Vigilant Walrus
Member
To clarify, I believe the stuff in the article is already an indication of mismanaged backer funds, insofar as the toxic work community, lack of realistic goals, the CryEngine rabbit hole, and internal miscommunications have set the project back years, and during this time many millions of dollars has been spent. I just wish we had something more concrete in terms of the actual numbers. 2/3rds was indeed a hypothetical, but not an implausible one.
The problem with what you're saying here is that toxic work community, lack of realistic goals and internal miscommunications are loaded labels that befits every major game development studio that has projects with many hundreds of people in teams all over the world.
I don't work in games, but having worked in software I promise you- I absolutely promise you that this is the norm, and it is hell. It can be a living nightmare to work in this industry. Overwork, managers who ask the impossible, inefficent beaucracy across the entire structure.
The reason why this is apparent here is because Star Citizen has had a open ended transparent development.
That doesn't mean there is not legitimacy to the accusations- or at least some of them. But I am sure there are many comparable testimonials from developers who worked on Destiny, Metal Gear Solid, GTA, Assassin Creed and others. You always don't have enough time. The goals are always to high. You're ALWAYS being asked to deliver the impossible and things get rushed, and things are not done logical.
I wish I wish I wish so much that many gamers could see what it is like- To see the level of complete and utter chaos and abuse done by the grunt designers and programmers who have to slave to make the leads vision come to pass.
Every game has major features and systems cut. Every game starts out with a unrealistic spec sheet.
What you got here is a man- who has no investors saying when he has to stop. It's not like with Molyneaux or Kojima- Who eventually are forced to compromise on their vision. They have the perfect game in their head. There is no doubt about it. But the management and scope of the project is such that there is no way to fulfill it. Microsoft/EA/Kojima says "enough!" and the thing gets released- finished or not finished.
But we see games all the time that continues. FFXV- The Last Guardian. Entire gameplay systems gets scrapped. Months and quarters worth of tech and development gets wasted and things get rebooted. And the more ambitious the project the harder it is to realize.
I think this game is absolutely stunning. It's insane. Not since Shenmue have we seen a game of this level of ambitious and detail. And the usual stop blocks don't apply because roberts is not answering to nobody. I really hope he pulls it off.
I am optimistic. It's not that many months ago when they first showed the FPS module and it looked absolutely atrocious. But have you seen the new videos? Its like a different game. It looks as smooth as Crysis 3- It's responsive, the animations are more seamless. the reloading looks good. there is some very nice particle effects and that laggyness seems to be gone.
It's still a demo- But it went from looking "dear god no" to really damn good in a manner of months.
And what I take away from all this is that the iderative process- the process of showing something when it is dogshit and then fixing it slowly as the months roll by needs to be met with a certain level of patience. This is why developers polish alpha and beta versions to outragous levels. gamers run with it and pass judgment before the product is done. Its a shame because it hinders the level of feedback that could otherwise be achieved from the community if they could show the game in earlier stages without creating such levels of conspiracy and rapid judgment on a product that is so far from being finished.