Star Citizen — Down the Rabbit Hole

when first viewing one of the gameplay demos from star citizen it can be easy to feel overwhelmed the environments are detailed and beautiful the flying is satisfying to watch and the seamless transitions from space to a fully rendered planet are stunning as is the ability to walk around the ships while they're being flown a quick glance at the games website reveals that they have raised almost 130 million dollars and Counting while another section claims that there are numerous a list actors for it searching for information online will generally turn up both zealous support and staunch opposition along with tepid dubious interest these searches will often leave the question largely unanswered what exactly is star citizen on October 15th 2012 a new game publisher under the name cloud Imperium games launched an independent crowdfunding campaign for their first game entitled star citizen asking for two million dollars the proposed game was to be a space simulation genre that had mostly died out around the end of the 90s set in an open game world the campaign states that quote it's a complete universe where any number of adventures can take place allowing players to decide their own game experience pick up jobs as a smuggler pirate merchant bounty hunter or enlist as a pilot protecting the borders from outside threats the economy was to be constantly changing in real-time with supply and demand dictating the costs of goods in different parts of the playable universe along with the gameplay was promised what they called a Newtonian physics system in which flying through the vacuum of space is realistically simulated through the use of moving thrusters controlled with a fly-by-wire system so that if any individual thruster is damaged movement is appropriately effective this persistent universe would be paired with a single-player campaign as well many of these features were shown in videos of the self-funded prototype build presenting stunning visuals animations and high polygon count models all presented by the game's producer Chris Roberts aided by cheesy green screen effects was a wide-eyed eight-year-old I dreamt of being a hotshot pilot saving the galaxy or lovable rogue making my way across the cosmos reward tiers included ownership of ships which would be flyable when the game was finished and publicly available along with numerous other rewards at this point the games projected release date was 2014 Roberts's presence on the project was a major selling point he was a prolific and well known game developer whose career began in the 80s when he worked chiefly as a designer for numerous titles both well-known and obscure most notably Ultima 5 in 1990 however he released the game for which he is most known Wing Commander for which he served as both producer and lead designer this game capitalized on the excitement around space combat liberated by Star Wars and critics praised it for emulating the feeling of dogfighting in space while still remaining accessible to a new audience it quickly became a best-seller and is largely credited with launching the popularity of the space sim genre that would persist throughout the decade Wing Commander itself received numerous sequels and expansions which garnered generally positive reviews and made very large returns near the end of the decade however Roberts gained a reputation for over-promising on his games this was encapsulated with his game freelancer which was touted to have a sprawling multiplayer universe but was subject to numerous delays development began in 1997 and when it was first announced in 1999 Roberts declared that the release would occur in fall of 2000 just a year later however this date was continually pushed back to the point that the studio ran out of money and was forced to enlist the financial aid of Microsoft only in 2003 was the game finally released three years late though the game was missing many of the features announced the critical reception was still positive and most reviews gave it an 80% or better after the release of freelancer Roberts left the video game scene to produce movies which almost universally received either mixed or negative reviews and either made little money or lost money including Lord of war and lucky number Slevin despite Roberts's limited success over the previous decade many nostalgic fans reacted with excitement to see the name behind Wing Commander attached to a new project within a day of the crowdfunding campaign going live they had raised over six hundred and fifty thousand dollars from nearly 7,000 backers averaging almost $100 per backer if the numbers on the site were accurate however cloud imperium was not expecting such a massive rush of visitors and the site promptly crashed after a day and so a back-up plan was instituted I think it's a little hot in my piss-poor we were completely overwhelmed by the amazing response we got only in our star citizen but unfortunately our servers are even more overwhelmed that we were it went down for a few days so we're just at the tail end of getting it all back into order but in the meantime the kind folks at Kickstarter offered to help out and we'll be launching a star citizen Kickstarter page on the Kickstarter page they added a number of reward tiers to receive a copy of the game the backer only had to commit $30 but some of the tears were exorbitantly expensive with the highest being $10,000 the two million goal was met quickly and so additional stretch goals were added including extra ships and star systems during this time media outlets were discovering star citizen as well and they began running articles on it increasing its exposure by the time the campaign was finished a month later the total raised just exceeded five point five million dollars donated by almost 80,000 backers this income fueled even further media attention and it served as a success story for this relatively new method of gathering funds due to the publicity it was receiving cloud imperium decided to leave the donations open to continue raising money appropriately adding stretch goals as more money was raised but after the hype had died down the company continued to receive between 5,000 and 10,000 dollars a day from new backers and those pledging four extra packages during this time cloud imperium expanded production working out of two different offices in two different locations both in America the smaller and quainter one was in Austin where the team began work in January of 2013 the other was in Los Angeles into which the rest of the crew moved in April throughout the rest of the year regular updates with steady progress were posted through the website and through their YouTube channel with videos on ship designs as well as interviews with developers on August 24th 2013 these updates culminated in the first module released for star citizen the hangar module which was revealed at Gamescom in Germany only two months later a large convention specifically for the star citizen project aptly named citizencon was held to show even more progress including planetside environments along with other footage from the two separate studios under the cloud imperium banner however with this celebration came some worrying news on December 16th 2013 chris roberts released a public letter stating that the game's dogfighting module would be delayed indefinitely we had two choices he explained in a letter to the public either fork development and spend time building something that would involve throwing away work in order to meet the December deadline and deliver something that wouldn't have the level of polish I'm happy with or stay on course to build something that would lead directly into the finished game though funding had already been steadily increasing over the course of 2013 the release of the hangar module would catapult the funding past 35 million by the end of the year but the company having grown to a total of 48 employees with another 91 contracted from other companies turbulent was hired to help design web tools such as the star map and ill phonic was hired to create the first person shooter module entitled star Berean at this point ill phonic had not yet released their infamous game sonic boom rise of lyric with the game's release date less than a year away backer money continued to flood in and in January of 2014 a new office was opened in Manchester England specifically to work on the single-player campaign squadron 42 while the other offices quietly continued on their work through to the next year however the scope of the game had increased immensely with more ships more features and more occupations being announced as more money was received many accused Chris Roberts and his team of feature creep a phenomenon where in a project scope becomes far more than ever can be delivered the difference here however was the project's budget was continually fluctuating and as it grew the ever ambitious Robert saw the possibility to create something even bigger and better but it was taking time to build his team as 2014 began updates became vaguer and less frequent video of ships and production seemed to slow to a crawl and the most revealing show on their YouTube channel became the 10 for the Chairman's series where Chris Roberts would answer questions sent by subscribers who are paying extra money for more detailed updates on the game these 10 questions however were not often accompanied by any images or video footage of game assets and left the audience largely disconcerted much had been promised in the stretch goals and suddenly progress seemed to be slowing On June 3rd of 2014 the arena commander dogfighting module was launched to much fanfare playing in a local lobby seemed mostly smooth if not buggy but the performance with other players on cloud Imperium servers would chug even with low graphical settings leaving most players feeling unsatisfied and frustrated after the release of the dogfighting module cloud imperium again went mostly silent small incremental updates were released for arena commander including a racing mode and more ships were added over time during the next games calm in August there was even more disappointment the multi cruise ships were buggy with low frame rates and the game crashed near the end of the presentation citizencon was similarly disappointing even the announcement and a demonstration of the first person shooter module star marine did little to assuage the concerns of onlookers a large number of fans remained hopeful but critics began slamming the game some saw that delays as a way to make the best game possible but others began to see the game as a scam most online publications were tentative to state anything too positive and the closest that any article came to positivity was neutrality the communities quickly began to split with fans of the game in some sections of the internet and detractors in others occasionally butting heads in the comment sections of videos and articles in discussions that almost always spiraled into brutal arguments despite the enthusiasm from the former party much of the community's interest and faith now hinged on Star Marines launch slated for April of the following year to make matters worse for cloud imperium two games were beginning to muscle into star citizens arena that year elite dangerous and no man's sky the former had launched its crowdfunding campaign during star citizen's with a similar feature list and though it was also receiving delays this project seemed to be far more on track the latter a space game focus on exploration had just been announced the previous year and received massive amounts of positive attention at the 2013 VG x awards for its vibrant color palette and scope of its gameplay as well as the ability to land on massive lush procedurally generated planets all of this was occurring around the time that faith in crowdfunding projects was beginning to dwindle especially crowdfunded games in 2012 the yogscast channel on youtube had successfully crowdfunded almost 570 thousand dollars for their game yaagh ventures to be released in December of that year however after numerous delays they announced the project cancelled in July of 2014 with no recourse for the backers who had lost their money this occurred to code hero as well a campaign in 2012 a release date that same year and delays until 2014 before it was finally cancelled this pattern was cropping up more and more to the point that clickbait lists were being written about them and it seemed that star citizen would inevitably follow the same route however some believe that it had the hype to continue receiving money so that it would remain in development held indefinitely David planer of ten-ton Hammer writes in an opinion column that quote it's so hilariously transparent that this isn't about making a game anymore but more so about exploiting a community of zealous fans who will spend as much money as humanly possible to make sure that they're right he goes on to postulate that what's going to happen is the game is going to drag along as long as humanly possible and they're going to delay that point where you can get a full and accurate feel of the various spaceships and the actual combat despite these misgivings attacks bad omens and lack of updates the Contra she had helped generate awareness for the game and money continued to pour in to help promote growth cloud Imperium games began holding what they called concept sales with detailed descriptions and concept drawings of ships so that backers could pledge money to receive them upon release of the game despite star citizens tarnished reputation the total amount of money raised had nearly doubled from 35 million to over 68 million while the number of full-time employees had grown from 48 to over 161 not including contractors this however was not the worst Press that star citizen would receive as star citizen's funding grew their public opinion worsened predictably star marine was not launched in April of 2015 but unlike the dogfighting module star marine as it was made by ill phonic studios would never make it into the game cloud Imperium had decided early on to use the CryEngine as a base but would heavily modify it due to a lack of communication between the game studios alpha net created a version of the first person shooter module that couldn't be used for star citizen's heavily modified engine and cloud imperium made the decision to scrap all of the work that ill phonic had done deciding instead to redo the code the map assets that L phonic designed had to be scrapped as well because they had been built to the wrong scale another casualty of poor communication these along with a myriad other issues caused a mutual antagonistic split and cloud Imperium games chose instead to create the first person shooter module themselves from scratch to ease the burden cloud Imperium launched a fourth studio this one in Frankfurt Germany to assist with backend coding none of these dealings were communicated with the community however and after months of saying that the module was almost ready the studio went completely mum on the topic many of the backers were looking forward to the first person shooting element even more than the flying and frustration within the community was beginning to increase a company that had once been incredibly transparent was suddenly beginning to close the blinds and this did little to settle the concern over an already troubled game the prodigious amount of money that was being meant that if star citizen did collapse the effect would be much greater than any other crowdfunding campaigns failure and lawsuits would be almost inevitable this frustration was compounded by the fact that the aforementioned elite dangerous had already launched to generally positive reviews despite a number of missing features that would later have to be patched in the question was if elite dangerous could launch on time with far fewer people what was happening with star citizen on October 1st 2015 an article was posted to the escapists online nerd culture magazine entitled star citizen employees speak out on project woes here the author states that she had been contacted by 7 ex employees and two current employees all unnamed interested in airing their grievances after an earlier article she wrote had attracted their attention one of her sources said that the game became quote more about the campaign and less about the actual game another one admonishes the scope of the game saying that quote 90 million dollars for what he's pitching even with a competent leadership you couldn't do others noted the poor working environment I couldn't take it says one of the sources it was by far the most toxic environment I have ever worked in no one had clear direction about how to do their jobs well pertaining to the money spent the author explains that quote several different sources have indicated that the company has already used the majority of its funding but not much has been created to show for it the number most often received from people has indicated that currently the company has less than 8 million of what was raised from the crowdfunding efforts left they also universally had visions that the studio as it was would either fail or be bought the most brutal attacks however were leveled against sandi gardiner the vice president of the company and chris Roberts's wife one source alleged that she spoke about a potential hire saying quote we aren't hiring her we aren't hiring a black girl another source stated quote she would write emails with so much profanity she would call people's stupid [ __ ] [ __ ] accuse men of not having balls and she was incredibly hostile to other female employees many people took this story as confirmation of much they already believed however the following day a letter was issued by the co-founder of cloud Imperium games or twin Freimuth disputing the claims made by the sources as well as attacking the credibility of the sources themselves he says that quote you have violated the most basic rules and ethics in journalism in failing to properly vet your sources and providing the affected party with an opportunity to refute these ridiculous highly slanderous and easily disproven allegations and we have indications that this was not a bonafide act of journalism protected by the rules applying to the Free Press but rather a conspiracy between the author and third parties with the deliberate intention of inflicting emotional distress and financial harm on the individuals and entities concerned the allegations of racism are attacked first stating that quote mrs. Gardner has personally hired two African American staff members who currently report to her perhaps most damningly he states that quote you verified an unidentified employee by examining his company ID card with the name blocked out you might be interested to know that C IG does not issue any company ID cards at any of its studios the letter also voices fur muffs belief that the person behind this conspiracy is Derrick smart and Chris Roberts aired this belief in his own more impassioned letter while this claim may seem strange at first it may have merit Derrick smart is a controversial independent game developer for chiefly space themed games whose works have a history of long and troubled development cycles he is most famous for attacking people on forums who criticizes games similar to digital homicide studios only two months prior smart had issued cloud imperium a letter from his lawyers with an ultimatum demanding they release their finances and refund all backers who asked for it cloud imperium responded with their tongue in there they dismissed him with a letter in response and refunded him his money banning him from any further participation in star citizen smarts social media quickly became a forum he used to attack star citizen while he promoted his own early access game almost every day he would post tweets about star citizen coupled with long rambling blog posts and it seemed to develop into an obsession in the face of this The Escapist updated their article with Chris Roberts's rebuttals but they said that they quote stand by our coverage of star citizen and intend to continue to investigate the developing story despite the strong rhetoric it appears that no further articles were written and The Escapist seemed to have halted their investigation still the damage had been done and it seemed that frustration with the game was reaching a fever pitch as cloud Imperium games continued their silence but this silence would break less than two weeks after the original escapist article was published on October 10th 2015 cloud imperium put on citizencon once again but expectations were mixed some were excited while others couldn't forget the disappointing showing of the previous year however the progress that they showed was promising they revealed that they were releasing a miniature version of the star citizen universe where people could fly their ships in limited size servers Quantum Jumping to different points and leaving their ships to float through space perhaps most importantly it showed the first-person-shooter features that had been created from the ground up after elf onyx departure from star citizen they also showed a scene from the single-player game utilizing facial and motion capture technology to defend the sand pile we must attack and we have to be committed to that attack whatever the case may be they would later reveal that since April of that year they had secretly been recording scenes for squadron 42 with celebrity actors including Mark Hamill Gillian Anderson Gary Oldman and Andy Serkis after the clip they stated their intended release date as the final quarter of 2016 they revealed the first few minutes of squadron 42 as well showing off the interior of the largest ship to be produced so far which holds a crew of 50 viewers were dubious as to the release date for squadron 42 as well as the release date for the miniature universe which was slated for December approximately two months after citizencon with uncharacteristic timing however the miniature universe was released within the slated timeframe with access to a few different space stations along with this a video showing off their new procedural planet tech had been released in a video called pupil to planet in order to show the rendering capability of their modified engine both were generally impressive but many players were still dissatisfied with the bare-bones experience that was on display and felt they had been waiting for too long despite this the progress shown was enough to silence some of the critics while the footage displayed brought in a hoard of new backers by the end of 2015 the game had raised over 104 million dollars with approximately 15 million raised in the last three months of the year due in part to the presentation at citizencon the total number of ships pledged at this point had reached over 1.1 million cloud imperium began iterating on the miniature universe releasing patches irregularly to add features and flyable ships again progress seemed slow mostly due to blockers in the backend technology by the end of 2015 however the permanent staff had ballooned to over 250 people and so progress was beginning to pick up speed more and more ships were announced as some of the earlier concept sail ships were being completed and made flyable perhaps most notably was the Starfarer a massive tanker in which players would regularly become lost while exploring in the miniature universe players marveled at the ability to walk around the ships while others flew and fought all in spite of large bugs and low frame rates it was still a far cry however from the experience star citizen promised in a single massive universe as 2016 wore on even more of us shown and it seems that the progress made on the game was increasing exponentially patched 2.5 released in august added persistence so that players could earn in-game cash for performing missions which would remain between play sessions the largest takeaway that the media was receiving it seemed was that star citizen was indeed progressing the game also was receiving positive press in comparison to its two largest competitors elite dangerous and no man's sky elite dangerous had recently come under attack due to the aggressive posture of its monetization the development team revealed that some of the content promised in the Kickstarter would have to be purchased as expansions and add-ons with higher total prices for some of those who had bought the game earlier on top of this there was heavy criticism from its players stating that though there were many planets stars and Space Station's they all were extremely similar with shallow gameplay and relatively low replayability no man's sky on the other hand had exploded into a full-blown controversy very little information had been released to the public by the development team while an embargo was placed on review copies towards its release the developers claimed that this was to maintain the mystique of the game but when it was launched it seemed clear that the embargo was because a wide swath the content promised by the small independent development team was missing the beautiful environmental effects and complicated wildlife interaction from the gameplay trailers seemed to be entirely absent and the interstellar trading was nowhere to be found much like the massive space conflicts and dynamic loyalty systems in short the trailers masquerading as gameplay footage were entirely constructed cutscenes rather than generated by the game itself the majority of the game's audience felt that the studio had lied about massive portions of their game and an absurdly long post on reddit was circulated cheekily entitled no man's lie with a list of promised features missing from the release the limited content made it difficult to justify the full $60 price tag the game has mostly negative user review scores on Steam with 31 percent approval while the recent reviews place it as overwhelmingly negative at 9% after this dismal reception the game studio went entirely silent and little has been heard since in the face of the disconcerting and disastrous responses respectively the gaming publications and avid space game fans turned their hopeful gaze to star citizen the timing could not have been better for cloud Imperium as they were about to perform two of their biggest reveals to date on August 19th cloud Imperium games revealed the first-ever vertical slice of their game though many features of the final game were missing the demonstration lasted for over 50 minutes showcasing numerous features including facial animation capture mission systems and user interface just like their other presentations a man on the side of the stage was playing the game going through rehearsed motions this time however it seemed almost to be mocking no man's sky perhaps most importantly however it showed the planetary technology that had been developed the early parts of the video features a ship entering the atmosphere of a planet and landing while a later section showed two of the land-based vehicles that had been created the reception was extremely positive and online magazines were heralding star citizen as the game to fill the void left by elite dangerous and no man's sky during Gamescom however they tease that even more would be revealed at the upcoming citizencon which was happening in just a few weeks with a potential reveal of squadron 42 the studio worked fervently to produce these demos in the short amount of time they had left and when October 9th arrived both fans and the media were watching intently partway through the citizencon presentation however it was revealed that the gameplay from squadron 42 was not ready and that it would not be making an appearance that night I think we're hoping to show you a squadron 42 mission and we're not quite there yet so we got very close the team worked really hard but we don't want to show it until we say this is what it's going to be like in the final game with all the polish what they were able to show off however was just how far the procedural planetary technology had come another vertical slice was presented showing a planet with multiple biomes oceans and flora not to mention fauna in the form of a massive sand worm after the half-hour-long vertical slice demonstration it was made clear exactly what they meant when they said they were making procedural planet technology rather than having a key generate an entire planet like its competitors had done so our citizens technology was a tool for designers to craft planets they showed this off by allowing one of their designers to construct an entire landing environment complete with a landing pad surrounding rocks foliage and fauna in less than five minutes the dream of star citizen's persistent universe was beginning to crystallize in the minds of fans today star citizen's development is continuing and the first game in the squadron 42 trilogy has unsurprisingly been delayed beyond 2016 so that more systems may be completed however with the sudden explosion of progress shown many of the concerns of star citizen status as vaporware appear to have been a suede though most retain a healthy skepticism concept chips continue to be produced while more transparent videos reminiscent of the early days of development show the game's progress what squadron 42 and star citizen will look like upon final release is uncertain but right now the hopes of the community could not be higher hey everyone thanks for watching if you enjoy this series and want to help support it you can do so through my patreon everyone who pledges a dollar or more gets their name in the credits but there are a couple of higher reward tiers that give access to things such as exclusive audiobooks and scripts for the episodes before they go live also my new series the grim archives goes live tomorrow that's going to be on its own channel the link is above it's going to go into the origins and histories of mythological creatures and I'm really excited to show you guys it's being done in conjunction with animator Ben Tobit and he is fantastic anyways thank you very much for watching and I'll see you on the next episode

Channel: Fredrik Knudsen

Views: 1,859,074

Keywords: Down the Rabbit Hole, Star Citizen, Cloud Imperium Games, Chris Roberts, Derek Smart, The Escapist, crowdfunding, Kickstarter, Wing Commander, Freelancer, Ten Ton Hammer, Hangar, Arena Commander, Star Marine, Turbulent, Illfonic, feature creep, Elite: Dangerous, No Man's Sky, Yogventures, Yogscast, Sandi Gardiner, Ortwin Freyermuth, Mark Hamill, Gillian Anderson, Gary Oldman, Andy Serkis, John Rhys-Davies, Pupil to Planet, Squadron 42, Gamescom, CitizenCon, documentary, dtrh

Id: 8IcPsIwC-pU

Length: 32min 46sec (1966 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 27 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/PhantomPowerSC]

This vid was posted like 3 days ago.

[u/jimleav]

I don't remember it ever being quite at bleak as it gets in the video, but that's probably just personal impression. I suppose I have always been more of an optimist than a pessimist about this project. That being said, this was a very good summary.

[u/jfc1313]

I've been backing the game since the beginning, and that's pretty much how I remember it.

Granted, I personally didn't feel all the doom and gloom when Star Marine didn't drop, but I do remember a lot of doom and gloom on this sub.

One thing I would add that he didn't talk about was, that most of the doom and gloom around that time stopped when Disco accidentally leaked that URL, and people saw all the assets they've been working on, but hadn't told us about (Like the Kingship).

After that leak, they started being more open about what they were working on.

That accidental leak probably did more to alleviate concerns than anything else that happened that year. It restored most of the faith that some fans had lost in the months of silence prior.

[u/rjceynar2]

Very professionally made.

[u/zenoen]

This paints a very grim picture that is not representative of the times it is talking about. It sacrifices accuracy for this critical/opposing perspective. I'm not saying it's wrong just taken to extremes. my biggest problem with this video is that i was around during those times not everybody was happy but the first two years were nothing but hype. People didn't even question anything really till 2014.

P.S The yogcast game - the single developer had a meltdown and couldn't complete the project so yogcast took all the assets and gave them too TUG and then gave all the backers keys for that game (it was a very similar game project) then that project failed as well.

Putting everything together like this would of still emphasize your point. The way you phrased it makes it look bad on the people when they tried to do everything to help their audience.

[u/StrapNoGat]

Fantastic video. Well researched, and despite being from a long time backer, it maintains an excellent level of neutrality.

I hope everybody would watch it at some point as it really puts everything into perspective. It's easy, as a backer, to disassociate oneself from the whole process. I can't imagine the day to day feelings that the entire company (let alone CR and the team leads) experience; especially during the time of Derek Smart and the Escapist articles. To be personally attacked in front of a massive audience would crush many peoples spirits.

It's not easy giving money, expecting what we've been promised and getting angry when it's not delivered in time, but it's a two way street. They've all been pouring themselves into building almost this whole thing from scratch (SQ42, SC, Hangar Module, Arena Commander, Star Marine), and they have to be just as upset when they can't meet deadlines or are blocked because of ground-breaking systems they're making.

The game has come immensely far since it's inception in such a short time. The communication with its fanbase has decreased and many are not pleased with this. It may be with good reasoning, though. With all this progress and the potential of the final result, a lot of rival producers and critics may find this game to be a large threat. CIG has been burned before by the media and I can understand keeping quiet to prevent any further damage. It seems they're taking the 'let the game speak for itself' approach; and with what we're seeing lately it is doing a fine job of that.

I don't mean to be SC's white knight here. If they can't figure out a way to keep interested parties well-informed while skeptics and nay-sayers try to destroy them, then they may end up with an issue larger than building the first game of this magnitude. Despite the 130 million raised, its all provided through crowdfunding; this source of income is extremely finicky. Without the right balance of fund management, maintaining income, and appeasing backers, things could become lopsided very suddenly and collapse this whole house of cards.

As a star citizen, I hope to never see it fall, and I eagerly await the release, whenever that may be.