nastiness between Star Citizen and The Escapist Magazine

[MintyScot]

Digger said:

What it does highlight really well is the ambiguous nature of crowd-funding and its deeply flawed levels of accountability to its backers. To be fair those changes to the ToS for new backers are a real kick in the teeth, and well worth being exposed!

I think any "kick starter" or crowdfunded venture is a risk. You are basically handing over money for an idea. You aren't buying a product or investing, you are donating. So the idea of after a while you change your mind and ask for your money back is perhaps a little naive.

In respect to the TOS change from what I understand it will effect new people who donate. The existing 1 million people who have already donated wont be effected. So basically if you don't want to risk losing any money then simply don't give them any.

Wait for the game to be finished and released.....then decide whether to buy it or not.

[Guvernator]

^^^^ Yep this. As I said before this just seems like a massive case of nerd rage over a delayed game. As an avid gamer, I can't say I haven't been disappointed by this kind of stuff before but I like to think I keep it in perspective. However this time it's magnified by 10 because people think giving money via kickstarter means they own a part of the company\game when that's not the case.

[MintyScot]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I believe so...

To be fair though games take a long time to create. Fallout 4 took 7 years and it didn't have to create a company, 4 studios and a work force from scratch. I'm fully expecting it will be atleast a couple more years until it resembles the pitch they made.

As for the separate Squadron 42 game they are making along side Star Citizen...who knows. Scheduled for end of the year...I'm guessing delayed until next.

[PhilboSE]

I work on pretty big software projects and SC has all the hallmarks of a deathmarch. I've never seen anything salvageable come from a project that is this late and under-delivered at this point of the dev path & funding burn.

Only Croberts knows how/where the money has been spent, but given the evidence of feature creep and a lack of significant deliverables to date I can't believe that the project is anything other than a big ball of mud.

I can't see very much being delivered as a result, but Croberts is very likely to blame everyone else for this.

[Spiritual_Beggar]

Whilst I still hold out hope that this game does come out and is as good as we're all hoping it could be.....

.. I can't help but feel that they would have done much better to release a base game and keep adding features to it.

[Guvernator]

Spiritual_Beggar said:

Whilst I still hold out hope that this game does come out and is as good as we're all hoping it could be.....

.. I can't help but feel that they would have done much better to release a base game and keep adding features to it.

But then you have the equally unsavoury possibility of it ending up like Elite Dangerous which was very dry, sparse and under-content when it was released. Yes they have kept adding lots of stuff to it but they'd already lost a lot of players by then as the initial game just didn't have enough in it to keep people playing. It's a tough decision certainly.

[deckster]

Guvernator said:

But then you have the equally unsavoury possibility of it ending up like Elite Dangerous which was very dry, sparse and under-content when it was released. Yes they have kept adding lots of stuff to it but they'd already lost a lot of players by then as the initial game just didn't have enough in it to keep people playing. It's a tough decision certainly.

'Equally unsavoury'? Remind me which one of these models has resulted in a game that people can actually play.

I realise that professional opinions are unwelcome in these parts, but I would add my 20 years of software development experience to the "we ain't never going to see anything" camp.

[Guvernator]

deckster said:

'Equally unsavoury'? Remind me which one of these models has resulted in a game that people can actually play.

I realise that professional opinions are unwelcome in these parts, but I would add my 20 years of software development experience to the "we ain't never going to see anything" camp.

OK perhaps not equally, you are correct people can actually play ED rather than it being vapourware.

However the point stands that ED definitely seemed to suffer from a lack of content on first release.

[br d]

I put £140 in years ago, write that off I think.

I was a busy part of the infamous Derek Smart flamewar on Usenet 20 years ago, it was a spectacular part of Internet history, someone should write a book.

I actually loved BC3000, when it worked it was quite brilliant with ideas implemented that we haven't seen since. The trouble was of course that it always fell over eventually and Derek always blamed your drivers!

Good memories.

[MintyScot]

Guvernator said:

OK perhaps not equally, you are correct people can actually play ED rather than it being vapourware.

However the point stands that ED definitely seemed to suffer from a lack of content on first release.

Yeh I'm not a great fan of Elite either. I've owned it since launch and followed it before that but it just doesn't gel with me. I wish it did. I'm going to pick it up again and give it another bash on my next holiday I think.

As for Star Citizen I guess it depends on what you call "playable".

First video I came across on reddit today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlNldjFmjvw

Clearly has a looong way until its a "finished" product but there certainly some potential.

[MattyB_]

Guvernator said:

deckster said:

'Equally unsavoury'? Remind me which one of these models has resulted in a game that people can actually play.

I realise that professional opinions are unwelcome in these parts, but I would add my 20 years of software development experience to the "we ain't never going to see anything" camp.

OK perhaps not equally, you are correct people can actually play ED rather than it being vapourware.

But...it's not vapourware. You can download and play Star Citizen, right now.

[Guvernator]

MattyB_ said:

But...it's not vapourware. You can download and play Star Citizen, right now.

The pedants really are out in force on this one aren't they? If you call the current version of Star Citizen playable and in any way representative of what they promised to deliver by now then you obviously have lower standards than me.

What was originally supposed to be a comment about the tricky aspect of timing when a game is "ready" to release has turned into a little point scoring exercise as usual. I really do wonder why I bother posting on PH sometimes.

[FourWheelDrift]

Chris Roberts can't even play it - https://youtu.be/ZWq8ynUq7wM?t=20

[Bullett]

Yup

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/feature-list

But seeing as it's been in development for 5 years almost and had millions spent they should be way beyond an Alpha by now. I thought it was pretty rubbish when I played the free trial a while back. Very clunky.

[Digger]

One of the latest videos.


http://youtu.be/cbyE6SCBuUA

[MintyScot]

Bullett said:

Yup

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/feature-list

But seeing as it's been in development for 5 years almost and had millions spent they should be way beyond an Alpha by now. I thought it was pretty rubbish when I played the free trial a while back. Very clunky.

While I'm also of the opinion that Star Citizen development seems slow and that I expected much more by now I'm also fully aware that they are making Squadron 42 along side Star Citizen. Two games, one a single player campaign and one basically an MMO. Apparently Squadron 42 is in a far more advanced state than Star Citizen.

If they don't basically show some real(and completed) footage of Squadron 42 at Gamescom in August(they have a display/stand) and atleast some of the stuff that they have been working on for Star Citizen then I will be very disappointed.

[Spiritual_Beggar]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Could be right. The problem with such long development, coming from a laymans point of view, is that technology moves on extremely quickly. So during the time they are devloping the game they risk the tech they're building it on becoming old. They then either carry on and make the game using old tech, or try to update the current product to work with the new tech...which justs adds more time to the development.

As I said though, I'm a layman, so it might not be quite like that. Maybe someone with experience in the industry could shed some light of this?

[FourWheelDrift]

Star Citizen 3.0update has shown planetary landing

http://www.pcgamer.com/star-citizen-30s-planetary-...








I'll stick with ED

[Lucas Ayde]

br d said:

I put £140 in years ago, write that off I think.

I was a busy part of the infamous Derek Smart flamewar on Usenet 20 years ago, it was a spectacular part of Internet history, someone should write a book.

I actually loved BC3000, when it worked it was quite brilliant with ideas implemented that we haven't seen since. The trouble was of course that it always fell over eventually and Derek always blamed your drivers!

Good memories.

I remember following that Usenet flamewar at the time - probably one of the first internet 'events' that actually attracted wider attention than just one or two people arguing on a newsgroup. The amount of vitriol on both sides was staggering and it was basically Derek Smart in very involved, very heated slanging matches with dozens of individuals over technical points and claims. Actually, compared to the sort of trolling that is the norm today it would almost seem intellectual as it didn't go straight to name-calling and had some tech discussion as a preamble to the hysterical yelling.

It's amazing he ever had time to get any game out, never mind one that sort of, kind of, nearly worked. A bit hypocritical to be championing the cause against Star Citizen though, unless he acknowledges his own failings and is speaking from the perspective of someone who made the same mistakes (but didn't take $100million of crowd funding to make them).

[br d]

Lucas Ayde said:

br d said:

I put £140 in years ago, write that off I think.

I was a busy part of the infamous Derek Smart flamewar on Usenet 20 years ago, it was a spectacular part of Internet history, someone should write a book.

I actually loved BC3000, when it worked it was quite brilliant with ideas implemented that we haven't seen since. The trouble was of course that it always fell over eventually and Derek always blamed your drivers!

Good memories.

I remember following that Usenet flamewar at the time - probably one of the first internet 'events' that actually attracted wider attention than just one or two people arguing on a newsgroup. The amount of vitriol on both sides was staggering and it was basically Derek Smart in very involved, very heated slanging matches with dozens of individuals over technical points and claims. Actually, compared to the sort of trolling that is the norm today it would almost seem intellectual as it didn't go straight to name-calling and had some tech discussion as a preamble to the hysterical yelling.

It's amazing he ever had time to get any game out, never mind one that sort of, kind of, nearly worked. A bit hypocritical to be championing the cause against Star Citizen though, unless he acknowledges his own failings and is speaking from the perspective of someone who made the same mistakes (but didn't take $100million of crowd funding to make them).

Derek Smart, acknowledge his own failings

It was a strange time. I'd waited years for the game (as a huge fan of the original Elite) and it was a big disappointment when it just wouldn't bloody work! I went to the usenet groups looking for advice and just got sucked into the whole famewar. All the stuff about the games "Neural Net" and other big boots claims was highly entertaining.

It was tremendous fun at first but after a while it got pretty grubby, once Derek's Phd started to be questioned everything went very sour.

Derek is actually a good guy on his own terms, we would often chat privately outside of the groups, he'd spent some time in Brighton and London and we had stuff in common, I liked him on a 1 to 1 level but once in the limelight of the internet he just couldn't help acting superior. Just something about his character that seriously aggravated people.

I did play the game for quite a long period (after hours of torture getting it semi-stable), it had some fantastic facets, the Tacops was years ahead of it's time, as was the whole planetary way-points stuff, when it worked. A great shame.

My save game eventually corrupted beyond all repair and I rage quit. I would always download the game when I got a new PC in the futile hope that it would suddenly work, it never did. I even tried it when I got my current rig earlier this year but the graphic glitches are too tiresome to devote half my life to curing.

I haven't kept in touch with any of the people from the flamewar, once Usenet died (Usenet was "it" back then, the only game in town) everybody just melted away. Hard to believe that was all 20 years ago.

Edited by br d on Tuesday 23 August 18:45