Vapourware Scam Citizen - Only people with too much money can become StarCitizens! WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?

[Craig Stern]

Yeah! Just look at that star racer's sleek design, meant to reduce drag from air resis--WAIT A MINUTE

 

[fantadomat]

I am pretty sure that most people that spend such moneys are not very rich, wouldn't be surprised if many of them are in debt. A guy that makes good money will spend a few hundred buck.

 

[Drax]

Yeah! Just look at that star racer's sleek design, meant to reduce drag from air resis--WAIT A MINUTE

The racing course I've seen is in an atmospheric enviro.

 

[Craig Stern]

The racing curse I've seen is in an atmospheric enviro.

Okay. But, then...how is it "star racing"?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The racing curse I've seen is in an atmospheric enviro.

Okay. But, then...how is it "star racing"?

Guess you'd have to be a hell of a celebrity to enter.

 

[Freddie]

I am pretty sure that most people that spend such moneys are not very rich, wouldn't be surprised if many of them are in debt. A guy that makes good money will spend a few hundred buck.

Might very well be. I read about some stuff about these 'whales' somewhere in the Codex, single guy spending a small fortune to some shitty mobile tactical game and then kept losing anyway because he didn't had the attention span. But he could afford it and I this sort of 'whale hunting' has focused on something concrete. Buy 100 Shitware upgrade packs to level up your weapons and gear, or get XP bonus, etc. They offer advantage and reduce grind. (Of course the side effect is that MP games has turned to unnecessarily grind, to build incentive to buy those packs, but that's another topic.)

Star Citizen is a different kind of beast. Roberts is focusing on selling anticipation and dreams. He has very carefully planned his scheme to target people who has reputation to be vulnerable to this. Like type whom forms cults around less than mediocre sci-fi show out there, which aren't going anywhere. Issues like writers having no idea what they are really writing about really doesn't really matter because there appear to be people whom have very little knowledge about things work in real life. Then there is this fascination with anticipation which causes them to hand wave plot issues away like 'it will be explained later' or rationalised whatever way, no matter how odd, and then showrunners throw in some stupid crap which is fucking nothing and it doesn't matter because next shiny object time travel, or parallel universe of has caught this audience segments anticipation.

There are people in these crowds with high real life skills, but I suspect they are very small niche inside of niche. I don't think this sort of people in general are on very high on social-economic ladder. I'm guessing here, but maybe anticipation hook works because it's part of their escapism. No need to stress about issues, when they dream about their supposed alternative life in alternative universe, be that star racing or whatever. Take another example. In gaming some paper magazines had terrible reputation because there were far more pre-views than reviews in them. They focused on feeding the anticipation. Did that killed them? No, WWW did. Then imagine we are dealing with even worse sort of escapists here and perhaps that is telling about something else. Perhaps people whom some maybe borderline cases if they needed a legal guardian.

With scam as huge as Star Citizen, well, money laundering is a possibility but there is also this core audience. Many of them may simply reject the reality that they were scammed and focus on anticipating something else. There are youtube videos from people whom have realised where there are explaining what SC really is and giving everything needed for other people to make their own judgement posted in this very thread. Yet, SC keeps getting money because despite of this all, for some this reality just can't be!

So Roberts and his wife are quite secured from outside threats. If they have played their cards right they can live a very good life in Ecuador or somewhere if legal waters get hot. With money they have, they can buy out people starting their own investigations through legal channels and has option to get friends in interesting positions. Anyway, outside of class action, I don't see their fans being any threat to them.

I can understand some Codexers frustration with SC's fans, but IMO it's more important, that if this goes through, more will follow. Now how are studios that are actually trying to create a product going to compete with that? On other hand, AAA corporations would love to see crowdfunding to go away.

 

[Morkar Left]

I go with number 2. I wanna see the meltdown of the guy that spent over 50k or whatever it was.

If you can spend that kind of money on a hobby, I'm not sure you really care about money any more.

You don't know how Scientology works. These aren't just some rich guys, these are pretty ordinary middle-class people they took advantage of.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

These aren't just some rich guys, these are pretty ordinary middle-class people they took advantage of.

They are accomplices in this mass fraud. You have to be insanely gullible to believe in Chris Roberts. Look at his track record.

 

[Irata]

I go with number 2. I wanna see the meltdown of the guy that spent over 50k or whatever it was.

If you can spend that kind of money on a hobby, I'm not sure you really care about money any more.

It has been my experience that people who are rich tend to spend it more wisely than those who can't afford to spend that kind of cash. At least those who didn't grow up rich or win the lottery.

I'm not even sure how many of these large donations are even legit. Who knows what kind of shady Hollywood money people Chris hooked up with after his movie career crashed and burned?

 

[Grimlorn]

Remember a couple marriages were destroyed because a couple of guys with low impulse control spent their life savings, about 10k+ at least, on this shit game which caused their wives to leave them.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Remember a couple marriages were destroyed because a couple of guys with low impulse control spent their life savings, about 10k+ at least, on this shit game which caused their wives to leave them.

Citation needed.

 

[Grimlorn]

I remember an article talking about devs feeling uncomfortable or something about marriages ending in divorce over this but I can't seem to find it.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Grimlorn, thanks. I thought most whales were STEM guys with some money to burn. I couldn't have imagined that someone would be irresponsible or gullible enough to use his school loan money on this fraud. That's so sad.

 

[thesheeep]

I have a confession to make:
When they did the initial fundraiser, I think I spent 20-30$ on this.

On the other hand, the whole drama alone has been worth that money...
And the best is yet to come.

 

[Deathsquid]

2015 Chris: "We actually have a full Universe simulation that runs… we actually don't need it to run on any particular bank of servers. It just actually runs on one server, and it simulates about 20 million AI agents. It simulates the AI agents in a very sort of high-level manner. Ok, you've got a mission, you're going to go from here to here, so it's not simulating it on the fidelity level that you would do when you're actually connected to the game and flying around and doing combat maneuvers or flying from point to point, it's simulating it more in the – here's the jobs, here's the missions, here's the market demand, here's the things that are happening"

"So the Universe simulation keeps track of all the NPC's. It's the one that's dealing with the goods and the markets, the economy nodes, so on various planets there'll be things that produce, things that consume, so there's sort of a very high-level meta AI that's running on the economy simulation. And from that high-level simulation we can track the sort of movement, the populations, the progress of AI"

"it's a pretty decent, high-level simulation, and that information is then fed to the system servers and the game servers, and that will help determine, when you're flying around, whether or not you will encounter NPC's or not, and whether those NPC's are fighting each other, in conflict, or what's happening. [...] We currently have the Universe Simulation happening on a server, and we have an interface where there's the communication of kind of what you would, this is the kind of thing you would see if you're in this area, and that's all in progress"

 

[Alienman]

He spent 45 dollars and had her wife freak out? Might be hyperbole but what the fuck.

 

[Grotesque]

 

[Country_Gravy]

He spent 45 dollars and had her wife freak out? Might be hyperbole but what the fuck.

I think when his friend went over the deep end, she wanted proof he hadn't done the same thing. If he's smart, she doesn't know their financials at all.

 

[thesheeep]

Yup. Never heard Yong so angry

 

[Drakron]

Yup. Never heard Yong so angry

TWENTY-SEVEN ... THOUSAND dollars!

 

[fantadomat]

Yup. Never heard Yong so angry

His communist inner self is showing .

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Anyone who thinks it’s ritch people spending thousands of dollars on this scam has never dealt with a rich person before.

I used to work at a company that sells high-priced stuff to rich people with a very expensive hobbby (mostly males). They are basically the worst customers ever. Very stingy, very concerned about the value they get for their money, always asking for discounts and being offended when they are not granted.

(Self-made) rich people don’t get rich by spending their money on escapism and addictions.

So yeah, it’s basically above-average-wealth STEM cucks or lower middle class deadbeats who are financing this game with obscene amounts of money.

50K isn’t out of anyone’s range who lives in the first world and has a steady job with halfway decent pay. IF you are ready to sacrifice everything else for it.

 

[Drakron]

Thats a big IF and the problem with gaming, they are going all-in on whaling that sure, ... some people can spend those amounts of money on a hobby but then again, IF I had absurd amounts of money my hobby would be collecting classic cars, there are people that do that but you dont see Porsche getting the idea most car owners will buy their 911 classic model.

And that is the issue gamers have, that their hoddy is expecting then all to be "classic car collectors" because thats what brings most money for the publishers and developers, I play STO and I am still very pissed off on how they monentize the crap out of classic Trek and they dont go to the insanely high costs that is Scam Citizen prices, just because there are people that would spend the price of a car on what is "digital goods" doesnt mean we should all line up and do the same and that is exactly what those publishers and developers do, they expect the people that pay full price for a game to start paying 10 times or more for "games as services".

 

[fantadomat]

Anyone who thinks it’s ritch people spending thousands of dollars on this scam has never dealt with a rich person before.

I used to work at a company that sells high-priced stuff to rich people with a very expensive hobbby (mostly males). They are basically the worst customers ever. Very stingy, very concerned about the value they get for their money, always asking for discounts and being offended when they are not granted.

(Self-made) rich people don’t get rich by spending their money on escapism and addictions.

So yeah, it’s basically above-average-wealth STEM cucks or lower middle class deadbeats who are financing this game with obscene amounts of money.

50K isn’t out of anyone’s range who lives in the first world and has a steady job with halfway decent pay. IF you are ready to sacrifice everything else for it.

Don't forget all those debt opportunities waiting at every corner. Yeah,most whales are retarded guys with normal job and average standard of living. At most they are stock market dealers.

 

[Dayyālu]

I have a confession to make:
When they did the initial fundraiser, I think I spent 20-30$ on this.

On the other hand, the whole drama alone has been worth that money...
And the best is yet to come.

Let's be honest, after Daikatana dna Duke Nukem Forever every generation has to get a myth.

Star Citizen gave the world so much amusement by sheer drama and laughing at the speeding train, slowly travelling towards disaster. It's pure schadenfreude, cheaply gained.