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Star Citizen: Clusterfuck or Scam?

Started by Cold Meat Platter, November 20, 2021, 11:10:42 PM

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Cold Meat Platter

Hey they've just passed the $400,000,000 raised milestone everyone haha.
The whole story of this game is extraordinary. It's like an experiment to see how far nerds can be manipulated for money. Chis Roberts has to be one of the least charismatic cult leaders ever. It's all baffling to me.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-11-20-star-citizen-crosses-the-usd400m-raised-mark

Anyone played it?

bgmnts

The fact this is still getting new backers is incredible.

All because this cunt did Wing Commander.

jonbob

I tried playing it on one of their free weekends, spent half a hour trying to work out how to get into a ship and start flying. After having to read a fucking starter guide on how to get out of the room your start in, decided fuck this and went to playing elite dangerous

The Crumb

For me, even if they were genuine in intending to  deliver, thousands of dollars for digital ships is a scam. Same way that Rolexes are genuine products but also a scam for mugs.

Cold Meat Platter

Thousands of dollars for digital ships that only exist as concept art as well.
Yeah it'll be interesting when/if it all goes gold and everyone gets their special ships only to find that after a week there's other folk flying around in the same ships that they had bought through just playing the game.

Alberon

It'll never go gold, won't even reach beta, this will be in alpha until the heat death of the universe.

Why would they release it? They seem to be making a good enough living from endless development.

The best bit of Scam Citizen is reading the comments under any news article. There's always one or two true believers who have shovelled way too much money into something that is clearly nowhere near a game yet.

evilcommiedictator


The Culture Bunker

Quote from: Alberon on November 22, 2021, 08:15:22 PMThe best bit of Scam Citizen is reading the comments under any news article. There's always one or two true believers who have shovelled way too much money into something that is clearly nowhere near a game yet.
Any chance such comments are from people linked to the project in some way? I suppose if I was getting paid to work on something that never appears to need finishing, I'd be keen to keep the wagon rolling.

Wing Commander I/II and Strike Commander were great for their time, but I'm not sure I've played anything else Roberts has been involved with that has impressed me. I didn't find Wing Commander III/IV and Privateer II much fun at all.

racecar bed indy 500

Quote from: evilcommiedictator on November 22, 2021, 11:04:39 PMStar Citizen: Clusterfuck or Scam?
yes

I believe the discussion of this goes back... *googles it* holy shit what 9 years.
And the answer has been yes the entire time.

Alberon

There has always been a fascination with games that spend far too long in development hell.

Daikatana and Duke Nukem Forever have nothing on this beast though. The fact it has a viable business model out of endless development really does give this legs no previous game has had.

I can't wait to see how this ends, but I do not believe it will be in a released product. There's probably a really good book or film in the behind the scenes story, though.

Rev+

They announced a fairly decent mid-tier voice cast with the likes of Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman and Gillian Anderson a few years back.  Have they done their lines yet or are they on absolutely ridiculous retainers?

Sonny_Jim

#11
Chris Roberts has previous form for blowing out the scope of a project and not finishing it within a required timeframe:

Quote from: Wikipedia article about FreelancerIn June 2000, Microsoft started talks to buy Digital Anvil. Roberts admitted that his team required large sums of money, which only a huge company could provide, to continue developing Freelancer with its "wildly ambitious" features and unpredictable schedule; the project had overshot its original development projection of three years by 18 months. Roberts trusted that Microsoft would not compromise his vision for Freelancer, and was convinced the software giant would not attempt the takeover if it did not believe Freelancer could sell at least 500,000 copies when released.[39] Roberts left the company on completion of the deal, but assumed a creative consultant role on Freelancer until its release.[40] Microsoft instructed Digital Anvil to scale down the ambitions of the project and focus on finishing the game based on what was possible and the team's strengths.

The main difference being is that before Star Citizen, Roberts was beholden to other people like shareholders and executives above him.  Here he's got no one looking over his shoulder to make sure he isn't royally fucking things up and wasting money on pipe dream stuff.  IIRC his team spent 4+ years using an engine that wasn't appropriate for an MMORPG, instead plumping for a FPS one that looked pretty but couldn't be scaled up.

He'll piss $400M away in no time and will find something else to blame it on other than his mismanagement.

Ferris

Never heard of this so looked it up. $400m well spent I'd say.

Ferris

Quote from: Sonny_Jim on January 03, 2022, 03:41:33 AMHe'll piss $400M away in no time and will find something else to blame it on other than his mismanagement.

According to Wikipedia they raised $150m as of mid-2017, but had spent $193m by end of the year. Sounds like they're burning though cash as quickly as they're raising it.

I'm having a look at their accounts on companies house now and expect it to be a bin fire.

Ferris

The accounts are fascinating.

It's like this little industry; 400+ employees (with costed out pension schemes etc), accounting firms, legal consultants, foreign sub-entities, lots of spiel from the directors, all ticking away in the background and producing nothing.

The highest paid director made £280k in 2019 and £295k in 2020 (plus pension matching contributions) for producing fuck all so there's hardly incentive for them to hurry up.

Alberon

And with fanboys happily buying non-existing spaceships it seems this won't end anytime soon.

The single-player Squadron 42 is, I think, the one with the all-star voice actors. It's release was designed to be in advance of the main game and to fund it. The beta was set for Q3 of 2020 but has no deadlines now. Only done when it's done.

I suspect that any release of either game could only happen after they finally run out of money and are bought out.

Ferris

The most astonishing thing from my (brief!) reading last night was that the main guy driving this hasn't had a credit on a finished video game since 2003.

Sonny_Jim

There's a video series from 2017 called 'Sunk Cost Galaxy' which covers all the ins-and-outs, but it's about 3 hours long and I've not been that interested enough to watch all of them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU3uEBUBIEA&list=PL7SIP0NDfM2yyHKfRmCAociCcJKZHHY0E

Like I said, the guys got previous form for never finishing anything, add on the lack of oversight and it's a juicy recipe for Duke Nukem Forever times a thousand.

Jim_MacLaine

I wouldn't normally re-animate threads but the funding for this has now passed HALF A BILLION dollars.

Ferris

Quote from: Jim_MacLaine on October 29, 2022, 01:55:15 PMI wouldn't normally re-animate threads but the funding for this has now passed HALF A BILLION dollars.

Stuff like this infuriates me. The amount of good I could do with that much bread is maddening - I volunteer on the board for a food charity and basically I spend a few hours a month writing proposals for micro grants to keep this tiny (and effective!) pocket of good going. 100 grand would set it up in perpetuity.

Instead it's pissed away by nerds on never-to-exist spaceships.

Sorry don't mean to rant.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: Jim_MacLaine on October 29, 2022, 01:55:15 PMI wouldn't normally re-animate threads but the funding for this has now passed HALF A BILLION dollars.
I try not to blame people for their own oppression, but boy oh boy some people seem really determined to waste their money.

Alberon

I do wonder when this is all going to collapse?

There's never going to be a full game release and they seem to spend their time tinkering with one random minor feature or another rather than getting it into a releasable state.

Famous Mortimer

From a recent Eurogamer article:

QuoteThe ambitious space game has raked in a staggering amount of money through Kickstarter in its 10-year-long development period. As of September 2022, Cloud Imperium Games raised over $500 million, with nearly $100 million donated during the last 10 months.

The single-player campaign, Squadron 42, has been long anticipated. The original targeted release date was 2020, but as of October 2022, a release date has not been announced.
It's such a bonkers amount of money that I can't wrap my head round it.

oggyraiding

Has the scope of SC changed as other games/systems have come and gone? What passed for an expansive universe and cool space sim back in 2011 would probably be underwhelming seeing what the current gen of hardware is capable of. Surely they can't be using the same engine 11 years later.

Jim_MacLaine

I lost interest in this as a viable project years ago. They seem to be consistently adding new shit and new ships without actually having a proper base game to hang it all on*

In theory a great idea but it's going to be impossible to implement, even taking into account the next gen.

Just look at Cyberpunk 2077. 

*that's still the case isn't it?

bgmnts

Half a billion is a fucking amazing effort. A decade long scam.


Ferris

Just thought, isn't the new Bethesda game basically this? So I'd guess the potential pool of players is about to drop massively.

The Crumb

Half a billion dollars and it's not going to be half as good as something knocked together by some physics students and a guy with a banjo.

Alberon

Quote from: Ferris on October 30, 2022, 03:32:01 PMJust thought, isn't the new Bethesda game basically this? So I'd guess the potential pool of players is about to drop massively.

I think it's more in the Elite Dangerous area. IIRC both games went into development fairly close to each other. The main difference is that this has been out for many years now.

Ferris

Quote from: Alberon on October 30, 2022, 05:10:09 PMI think it's more in the Elite Dangerous area. IIRC both games went into development fairly close to each other. The main difference is that this has been out for many years now.

For the hardcore nerds yeah, but for the latent shitmuncher demographic they're both "space games", and you need those people onside if you're going to make a good return.