Star Citizen - Chris Roberts Interview

Chien, I'm not sure what exactly you're going on about, but the game hasn't been released yet. You must be speaking about alpha or beta versions, I know as a backer I see emails for those often but I won't consider touching the game until it's actually complete, and I'm certain many others feel the same way.

Carnifex said:

Chien, I'm not sure what exactly you're going on about, but the game hasn't been released yet. You must be speaking about alpha or beta versions, I know as a backer I see emails for those often but I won't consider touching the game until it's actually complete, and I'm certain many others feel the same way.

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Are there any kind of missions/quests in the beta, which could spoil the experience of the full release?

Carnifex said:

Chien, I'm not sure what exactly you're going on about, but the game hasn't been released yet. You must be speaking about alpha or beta versions, I know as a backer I see emails for those often but I won't consider touching the game until it's actually complete, and I'm certain many others feel the same way.

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We've had this discussion with Chien before on an early access / open beta game. Basically Chien takes the word released as 'publically available' whereas the majority of people take it to mean 'first complete marketable version' or some variation of that.

It will take a miracle for this entire thing to NOT end up mired in many lawsuits. Hope I'm wrong...but with that amount of funds and about six years in development with no actual released game, all while still accepting donations along with an ever widening scope of features, it's just hard for me to not see this thing implode with lawsuits.

In my view they should have "released" this game mmo style - meaning that they come out with the game with a certain number of feature sets. Then over the years, come out with "patches" and "expansions" that add to the game play possibilities.

What they're doing is accepting tons of money, promising what seems like an impossible number of features, and treating their release date like how the U.S. government treats the debt ceiling... every time the release date nears, they push it out another few years.

Again, hope I'm wrong... but businesses with far few dollars, far fewer partners, and potential customers with zero "horse in the race dollars" prior to purchase have cavitated out of control landing them squarely in never ending litigation where lawyers win and everyone else loses.

TheMadGamer said:

What they're doing is accepting tons of money, promising what seems like an impossible number of features, and treating their release date like how the U.S. government treats the debt ceiling… every time the release date nears, they push it out another few years.

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Similar to Greece, Italy, France, UK. Nobody realistically can make the general populus happy in a democracy and still pay back principal on debt. Short term happiness as any party unwilling to make big promises will be voted out.

It's a smart decision to give so much money in marketing, for many people will support them and defend them.

Just like with Cleve and Grimoire, I don't even have to buy this game to get hours upon hours of enjoyment out of it. Just watching YouTube videos and reading the discussions about it is enough for me. ^_^

Seeing stuff like the in-game ships being sold on the website for thousands of dollars is just ridiculous. I can't even imagine putting down that much money for a game that was already fully released and awesome, nevermind a game that's not released and of unknown quality. =/

https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/29/star-citizen-27000-ship-pack/

I recommend watching series of vids on that channel: very informative and in depth on background/the project.
Interesting how SC backers attack anyone as hater/ignorant while there is really a ton of very detailed, informative criticism on it.
At this point, best case scenario is release of nowhere near to finished, "empty" game, that Roberts will likely sell with "All part of this journey" pitch.
If we have global recession ( very likely in next year or two), and money starts drying up, things could very..heated.
One point, I considered backing this, but hearing of what they're doing ( some of their practices are literally similar to those of "pyramide scheme"), soured me on this.

I'm reminded of Trump when he talks about how informed he is because he watches Fox News

Anyway - thank you all for your entertaining "insight" into this project. It's clear you REALLY did your homework here.

Wisdom said:

It's amazing how passionate people get about attacking a project that they didn't even contribute to. The social media era allows for an unprecedented level of self righteousness. They will attack you to 'save' you, all the while feeling justified

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It's because the less you know about something, the easier it will be to fit whatever it is into your own personal agenda.

Problem is that when your personal agenda is your motivation - whatever information you find will be skewed and tainted, because it goes through a non-truth filter.

I guess caring about factual information and the way things actually are - as well as grasping that all things have a reason to be, which is rarely what they seem at face value - is less common than one would have hoped

In this case, I understand it. It's a high profile game with lots of big numbers and "red flags" for people who don't know the details.

It's amusing and fascinating.

I don't judge people for being a little dumb (as in, inexperienced) and a little zealous - even if they don't know what they hell they're talking about. I'm guilty of that myself sometimes. It's the nature of having an ego - and some people, like Bobo, are almost entirely ego-driven. I was like that when I was his age, too.

I only hope that people won't let their ignorance and pride because they were 100% wrong stand in the way of having fun with this game once it's eventually released.

If they're at all interested in an enthusiast space sim, that is.

Ignoring your very own agenda, I can at least say one thing, regarding

Darth Tagnan said:

having fun with this game once it's eventually released.

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If they release what they promised, I'll be playing that game. Miracles happen. ( I'll leave it to everyone's judgment, to decide which part of that sentence is "the miracle". )

If they release what they promised, I'll be playing that game. Miracles happen. ( I'll leave it to everyone's judgment, to decide which part of that sentence is "the miracle". )

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I can't exactly guarentee that they will release what corresponds to your personal interpretation of what you think is an actual promise.

Personally, I don't think they're obligated to release anything except the best they can do with whatever resources they have available. I don't think of dreams and early goals as actual promises - because that's not how game development works.

I never back a game expecting every single ambition to be met - without delays of any kind.

Mostly because I'm cursed with an actual memory of all those other ambitious games that were delayed and never fully lived up to the initial promises.

With SC being the most ambitious game of all time - by an order of magnitude - at least in my experience - this is more true than ever.

However, I can *almost* guarentee that they will release an extremely evolved and technically advanced space game - from an enthusiast point of view.

As in, it won't be a mainstream experience - and it won't be watered down to please the masses.

Unlike AAA games like RDR2, Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk - this game doesn't compromise for money and it doesn't compromise for consoles.

But I have no problem making the claim that it will be worth the wait - and then some, if you care about the genre and you want to see how far it can go.

I never back down from standing by my claims in that way, and if the game is cancelled or less than great upon release - I will be back here owning up to it.

So…. let's see who is right and who is wrong

Again, though - obviously, there's no "objective" measurement of what's good and bad - and this game isn't going to be for everyone, that's for sure.

Of course, that's for Star Citizen primarily.

For Squadron 42 - it's more of a very, very elaborate and very, very pretty Wing Commander using the same tech as Star Citizen. Also, it's probably going to have a 60+ hour story campaign - and that's not counting the side stuff you can do. Should be pretty amazing if you're into that genre - but it's not what I'm personally looking forward to the most.

SQ42 would be more in line with a typical mainstream experience - and I think they're going to market it wider than SC.

I know Chris Roberts thinks Star Citizen could potentially reach World of Warcraft popularity - but I don't really think so. The hardware requirements alone will be a big obstacle - but the core gameplay most certainly won't be the same sort of casual experience that WoW 1-60 was upon release.

So, I keep reminding people that they really need to be enthusiasts to truly enjoy this game.

I get the feeling that some backers expect this game to be a huge hit with millions and millions of additional purchases after it's "done".

I'm very sceptical that will be the case.

I do think it can become a big hit - but I would definitely not expect WoW or GTAV level sales here, even IF it's everything they "promised".

Cacheperl said:

If they release what they promised, I'll be playing that game. Miracles happen. ( I'll leave it to everyone's judgment, to decide which part of that sentence is "the miracle". )

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I'm interested only in the game's singleplayer part. After I'm done with it, it'll be uninstalled just as GTA5. They can't milk these.

Will they actually deliver on singleplayer part dunno as 99% of funds went into developing mmo part and buying future servers. But with crapload of money they've collected by different means, 1% is still more cash than many other developers had yet made good games with it.

joxer is a very good example of the kind of 100% ignorant misinformation being spread around

Thankfully, I trust we all know how informed joxer tends to be when he speaks about things - but that's not nearly as obvious when you don't know the person involved.

I think it was trying to master WoW DPS'ing that ultimately taught me just how many people are full of shit when it comes to speaking from a position of authority.

It took me at least a year of reading up on WoW mechanics 4-6 hours every day - until I finally understood that perhaps 1 in 1000 people who claimed to understand the finer points of the math and the design ACTUALLY knew. I ended up with 2 people who I could fully rely upon for that kind of precision, even if some of it was theory still - and that's on the US forums with tens of thousands of people involved in the discussions and attempts to top the DPS charts.

I mean, I had no idea how the mechanics worked - and, for months, I had to base my calculations on the assumption that the people who claimed to know (and seemed to know) actually knew.

Not so, I'm afraid.

It was a useful, but also highly disturbing discovery about the capacity for self-aggrandizement and self-delusion that's so, so common in human nature.

I don't think it's on purpose. I just think people have this very unfortunate tendency to follow other people who "seem" to be in the know and who "seem" to have authority - and then theories quickly become fact.

Wisdom said:

We've had this discussion with Chien before on an early access / open beta game.

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There is no discussion with people who are urged to shift word meanings. When you start by declaring freedom as an unalienable human right and have slaves, when declaring property as an unalienable human right and go into a land grabbing spree, it comes as a cost. One is the permanent urge to redefine everything.

Basically Chien takes the word released as 'publically available'

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No. Nothing personal in it. Commonly, released is understood as publically available. The rejection of common word meanings disallows discussion.

No needs for re definition, especially as all those early releases come as a result of the crowdfunding movement: supporters told that all those early releases were great as they allow players to give their inputs and shape the developpment.

People who pushed in favour of the crowdfunding movement are now the same rejecting release's common meaning on the ground the released versions are early versions.

whereas the majority of people take it to mean 'first complete marketable version' or some variation of that.

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That is trading something for nothing. Apart from version, all the other terms receive an altered definition.

Marketable: this product is marketed and hence marketable. It hit the market and raked in revenues (published charts show that)

Complete: players are not going to play a complete version of it since this product is going to receive an inflow of new content.

First: which one it is going to be. Eventually, the most fitting one is likely to be the last version they are going to release as it is going to be the complete one.

Three common words, all of them must surrender their common meaning because people can not bear the consequences of what they've pushed for.

This product is a classical crowdfunded project, it is already released, it will certainly not meet expectations and promises as the crowdfunded scene is an industry of underdelivering, it has troubles with deadlines etc

Classical crowdfunded project, no reason to blame it for features crowdfunded projects exhibit.

In this case, CIG are treating the Star Citizen Alpha as a "live product" - even though it's far, far from finished.

So, it's arguably released from the point of view of backers.

It has recently become quite playable, though - with some genuinely satisfying gameplay here and there. That stage took quite some time to reach, let me tell you

Personally, I don't play it much except to help test it and when I can't help myself. I'm doing my utmost not to spoil the final experience - and I'm trying to maintain a semi-blackout in terms of content, though I don't quite manage that.

With OCS - it has reached the stage where I no longer have any serious doubts they can truly pull it off. I used to worry a lot about final performance, because I know what they intend to have happen.

I remain sceptical they can make the AI work for all the things they want it to do. For my part, they don't necessarily need that level of sophistication - but a few features would be extremely hard to do without it.

Also, they intend to release an MVP after a couple of milestones - including full persistence and server-meshing. I doubt either of those are going to be harder to achieve than OCS - so it's probably not THAT far off. My current estimate would be 2021 or 2022.

Certain features have taken much longer than even I expected, and I'm not an optimist when it comes to release dates.

That said, if I had known the full feature-list and final scope at the time of the Kickstarter - I would probably have estimated around 10 years with 500 people in full production. So, if they actually make 2022 - I'll still be pretty impressed, all things considered.

People with limited insight into the tech and the scope of this game will likely NOT be impressed, however. Maybe when they get their hands on it - but they will need to understand the technical challenges involved, which we've all underestimated - including CIG themselves.

That said, I don't know what kind of content they're going to have ready for that point in time.

Personally, I will not be playing the MVP unless they have multiple finished star systems ready for exploration. At least 10-15 would be my personal requirement.

@joxer;
Their plan is to release SQ42 first, which is single player only. In that case, no mixup with the MMO necessary.

Darth Tagnan said:

I do think it can become a big hit - but I would definitely not expect WoW or GTAV level sales here, even IF it's everything they "promised".

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If they release something solid, they might at least do similar to or better than EVE. Not too many sales, but a long-term, stable community. But would that be enough to keep maintenance and successive development of the whole thing running for a while?

Cacheperl said:

If they release something solid, they might at least do similar to or better than EVE. Not too many sales, but a long-term, stable community. But would that be enough to keep maintenance and successive development of the whole thing running for a while?

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Perpetual development will naturally correspond to the active player-base and how successful their plans for future funding will be.

I suspect they will probably add some kind of cosmetic microtransactions to the already planned UEC for real money plan, which is supposed to have a daily limit.

One very good part of their approach is that they've spent much MUCH longer developing the content-creation tools than pretty much every other developer out there - so it's technically feasible to add a lot of content with a relatively small team.

Another revenue-positive aspect is that they're going to make 2 more chapters for Squadron 42 - effectively 2 more games. They can do that relatively easily - since it's mostly going to be about the motion capture sessions and I expect them to re-use a lot of assets for those games. Now, that's not the Chris Roberts way - so maybe I'm wrong about that latter part.

Contrary to what outsiders seem to think, he really is ALL about the game. He's arguably insane in terms of the ambition - but I will let time tell the real story on that one.

I would personally expect them to far exceed the EVE playerbase (which is around 300-500K AFAIK).

My own personal estimate would be something like 2-4M active players for the first few years - though it's obviously impossible to predict such things. I mean, they already have more than 2 million backers - and it's reasonable to assume they will be actively playing it for a good while.

In a way, it's only as sophisticated as you make it - but to have anything like the "full" experience - you're going to have to invest yourself in the game.

It's not trying to cater to the majority - and they're not trying to be overly inclusive in that way.

So, I just don't see it becoming like WoW or GTA - where everyone and their grandmothers are talking about it.

Maybe they will be aided a little by all the ignorant controversy - but, ultimately, people have the memory of ants. Once it's out (or cancelled) - it will be all about how it actually plays, unless it's a complete PR disaster for whatever reason.

A scam is a scam is a scam... let the fools part with their money to keep the dream alive.

mbpopolano24 said:

A scam is a scam is a scam… let the fools part with their money to keep the dream alive.

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You are totally wrong!
It was not a scam!!

The money have gone to charity.
Good booze and girls to all that have involved in the scheme.
:lol: