Star Citizen Development Discussion (Is Derek Smart Right?)

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[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
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Out of curiosity, what are some missions that stick in everyone's heads as good design within the space combat realm?
One of the big ones for me, a very long time ago, was in Privateer 2. You would be flying around in space doing whatever, get a distress call from somewhere, truck your way over to find out it's *BUMBUMBUMMMM* a trap, and proceed to get your tail kicked by pirates unless you knew what you were doing. I thought that was neat, and broke the mold a bit from the 'go here do a thing watch out for the scripted bad guys' model. Could easily be overused though.
 

Fallen Kell

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Yeah. Same here. Show me an Aurora with a Stor-All doing a cargo mission, not scripted combat and a ship that won't be in 3.0, nor in a lot of patches to follow 3.0 (Idris frigate).
Except a cargo mission couldn't be more boring to watch... Maybe a smuggling mission, but not a cargo mission. I mean, seriously that would be like watching paint dry.
 

Fallen Kell

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
6,009
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every x-wing and tie fighter mission was good. And that was like 1992.
Please remember that those were single player games (with extremely limited multiplayer on the last few releases if I remember with some sort of direct connect/dialup type configuration (if I remember correctly)). Also remember that those missions were also more like what we will see out of SQ42, not Star Citizen.
 

JSt0rm

Lifer
Sep 5, 2000
27,399
3,947
126
Please remember that those were single player games (with extremely limited multiplayer on the last few releases if I remember with some sort of direct connect/dialup type configuration (if I remember correctly)). Also remember that those missions were also more like what we will see out of SQ42, not Star Citizen.


my bad. Shart citizen will be about going to X space get orders to pick up thing Y and bring to Z place. Riveting.
 

JSt0rm

Lifer
Sep 5, 2000
27,399
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AND thats end game content. I mean that mission had what? $2000 worth of ships. Us peasants will be mixing drinks on space fart ships.
 
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rivethead

Platinum Member
Jan 16, 2005
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Except a cargo mission couldn't be more boring to watch... Maybe a smuggling mission, but not a cargo mission. I mean, seriously that would be like watching paint dry.

Well to that I would say: if cargo is as boring as watching paint dry, then CIG made it that way. Space, all by itself, is a dangerous environment and operating in space, even a plain cargo run, should have challenges and risks. CIG could script a cargo mission in an Aurora such that one of the power plants fails. Now the thruster only work at 50%. Suddenly the Aurora pilot's scanner picks up an approaching vessel. Not sure of friend or foe, the pilot turns off shields, weapons, and thrusters and routes all power to the scanners. Shit, it's a pirate. Pilot now has a choice: send out a distress beacon and hope the local militia can respond in time (but this would give away his position to the pirate), go completely dark (turn off all systems) and hope pirate overlooks him, limp over to the nearby asteroid field and hope the thrusters have enough power to help avoid crashing into moving rocks (but being in the field would definitely hide you from the pirate). To make that easier, pilot could jettison his Stor-all.....the reduced mass would make it so much easier to navigate an asteroid field (even with 50% thrusters)....but loss of cargo would damage reputation and create a significant financial loss for the pilot......oh what to do?

That missions would be anything but boring to me. That mission would show off so many things CIG has told us about and told us were completed (item 2.0, cargo, service beacons, scanning, etc.). But instead they showed us two cap ships flying like mass-less paper airplanes. And face wrinkles.
 
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zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
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Except a cargo mission couldn't be more boring to watch... Maybe a smuggling mission, but not a cargo mission. I mean, seriously that would be like watching paint dry.

Hold your tongue! I enjoyed dozens of hours transporting space burgers, energy cells, and prostitutes back and forth between my stations in X3! :colbert:
 

Fallen Kell

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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417
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Well to that I would say: if cargo is as boring as watching paint dry, then CIG made it that way. Space, all by itself, is a dangerous environment and operating in space, even a plain cargo run, should have challenges and risks. CIG could script a cargo mission in an Aurora such that one of the power plants fails. Now the thruster only work at 50%. Suddenly the Aurora pilot's scanner picks up an approaching vessel. Not sure of friend or foe, the pilot turns off shields, weapons, and thrusters and routes all power to the scanners. Shit, it's a pirate. Pilot now has a choice: send out a distress beacon and hope the local militia can respond in time (but this would give away his position to the pirate), go completely dark (turn off all systems) and hope pirate overlooks him, limp over to the nearby asteroid field and hope the thrusters have enough power to help avoid crashing into moving rocks (but being in the field would definitely hide you from the pirate). To make that easier, pilot could jettison his Stor-all.....the reduced mass would make it so much easier to navigate an asteroid field (even with 50% thrusters)....but loss of cargo would damage reputation and create a significant financial loss for the pilot......oh what to do?

That missions would be anything but boring to me. That mission would show off so many things CIG has told us about and told us were completed (item 2.0, cargo, service beacons, scanning, etc.). But instead they showed us two cap ships flying like mass-less paper airplanes. And face wrinkles.

Sure, they "could" script a mission like that, but that would break many of the points of the rest of the game (i.e. if you properly maintained your ship, a thruster/engine wouldn't break down, or if you had used upgraded components in the ship, or the ship wasn't an Aurora, but the player used a Ghost Hornet with a cargo pod, and thus you were too stealthy to be detected by the pirates....).

Again, any scripted missions would need to take into account the rest of the capabilities of the game engine and physics that have been created. I mean, it doesn't make sense that your engine would always breakdown if you take a specific mission. There should be a reason for the possible breakdown, which can also be affected by choices the player has made...

Which again gets back to the point of a demo. They showed cap ships because people have been wanting to see cap ships. We can already fly most/many of the smaller 1-3 seat ships, so showing a demo using those ships isn't as impressive.
 

rivethead

Platinum Member
Jan 16, 2005
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Sure, they "could" script a mission like that, but that would break many of the points of the rest of the game (i.e. if you properly maintained your ship, a thruster/engine wouldn't break down, or if you had used upgraded components in the ship, or the ship wasn't an Aurora, but the player used a Ghost Hornet with a cargo pod, and thus you were too stealthy to be detected by the pirates....).

Again, any scripted missions would need to take into account the rest of the capabilities of the game engine and physics that have been created. I mean, it doesn't make sense that your engine would always breakdown if you take a specific mission. There should be a reason for the possible breakdown, which can also be affected by choices the player has made...

Which again gets back to the point of a demo. They showed cap ships because people have been wanting to see cap ships. We can already fly most/many of the smaller 1-3 seat ships, so showing a demo using those ships isn't as impressive.

The vast majority of backers want to see progress, not fluff. The reason I chose a cargo mission is because CIG's own stats tell us that something like 70% of the backers own a starter ship....and nothing more. That means on day 1 these backers are going to be limited to some pretty basic missions. It's only logical that CIG show how interesting these basic missions could be. And while doing that, they show off all those things they've told us are complete (Item 2.0, cargo, scanning, service beacons....hell the new Aurora) but have yet to show us much more than static glimpses and limited clips.

I don't think that breaks any point of the game. It would instead show off specific game play mechanics and/or assets supposedly complete. Essentially a vertical slice of Star Citizen. It would show progress. And progress is a heck of a lot more impressive than fluff. In this backer's opinion any way.
 

JSt0rm

Lifer
Sep 5, 2000
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all cig shows is fluff. They do 2 trade shows a year and have to show cool shit at each one. That means they are constantly prepping for each of those shows and not making a game. The actual game is the last thing when you are making millions on dreams.
 
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zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
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so people are basically paying them millions to not make a game? lol. I told all these fools years ago that this crowd sourcing nonsense was the stupidest thing ever.
 

GoodRevrnd

Diamond Member
Dec 27, 2001
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so people are basically paying them millions to not make a game? lol. I told all these fools years ago that this crowd sourcing nonsense was the stupidest thing ever.
RANDY-MARSH-quotes-global-warming.jpg
 

KMFJD

Lifer
Aug 11, 2005
29,044
41,728
136
all cig shows is fluff. They do 2 trade shows a year and have to show cool shit at each one. That means they are constantly prepping for each of those shows and not making a game. The actual game is the last thing when you are making millions on dreams.
for a game that doesn't need to advertise (wasn't that a selling point?) they do seem to spend a lot of money on advertising (trade shows, atv etc..)
 

werepossum

Elite Member
Jul 10, 2006
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I think that's one of the things that fascinates me the most about this game. It has such a polarizing vibe to it that almost everyone either loves it or completely hates it. As it truly is something that hasn't been done before (I speak mainly of the crowdsourcing and public dev of it mostly as both are normally done behind close doors) I honestly look forward to how it all ends. The ripples from it regardless of it works or fails will be interesting.. at least to me.

The faceware thing confuses me more than it impresses me. I'm not sure I get the point of it, it's like the Kinect only less useful. I guess when you have money coming in like they have you can diversify the IP a bit and create things like having your computer's camera mimic your facial expressions onto your game avatar. At least that's what I'm assuming that's it.. if it's more to it, like they've reinvented the computer camera or worse the Kinect then I really don't get the point..
I'm one of those apparently few who neither loves it nor hates it. It's a game that I MIGHT buy, if it seems to offer something I'd enjoy, gets good reviews and doesn't look like pay-to-win. Honestly to me it looks like a cross between an outright scam and Duke Nukem Forever (or maybe Daikatana Forever) at this point but I'm rooting for Roberts to come through. In the mean time, I find it highly entertaining to watch the process. I avoid the other thread since at this point I don't believe any of the promises will necessarily have any relationship to the eventual game, but damn, that process and the attendant fire (on both sides) are highly entertaining,
 
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werepossum

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Well to that I would say: if cargo is as boring as watching paint dry, then CIG made it that way. Space, all by itself, is a dangerous environment and operating in space, even a plain cargo run, should have challenges and risks. CIG could script a cargo mission in an Aurora such that one of the power plants fails. Now the thruster only work at 50%. Suddenly the Aurora pilot's scanner picks up an approaching vessel. Not sure of friend or foe, the pilot turns off shields, weapons, and thrusters and routes all power to the scanners. Shit, it's a pirate. Pilot now has a choice: send out a distress beacon and hope the local militia can respond in time (but this would give away his position to the pirate), go completely dark (turn off all systems) and hope pirate overlooks him, limp over to the nearby asteroid field and hope the thrusters have enough power to help avoid crashing into moving rocks (but being in the field would definitely hide you from the pirate). To make that easier, pilot could jettison his Stor-all.....the reduced mass would make it so much easier to navigate an asteroid field (even with 50% thrusters)....but loss of cargo would damage reputation and create a significant financial loss for the pilot......oh what to do?

That missions would be anything but boring to me. That mission would show off so many things CIG has told us about and told us were completed (item 2.0, cargo, service beacons, scanning, etc.). But instead they showed us two cap ships flying like mass-less paper airplanes. And face wrinkles.
Dang, dude, you made that sound so interesting! Being essentially a single player gamer, that sounds like something I'd pay to play, assuming it had good (read: realistic) physics and didn't fall into common traps such as assuming that in the future we will lose the ability to shoot things we can't see.

I have the same reaction to the "face wrinkles" as do you, but if Roberts were able to do this with high fidelity in such a way as to be patentable, that's technology that would probably be highly licensable. It's not something that would ever interest me, but we have a new generation that literally sends friends selfies of themselves watching movies. Many people are more concerned with how their characters look in games than with the protective value of said outfits. I can see such technology (i.e. being able to see their own facial expressions on their characters and just as importantly having others see them) as being a hot commodity, and if Star Citizen is the first game to have it, might be a huge draw. And if the system could correctly interpret those visual cues and NPCs could then act on that knowledge, that would be huge. Just imagine the immersiveness of that. Of course, given the current state of the art, deploying that technology on an open world space opera seems like a great way to crash and burn. But it is certainly in the same vein as Roberts' claim of having NPCs remember individual characters' actions and make decisions based on that memory, and if well implemented it also would definitely add an entirely new level to interactions between players. (e.g. Can I trust this player to honor this deal we are making? Did he just smirk?)

Even if Roberts never delivers on these extravagant promises, surely there's some value just in having the dreams. Perhaps someone else will be inspired by Roberts and deliver on those individual promises in other, future games.
 

rivethead

Platinum Member
Jan 16, 2005
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Dang, dude, you made that sound so interesting! Being essentially a single player gamer, that sounds like something I'd pay to play, assuming it had good (read: realistic) physics and didn't fall into common traps such as assuming that in the future we will lose the ability to shoot things we can't see.

I have the same reaction to the "face wrinkles" as do you, but if Roberts were able to do this with high fidelity in such a way as to be patentable, that's technology that would probably be highly licensable. It's not something that would ever interest me, but we have a new generation that literally sends friends selfies of themselves watching movies. Many people are more concerned with how their characters look in games than with the protective value of said outfits. I can see such technology (i.e. being able to see their own facial expressions on their characters and just as importantly having others see them) as being a hot commodity, and if Star Citizen is the first game to have it, might be a huge draw. And if the system could correctly interpret those visual cues and NPCs could then act on that knowledge, that would be huge. Just imagine the immersiveness of that. Of course, given the current state of the art, deploying that technology on an open world space opera seems like a great way to crash and burn. But it is certainly in the same vein as Roberts' claim of having NPCs remember individual characters' actions and make decisions based on that memory, and if well implemented it also would definitely add an entirely new level to interactions between players. (e.g. Can I trust this player to honor this deal we are making? Did he just smirk?)

Even if Roberts never delivers on these extravagant promises, surely there's some value just in having the dreams. Perhaps someone else will be inspired by Roberts and deliver on those individual promises in other, future games.

I don't dismiss the importance of face wrinkles and that FOIP stuff. Nor the capital ship combat. I just think that neither of those items should be a focus of the project at this point in time when so many other, more important, things are still missing from the alpha code.

You make a good point about the FOIP stuff appealing to the new generation though. And maybe that's why CIG is showcasing this now: they've already saturated the market for space sim old-timers. Perhaps CIG is smarter than I'm giving them credit for. But I doubt it. I think it's still a case of: showcase fluff because we don't have any real substance to show off.
 

JSt0rm

Lifer
Sep 5, 2000
27,399
3,947
126
Dang, dude, you made that sound so interesting!

one of the biggest problems with this game is people theory crafting what they will be able to do in the game. Croberts spent so much time saying yes to every little feature he was asked about people think he is gonna create a virtual world where anything goes. Not gonna happen as we can see.
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
14,004
12,068
146
one of the biggest problems with this game is people theory crafting what they will be able to do in the game. Croberts spent so much time saying yes to every little feature he was asked about people think he is gonna create a virtual world where anything goes. Not gonna happen as we can see.
I remember a similar thing happening with NMS, 'will there be multiplayer?' 'yeah, sure, why not'.
 

Skel

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2001
6,214
659
136
Dang, dude, you made that sound so interesting! Being essentially a single player gamer, that sounds like something I'd pay to play, assuming it had good (read: realistic) physics and didn't fall into common traps such as assuming that in the future we will lose the ability to shoot things we can't see.

I have the same reaction to the "face wrinkles" as do you, but if Roberts were able to do this with high fidelity in such a way as to be patentable, that's technology that would probably be highly licensable. It's not something that would ever interest me, but we have a new generation that literally sends friends selfies of themselves watching movies. Many people are more concerned with how their characters look in games than with the protective value of said outfits. I can see such technology (i.e. being able to see their own facial expressions on their characters and just as importantly having others see them) as being a hot commodity, and if Star Citizen is the first game to have it, might be a huge draw. And if the system could correctly interpret those visual cues and NPCs could then act on that knowledge, that would be huge. Just imagine the immersiveness of that. Of course, given the current state of the art, deploying that technology on an open world space opera seems like a great way to crash and burn. But it is certainly in the same vein as Roberts' claim of having NPCs remember individual characters' actions and make decisions based on that memory, and if well implemented it also would definitely add an entirely new level to interactions between players. (e.g. Can I trust this player to honor this deal we are making? Did he just smirk?)

Even if Roberts never delivers on these extravagant promises, surely there's some value just in having the dreams. Perhaps someone else will be inspired by Roberts and deliver on those individual promises in other, future games.

Maybe I'm out of touch with the younger generations (which honestly don't appear to be the target audience with this game, not with the prices of some of those ships) but I have seen every camera system for games fail, I have a really hard time seeing this as the one that works. At best this will be like the kinect where some people used it, but most wondered what else it's recording.

I don't dismiss the importance of face wrinkles and that FOIP stuff. Nor the capital ship combat. I just think that neither of those items should be a focus of the project at this point in time when so many other, more important, things are still missing from the alpha code.

You make a good point about the FOIP stuff appealing to the new generation though. And maybe that's why CIG is showcasing this now: they've already saturated the market for space sim old-timers. Perhaps CIG is smarter than I'm giving them credit for. But I doubt it. I think it's still a case of: showcase fluff because we don't have any real substance to show off.

I freely admit I'm missing the point of the face stuff, but it's bizarre to me that this is what they're putting money into. I may not know much about game development (as I'm reminded every time I post in this thread by someone), but I would think you'd be more focused on what you've already sold vs something no one is really asking for.. (here's where I get told that the community voted and said they needed this face cam more than air itself) I get you're not generating more money by focusing on what you've already sold, but when you're this far past the dates originally said (and you keep missing most dates for releases of Alpha's) one has to wonder why the focus on toys like the face cam (still don't see how this will sell more than a couple of units to people) rather than making the game you promised... it's not like you can't add to it later..
 

gorobei

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2007
3,654
980
136
Maybe I'm out of touch with the younger generations (which honestly don't appear to be the target audience with this game, not with the prices of some of those ships) but I have seen every camera system for games fail, I have a really hard time seeing this as the one that works. At best this will be like the kinect where some people used it, but most wondered what else it's recording.
the foip is most likely middleware or an implementation of some openly available code. cig is simply implementing it in game. there were demos of this sort of stuff 10 years ago at siggraph (the real time face capture part). the main hurdle is tracking a face and then mapping the results to the deformers in the 3d model face. getting it to work real time over ip is simply someone finally putting the rubber to the road rather than idealized/untested proof of concepts. it is very ambitious to go ahead and try to implement it, but as others have stated it is the lowest priority. a responsible dev would get the data to see what kind of bandwidth is needed for the feature, pass it to the netcode guys, and then put it on the backburner while they got an actually playable version of the game out.

I freely admit I'm missing the point of the face stuff, but it's bizarre to me that this is what they're putting money into. I may not know much about game development (as I'm reminded every time I post in this thread by someone), but I would think you'd be more focused on what you've already sold vs something no one is really asking for.. (here's where I get told that the community voted and said they needed this face cam more than air itself) I get you're not generating more money by focusing on what you've already sold, but when you're this far past the dates originally said (and you keep missing most dates for releases of Alpha's) one has to wonder why the focus on toys like the face cam (still don't see how this will sell more than a couple of units to people) rather than making the game you promised... it's not like you can't add to it later..
cig is in a very ironic place. normally devs have milestone dates where they show the publisher(people with the money) what they have working in order to get additional funding. cig got most of their money upfront so theoretically they wouldnt need to waste time packaging and cleaning up pre alpha versions of the game. but instead they are putting out monthly status updates in order to appease the rumblings from the crowd backers. in order to keep wowing the rubes who dont know what is hard or easy to implement they put on these smoke and mirror shows. a simple honest estimate on the actually important stuff would probably work better and they wouldnt be wasting time and money on the status bursts. i think the devs of bayonetta(2?) did a real time blog dev diary where all the fans could see actual dailies and wip. the fan feedback was supposedly very positive, probably because the devs hadnt made any promises or set any expectations and just did the work.
 

werepossum

Elite Member
Jul 10, 2006
29,873
463
126
Maybe I'm out of touch with the younger generations (which honestly don't appear to be the target audience with this game, not with the prices of some of those ships) but I have seen every camera system for games fail, I have a really hard time seeing this as the one that works. At best this will be like the kinect where some people used it, but most wondered what else it's recording.

I freely admit I'm missing the point of the face stuff, but it's bizarre to me that this is what they're putting money into. I may not know much about game development (as I'm reminded every time I post in this thread by someone), but I would think you'd be more focused on what you've already sold vs something no one is really asking for.. (here's where I get told that the community voted and said they needed this face cam more than air itself) I get you're not generating more money by focusing on what you've already sold, but when you're this far past the dates originally said (and you keep missing most dates for releases of Alpha's) one has to wonder why the focus on toys like the face cam (still don't see how this will sell more than a couple of units to people) rather than making the game you promised... it's not like you can't add to it later..
With every new invention, every iteration fails until one doesn't. Still, I suspect that you (and JSt0rm and Rivethead) are correct, they are flailing around in circles because (a) they need to show SOMETHING since they've promised so much that they cannot yet deliver) and/or (b) they need to attract new blood. Still, I'd be very, very surprised if those drawn in by the promise of having the game or other players see one's facial expressions on one's avatar's/character's face deliver anything near the capitol they spent developing this.

You guys realize that Roberts may one day be saying "I gave it my best shot, but in the end a quarter billion dollars just wasn't enough to develop my game"?
 

Skel

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2001
6,214
659
136
With every new invention, every iteration fails until one doesn't. Still, I suspect that you (and JSt0rm and Rivethead) are correct, they are flailing around in circles because (a) they need to show SOMETHING since they've promised so much that they cannot yet deliver) and/or (b) they need to attract new blood. Still, I'd be very, very surprised if those drawn in by the promise of having the game or other players see one's facial expressions on one's avatar's/character's face deliver anything near the capitol they spent developing this.

You guys realize that Roberts may one day be saying "I gave it my best shot, but in the end a quarter billion dollars just wasn't enough to develop my game"?

I honestly don't know if they can deliver or not.. I really hope they do as there are a lot of people that put in money for it. If Roberts does say "I gave it my best shot but it didn't work out" that'll have ripple effects on not just the people that put in but for future kickstarted projects. I hate to see people screwed over (which hasn't happened yet) and while yes they did put money into the project knowing there's a risk, it still blows for them. Having said that, I do think the fall out would be interesting to see.
 

JSt0rm

Lifer
Sep 5, 2000
27,399
3,947
126
I honestly don't know if they can deliver or not.. I really hope they do as there are a lot of people that put in money for it. If Roberts does say "I gave it my best shot but it didn't work out" that'll have ripple effects on not just the people that put in but for future kickstarted projects. I hate to see people screwed over (which hasn't happened yet) and while yes they did put money into the project knowing there's a risk, it still blows for them. Having said that, I do think the fall out would be interesting to see.

oh they gonna get screwed over. But they only have themselves to blame. At this point you have 4-5k true believers buying everything. And that number is dwindling.
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
14,004
12,068
146
cig got most of their money upfront so theoretically they wouldnt need to waste time packaging and cleaning up pre alpha versions of the game.
The roughest part about this is, most people work for their money (work = profit later), CIG got a quarter billion dollars on the promise of work to be done, but there's no true requirement for them to do the work. Steam is littered with the carcasses of a hundred 'sandbox/Minecraft clone/Next Best Thing(tm)' that got pumped up by cash in EA then dropped in the end. CIG's just on a bigger scale.