Star Citizen - "Incompetence and Mismanagement on a Galactic Scale" - Forbes

About a week ago (sorry, a little late) Forbes wrote an article that, well I won't call it a hit job, but let's say it's a very well researched, negatively toned article about Star Citizen and it's management.

Link to the article right here.

Now, before we go any further, I hope to hear some constructive arguments, criticisms, and so forth from all people here. While I fully expect some trolls and haters to be in here, I hope we can at least discuss this in a mature manner.

I am a backer and daresay a fan of Star Citizen, but tbh I have found my faith in the project waning for the last year. While I am enthusiastic about the ships, overall goals, and sometimes even the direction of the project, I find myself baffled at the lack of "big picture" progress towards a finished project. While we keep getting new ships, new clips of Hollywood actors, and new areas and moons and planets, at the same time I feel we are no closer to a finished product, SQ42 or otherwise.

The article goes into this. I suggest you read it for yourselves, but some of the damning evidence is:

• Of the 288 million raised (240 million came from crowdfunding), Roberts had just 14 million in the bank as of 2017
• Of the 100 star systems promised, none have been completed
• 20 former employees contributed information to the article, with little good to say; it should be noted these employees left of their own free will, so they have no agenda to spite Chris Roberts
• Roberts won't disclose how much executives and officers are paid at the 520+ employee Cloud Imperium. It should be noted both his wife and brother work there in high positions.
• When developing the Freelancer game and the Wing Commander movie, Roberts was accused by Microsoft of diverting funds destined for game development to the movie.

This is just from the first half of the article, and not everything.

Any other backers here? Do you have faith in this game still? Will it see the light of day?

To non-backers, what are your opinions? Buyer beware? A dream project worth believing in, or a scam by a couple of get-rich-quick schemers?

I truly hope this game is finished and does well--truthfully, I rarely wish ill will to any game...they are just games, after all, and intended for harmless fun--but the amount of money this game has generated, and for how long the game has been in development for, has to generate a certain amount of concern for even the most optimistic of us.

@mrbojangles25: Honestly, I'm more surprise you didn't post this thread in System Wars since this is more suited for this discussion and not to mention, more SC members are in SW then GD.

Back on topic. I'm one of the Backers and I'm not all that worry about this game taking way longer then it needs to be. My Credit Card Associates are standing-by should Chris Robert's pulls a fast one on his backers and either way, I win, I'll get my money back and let's be real, Chris Robert's career reputation is on the line and trust me, reputations carries the resume more then experience.

As for Forbes article. Them pulling in Chris’ relationships and how he spends his money was out of line but I can’t say I disagree with anything else they wrote. The lack of progress on the game, it tries to be so many everything at once. I'm afraid that, every time SC gets near ready for a beta, a new technology or a fad will come along, and they'll be tempted to extend the alpha to work that new technology or fad into SC and that's the problem.

*It's not fraud, I just really suck at what I do*

No shit Robert! My advice is, just take what you have right now and go ahead and build the game as it is now. The more you keep adding new stuff, the more it's gonna stay in alpha. I don't think anyone would be annoyed if Star Citizen/Squadron 42 existed. People are annoyed it doesn't exist.

To continue my previous post, one thing I should mention between Star Citizen & Freelancer attempts.

Chris Roberts once spent too much time on Freelancer to make the game he wanted to make, and that made Microsoft upset back then. The problem here is, that's a very biased look at it, Freelancer was effectively CR's first attempt at something like SC. With it he promised the moon and failed to deliver because (surprise surprise) the backers (in this case, MS) were not happy with the progress being made, not surprising since he went massively over budget and over schedule.

Now, are you telling me, you don't see any parallels here between SC and Freelancer? The only difference is this time he has backers who are willing to cut him alot of slack for missed deadlines (answer the call, 2015 and that's about SQ42, not SC, so don't go throwing the two votes at me, they were about SC, not SQ42), and those backers keep giving him more and more cash despite him failing to meet his own deadlines.

What remains to be seen is how many more years backers are willing to keep on giving CIG money and whether they can balance that income with their expenses to finally deliver the game. It's clear SC is still years away from anything that can be called a release and will not get panned by critics, and even so, it might still get panned by critics depending on what is finally shipped. It's going to be measured against how much funding they got and how long they took, so it's going to have to be literally the best damn space sim ever in history! But that remains to be seen.

One thing is pretty certain, the longer they take to ship a 1.0 release, the more articles we will see like this, and the more critical they will become, unless CIG can really pull some magic out of the Rabbits hat and start adding more systems and mechanics in the coming years to start fulfilling their promises. (kickstarter and post kickstarter)

Regardless of the outcome, it's going to be interesting to watch, and I'm sure there is a documentary of it's development waiting to be made. The question is, will it be a Fyre Festival type documentary or will it be one with a happy ending? Only time will tell.

Stuart Moulder, the Microsoft general manager who oversaw the software giant’s relationship with Digital Anvil, came to believe that Microsoft money intended for game development was instead used for the movie. “[Roberts’] energy and attention and some of the funds were siphoned off for that movie,” Moulder says. “The Digital Anvil investment has to be looked at as largely a failure.”

I'd deffo give this brah moneys.

People still defend this crook?

they have bitten off more than they can chew (looking at it from the outside. i'm not a backer but was tempted). developing it so openly has probably not helped either.

they should have thrown it at squadron 42 first. use that to

• build confidence in the team amongst gamers and publishers/investors.
• use it to build a solid foundation and toolchain to then kick off star citizen
• get people playing. get feedback.

SQ42 should mechanically consist of (generally the more military/combat side of things):

• space combat
• FPS combat
• Landing/taking off from ships and planets (storming ships/bases and so on).
• much more mission focused and structured (like starlancer or freespace).

Just get the tech and tools and so on that far and get a game out. Build the missions and content around that. dont bother with trade or MP or in game economies or entire worlds and star system building or any of that yet.

their lack of focus is their biggest mistake. every single last individual should be focused on getting SQ42 complete.

I do think it's "incompetence" as the topic headline puts it rather than anything sinister though. the undertaking is an absolutely colossal one. nothing currently in development or out comes close it its sheer scale, attention to detail and ambition. nothing comes even remotely close.

in fairness to chris roberts what he eventually puts out, from what i have played (starlancer and freelancer) is actually very good and i hear nothing but good things about the wing commander games (the movie.....yeah not so much).

But yeah they need to get SQ 42 out. it doesnt need to deliver the entire star citizen experience.....just a taste.

I've KS/ Backed and Early Access a few games. Most worth the investment, one of which was Elite (IV): Dangerous. Put over three hundred hours into E:D, had a very good time with PvP and PvE.

Glad I didn't get caught in Star Citizens zeitgeist. Much like NMS or BGaE2; some pitched concepts are filled with unrealistic expectations/ goals.

And while it's easy to blame Chris Roberts, we as investors should really know better likewise.

I will probably purchase SC when(if) it comes out (in some six years), and I don't mean the overpriced 3.5 Alpha, when Elite: Dangerous is a fraction of the price, with more value.

But when Star Citizen comes? Hope it's enjoyable, cities look very immersive. May even purchase the PS7 port. . But anyone who proudly backed this horse have thrown money at a dream, not a game grounded in reality for its time (decade).

For many the eight year long road has been too long and it's very, very understandable. Like giving money to a homeless man who spends on hard liquor instead of getting a job.

I'm all for devs taking their time making a great game, but this is on another level. 8 years and $288 million and this is all they have to show for it?

They need to release this thing already, it's been too long.

At that pace this game will probably take 40 more years to release the full game.

Maybe that was the goal of the Kickstarter...wait till everyone can't physically play it.

It sounds more like incompetence than deception. This very thing is why Ken Levine no longer has a big dev team, but in his case, there was fortunately oversight to step in and say "hey, man, you just can't be trusted to run shit." You're not going to get that with crowd funding. I mean, we bitch when devs are forced to release a game, but if someone doesn't step in at some point and just ship it, you occasionally will get this.

It's not really just a gaming thing, though. HBO did that documentary Out for Blood, that was a similar sort of thing with a company just devouring investment dollars on an impossible idea the creator just couldn't let go. Inevitably these things are going to happen in a culture that values "having an idea" over actually being able to deliver on an idea. It's why patent law is all fucked. First consideration should always be "but can you do it," but with the surplus of confidence we instill in our children, the answer to that is always yes.

Not against crowd funding, but with a game we should have some sense of what it costs as gamers who visit message boards fairly regularly and limit our willingness to donate to projects that seem reasonable based on the company's track record. You don't just give 200 mil to someone who has one game to his name...ever.

With how much money has been burnt, unlikely. They'll have to pitch yet another Kickstarter campaign, or moar money scheme. . oh wait. lol

Seriously though. These flops make Kickstarter look bad. It's kind of sad when looking at one of the most successful and most well received Kickstarter games developed which had but a fraction of the funding_

Example- Divinity: Original Sin II

In development for two years (2015-2017), and from a search, claimed to have a budget close to 2.5 million US dollars total (Star Citizen has/ had 288 million). Not including the Bandai Namco console ports in 2018 called Divinity: Original Sin II Definitive Edition.

D:OSII is also a KS game that is rewarding players/ fans with free DLC packs in 2019 (two years after release). As well as the Definitive Edition upgrades on P.C. being free as well.

Still holding above 90 on MC

Meanwhile. . Star Citizen looks and plays like a game in early development.

Wait, this game still in development?

I keep throwing my money on the screen and the game is still not out yet! What's going on!?

Jokes aside, even though this looked interesting, I was way too skeptical to put a cent in it. They should've just released the game with what they have and develop it over time. I mean, No Man's Sky had a rocky launch, to say the least, but look at that game now.

As it's now, by the time Star Citizen is released, Elon Musk will already have become a star citizen.

We just got some pretty large updates, actually. Game is much more stable, and there was a new "city planet" (think Coruscant from Star Wars) added in.

Yeah I already take issue with big-budget games. When I backed Star Citizen it was still in the tens of millions, which was damn impressive and large but not AAA-Titanic sized.

I feel like once you get into the hundreds of millions, a studio sort of just gets fat and complacent and thinks they can just throw money at everything, that people with talent are expendable because they can always afford to hire new ones. It's not a company at that point, it's a corporation.

There was a time where I would say "That's OK, this will be the best game ever" and I'd be happy waiting until 2025 for this game, but I have sort of come to my senses lol. I still have faith in the game, misplaced as it might be, but it needs to be released in the next three years. SQ42 and Star Citizen. Otherwise I am asking for a refund [that I probably won't get].

Yeah, I am trying to bring more constructive discussion to games though. Half the threads in SW belong in Games Discussion. I don't want this devolve into "why PC sucks and ____ is better" argument.

As to your other points, all valid. Again, as per my standard belief, Star Citizen is a game so it's not worthy of taking that serious, but at the same time most game don't ask people to spend hundreds (thousands, sometimes) of dollars. Most games are not as disrespectful to patiently waiting fans. Most games are not surrounded in such questionable behavior.

Freelancer is one of my favorite space sims, though, which is part of the reason I backed this. I realize now that's a bit misguided, but I didn't really do my homework, I simply thought (like millions of other did, I am sure) "Oh the guy that did Wing Commander and Freelancer? Sure I'll back it"

The problem with "creatives" is they generally lack direction, guidance, and work ethic. Sometimes you need a publisher or some external force to say "No, don't spend six months picking a color for the HUD" or "This is taking too long, we are setting a release date for you". If you're not beholden to anyone, and you feel like your job is to give a perfect product to your fans (re: something impossible to deliver), then you're going to get mired down and not finish it.

Usually money can act as an incentive--artists need to eat, and if you spend six months painting something that only nets you 20k dollars, you aren't really going to make a living--but when you have people throwing money at you for a product that isn't finished, you don't even have the most basic and critical of motivators.

Basically it just becomes a hobby at that point.

I think it's a very true perspective, look at Resident Evil 6. Easily the biggest budget game Capcom ever developed and published. And heavily considered one of Capcoms lowest points. During a January Resi2Remake interview Anpo Yasuhiro san mentioned both Resi7 and the upcoming remake had roughly one fifth the budget of Resi6. And yet are far higher quality products.

Overwhelming funds seems to make developers cocky and arrogant. Bioware is a great example of this, I've read EA gave them a lot of funds towards the last Mass Effect and Anthem project. And they're both arguably as mediocre as Resi6.

I guess this game isn't for me, everything I've seen looks like they've tossed everything at the technical side of it, but somehow it still looks visually bland and boring. The game itself also just looks bland and boring. Did I mention how boring this game looks?

Star Citizen is supposed to be a slow-burn sci-fi game, not one of those fast pacing shooters like Mass Effect, Star Wars, or Elite: Dangerous. If you aren't into slow-burn games such as this, you won't like it, but that's to be expected.

Erm. . . Hmm?

The Elite series is the definition of a slow paced gaming experience. Questionably invented it (1984)

One can roam space for six hours in Dangerous and find nothing of value.

I'm assuming you guessed what it was on a trailer.

Haha... this was the game that hermits said was to much for consoles. Well if we were still on the PS4 and XB1 that would be true. But the PS5 will be out by the time this is finished.

Take that level of maturity back to System-Wars dood. No need for the toxic platform bias here.

Games Discussion is about the games, not praising your piece of plastic, over another piece of plastic.

@mrbojangles25: It was supposed to be a sarcasm but I was genuinely surprised to find out that SC still pretty much in development to this day. It already got huge amount of money for many years ago, from 2012 I think and to this day it still not finished. It just sad to see many talented indie devs cancelled their projects or at least stalled them for long time due to lack of funding. For Sc where funding is not an issue but still not completed to this day.

I love E:D but calling it fast-paced is laughable.

Yeah, it is pretty shameful to see this going on.

Speaking from my own beliefs, if I had a crowdfunded game that millions of people were interested, that would be incentive to actually finish the game in a timely manner. I wouldn't take any more time than I had to.

I am a huge fan of Roberts past games all the way back to Wing Commander 1. Honestly he is my favorite game creator of all time. I backed SC back when it was just SQ 42 and I had huge hopes. Now it’s another beast. I never really cared about the SC MMO added aspect or it all and I wish it never happened because that’s why this is taking so damn long. All I wanted was my spiritual successor to Wing Commander. I just hope after all of this is over SQ42 comes out good. Us fans deserve that. As far as SC goes I think it’ll be a work in progress for many many years much like Elite Dangerous has been. Roberts isn’t a thief. He is really making these games. You can play SC now. It just isn’t near finished and is way too complicated for me to bother mastering at this point because the systems are always changing. I wanna play a finished product and I really hope SQ 42 is exactly that.

@mrbojangles25:

I love E:D but calling it fast-paced is laughable

Exactly, much like in my Devil May Cry 5 thread; people calling it a 'movie game' and making wrong claims to the commonly complained censorship.

I simply wish some people would be more up-front when they have zero experience with a game. I mean, most the time it stands out like a swollen thumb and comes across as awkward to point-out. But you do anyway otherwise the other User is representing a game incorrectly.

Personally don't play even half the games mentioned in the forums, make it blatantly obvious, and keep it to an outwards perspective when bringing them up in debate. Either through jest or what is coming from articles.

I only hope this game gets released. I am no backer but come on, even if you need time to make a new engine and develop everything yourself, the beta should be ready by now.

Based on the accounts of ex employees in the articles, it seems like work on Star Citizen is really slow and ineffective. Chris Roberts reputation before this not helping the matter either, he was accused of siphoning money from EA for other projects? Dang Chris has experience, imagine what that guy can do with near $300m of funds!

I think that is part of the problem; Chris Roberts has experience in game development, but not so much management. With Wing Commander and Freelancer, he had publishers and bosses to light a fire under his ass, push him to get things done, and so on.

I would rather see what Roberts could do with 100 million and some direction, than what he can do with 300 million aimlessly.

The part that interestes me a lot is the part where Chris was allegedly siphoning money for other unrelated projects during production of wing commander... I mean it was also stated Chris bought a $4.7m house....

Regardless I agree with what you said, hope the Chris hires someone who can actually direct while he stays in the executive producer role. I think that can help a lot with Star Citizen productivity.

Well to be fair, from a technical standpoint it's doing some impressive things. It's severely lacking in polish though, and they are light years away from the having all the content that was promised.

I've always been highly skeptical of this game, and that hasn't changed. I think it's inevitable that the game will release eventually, probably for legal and financial reasons, and not because they "finished" the game, because I don't see them completing the game they promised to make, it's just too vast in scope and ambition.

Yeah the whole "he bought this and that" argument is compelling, but the guy was a millionaire since the mid-90's so I don't really have too much of an issue with it. I think in the article it says he sold Digital Anvil to EA or MS for like 34 million, and this was after the success of the Wing Commander game series. Couple this with whatever money he made from his movies and I don't think we have someone who is defrauding people, just a guy that doesn't care about appearances haha.

Right now I am very reserved, but cautiously hopeful lol.

I think we will get Squadron 42 for sure, and I think it will be amazing; they've already done so much work on it (what we see in the alpha is only for Star Citizen, not SQ42). After that....who knows? SQ42 in 2020 or 2021, and Star Citizen in 2023 or something. I'd be OK with that.

@pozy02: why bump this

Please don't bump old threads in the future cause this is a 1-year-old thread.