Star Citizen’s development has been high-profile enough, expensive enough and, yes, troubled enough to spawn a whole ecosystem of theories as to what’s going on at Cloud Imperium Games, from theorising about the project’s technical challenges to wild accusations about what’s happening to the money. Various community scandals have added yet more fuel to the fire, turning Star Citizen into a lightning rod for controversy. The questions I wanted answers to were: what exactly has been happening over the past five years? What are the reasons behind Star Citizen’s various delays, and what specific development problems has it encountered? Have things been mismanaged? And, as many Star Citizen backers are now beginning to wonder, can it ever actually be finished?
Chasing this information has not been easy. There’s a reason that many of the sources in articles like this are usually anonymous: people fear both legal and professional repercussions for speaking out. In the course of contacting over 100 different people while researching Star Citizen’s development, I was told by multiple sources that they were worried about legal repercussions if they spoke to the press. Speaking out publicly about a previous employer carries professional peril, too; prospective future employers may see you as a risky hire. Nonetheless, over the course of the year we found that many of the people who had worked on Star Citizen were willing to talk about their experiences, which painted a picture of a development process riven by technical challenges, unrealistic expectations and internal strife.
I said they haven't delivered $20M worth of product, on account of the fact that they haven't delivered anything. In fact the statements CIG has said thus far about the limited number of solar systems (less than 100 will be at release according to CR), drop-in drop-out co-op (no longer a feature), and private servers (literally the last thing they will ever do according to Jared) makes it difficult to see how the product we are getting at release is equivalent to what was originally promised, let alone this $125M masterpiece. I'm not a game developer so I can't be sure, but you would think that CIG would have made it perfectly clear exactly what people are getting for their money.
You know what I am? A backer who pays attention. I pay attention when CIG says a product like Squadron 42 is being released in November 2014, then Fall 2015, and now 2016. I pay attention when CIG says the Dogfighting Module is being released in December 2014, then being delayed until spring so they can fix the netcode, then revealed in a disastrous event that still takes two months before backers can play, then takes another month because the netcode isn't fixed. I pay attention when Star Marine is scheduled for Spring 2014, then Spring 2015, then "weeks, not months" during Summer 2015, then nothing until January 2016 when the founder bitches about how annoyed he is at people asking where Star Marine is, then nothing until Gamescom 2016 when magically Star Marine is showing up in the next patch. I pay attention when all of this happens while CIG says features originally promised in Kickstarter and stretch goals are delayed past released, yet somehow all of the delays are justified because they said they're delivering more. I pay attention when they deny refunds on the grounds that a "substantive portion of the game" has already delivered while at the same time they say if Star Citizen were under development by any other company it wouldn't even be called an alpha. I pay attention to all of this because CIG said that I was their publisher and that they would treat me with the same level of respect and honest communication.
Calling CIG out for failing to meet their own expectations is not armchair development. It's not undermining the developers. It's keeping them accountable.
jdreyer wrote on Sep 26, 2016, 21:11:Kosumo wrote on Sep 26, 2016, 15:40:Erin Roberts is running the SQ42 studio. He has successfully shipped many games including the highly popular Lego games. For this part of the project he should be able to keep things on track. Since SQ42 is the main reason I kickstarted I have high confidence it will be delivered.
His "professional reputation" was such that no publisher would fund him.
I doubt Squadron 42 will be good due to him having yet displayed any understanding of what gameplay is.
It's not graphics and motion capture.
Kosumo wrote on Sep 26, 2016, 15:40:Erin Roberts is running the SQ42 studio. He has successfully shipped many games including the highly popular Lego games. For this part of the project he should be able to keep things on track. Since SQ42 is the main reason I kickstarted I have high confidence it will be delivered.
His "professional reputation" was such that no publisher would fund him.
I doubt Squadron 42 will be good due to him having yet displayed any understanding of what gameplay is.
It's not graphics and motion capture.
Kosumo wrote on Sep 26, 2016, 15:40:
His "professional reputation" was such that no publisher would fund him.
I doubt Squadron 42 will be good due to him having yet displayed any understanding of what gameplay is.
It's not graphics and motion capture.
Kxmode wrote on Sep 25, 2016, 19:05:CJ_Parker wrote on Sep 25, 2016, 06:36:
As far as "professional reputation", well, ahem... Wing Commander movie anyone? You are correct though that he will try to make Squadron 42 as decent as possible because of all the Hollywood cast he hired. They are going to polish the fuck out of it and it will probably be very well received.
I am obviously not referring to his movie career.
CJ_Parker wrote on Sep 25, 2016, 06:36:
As far as "professional reputation", well, ahem... Wing Commander movie anyone? You are correct though that he will try to make Squadron 42 as decent as possible because of all the Hollywood cast he hired. They are going to polish the fuck out of it and it will probably be very well received.
CJ_Parker wrote on Sep 25, 2016, 06:36:Kxmode wrote on Sep 24, 2016, 22:57:
I have to believe Chris not to recently woke up one day and it hit him "I'm never going to ship this game as I pitched", but he keeps soldiering on because his professional reputation in on the line.
You're giving him way too much credit. He is a pathological lkiar who only cared about that money counter keeping a strong northern heading when he made all those lofty promises. He was high on his own bullshit or still is, although the drug naturally doesn't kick in as much anymore as the early days. $2 million/month is probably boring to him at this point.
As far as "professional reputation", well, ahem... Wing Commander movie anyone? You are correct though that he will try to make Squadron 42 as decent as possible because of all the Hollywood cast he hired. They are going to polish the fuck out of it and it will probably be very well received.
Then when he cancels the full scale PU later, it will only look like half a failure instead of a total wash and the Hollywood peeps won't even care because their name will always be associated with the successful Squadron 42 and not the failed Star Citizen.
Kxmode wrote on Sep 24, 2016, 22:57:
I have to believe Chris not to recently woke up one day and it hit him "I'm never going to ship this game as I pitched", but he keeps soldiering on because his professional reputation in on the line.
jdreyer wrote on Sep 24, 2016, 12:39:Just shows how much hunger there is out there for another good space MMO. ED was pretty good, I put hundreds of hours into it. If this was anywhere near what has been promised I'd probably spend thousands of hours on it. Unfortunately, I have absolutely zero expectation it will actually happen.
It's just bizarre that they keep pulling in $2M/month.
CJ_Parker wrote on Sep 24, 2016, 09:16:
Personally, I am expecting this. They are not going to be able to deliver the full MMO with the promised level of fidelity so this will most likely end up with the delivery of Squadron 42 and then some massively stripped down (from the promised complete vision) version of the current multiplayer "PU" with a low 24/32 players per instance limit and a few star systems all crammed into a single instance/level because they can never make it all work as a true MMO with all systems implemented.
Slashman wrote on Sep 24, 2016, 08:52:
My one question right now is this:
How are they going to continue to fund this if Chris is determined that everything be done exactly the way he wants it or it gets a do-over?
325 employees right? Even if you average their salary at a VERY modest 4k a month, that's still 1.3 mil a month not counting office space, building upkeep, utilities, travel expenses, MARKETING and several other things I'm likely forgetting.
If this does need to take another 3-4 years to complete, how do they keep the lights on and pay people? They have 2 games to deleiver and each one depends on the other to move forward.
descender wrote on Sep 23, 2016, 19:44:If by 'rich' you mean 'accurate', we can find ourselves in agreement. I'll sum up what makes you either sadly myopic, unable to figure it out or too busy bitching to think.
To call ME myopic in a thread about people giving money to a publisher with zero accountability... that's rich.