Star Citizen - Any Day Now™

this video was made possible by squarespace the best website creation tool in the entire universe humans are driven by stories we daydream a third of our lives we spend another fraction with fiction our cultures are founded on myths but why why did we become this way well according to theory it's because stories teach us what mistakes not to make an imagined reality is like a computer simulation where fake people called characters fail so we don't do the same stories feel empty without a point because they exist to be learned from but sometimes a story can be more than a lesson because sometimes an imagined reality can be preferable to our own and we tell stories not just to learn from but to live in fantasies dreams where we can visit the stars in our eyes where we can escape our oppressed frenzied lives into wells of wonder adventure and purpose and as the years have gone by technology has found greater means to provide it vivid color motion picture interactive simulation it was 1977 when star wars used the structure of ancient myth aesthetics of new imagination and the awesome potency of the cinema screen to reinvigorate one of the most powerful dreams the world had ever known the one inspired by the 19th and 20th century founders of science fiction to let our imagination run free amongst what we had just learned was a whole universe of different suns and alien earths up there anything was possible anything you could wish for and only a few years after star wars technology had found a new way to prove it what if he really could be in the pilot seat of an x-wing creators wanted to know just as bad as consumers but the wilder a dream grows the harsher it's reckoning with reality and some were going to find that out the hard way imagine this a fully dynamic universe running in real time in 1990 as this designer put it you could fire up the game put your ship under ai crew control and not do a thing the game will literally play itself complete with trading combat alliance changes and exploration you could fight in space in air and on the ground even a self-learning neural net was promised this would make industry rival chris roberts his wing commander look like a prehistoric mammoth its name was battle cruiser 3000 ad his name was derek smart and marketers liked his ambition but when smart realized just how far his dream exceeded his ability when it became clear that even eight years of development hadn't been enough his publisher was all out of patience in 1996 battle cruiser would launch whether it was ready or not unlike chris roberts smart didn't have the good will of four successful wing commanders to cushion his fall nor a publisher kind enough not to ruin him he became the first high-profile victim of many to burn up in pursuit of this dream in 2016 no man's sky became one of the most anticipated games in history it was never meant to be it was an indie project made by a humble studio of 20 in guildford but the excitement their fantasy created outgrew their ability in months sony capitalized on the hype but sean murray and his team could not deliver no man's sky released unfinished broken and humiliated once the same dream even fueled the hype for destiny way back when people thought the ships would be more than a loading screen widget that its interconnectedness would take the form of a real universe not just the suggestion of one this has always been a particularly powerful dream but as smart as shown the history of the ambitious space sim has also been impacted by some particularly big dreamers ever since his first viewing of star wars in 1977 chris roberts has found it difficult to restrain his passion it inspired 1990s wing commander a now legendary title that stunned the industry with its world and fidelity but it was with his next game strike commander when robert's tendency to set his sights outstandingly high began to cause serious problems in the game's manual roberts compared his plight to that of francis ford coppola on the set of apocalypse now in the spirit of wanting it all we set out to design a game that would have more realism than the best flight simulator better storytelling more fun and more accessibility than wing commander and the best sound effects music and graphics of any game ever created our biggest mistake was thinking that we could achieve all this in a single year our biggest setback was the realization that it would take more than two strike commander took four years of development most of the work died with the reboots it took to arrive at a final product but it did arrive it reached the end of its long and arduous journey to critical acclaim and roberts looked back on strike commander humbler to see a project that every member of the team could say yes it was two years of hell but at the end we've created something special of course it very nearly wasn't the story of strike commander had a lesson but when fantasy came back to put stars in chris roberts's eyes again the lesson was forgotten freelancer a universe of possibility true freedom to forge a life amongst the stars its million-dollar trailer made tantalizing promises of seamless multiplayer integration a persistent wild state an ai-driven economic ecosystem so powerful it could run the virtual galaxy with or without the player's input the game would literally run it hey i've seen this one before announced in 1999 promised for 2000 freelancer released in 2003 after microsoft acquired the developers roberts was forced out and the ambition cut down it was a decent game so i hear but the story wasn't over yet the dream was still alive over the past 20 years crowdfunding platforms have made it easier than ever for aspiring dreamers to get a financial foothold no publisher no limits but the ones you set for yourself and sometimes it works but sometimes it doesn't it's 2022. star in the title of a crowdfunding project now makes as many eyes roll as it attracts but most eyes are on just one of them bounties trading mining farming building fighting sneaking salvaging boarding racing flying policing reporting modifying delivering fueling housing healing hacking exploring in the most immersive world ever created in an mmo environment with a single player campaign with a celebrity cast with the largest development budget in history with 10 years of development 10 years of controversy and no end in sight star citizen [Music] networks they're really quite cool if cig knew that before they started we wouldn't be here but squarespace have always understood the belief that a website is merely an archaic resume is outdated it can be a blog it can be a member exclusive chat room or a newsletter or a hub for all your social media and it can be every one of those things with a handful of clicks on squarespace you don't need 10 years to reach an unpolished first draft you need five minutes with squarespace's design tools as functional as they are intuitive you don't need 400 million dollars you don't even need a credit card not until you're ready to publish so prove it to yourself with no barriers and when you're convinced use code white light at checkout for 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain [Music] chris roberts was back certain now that where they failed he will not and where he failed crowdfunding makes everything different this time freelancer meets its potential and that old dream finally comes true star citizen the implication of space and the implication of a life yours to define star citizen is just a simpler way of saying a universe of possibility which itself is a simpler way of saying i want to escape into a world of meaning and wonder it takes no more than a look at the game to realize what it's meant to be the aesthetic of star citizen is an unapologetic reincarnation of the old but mighty pillars of sci-fi pop culture hot shot fighter pilots mega corps alien barbarians the empire san juans shields blasters and credits it's nostalgic not original it's just the dream with a simple promise it will come true but will it hasn't history painted a clear lesson that will release a shell of itself or not at all doesn't this story have an obvious lesson the stakes for star citizen are high the main character is compelling and humans are driven by stories we would all like a decisive dramatic poetic end with a theme with a point but star citizen has been furiously controversial for a decade not because the answers are simple but because we like them to be and they are not popular narrative pins this history of over ambition on chris roberts alone but it's also true the space sim has lent itself to over ambition since the 1990s to the historian 400 million dollars is a sign the space sim cycle is spinning again but to the faithful that much money and that much time means any development hurdle can be overcome the certainty doesn't exist to prove them wrong and those were just the beginning truth is star citizen is one of the most stubbornly uncertain topics i have ever looked into sometimes because there isn't enough information sometimes because the information is highly complex sometimes because moral grays are difficult the result of either is the uncertainty that has kept this controversy alive for a decade this video is my attempt at a crash course on the star citizen rabbit hole we're going to focus on the problems of years and ignore the problems of the week we'll remove uncertainty where it can be removed and explain it where it can't there are some things i'll choose to leave out some things i'll simplify some things i won't know and mistakes i will make despite my efforts so if you have anything to add please don't hesitate to comment without further ado let's punch the biggest question in the room why is star citizen still not out yet as the gravity of their cash stacks dilated time is feature creep to blame and are back is responsible for repeatedly voting for feature creep those last two are common narratives but reality is not so kind as to do us the mercy of a simple answer the truth begins in 2012 when star citizen had a set vision and a 500 000 funding goal on kickstarter there would be a single-player campaign and a persistent mmo freelancer as it was meant to be it's no surprise this dream would not be insulted by a mere half million pledges rocketed past every stretch goal and with the support of community polls more were added until 65 million features crept and backers approved hence the claim we voted for this well here's where things start getting complicated we didn't who's we we as in a democratic majority of backers true the polls ended with the majority but that was a majority of the fraction of backers who voted 99 [Music] fifty percent try ten and that ten was no representative sample those who engaged were following the project the closest they were most passionate and so most likely to be in favor of dreams but here's another question exactly what dreams were voted for the majority of post-vote stretch goals were such things as ships armor upgrades to already confirmed mechanics and a few new star systems amongst the hundred already promised so less like core functionality more like extras and for those still concerned by the possibility of these extras dragging out development cig had assurances in his celebration of the 20 million milestone roberts himself explained that goals are carefully considered we don't commit to adding features that would hold up the game's ability to go live in a fully functional state and we must not overlook the pretense established the week before in response to the question of star citizen's funding being complete at 21 million chris roberts gave a clear answer no because in his own words the more funds we can raise in the pre-launch phase the more we can invest in additional content more ships characters etc and perhaps more importantly we can apply a greater number of resources to the various tasks to ensure we deliver the full functionality sooner rather than later clear reasoning more money is more game sooner stretch goals then existed under the pretense that feature creep was no concern the biased fraction of those who voted did so under false assurances and if backers aren't to blame then cig is or more accurately chris roberts is the greek god of over ambition himself because clearly features crept regardless not quite it's true that features crept but despite the narrative feature creep is not the reason star citizen still isn't out yet some may consider why not obvious but this is still a popular narrative because the basics are not obvious to everyone with star citizen there is a lot not to know so let's be thorough the typical idea of feature creep requires typical development limits to burden and stretch but star citizen does not have a typical development for one we're asking the wrong question star citizen is out it's early access you can play a live build right now which means there is no one big release for extra features to delay it also means the correct question is this why is it taking so long for star citizen to be good enough feature creep isn't the answer to that either the most conspicuous problem with the build we can play is the lack of fundamental functionality major game systems stability and performance some imagine development resources sapped and stolen from what matters by a temperature sensitive testicle system or something as insignificant as farming but star citizen does not have a typical relationship with resources when development began there was the idea of enough funding the idea of an end but as the project became more successful these limits disappeared why not with more resources you can realize more dream and you can be more employed star citizen have become a theoretically infinite project and if you can reasonably expect to make your dynamic scrotum system in 10 years time feature creep loses much of its meaning so backers are blameless and an excess of features could not be responsible for star citizen sustained distance from the mythical standard good enough we are lacking a stable developed core why ask and the common response suggests that developing this core is simply difficult because of the major technological hurdles presented by star citizen's ever-expanding vision not feature creep scope creep that is why star citizen has taken so long severe and unsanctioned growth of the fundamentals of the game chris roberts was at it again or at least he's who gets the blame but is that fair well kind of i don't doubt he pushed it along but as ever this situation was far more complicated than what one man could be held responsible for you see crowdfunding is susceptible to a runaway effect where the more money you make the more confidence and excitement you generate which makes more money which makes more confidence and more excitement and so on but more money doesn't just mean you can do more it means people expect you to do more and they were about to expect a lot from star citizen to a degree cig cannot be blamed for how much money they were about to make they asked for more funding no one expects to be answered with broken records to another degree they can be blamed for it switching from kickstarter to selling in-game ships for extreme prices is more than just asking right either way star citizen couldn't just be the 20 million dollar game it had to expand there were two options they could deliver the original vision first then the expanded vision later this is safer but takes far more time because you're practically making two separate games controversially star citizen chose the riskier option to go straight for the expanded vision everything depended on cig's ability to realize it which meant the problems the expanded vision was always going to face had become drastically more important the first is simple an expanded vision for a game like star citizen was going to take a very long time to deliver which meant to keep up with expectations it would have to expand even further because this is the games industry and technological standards raised dramatically with time look what happened in just one year after star citizen was announced in 2012 calling itself the best damn space sim ever you could only land at prescribed landing zones there was no guarantee travel would be truly seamless and then no man's sky was announced in 2013 showing the world both of those things the meaning of best damn space sim ever had raised that much in just one year so imagine what 10 years could do to graphics it was 2015 when gary oldman delivered the worst speech ever written as a sneak peek into squadron 42 and then his next-gen face amazed today they're outdone by ubisoft the world will not wait for star citizen photo realism the end of lod distance if cig planned to take another five years of development that's what they need to keep up with this game can't afford to look good by 2015 standards in 2027 after that much time and that much money and so the runaway train has ever further to go but when star citizen chose to go straight for the expanded vision a second problem became much greater the engine achieved with cryengine 3 yes if being the best means the prettiest graphics than in 2012 that meant cryengine 3 and you didn't need to be a prophet to know an engine made for games like halo would struggle to simulate an entire star system with thousands of players but as the expanded vision forced this struggling engine further and further past its limits the greater the problems it would cause the harder it would be for star citizen's development to speed up in detail the major issue was this cryengine servers slow to a crawl as player counts approach 50 not enough for large space battles which meant star citizen always needed to figure out server meshing if two servers both of 50 could communicate between each other effectively enough then interplay could occur as if both servers were the same if a player can shoot a bullet from one server and hit a player in another then that they are different servers is irrelevant you beat cryengine's limit well you do in theory in practice server meshing hasn't budged from cig's r d dungeon ever since and that meager player cap for the entire system makes the vastness of space feel barren for this cryengine has been considered a curse but nevertheless in 2012 it was a lesser curse because star citizen was closer to the game's cryengine was made for smaller planets you could not land where you wanted and where you could was far closer to cryengine's comfort zone large but restrained open spaces is the dna of crisis and the backbone of its freedom of approach crisis wars and hunt showdown brought these worlds online and as for player count 50 is the limit but if star citizen was at any point willing not to be entirely seamless they could divide the world into zones and then it wouldn't be 50 per system it would be 50 per zone cryengine was always a problem but the further the runaway dream forced it past its limits the greater a problem it became which brings us to a conclusion the engine runaway funding expectation ever rising standards and the unmistakable track record of the ceo have each played a lead role in star citizen's complicated relationship with scope creep basically that's why it still isn't out yet you're happy well if you were you'd be the only one not many people are comfortable with this situation and it doesn't take much to see why nobody voted for what we have today no backer from 2012 paid for this vision are expected to wait longer than they may even live to play it in that there is a fundamental ethical problem but it is balanced back into an uncertain gray by potential for the game to be so much more than the vision they paid for but will it be will it meet that potential or will it fail it's one thing to wonder if this is acceptable it's a much larger problem to ask if it will ever happen at all the uncertainty of star citizen success is immense that's what we have to talk about next sometimes things are uncertain because there simply isn't enough information but when it comes to information the bigger argument is not caused by knowing nothing at all it's caused by knowing lots of little things because now there are hundreds of ways you could connect and interpret those little things according to your own biases now there is a great deal of weak evidence for numerous conclusions we're about to see that in practice it is difficult to tell how fast our citizen has to go before it is considered good enough evidence for its doom is found in looking back at how long it has taken to get this far if it's gonna be another five years for major systems completion the runaway dream will make it eight years patience may run out funding may run dry but evidence for star citizen's success comes in the form of certain milestones that could change this calculation floodgates that once opened may lead to better faster and smoother progress technologically these are sometimes affectionately but for the most part mockingly called jesus tech for their narrative role as a savior for instance we know that other things are dependent on the successful implementation of server meshing to what degree well there's a lot we know and a lot we don't so plenty of possibilities at minimum server meshing means slightly higher player counts in one star system and the possibility of visiting others better would be the disastrous state of network performance fixed somewhat or entirely and through that the server-dependent ai we see in mercenary contracts working properly but the fullest implementation of server meshing would mean massive space battles and a player count in the thousands server meshing may bring star citizen bounds closer to good enough in just a few months or just a few years but it may never make it past a hop better procedural generation might be a floodgate for a rocketing rate of star system development but it might never happen it might not be possible tony z's mythical ai tech quantum could lead to staggeringly immersive npcs along with a self-balancing meta game and something resembling shadow of war's nemesis system but that might never happen the gen 12 renderer may make visuals and performance much more gooder how much who knows and it's been a recurring fantasy amongst the community since the project began that the establishment of new production pipelines within cig could mean better results faster but now we have to address the big one the king of all maybes the single player campaign squadron 42 because it is a single player game there will be a full release it is currently cig's first priority if squadron 42 is a major part of what star citizen is the first question and uncertainty is obvious will squadron 42 be good then comes what for many is more important how will that impact the persistent universe squadron 42's reception will have a tremendous effect on faith in the star citizen project this is a full release which means it is an unreserved display of what 600 million dollars in 12 years can do of what chris roberts and cig are truly capable of if people like what they see faith is reinforced funding benefits in proportion star citizen thrives but if they don't well and remember star citizen's expectation is astronomical even being average could have a disastrous long-term effect on sustained backer interest and that's only the psychological impact what about the material one regardless of its reception when squadron 42 is finished it will be finished which means ideally all the staff flood back over and all the shared features made for the campaign first will be complete and polished for import into the persistent universe will it truly be that simple that easy when will squadron 42 be finished how much will those features benefit the pu all questions with no certain answer so the point it is difficult to gauge the success of star citizen because star citizen success depends on the many possible impacts that floodgates could have the next question then is clear why is it difficult to determine which of those many possible impacts floodgates may have why is it difficult to gauge the success of server meshing and squadron 42 and quantum ai well for one few games have implemented similar technologies no games to similar extents so what can star citizen be compared to the next is a little more complicated star citizen has what's called an open development where live streams updates the next of a thousand youtube videos and yearly conventions provide a collective window into what's being worked on when and how now the last thing open development should create is uncertainty in fact it ought to reduce uncertainty because when you rely on public donation you want your backers assured you want them faithful hopeful and confident the problem is if you live on public donation you can be harmed by bad publicity which means you do not actually want transparency maybe because you have something to hide maybe because something entirely normal could be unfairly misinterpreted or used against you either way the result is not an open window it's not specificity it's the revelation of what is likely to have the greatest benefits for the lowest costs it's a great deal of weak evidence that the faithful interpret favorably and the skeptical certainly do not take the progress tracker for instance go ahead track some progress with the progress tracker you're done okay now come to a single conclusion of certainty good luck as the community is repeatedly reminded the fluid stop start nature of development and developers means progress on the tracker cannot be meaningfully translated into estimates of anything it tells us in great detail that things are happening which does inspire confidence but how much depends entirely on faith squadron 42's progress reports are in a similar state each month brings a new post brimming with bullet points a third style of press on to the breakfast bar an ai that can trim its own pubes and greater enemy accuracy in mid-range engagements all things that sound good but feel unquantifiable without further context that we don't have strenuous detail on each of star citizen's major technologies is no different maybe all these technical terms and impressive graphics should assure me maybe they make sense but it's just theory and there are a thousand things you could choose not to tell me and you have motive not to tell me those things who can provide certainty apart from experts and which experts can i trust the ones on their team who cannot say anything that would break faith in the project or the unverified industry veterans on reddit who somehow come to completely opposing conclusions more often than not cig's transparency increases confidence but only through faith faith that what they're saying is true and what we're shown is the whole picture it sustains the confidence of those who want to believe but it fails to convince those who don't it balances the uncertainty of star citizen success squadron 42 and jesus tech make it difficult to project the length of the journey to good enough but nothing is simple with star citizen and projecting the journey is not our only problem there is disagreement as to what exactly good enough should mean there is disagreement as to how close the game is today to that standard to demonstrate these problems and to find some answers we're gonna need to look within the game itself i can put this down as a business expense right things get fraught about one second in when the game's staggeringly awful performance races with its staggeringly beautiful presentation to make the first impression every frame a painting and you'll get to savor every frame whether you're looking out the window or into the cabin itself rooms like these are where new players start it's not often you'll find yourself drooling over a game's rooms star citizen has really good just walls and chairs and things the detail the style the fidelity the consistency it matches even cyberpunk and in more ways than one though of course the only way to see a planet in cyberpunk was to glitch through the map in star citizen that's just one of the ways the best is to get in your stunning ship and go there so it looks really good but it runs really bad and it's difficult to say if it runs really bad because it looks really good or because the technical state is just a mess few games of this detail have ever existed on this scale then again few games run on frankenstein engines star citizen's performance is tough to judge and things get a lot more complicated when you turn to assess the content of whatever number of ships were promised we have about a hundred most of which are flyable and many of which are so absurdly detailed inside that you really can justify a 30-minute architectural review there's no trickery there is the product of 400 million dollars there is the dream simply come true so now let's compare that to something else we were promised over 100 star systems but right now we don't even have 50 we don't even have 40 or 25 or 10 or 2 yes there is one star system in the best damn space sim ever it's easy to see why this is such a popular talking point among star citizens detractors one of a hundred is quite a distance from good enough but i wonder is a hundred star systems a fair definition of good enough this was a promise made in 2012 the visions changed what it means to be a planet has changed and so what it means to be a system has two if you were to receive 100 today it would be many times what was promised so you see there are many things people choose to compare against many different standards but some more often than others and one of the most important standards is also one of the most debated being a fun game simple vital and no definition of good enough is worth considering without it but ask whether or not star citizen is a fun game and answers differ wildly let's find out why there is not very much to do in star citizen there isn't much to trade there isn't a story there are some basic mercenary contracts that don't always work there are some bare bones deliveries there are some bounty mechanics but the highlight of star citizen's content is generally considered its occasional community events where a server is encouraged to converge on a specific location and complete a simple task people can cooperate people can compete but the thing is people are inconsistent sometimes it will be fun sometimes it will not and star citizen is inconsistent sometimes the event will function sometimes it won't and it's only occasionally on luck and timing have a considerable influence on answers to is this game fun that and whether or not your friends have star citizen but this is only part of the picture there is more to star citizen than content than game systems and progression loops in one way star citizen is utterly unmatched and the biggest reason star citizen's fun factor is so debated is that this one way only matters to some let me tell you the story of how long it took to find my ship well the first vehicle i found was a train and on it i began to understand what was going on if immersion is the gap between player and world then for a player who wishes to live a different life and for a game made to fulfill that fantasy immersion can mean everything but chris roberts won't settle for the best graphics and sound not even derek smart's holy grail the uncompromising first-person perspective with no cuts and total seamlessness will satiate a man who has spent his life trying to push simulations one step further here i stood on a train where you could sit in every seat after having to look for the departure gates then wait for its arrival here i stood waiting once again to arrive not at my ship but at the airport that leads to my ship once you make it through the businesses whose merchandise is physically displayed in store request the ship's deployment from a departure terminal then make your way to the appropriate hangar using signs to find it star citizen does not care for convenience it is so committed to the fantasy that ease of use will always be sacrificed in its name and those most passionate for the dream will never be frustrated because they want to feel that it's real that they are in it an actual star citizen alongside their friends i had to climb into my pilot seat manually through a fully rendered interior and watched the windscreen dance with supposedly relevant lights but i never felt it was pointless because what i really felt was chills it's not fun in the usual sense but to many it is a good time you do not transfer cargo into your ship via some ethereal inventory system you use your hands you do not enter a different seat by pressing a button you get out and walk to the seat then press a button you do not sell the or you mine you take it to the refinery then you sell it you do not simply land at a station you request permission then you land and unless you'd like a parking ticket you land appropriately which yes i found out the hard way nor did i imagine that i would one day enjoy getting a parking ticket everything relevant to the fantasy of being a star citizen is real in star citizen little did i know that my parking ticket came with a crime stat that if high enough could land me in space prison or pursued by space bounty hunters that i would need to space escape from there are no loading screens anywhere ever you can watch other people interacting with physical interfaces but all of that pales in comparison to what happens when you stand in the cargo bay of a moving ship nothing nothing happens the physics do not snap and you are not ejected into glitch limbo as it is with so many other games where player characters and fast-moving containers co-exist in star citizen you simply remain free to fire out an open hangar door drive in as many vehicles as you please and transport passengers or cargo freely there's fun to be had here just because it's novel there's fun to be had here because assuming proper balance being able to do more things relevant to your objectives makes the game deeper but mainly it's just cool because it's cool people see this on a bed bananas video and they're sold on star citizen for the same reason fully rendered ship interiors excites them it lacks content it lacks stability but it has fantasy to those who value min maxing maths and meta games the dream world it's all housed in means little they look at this and see style over substance but to those who see a metaverse a universe and wonder to those who see it like chris roberts there is truly nothing else quite like it oh he promised the maths in the metagames too it's valid to expect them but for those who simply don't well the game seems pretty damn good right now so detractors laugh at bugs and proponents drool over screenshots detractors despair over a hundred systems and proponents just don't care some demand content others are fine with fantasy floodgates change everything but no one knows where or when they are i speak as if these are binary in reality it's a spectrum but this is the balance in the decade of uncertainty surrounding star citizen success that leaves us with one more problem a darker problem whether or not star citizen deserves to succeed morals there are a few things star citizen hasn't been accused of nepotism disrespect of backers unprofessional conduct important issues but gossip compared to what makes people really uncomfortable funding money what's moral what's necessary and that starts online stressing the difference between a purchase and a pledge cig have a vast web store where funding the dream serves to excuse extensive monetization and extreme prices 15 pounds for a skin 20 for a monthly subscription 25 for a mug hundreds for a ship you can buy in-game currency there was a time you could buy digital land but a cig would remind you this isn't a purchase it's a pledge yeah but is it though the value of a pledge should be the pledge itself not the item attached to it so why do they offer sales discounts this is not a patreon it's a microtransaction mega store the question is if it can be justified cig need a lot of money the financial details we have are not exact but they burn cash and if this project is to succeed they need a solid income it's the stubborn moral grey of making dreams come true that we may not be comfortable with what it takes we have to consider whether the ends justify the means star citizen's average pledge is anywhere from 100 to 300 they are making as much if not more money from a game that barely exists than other live games do finished maybe that's not fair but maybe there's no other way to realize such an absurdly ambitious project let's add another layer the average pledge is high but it is a mean average the extremes influence it immensely and odds say the median backer hasn't spent far beyond the minimum cost of entry 45 they're not paying the price of a full game most would consider that a good thing but what accounts for the difference between the median and the mean whales space whales who in star citizen exist in the context of a scheme called concierge also known as the chairman's club this is a hierarchy of whale boy scout badges you are high admiral if your purchases total to one thousand dollars you are legatus navium for 25 000. members enjoy a number of gold skins badges flares a hotline to premium customer service and 15 times greater success on tinder for prospective members the money is usually spent on ships and the most expensive ship packages are sold exclusively to concierge for as much as tens of thousands of dollars yes one of the rewards for spending huge sums of money is the ability to spend even more money but it works concierge works because star citizen is a large community and status symbols do have value so there is an incentive to be just a little more charitable cig sold the most passionate believers a way to prove their devotion and this cultivation of space whales has accounted for a significant fraction of their financial success all it takes is a few hundred backers making thousand dollar purchases for that month to become another crowdfunding record the question is can it be justified for outsiders it is hard not to be disturbed by the power dynamic but can that get past the defense they can send it it's their money well some say it can because consent is not rigid if it's based on false assumptions for example the false assumption that star citizen is going to be something or have something much sooner than it really will star citizen has a legendary reputation for setting expectations then breaking them which over 10 years and as you might expect has caused a bit of a tiff some say cig have lied others believe they're innocent that these failures were justified or unavoidable but what swings the balance immediately is that cig have incentive to set release dates faith hope confidence for cig these are lifeblood and nothing builds confidence quite like a release target that target is a statement it means they think they can make it it is a quantification of progress it's confidence but there is also incentive to simply make things seem close coming this year is exciting excitement keeps an audience around in their wallets loose people will be upset if you fail but the benefits almost always outweigh the costs so bearing the motive to set goals in mind let's address the most popular defense of cig's failure to meet them the goals are not promises point being they never said it was certain there was never a guarantee and they often explicitly label them tentative so missing a goal does not warrant outrage at first this seems fair if i say i hope to be with you in 15 minutes you're allowed to be disappointed if i'm late but you can't hold it against me because one of a thousand unforeseen difficulties could cause a delay skeptics however remain unconvinced they believe this argument only works in isolation you certainly can hold it against me if i keep saying 15 minutes after hundreds of failures and i have incentive to make things seem like they're happening soon it is the bird's eye view the 10-year trend the continued failure and the continued failure to adjust for the possibility of such unforeseen difficulties that justifies their backlash we can even put a number to it cig claimed 70 confidence in hitting even tentative goals they do not live up to those arts you might then think they're frustratingly over-optimistic you might think they just don't know how to set an accurate goal even though they usually seem to be inaccurate in the most convenient direction bearing the motive in mind you might even think they're not being entirely honest let's see what you think by the end theatres of war is a fun place to start argumentatively fun not physically because that would require star citizen's big team battle combined arms pvp mode to actually exist here is a statement from citizencon 2019 and here is another at the beginning of 2020 [Music] and here is another from right now it still doesn't real i'm not entirely sure how any catastrophic technical issues or any runaway dream concerns were still unknown in [ __ ] distance of the release window but what do i know well i do know one thing that this has happened before with star citizen small scale competitive fps mode star marine they said it was coming and it didn't then they said it was coming a few more times and it didn't and then it did and it was bad which is besides the point point is you'd think they would have learnt their lesson about over-promising anticipated game modes bear lessons in mind here is aaron roberts chief development officer stating that the server meshing technology to increase player counts to massively multiplayer standards will be next year he said that in 2018. here is aaron roberts same year making repeated assurances that he and the teams were exceptionally confident in their new content roadmap with this release of the road map i have very much made sure and asked the team that what we put in there is what we can achieve with what we have right now this time we put in what we are pretty damn sure we can do okay so now i'm signing up for this we try and learn so believe it or not so we uh so yeah that i mean that we got aggressive we did the stuff and we said well this time let's just put it in the roadmap which is people feel is completely doable unless we get to the end of q2 and we take a look and go you know i actually need to change direction do this or change stuff around i feel very comfortable with that road now spoiler alert they shouldn't have been here is chris roberts using the word will to describe a feature for 2017 that still doesn't exist today that's that won't be in 3-0 but in 3-0 you'll be able to blow doors and it will be atmosphere here is chris roberts promising the second star system and thus server meshing implicitly for 2020. we are going to have the pyro system next year uh obviously uh squadron 42 on the other hand regrettably couldn't make release for 2016. it wasn't 18 months away in 2018 either beta didn't arrive when it was pushed back into q3 2020 and now it's still two years away we could keep going if we were a little less forgiving we'd still be here tomorrow in isolation the reasons for these delays can be taken as a defense but it's been a long time they never learned their lesson not from freelancer not from no man's sky is there any other company who ought to know better than cig some chalk this up to roberts's starry eyed optimism even roberts chalks it up to that but setting aside the fact the most egregious over-promises did not come from him it is difficult to believe a personality quirk could be that persistent that immune to any attempt at restraint he just couldn't stop himself no one else could hand him a script but maybe there was a motive to keep on talking there is a vast difference between the outright lie of advertising something that will not or cannot exist and being a little more optimistic than you know you should be between evil and what you think of as necessary would this project have survived a decade if it did not always seem only two years away do the ends justify the means dishonesty calls into question the consent that justified thousand dollar purchases and i could read you a thousand stories of people who've spent that much money abandoning the project years later feeling betrayed do the end still justify the means some say yes some don't want to admit to saying yes some say no and others say no but just as much blame lies with the backers for allowing themselves to be lied to it's worth exploring that last one the argument goes that just as chris roberts should know better from his countless mistakes so should backers from that same pattern fool me 46 times shame on who then there is the matter of why why would someone not wise up or adjust to this pattern the obvious reason is that star citizen's dream is exceptionally powerful people want to believe in it another reason could be sunken cost fallacy where people continue to believe in the present purely to justify what they've invested in the past but contrary to some wild assumptions the average backer is less than 60 bucks deep i'd put forward a further reason that for some believing in star citizen is itself valuable it has never been easier for communities to form around common interests than it is in the online world of today and there is a value in that sense of community alone but with projects like star citizen destiny and the early access game there is something particularly attractive that finished games or closed developments do not have they are in the process of becoming something great and through a relatively open development their followers feel a part of that journey it's collective purpose a desire as old as time and for many a scratch to that itch is the most valuable thing star citizen will ever be and that value is real but it might help a company like bungie like blizzard or like cig to get away with more than they otherwise could and that's a dilemma no one has an answer to which makes it the perfect place to end a video like this thank you for watching [Music] special thanks go out to chase baker chino dr pavel eli weaver francisco garcia g series gourmet crap it's not v john c john lemley caleb doss kanra hutterke lex williams l hudson mt the poet newts storyteller max save the wayfinder 12 william vossler warthol abby andrei baltuta anton attila bloth blue eyes white idiot bossian brandon harris brendan mcdonald caleb finnamal calvin black carlos skibber christopher richardson colby the ranch man combat wombat connor fraser corey walterbeak dan walker darren chambers deluxo dj dominic jaworski enzo eric mahul ethan siege floyd dibben hunnez norwiger harry rose idibery hypocrite holy shift i joined tier 3 because i wanted to hear white light say this out loud i pay my chem girl so why not you joe simmons joshua w schreiner kasper schmidt libermeer mitkov malone patron monochrome only nathan navy husky princess zed rolo runner sad cabbage shade starria the last great opium den trending tech vertigos vladimir oberkov and voy [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Whitelight

Views: 1,058,107

Keywords: star citizen, star citizen documentary, star citizen review, should i get star citizen, star citizen gameplay, star citizen pc, star citizen chris roberts, star citizen explained, star citizen failure, star citizen success, star citizen game, space game, star citizen crowdfund, star citizen whitelight, star citizen controversy, is star citizen good, star citizen release date

Id: w9x7QppQabk

Length: 46min 5sec (2765 seconds)

Published: Sat May 14 2022