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‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

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Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still looks an incredibly boring and pointless procedural generation tech showcase even in the latest trailer.

Lots of people like games like that. Tell your own story, use your imagination, stuff like that.

[deleted]

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#162

I'm a backer and I have no problem with this. Many AAA titles take a decade or more from start to finish. For example, between Diablo 2 and 3. I want the best space sim and I like what RSI is doing. I'm not holding my breath, just living my life and when the game is finished I will be happy to play it. Although, I also did not drop 5 grand on this game.

The argument that far less ambitious AAA games have taken a long time has seemed to me to be a double-edged sword. It does give SC some leeway in expected timeline. But there’s also the concern that if a reasonably-experienced studio like Blizzard could be stalled for 10 years to iterate on Diablo 2, then it seems very likely that CIG, an entirely new studio, is going to stumble hard when trying to solve multiple challenges in gaming that have yet never been solved. Chris Roberts is rightly a legend for the WC series, but that doesn’t suggest he can pull off a dynamic game of SC’s scope.

I’ve been paying attention to SC because its ambition is fascinating. I’m especially interested in what innovations they’ll bring to AI when it comes to populating a game world. But I would’ve thought by now — especially based on Roberts’ confident prediction of a 2016 release — that the single-player SQ42 would be in beta form by now. But it seems like they don’t have any kind of game loop, or a stable/fun flight model.

Nevermind the never-before done innovations — I think that SC, whenever it releases, is going to have a hell of a time with more mundane things, such as game balancing. I think of how much work Blizzard has to constantly put into Overwatch, a team FPS with very few innovations, to find the right mix of balance with <30 characters in 3 classes. SC has what looks like dozens of ships that have to be designed well for human and AI alike. Some of these ships cost hundreds of dollars and yet have to be tweaked so that SC doesn’t feel like a pay-to-win game, where whales dominate the galaxy with AI-controlled fleets. It’ll be an interesting project to follow over the decade but the challenges seem daunting.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#163
post #159
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't get phone or Internet in my area without some form of forced arbitration.....if I don't give up my rights to the court system for those services, I just don't get them. There is no option to simply not participate, it is absurd.

Have you tried asking your parents for an itsy-bitsy teensy-weensy million-dollar loan so you can found your own telecom?

A.K.A The Kardashian method to becoming self made.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#164
post #2

I pledged a fraction of this fellow's total in Star Citizen, probably the lowest tier that would result in a digital copy of the game once complete. I was after a modern Privateer reboot, essentially, and figured it was worth the gamble. I haven't followed the development with anything more than a casual, occasional glance and accompanying eye-roll. I doubt I'll ever see anything come of it. A shame, not necessarily…

I think they came to a point when they thought "This could be huge and mind blowing, and can't be done for a long time if we don't do it" and kept going. I myself went from a critic to someone shouting "Go ahead!"

Investors need to re-imagine epic games as platforms, a movie that plays for twenty-plus years, iteratively developed. This also tends to collapse genres (markets): the World-of-Warcraft effect, wherein all other games of the genre bleed-out to the big platform. Good if you're the Star Citizen in the room and succeed.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elite Dangerous did turn out a very successful game though.

Not only successful but also great in terms of quality and polish - iirc they got awards for their great sound design. I've also tried it in VR and it's a killer app for that platform, especially with a joystick setup.

The sound design in Elite: Dangerous is just fantastic. In my book it's among the best games ever in this category. It takes skill to take a simulation to a level where you can literally fly the ship by ear because every nuance of your ship's quite complex status is reflected in audio somehow.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#166
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But arbitration didn't fail here. He never tried it in the first place.

Arguably he shouldn't have had to, since the arbitration clause appeared in the Terms of Service after he made his pledge. I have my own opinions about arbitration but that's neither here nor there when what you agreed to did not dictate that you must resolve disputes through arbitration.

But he has used the service since, making more pledges to other companies. Part of continuing to use kickstarter is to to accept the new TOS when they come out.

If he made one pledge, and then never used or logged into kickstarter and agreed to a new TOS then he would have a case.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#167
post #4

Meanwhile, No Mans Sky, the underdog-turn-most-hated-turn-underdog-again game is releasing full multiplayer free upgrade next week. They engineered a PR disaster for themselves but have been adding great features at a slow steady pace, which is exactly how it should be done.

Yeah, that should have been an "Early Access" game from the start. What they are releasing next week is more so what they ORIGINALLY advertised, which always rubbed me the wrong way. Took them almost 2 years to get it right, after that PR nightmare of theirs. Sadly, this only hurts the player base most, because most players already wrote this game off when they got burned by it 2 years ago. It's really sad to see a g…

To each their own, but I put 60+ hours into the original game (I never bought into the hype and hadn't pre-ordered), and then put it away for 2 years..

I am greatly looking forward to diving back in next week, and am treating it basically as a free sequel.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still looks an incredibly boring and pointless procedural generation tech showcase even in the latest trailer.

Lots of people like games like that. Tell your own story, use your imagination, stuff like that.

I generally like games like that to some extent but I still found the original version of NMS mind numbingly dull. I think the problem is that they decided that they would just let the Random Number God decide everything through the procedural generation and they thought that gameplay would organically happen on its own.

Except it doesn't work that way, the procedural generation engine in the game obviously has too few assets too many constraints to really come up with original planets and biomes, after a few couple of planets everything looks the same and plays the same. You don't have anything worthwhile to do and nothing to look forward to. You don't feel like you're progressing, you don't feel like you can meaningfully interact with the universe.

Since then they've added base building and now multiplayer though, so that probably helps with these issues but I firmly believe that there's something fundamentally broken about NMS, it looks like it's a tech demo before somebody decided to actually implement a game with it.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#169
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But arbitration didn't fail here. He never tried it in the first place.

Arguably he shouldn't have had to, since the arbitration clause appeared in the Terms of Service after he made his pledge. I have my own opinions about arbitration but that's neither here nor there when what you agreed to did not dictate that you must resolve disputes through arbitration.

According to the article, he made a some of his pledges after the change to the Terms of Service.

I can imagine that if they tried to get a refund somewhat close to the change, a judge could be convinced to allow the refund under the old ToS.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#170

He lost because of a forced arbitration clause. This massive privatization of justice where any boilerplate service or product now comes with forced arbitration is making my blood boil. The justice system should always be an option when arbitration fails, and arbitration should take no more than a reasonable time to fail (say, two weeks for this $5000 amount). The whole point of a small claims court is to handle such…

> He lost because of a forced arbitration clause.

Just to be clear, that doesn't mean he wouldn't have lost otherwise, or that forced arbitration wouldn't have worked in his favor. If forced arbitration wasn't a consideration, he might still have lost.

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