Star Citizen, Roberts Space Industries - Chris Roberts' life support and retirement fund [2012-]

[Jupiter]

When moving to 64bit for large worlds there were problems with the netcode.

Everything will work out. All it takes is time. Now 500 people working full time on Star Citizen. Hopefully they will not run out of money.

 

[Dominik D]

As a native English speaker the headline seems fair and doesn't seem to me to imply it's not coming out at all, just that it won't be very soon. The article seems to reflect that. I don't think there's malicious intent there.

I stand corrected.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Btw, is there a way to get back the money and de-back

Thats like asking your money back when the stock you bought goes down because you bought stock only to make a profit...

If you don't want to run any risk wait until a game comes out. I don't understand why people (in general) still expect they have any right or that it even makes any sense they say they want their money back when things don't go as planned. It's pretty obvious that kickstarter and the likes are all investment options and that means you run a risk of things not going as planned.

 

[Billy Idol]

Thats like asking your money back when the stock you bought goes down because you bought stock only to make a profit...

If you don't want to run any risk wait until a game comes out. I don't understand why people (in general) still expect they have any right or that it even makes any sense they say they want their money back when things don't go as planned. It's pretty obvious that kickstarter and the likes are all investment options and that means you run a risk of things not going as planned.

Well, I can sell my stock if I want to....

But anyway, I was generally asking if kickstarter offers the opportunity to de-back? But it seems tge answer is no.

Easy.

 

[tabs]

If you would like to be annoyed, feel free to read Derek Smart's latest thoughts on Star Citizen. Personally I recommend you ignore this link and carry on with your lives.

 

[Malo]

Should see the crap he spews on his facebook about Star Citizen as well.

 

[homerdog]

Derek Smart!

Anyway he is pretty much exactly right about this whole thing. When you stop to really think about all they've promised it becomes clear that building the game as they've described it would take an effort akin to landing on the moon in 1969. Something will get released, but it won't be anything like what they've said it will be.

 

[swaaye]

Derek has an account on here. He should stop by.

 

[Malo]

If you would like to be annoyed, feel free to read Derek Smart's latest thoughts on Star Citizen. Personally I recommend you ignore this link and carry on with your lives.

He certainly has some valid points but the whole article seems to be more about what he's done and selling his new game, LoD.

 

[homerdog]

I'd never heard of the game until I read this. Is it any good?

 

[Billy Idol]

He certainly has some valid points but the whole article seems to be more about what he's done and selling his new game, LoD.

Yeah, I got the same feeling. It is a bit to much padding the own shoulder in this blog. Gosh, some of those game devs really have an ego as large as Star Citizens feature list

Said thing, I fear he is spot on and we will never get the game...

 

[Deleted member 13524]

He certainly has some valid points but the whole article seems to be more about what he's done and selling his new game, LoD.

The blog entry is enormous and he does spend a lot of time talking about his games, but I'm convinced he did it in order to explain his perspective.
Regardless, start reading from the "Elite: Dangerous" title where he stops talking about his work and starts talking about other space sims.

This part of the text pretty much explains my problems with the (lack of) game development:

As of this writing, having sailed past the original November 2014 delivery date, in over three (Chris indicated that they started the project one year before the Kickstarter crowdfunding) years of development, they’ve thus far delivered the following:

• A hangar where you can see and walk around the ships you’ve bought
• A combat training simulator, Arena Commander, where you can dogfight with some—not all—of the ships you’ve bought thus far in the game. And there’s racing. Not to mention the fact that, as of this writing, that module still can’t even handle 8 vs. 8 combat engagements without terrible issues.

In three years and massive amounts of money they can use any way they want, they haven't released anything of relevance. It's ridiculous.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Isn't there a way to make Cloud Imperium held accountable for under-delivering?

I don't believe that the people in this forum are the only ones unhappy with how things are (not) progressing.

nope.

Turns out there is.

http://dereksmart3000ad.tumblr.com/post/123125564079/interstellar-citizens

The bottom line is that they had two years to deliver the game that people wanted and paid for. Now we’re 2.5 years in, and that game is nowhere in sight.

NOBODY asked for what they are doing right now. If they went on crowd-funding and asked for $85m, we’d all just laugh, and go back to our lattes.

The FACTS are as follows:

• In 10/2012, they pitched a game for $500K, and got $2.1m
• They got the money
• They haven’t delivered the game - as pitched - by the Nov 2014 promised date
• They have kept asking for money and more money, based on intangible goods
• They kept increasing the game’s scope, despite having missed the original delivery milestone
• The game now, is beyond the initial scope, and which we backed

I love this industry. An industry that, while brutal, gave me the opportunity to do something that I love, while not making it easy. I take pride in the fact that when I screw up, or fail, and fall down, I can pick myself up - and keep on running. For me, there is no shame in failure; only pride in being able to acknowledge mistakes, and to learn from them.

My article which I wrote, was a result of my observation that there is another industry disaster brewing, and which is, once again, going to not only cast the industry in a poor light if we didn’t do something, but which threatens to make it that much harder for the inbound generation to find their footing, because a bunch of people who came before, pretty much made it FUBAR.

And during my research for the piece, and for which I have hundreds of web articles, forum posts etc in an Evernote notepad, I came across a lot of things that I wasn’t even aware of. And once the article went live, I started hearing from all kinds of people in media, game development, gamers etc. And the more I read, the more I came to the realization that my article, which was merely a technical wake-up call of sorts, hadn’t even touched the tip of the iceberg. Which is why I am adding this next paragraph.

If you feel that you have been misled when you backed the Star Citizen project after Oct, 2012, and you want a chance to get your money back, the FTC has setup a special department that deals with crowd-funding complaints. You can fill out this form. Then select “Internet services, online shopping, or computers” then “Online shopping”. You can read more about that over here.

 

[Rodéric]

Video games take time...
It's like Valve or Blizzard games, you don't really know when they'll show up, just they are in the work, being a little optimistic we could wish for similar quality.
And anyway you can dogfight already, so you can play a subset of the final game...

 

[homerdog]

The bottom line seems to be death by feature creep. I think they could do something really great if they cut back to the initial proposal with just a few minor additions.

Keep in mind each time they add something to the scope it exponentially complicates the entire process. It's not like "add planetary FPS combat and be done with it". Everything in the entire game now has to take this into consideration!

Ima bow out now and wait to see what happens. Despite all the craziness I expect if they don't go bust they will release something that resembles a complete videogame around 2019-2020 and I really hope it's good.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Video games take time...

An by the proposed release date of November 2014, 3 years after the game development started, all they had to show was some 15% of their initial promise (walking around in a hangar and dogfighting) and 2% of their current promise.

It's completely bonkers to think this is somehow doing ok, regardless of Derek Smart's opinion on being technically doable or not.

 

[Rodéric]

With the scope of the game being bigger you'd need to re-design a number of components.

I don't know, I funded the game but likely won't have the time to play it, it amuses me tremendously people spend millions on dreams and immaterial work though.
(Also I won't fund games anymore since I don't get a share of the benefits unlike a publisher, which is plain wrong, just like pre ordering is horribly wrong and should be banned, but that's another story.)

 

[Lightman]

I too funded this game at the beginning but with only $45.00 for a basic ship as I'm not a gambler and rather see more of a product before I pay substantial money. Saying that I already had my fair share of fun in Star Citizen and when treated as graphics benchmark or showcase I've got some of my investment back. Still though would be nice to get final game with Squadron 42 at least as that was the reason I backed this project in the first place.

Now I'm thinking I should get Elite Dangerous on sale for £26 and support developer who can deliver on promises in a timely fashion and forget about Star Citizen for a looong time hoping one day it comes out and be half as good as promised ...

 

[Davros]

You guys should really try I-war 2 (its cheap)
https://www.gog.com/game/independence_war_2

 

[tabs]

"In reality, we're probably weeks off. We're shooting to have FPS on the PTU round-about Gamescom or slightly after Gamescom. We're really talking about people getting to play FPS in a matter of 3, 4, maybe 5 weeks."

http://www.gamersnexus.net/gg/2016-chris-roberts-fps-delays-progress-release-interview