Author Topic: Chris Roberts - A Legacy Of Failure  (Read 76804 times)

dsmart

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Chris Roberts - A Legacy Of Failure
« on: November 28, 2016, 09:56:00 AM »
Much has been written about this "visionary", Chris Roberts, despite the fact that, aside from Wing Commander, all his legacy amounts to is a string of failed or games he wasn't directly involved in, failed movies and studio, and various other failed enterprises - all of which started and finished which him playing with, and losing, other people's money. And it started right after he left EA to form Digital Anvil.

Recently a post appeared on FDev forums which highlighted some comments (see page 45-46) from the Strike Commander manual. A game which, like Freelancer, echoed the same traits that we're now seeing with Star Citizen. Except this time, it's not publishers money; but money from gamers, investors and banks.

As is now known, Microsoft, after investing in Digital Anvil, ended up buying the company, and booting Roberts, Zurovec and others out shortly thereafter in 2000. In 2005, Microsoft eventually shutdown Digital Anvil and sold off some of it's game IP.

Here is a GameSpot interview which sheds some light on how the move to Microsoft came about.

Quote
GS: In a time when a developer's freedom is fast becoming scarce, why would you choose to make Digital Anvil a division of the world's largest software company?

CR: It's very difficult to build wildly ambitious games without the financial security of a larger company, especially when their development cycles are so unpredictable. Freelancer was meant to take three years - it will probably be four and a half years by the time it is done. It's very tough for an independent developer to weather that kind of slip, and it's not just Digital Anvil. I believe all A+ games require severe patience and funds - witness Team Fortress 2 and Black & White.

An interview about the death of the celebrity studio:

Quote
Digital Anvil Hammered

The next high profile collapse was to be Digital Anvil, co-founded in 1997 by the brothers behind the Wing Commander and Privateer series, Chris and Erin Roberts. The company soon had four seperate titles under development, not to mention the truly awful Wing Commander movie helmed by Chris Roberts.

Four years later their sole release to date is a rather unremarkable space combat sim called Starlancer. In fact, most of the actual work on the game had been done by a British developer called Warthog, so arguably Digital Anvil still haven't released anything of their own after four years. With the company still soaking up money and no end in sight for many of its more ambitious titles, something had to give.

In November publisher Microsoft announced that they had pulled the plug on space strategy game Conquest, apparently because it didn't meet their high expectations. It was already two years late. This proved to be the end for Digital Anvil, as just days later Microsoft announced that they had bought out the ailing company. Loose Cannon, another long overdue title, was also canned, with the designer leaving the company and eventually striking up a deal with UbiSoft to complete work on it. Chris Roberts will be leaving the company as soon as he has finished his work on Freelancer.

The History of Wing Commander

Back On The Flight Deck: An Interview With Wing Commander’s Chris Roberts


We are seeing history repeating itself with Star Citizen, and by all accounts, it's not going to end well.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2019, 05:30:07 AM by dsmart »
Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

Kyrt

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Re: Star Citizen - Chris Roberts Legacy Of Failure
« Reply #1 on: November 28, 2016, 10:28:20 AM »
We are seeing history repeating itself with Star Citizen, and by all accounts, it's not going to end well.

And I sincerely hope you are wrong.

I can see the concerns you have raised - but I really like the idea, concept and vision behind Star Citizen.
I want to play it.

Not enough to make me hand over my money to support development but I really want to buy the game when it is released.
So - I want it to be released. I want it to fulfil Chris Roberts' vision. I want it to fulfil the promises made. I want it to be good enough to buy.

So I really, really, really hope you are wrong.

Sadly - while I believe a game will probably be released, I think it won't meet the promises CIG has made. It might still be a good game - but I don't think it can match the hype and expectations.


helimoth

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Re: Star Citizen - Chris Roberts Legacy Of Failure
« Reply #2 on: November 28, 2016, 10:45:36 AM »
We are seeing history repeating itself with Star Citizen, and by all accounts, it's not going to end well.

And I sincerely hope you are wrong.

I can see the concerns you have raised - but I really like the idea, concept and vision behind Star Citizen.
I want to play it.

Not enough to make me hand over my money to support development but I really want to buy the game when it is released.
So - I want it to be released. I want it to fulfil Chris Roberts' vision. I want it to fulfil the promises made. I want it to be good enough to buy.

So I really, really, really hope you are wrong.

Sadly - while I believe a game will probably be released, I think it won't meet the promises CIG has made. It might still be a good game - but I don't think it can match the hype and expectations.

I want to see a release too but that's just because I'm an awful person and I just want to see an SC where the people who have spent thousands finally realize their 'investment' bought them zero in-game advantages. Should it release, RSI are going to be very thirsty for new cash and will immediately set about depreciating any ingame value or purpose of the currently pledged-for ships. I'd almost guarantee it. The thousand-dollar tears shed on that day will be the saltiest of them all and I intend to bottle them to be sold as a vintage.

Stan

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Re: Star Citizen - Chris Roberts Legacy Of Failure
« Reply #3 on: November 29, 2016, 01:25:17 AM »
We are seeing history repeating itself with Star Citizen, and by all accounts, it's not going to end well.

And I sincerely hope you are wrong.

I can see the concerns you have raised - but I really like the idea, concept and vision behind Star Citizen.
I want to play it.

Not enough to make me hand over my money to support development but I really want to buy the game when it is released.
So - I want it to be released. I want it to fulfil Chris Roberts' vision. I want it to fulfil the promises made. I want it to be good enough to buy.

So I really, really, really hope you are wrong.

Sadly - while I believe a game will probably be released, I think it won't meet the promises CIG has made. It might still be a good game - but I don't think it can match the hype and expectations.

A game isn't going to be released.

CR seems to have learnt NOTHING other than how to rob people.

Propaganda Machine

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Re: Star Citizen - Chris Roberts Legacy Of Failure
« Reply #4 on: December 10, 2016, 02:25:38 PM »
I want to see a release too but that's just because I'm an awful person and I just want to see an SC where the people who have spent thousands finally realize their 'investment' bought them zero in-game advantages. Should it release, RSI are going to be very thirsty for new cash and will immediately set about depreciating any ingame value or purpose of the currently pledged-for ships. I'd almost guarantee it. The thousand-dollar tears shed on that day will be the saltiest of them all and I intend to bottle them to be sold as a vintage.

You know, I have never, ever wanted to spend money on, much less play, Star Citizen, but you make a good point here.

Stan

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Re: Star Citizen - Chris Roberts Legacy Of Failure
« Reply #5 on: December 11, 2016, 01:10:49 AM »
I want to see a release too but that's just because I'm an awful person and I just want to see an SC where the people who have spent thousands finally realize their 'investment' bought them zero in-game advantages. Should it release, RSI are going to be very thirsty for new cash and will immediately set about depreciating any ingame value or purpose of the currently pledged-for ships. I'd almost guarantee it. The thousand-dollar tears shed on that day will be the saltiest of them all and I intend to bottle them to be sold as a vintage.

You know, I have never, ever wanted to spend money on, much less play, Star Citizen, but you make a good point here.

IIRC there is something floating about in the CR Star Citizen spiel that players will not be able to trade their own ships to other players in the early days of the PU release.   This is only going to make any price crash even more pronounced. 

You have the usual sycophants claiming that "rare" ships going up in price will compensate for this.  It is funny because so many backers talk about their "investment" when they would clearly better better off investing their money elsewhere with a view to coming back to any released SC  to consider buying any ships they might want then.

Kyrt

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Re: Star Citizen - Chris Roberts Legacy Of Failure
« Reply #6 on: December 11, 2016, 01:48:24 AM »
What investment?

They are paying thousands to preorder a $60 game which is nowhere near complete and providing CIG with a revenue stream that acts as a disincentive for actual release.

But they aren't investing. What it is is an expensive game of Pokemon where people spends money to get the ships...which ironically enough, removes one of the big in game goals of such games.

Those people who bought a Javelin...what is their goal in the game?
« Last Edit: December 11, 2016, 01:50:12 AM by Kyrt »

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - Chris Roberts Legacy Of Failure
« Reply #7 on: December 11, 2016, 05:06:10 AM »
It's even more hilarious when you consider that win, lose, or draw, CIG has ZERO incentive to change the funding for the game. So even if it gets to the point whereby there is an in-game economy, that's when backers are going to realize that, all along, they'd be played.

But there's no need to speculate because I still have no reason to believe that the "game" will ever get that far.
Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

Stan

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Re: Star Citizen - Chris Roberts Legacy Of Failure
« Reply #8 on: December 11, 2016, 11:23:21 PM »
It's even more hilarious when you consider that win, lose, or draw, CIG has ZERO incentive to change the funding for the game. So even if it gets to the point whereby there is an in-game economy, that's when backers are going to realize that, all along, they'd be played.

But there's no need to speculate because I still have no reason to believe that the "game" will ever get that far.

For amusements sake, how much is it likely to cost CR to run a PU and thus how much revenue would he need to generate to pay for the day to day running of the game ?

Kyrt

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Re: Star Citizen - Chris Roberts Legacy Of Failure
« Reply #9 on: December 12, 2016, 03:03:53 AM »
For amusements sake, how much is it likely to cost CR to run a PU and thus how much revenue would he need to generate to pay for the day to day running of the game ?

It depends on a number of factors.

They'll need a number of servers and the quality and expense of those servers will help determine the concurrent player limit. Those servers will need to be housed at a data centre, powered, maintained and bandwidth provided for....bandwidth again determining concurrent player limit. They'll need appropriate security, online moderation and so on. You can double those costs if you want redundancy and if CIG are serious they'll want similar setups in Europe and Asia and possibly Australia to minimise ping times and lag.

How optimised your netcode will be is another factor...if you can represent the position, actions and movement of a player with 1 packet of information instead of two you can double the players on your system.

What CIG will want is as many players per shard per server as possible to minimise costs.

It can be expensive....or fairly cheap. CIG say they plan on scaling to millions....but being blunt, millions of concurrent gamers means tens of millions of active subscribers.

CIG won't have any development costs to pay off...assuming their funding model...but there'll be no subscription fee either.  There'll be microtransactions but also a continuing meed to support existing players and develop the game after launch.

As it is, I haven't heard anything about CIGs plans in this area. If they plan on one universal data centre for everyone, that could put players outside the US at a severe disadvantage due to lag for example. They want 400 players per instance....but according to some players, CIG appears to have some sort of miracle tech which layers multiple instances inside instances to get around existing instance limits but even if that were true (and CIGs own description works against it) data is data and a lot would depend on the quality of the netcode, hardware and associated bandwidth.

Given SCs stature, it'll be a target for DDOS attacks and hacks...we don't knowcwhat sort of security CIG are planning.

But overall, CIG don't appear to have given this much thought. They have systems that have or will scale to allow for millions of players...but nothing on whether they plan on having, for example, multiple data centres across the globe.

To put it another way...
World of Warcraft has servers to handle authentication, looting, the various continents they have, instance servers for their dungeons and raids, and so on.

Some of these...actually, a lot of them...are likely virtual these days. And these are spread across a number of data centres. You can check out some old info on their set up if you want....over 13000 blades across 10 data centres alongside a global NOC and a management of 68 staff.

Of course, servers would have been optimised since then.

To get CIGs "millions of players" however, thst's the scale you'd need.

If they are serious....they'll want three data centres to minimise lag times, a global NOC and an engineering team to manage and secure them (this is not the responsibility of the data centre) and they'll want enough servers of a high enough quality to handle an appropriate load and other tasks such as authentication and security.

And these type of servers are not cheap. Nor is running or maintaining them 24/7. And CIG likely won't have the same efficiencies of scale.

As it is...I think CIG haven't even set up the $25 Million stretch goal of European and Australian test servers. I don't think they"ve bothered with localisation so far for other languages :woop:

TLDR...depends on a number of factors but given CIGs stated goals, likely to be expensive

Narrenbart

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Re: Star Citizen - Chris Roberts Legacy Of Failure
« Reply #10 on: December 12, 2016, 09:07:36 AM »
Don't worry about server structures now, well their "instance'" system (Dynamic instances which will shrink and grow as needed) with transitions in between them without any lags is so far off reality that this will never go live.

Imagine, you shot a missle at a target, this target is behind a small pocket instance (the missle has to pass it) during the flight of the missle 4 ships are entering the pocket instance, this one has to grow now, this also means all others around have to shrink to maintain scaling, all this needs to happen in a 3D environment (which almost resembles to a very complicated puzzle) with all positions intact, in real time ...

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - Chris Roberts Legacy Of Failure
« Reply #11 on: December 12, 2016, 04:02:34 PM »
It's all pie in the sky bullshit which will never happen. They're going to be stuck with the same instancing they have now.

Plus, they are using Google Compute; so there's that. Forget about hardware server costs because GC can get super expensive very quickly. And for this kind of game, it's more expensive than just buying some servers and hosting them via colo at a datacenter.

Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

helimoth

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Re: Star Citizen - Chris Roberts Legacy Of Failure
« Reply #12 on: December 19, 2016, 11:01:35 AM »
Always interesting to read what release dates the shitizens had in mind back in early 2013. I guess their blind faith in the dear leader did not yield much in the way of anything really.

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/16409/is-a-2014-release-rushing-it/

Seems like the rhetoric remains the same today just the dates that have changed.

edit: http://tindeck.com/listen/ukvgr essential background listening whilst you read.
« Last Edit: December 19, 2016, 11:12:25 AM by helimoth »

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - Chris Roberts Legacy Of Failure
« Reply #13 on: December 19, 2016, 11:25:27 AM »
Yeah, they keep moving the goal posts to suit their narrative. Which is just so sad, given that they've paid all this money.
Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - Chris Roberts Legacy Of Failure
« Reply #14 on: February 26, 2017, 07:45:55 AM »
So this GDC 2013 presentation croberts gave, has resurfaced Oh the simpler times  :bahgawd:

Traditional Retail vs Crowd Funded Projects

Key point:


Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

 

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