going to be the hurdle, because of the amount of stuff he wanted to have. The gameplay loop wasn't that tough.

Well.

Fast forward to today where the gameplay loop is an impossible dream of confusion. The scope of the game itself may as well be The Matrix. While the CryEngine guys apparently failed, and Chris never listened to the cries of his internal programming teams, he's since bled any talent that may have been able to bring a fraction of the vision to life.

Now he's working with middle talent and probably mostly fresh out of college graduates. He can't convey an idea to save his life. There is no design documentation to speak of. One day you're working on the game, the next suddenly you need to build a fake 3.0 level, or a loving sandworm fever dream that makes no sense.

All the while Chris has no understanding of how difficult his ideas are to make, and seriously believes that having an idea is more valuable than the people capable of making an idea into reality.

So what does all this net you?

Basically exactly everything Star Citizen is.
- Missed deadlines everywhere
- Features promised being pulled due to impossibility
- Features promised delayed far into other updates
- No honesty or understanding of what will be in a deliverable
- Customers who have no clue what to expect
- Totally disconnected games which will never merge together
- Zero progress on an actual MMO system
- Bugs galore

This is not anywhere near comprehensive, but none of it is a lie. This is 5 years and $140 million. People who have faith in this are astonishing. People who defend it need to go into the Guinness Book for something.