[Megathread] Star Citizen

[Edge-]

Compared to all the other big productions from big studios with long development times.

Like...? You always talk in vague generalities and never actually provide examples. What. Other. Games?

You can polish an early feature/asset from as soon as you start the game while at changing, removing several other features that go from concept, to development to polish multiple times at different timelines. It's called iteration and game development if full of it.

That's...not how iteration actually works in development. You feature lock early and usually don't make major changes once that's done as those are fairly fundamental pieces of tech to the game overall, and you work towards content lock. At that point you spend time polishing, because polish work done prior is largely a big potential waste. Things are still cut and added throughout content locking, so if you spent a week polishing something that gets cut later on when you're locking content then congrats, that's a week of multiple peoples time burned and wasted.

I don't know why you and others keep talking about CIG's development as if it's "standard" while also talking up how unique it is. Nothing about CIG's development process is remotely "standard" in game development and that's the whole reason there's so much ongoing discussion about it. Because they're not operating like any other development studio operates or following traditional/best-practices for gamedev.

I'd say it's relevant alright.

The entire development timeline for those games is irrelevant to the polish timeline for SQ42. Unless you can show that both games were "complete" and spent years being polished.

You can try to argue semantics but game development is just that iteration and constant change, you can polish the bits you like while refactoring the ones you don't and going back and forth until the gameplay is fun and pan's out as you envisioned.

Again, this is not how game development works anywhere else.

Oh but it is, there's plenty of reports of entire levels or features being cut during Beta, why do you think so many games missed their initial release dates? Specially in story driven games. Uncharteds, Read Dead Redemption, Cyberpunk, Anthem, even Wow all had chunks of features and/or zones altered or completely removed during the final year of development, which in WoW's case some ended up added later.

Those are all examples of content cut because they didn't have time/budget to complete them for launch, or that got far along and simply didn't work out. It happens, but this is, again, not as "super common" as you say it is.

They were hired in early 2015 but the Procedural Planets tech breakthrough only came at the end of the year, which then prompted the scope increase to make the most of such game changing tech.

So...was Chris lying when said that the game was greyboxed and in the polish state after that news came out then? Or is there some weird time travel shit going on?

[MrAnderson]

Who would of thought that exposing gamers to the making of the sausage would spawn so many into angry gamers.

New PTU patch is up for Evo so I'll let you guys rest for today.

Have a good one!

[Edge-]

Who would of thought that exposing gamers to the making of the sausage would spawn so many into angry gamers.

New PTU patch is up for Evo so I'll let you guys rest for today.

Have a good one!

Many of us are involved in said sausagemaking, bro.

[kenn9530]

On the basis that the amount of time, and possibly budget, they've put into "polishing" for the past 6 years is longer (in terms of length) than the development cycles for AAA titles from pre-production to shipping, fast-approaching the development cycles for full production of a MMO, and the corresponding budget just for polish is about what a "low-end" AAA game budgets for the entirety of development.

That or...Chris has been slinging a lot of BS and there's been more work scrapped and redone repeatedly over this time which is realistically the only way that any dedicated teams working on SQ42 could have kept busy over the span of 6 years.

Features can be polished in early development it doesnt mean the game is nearly ready to release, SQ42 also added in full ground combat while origionally it was just going to be space based so thats a huge change in the game, the games have only really been in full development around 6-7 years at most and thats 2 games being developed not just one so the current development timeframe is more than reasonable, also this is the largest scale game ever created so that adds extra development time also.

[Calfredd]

Features can be polished in early development it doesnt mean the game is nearly ready to release, SQ42 also added in full ground combat while origionally it was just going to be space based so thats a huge change in the game, the games have only really been in full development around 6-7 years at most and thats 2 games being developed not just one so the current development timeframe is more than reasonable, also this is the largest scale game ever created so that adds extra development time also.

I'm feeling a complex combination of hoping Star Citizen fails just to spite you, Otaka, and Anderson and hoping Star Citizen is real and actually comes out one day so that the real fans (the ones who can actually acknowledge the good and bad) can finally get the game they deserve.

[Thestrawman]

Many of us are involved in said sausagemaking, bro.

No let him slink away with whatever "dignity" he thinks he can get away with. He'll be back as soon as there is another video with dozens of views he can link.

- - - Updated - - -

Features can be polished in early development it doesnt mean the game is nearly ready to release, SQ42 also added in full ground combat while origionally it was just going to be space based so thats a huge change in the game, the games have only really been in full development around 6-7 years at most and thats 2 games being developed not just one so the current development timeframe is more than reasonable, also this is the largest scale game ever created so that adds extra development time also.

Didn't feel like continuing the conversation as Mr Anderson account? Had to swap over to kenn so you could agree with yourself?

[Aoewy]

Who would of thought that exposing gamers to the making of the sausage would spawn so many into angry gamers.

New PTU patch is up for Evo so I'll let you guys rest for today.

Have a good one!

Traduction - I have no idea what I'm talking about, I googled gamedev and grab some terms thinking I'll look smart putting them together, and now for the 200th time it backfired because there are actual people who work in this industry who know I'm full of shit that called me out so I'll just bail out and come back in a couple of days like if nothing happened.

*log on his Kenn account*

[Kyanion]

I'll let you guys rest for today.

Have a good one!

Translation: I have no good arguments and I've run out of videos with sub 1k views to link. Don't look behind the curtain at the 'polish' phase lasting 6 years of the game. Give CIG more money! I totally wish I worked for them.

- - - Updated - - -

Traduction - I have no idea what I'm talking about, I googled gamedev and grab some terms thinking I'll look smart putting them together, and now for the 200th time it backfired because there are actual people who work in this industry who know I'm full of shit that called me out so I'll just bail out and come back in a couple of days like if nothing happened.

*log on his Kenn account*

Dammit you beat me to the translation!

- - - Updated - - -

the games have only really been in full development around 6-7 years at most and thats 2 games being developed not just one so the current development timeframe is more than reasonable, also this is the largest scale game ever created so that adds extra development time also.

LOL now it is only 6-7 years of development guys! Ignore that whole Pre-production starting in 2010, production in 2011, kickstarter in 2012 thing. Only 6-7 years AT MOST meaning it could be less! I love how you can outright fucking lie despite facts proving you wrong and nothing happens. It really is fucking amusing.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm feeling a complex combination of hoping Star Citizen fails just to spite you, Otaka, and Anderson and hoping Star Citizen is real and actually comes out one day so that the real fans (the ones who can actually acknowledge the good and bad) can finally get the game they deserve.

I want it to come out AND fail just because from what I've seen of this project it won't be out for years and eventually they will run out of money and excuses. It does not matter how great the funding is right now, eventually people will get tired of waiting. Until they run out of money though you won't see a game.

[Henako]

Who would of thought that exposing gamers to the making of the sausage would spawn so many into angry gamers.

New PTU patch is up for Evo so I'll let you guys rest for today.

Have a good one!

This is fucking embarrassing, lol.

[Kyanion]

This is fucking embarrassing, lol.

They really are the gift that keeps on giving.

[banmebaby]

Who would of thought that exposing gamers to the making of the sausage would spawn so many into angry gamers.

New PTU patch is up for Evo so I'll let you guys rest for today.

Have a good one!

"Am I out of touch? No, It's the children who are wrong!" Hey, at least you tried and we all had fun, thanks, see you on the next one.

[Rennadrel]

WoW has ray tracing tho.

20 year old game engine is still a 20 year old game engine that looks like shit. Quake 3 has RTX any all it does is improve shadows and minor lighting

[Cloverfield]

Seems you're extrapolating quite a bit there and letting some biased misconceptions create an alternative reality because, reasons.
Hand-waving an alternative reality where a pharmaceutical company business as anything to do with a Game development studio and crowdfunding seems kind of a stretch.

Not really, this is purely factual: I am simply showing with real life exemples how your statement below is a red herring and does not mean much about the actual state of SQ42:

And for the ones stating that "nothing is shown of Squadron 42" and there's no work being done I leave some footage:

I don't think many here are suggesting that work isn't being done (that is your red herring part). But, much like the Theranos' videos and words, the videos and words by CIG that you linked do not mean much for the actual state of SQ42 (especially when considering the outrageous continuous delays for almost a decade, while CIG keeps asking for more money). Despite all Theranos work, videos and words over a decade and 1.4 billion in funding, in the end there was only a very sub par product, a far cry from the original dream, and its leadership was found guilty of fraud.

[Shakzor]

20 year old game engine is still a 20 year old game engine that looks like shit. Quake 3 has RTX any all it does is improve shadows and minor lighting

Isn't that what Raytracing is? I never rally cared for it, but i can't remember any of the raytracing footage ever being more than lightng, shadows, reflections and that sorta thing, as in "tracing light rays". Wouldn't make sense for a lighting tech to improve the texture quality.
But as i said, i never really followed it, so if it DOES something else, feel free to tell so.

[Cloverfield]

On the basis that the amount of time, and possibly budget, they've put into "polishing" for the past 6 years is longer (in terms of length) than the development cycles for AAA titles from pre-production to shipping, fast-approaching the development cycles for full production of a MMO, and the corresponding budget just for polish is about what a "low-end" AAA game budgets for the entirety of development.

That or...Chris has been slinging a lot of BS and there's been more work scrapped and redone repeatedly over this time which is realistically the only way that any dedicated teams working on SQ42 could have kept busy over the span of 6 years.

Absolutely.

The additional key element often left unspoken here is that throughout all those years, each and every major announcement of an estimated timeline for SQ42 (and there has been quite a few since the first one for 2014) often came with all those videos and words MrAnderson has been linking and the consequent hype and funding drive, hundreds of millions, if the CIG tracker is to be believed. Only for all those estimated dates to come and go without a SQ42 release, but with all the money payed by customers based on those dates and videos still safe in CIG's coffers and its leadership pockets.

That is one of the reasons some people say it is a scam or simply fraud.

[banmebaby]

As hinted with a screen shot that I’ve shared some pages ago from this thread:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/s...vertical-slice
“blá blá blá only people who didn’t back the game complain about it.”

The Batman Who Laughs@TheBatman_Who_Laughs
August 19th at 23:14
Didn't you hear? SQ42 needs drones (among other things) and those aren't even started yet. It also needs more cutscenes filmed in the new mocap studio and that isn't built yet. There are no plans to release this game any time soon...

Chubba@ChubbaBaby
August 19th at 23:59
Wasn't that crazy? Today's stream was an eye opener with regard to just how bad things are. I really don't think many have absorbed just what all was revealed by the devs today.

This is the Stream they were talking about, was shared AFTER the last “just polishing” letter:



@ 17:50

Turns out they have been just polishing incomplete features for over 6 years. GJ!

[Cloverfield]

Well it's noticeable only to those who play and engage with it's community. There's been a big influx of new players in the servers asking for help.

During my time in game when I was most invested, and more recently in the spot occasions that I still check now and then, I have seen players asking for help, both old and new, but equally I have seen a similar, if not higher, amount of people stating leaving the game in the same period. Some players come, but many also leave. Your personal testimonial is very likely biased towards confirmation of your own point of view, as is probably mine so, meh?

What could actually help here is not really your own personal biased views or 3rd hand assumptions on "streamers", but rather actual live and auditable player concurrency metrics published by CIG and such. The fact CIG is one of the most opaque game developers in terms of live players statistics does not help much in this discussion.

But I suspect that, if those influx you mention were a clear net increase for SC, CIG would have already decided to publish live stats a long time ago (hopefully in an auditable way), which they have not yet after almost a decade.

Jackfrags, like most big content creators knows what gamers enjoy to watch and he tailors his videos towards that. He has a nice balance between narrating it's adventure, cool gameplay and witty humour. Something that seems to be a popular mix.

And yet he just did a handful of SC vids several months ago and that is it. Given those videos seem to have given him on average a higher view count than his regular ones, one would expect him to continue squeezing that "gold mine"... alas , he has not. The point was precisely that one of the main reasons for this is probably the extreme brokenness of SC, which in turn leads to extreme curation work from his part, in addition to the fact that he may have actually ended up suffering more than enjoying the whole experience: He probably rather play and stream other games that he has more fun with and that are much less broken.

That being the case, given jackfrags controversial relationship with paid for promotion and CIG's apparent keenness to sponsor this kind stuff (Rexzilla etc), the likelihood of those few vids being a sponsored job by CIG (directly or indirectly) are quite high, which always helps when the product is difficult to work with.

Don't think so, I think FDEV pushed odyssey because they needed end the financial year with a funding boost so that their shareholders could get their big fat bonus.

And you would be wrong. That is a common misconception by SC backers about publishers in general. Somehow they think shareholders are there to squeeze out as much cash out of a business as possible. It is actually the other way around (CIG seems to be an exception to this, see further below). Shareholders put their money in the company with the main expectation the share price will go up and then they will be able to eventually sell their stock at a better price than they bought it.

What I presume you are trying to refer to with that naïve "big fat bonus" is really dividends. But these do not work as you suggest. To start with not all companies offer dividends all the time to their shareholders, and apparently that is something that occurs even less often within the video game industry. Shareholders by default much rather the company reinvests its cash in projects with better yields, than issue the usual dividends. As a rule of thumb dividends are offered when a company has more cash floating around than projects with better yields to invest it in. There are companies that base their shareholder return mainly on dividends instead of growth but those are usually a minority and tend to be in companies with little to no growth prospects, which is far from being the case in the gaming industry.

As for FDEV in particular, it has not given dividends for years (if at all) so there was never a "big fat bonus" for shareholders at the end of the year as you say. That is simply incorrect.

So going back to your original point:

Nobody but the shareholders win when a game is rushed to release.

That still does not necessarily follow. And the logic is still quite simple: Bad products lead to loss of sales which lead to bad results which lead to loss of share price, and value, for shareholders. FDEV share price in the last year is but one exemple of this.

Shareholder (and board) control is a key balance mechanism of proper corporate governance, one that is sorely lacking at CIG (unless the Calders investment got them a significant say in CIG strategic decision making).

Now speaking of CIG the funny thing is that, unlike FDEV, CIG has actually issued dividends to its owners (the Calders, Chris Roberts himself, Ortwin etc) to the tune of £1,007,559 paid in dividends to owners, plus someone cashed out £1m in shares. Chris Roberts owns around 65-75% of CIG so make the maths about how much in dividends he awarded to himself.

As you said, that is what I would actually call a "big fat bonus" indeed!

And that is on top of the annual director salaries. For info, in the case of Erin Roberts his salary was £414,359 in 2020, up from £363,425 in 2019. Now you can imagine the salaries Chris Roberts and Ortwin pay themselves, plus Sandi... And that in a company that allegedly hasn't released a single product yet and is still crowdfunding. It is just truly remarkable.

Dividends is something usually reserved for companies that have already formally released a product that they can account profits on, but here we are.

Well but they are working on their own dime.

I am afraid they are not. As far as we know CIG has not really publicly confirmed SC is released in any way (weather early access or gold release). At least not publicly enough. So according to CIG itself there is no product yet made by them to claim any revenues they can use as own resources. So far, it is still all allegedly crowdfunding, so CIG is working on our dime, not theirs.

Using own cash reserves following released product sales, raising cash in exchange of equity or asking for loans are all exemples of actually working on your own dime. All of those exemples carry constraints and/or obligations for the one using the cash and therefore all losses and liability for misuse fall squarely on the company using it. With crowdfunding (and the abusive CIG ToS) on the other hand CIG has pretty much zero obligations in general, and zero risks or liability if the money is misused, it would be a case of "oups, sorry guys, we tried, thanks for your money and trust, bye!" and that is it... Because they are working with our money, our risk, not theirs.

[Kyanion]

Now speaking of CIG the funny thing is that, unlike FDEV, CIG has actually issued dividends to its owners (the Calders, Chris Roberts himself, Ortwin etc) to the tune of £1,007,559 paid in dividends to owners, plus someone cashed out £1m in shares. Chris Roberts owns around 65-75% of CIG so make the maths about how much in dividends he awarded to himself.

As you said, that is what I would actually call a "big fat bonus" indeed!

And that is on top of the annual director salaries. For info, in the case of Erin Roberts his salary was £414,359 in 2020, up from £363,425 in 2019. Now you can imagine the salaries Chris Roberts and Ortwin pay themselves, plus Sandi... And that in a company that allegedly hasn't released a single product yet and is still crowdfunding. It is just truly remarkable.

Dividends is something usually reserved for companies that have already formally released a product that they can account profits on, but here we are.

Damn they really are enriching themselves while also getting some nice raises on top of it. That is some pretty shitty stuff right there.

[banmebaby]

Which is why the majority of those who complain or have a problem with how the company takes their time developing Squadron 42 are not even backers, players or supports of the project at all hence completely irrelevant to the discussion.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/s...ed-6-years-ago

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/s...vertical-slice

It doesn't surprise me that backers aren't more vocal about it, at least over the CiG forums, considering criticism and pesky questions often lead to bans and thread locks in record times.

[Cloverfield]

Continuous player and funding growth can't exist on a vacuum, crowdfunding projects that fail to present results don't last long in the graces of their backers.

Which is why the majority of those who complain or have a problem with how the company takes their time developing Squadron 42 are not even backers, players or supports of the project at all hence completely irrelevant to the discussion.

Because if they were, CIG wouldn't be seeing the continuous record numbers of player engagement and funding like they do.

Which is one of the predicates of Crowdfunded focused games. Projects are born and live by it's crowd, it's community.

Which can only be sustained by constant delivery with demonstration of progress year after year which CIG has been doing since inception despite what outsiders like to preach.

Something something "Dogs bark, but the caravan keeps on."

This has been discussed previously and proven to be a false equivalence. There are many projects that have failed to present results or present extremely sub par products, and which have increased their funding or revenues to even billions for years, sometime even over a decade.

It suffices that those buying in believe in the dream, the potential and the hype even if the current state is broken. Especially when the company is misrepresenting the actual state of the work, or even committing fraud. Theranos, Fyre Festival, Enron, Madoff, Lehman Brothers etc are exemples of this.