Nostalgia plays a big part in these kickstarters of old forgotten genres titles, absolutely!
Good sense is a bit ambiguous, good or bad that will be depending on the perspective of each one.
I understand that for detractors of the project seeing it constantly getting more and more funding is a thorn in their sides but that's just how things are.
People really like the work of CIG and the direction Star Citizen is taking, hence the continuous backing.
After 5 years it should be clear by now that doesn't matter how much drama the haters try to create to harm this project, Star Citizen/SQ42 will keep on being developed and improved upon.
So in other words, they let their nostalgia get in the way of good sense...
hmm?
What SC tries to be, is one void on gaming that needs to be filled, nobody else is trying to push something on the lines of SC (some expected ED to be that by now but still to be seen) so what is so surprising that when someone crowdfunds something people really want to play it results in a huge amount of support?
If the offer already existed, I think people wouldn't really turn to crowdfund what they want to happen. The continuous support is mirrored with the project continuous progress, if people like what they see and/or play, I'd say it will only continue as that.
Not really sure what Elite has to do with this, the amount it took in crowdfunding is incomparable, the size of the team that works on the game is incomparable. Expecting Elite "to be that by now" when Star Citizen can't manage it with $189 million and 500 staff would just be wishful thinking.
Nostalgia plays a big part in these kickstarters of old forgotten genres titles, absolutely!
Good sense is a bit ambiguous, good or bad that will be depending on the perspective of each one.
I understand that for detractors of the project seeing it constantly getting more and more funding is a thorn in their sides but that's just how things are.
People really like the work of CIG and the direction Star Citizen is taking, hence the continuous backing.
After 5 years it should be clear by now that doesn't matter how much drama the haters try to create to harm this project, Star Citizen/SQ42 will keep on being developed and improved upon.
Indeed, nostalgia is an important part of crowdfunding but when you have people who claim not to have played games for 20 years dropping $20,000 on a childhood memory one can certainly question good sense.
I don't think people care that CIG are continuing to get funds, they might care what CIG are managing to do with the money, they might care that they are not issuing refunds but beyond that, I don't anyone gives a shit.
People want SC/SQ42 to carry on being developed because it brings a lot of drama and laughs of it's own, there's very very few people who actually want to tear it down and see it fail.
I also smile when I hear "Oh game X is doing that better than SC and will be finished sooner .... " (most recently Warframe, but you can insert CoD, ME-A, NMS etc.).
That is a GOOD thing in my book. Gimme MORE excellent space games. I will play them all. AND Star Citizen.
All predictions that game X "will be the death of" SC have turned out to be wrong. Coexistence is perfectly possible in the space game category.
>>> , they might care that they are not issuing refunds but beyond that, I don't anyone gives a shit.<<<
If people did not ask for a refund for 5 years, it is their own fault. In the first 3 years getting a refund was very easy.
And I think a gaming magazine (one of the worlds largest magazines) Star Citizen special issue of 128 pages in full color may count as "giving a shit" - contrary to your postulate.
I'll wait until it is better optimized. I suppose I could add some RAM (pretty hard to free up 8gig when I have. . 8 gig total). It could be a tonne of fun one day.
I do have the concern that they are going to run into engine / hardware / software limitation though that, if they just keep adding, they won't be able to fix. . then they will have to slash player numbers or have loading screens etc. A lot of people would like to make games like that but have not been able to. I hope they can pull it off with a decent number of players. . or at least SQ42. I would take even just that.
Well Elite is developed by a company established back in 1994, that's 24 years ago.
It has it's own funding through private investors. It costed a lot of money and it was developed by a lot of people too (check the credits)
I think one of the reasons Elite: Dangerous was given the go by the board and went with the crowdfunding campaign was because Star Citizen showed that there was a market for it!
Works on Elite 4 had been announced before, I think it was on the shelf because they thought there was no market for it at the time or the tech wasn't there, probably both.
There's people who've dropped thousands of dollars upfront to help Elite get made and I'm sure nostalgia played a big part with it's early investors too.
Why should anyone have a problem with that? Space games are so few that anyone helping them get made should get kudos not be frown upon.
Yeah I'm sure that people are giving millions of dollars per year to CIG because it brings a lot of drama and laughs lol, right.
There is a lot of people who actually want to tear it down and see it fail, even if they don't care to admit it out loud because it would showcase their scummy self.
Fortunately the people who actually want to support and play great space games dwarf them by comparison
Well Elite is developed by a established company, that has it's own funding through private investors. It costed a lot of money and it was developed by a lot of people too (check the credits)
I think one of the reasons Elite: Dangerous was given the go by the board and went with the crowdfunding campaign was because Star Citizen showed that there was a market for it!
They didn't use investors, they took out a decent sized loan, had a few million in crowdfunding as well as company funds.
You can only assume that Elite's crowdfunding happened because of SC, however there is nothing to back that up. Frontier were waiting for Kickstarter to allow British companies to use the crowdfunfing platform and that only became available end of October 2012 https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-in-the-uk Frontier's crowdfunding pitch started within days of it opening up.
Works on Elite 4 had been announced before, I think it was on the shelf because they thought there was no market for it at the time or the tech wasn't there, probably both.
They were waiting the tech, they'd been working on a game called The Outsider. The plan was that after it was done they would start on Elite 4. The publisher for The Outsider scrapped the game leaving them in the lurch, so Elite 4 got put on the backburner while they made ends meet.
There's people who've dropped thousands of dollars upfront to help Elite get made and I'm sure nostalgia played a big part with it's early investors too.
Why should anyone have a problem with that? Space games are so few that anyone helping them get made should get kudos not be frown upon.
Very few people did that and only people who went for the Kickstarter tiers, nobody can spend thousands on Elite assets now. In comparison there is a large amount of people that have spent a significant amount of money on SC assets over the last 6 years.
There is a lot of people who actually want to tear it down and see it fail, even if they don't care to admit it out loud because it would showcase their scummy self.
Fortunately the people who actually want to support and play great space games dwarf them by comparison
>>> , they might care that they are not issuing refunds but beyond that, I don't anyone gives a shit.<<<
If people did not ask for a refund for 5 years, it is their own fault. In the first 3 years getting a refund was very easy.
And I think a gaming magazine (one of the worlds largest magazines) Star Citizen special issue of 128 pages in full color may count as "giving a shit" - contrary to your postulate.
Have fun
I can't agree with that. You can't say people should have done it by X date because they were constantly being reassured that the game was on schedule, that everything was rosy. If they were giving CIG the benefit of the doubt and being patient we can't suddenly turn round and say they were wrong for doing that
I think there should have been some announcement about their intents. If 3.0 was their entry to early access and they were going to stop refunds at that point then they should have said so. The game they are playing now is despicable.
Well you could and can allways spend thousands on the elite store, you can spend thousands on frontier shares, you can spend thousands on merchandising, multiple accounts etc etc
If few people do it is because they are not compelled enough to do it.
Be it because frontier is not delivering or is not showcasing it's intentions clearly enough.
People go to great lenghts to support what they enjoy if you keep them engaged.
And haters do care about people spending money in Star Citizen lol
I'm glad that some people seem to have found their game of the future...it just doesn't seem that it is for me....With the outrageous prices and so many having a several year head start, how can anyone that just starts at launch (if that happens) even compete?
>>> , they might care that they are not issuing refunds but beyond that, I don't anyone gives a shit.<<<
If people did not ask for a refund for 5 years, it is their own fault. In the first 3 years getting a refund was very easy.
And I think a gaming magazine (one of the worlds largest magazines) Star Citizen special issue of 128 pages in full color may count as "giving a shit" - contrary to your postulate.
Have fun
I can't agree with that. You can't say people should have done it by X date because they were constantly being reassured that the game was on schedule, that everything was rosy. If they were giving CIG the benefit of the doubt and being patient we can't suddenly turn round and say they were wrong for doing that
I think there should have been some announcement about their intents. If 3.0 was their entry to early access and they were going to stop refunds at that point then they should have said so. The game they are playing now is despicable.
I don't disagree. I backed super early and missed the entire (we are changing the games direciton thing - vote that happened). I don't care what percentage of votes where for it. . those would have been people in love with the game anyway. I want to know the percentage of backers who voted. If only 10% voted but 80% of those wanted the change. . that is not a good reflection (someone here might know the numbers?)
BUT . . I think I threw $25 or $35 at the game maybe and will get SQ42 (two parts maybe. . whatever that means) plus the MP game. . (guessing that will be free anyway since they sell ships). I hate the delay and sometimes wish I could get a refund just to "send a message" (LOL. . they would be terrified at losing my $25!) .. but if the game turns out it will have been a stellar investment!
The part that might bight me in the arse is the system requirements changing etc.
>>> , they might care that they are not issuing refunds but beyond that, I don't anyone gives a shit.<<<
If people did not ask for a refund for 5 years, it is their own fault. In the first 3 years getting a refund was very easy.
And I think a gaming magazine (one of the worlds largest magazines) Star Citizen special issue of 128 pages in full color may count as "giving a shit" - contrary to your postulate.
Have fun
I can't agree with that. You can't say people should have done it by X date because they were constantly being reassured that the game was on schedule, that everything was rosy. If they were giving CIG the benefit of the doubt and being patient we can't suddenly turn round and say they were wrong for doing that
I think there should have been some announcement about their intents. If 3.0 was their entry to early access and they were going to stop refunds at that point then they should have said so. The game they are playing now is despicable.
5 years though, It's not a week or a month, it's 5 years, regardless of being reassured or giving the benefit of the doubt, that's more than enough time for anyone to assess the situation themselves, it's not a closed project. If anything I have less sympathy because they're choosing to ignore whats shown and just going off what's said, if people are doing that and have invested thousands, i'm sorry that's their own problem.
I'm confused about your last part, everything about refunds, why they were allowing them and why they stopped them was announced, there have been threads upon threads about it on this site and on official
At the end, there's no excuse, 5 years to make a choice with years of information and announcements.
I hope CIG's creating a megahuginormous Sci-Fi RPG universe to explore with so much story it chokes something impossible to choke, then I'll definitely buy in on this. I know I joke about how long it's taking, which it is, but if it's done right I guess that's all that matters.
I just hope the CIG delivers for all of those gamers investing so much time/money to help CIG with their game, out of sheer love and finally getting a scratch to an itch gamers have had for years.
I worry that CIG is stuck in 'adding' mode without the 'refining' needed on all of these systems they want in the game. I would rather have 10 things that work great instead of 100 that are hit-or-miss, especially with as much time/money that's been spent already.
And I would def like CIG to be a game changer by winning in a big way with a super awesome game, other than being a game changer by losing so horribly that no one will ever want to invest in a situation like this again...
5 years though, It's not a week or a month, it's 5 years, regardless of being reassured or giving the benefit of the doubt, that's more than enough time for anyone to assess the situation themselves, it's not a closed project. If anything I have less sympathy because they're choosing to ignore whats shown and just going off what's said, if people are doing that and have invested thousands, i'm sorry that's their own problem.
I'm confused about your last part, everything about refunds, why they were allowing them and why they stopped them was announced, there have been threads upon threads about it on this site and on official
At the end, there's no excuse, 5 years to make a choice with years of information and announcements.
You can't put an arbitrary date on these things. People make and change decisions as and when, no-one can say they should have done it by this date, it's not a black and white situation. What about the person that backed 2 years ago? Perhaps they thought OCS and NBC would fix things in 2.6, but then decided to wait until 3.0 for it to arrive, then they find it's still not implemented and now they can't get a refund anymore. The idea that it's these people's fault because they held on to the hope a little too long is an awful viewpoint. The blame stops entirely at CIG's door.
No there was no announcement. They were refunding as per normal up until the end of last year and then they suddenly stopped. The current situation is people are stuck in a queue to hear from a specialist, if CIG have stopped then they should tell those people rather than stringing them along, if they haven't stopped then WTF are they doing taking 7 months (and counting) to issue a simple refund?
I always thought it seemed strange to put multiple offices all over the globe when starting a new company. Will have to wait to see how things turn out during launch.
"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
@Octagon7711 not strange at all, if you are to undertake a large project and have to create your own company, it will be MUCH harder to hire talent to one single-location office, than open offices where the talent is. This is the same logic with even the biggest companies, the downside is that it complicates development having to cope with the remote organization/timezones/etc.
@Octagon7711 not strange at all, if you are to undertake a large project and have to create your own company, it will be MUCH harder to hire talent to one single-location office, than open offices where the talent is. This is the same logic with even the biggest companies, the downside is that it complicates development having to cope with the remote organization/timezones/etc.
Sounds good but I can't think of any other company that's done that on a first project in the gaming industry. Everyone and teams work differently which means you end up redoing a lot of things because the last team in a different country did something different and you have to set up more conference calls to get back on the same page. Putting everyone in the same building means it's easier to stay on the same page during development. Yes, it can be done but it means everything takes a lot longer to do.
"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
Sounds good but I can't think of any other company that's done that on a first project in the gaming industry. Everyone and teams work differently which means you end up redoing a lot of things because the last team in a different country did something different and you have to set up more conference calls to get back on the same page. Putting everyone in the same building means it's easier to stay on the same page during development. Yes, it can be done but it means everything takes a lot longer to do.
They had to scale their development team to the needs of the project, by no means they could have done that in one single office, even with 4 offices hiring it took them years to get to the point they had hundreds employed.
Their biggest office, in UK, is the prime example, over the years they went from 1 floor to in 2015 they were able to expand to the 2nd floor and then in I think 2016 expanded to the 3rd floor; it's a slow process, if they were starting with a small project sure... but the quite the contrary.
The German office is even one more telling example, Star Citizen was under a huge engineering debt, even with 3 offices at the time they were short on engineering, they made great use of the opportunity when Crytek layoffs hit hard and they snatched several engineers to work on SC.
@Octagon7711 not strange at all, if you are to undertake a large project and have to create your own company, it will be MUCH harder to hire talent to one single-location office, than open offices where the talent is. This is the same logic with even the biggest companies, the downside is that it complicates development having to cope with the remote organization/timezones/etc.
Sounds good but I can't think of any other company that's done that on a first project in the gaming industry. Everyone and teams work differently which means you end up redoing a lot of things because the last team in a different country did something different and you have to set up more conference calls to get back on the same page. Putting everyone in the same building means it's easier to stay on the same page during development. Yes, it can be done but it means everything takes a lot longer to do.
Yeah the teams all working different was something they ran into quite a bit early on, I dare say they have smoothed things out over the years but having studios around the world was never going to work like they originally hoped. The idea that you'd have people developing 24/7 and passing over their work to another team in another timezone at the end of a shift was laughable.
Yeah the teams all working different was something they ran into quite a bit early on, I dare say they have smoothed things out over the years but having studios around the world was never going to work like they originally hoped. The idea that you'd have people developing 24/7 and passing over their work to another team in another timezone at the end of a shift was laughable.
I don't think the problem was or is having studios across the world, was the large amount of outsourcing they did at first, and this was where the core issue of communication failures and such led to situations like SM, they did fix this as over the past years things got moved indoors instead.
And why is that laughable? The studios work exactly like that, EU offices will do their work, at the end of the day is when the US offices will open up, likely this is set with reviews and meetings so they catch up on the work done, I've noticed on bug-smahers the emails from the UK office that end of the day sends information and the last build of the game to the US offices, and vice-versa. Communication and organization is the key factor to that.
A thing I've noticed they did to mitigate the impact that has, is that different offices have a different focus and their own teams, like FQ42 DE with engineering, cinematics, weapons... Austin with the PU specific design, systems development, live-ops, etc... and so on.
@Octagon7711 not strange at all, if you are to undertake a large project and have to create your own company, it will be MUCH harder to hire talent to one single-location office, than open offices where the talent is. This is the same logic with even the biggest companies, the downside is that it complicates development having to cope with the remote organization/timezones/etc.
Sounds good but I can't think of any other company that's done that on a first project in the gaming industry. Everyone and teams work differently which means you end up redoing a lot of things because the last team in a different country did something different and you have to set up more conference calls to get back on the same page. Putting everyone in the same building means it's easier to stay on the same page during development. Yes, it can be done but it means everything takes a lot longer to do.
Yeah the teams all working different was something they ran into quite a bit early on, I dare say they have smoothed things out over the years but having studios around the world was never going to work like they originally hoped. The idea that you'd have people developing 24/7 and passing over their work to another team in another timezone at the end of a shift was laughable.
Most of the problems they ran into early on was because they had outside contractors which is quite different than having multiple studios across the world.
That's why that when they opened the UK and GER offices allowed them to bring the work inhouse and do it properly. That's why development really started to pick up from 2015 on. The work of the contractors was important in the way that they delivered early test versions of a lot of tech that helped flesh out what could and had to be done while showcasing progress and help with the continuous crowdfunding campaign.
As for having multiple studios across the world, most of the big boys have them: Blizzard, Ubisoft, Rockstar, EA etc... They are a necessity to make these big open world games
There are still parts of development where dev's pass work into other time zones making it a 24/7 development. They talk about it constantly in the dev interviews in the monthly jump point magazine.
@Octagon7711 not strange at all, if you are to undertake a large project and have to create your own company, it will be MUCH harder to hire talent to one single-location office, than open offices where the talent is. This is the same logic with even the biggest companies, the downside is that it complicates development having to cope with the remote organization/timezones/etc.
Sounds good but I can't think of any other company that's done that on a first project in the gaming industry. Everyone and teams work differently which means you end up redoing a lot of things because the last team in a different country did something different and you have to set up more conference calls to get back on the same page. Putting everyone in the same building means it's easier to stay on the same page during development. Yes, it can be done but it means everything takes a lot longer to do.
Yeah the teams all working different was something they ran into quite a bit early on, I dare say they have smoothed things out over the years but having studios around the world was never going to work like they originally hoped. The idea that you'd have people developing 24/7 and passing over their work to another team in another timezone at the end of a shift was laughable.
That's not how it works at all, not even slightly. you have the completely wrong idea on how this works. Its not about passing packets of work around the world in a 24 hour period, its about meshing project lines, it doesn't matter if the other project section is 2000 miles away or the next floor down.
It happens all the time with millions of people involved the world over from car companies to drug companies and in many differing fields, the keys are your project managers they offer up the jig saw pieces for the Project lead to mesh.
So as long as you have competent project managers and a good project lead the location and time zone thing is a non issue, and in fact can save a lot of time and money.
A personnel example of time zones and projects, I number of years ago worked for IBM Australia, you cant get more time zone awkward than that when working on projects for UK contracts...……..FYI it wasn't awkward and went well.
They would 'out' outside contractors before they outed themselves, it's only natural and very easy to do.
Yes a lot of the big studios have multiple locations all over the world but none, to my knowledge started their first projects that way, which is why I emphasized starting projects in my posts.
If it was a genius move or not can only be determined when the game is in it's final phases at launch, till then it's speculation on the wisdom of their process.
"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
Yes a lot of the big studios have multiple locations all over the world but none, to my knowledge started their first projects that way, which is why I emphasized starting projects in my posts.
If it was a genius move or not can only be determined when the game is in it's final phases at launch, till then it's speculation on the wisdom of their process.
That argument is irrelevant.
Studios tend to start small and grow big, when they undertake large scale projects they already have around the resources they need, that was not the case with SC, and they were still undertaking a large-scale project, so they HAD to go where the talent is, especially being a new company.
There was no choice there, and even after they had more than one studio, the dev team was still in lacking on engineering, the German office likely only came to happen because Crytek layoffs, they wouldn't be able to get the talent they NEEDED if they didn't open the office there.
And if they didn't open that office, my opinion is that SC would possibly still be stalled today on the tech blockers front.
I don't think the problem was or is having studios across the world, was the large amount of outsourcing they did at first, and this was where the core issue of communication failures and such led to situations like SM, they did fix this as over the past years things got moved indoors instead.
And why is that laughable? The studios work exactly like that, EU offices will do their work, at the end of the day is when the US offices will open up, likely this is set with reviews and meetings so they catch up on the work done, I've noticed on bug-smahers the emails from the UK office that end of the day sends information and the last build of the game to the US offices, and vice-versa. Communication and organization is the key factor to that.
A thing I've noticed they did to mitigate the impact that has, is that different offices have a different focus and their own teams, like FQ42 DE with engineering, cinematics, weapons... Austin with the PU specific design, systems development, live-ops, etc... and so on.
No this happened after the major outsourcing. Part of the reason they grew so big is because they wanted to bring it all in house as opposed to using contractors.
There's been plenty of coverage about why their claimed MO was laughable. Jennison touched on it regarding the morale loss of having your art shared around for others to work on, how there was no sense of ownership or completion. You'd have character artists in the UK getting work from the US which would be wrongly specced, it was causing all sorts of havoc but that was the plan initially, hand off work at the end of a shift which is just a recipe for disaster. On top of that the blame game would start, which was made even easier because of the distance.
Comments
Indeed, nostalgia is an important part of crowdfunding but when you have people who claim not to have played games for 20 years dropping $20,000 on a childhood memory one can certainly question good sense.
I don't think people care that CIG are continuing to get funds, they might care what CIG are managing to do with the money, they might care that they are not issuing refunds but beyond that, I don't anyone gives a shit.
People want SC/SQ42 to carry on being developed because it brings a lot of drama and laughs of it's own, there's very very few people who actually want to tear it down and see it fail.
That is a GOOD thing in my book. Gimme MORE excellent space games. I will play them all. AND Star Citizen.
All predictions that game X "will be the death of" SC have turned out to be wrong. Coexistence is perfectly possible in the space game category.
Have fun
If people did not ask for a refund for 5 years, it is their own fault. In the first 3 years getting a refund was very easy.
And I think a gaming magazine (one of the worlds largest magazines) Star Citizen special issue of 128 pages in full color may count as "giving a shit" - contrary to your postulate.
Have fun
I do have the concern that they are going to run into engine / hardware / software limitation though that, if they just keep adding, they won't be able to fix. . then they will have to slash player numbers or have loading screens etc. A lot of people would like to make games like that but have not been able to. I hope they can pull it off with a decent number of players. . or at least SQ42. I would take even just that.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
They didn't use investors, they took out a decent sized loan, had a few million in crowdfunding as well as company funds.
You can only assume that Elite's crowdfunding happened because of SC, however there is nothing to back that up.
Frontier were waiting for Kickstarter to allow British companies to use the crowdfunfing platform and that only became available end of October 2012
https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-in-the-uk
Frontier's crowdfunding pitch started within days of it opening up.
They were waiting the tech, they'd been working on a game called The Outsider. The plan was that after it was done they would start on Elite 4. The publisher for The Outsider scrapped the game leaving them in the lurch, so Elite 4 got put on the backburner while they made ends meet.
Very few people did that and only people who went for the Kickstarter tiers, nobody can spend thousands on Elite assets now. In comparison there is a large amount of people that have spent a significant amount of money on SC assets over the last 6 years.
Duh, no one said that. What I said was people do not care if others give CIG money.
Is there? I'd like to see some proof on that.
I think there should have been some announcement about their intents. If 3.0 was their entry to early access and they were going to stop refunds at that point then they should have said so. The game they are playing now is despicable.
If few people do it is because they are not compelled enough to do it.
Be it because frontier is not delivering or is not showcasing it's intentions clearly enough.
People go to great lenghts to support what they enjoy if you keep them engaged.
And haters do care about people spending money in Star Citizen lol
It messes with their F.U.D campaing lol
BUT . . I think I threw $25 or $35 at the game maybe and will get SQ42 (two parts maybe. . whatever that means) plus the MP game. . (guessing that will be free anyway since they sell ships). I hate the delay and sometimes wish I could get a refund just to "send a message" (LOL. . they would be terrified at losing my $25!) .. but if the game turns out it will have been a stellar investment!
The part that might bight me in the arse is the system requirements changing etc.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
I'm confused about your last part, everything about refunds, why they were allowing them and why they stopped them was announced, there have been threads upon threads about it on this site and on official
At the end, there's no excuse, 5 years to make a choice with years of information and announcements.
I just hope the CIG delivers for all of those gamers investing so much time/money to help CIG with their game, out of sheer love and finally getting a scratch to an itch gamers have had for years.
I worry that CIG is stuck in 'adding' mode without the 'refining' needed on all of these systems they want in the game. I would rather have 10 things that work great instead of 100 that are hit-or-miss, especially with as much time/money that's been spent already.
And I would def like CIG to be a game changer by winning in a big way with a super awesome game, other than being a game changer by losing so horribly that no one will ever want to invest in a situation like this again...
Gut Out!
What, me worry?
The idea that it's these people's fault because they held on to the hope a little too long is an awful viewpoint. The blame stops entirely at CIG's door.
No there was no announcement. They were refunding as per normal up until the end of last year and then they suddenly stopped. The current situation is people are stuck in a queue to hear from a specialist, if CIG have stopped then they should tell those people rather than stringing them along, if they haven't stopped then WTF are they doing taking 7 months (and counting) to issue a simple refund?
"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
"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
Their biggest office, in UK, is the prime example, over the years they went from 1 floor to in 2015 they were able to expand to the 2nd floor and then in I think 2016 expanded to the 3rd floor; it's a slow process, if they were starting with a small project sure... but the quite the contrary.
The German office is even one more telling example, Star Citizen was under a huge engineering debt, even with 3 offices at the time they were short on engineering, they made great use of the opportunity when Crytek layoffs hit hard and they snatched several engineers to work on SC.
The idea that you'd have people developing 24/7 and passing over their work to another team in another timezone at the end of a shift was laughable.
And why is that laughable? The studios work exactly like that, EU offices will do their work, at the end of the day is when the US offices will open up, likely this is set with reviews and meetings so they catch up on the work done, I've noticed on bug-smahers the emails from the UK office that end of the day sends information and the last build of the game to the US offices, and vice-versa. Communication and organization is the key factor to that.
A thing I've noticed they did to mitigate the impact that has, is that different offices have a different focus and their own teams, like FQ42 DE with engineering, cinematics, weapons... Austin with the PU specific design, systems development, live-ops, etc... and so on.
"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
Studios tend to start small and grow big, when they undertake large scale projects they already have around the resources they need, that was not the case with SC, and they were still undertaking a large-scale project, so they HAD to go where the talent is, especially being a new company.
There was no choice there, and even after they had more than one studio, the dev team was still in lacking on engineering, the German office likely only came to happen because Crytek layoffs, they wouldn't be able to get the talent they NEEDED if they didn't open the office there.
And if they didn't open that office, my opinion is that SC would possibly still be stalled today on the tech blockers front.
There's been plenty of coverage about why their claimed MO was laughable. Jennison touched on it regarding the morale loss of having your art shared around for others to work on, how there was no sense of ownership or completion.
You'd have character artists in the UK getting work from the US which would be wrongly specced, it was causing all sorts of havoc but that was the plan initially, hand off work at the end of a shift which is just a recipe for disaster. On top of that the blame game would start, which was made even easier because of the distance.