Kotaku is [CONCERN]ed
- Thread starter maynard
- Start date
zeddie
Space Marshal
That's a very long article, seeing both sides of the argument.
The only true answer is really to wait it out, and see how it turns out.
So far though, I'm very optimistic, and think it's getting better as we go. I can't wait for Squadron 42, the MAIN reason I backed in the first place.
The only true answer is really to wait it out, and see how it turns out.
So far though, I'm very optimistic, and think it's getting better as we go. I can't wait for Squadron 42, the MAIN reason I backed in the first place.
kotaku is always concerned
but that's actually a good article
but that's actually a good article
WarrenPeace
Space Marshal
That sure is a helluva a lot of words for total bullshit. People have been saying Star Citizen is doomed, and moaning about its "troubled development" pretty much since it was announced. Ignore the fact that we have a alpha build that plays better and has more gameplay than some games that have been released recently. *coughnomansskycoughcough* Obviously, because we missed the original deadline for a project about 1/10 the size, that was set 5 years ago, the game is a total loss and will never be released, total vaporware.
Really, the idiots at Kotaku must be coming up empty for ideas. "Oh shit, nothing to write about this month, better say Star Citizen is doomed again! That always brings in the readers!" The only trouble for Star Citizen is when writers try to invent trouble for them.
EDIT: Having read it all the way through, I'll allow that it was a fairly even-handed article. I'm just sick of all the doomsaying. Star Citizen has had some difficulties that it's overcome, and there will be difficulties in the future. Just like pretty much every game ever made.
Really, the idiots at Kotaku must be coming up empty for ideas. "Oh shit, nothing to write about this month, better say Star Citizen is doomed again! That always brings in the readers!" The only trouble for Star Citizen is when writers try to invent trouble for them.
EDIT: Having read it all the way through, I'll allow that it was a fairly even-handed article. I'm just sick of all the doomsaying. Star Citizen has had some difficulties that it's overcome, and there will be difficulties in the future. Just like pretty much every game ever made.
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To be honest, this article is a lot more even-handed than Escapist. And it doesn't come off as a deliberate hit piece, but rather as something that objectively looks at the entire development from start to present, and frames it as a perspective between two sides.
This is responsible writing, compared to the dreck that came out of Dick Short's mouth and The Escapist. It holds up the idea that the game will still likely be successfully completed in some shape or form.
what NKato said
I worked at the Motorola facility where the Iridium satellite phone system was developed. That was a multi-billion dollar project that had all of the conflicts and clusterfucks the article describes. Miscommunications are inevitable when a project scales up.
If most of the features promised for Alpha 3.0 are delivered in working order, in a timely fashion, I will have no worries.
I worked at the Motorola facility where the Iridium satellite phone system was developed. That was a multi-billion dollar project that had all of the conflicts and clusterfucks the article describes. Miscommunications are inevitable when a project scales up.
If most of the features promised for Alpha 3.0 are delivered in working order, in a timely fashion, I will have no worries.
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MikeAlphaTangoTango
Space Marshal
The whole article just makes me think 'You can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs'. Basically, considering at all that CR and CIG have achieved in the past 4 years, it'd be nothing short of an absolute miracle if nothing had gone wrong... Espacially seeing as CR started off with a few friends/colleagues looking for $500,000, and was gonna code it on his own...
Nevertheless, it was a pretty interesting read.
Nevertheless, it was a pretty interesting read.
thanatos73
Space Marshal
I didn't get any implied negativity for the article, in fact, it showed some of the issues people have been whining about (read STAR MARINE) in a better light.
Overall, I think it was pretty even handed.
Overall, I think it was pretty even handed.
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Bigcracker
Space Marshal
At first when I seen the title I thought it was a hit piece possibly click bait. But after 20mins of reading the article and damn that was a big article. I just came out with it could go good or bad. Good writing though.
Was in depth for the subject matter. Good article however I do believe this game will come out in a final state and be awesome.
Han Burgundy
Space Marshal
My knee-jerk reaction was to tear this article a new one, but by the time I got to the bottom it seemed to be a fair assessment. I could do without the clickbait title, but I doubt the original Author had too much to do with that (Editors love dem clicks). I'm sure this will stir up the doubters and they will love to point out all the "damning evidence" of drama, but all I saw were some pretty standard workflow restructuring tactics. Anything can be dramatic when a million eyes are on it, picking everything apart. And as for stating things about how Chris Roberts is controlling and yada yada: Ask anyone who has worked for Elon Musk about how HE runs things. History buff? What about that dickface Edison? The same "slave-driver" mentality has been used by people with fantastic visions who have always gotten massive amounts of monumental shit done. May suck to work for at times, but it generally means that you are operating on the bleeding edge. And that is always exciting to those who strive to make something that nobody has seen before.
/$0.02
/$0.02
Very well written article, which did a pretty good job of letting the reader come to their own conclusions. For me this re-affirmed my suspicions of what has occurred and validated that I think Chris Roberts has it headed in the right direction. Couple of key points for me.
- Creating a company is a very difficult endeavor, let alone with a fanbase who wants to see the creation of the product while under development. This article reaffirms Roberts is making the right choices that I have personal expierenced in my own career with successful start-ups.
- It's taking a long time to produce the game. Roberts did stumble badly in taking the company from dozens of employees to hundreds of employees. All companies struggle at this point in their development, it's just how badly and how long. Alot of companies fail at this point. From the article it took Roberts two years to recoginize their inital plan wasn't going to scale and then to course correct.
- I think the article failed to give credit to the transparency of Roberts and his staff. They have been very forthcomming with information about the game and really leaves it up to the fanbase to make their own decisions. I scratch my head when people claim that he hasn't delivered on what he has promised. Prehaps it's my own bias. As the feature set has grown I just always chuckled and told myself his dev's are gonna kill him.......scope creep.......more scope creep......and more scope creep.
- I agree with author in that Roberts will produce an beautiful tech demo. He raises a good point of whether it will be fun. For me it is already fun.......although it could be more fun. Last night I spent hours flying around the Yela asteriod belt and had a blast, granted FedEX just delivered two Hotas joysticks so it was a new expierence for me.
- Couple of tanigbles: The community is incredible with Test Squadron leading the way! Another is the lore. A couple of weekends ago all I did was read the entire weekend and the best part this was freely available. Made me think that Roberts is going in Blizzard's direction and trying to develop the lore to the point that he can create books and movies based on Star Citizen. You could probably argue that Blizzard was follwing Roberts lead with the Wind Commander game and movies.
I would like to thank the @maynard for bringin this to my attention!
It made me so angry that I've written a very long rant that doesn't make much sense now that I've read it again half a day later lol.
I had enough of these doomsayers as well. Misrepresenting, and totally not understanding what Star Citizen is actually about is the bread and butter of the media, and it seems like it won't change a bit till SC comes out in a few years time...
Aaaanyawys, read the rest of my crazy thoughts from a day ago if you are really really bored and have a lot of time to pass below :D
TLDR.: Yes, development is a troubled thing, and actually making something new takes even more effort and is more troubled. It's most definitely not for everyone. CR and CIG and Star citizen is being shamed because they want to move on from the limited and obsolete technology of the console era, and not just make money with the same thing over and over again like everyone else. This takes time, devotion, vision, and a lot of trial and error, which is frowned upon and unusual in todays "factory production line" environment of game development.
So haters gonna hate, may their souls rest squashed under the belly of my Beerfarer :D
It made me so angry that I've written a very long rant that doesn't make much sense now that I've read it again half a day later lol.
I had enough of these doomsayers as well. Misrepresenting, and totally not understanding what Star Citizen is actually about is the bread and butter of the media, and it seems like it won't change a bit till SC comes out in a few years time...
Aaaanyawys, read the rest of my crazy thoughts from a day ago if you are really really bored and have a lot of time to pass below :D
Now that was a long read of bitching and moaning by the "CIG sources * "... Their "comments" on how things were not going in the usual laid back style made me very very angry, and want to throw em out the nearest window myself! The amount of ego, laziness, total incompetence and self pity oozing from their comments only strengthened the feeling that it's a very good thing they are not at CIG anymore, and that things are going the right way!
Otherwise it's the usual "omg, SC is a scam" kind of click bait in very well crafted "oh I'm just being factual, even tough I edited what everybody said in the interviews to make things look worse or at least incomprehensible" style. No points for you Kotaku, even though I usually read the crap you write cos it's still not as bad as IGN's or Gamespot's...
*And yes, I have every right to call the "sources" out on it, the little shits, because I know their type exactly.
I was concerned that the way things were going in the beginning, this game would never get done. Now that it actual content is coming out, studio reports seem to be coherent and make sense, and things are settled into a good pace, I believe again! This will happen, eventually.
What the article fails to mention or emphasise enough, probably edited to create drama and repeated visits to the article for the comments, is this stabilization process.
I fully agree with CR on one thing though: they are doing something new, pushing the limits, expanding them, and it's His vision that everyone who works for CiG has signed up for! He isn't there to make friends, he is there to make things happen His way, not EA-s way, or Activisons way, or name any other publisher in the world, because then Star Citizen would never happen.
And F You dear writers at Kotaku. Saying that "There is no game" is a blatant lie! Wait, actually, you know what, you are right! Because currently, there are Four!
The explanation why the development of SC is percieved as a failure and one filled with drama is simple!
You just need to look back what happened in the last 15 years to gaming.
Since the new console era started with the PS2/3 and the XBox 360, every technical development stopped! Every single game was about the same with very very small changes. Game devs got taken over by their publishers, they had no chance to bring in anyhting new. Indies couldn't ever afford or dare to make anything technologically new.
Graphically nothing has been done since Doom3 brought Normal mapping to the masses. Some improvemnts in shaders, some in particles, but mostly just because machines got faster, and devs learned to cheat the system better. We got some useless AA filters that either overly tax the system or indiscriminately blur everything. We got some pretty week implementation of AO, that still makes more artefacts than improves the look of things. AI got dumber and dumber as things were made for the weak consoles. Some things improved over time, but just by a little. No leaps were made.
The technical aspect of game development stopped as fast as the consoles spread, with their very limited capabilities. Every game had to be made the same, so it would run on the consoles. Adding advanced graphics, character animations, or even simple joystick support, and any other technical element to a game that wasn't standard on the consoles, meant a risk for devs, something they probably had to support from their own pockets. So nothing happened, industry standards were layed down on how to make a game from the amount of money with the number of ppl through the number of years. If anyone strayed, it was percieved as a failing and drama ensued.
With a new "episode" of the big titles coming out every 1-2 years, the public's expectations were that a game like SC should be done in 2 years, using the industry standards. This has made it easy for the media to constantly attack and bash CR and CIG, while never writing that single sentence that could clear it all up: "This is not just your standard "CoD episode 186" kind of game, this is the game that will set the new industry standards for the next 20 years, and that takes time and effort, so STFU and wait for it, cos it's gonna be worth it."
Just to mention a few things CR has already done that everyone said cannot be done:
64-bit precision, with embedded cells supporting their own physics
multi-layered vertex shading for damage and really anything else they wanna use it for, working over network
one unified skeleton and animation set for all views even in multiplayer with insane detail and yet no network issues
real-time characters that look and animate better then almost anything in pre-rendered feature films
All of the above is something that cannot be done with todays industry standards, and all of them are important in actually progressing video games, and even vfx and cgi in cinema in a way, forward!
It's very easy to drama and bash CIG for deviating from the industry standard production line of grey military shooters and zombie survival games, and not using the same obsolete tech everyone else used for the past 15 years and is still using today.
But lets not forget what it must have been like to make the first Crysis! How many years it must have taken to get it working at all on the PC's of that era. How much they had to break from industry standards, how drama filled it must have been to release something that barely played on the best gaming PC's at the time! Same goes for the making Everquest for the first time while ppl mostly had dial-up internet, or Max Payne with it's incredible textures and bullet time that was deemed impossible at the time, or Doom 3 with it's highly detailed normal mapped monsters, or any other ground breaking game that pushed the limits of their time, which we now consider as standards!
They had to break from the standards, make radical changes, and have the passion and devotion well beyond the "standard" levels to do it! Otherwise we would be still playing Pong and nothing else...
Otherwise it's the usual "omg, SC is a scam" kind of click bait in very well crafted "oh I'm just being factual, even tough I edited what everybody said in the interviews to make things look worse or at least incomprehensible" style. No points for you Kotaku, even though I usually read the crap you write cos it's still not as bad as IGN's or Gamespot's...
*And yes, I have every right to call the "sources" out on it, the little shits, because I know their type exactly.
I've worked as a CGI/VFX artist for a small company with a leader "worse" then CR for over 3,5 years. He had the same strong vision of what we should do and especially how we should do it, with full time micromanagement, but no money to back it. It was a very small company, sometimes there were only 3 of us, including the boss, so I had to grow from junior 3d assistant ot full 2d/3d generalist, lead 3d art, and project manager overnight, with all the responsibility, but no monetary gains. If it weren't for the total lack of money, sometimes for as long as 5 months, throughout the years, I would still be there, working my ass off and pushing the limits of what such a very small studio can achieve in visual effects.
Because we were on the bleeding edge of what can be done with almost no resources, no experience, and no industry standards. The boss would "micromanage" the same way the article described CR to do it, just even worse because he had to do it hands on, and make you redo something while sitting beside you for half a day and directing every move, even when you have already tried it and realized it will never work.
I was proven wrong plenty of times to see why CR is pushing this kind of "do it my way or the highway" approach. It could be done! Not always, and not always better then my previous version, but most of the time it worked...
This is something that not many can tolerate, especially when they were raised with the '"you are special" trait. It's not the most comfortable, or "standard" approach, but it is the only way you can ensure that something that was deemed impossible actually gets done!
Doing the CGi on a full 1,5 hour movie with 4 ppl under a single month, including cgi cockroaches crawling out of someones mouth, blowing brains up, turning a crash test dummy into a 80yo grandma, adding horns to a cow so it looks like a bull, all in the quaility of at least the first Iron Man!
It is something your "standard" visual effect studio would say takes 3 months with at least 30 ppl, because they use the "industry standard" ways and well, they only work 4-6 hours a day anyway cos health and safety and 21st century morals of working, yada yada...
We did it with 4ppl in 4 weeks, with only a few weekends days and a few days of 14+ crunch. Because we all wanted to prove that it can be done, and we had nothing else then our talents and the beliefe that it can be done.
But this has also shown me that this kind of approach only works with 3-4 ppl under your command. You can't expect to hands on manage the work of 300+people! You can't just walk up to every one of them and show them how to do it
CR comes from the old days when a studio was 12 ppl including the cleaning lady who was most likely the lead artist's mother, and it shows in the way he managed the company for the first 2 years. This seemed to stabilize over the last year to point where things are now working properly.
You do have to make sacrifices along the way. CR nailed it with the "Ameri-can't vs Ameri-Can!".
You can only pull off something that's been said to be impossible by the whole of the games industry, if you have the "it can be done, no matter what" kind of ppl around you. And no one else! You need a level of devotion, that is rare these days.
The Sources were bitching a lot about how CR decided if your work was good enough, and then told you to redo it, or accepted it and then your director said you had to make it better... First of all, that director should have brought it up with CR, and not the artist. So yeah, dear director, you should be demoted, or fired even, cos you have no idea what being a director means. And to you, dear worker bee, I have one thing to say for you: you WORK for CR. If I need to explain why you do NOT have a say in the above problems, then you shouldn't be working at CGI at all. You shouldn't be working At ALL, because clearly you can't accept the fact that you are not working for yourself, but for some else! Go back to bioware or some french place where you are only allowed to work 4 hours a day anyways, and keep making the same boring cloned games again and again...
I could go on for ages, but there is no point. People who didn't work in such a situation, where you could actually push the limits, will never understand why this is neccesary.
Because we were on the bleeding edge of what can be done with almost no resources, no experience, and no industry standards. The boss would "micromanage" the same way the article described CR to do it, just even worse because he had to do it hands on, and make you redo something while sitting beside you for half a day and directing every move, even when you have already tried it and realized it will never work.
I was proven wrong plenty of times to see why CR is pushing this kind of "do it my way or the highway" approach. It could be done! Not always, and not always better then my previous version, but most of the time it worked...
This is something that not many can tolerate, especially when they were raised with the '"you are special" trait. It's not the most comfortable, or "standard" approach, but it is the only way you can ensure that something that was deemed impossible actually gets done!
Doing the CGi on a full 1,5 hour movie with 4 ppl under a single month, including cgi cockroaches crawling out of someones mouth, blowing brains up, turning a crash test dummy into a 80yo grandma, adding horns to a cow so it looks like a bull, all in the quaility of at least the first Iron Man!
It is something your "standard" visual effect studio would say takes 3 months with at least 30 ppl, because they use the "industry standard" ways and well, they only work 4-6 hours a day anyway cos health and safety and 21st century morals of working, yada yada...
We did it with 4ppl in 4 weeks, with only a few weekends days and a few days of 14+ crunch. Because we all wanted to prove that it can be done, and we had nothing else then our talents and the beliefe that it can be done.
But this has also shown me that this kind of approach only works with 3-4 ppl under your command. You can't expect to hands on manage the work of 300+people! You can't just walk up to every one of them and show them how to do it
CR comes from the old days when a studio was 12 ppl including the cleaning lady who was most likely the lead artist's mother, and it shows in the way he managed the company for the first 2 years. This seemed to stabilize over the last year to point where things are now working properly.
You do have to make sacrifices along the way. CR nailed it with the "Ameri-can't vs Ameri-Can!".
You can only pull off something that's been said to be impossible by the whole of the games industry, if you have the "it can be done, no matter what" kind of ppl around you. And no one else! You need a level of devotion, that is rare these days.
The Sources were bitching a lot about how CR decided if your work was good enough, and then told you to redo it, or accepted it and then your director said you had to make it better... First of all, that director should have brought it up with CR, and not the artist. So yeah, dear director, you should be demoted, or fired even, cos you have no idea what being a director means. And to you, dear worker bee, I have one thing to say for you: you WORK for CR. If I need to explain why you do NOT have a say in the above problems, then you shouldn't be working at CGI at all. You shouldn't be working At ALL, because clearly you can't accept the fact that you are not working for yourself, but for some else! Go back to bioware or some french place where you are only allowed to work 4 hours a day anyways, and keep making the same boring cloned games again and again...
I could go on for ages, but there is no point. People who didn't work in such a situation, where you could actually push the limits, will never understand why this is neccesary.
I was concerned that the way things were going in the beginning, this game would never get done. Now that it actual content is coming out, studio reports seem to be coherent and make sense, and things are settled into a good pace, I believe again! This will happen, eventually.
What the article fails to mention or emphasise enough, probably edited to create drama and repeated visits to the article for the comments, is this stabilization process.
I fully agree with CR on one thing though: they are doing something new, pushing the limits, expanding them, and it's His vision that everyone who works for CiG has signed up for! He isn't there to make friends, he is there to make things happen His way, not EA-s way, or Activisons way, or name any other publisher in the world, because then Star Citizen would never happen.
And F You dear writers at Kotaku. Saying that "There is no game" is a blatant lie! Wait, actually, you know what, you are right! Because currently, there are Four!
The explanation why the development of SC is percieved as a failure and one filled with drama is simple!
You just need to look back what happened in the last 15 years to gaming.
Since the new console era started with the PS2/3 and the XBox 360, every technical development stopped! Every single game was about the same with very very small changes. Game devs got taken over by their publishers, they had no chance to bring in anyhting new. Indies couldn't ever afford or dare to make anything technologically new.
Graphically nothing has been done since Doom3 brought Normal mapping to the masses. Some improvemnts in shaders, some in particles, but mostly just because machines got faster, and devs learned to cheat the system better. We got some useless AA filters that either overly tax the system or indiscriminately blur everything. We got some pretty week implementation of AO, that still makes more artefacts than improves the look of things. AI got dumber and dumber as things were made for the weak consoles. Some things improved over time, but just by a little. No leaps were made.
The technical aspect of game development stopped as fast as the consoles spread, with their very limited capabilities. Every game had to be made the same, so it would run on the consoles. Adding advanced graphics, character animations, or even simple joystick support, and any other technical element to a game that wasn't standard on the consoles, meant a risk for devs, something they probably had to support from their own pockets. So nothing happened, industry standards were layed down on how to make a game from the amount of money with the number of ppl through the number of years. If anyone strayed, it was percieved as a failing and drama ensued.
With a new "episode" of the big titles coming out every 1-2 years, the public's expectations were that a game like SC should be done in 2 years, using the industry standards. This has made it easy for the media to constantly attack and bash CR and CIG, while never writing that single sentence that could clear it all up: "This is not just your standard "CoD episode 186" kind of game, this is the game that will set the new industry standards for the next 20 years, and that takes time and effort, so STFU and wait for it, cos it's gonna be worth it."
Just to mention a few things CR has already done that everyone said cannot be done:
64-bit precision, with embedded cells supporting their own physics
multi-layered vertex shading for damage and really anything else they wanna use it for, working over network
one unified skeleton and animation set for all views even in multiplayer with insane detail and yet no network issues
real-time characters that look and animate better then almost anything in pre-rendered feature films
All of the above is something that cannot be done with todays industry standards, and all of them are important in actually progressing video games, and even vfx and cgi in cinema in a way, forward!
It's very easy to drama and bash CIG for deviating from the industry standard production line of grey military shooters and zombie survival games, and not using the same obsolete tech everyone else used for the past 15 years and is still using today.
But lets not forget what it must have been like to make the first Crysis! How many years it must have taken to get it working at all on the PC's of that era. How much they had to break from industry standards, how drama filled it must have been to release something that barely played on the best gaming PC's at the time! Same goes for the making Everquest for the first time while ppl mostly had dial-up internet, or Max Payne with it's incredible textures and bullet time that was deemed impossible at the time, or Doom 3 with it's highly detailed normal mapped monsters, or any other ground breaking game that pushed the limits of their time, which we now consider as standards!
They had to break from the standards, make radical changes, and have the passion and devotion well beyond the "standard" levels to do it! Otherwise we would be still playing Pong and nothing else...
TLDR.: Yes, development is a troubled thing, and actually making something new takes even more effort and is more troubled. It's most definitely not for everyone. CR and CIG and Star citizen is being shamed because they want to move on from the limited and obsolete technology of the console era, and not just make money with the same thing over and over again like everyone else. This takes time, devotion, vision, and a lot of trial and error, which is frowned upon and unusual in todays "factory production line" environment of game development.
So haters gonna hate, may their souls rest squashed under the belly of my Beerfarer :D
I don't think the author was being pessimistic, and I agree with his conclusion "But sooner or later, Roberts and his team have to deliver a game, or all of this will be just a prelude to the most expensive failed development of all time." What they have accomplished so far is a total overhaul of the Cry Engine and beautiful art. I have made my decision to see it through to the end , and no matter what happens to be able to turn to Chris and say "It was a beautiful ride and I thank you for that, it made it all worthwhile."
shadowvinez
Rear Admiral
Its worth mentioning that kotaku is a completely unreliable site for any kind of news they were considered one of the worst offenders in gamergate. they have been blacklist from many major publishers because they consistently leaks privileged information. They are considered a complete joke by most informed gamers.
Very true and despite the article being ok, Kotaku is a complete joke. I imagine if public opinion wasn't slowly coming round (partly due to the impressive gamescom demo) then kotaku would have written a less balanced article. I wouldn't be surprised if they drum up content based on which way they feel public opinion is swaying.
Well put. I'm pretty optimistic that Roberts will deliver a finished, beautiful and fun game. The key for Roberts is to continue to demonstrate progress too his supporters. Version 3.0 will go a long way in showing that Cloud Imperium can deliver a fun, beautiful, and technically advance game.