toanoradian posted:

It seems like they want to be able to do everything in the game. From silly time-wasting activities like the rubber ball to the horrendous 'realism' of raped and tortured hostages. What they want isn't a game, what they want is a transcendental spaceman simulator. They're not getting it, even if Chris Roberts is a great leader who's adept at managing teams and conserving budget.

dyzzy posted:

The least surprising yet also the most telling

XK posted:

They are metal cards, so slightly more difficult to machine gun out of a press, but still. Too many orders, closing down early, but get your order in fast and we'll squeeze it in somehow.

Also, have fun with your bent up metal card if you do anything with it other than immediately clamping it into a lucite collector's case.

Loiosh posted:

I like comparing development to other games that have gone through major revisions in their own histories for comparison, which is why I mentioned Halo, Destiny and AC as examples of games that have had major revisions during their development. (One fundamental engine redesign with a complete art and asset scrap, one a complete story and MP redesign, and one a full art and asset scrap)

Loiosh posted:

In regards to your point about history, finding examples like that is a bit more difficult. The industry is relatively young and tends to burn people out, finding people who return is rare. Jordan Mechner, Roberta Williams, Tim Schaffer, Derek Smart, Peter Molyneux, Ron Gilbert, John Carmack, Sid Meier, Will Wright are some of the names I can think off the top of my head who were around at that time and involved in design. So, I'd have to agree with you, in terms of finding an example of a designer who left gaming for 10 years, then returned, I cannot think of an example off the top of my head.

Loiosh posted:

I don't know if I'd agree with consistent, given that WC 1,(Strike Commander, lol),3,4, Starlancer, and Freelancer, but I certainly agree that his last project was a shitshow in terms of development, along with Strike Commander.

Amun Khonsu posted:

Sandi said, "3" Constellation Model Prototype for the Collectors Boxes!"

Mirificus posted:

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

Hey Bootcha, how aggravated does it make you feel when these loving retarded whales call their thousand dollar jpeg purchases "investments"?

Raskolnikov posted:

I pledge my life to Croberts. Life is grand living for a kickstarter! *falls on fake sword when game never comes out*

D_Smart posted:

Actually we've been looking into this one for sometime now. In fact, one of my researchers has been involved in checking the Chinese factories they use for this crap to see if they are sweat shops, use child labor etc.

A Neurotic Jew posted:

even if there's no legal implication, it would be awesome to see Really Good Community Manager Jared explain to the fan-base why they decided to use sweatshops.

A Neurotic Jew posted:

This is what they've already said, but there's a difference between stating that your goods are made in China because it saves money and having it proven that you've been sourcing to a sweat-shop. Even if the one implies the other, people get uncomfortable once the conditions of labor are made explicit. For a company with such a public facade like CIG, it would become a huge hassle, and they wouldn't be able to simply hand-wave it away with "it saves money".

OhDearGodNo posted:

In other words, you're making poo poo up and have no clue. You wrote all of that just to say you're making guesses and really don't know.


The reason you get poo poo on is not because you're defending SC. There's another goon that does and nobody laughs at them. The goon doesn't post ad hominem responses, doesn't post about things they don't know, and doesn't sugarcoat things with paragraphs of random boilerplate.

OhDearGodNo posted:

Octopode manages 3 datacenters while also moonlighting as a lawyer in trade law (hence his extensive knowledge with TOS enforcement) and only recently has begun to apply his expertise in programming.

To be fair, he has more marketing experience than Sandi.

Octopode posted:

Because the negative reaction to missing those dates due to their inability

I said come in! posted:

lmao you're full of poo poo and nothing you say is believable.

I said come in! posted:

i'm jealous that he might be into another person

peter gabriel posted:

The fact that they are having an anniversary sale a year after the game was supposed to be released is pretty to me

Chocobo posted:

Derk Smart paused a moment, then burst out, “Octopode, Chris Roberts bears all the troubles of the games industry on its shoulders and he is tired.”
“Madness. Midsummer madness,” muttered Octopode.
“Then let me show you something. Let me put him to the test. May I have permission to use the computer here in your office?”
“Why?”
“To ask him a question no one has ever asked Roberts before.”
“Will you do him harm?” asked Octopode in quick alarm.
“No. But it will tell us what we want to know.”
The fanboy hesitated a trifle. Then he said, “Go ahead.”
Smart used the keyboard on Octopode's desk. His fingers punched in the concierge support ticket with deft strokes: ‘Chris Roberts, what do you yourself want more than anything else?’
The moment between question and answer lengthened unbearably, but neither Smart nor Octopode breathed.
A week later there was a beep and a reply was recieved. It was a form letter:
“We would like to alert you to the fact that we are currently experiencing an unusually high load of tickets causing severe delays in getting replies out to you.”
Three weeks later there was another beep as a second reply was recieved. On it, in precise letters, was the answer:

Mirificus posted:

Mandibular Fiasco posted:

I'm only into this thing for a grand total of $40, and am debating about asking for my money back. I see people with thousands of dollars 'invested' and think that makes total sense to do. For someone like me, with barely anything spent on this gong-show, how likely is it I'll see anything worthwhile, ever? On one hand, I'd rather take that $40 and spent it on some real games, made by people who can actually ship a product. On the other hand, the $40 isn't going to break my financial picture, so part of me figures I should just ride it out and enjoy the front row seat for the drama. If you're a minimal contribution person, have you asked for your refund yet?

Tank Boy Ken posted:

Shipping to the individual recipients from China is probably not totally cheap.

Amarcarts posted:

Don't do a chargeback until a reasonable amount of time has passed. I think two weeks is reasonable.

Amarcarts posted:

I'm kind of torn on the issue. I think it's important to be reasonable because then if the person resorts to a chargeback the bank is more likely to side with them. It seems like CIG isn't having a lot of chargebacks brought against them because they'll cave in and do a refund when someone threatens. This means that it's likely people will get their money back but also probably that very few actual chargebacks have been filed against the company so they aren't on the banks' radars as scammy. Also: PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPP

Cig CS/Sandi posted:

This is all done on a discretionary basis and we are not refunding everyone who emails because of personal hardships and nor are we obligated to. It sounds like you are now threatening us?

Devian666 posted:

CIG are threatened by legal rights that they are required to fulfill. Every refund is pushing this project closer to extinction now if they are responding like this. Maybe there's only a few hundred thousand left?

Olesh posted:

Derek is half right, but only in theory - if enough people actually chargeback them over this, they lose their ability to process credit cards for an indeterminate period of time on that account. The target number isn't very large, either - either a fixed number (something like $50k) over a certain period of time or 1% of their transactions over the same period of time, whichever is lower. The major card brands (Visa/Mastercard/etc) are the ones who won't tolerate this, but on the one hand whoever they're using as a payment processor is liable to turn a blind eye to things like account juggling (to spread out chargebacks and avoid hitting the limit on any one account) because they're making a crapton of money off of CIG so long as nobody officially reports them doing it. On the other hand, there's not exactly a mechanism for reporting this sort of thing and even if one of their accounts gets closed down they can just funnel transactions through another account in future.

That's why this is only half right (sorry Derek) - it's not really remotely plausible that enough people will go through the chargeback process to get any of CIG's processor accounts shut down, because CIG is capable of juggling the accounts to spread out the chargebacks to avoid any one account getting hit heavily enough to matter. Even if one of their accounts gets shut down from an excess of chargebacks, their related accounts are not likely to be touched - it would take at least two accounts shut down in this way to demonstrate a pattern of behavior, and we've already got demonstrated proof that they've got transactions coming through multiple sources, meaning the bar for any individual account to get nailed for chargebacks is going to be rather high, let alone multiple accounts crossing that threshold. In practice the chance that they'll lose the ability to process credit cards through any of their accounts is so remote as to be effectively zero, let alone all of their accounts.

On the other hand, chargeback fees are _totally_ a thing; typically anywhere from 25$-75$ a transaction, and not only do payment processors take a percentage cut of the transaction, about half the time processors will also charge the same cut on issued refunds. If my payment processor charges 4% on a 100$ transaction, that is later refunded via chargeback, that means that not only do I have to refund the full $100 to the consumer (as per Visa and Mastercard, fees for using credit cards cannot be passed to the consumer), I get hit with a 4$ charge for accepting the transaction, possibly hit with a 4$ charge for refunding the transaction, and also hit with a $25 (or more!) fee for the chargeback. So that $100 in (that's actually $96 in pocket) ends up being a total of $129 or more out.

The reason CIG is trying not to issue full refunds is because every refund is a loss for them; even if their processor doesn't double-dip on refunds they're still out a percentage of the transaction, and chargeback threats are not only worse but require administrative oversight to ensure that the funding model isn't accidentally taken down by having too many chargebacks issued through the same processors. When they're trying to deny any individual their refund, it's because ANY refund is a net loss, and they're trying to balance how much they can try and hang onto without refunding vs the likelihood that you'll actually go through the chargeback process and cost them an extra chunk of change. They can juggle accounts all they want, there's no getting out of the chargeback fees which is why they still want to avoid them.


Edit: This is really as simple as a discussion of this gets - without knowing the specific details of the contracts they signed with their payment processor(s), whether or not they're held to stricter standards or the specifics of what might happen IF an account gets taken down through chargebacks aren't really on the table for speculation. Any individual payment processor IS absolutely capable of connecting the dots between companies, but in general due diligence on the processor side is limited to the primary account holder and whether or not that individual has the authority to sign for processing on behalf of their company.

Omi-Polari posted:

Coffee is better.

G0RF posted:

Yeah, I thought that at first, too- and it could be that, but the way she says it, "No, seriously- I am actually a science teacher. A high school science teacher. I didn't do a very good job at it." comes across like she's letting them know something about her that they didn't know. It could be read either way, though. The important thing is that I learned something new in watching it- that she is capable, occasionally, of self-critique. So that's something.

Warcabbit posted:

I was a substitute TA for prefirst and first in America without qualifications. (I was still in college) In practice, this meant I was the sole teacher for 23 four and five year olds for several months.

Yes, it was terrifying.

Fatkraken posted:

If buying in at $40 ends up being a substantially worse experience as a player than having a $3000 pirate racing fleet, then the game is a failure on a fundamental level and not something you should want to be involved with anyway, because that would make it a lovely, cynical pay-to-win scam.

Mirificus posted:

Orions Lord posted:

I worked in a Canadian office once that had Eye Strain software installed it was terrible.

So I asked the SC forums if it can be implemented in the game.

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/299616/computer-vision-syndrome#latest

Let's see where this one is going.