I don't know how it is with you all, but I stopped talking about Star Citizen. It felt too much like I was trying to convince my friends that the earth is flat. It's like bringing up the name Star Citizen lowers people's opinion of me. Like I am suddenly gullible and easily misguided. To the general public, I feel we aren't able to be publicly optimistic without looking foolish.
That is, until the SQ42 demo came out. When I linked it to my gaming friend group, there was the usual rabble. It was everything we all have heard a million times by now. Then, nothing. They clicked the video and watched enough to shut up. Since then, most of them have started up a conversation with me. So here's what I get out of it. It's promising. It's enough to make people curious, but not enough to openly discuss it yet. There's too much of a history of setbacks and delays. But it's a start.
One of these promising steps are videos like this. They are openly critical, but cautiously and practically optimistic.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y6vNd9v0tQ
Regarding talking about SC, I got my 2 good friends a game package ages ago. One playes with me now, during IAE and such events, and the other is waiting patiently. Anyone else I mention it to, even if interested, comes back at me with things like: unless it's coming on PS5 I don't care. And he thinks he is a gamer... gawd....
Anyways, WTF do you mean by cautious optimism? In that video? WHERE???
I happened upon that trash video yesterday. That's the most fake drama for views clickbait shit ever. The only real desperation in that video was Bellendular's to get enough hate clicks on his video.
What I was most disgusted about is the tone he takes while spewing lies, like he is worried, like he cares, like he isn't a 100% biased against CIG and doing this for the hate clicks.
Bellular has some decent videos sometimes but his latest trend is to put out as much hate-click inducing "OMG here's the full story/it's worse then 911" type of fake shit as possible, with close to no substance behind it.
Regarding this vid of his, every single allegation and "critic" is basically omitting half of reality to make CIG sound as bad as possible while keeping the fake veneer of honest objectivity.
For instance , since when the fuck do you get severance pay if YOU decide to leave the company? No you fucking don't (at least not in any western country I know of) yet he takes 10 minutes to shit on CIG that they are bastards for linking it to NDAs that people had to sign when they wanted to leave or they wouldn't get paid... It's just a bullshit sentence, mixing things on purpose to make you think CIG is evil.
OFC they do have to sign an NDA, I couldn't name you a white collar job where you aren't bound by some form of secrecy, even if it'"s just for basic shit like how much the company got paid for a certain job... Absolute BS....
He makes it out like hundreds left the company, has no proof for anything, and conveniently omits the fact that the studio moved and the few that didn't or couldn't make it just left on their own...
Then the work one or two? weekends thing. He keeps repeating it to make it sound worse, while he reads the actual leak that basically translates to "no one actually expects you to do anything worthwhile on Sunday, cos you can just work from home". Then he goes on to ignore the fact that everyone gets 2 days off per weekend day they had to work (I think that's the law, at least here it is, not something that CIG can just give or take away...), right after CitCon.
Do I need to break down the rest of his lies or we done here?
This constant negativity, especially when hidden behind the facade of honesty, is actually an issue that CIG HAS TO FIX before SQ42 launch. They have 2 years, they better start paying IGN to start posting positive vibes about SC/Squadron. As you said, everyone thinks of SC as a scam, and it's been so long that they cannot be convinced otherwise with anything, not even the demo unless they are already on the edge and just looking for an excuse to jump ship.
I listen to some of these normy media podcasts like SideGrifters (SideScrollers if you must know). They are one of those channels that normies turn to when they are fed up with IGN giving yet another unplayable mess of AAA game a 9/10, and want to hear some hate, want to feel like they are "real, edgy gamers". Just a couple of days ago this was spoken: "well at least this game did something and came out after 10 years unlike Some space game, khm, Star Citizen.." then all 3 hosts proceeded to nod and laugh at it. Chat went wild with hating on SC, spewing the same old rhetoric, attacking the few that tried to say soemthing not so negative about the recent demo or progress... The attacks got ignored by mods. It's the norm to hate on SC.
THE chat that consists of those who are actually THE potential market for CIG.
Even those who depict themselves as the good guys, the unbiased gamers, for gamers and so on like sidegrifters, bellular and so on, keep ignoring anything and everything that might change their audiences absolutely negative view on SC, and will continue to do so, because it has become the norm, and it pays well.
One of the better talks I've heard after Citcon was the Space Tomato ( an actually good SC channel with real criticism) interview with access-media paid shill Luke Stephens, who keeps acting like he likes the project and he doesn't put out a "CIG is trash" video every 6 months for hate-clicks. He is one who tells you that SW Outlaws was a perfectly fine 7/10 at launch (despite the fact it was a primitive, buggy hellscape, even to a seasoned SC veteran) ... This should tell you everything you need to know about him. BUT, he made a very good point, that unless CIG doubles down on positive marketing very very fast, and starts fighting the lies.
The mass media will trash SQ42 unless they get paid off, because that's what their owners and their readers expect. They will nitpick it to hell for the smallest things even if it's a perfect 10/10 bugless god-tier game, which it most def won't be, and apart from a group of SC players, most won't buy it. They will refuse to believe that it's anything but a scam. They will cancel their favorite independent reviewers on YT if they dare go against their negativity bias. I've seen it happen before, it will happen to Squadron again. Something BIG has to happen, CIG really has to get this right. For our sakes, for Star Citizen.
