Chris Roberts speaks out about the time it's taking for Star Citizen to release

[Bloodyvalley]

In his latest Letter From the Chairman missive, Cloud Imperium Games founder Chris Roberts acknowledged that development of Star Citizen has dragged on a lot longer than initially expected. But that, he said, is a consequence of the studio's embrace of "open development" that gives supporters access to the game at a much earlier stage in the process than is usual, as well as its vastly expanded scope, which goes far beyond what he originally believed was possible.

 

The update covers a number of topics, including the recent delay of the Star Marine FPS module, which he said was mischaracterized by many sites as "being put on indefinite hold or canceled." He also addressed reports about the loss of high-profile staff members, including Executive Producer Alex Mayberry, which he said is perfectly normal for a company as big as CIG.

"We are a very large company now, dedicated entirely to making Star Citizen and Squadron 42. We have four development studios: Los Angeles, Austin, Wilmslow, UK and Frankfurt, Germany. Our internal headcount has gone from five at the end of 2012 to 59 at the end of 2013 to 183 at the end of 2014 and to 255 now," he wrote. "The turnover at CIG is no more or less than it was at Origin, EA, Digital Anvil or Microsoft when I was making games there. The difference is that since we conduct our development in an open manner people get the opportunity to know some of the individuals working on the game, in a way you wouldn’t with a normal publisher, so a departure becomes more noticeable."

And of course he touched on complaints, headed by 3000AD founder Derek Smart, about the state of the game and its internal crowdfunding campaign. Smart, you'll recall, was given an unrequested refund on his Star Citizen Kickstarter pledge after, among other things, calling for an FTC investigation into Cloud Imperium on his blog. Roberts acknowledged that the launch schedule envisioned during the Kickstarter is completely out the window, but said the studio is taking pains to keep supporters informed and engaged.

"This is why we decided on multiple modules: the Hangar, so you could first see your ships and walk around them in the manner you would in the final game, then Arena Commander, to allow people to get a taste and give feedback on the basic dogfight and flight mechanics. Star Marine, which will be available shortly, is the module for backers to experience and give their feedback on the First Person Shooting component of the game," Roberts wrote. "Not long after that we will be releasing the next level of Arena Commander, allowing players with bigger ships to fly them with friends, on maps that are closer in size to the huge ones you’ll have in the final game."

 

 

"Anyone with knowledge about game development can assess our spending based on the information we share every month," he added. "It speaks for itself that from the outset our TOS provides for an accounting to be published if we ever had to stop development before delivering. With the progress and the funds we’ve raised this is no longer an issue, but quite obviously we wouldn’t have provided for this clause, if we weren’t using your funds very carefully for the development of Star Citizen."

Smart, however, is having none of it. In a response on Twitlonger, he wrote that anyone who believes Star Citizen will come out as advertised "is delusional," and said its business model is unsustainable.

"From an economics standpoint, what people fail to realize is that most games don't sell 927K (their approx pledge count) copies. So this $85m, at this point, are pre-sales because people expect something in return for their money. Thus, any money needed to continue ops after that money runs out within this year, has to come from somewhere," he wrote. "F2P games work on the premise that most of the whales (those buying stuff), pay for those who don't buy anything. The ratio is massive, and even if the numbers go from 927K to 1m, it's not enough for long term financial success, even if 70% of those are whales who keep buying stuff. And with 255 (as of this July statement) employees, plus an undisclosed number of contractors, that monthly burn rate is killer."

In spite of the rhetoric, the situation seems to have stabilized: Cloud Imperium is making promises, and Derek Smart doesn't believe them. If Smart is correct and a crash is coming, then it almost certainly will, as he predicted, "be unprecedented and have long term ramifications for the industry, as well as videogame crowd-funding in general." On the other hand, if Roberts and company pull it off, then Star Citizen may well be "the dream game that all of us have wanted to build all our lives."

 

 

I don't see why people are even complaining that the game is taking so long. Isn't that what people were bitching about to DICE about because BF3 and 4 were complete and utter messes at launch? Now they don't want the devs to put time in to making a good game? God damn...

 

Source

[PillowSmoke]

Inb4 never finishes

[Bloodyvalley]

Inb4 never finishes

Let them take their time! A game of this magnitude needs time to complete!

[dragosudeki]

People complaining about a game that is taking too long to 'finish'? We're also talking about the same people who probably paid for the game when it wasn't finished, so the fact that it is progressing at all should at least impress them. When you buy an unfinished/unreleased product, expect to experience it in the same state. Yet we also see such high funding for the other kickstarter Shenmue, that seems like they just started developing it. The only people who have a right to play the finished version of a product are the people who waited for it to be fixed, and then decided to buy in.

[Misanthrope]

Crowdfunding. No matter how many times you explain it's a no guarantees donation, people will always see it as an investment and will expend and even demand something in return, in a timely matter.

 

This is why crowdfunding should be a last resort and for smaller, reasonably sized projects, not massive budget behemoths like Star Citizen that of course can take a good 5 to 10 years to develop.

[The Benjamins]

Crowdfunding. No matter how many times you explain it's a no guarantees donation, people will always see it as an investment and will expend and even demand something in return, in a timely matter.

 

This is why crowdfunding should be a last resort and for smaller, reasonably sized projects, not massive budget behemoths like Star Citizen that of course can take a good 5 to 10 years to develop.

 

It was only possible through crowdfunding. or they would have to make compromises.

[patrickjp93]

It was only possible through crowdfunding. or they would have to make compromises.

Some compromises are worth taking. Having 4K textures on a 1080p resolution setting is pointless. We have tiling in Direct X and OpenGL for a reason. And yet, we're getting the brute-force approach.

[Misanthrope]

It was only possible through crowdfunding. or they would have to make compromises.

 

Well maybe this will not sit well with you and Star Citizen fanatics but some projects just shouldn't be made: if nobody is willing to fund you it's usually for a damn good reason, your ambitions are too great and this game could have easily been made a lot better with a bit outdated graphics and such like Unreal Engine 3 and such.

 

There's many projects that just are not possible without kickstarter or crowd funding of other kind, but only some are worthy of those and that'd be manageable projects like smaller indie titles that are fairly innovative or throw back but not that difficult to code and optimize. Games like Pillars of Eternity are fine by me, games like Star Citizen are too unwieldy for crowd funding.

[DEDRICK]

The next Duke Nukem Forever

[DEDRICK]

Some compromises are worth taking. Having 4K textures on a 1080p resolution setting is pointless. We have tiling in Direct X and OpenGL for a reason. And yet, we're getting the brute-force approach.

 

4K textures has very little to do with screen resolution

[LucidMew]

Some compromises are worth taking. Having 4K textures on a 1080p resolution setting is pointless. We have tiling in Direct X and OpenGL for a reason. And yet, we're getting the brute-force approach.

Although, by the time SC to release, hopefully, the standard will be 4k, and most midrange graphics cards (the GTX 1360 or R9 570 or whatever) will be able to pull acceptable frame rates at 4k. The tiling should be used for "lesser" systems (970 in todays standings) that don't have the vram/horsepower to "brute-force" it.

[patrickjp93]

4K textures has very little to do with screen resolution

That's my point. The actual resolution of the texture being higher than the resolution of your screen is pointless. Even matching is actually pointless. This is why we created tiling techniques.

[The Benjamins]

Well maybe this will not sit well with you and Star Citizen fanatics but some projects just shouldn't be made: if nobody is willing to fund you it's usually for a damn good reason, your ambitions are too great and this game could have easily been made a lot better with a bit outdated graphics and such like Unreal Engine 3 and such.

 

There's many projects that just are not possible without kickstarter or crowd funding of other kind, but only some are worthy of those and that'd be manageable projects like smaller indie titles that are fairly innovative or throw back but not that difficult to code and optimize. Games like Pillars of Eternity are fine by me, games like Star Citizen are too unwieldy for crowd funding.

 

They don't want a publisher to get involved. they want full control over the game. that is why they did crowd funding. they could of easily got a publisher but then they lose control over the rights to the game.

 

 

That's my point. The actual resolution of the texture being higher than the resolution of your screen is pointless. Even matching is actually pointless. This is why we created tiling techniques.

 

 

you don't see the full texture when in a game. sometimes you may see a 1/4 or less of it and it may be blown up. a texture is NEVER displayed 1:1 on the screen hence why textures should be bigger than the resolution.

[patrickjp93]

Although, by the time SC to release, hopefully, the standard will be 4k, and most midrange graphics cards (the GTX 1360 or R9 570 or whatever) will be able to pull acceptable frame rates at 4k. The tiling should be used for "lesser" systems (970 in todays standings) that don't have the vram/horsepower to "brute-force" it.

You shouldn't ever be brute-forcing. The more elegant technique lets you do more with your hardware. This is called "optimization." There was a time where actual computer scientists built games and worked hard to use every last cycle to the utmost. Nowadays we have broken code that's fixed by drivers, we have huge explosions of memory usage that aren't necessary, we have tessellation levels exploding beyond the point of visible returns, and for what?! If you waste your resources, you shouldn't be praised for it. SC is a travesty from the perspective of real engineers. From a game design perspective it may be gold, but you can get there in a lot less time with far fewer resources if you just take the time to learn how to do it right. Brute force is 99% of the time the wrong answer. If you're handling an NP-HARD problem, then brute force is your only choice since no elegant solution exists and the polynomial approximations still have so much extra added time for small workload sizes you're better off brute-forcing for time anyway.

[Misanthrope]

They don't want a publisher to get involved. they want full control over the game. that is why they did crowd funding. they could of easily got a publisher but then they lose control over the rights to the game.

 

Yeah so they want AAA funding but no AAA limitations and compromises: I'm sure they'd love to get all employees their personal ferraris, bowls of cocaine and a 24/7 readily available personal hookers too but we don't always get what we want. 

[Isocadia]

That's my point. The actual resolution of the texture being higher than the resolution of your screen is pointless. Even matching is actually pointless. This is why we created tiling techniques.

Unless you are like me and will want to walk up to a wall with a 4k VR design and still not see a single pixel.

Honestly, I don't get why people are mad at SC for setting their standard in advance of what current hardware is capable of driving. Making a texture at 1080p or at 4k probably doesn't make an enormous difference (sure there will be some) in the time it takes to make it, so why not make it 4k and give the option.

Alot of people were mad at Bethesda for not including high resolution textures with skyrim and people are mass installing 4k texture packs, yet when a company does supply the 4k textures now you are saying they shouldn't?

[kacper]

Some compromises are worth taking. Having 4K textures on a 1080p resolution setting is pointless. We have tiling in Direct X and OpenGL for a reason. And yet, we're getting the brute-force approach.

I don't know what texture specifically you are talking about , but generally it's not pointless.

 

This 4k texture could be at wall of a hangar which dimensions 10x10 meters so if you would come closer - even this 4k texture would be too little for 1080p.

[The Benjamins]

Yeah so they want AAA funding but no AAA limitations and compromises: I'm sure they'd love to get all employees their personal ferraris, bowls of cocaine and a 24/7 readily available personal hookers too but we don't always get what we want. 

 

ya so they are making do on what they can get, so whats your point? they are only a few years in development, i dont expect a game like this to be finished for 1-2 years from now at least. it took GTAv 7 years to hit the shelves  and another 1 year to get on PC. why do people expect this game to come out so fast?

[Misanthrope]

ya so they are making do on what they can get, so whats your point? they are only a few years in development, i dont expect a game like this to be finished for 1-2 years from now at least. it took GTAv 7 years to hit the shelves  and another 1 year to get on PC. why do people expect this game to come out so fast?

 

I think I made my point abundantly clear: I think relying on such a time consuming, large budget game entirely with crowd funding it's abusive and morally reprehensible in my opinion: normal people and fans shouldn't have to fund big games since it will lead to a lot less interesting games being made and a lot less games made overall, hurting the industry instead of helping it along.

[Trik'Stari]

I wish people would stop being so damned negative about Star Citizen.

 

If they pull this off, it will be an amazing game, but for them to actually make the dream a reality, they need support. We obviously aren't getting that many amazing games from the big production houses, so it's time people stepped up and helped create games they want to play, instead of just shelling out $60 for a POS like (any) call of duty (ever), Batman Arkham Knight, Assassins Creed: Unity, etc

 

I think I made my point abundantly clear: I think relying on such a time consuming, large budget game entirely with crowd funding it's abusive and morally reprehensible in my opinion: normal people and fans shouldn't have to fund big games since it will lead to a lot less interesting games being made and a lot less games made overall, hurting the industry instead of helping it along.

 

So it's better to just sit back, do nothing, and receive endlessly-getting-worse shitty ports like we have over the last few years? Those big publishing houses are obviously more concerned with make as much money with as little effort as possible, rather than delivering quality products designed to please the customer.

[Agent181]

I think I made my point abundantly clear: I think relying on such a time consuming, large budget game entirely with crowd funding it's abusive and morally reprehensible in my opinion: normal people and fans shouldn't have to fund big games since it will lead to a lot less interesting games being made and a lot less games made overall, hurting the industry instead of helping it along.

Even the betas are better than any shitty games out right now... Or are you OK with the bad games out recently... Look at assassin's Creed or batman.. What peice of shit those games came out to be... I'd rather help a game be made right and not buy a shitty AAA that always based on consoles first... Only exception was gta v after almost a year later of prep to go to pc

[Trik'Stari]

Even the betas are better than any shitty games out right now... Or are you OK with the bad games out recently... Look at assassin's Creed or batman.. What peice of shit those games came out to be... I'd rather help a game be made right and not buy a shitty AAA that always based on consoles first... Only exception was gta v after almost a year later of prep to go to pc

Agreed. I'll probably also buy Fallout 4, but only if we get early reviews and if it looks like they aren't focusing on consoles and giving us PC gamers the short end of the stick.

 

In fact, I'm gonna go buy the arena module right now, as I've been meaning to do it, and finally have some money.

[DEDRICK]

I don't know what texture specifically you are talking about , but generally it's not pointless.

 

This 4k texture could be at wall of a hangar which dimensions 10x10 meters so if you would come closer - even this 4k texture would be too little for 1080p.

 

This is essentially what I was getting at.  A 4K texture is 4096x4096 and has nothing to do with the screen resolution you play at.  A ship or wall with a 4K texture will always look better than the same texture @ 2K, no matter what resolution.

[Misanthrope]

Even the betas are better than any shitty games out right now... Or are you OK with the bad games out recently... Look at assassin's Creed or batman.. What peice of shit those games came out to be... I'd rather help a game be made right and not buy a shitty AAA that always based on consoles first... Only exception was gta v after almost a year later of prep to go to pc

That's the kind of extortion argument I expect from a publisher except substitute pre-orders for crowd funding.

And no just because things on the other end of the spectrum are bad doesn't means we should settle for DIY solutions constantly.

With this much money they could have easily started a publishing company for like 5 or 6 smaller games and really impulse pc gaming instead of one big, expensive promise.

[The Benjamins]

I think I made my point abundantly clear: I think relying on such a time consuming, large budget game entirely with crowd funding it's abusive and morally reprehensible in my opinion: normal people and fans shouldn't have to fund big games since it will lead to a lot less interesting games being made and a lot less games made overall, hurting the industry instead of helping it along.

 

they chose to pay, when they had it planned to start merging all the modules together in late 2016. no one forced people to pay. people should vote with their wallets.

 

also the money has to come from somewhere. you cant make a game like this for free, and within a year or two.

 

I also think when devs can make what they want, they will make more interesting games. not the other way around.

 

just some info:

 

GTA 5 had a 260 million USD budget

1000 people worked on it

7-8 year dev time.

 

star citizen is at 85 million  (as far as I know)

3-4 years in dev so far (as far as I know)