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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

#291

Post by kowdermeister »

macspoofing wrote: post #62
serg_chernata wrote: post #38

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.

> Many AAA titles take a decade or more from start to finish. AAA titles that take a decade or more to develop are usually stuck in some sort of development hell. >I want the best space sim and I like what RSI is doing. You like that instead of making the best space sim, they are adding focusing on adding an first person combat? It's clear as day that Roberts and Co. lack any sort of discipline. It's a perfect exampl…

Constraints on creative freedom is always a good thing. But let me rephrase that. If you introduce limitations to the creative process, then the outcome will be more creative than a process without any limitation.

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

#292

Post by shiburizu »

lloydde wrote: post #200

I choked on my coffee when I read "Lord is a data scientist who works on developing AI for SAP—a data-processing company in Colorado." SAP as in the 90k employee German-based European multinational software corporation?!

SAP really doesn't exist in the public eye outside of the enterprise world. It's interesting how few people would actually know they exist next to other mainstream names.

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

#293

Post by contravariant »

NullPrefix wrote: post #248
viscanti wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He made some purchases on the old ToS and some on the newer ToS. So he did agree to forced arbitration on the bulk of his transactions. That's not saying that the first transactions should be grouped in (or that forced arbitration should ever happen) but this isn't just a company changing the ToS later without him ever agreeing.

1.Sell some products where price is mentioned in ToS. 2.Change price. 3.Sell some more products. 4.Send lawyers to collect diff on product sold in [1]. The question is, was he made aware, that his previous agreement will be changed when he was giving some more money?

>The question is, was he made aware, that his previous agreement will be changed when he was giving some more money?

Any new pledge could easily have a little tickbox "I've read and understood the terms & conditions", I'm not sure if Kickstarter has one but I've seen such boxes pop up everywhere.

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

#294

Post by kowdermeister »

laythea wrote: post #219

I will never know how so many people get sucked in and used like this. Surely at least some of the "blame" for this situation lies in the individual that got used.

You can know it:

STAR CITIZENS: 2,058,546

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals

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

#295

Post by ikeboy »

izuchukwu wrote: post #42
michaelcampbell wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, that's 8 years. Article says they didn't start the kickstarter till 2012; 6 years ago.

If they began backing before their birthday in 2012, today’s birthday would make an 8 year age difference. Happy birthday gp!

No it wouldn't. If they were 25 on some date in 2012, then they'd be 31 on the same date in 2018 and the oldest they could be at any point in 2018 would be 32

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

#296

Post by MaupitiBlue »

Karunamon wrote: post #236
pixl97 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>om what it seems like, most large companies tend to use the same few arbitration firms Maybe the other arbitrators went out of business because they ruled on the consumer side. See: survivorship bias.

I'd love to see the data either way. "Arbitration is popular because it always screws the customer!" is a wonderful emotionally-evocative talking point, but that seems way too simplistic and pithy for me.

Arbitrators, like jurors, tend to split the baby if there is a halfway decent rationalization for doing so.

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

#297

Post by sullyj3 »

plttn wrote: post #221
beaconstudios wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, but they're not building those atop a functioning game platform. They're completely separate, like individual prototypes. If they were integrated into a whole that'd be a totally different story.

They are though. You can go from flying a spaceship, land, get out, shoot some friends, get back in a spaceship and fly away. The module concept hasn't really been a thing for a while.

This is true, but I was under the impression that they were using separate mechanics for star Marine vs shooting in the persistent universe, which they're still in the process of merging together

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

#298

Post by sullyj3 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #251

> But games change during development and, according to Lord, Star Citizen changed a lot. According to the game’s original pitch on Kickstarter, it would be a space sim with a co-op multiplayer game, an offline single-player experience, and a persistent universe. It’s since become a massively multiplayer online game and a separate single-player game with first-person shooter elements called Squadron 42, which RSI ori…

What's the difference between a persistent universe and an MMO?

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

#299

Post by inetknght »

cabaalis wrote: post #184
inetknght wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthcare, too

Transportation. Communication. Food. See? I can do it too. The idea of non-privatizing things has to pass tests other than just "Everyone needs it."

It's an opinion, man. How do I see if it passes this test without expressing it?

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

#300

Post by Laforet »

benjaminsuch wrote: post #279
Laforet wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not entirely wrong though, CryEngine was and arguably still is wholly unsuited for anything that borders on MMO. Instead of realigning your plan around the changed scope, Chris Roberts decided to keep the glitter of CryEngine visuals and he is paying the price for this decision. Netcode is still affecting performance to this day and I doubt if it will ever be solvable. We are long past the time when Iwata manage…

They switched 2 years ago from CryEngine to Lumberyard from Amazon which have an integrated feature for using AWS. They also stated that they completely rewrote the network part and still working on it to date. They call it Object Container Streaming and Network Bind Culling (I'm not a network developer, so I have no idea about the technical side of it). I don't know how far along they are (they postponed the feature…

You do realise that Lumberyard is just an licensed build of CryEngine with AWS related APIs added on top, right? As of alpha 3.2 there is still a very noticable network latency correlated to the number of active players per server. I will gladly change my opinion when CIG do manage to fix it.

Still, none of this would help to explain why SQ42 was postponed to 2019 and beyond.

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