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

[ADL]

I believe the current Star Citizen engine (especially the first person implementation) would be the best to make a first person RPG like Cyberpunk 2077 which from the gameplay presentation, the shooting is like playing Doom.

A couple years ago there were some rumors that after Cyberpunk 2077 launched, they'd use it as a foundation to build some sort of sandbox MMO inspired by Ultima Online or Face of Mankind which is even more focused on role playing. I'd love that.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

‘Star Citizen’: Still No Release Date in Sight, Work Environment is ‘Chaotic’ (Report)

By LIZ LANIER
https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/star-citizen-chaotic-report-1203205859/

Twenty former employees who worked on “Star Citizen” detailed their experiences, revealing that the nearly $300 million crowdfunded game seems destined to never release, according to a recent report from Forbes.

“Chaotic” is how the work environment at Cloud Imperium Games was described, and that chaos seems to come, in large part, from co-founder Chris Roberts. The designer, according to the report, apparently micro-manages and gets hyper-focused on minor details of the game, resulting in a, thus far, seven-year project that seems to have no end in sight. Roberts raised $288 million from crowdfunding, making it the biggest crowdfunded project of all time (not including cryptocurrency funding), but there is still no clear release for “Star Citizen” a planned online multiplayer space game that was originally meant to release in 2014. “Squadron 42,” a companion, single-player game to “Star Citizen” is also still in development.

The money comes in, in part, from enthusiastic PC gamers purchasing digital ships, sometimes for thousands of dollars. Some of those ships are in the conceptual art phases, and can’t even be used in the game yet, which is currently in its Alpha status, “Star Citizen” is nowhere near what it was promised to be yet. Roberts described a game that would have “100 star systems,” and the Alpha currently doesn’t one completed star system.

Cloud Imperium Games also received a $46 million investment last year. But despite all the money coming in, “Star Citizen” seems to have no release date in sight, and where all of the money is going is of concern. Last year, financial statements revealed that the company was spending $4 million per month, but we don’t know exactly how much money Roberts is taking in— nor do we know how much his wife and brother, both working in senior positions at Cloud Imperium, are making as a salary, according to the report.

“As the money rolled in, what I consider to be some of [Roberts’] old bad habits popped up—not being super-focused,” Mark Day, whose company did work on “Star Citizen” in 2013 and 2014, told Forbes. “It had got out of hand, in my opinion. The promises being made—call it feature creep, call it whatever it is—now we can do this, now we can do that. I was shocked.”

For example, Roberts reportedly told one senior graphics engineer to spend months working only on the visual effects of the ship shields. Other devs spent weeks working on demos intended to keep crowdfunding money coming in. Roberts also hired an expensive cast of actors, including Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill, and Gillian Anderson, to do motion capture for a cinematic “Squadron 42” trailer.

Some backers have said enough— the Federal Trade Commission received 129 complaints for the company, according to Forbes. Some of the refund requests are incredibly high, up to $24,000.

“The game they promised us can’t even barely run. The performance is terrible and it’s still in an ‘Alpha’ state,” one consumer complained. “I want out. They lied to us.”

Roberts insists that the company’s fundraising is “ethical,” according to Forbes.

“I know everyone thinks we just have $200 million in the bank and we dive off into it like Scrooge McDuck or something,” Roberts told Forbes. “All I know is when people come to me, I say, ‘Look, you don’t need to spend anything more on this game than $45.”

The $45 refers to the backing needed to get a starter pack to play the Alpha, which includes a single ship, and three months of insurance to protect said ship.

Roberts said that “Squadron 42” is coming out in 2020, but there’s no estimate for when the full “Star Citizen” will arrive.

Teehee!

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Also the comments:

sam says:
Star Citizen might as well as be a biggest CON in history of game development. AT this point contact FTC and Contact your State senator to look into this fraud.

RachaelQ says:
The comments below are indicative of how cults are formed. Throw money at something, be fed scraps, and then call it a full meal. Very sad.

CitizenFan2019 says:
This Article should be deleted!

Joe says:
In short a biased article with nothing new than a compilation of numbers from CIG with nothing more than speculation.
Reality is that 3.5 have been delivered in time (quarterly patch) and that official roadmaps indicate the project is well under control.

BlondeTittis says:
Wow MorseSugar. Thats pretty personal. The use of first names and all seems like you’ve known these people from quite some time now. You sound like you are extremely butthurt about something Chris did to you. Hmm, interesting. Also, it is obvious Forbes is paying off these losers to bash the game and give it bad publicity. Karma is a motherf**ker though. Keep it up.

mariana says:
i dont care what stupid things you say, many 1000 people have fun in the alpha of Star Citizen.
If you have a problem with that, its your problem. If you dont believe that star citizen will be finished than leave it.

Look at those cultists. They are doing their best to protect their delusions interests in their bubble game.

 

[Steamboat Willie]

Joe says:
In short a biased article with nothing new than a compilation of numbers from CIG with nothing more than speculation.
Reality is that 3.5 have been delivered in time (quarterly patch) and that official roadmaps indicate the project is well under control.

Oh look, its Joe Blobers and "muh roadmaps".

 

[Lutte]

People who still believe in SC just don't understand software development at the most basic of levels.

 

[Zarniwoop]

People who still believe in SC just don't understand software development pyramid schemes at the most basic of levels.

 

[Xor]

People who still believe in SC just don't understand software development at the most basic of levels.

No, it's perfectly normal for projects to drastically expand in scope and be in development for 7+ years and 200+ million dollars with no end in sight. Nothing to see here. Move along.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Bbbbbut it's only 5 years actually, the first 2 years were spent on recruitment

 

[Beastro]

Everyone needs to calm down.
Here, this'll help:

He looks so mad.

 

[thesheeep]

Everyone needs to calm down.
Here, this'll help:

He looks so mad.

That's just the "concentrated musician" look.
Also, he made the video because he was so sick of playing this song on weddings, so there might have been some madness as well

 

[Beastro]

Also, he made the video because he was so sick of playing this song on weddings, so there might have been some madness as well

He'd love playing Utopia then!

 

[ADL]

Bbbbbut it's only 5 years actually, the first 2 years were spent on recruitment

Alright, 7 years with the asterisk that they started without a studio and less than ten people and had to scale up to 500 employees across five offices. Feel free to compare the development cycles of massive projects made by established studios like Grand Theft Auto V as much as you want. It's stupid and disingenuous without any context but you can do it I guess.

 

[Perkel]

No, it's perfectly normal for projects to drastically expand in scope and be in development for 7+ years and 200+ million dollars with no end in sight. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Several problems with claim:
- the whole project manifesto is to deliver the best looking game around as per initial initial pitch. It was supposed to be PC game akin to Crysis when it comes to graphics breakthroughs. From start it wasn't supposed to be easy project.
- 2 games not one. And one of them is MMO and those have minimum 5 years gestation, 7-8 years is pretty normal and not upper limit. But you don't know about it because most of the time development is not disclosed to public.
- They could make SQ42 faster but they decided to use same technology for it as for MMO game for sake of saving money and efficiency. They plan to enter beta for SQ42 around summer next year with possible release date around holidays. If they would create first SQ42 and then MMO then MMO part would be easily 10 years if not longer away and most of the work on SQ42 would be thrown away.
- Scope of MMO project completely changed from initial pitch. People tend to forget that pitch didn't end at 6mln but at 60mln year later. They are now supposed to deliver 60mln pitch not 6mln one. If this was 6mln pitch one there would be no FPS part, no planetary landing, no walking on stations. Just few ships and flying around in space. That could be reasonably quickly delivered. But again. That would be scamming people who voted with their money on pitch.
- Project started at the end of 2012 with only 3 devs. Whole 2013 was spend to build studio and hiring people and 2013 is when last streatchgoal was reached. Which means end of 2013 is when project officially starts ticking time. Which gives us 6 years which is not really that long for that kind of project. The problem here is retarded peasants who don't know have games are made and believe you can make MMO in 2 years or something or even better make normal game in 2 years without having studio of highly effective developers with established pipeline.


Right now they slowly create content for MMO because most of their developers work on finishing SQ42 and most of that work is hidden from public because they don't want to spoil campaign. That content which is way more what people have in SC will go into SC once SQ42 will be released.

 

[Plaguecrafter]

The year is now 2062. Elon Musk has occupied Mars and is now its one and only ruler. Star Citizen has finally entered the long-awaited Alpha 37.02. The game has accumulated more than 2.5 billion dollars in funding. Many fans wait to hear what Chris Roberts, now a 94-year old man, will say about the state of the project. He says the game is still evolving and will come out in the next 2 to 3 years. Tears of joy come from fans' faces as they shout "We love you, Chris! Take our money!" Meanwhile, people on the forums, which still live to this day, are defending the development of the project, saying that it only started with a few people 50 years ago. Half of those people are saying the game is a scam. Almost all of those people were born after the game was already 20 years in the development. The Earth is still spinning. Everything is good. Somewhat good.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Bbbbbut it's only 5 years actually, the first 2 years were spent on recruitment

Alright, 7 years with the asterisk that they started without a studio and less than ten people and had to scale up to 500 employees across five offices. Feel free to compare the development cycles of massive projects made by established studios like Grand Theft Auto V as much as you want. It's stupid and disingenuous without any context but you can do it I guess.

That's the whole point. No game should need 500 employees or more than 1 office. Especially since they pivoted to the whole "it's going to be an mmo now" thing.

If you make an MMO, you release the base game and keep producing content while it runs.

You don't keep hiring the population of a small city and building new offices, while selling virtual ship futures to keep luring in more whales.

 

[Perkel]

That's the whole point. No game should need 500 employees or more than 1 office. Especially since they pivoted to the whole "it's going to be an mmo now" thing.
If you make an MMO, you release the base game and keep producing content while it runs.
You don't keep hiring the population of a small city and building new offices, while selling virtual ship futures to keep luring in more whales.

They did not "pivot" mmo was part of initial pitch.

First, 500 people for AAA game is not that much these days. Games like GTA have 1000+ dev team and if you ever finished any ubishit game you would know that they are rolling well over 1000 for almost every game they make.
Naturally all of above are established teams for years and they don't have to be created for new game something which SC had to do.

Secondly you absolutely have no idea how much work and time goes into making even base game mmo.

World of Warcraft was announced 2001 and released 2004. Before 2001 announcement they were working another few years on it. So about 8 years and including initial draft it could be even 10 years. And it was worked by huge team of people who were at the top of their game in industry in one of the industry leading studio.

Will you also claim they were incompetent ? Believe me WoW ~8 years is industry standard for MMO dev time.

 

[:Flash:]

That's the whole point. No game should need 500 employees or more than 1 office. Especially since they pivoted to the whole "it's going to be an mmo now" thing.
If you make an MMO, you release the base game and keep producing content while it runs.
You don't keep hiring the population of a small city and building new offices, while selling virtual ship futures to keep luring in more whales.

They did not "pivot" mmo was part of initial pitch.

First, 500 people for AAA game is not that much these days. Games like GTA have 1000+ dev team and if you ever finished any ubishit game you would know that they are rolling well over 1000 for almost every game they make.
Naturally all of above are established teams for years and they don't have to be created for new game something which SC had to do.

Secondly you absolutely have no idea how much work and time goes into making even base game mmo.

World of Warcraft was announced 2001 and released 2004. Before 2001 announcement they were working another few years on it. So about 8 years and including initial draft it could be even 10 years. And it was worked by huge team of people who were at the top of their game in industry in one of the industry leading studio.

Will you also claim they were incompetent ? Believe me WoW ~8 years is industry standard for MMO dev time.

Exactly! Zarniwoop how can you be so clueless? How can you not know that the initial draft for WoW started before Ultima Online's development process even began? Isn't it obvious that Blizzard started development of WoW while it was a 10 person company working on Warcraft 2?

 

[DeepOcean]

Exactly! Zarniwoop how can you be so clueless? How can you not know that the initial draft for WoW started before Ultima Online's development process even began? Isn't it obvious that Blizzard started development of WoW while it was a 10 person company working on Warcraft 2?

I found it funny but he isn't that wrong, Elder Scrolls online took 7 years of development but Elder Scrolls online didn't depend on a ponzi scheme to survive as a project though.

 

[Jigawatt]

World of Warcraft was announced 2001 and released 2004. Before 2001 announcement they were working another few years on it. So about 8 years and including initial draft it could be even 10 years. And it was worked by huge team of people who were at the top of their game in industry in one of the industry leading studio.

Will you also claim they were incompetent ? Believe me WoW ~8 years is industry standard for MMO dev time.

Absolute bullshit. It's bad enough that you SC fanboys want to rewrite that games history, now you want to do it with others as well? Almost every external estimate of WoW's dev time is 4-5 years, and Blizzard themselves have said that work on WoW didn't begin until after Warcraft Adventures was cancelled in 1998, putting the upper bound at 6 years.

 

[Zarniwoop]

They did not "pivot" mmo was part of initial pitch.

First, 500 people for AAA game is not that much these days. Games like GTA have 1000+ dev team and if you ever finished any ubishit game you would know that they are rolling well over 1000 for almost every game they make.
Naturally all of above are established teams for years and they don't have to be created for new game something which SC had to do.

Secondly you absolutely have no idea how much work and time goes into making even base game mmo.

World of Warcraft was announced 2001 and released 2004. Before 2001 announcement they were working another few years on it. So about 8 years and including initial draft it could be even 10 years. And it was worked by huge team of people who were at the top of their game in industry in one of the industry leading studio.

Will you also claim they were incompetent ? Believe me WoW ~8 years is industry standard for MMO dev time.

Dude.

Read this very same thread.

The main focus was supposed to be the single player campaign. The persistent universe was going to be some optional component. Now it's a full blown MMOWTFBBQ with Squadron 42 being some side bitch project.

Also, nice revisionism on Wow history.

You shilled hard for Egosoft on X4. Look where that got you. It's a decent-is alpha demo (much more than Star Citizen is or will be by the way) but its not even a full game.

This will be on a much bigger scale.

 

[Myobi]

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/...-growing-even-as-players-test-its-limits.html

He sighed and leaned his elbows on his office's conference table, which was covered with building plans. The company started developing World of Warcraft in 1999, and two years later Blizzard still employed fewer than 200 people. Now that figure is pushing 750 worldwide. The company is bulging out of its 63,000-square-foot headquarters and is about to take over an additional 22,000 square feet in a building nearby to house its expanding customer-service department.

It's confirmed, World of Warcraft development started with the Romans, who found it's lore on ancient scriptures dated 600-500 BC, so technically yes, 8 years sound about right.

 

[Saerain]

Nice of you to come by and support the point, although strange that you'd frame it otherwise.

 

[EruDaan]

World of Warcraft was announced 2001 and released 2004. Before 2001 announcement they were working another few years on it. So about 8 years and including initial draft it could be even 10 years. And it was worked by huge team of people who were at the top of their game in industry in one of the industry leading studio.

Will you also claim they were incompetent ? Believe me WoW ~8 years is industry standard for MMO dev time.

In before "B-bu-but mah Diablo 3?! It took also a bazillion years to finish! It's normal and good to have such long developement periods! Hurr, hurr."

 

[Grotesque]

I've said it already and I will say it again.
This thread is filled with the cretinous Star Citizen fanboy pleb but from the opposite pole.

Star Citizen has its share of managerial and moral problems but when reading some posts around here, you can't but root for Chris Roberts and his clique.

 

[Jigawatt]