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Read this article about Enron and tell me why backers should not be concerned with CIG
booniedog96
Member UncommonPosts: 289
in Star Citizen
Read please, you may learn something new if you didn't already know.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2013/05/14/enron-ethics-and-todays-corporate-values/
“Ethics and integrity are at the core of sustainable long term success,” says Richard Rudden, managing partner at Target Rock Advisors in New York State. “Without them, no strategy can work and, as Enron has demonstrated, enterprises will fail. That’s despite having some of the ‘smartest’ guys in the room.”
Comments
1. Backers aren't investors and no single backer has invested a fraction of what the investors did into Enron.
2. There's no 'evidence' other than wild speculations that anyone at CIG is engaging in any of the practices that Enron did.
3. Anything remotely close to any kind of 'nefarious' actions in CIG comes from someone that has not nor will actually provide their source: oh, and this person has a competing product; has a past grudge stemming from 25 years ago; puts out 'million dollar bounties' on CIG's CEO; and has never worked on a critically acclaimed game while the person he is targeting did.
Does that clear this up for you?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
There's nothing wrong with backers being concerned that a game like this could fails, but this guy is committing a logical fallacy:
http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/30-appeal-to-extremes
There's investors that have put MILLIONS into a MMO; had an expectation of monetary gain from it; but ended up losing all those millions due to TOTALLY LEGIT REASONS.
Kinda puts things in perspective doesn't it?
1. Backers aren't investors, exactly. Though, backers gave their money "in good faith" for a promise of a kick ass game in return which has been suffering from chronic delay syndrome for some time.
2. There is no evidence because no one has asked for accountability prior to recent events.
3. This article has nothing to do with DSmart. You are bringing DSmart into this from some other thread.
I'm not trying to insult you here, but you're leaning on your lack of knowledge in the relevant areas to make your argument.
There's plenty of stuff that you can find already that shows that extensive progress is being made. In fact, some of us that actually understand how MMO development is can actually understand the thought process that went into CIG's approach and how they're releasing various modules and such (when we factor in this is a crowdfunding project as well).
Calm down. This not anything remotely close to Greed Monger.
Not when the project is funded by people who are emotionally attached. Investors want charts to skyrocket, if the stock dumps they jump ship. Gamers want a world they can get lost in and have no control of their contributions once it's in the hands of the company.
The wet patrol is all over this game.
Remember kids, the devil only exists through belief.
Putting family members in executive positions on a $85M project is not a form of greed? Executive bonuses come to mind?
Actually there are a lot of backers that are asking the same questions. Say what you want about Derek good or bad. But he asks the right questions.
Remember originally they only needed around 4 million to make the WHOLE game. Now they have 90 million with a studio that rivals EA and Bioware with 300+ people working on it. If your average programmers making 20k a year, that's 6 million dollars just on paychecks. And you know the Family of Executive Producers are making way, way more than that..:P
There's at least one guy who spent 25k on the game. Are you saying he doesn't have a right to know where his money's gone or what it's being spent on?
There's less than 6 months to go before the end of the year, you'll get a crap pushed out game with promises of more modules down the road so you can keep sinking more into this money pit.
You mean this family member:
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,23689/
Yeah, nothing in his resume that suggests he can handle being an Executive Producer.,,,
Or, how about the fact that his 'wife' Sandi Gardiner was someone that put a considerable amount of effort into the crowdfunding efforts (you know, marketing). She is also in the Guinness Book of World records as one of the 'co-founders' of the biggest crowdfunded game ever.Her position? VP of Marketing...
The more you know...
You DO know that they were there on Day 1, do you not? Or more accurately ... Day -90 .... without them he could not have even started the project, because the team was around half a dozen people back then (Chris, Sandi, Eric, Ortwin and some close friends, Erin was still working on another job at that time but was helping).
Have fun
You do know that this guy fully supports the project and has NOT asked for any financial documents from CIG, do you not ?
He is some of the more famous supporters and has been interviewed quite a lot (even by our biggest German game magazine GameStar).
Have fun
"Are you working on the game?" - Backer
"Here's a cool new ship, here's a cool new screenshot, we have an update to the Arena Commander module, we've brought in new people to fill roles because in the gaming industry that happens all the time. Here's our current plans. A module has some issues so we don't have a timetable for it yet, which happens in ALL GAME projects." - CIG
"GRAB THE PITCHFORKS, CIG DIDN'T BOW TO DEREK SMART'S DEMANDS!' - a handful of backers
Now they're making a game that rivals stuff that EA and Bioware are capable of making. Is this seriously an argument? Let's sprinkle in a bit of assertions and assumptions while we're at it because Derek Smart throws out the word nepotism when two people who appear to be well qualified for the positions they're in get those positions.
Hey, Chris Robert, can you provide a detailed account for every single dollar. We want you to highlight the areas of models that cost the amount a backer donated because some guy donated 25k and he has a right to know where his money ends up going. Also, we'd like to see you add comments along side every statement in the code to prove that you're spending our 'gifted' money on the project. Anything less and we're grabbing the pitchforks.
It's a good thing you're here since this guy might have possibly been concerned, may as well pre-emptively raise that concern for him.
You do realize that during full-scale production you're going to have what appears to be 'crap' since the primary focus is implementation, testing, debugging, and what not, not polishing the game so it matches release level, right?
If we managed to prove that some CIG top level bosses have behaved unethically, that would only ensure that the game will fail. Then there's no game for the backers, and no refunds either because the money will have already been used to pay employees, contractors and bills.
Backers should not be concerned because there's nothing they can gain. If you decide to aim for destroying Star Citizen and losing the money you've spent backing it, then sure be concerned it's a good way to work towards the goal of losing your money.
Enron ?
Wtf ?
From the sublime to the ridiculous...
Perhaps it's best if the US government creates an FGDC (Federal Games Design Commission) to oversee all future game development projects ? Clearly we need to regulate the industry, because there appears to be signs of trouble there.
Iirc, Enron were manipulating the supply of an existing product (electricity) to strengthen their position in the market at the expense of competitors, as well using the manipulation to artificially raise prices of the product, create fake shortages, etc.
I don't see any parallels between Enron and SC, I'm afraid. Even if I squint...
Digital ship sales are quite straightforward, pay now for something you can use when the game launches. No different from a pre-order or DLC "season pass". Much better than a DLC "season pass", in fact, because at least with the ship you can see exactly what you're paying for. Buying the ships is 100% voluntary. I do not see evidence of manipulation, sinister wording or deceptive sales conditions.
I don't own any ships in SC (yet), but I'm not about to dictate to other people what they can and cannot do with their money. If they want to spend $10K on a ship in SC or $100K on some digital real estate in Entropia, that's their business. I may make some disparaging remarks about the wisdom of their actions, but that's as far as it goes.
The reason we don't need to be concerned is because your comparing a company convicted of a laundry list of felony charges that temporarily crippled an industry and literally ruined thousands of peoples lives, to a company that is spending money that people have voluntarily given them to work on and build a computer game. If Star Citizen shut down tomorrow, NO ONE's life would be ruined and the price of your computer games wouldn't double.
There is such a lack of cognitive reasoning in people these days. There was a time when people would use words and give examples when relevant. It seems today people don't really understand the words they use or have the ability to know the difference between events that are happening in the world. People just lump everything together in order to make a point.
I'm going to blame it on the amount of information available today on the internet through search engines People just don't know how to filter and use it appropriately. I think the world was a safer and more reasonable place when people only new about the things that were within physical reach of themselves. At least they could speak only of things they had hands on experience with and less to be confused about.
If people wanted to learn something new they really had to go out of their way to do it, research centers, schools, not just open up Google, which probably meant they were the type of person that also had the intellect to properly process and apply the information they are learning.
Just an FYI, you've just walked into the realm of MMO analysis experts. Some of which have a history of calling games vaporware that ended up proving otherwise. I mean, their messenger is Derek Smart...