Star Citizen Woes

[Slashman]

I remember reading an article about game dev studio hierarchy a while back. It basically made the point that most people in management positions overseeing design generally worked their way up from actually doing dev work in several categories from level design, animation, scripting, playtesting etc. There was no graduate from game design school, go straight to overseeing huge projects.

In any case, my own real-word experience leads me to conclude that someone managing a group of people while knowing very little about what their work entails is much less effective than someone with experience in the field. By Robert's own admission in a previous article I posted, he often tells developers who say that something is impossible or impractical to do, to do it anyway.

[Mecron]

SV I KNOW what a manager at that level does, my point was that I wish some of you and especially the press would stop treating people like that as if they are doing any real work that leads to the completion of the game.

[Cpt. Awesome]

SV I KNOW what a manager at that level does, my point was that I wish some of you and especially the press would stop treating people like that as if they are doing any real work that leads to the completion of the game.

Despite my issues with the integrity of StarCitizen's development, I have to still acknowledge the part Chris Roberts had to play in getting everything going. Do I consider him a developer? no; do i think he has been very wasteful with the cash? Yes; was SC funded mostly by promises and a tech demo he just paid for; yes. However despite all that, I can't imagine a similar situation where a game gets so much funding. So I do begrudgingly admit that it was likely that very few other people would've been able to get something like SC off the ground. Jury is still out on whether it will fly or not.

[Space Voyager]

Luckily, Elite is slowly delivering everything Star Citizen promised. Braben is definitely the huge winner. Seriously, if you want to see the universe with your own eyes (as my childish nick attests for me), play Elite. At the moment, this is as good as it gets. I would be playing it for the sights alone. I do hope they add something of a story at some point, but I can live without.

[Cpt. Awesome]

Luckily, Elite is slowly delivering everything Star Citizen promised. Braben is definitely the huge winner. Seriously, if you want to see the universe with your own eyes (as my childish nick attests for me), play Elite. At the moment, this is as good as it gets. I would be playing it for the sights alone. I do hope they add something of a story at some point, but I can live without.

I played it for 30hrs+. I really appreciate their deliberate and resonable development approach. Would've played more of it, I'm planning on revisiting after a few more updates.

[Space Voyager]

I played it for 30hrs+. I really appreciate their deliberate and resonable development approach. Would've played more of it, I'm planning on revisiting after a few more updates.

Cool, I hope to meet you. I'm slowly grinding towards some money to get a decent ship. At least I can take on bountyhunting missions that tend to bring more and offer the most action, naturally. You get bored just flying from system to system. Though I did go on a pretty long trip into the unknown and the exploration was fun, too. The plan is to go out again now that I can afford the best scanner and discover all there is to find in the system.

Oh, there was an epic moment of "mygodthatisawesome" when I had a mission to deliver some goods to a space station far away from the star, much further than my scanner was able to find. Normally I would ditch the mission but this time I went scientific. I flew perpendicular to the planetary plane, than headed back towards the star and looked for moving dots. Stars in the background won't move (noticeably) but bodies much closer will as you're flying superluminal. Basically how the astronomers go about finding anything moving in our vicinity but reversed. So after a few flybys I finally managed to find the dot, meaning the planet and the station around it. It actually felt like an accomplishment.

Later I found out that I could just scan the navigational buoy at the star and it would reveal whole system.

[Slashman]

And now another avenue to raise money for this not-at-all costly game we're sure to be playing in 2 - 3 decades.

[marshb]

168 million dollars raised and still no game yet!?

[ZedF]

The bigger it is, the longer it takes to make. But it should never have been that big in the first place.

[Mecron]

so the issue is...is it going to be better than the 20 pretty heavily funded games that could have benefitted from that cash.

[Slashman]

The bigger it is, the longer it takes to make. But it should never have been that big in the first place.

That kind of talk borders on sacrilegious in the Roberts camp. The rule is bigger is better. The ongoing donation numbers are rather spectacular though. I wonder how many concept ships not yet in the game have sold so far.

[Mecron]

shrug, as long as folks are happy.

[Slashman]

Well fancy video blogs and multiple conventions every year can go a long way toward keeping the masses in check.

Gotta hand it to Roberts. He finally found a gig that supports his ego and crazy vision and pays exceptionally well.

[Torezu]

Mec, they're only happy so long as they stay duped into thinking they're going to get a playable and fun game Soon™.

[Slashman]

Well they're not thinking about the timeframe because they keep getting shown all these new shinies that don't exist. But man are they shiny!

It's the thing that keeps confounding everyone's favorite indie-dev nut job Derek Smart. His rantings were predicated on the money drying up. Roberts isn't letting it dry up because they keep finding new stuff to sell that they haven't made and don't have a timeline for.

Also note how the single player game is now in the "indefinitely delayed" box. The reasoning being that the tech it is based on is so closely tied to the multiplayer game's tech that they have to be developed together.