Yeah, we've been hearing from and talking to various current and former employees at CIS for a while now.
it's CIG Cloud Imperium Games
I genuinely commend you for not doing with your stories what The Escapist just did, though.
Yeah, we've been hearing from and talking to various current and former employees at CIS for a while now.
Similar to ARK, the majority of Star Citizen will be in the hands of backers before it is "done." I think that softens the wait considerably for many fans.
Yeah, we've been hearing from and talking to various current and former employees at CIS for a while now. I've spent a ton of time editing and working with others on the team and we've published a couple of things so far. Part of our job is to determine what's relevant, concrete information that's actually worth reporting and what's just gossip from employees who are angry for one reason or another.
FWIW, this is one of the most disgusting pieces of reporting I've ever seen, and I'm legit shocked that any professional website would publish something like "It was also claimed that Gardiner used race as a determining factor in selecting employees, allegedly once saying 'We aren't hiring her. We aren't hiring a black girl'" without crystal-clear sourcing and evidence (and without giving the person in question a chance to defend herself).
What's really ironic is that the Escapist article's author is a huge figure of GamerGate, a movement about ethics in journalism.
The latest wave of attacks on the project are following the absolutely incredible gameplay demos at Gamescom. No amount of progress will stop the attacks. Even the finished game will be picked apart and criticized, regardless of how it compares to projects of similar budget and talent.It's a good thing they have Citizencon coming up on Oct 10. It'll help to have some signs of progress.
If bosses are rolling around every AAA dev process calling people faggots and saying "We aren't hiring a black girl," then surely it's still a problem?
Of course they don't realize this.
People who follow the development and watch as the game becomes more mature and complete are not worried about its current status. However, it will be 2-3 years before everything promised is completed, that much is clear.
I'm confused, is Chris Roberts' really naive enough to think Gamer Gate is about Ethics in Games Journalism? I thought maybe he was taking the piss on this one but then he kind of kept going with it.
Do people not realize that this game has alphas for every module they do?
Hell they've even created awesome issue tracker for community to post the bugs. They have the most awesome tools to catch the bugs before going fully live.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/community/issue-council/
Yeah, this whole situation stinks--Smart (obviously), the anonymous but serious allegations from Escapist, Roberts' unprofessional response.
Honestly, in a weird way, this whole thing almost makes me feel warm and fuzzy about FD's somewhat conservative approach to Elite.
Its an interesting model
I do worry about burnout before the game launches though
Minecraft and many other early access games were pretty open ended, creation influenced, moddable, and could potentially be endlessly replayable (dayz)
What is your take on Star Citizens model?
Let's say this is all true, at their current burn rate are they going to have money to last another 2-3 years?
this doesn't help in the long run unless you are meeting some specific target, in this case, the game doesn't even appear to have a target. So you could spend forever fixing bugs, but you need a complete game at some point as well. you can have the best process but what's the end goal?
There's so many red flags here it's pretty interesting. How much more expense is racked up for every month the game is in development? 100 million isn't even much money if it's going to be 5-6 years.
I don't see how you can look at Chris's response and say it's logical. The first part is basically some tinfoil conspiracy theory about Derek Smart and Gamergate connections.
Anyone with PR worth a damn never would have signed off on that. It's the Dan Gilbert letter all over again.
If CIG/RSI has a PR person they must be hitting their head against a wall right now or hitting the bottle early. There is no way one worth their salt would ever think what Roberts just responded with was a good idea.
Yeah, we've been hearing from and talking to various current and former employees at CIG for a while now. I've spent a ton of time editing and working with others on the team and we've published a couple of things so far. Part of our job is to determine what's relevant, concrete information that's actually worth reporting and what's just gossip from employees who are angry for one reason or another.
FWIW, this is one of the most disgusting pieces of reporting I've ever seen, and I'm legit shocked that any professional website would publish something like "It was also claimed that Gardiner used race as a determining factor in selecting employees, allegedly once saying 'We aren't hiring her. We aren't hiring a black girl'" without crystal-clear sourcing and evidence (and without giving the person in question a chance to defend herself).
What's really ironic is that the Escapist article's author is a huge figure of GamerGate, a movement about ethics in journalism.
The latest wave of attacks on the project are following the absolutely incredible gameplay demos at Gamescom. No amount of progress will stop the attacks. Even the finished game will be picked apart and criticized, regardless of how it compares to projects of similar budget and talent.
What's really ironic is that the Escapist article's author is a huge figure of GamerGate, a movement about ethics in journalism.
After our chat and the initial story ran, we had a bunch of former employees and current employees step up to talk to us about Star Citizen and what is happening with the game. The allegations and concerns are numerous (see below), which gives us a sense of urgency to get this story out there ASAP, ideally first thing tomorrow morning.
Escapist's rationale for rushing out the piece is really shady:
That makes no sense.
I love how both you and Roberts referred to GG as being about ethics in journalism™.
That makes no sense.
But there is already a mountain of progress to point to, including the multiple weekly "shows" and a damn magazine CIG produces for the benefit of their backers.It's not to stop the people making the attacks - it's just to give supporters some recent progress to point to in response.
I'm confused, is Chris Roberts' really naive enough to think Gamer Gate is about Ethics in Games Journalism? I thought maybe he was taking the piss on this one but then he kind of kept going with it.
"I realized it was affecting my health, my home life. I needed to get out. So I left. I had no job lined up. I just had to get out. I looked at my situation, I had enough in savings, so I left," CS3 told me. "I couldn't take it. 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. No one was empowered to do their jobs well. Everything was second guessed, and the default reaction to everything was blame and yelling and emails with all capital letters and curse words."
Yeah, but its mostly due to Chris really holding back for months on commenting on Smart's attacks and probably this article was the last straw for his patience and politically correct respons.The rebuttals are important to post, considering the accusations, but hooooly crap, that first part just kept going, and does not make Robert look 'better' than Smart.
FWIW, this is one of the most disgusting pieces of reporting I've ever seen, and I'm legit shocked that any professional website would publish something like...
Let's say this is all true, at their current burn rate are they going to have money to last another 2-3 years?
If the 261 employee number is accurate, and assuming average cost of an employee is $60k+20k in benefits and payroll taxes. That's about $21 million per year, and I haven't factored the cost of the office and utilities, and marketing (such as E3 and other conventions etc).
If there is only $8 Million left. Which I don't see refuted, how are they going to last 2-3 years?
Secondly, the company uses additional sources of funding such as tax incentives, marketing and product partnerships, but we do not discuss these issues in public for obvious reasons. We always keep a healthy cash reserve and operate our business prudently based on the incoming revenue. It should tell you something that we are actually increasing our global headcount not decreasing it despite the inaccurate rumours perpetuated by Derek Smart.
FWIW, this is one of the most disgusting pieces of reporting I've ever seen, and I'm legit shocked that any professional website would publish something like ...
You work for Gawker, you can't be quite as shocked as you claim.
You called George Kamitani a 14-year-old boy because you didn't like his art style...
Glass houses, man.
anyone know how to go about getting a refund?
You sound like a Gamergater! I'm not going to derail this thread by getting into random stories Kotaku has reported in the past, but I will say that we have never and would never publish anything like this. Look at this sentence again:You should take a look at some of the gawker pieces then. Or better yet, what about that old rape fiasco piece on kotaku about cards against humanity? Or stardock.
Glass houses and all.
You sound like a Gamergater! I'm not going to derail this thread by getting into random stories Kotaku has reported in the past, but I will say that we have never and would never publish anything like this. Look at this sentence again:
"It was also claimed that Gardiner used race as a determining factor in selecting employees, allegedly once saying 'We aren't hiring her. We aren't hiring a black girl.'"
Where is the sourcing here? The first part of the sentence uses passive language -- "It was also claimed" -- which is awful, cowardly writing that presents a horrible accusation about a real person without explaining where it came from or why the author believes it's true. Earlier in the graf the author cites someone named " -- I guess codenames are fun -- which could imply that the accusation came from them, but that's thin sourcing by any definition of the word, and no responsible reporter would ever allege that someone said something this horrible with such flimsy evidence backing them up.
You called George Kamitani a 14-year-old boy because you didn't like his art style...
Glass houses, man.
People need to start demanding the base game then, and NOT just with Star Citizen.It's pretty obvious for those who worked in the industry.
The more features a game has, the worse development gets.
Reads like a FUD hit piece. Roberts shouldn't even be responding, particularly not through the Escapist. If he wanted to respond he should have done it through his own forum/website.
I have no doubt there are some issues at the studio, as with most game studios, but this article seems like junk. The whole Derek Smart+GG involvement makes me even less inclined to believe most of this.
You can get a loooot of money through tax incentives -just ask Curt Schilling.
Roberts' long-winded rant on Derek Smart feels less 'I'm trying to explain' and more 'I'm discrediting you via expose'
The rebuttals are important to post, considering the accusations, but hooooly crap, that first part just kept going, and does not make Robert look 'better' than Smart.
Shouldn't need to be said, but the article is also terrible. The rationale for 'needing' to get it posted ASAP (before a reasonable chance for rebuttal, especially after they took the time to 'ask' for it) is one of the biggest pieces of shit I've heard in a while.
He did respond through his website, then Escapist updated their article.
backers be like