Star Citizen Online - The search for more money

Big Phoenix

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You guys blame Roberts though? He announces ideas and people throw money at him, lots of money.

It sounds somewhat like a ponzi scheme at this point. Promise or show off a new feature to generate some cash to pay for the design work for the previous feature.
 

Abefroman

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You guys blame Roberts though? He announces ideas and people throw money at him, lots of money.

It sounds somewhat like a ponzi scheme at this point. Promise or show off a new feature to generate some cash to pay for the design work for the previous feature.
I think you can pretty much classify the majority of these crowdfunded games as that. Especially ones like SC, Crowfall, CU etc.
 

Pops

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If they were desperate for money they'd be selling overpowered combat ships, not this fluff stuff.
Are you crazy? The fluff is selling. Didn't you claim to buy some $600.00 fluff? I'd flip that hun.
 

Pops

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I have sold private placements in my life. You had to have a net worth and a substantial income. These guys are fleecing the masses.

Not that I didn't too. But my suckers could afford it.
 

Mist

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I already flipped one Glaive from 350 to 500. I'm up like 70 bucks off this whole mess so far.
 

Tuco

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CiG will enter a lawsuit against the Escapist, buy/sell?

I'd say sell. Their lawyers will probably tell them any resolution will happen long after the game is supposed to be released. The only upside would be the immediate PR boost of, "CiG is so confident in SC that they're opening their books to the courts to win against a slanderous article.". But that'd be tampered with, "CiG is so insecure in SC that they're suing anyone who tells people to not drink the koolaid."

By the time the suit ends, no one will care because the game will be out and we'll be too upset about how they need to nerf whales, or the game won't be out and we'll have abandoned it.
 

Vandyn

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There is a theory that CiG is pursuing this because this story (in the long run) could cause them damages in terms of additional funding. Which then lends to the thought that they don't have as much money now as every thinks they have. The problem they have is litigating the media (even stretching that term to include Escapist) doesn't have a great track record in this country.
 

Skanda

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Frankly CiG never should have responded in the first place. Not only to this 'news' article but they should have kept their mouths shut when Smart started making noise. I doubt this would have gone anywhere if they had.
 

InterSlayer_sl

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Schubert'smusings on the SC drama. (Sorry if it was already posted, don't remember seeing it)

...a 261 person team has a burn rate of 2.61-3.91M per month. That being said,that's just napkin math, and in reality there's a ridiculous number of variables at play here
Most of the engineers I've known personally who went to Cloud Imperium here in Austin did not stay there very long at all - most a few months - and none have any eagerness to talk about it. Which is pretty weird, in an industry where people love to share their tales of horror over beers.
 

Treesong

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Schubert'smusings on the SC drama. (Sorry if it was already posted, don't remember seeing it)
Nice piece, just want to mention he got it wrong with the 5-figure cost for a ship. The 15k he mentions is for the completionist ship package, not a single ship. You get dozens of ships for that(over 60 ships). The most expensive ship sold so far was the Javelin, for 2400 dollars I believe.
 

Skanda

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Schubert'smusings on the SC drama. (Sorry if it was already posted, don't remember seeing it)
Article_sl said:
Chris then goes into a long diatribe about how this is just a GamerGate conspiracy. Zen readers know my opinions on GG are not positive, but there?s definitely some wandering into tinfoil hat territory in his letter.

Fucking LOL. GamerGate is blamed for damn near everything these days.
 

Morrow

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They're flailing, which to me is pretty telling.

'You didn't give us time to respond!'
'You didn't verify your sources!'
'They are disgruntled employees! Who are they anyway?'
'Your journalist is an unethical child'
'We actually have 2 black employees! Look!'
'Apologize to my wife or else we duel at sunrise!'
Lol I pissed myself laughing at that last sentence. Well done.

I think this is all pretty obvious. Derek Smart is definitely an idiot and he definitely has an axe to grind, but that doesn't make what he's saying not true. Roberts is definitely a visionary, but that doesn't mean he isn't also running SC into the ground and generally fucking things up. Usually, when you are presented with two extremes, the truth is in the middle.

Look, I want to believe in this game as much as anyone. I've followed it since inception and I've always fantasized about a game like what Roberts has said SC will be (it won't, it definitely is impossible right now, not without an Avatar sized budget/crew for several years). But it's just a dream, that's all this is, a massive dream, and people are so desperate for that dream that they will clutch onto that fantasy as hard as they can, as long as they can. This is indeed definitely a lot like the Japanese tulip craze, it wasn't actually about the tulips and they weren't actually intrinsically worth anything, it was about what they represented.

I can't wait till a game like what SC is sposed to be comes out and we all get to play it. It's the game to end all games, forget about genres, it is the alpha and omega and it encompasses everything. I can see it and play it in my head. But we won't be doing that for at least another 15 years imo.
 

Denaut

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Roberts is definitely avisionary
There is no term more meaningless when applied to a game developer. The industry shits out public "visionaries" like it's been gobbling jalapeno burritos all night. The people that get visionary games into your hands are too busy working their ass off creating actual things to spend lots of time talking about creating things. Words are air.
 

Mist

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There's absolutely no evidence that they're running out of money or that anything is being run 'into the ground.'

As that article says, in an industry known for horror stories, few if any have come from CiG.

You don't hire that many people and rent that much office space in so many different countries for a pocket-the-money-and-run scheme.

Now, have they oversold what they can deliver in a reasonable time frame? Sure. But that's about all they're guilty of at this point. I don't personally expect to see a fully working persistent universe until atleast2018.
 

Denaut

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You don't hire that many people and rent that much office space in so many different countries for a pocket-the-money-and-run scheme.
To chime in, I highly doubt Roberts is stealing money.Ifthey are running out of money it is because it is shockingly easy to blow through it all on a large project due solely to incompetence, occam's razor is useful here.
 

Erronius

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Frankly CiG never should have responded in the first place. Not only to this 'news' article but they should have kept their mouths shut when Smart started making noise. I doubt this would have gone anywhere if they had.
I tend to agree. DS doesn't have a huge presence in the gaming community; if anything, people read what he has to say in the same way people here would flock to read a Tyen post if they saw one. You'd come expecting drama, but you wouldn't necessarily take what they have to say seriously.

To chime in, I highly doubt Roberts is stealing money.Ifthey are running out of money it is because it is shockingly easy to blow through it all on a large project due solely to incompetence, occam's razor is useful here.
This is kinda how I feel. I'm curious to see how much funding is left, or if they'll be forced to release earlier than they would otherwise want. But in my mind that's more because I'm morbidly fascinated with success and failure in the MMO sphere than anything else.
 

Awanka

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There is no term more meaningless when applied to a game developer. The industry shits out public "visionaries" like it's been gobbling jalapeno burritos all night. The people that get visionary games into your hands are too busy working their ass off creating actual things to spend lots of time talking about creating things. Words are air.
Yes. Too many "ideas" in the MMO industry. Not enough execution. It's the rare individual who can do both that makes a difference.
 

Tearofsoul

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I have said it couple time in this thread, this game still sounds too good to be true to me. Now, I don't mind dropping $80-100 on this game when it release, but before that, they have to show me the real deal.

And no, I ain't seeing this happening long before Derek starting raiding SC.
 

Furry

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Who didn't see this shit coming from a light year off? Kick starter for a space game. First thing you do to make said space game is spend all your time developing a shitty FPS. Is it too much to ask for fucking space in my space games now adays?

Yea right.