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MMOFTW - Star Citizen Brouhaha?
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Member UncommonPosts: 12,599
MMOFTW - Star Citizen Brouhaha?
This week Bill spends entirely too much time trying to make sense of the Star Citizen "scandals", talks about Guild Wars 2
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"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Knowing a bunch of ex-Origin employees, I find the present stories to be completely believable. And have mentioned possible issues years ago.
It's unfortunate that so many folks have pinned their hopes to this erratic star. Also unfortunate, the gaming press has acted more like cheerleaders at a Star Citizen pep rally than as journalists. A full diet of spoonfed pap from CIG/RSI was taken as gospel. With such a glorious tale, no one wanted to look closely at it. Until the fallout from the nigh inevitable disorganization and poor management started to creep out from around the cracks. And now we have rolling examples of histrionic reactions to any questioning of the chosen one.
First problem; Chris Roberts is not that nice a guy, despite his vainglorious exposition in public. Second problem; he's not that good a project manager or designer. Now marketing, he has been good at. But the issues that are being discussed now are pretty much the same things that he did when he worked at Origin, to scope of his power there. He's never produced a single game outside of the umbrella of Origin/EA. Digital Anvil? Four years, no games produced. That was a lot of money down the drain.
A scam? Not really. Bad behavior? Most probably. Profligate and wasteful spending? Almost assuredly. The cat has not changed his spots.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
You can not bring it up in SC chat either without getting or the threat of being reported to mods.
MAGA
Secondly, I'm wondering how you would define a "nice guy". See I work for people who are demanding, which can sometimes be misunderstood as being mean. It's not. It might be direct, but if you take the time to understand someone, it is generally just in how they communicate. If I actually listen and help them accomplish whatever it is they are trying to accomplish, they are completely fine with me. I can't make any comment on CR, though.
As far as his credentials go, he's produced, arguably, the most recognizable space sim series in history. His games have a huge following. His games are, generally, well received (his movies not so much).
I would suggest you vet your sources, though, since it seems that CIG is in the mood for litigation
Crazkanuk
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MAGA
Only time will tell as to seeing it through.
A creative person is motivated by the desire to achieve, not the desire to beat others.
Roberts was the boss at Digital Anvil for four years, and spent a lot of money, producing a big flat nothing. It took Microsoft nearly three years to finish that game in some releaseable form, and it was already a year and a half late upon the buyout.
His helming of the Wing Commander series is not the sign of greatness that some presume. Roberts had teams of very competent people to support him, and folks who could draw the line at some of his more vainglorious ideas. IIRC Warren Spector was brought in as a co-producer in the first WC to get it out the door after numerous Roberts-induced delays. It was also reported to me that once the cut scenes were introduced to the series, Roberts spent most of his producer-time shooting those. Etc.
As far as his personality, there's a pretty striking uniformity of opinion about him from the folks I have talked to. While other major players from the Origin era have a range of opinion about them, Roberts is uniformly negative. Even before the SC kickoff I knew of Roberts as the second most disliked guy at the company. It just took questions about the Kickstarter to discover why.
Paragraphing gone south again. Sorry. (fix maybe?)
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Star Citizen was hyped from day one, and the hype just got bigger and bigger. All the hype comes from big words, flashy presentations and even bigger funding. Arena commander has been out as an alpha for over a year, but from what I gathered it creates no hype of its own.
EQNext was hyped from day one, and I know Bill was really hyped that it would come out really soon instead of the usual hyped product that are 2-3 years in the future. Landmark has been out, originally as an alpha over a year ago, and it creates no hype of its own.
It wasn't because of landmark that hyped stopped, instead it was that they became really quiet about eqnext. If they had just continued talking about eqnext most of us would still be hyped about it, doing our best to ignore landmarks.
Sure, we are talking about games in development, and in these cases its not what the whole game is about but shouldn't we put more value on our gameplay enjoyment of these parts instead of putting most trust into what they are saying. That way we could become more honest with our expectations and stop building these gigantic dream castles that never comes true.
(edit: paragraphs turned into wall of text for no reason)
Nothing is ever as good or as bad as first reported. It seems people on both sides of this discussion just want to sensationalize every word uttered by anyone that is even obscurely involved. Ex employee's, harsh working conditions, do any of you even have jobs? If the conditions were even close to the way people have described them CGI would have many other issues beyond a relatively few number of employee's crying to a magazine. Just for starters.
The complete lack of common sense in this entire discussion, including several threads on these boards and others out there is astounding. I guess at this point I should not be surprised at what people say on the the internet and more to the point this discussion board.
If it does come to light (via credible sources) that CR/CGI did commit what is in essence some pretty serious crimes I will be surprised again, I suspect the truth lies somewhere in the middle ground as is usually the case in these types of things.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.