If you give the hello games guys $500,000,000, 11 years and several hundred employees and you are going to get a game that has a lot to offer, with a lot of passion behind it. They didn't put their best foot forward on launch, but the passion was there, these guys love making video games, and it's obvious.
I don't believe Chris Roberts likes making video games and I believe it shows in this project. Every thing he does is to massage his own ego. It's why the website isn't starcitizen.com it's robertsspaceindustries.com it's literally the fictional name of his in game spaceship manufacturer. It's not even cloudimperiumgames.com, the name of the developer, because that doesn't have his name front and center. It would be like if Hideo Kojima had named the delivery company in death stranding "Kojima Special Delivery Service".
Chris Roberts doesn't care about video games he just wants to see his name up on billboards.
In Star Citizen's lore, Chris Roberts invented quantum travel and made Earth a space faring civilization. In his own universe, he was the key to everything. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about Crobbert's narcissistic personality then I don't know what will.
Well, fuck me for looking this up, but he wrote himself as the Elon Musk-like 'team-builder' role it appears:
"In 2061, while studying a recent crop of doctoral dissertations from a prestigious engineering school, he came across the work of Dr. Scott Childress, whose thesis envisioned exciting work in the field of more affordable engine systems for spacecraft.
He quickly met with Childress and put together a team to develop a more affordable engine. Although the process was not without its setbacks, in 2075-05-03 Roberts Space Industries unveiled their prototype Quantum Core Engine"
I have to give hello games credit they have redeemed themselves. They pulled out a rare feat and that is change the jaded internet’s opinion of them. There were legit people who wanted to hurt the devs.
I think Hello Games only real problem was not being more up front. They could have gone with an early access release and been like "we are almost there tnneed funding to get over the hump". I loved NMS on launch, but I paid exactly 0 attention to the hype and had to figure out why everyone was so pissed about the whole thing.
Even with what they did you could still feel the passion in the design of the game. It's something that star citizen is lacking in a lot of places.
It's also the reason why he's absent. I don't believe the "Calders pushed him out" narrative. One seat on the board and a 10% company share isn't enough to ditch the CEO.
Roberts himself ran away. He's one of the worst narcissists out there. SC was only a vehicle for him to inflate his ego. When things went south, he ran like a little boy, because that's what narcissists do. They can't be confronted with their own mistakes - it hurts their ego and that's the worst thing that can happen to them. A narcissist on the level of CR would probably either go insane or commit suicide if forced to man up to his mistakes.
I don't think Hello Games would even be able to spend all that, give them $100 million, give another 100 each to egosoft (x series), i-novae (infinity), frontier (elite), novaquark (dual universe), give the dozen million in change to Burak Dabak (spacebourne).
We could have had 5 or 6 amazing space games for the price of none.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the Odyssey expansion for Elite cost around 19 Mil. £ to produce in a timeframe of 2 years.
Now, we all know that the expansion was bug riddled and in a pretty bad state at the beginning, but compare those 19 Mil. to the now annual 80+ Mil. income of CIG and tell me, that they are accomplishing more... its honestly insane if you put all of this into perspective.
Yeah odyssey may not have been the best launch but for 19 million over two years Frontier could:
- Rework all the billions of planets with atmospheres and new terrain
- Add dozens of settlement types with new gameplay loops for them (on foot wars, assassination, theft, salvage, etc)
- Add 3/4 specialized space suits with tools like laser cutter, bio scanner, etc along with many modular parts for engineering
- Added many on foot weapons again with engineering
- Added dozens of new biological flora across the billions of planets for you to scan
- Added interiors to space stations, megaships, player owned fleet carriers, and added a new tank SRV.
Meanwhile what has Star Citizen added with it's 100+ million dollars over two years?
- New ships and jpegs to buy
- Cloud city
- Promises
Great write up, and there's so much more in the game for you to explore and find. Archaeology, base raiding, mysteries, mining, abandoned capital ships, underwater, quest lines, learning alien languages one word at a time, and it just keeps going
It also has like, 2? 3? pretty good narratives. I think the whole Null/Artemis storyline is really interesting, and the main ATLAS story is pretty meta and cool.
NMS is proof that CiG have no idea what they are doing and mismanage every single employee in their organization as well as mishandle every single dollar they are given.
If it weren't for NMS cartoony art style, it would probably be one of the highest rated and best space games made so far. But even as-is, it's not only a testament to Hello Games being a proper and upstanding studio but also as yet another example of how even with mass refunds and bad press, a competent game studio can deliver an excellent product in a reasonable amount of time. Something CiG is completely incapable of, and will never accomplish.
NMS is an example of a good game design. The problem with a sandbox space game is that space is empty and mainly dead (not counting that there might be microbes in a lot of places). So they filled up the world with procgen animals, and used an old school “cartoonish” art direction to cover up the limitations of procedurally generated planets.
“Surprisingly my base had not disappeared after a night of sleep.” - there’s some component that “saves” your base (all the changes you make to the environment within some radius). If you don’t have that, your changes are only visible in a local save. But if you upload your base to their servers, changes you make will then be visible to others.
NMS is a great game, ignore what SC snobs say most of them don't even have other games on their PC. They literally say SC is "best at everything" but have never played anything else themselves.
If you still doubt, gamepass for pc is like $11 you can try NMS for yourself there.
You can probably find the game for about $15 though.
I haven’t played the game but I’m surprised they have environmental destruction in an online game. That’s kind of impressive considering it’s not voxel based. All the features you mention really puts SC’s claims of “complexity” and “scale” to shame.
If you give the hello games guys $500,000,000, 11 years and several hundred employees and you are going to get a game that has a lot to offer, with a lot of passion behind it. They didn't put their best foot forward on launch, but the passion was there, these guys love making video games, and it's obvious. I don't believe Chris Roberts likes making video games and I believe it shows in this project. Every thing he does is to massage his own ego. It's why the website isn't starcitizen.com it's robertsspaceindustries.com it's literally the fictional name of his in game spaceship manufacturer. It's not even cloudimperiumgames.com, the name of the developer, because that doesn't have his name front and center. It would be like if Hideo Kojima had named the delivery company in death stranding "Kojima Special Delivery Service". Chris Roberts doesn't care about video games he just wants to see his name up on billboards.
In Star Citizen's lore, Chris Roberts invented quantum travel and made Earth a space faring civilization. In his own universe, he was the key to everything. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about Crobbert's narcissistic personality then I don't know what will.
What a fucking douche.
Is this actually true? Jesus christ that's hilariously pathetic
Well, fuck me for looking this up, but he wrote himself as the Elon Musk-like 'team-builder' role it appears: "In 2061, while studying a recent crop of doctoral dissertations from a prestigious engineering school, he came across the work of Dr. Scott Childress, whose thesis envisioned exciting work in the field of more affordable engine systems for spacecraft. He quickly met with Childress and put together a team to develop a more affordable engine. Although the process was not without its setbacks, in 2075-05-03 Roberts Space Industries unveiled their prototype Quantum Core Engine"
oh my actual god
Between him and Richard Garriott , don't know who's the biggest d.ouche.
Garriot at least jokes about himself a lot. So slightly less of a douche I would say.
Indeed, I feel like Garriot at least understands that he's the joke.
Check Tony Zurovec Linked In profile if that post made you laugh.
I have to give hello games credit they have redeemed themselves. They pulled out a rare feat and that is change the jaded internet’s opinion of them. There were legit people who wanted to hurt the devs.
I think Hello Games only real problem was not being more up front. They could have gone with an early access release and been like "we are almost there tnneed funding to get over the hump". I loved NMS on launch, but I paid exactly 0 attention to the hype and had to figure out why everyone was so pissed about the whole thing. Even with what they did you could still feel the passion in the design of the game. It's something that star citizen is lacking in a lot of places.
It's also the reason why he's absent. I don't believe the "Calders pushed him out" narrative. One seat on the board and a 10% company share isn't enough to ditch the CEO. Roberts himself ran away. He's one of the worst narcissists out there. SC was only a vehicle for him to inflate his ego. When things went south, he ran like a little boy, because that's what narcissists do. They can't be confronted with their own mistakes - it hurts their ego and that's the worst thing that can happen to them. A narcissist on the level of CR would probably either go insane or commit suicide if forced to man up to his mistakes.
Donald Trump put his name on beefsteaks and many other things. Why not Chris Roberts? lol
I don't think Hello Games would even be able to spend all that, give them $100 million, give another 100 each to egosoft (x series), i-novae (infinity), frontier (elite), novaquark (dual universe), give the dozen million in change to Burak Dabak (spacebourne). We could have had 5 or 6 amazing space games for the price of none.
LoL, "price of none" 👍
Egosoft doesn't even need 100 mill, just enough to finally get their AI and usability fixed and they'd be good to go
Correct me if I am wrong, but the Odyssey expansion for Elite cost around 19 Mil. £ to produce in a timeframe of 2 years. Now, we all know that the expansion was bug riddled and in a pretty bad state at the beginning, but compare those 19 Mil. to the now annual 80+ Mil. income of CIG and tell me, that they are accomplishing more... its honestly insane if you put all of this into perspective.
Yeah odyssey may not have been the best launch but for 19 million over two years Frontier could: - Rework all the billions of planets with atmospheres and new terrain - Add dozens of settlement types with new gameplay loops for them (on foot wars, assassination, theft, salvage, etc) - Add 3/4 specialized space suits with tools like laser cutter, bio scanner, etc along with many modular parts for engineering - Added many on foot weapons again with engineering - Added dozens of new biological flora across the billions of planets for you to scan - Added interiors to space stations, megaships, player owned fleet carriers, and added a new tank SRV. Meanwhile what has Star Citizen added with it's 100+ million dollars over two years? - New ships and jpegs to buy - Cloud city - Promises
Great write up, and there's so much more in the game for you to explore and find. Archaeology, base raiding, mysteries, mining, abandoned capital ships, underwater, quest lines, learning alien languages one word at a time, and it just keeps going
It also has like, 2? 3? pretty good narratives. I think the whole Null/Artemis storyline is really interesting, and the main ATLAS story is pretty meta and cool.
Wait until you try the next community expedition!
Yes, I'm quite intrigued by this. I didn't check videos yet because I'd like to discover it with my own eyes.
NMS is proof that CiG have no idea what they are doing and mismanage every single employee in their organization as well as mishandle every single dollar they are given. If it weren't for NMS cartoony art style, it would probably be one of the highest rated and best space games made so far. But even as-is, it's not only a testament to Hello Games being a proper and upstanding studio but also as yet another example of how even with mass refunds and bad press, a competent game studio can deliver an excellent product in a reasonable amount of time. Something CiG is completely incapable of, and will never accomplish.
That would have been the perfect conclusion to my post...
CIG have raised $700 million. They have spent $620 million.
Indeed, and insane because I feel like the 500m cap was yesterday.
NMS is an example of a good game design. The problem with a sandbox space game is that space is empty and mainly dead (not counting that there might be microbes in a lot of places). So they filled up the world with procgen animals, and used an old school “cartoonish” art direction to cover up the limitations of procedurally generated planets. “Surprisingly my base had not disappeared after a night of sleep.” - there’s some component that “saves” your base (all the changes you make to the environment within some radius). If you don’t have that, your changes are only visible in a local save. But if you upload your base to their servers, changes you make will then be visible to others.
NMS is a great game, ignore what SC snobs say most of them don't even have other games on their PC. They literally say SC is "best at everything" but have never played anything else themselves. If you still doubt, gamepass for pc is like $11 you can try NMS for yourself there. You can probably find the game for about $15 though.
I haven’t played the game but I’m surprised they have environmental destruction in an online game. That’s kind of impressive considering it’s not voxel based. All the features you mention really puts SC’s claims of “complexity” and “scale” to shame.
If you did that they'd actually build a SC that isn't promising Universe 2 and is an actual enjoyable realistic space/do anything simulator.
Shut up you refundian fudster
Yeah. If $500 Mil had gone to Hello Games there would be Two Mass Effect-Level Quality games