Inside the Troubled Development of Star Citizen

HolyDuckTurtle · 5時間前

This is a hell of a long article but well worth a read, currently half way through (edit: now finished) and its going into really interesting detail into the development process from various points of view. As a game developer it's fascinating, like most pieces of SC material it's worth a read for anyone interested in this kind of stuff.

Please don't read "troubled" and jump on that "SC is a failure just like I told everyone so!" bandwagon. This is an article about the challenges this studio and project have faced during their transition from cool space sim to most funded project of all time, how that's impacted them and their struggles adapting their work ethics to it.

Things go wrong, good calls turn into bad ones, things get changed, staff get stressed, etc. Practically every game goes through this. It's game development in a nutshell.

If you fail to understand this, or even worse don't actually read the article and just form your own headcanon about what you think it will be based on the source, then please reconsider posting.

dczanik · 1時間前

Long read, but interesting. Every major project has its problems. With this open development we get to see it all. Fallout 4 spent 8 years in development but we were only saw it 6 months before release. Star Citizen has spent 4 years in active development, and we've seen it since the Kickstarter in 2012.

People are talking about how it's being "down-voted to hell" on the sub-reddit. It's currently the top item there.

TL;DR: It talks about the bumps and hurdles they had especially during the early development. It doesn't talk much about how many of these problems have already been solved. So a lot of the interviews were probably from former employees that hadn't been attached to the project in a while.

But there have been issues:

CryEngine: Was the best engine for them in 2011, they knew they had to change a lot on it. But the changes required to making an FPS engine into a space sim required gutting out huge parts of the engine. There's pros and cons with using an existing engine.
Outsourcing the FPS: It's why Star Marine, which was outsourced had problems and was delayed. Little things like not everybody being on board, wrong scales, etc. Things picked up once they brought it in-house. It's looking like it will (finally!) be released next month.
Getting people: This is always a challenge for any games company. Finding good talented people quickly. They ended up with a huge boost when CryTek stopped paying their developers and scooped up a bunch of talented guys who actually built CryEngine.
Chris Roberts: The man has a vision. He knows what he wants. And he's really adamant about getting exactly what he wants.
Reorganization: Back in 2015 they knew they had to make some major changes. Erin Roberts had to make some big structure changes and that meant moving people. Combining groups (like the UI group) that had been across the country. This also meant some people were now obselete.
Developers fighting Chris: A lot of people were fighting Chris saying things like an integrated 1st/3rd person were impossible. This video shows what they had to do.
The tools weren't made: They had to create a lot of stuff from scratch. The Item system, the piping system, their AI subsumption, the planet tech, 64-bit worlds, integrated 1st/3rd person, etc. That took a long time to do.
Innovation is hard: They are trying to push things on multiple fronts. Some things work, some things don't. But innovation also takes time and money. That's why we don't see much innovation in modern games.

One thing I found interesting was the developers thinking certain things (integrated 1st/3rd person, and realistic looking heads) were impossible and fighting Chris on it. Take the heads:

Once, a source says, Chris came to work after playing The Order: 1886. Impressed by the highly detailed art, he asked CIG’s character artists to match that standard. The team, my sources told me, saw this as impossible. “That's fine for a single-player game where you're able to control stuff and stream things in a certain way,

Just look here and see they've actually done a really damn good job. I mean, just compare it to Fallout 4's characters. They did a question and answer on the head tech recently. But it looks like they've done what many of their own developers originally thought impossible.

I would guessed smooth 1st/3rd person cameras were impossible too though. But using inspiration from birds, IK, and eye fixation turned this into this.

Neglects a bunch of things, and even gets a few things wrong (ie. Ben Lesnick started wcnews.com, a Wing commander ...not a Freelancer site). But overall an interesting long read. Rarely do we get real journalism in gaming anymore.

unslept_em · 5時間前

to the people who are considering downvoting this article: it is perhaps worth reading first. despite what the lede section might lead you to believe, it does not seem to be a hit piece, and indeed looks quite well-researched and well-written.

SirDingleberries · 5時間前

Gotta say, this was a much better article than I was expecting out of Kotaku. It details the issues that plagued the game's development in the earlier years (which were known to the people who actually follow the development), and also has plenty of insight to those issues from Chris Roberts himself. Sadly, there is plenty of people across all the websites this has been reposted to so far that are either treating this article as a eulogy for the game and mocking those who backed, or staunch defenders who treat their headcanon of game development as fact to the point they even ignore what Roberts says.

Phelinaar · 1時間前

To give some perspective for those that want it.

I've been involved with a few games, some AAA, some not. There are horror stories from all of them. Usually the ones where the game sucks come out easier, but they are everywhere.

Making games is hard, especially games like SC with 1 million things that need to work, come together and keep working.

Gundarc · 3時間前

I have been a backer since 2012, this information is not new to me. Those first years of CiG were rough, its tough building a company from nothing to 300+, in a few short years. Always will be growing pains. I always figured the first few years were them trying to hit their stride, and from reading the article it seems about right.

NotScrollsApparently · 2時間前

What a cool article, I'm a huge SC fan and I loved reading about the challenges and obstacles CIG had to overcome. And it really confirms my perspective of Chris Roberts as a perfectionist that is hard to work with, but eventually gets what he wants. Especially for the parts when people left because he demanded 'impossible' things from them, only for CIG to actually accomplish them later. Also explains why there are so many people shitting on CIG anonymously while the company seems to be doing just fine without them lol, CR doesn't tolerate naysayers.

I'd love to see a 'behind the scenes' documentary when all of this is done, it should be a lot of info about what goes into development of big games, how studios work... For example, I never considered the rivalries and blame shifting when you have multiple studios, and the effort that has to go into "sharing crew" and having common travels so they get familiar with each other.

tangysphere · 4時間前

As others have said, it's definitely worth reading this before making a judgement - it's a well written and reasoned piece, with a good detail about the development of the game.

SilverhawkPX45 · 1時間前

This is a great article that seems well researched, but I'm gonna go off on a small tangent here:

I hate the little quote-blurbs that litter this article. It makes it harder to concentrate on what's being said if you read the same thing twice within seconds of one another and I don't understand how it's a thing in journalism at all!

sp0ck06 · 2時間前

I found this part very interesting

“I really do listen to everybody but then I make a decision and I expect my decision to be enacted,” Roberts said in response to the claims above. “When I really lose it, it's because people passive-aggressively don't [do what they’ve been instructed], and instead try to push their agenda, coming up with reasons why it needs to be this other way. That really, really annoys me because it just creates friction all the time. I like to have a lot of really good creative people around and I like them to contribute all their ideas but when I say we're going left instead of right, everyone needs to go left. It's not an ego thing – it's about the project.

“If you don’t have one singular drive or vision that you're working towards then it's going to become muddled. That's kind of why I like the setup of movies. You may disagree with what the director is doing, how he is shooting a scene, how he is blocking it, but it doesn't matter: you still make it happen for that director because it's going to be on his shoulders. If the game doesn't work, it's on me, not on a junior designer or something. So it's my call whether it's right or wrong. So, please say 'This is what I think should happen'; I will listen and in quite a few cases I'll be like 'That's pretty good, let's try that'. But when I've made the choice [...] I expect people to go that way. I really don't like passive aggressive behaviour. It just really drives me crazy.”

I definitely understand what Chris means by saying the project needs a singular vision, but I also think he is leaving a key part out of his movie analogy. The director has the final say, yes... to a point. The director is ultimately beholden to the studio and executive producers (not in EVERY case, but most).

With Star Citizen, there is no such oversight. At all. There is no publisher, there is no board of directors. Its just the backers, most of whom are understandably excited for the project.

It's pretty clear that Chris Roberts is a very talented, passionate developer and I'm sure he is working insanely hard to make this dream a reality. But it also seems to be that CiG is kind of in a Star Wars prequels situation, where George Lucas had such total control over every aspect of the project that nobody ever disagreed with him, and his vision never really translated into reality.

Chris Roberts is a visionary and always has been, but people like that need other smart people around to disagree with them. If nobody is ever really challenging your vision, you lose perspective. I find it worrying that CR says he gets angry at passive aggressive disagreement, because to me that implies that people do not feel comfortable voicing clear disagreement and instead try to subtly change Chris' mind.

When I look at the CiG structure, I see Chris Roberts as God, and his brother as the right hand man and his wife as the left hand woman. So who exactly is there to speak up and say "this is just not working." Who is there to put there foot down and say "we have to move on from this feature, it is good enough right now"?

Chris says he "loses it" when people "try to push their agenda" but isn't their agenda to make the best game possible? Isn't that why he hired all these talented engineers and artists and programmers and writers and developers? It also seems that often times the various teams are confused about what precisely the vision is, that Chris is making promises to the media and claiming features will be in without talking to the team first?

Overall its a very interesting article, and I actually think it leaves a pretty optimistic feel about the project as a whole. But I really hope that some of these high level issues brought up, which Chris doesn't even deny exist, are really taken to heart by the Roberts. A project of this scale cannot be solely determined by one man, and there are a lot of smart people at the various CiG studios.

Erazzmus · 1時間前

Reading all this makes me glad I'm not a backer.

I grew up with Wing Commander, suffered through opening night of the movie, and am generally pleasantly mystified at the amount of money and attention SC has gotten.

But I would not want to live through this process, even vicariously (as so many early backers and forum participants seem to have done).

In a smaller studio, with a smaller scope, a flawed final product would mean my disappointment would be similarly limited. But to have invested so much money and emotional energy into something like this, I would be terrified of the result.

If Roberts and Co. pull it off, it will be one of the greatest achievements in the history of gaming. For me, coming in here at the middle of the story, it seems unlikely but still plausible.

Emnight · 3時間前

Actually quite an interesting read under a super clickbaity title.

Summed up : Roberts didn't expect to get nowhere as much funding and had a lot of challenges to overcome in the earlier period of the game development, people quit and overall the atmosphere was sometimes bad. Apparently the game is now doing much better thanks to a wide variety of circumstances. Also Chris is extremely stubborn about his vision and really wants to push beyond what is currently seen as state of the art in the industry.

megaglomatic · 4時間前

I hope some Star Citizen fans are actually reading it, before just giving their downvote. Over at /r/starcitizen the thread about the same article has already been nuked with downvotes.

Chris Roberts himself was interviewed and talks about the obstacles that SC faced during development. It was an interesting read.

megasloth · 48分前

This article probably should have had a staggered release - it's simply overwhelming to read in one sitting (we're talking about a 15,000 word article here). And according to the bottom of the article, it's part of an ongoing series on Star Citizen, and I can't even imagine what more they'd have to say. This was such a fascinating, well-researched exploration into game development and management in general. We need more games journalism that goes this in-depth.

BraveDude8_1 · 3時間前

“[Without investors] there's no a 'I need my return on the money, I need you to get [the game] out so I can sell my stake' or 'We need you to sell to EA’” - Roberts

Is this referring to Freelancer?

And incase anyone is wondering, the article is actually good.

kontis · 2時間前

It's incorrect thet CryEngine was suitable for the first vision of Star Citizen (with much lower budget). It was unsuitable even for that. They wanted to do big multiplayer space battles since the beginning, not just single player.

Chris is lucky that he got $100M+ (and I'm glad it happened) and not just 20 or even 50 million because with lower budget such a huge rewrite of CryEngine wouldn't be possible. Merging space scale with human scale in mass multiplyer was never done before and there was never an engine capable of doing that, so I hope they succeed and push the industry forward.

Ostentaneous · 1時間前

Kotaku gets a lot of flak around here, but I really like when they do these "long read" articles. They're almost always good. Their reviews are also a similar format, which I enjoy.

UAofWCat · 4時間前

Why is everyone so surprised about how good this article is? Kotaku has always had excellent journalism if you were willing to dig through clickbait to get to it.

hahnchen · 3時間前

Is releasing this game even in RSI's best interests?

This is a game that generates millions in sales every month selling in-game items. I think the plans originally were that once the game is complete and released, there would be no in-game item sales, is that still the plan? They'd probably be more successful by keeping the release date just out of reach selling an Early Access product and their money spinning space hats.

3時間前

[deleted]

Aboot_Tree_Fiddy · 1時間前

would anyone mind posting the article here? can't access the site.

Rehendix · 22分前

Anyone got a mirror? Getting a 403 error.

xdownpourx · 18分前

I am just gonna repost what I wrote in the Star Citizen subreddit.

"I think the biggest takeaway from this article is the point about the three goals with the devs saying it couldn't be done. The character fedility, inventory system, and 1st/3rd person cameras sharing the same animations. All three of those things are being done now. There has definitely been. Some rocky development to this. Some CR's fault and some of it just the growing pains of development. With all this in mind the game seems to be on a good course now. Content seems to be moving at a faster pace than ever before. A lot of the tech needed is in place now with other parts not far out. To me as someone cautious of backing for a long time (didn't back til 2.4) things seem to be going well now. Hopefully this cotinues. Do I think this game is overscoped or over ambitious. Yes. I don't think this game will meet everything it promised but that is fine to me. If it meets half of the promises and does them really well then I am OK with that. We already have dogfighting, fps combat, multi crew. The ability to fly a ship, walk around the ship, land the ship, get out of the ship, and do all kinds of things on foot. That's more than any other game in this genre offers. There is still a long way to go and things haven't been perfect so far. Mistakes have been made but I think overall CIG has done a damn good job so far"

Now to add a bit more to explain my view. I think the reason I come off mostly positive is because of my experience with the game. I had a good solid 5-6 straight hours of fun with a friend doing multi-crew stuff, missions, and fps combat. It was a good old time. If I never touched the game this article would probably scare me a lot more.

Its all really hard to judge this game because it is so different. For one its the most open development process I have every experienced. More than any other kickstarter/early access game it seems. They have a video being put out every 2-3 days updating everyone on their progress on different areas of the game. Most kickstarters/early access seem to do maybe once a week and lots of their updates come through backer emails or something like that where its just a bunch of words. In Star Citizen's case we actually see devs working at their desks showing us their screens and what they are doing. Its different and makes the whole thing hard to judge for me. To add to that Star Citizen is certainly ambitious. We can argue over if its good or bad but ambitious is not something you can really argue about this game. Because of these two things it becomes really hard to judge how this game is doing because it goes against tradition. If I wasn't a backer I would just casually watch what is happening from the outside and try not to make too many judgments either way. Good or bad. Wait till the 3.0 release. See if the progress convinces you. If not keep waiting. Maybe till beta. Maybe till release. Maybe till Squadron 42 releases. Personally what the game has available to play right now is impressive to me and its unique so I am willing to wait for this game. Its been slow but its also getting faster now so hopefully things continue this way

frosty147 · 15分前

I just remember seeing this game at first and thinking, "Oh, sweet! A spiritual successor to Freelancer." Then they announced the first person shooter stuff, and I basically got off the train.

badger_crab · 11分前

Great article. A project like this inevitably was going to hit the strides it has but the last demo they showed off was probably the most impressive demo I've ever seen.

slapdashbr · 10分前

See, the thing with private investors demanding results is that they demand results.

Chris Roberts is a great game designer but he hasn't shown himself to be a good manager.

MindSteve · 1時間前

They just need to get with the times and lie about everything in their game then sell it for full price. Worked for NMS.

LongDistanceEjcltr · 3時間前

Star Citizen has now been in development for five years

Yeah, no. The initial Kickstarter campaign ended at the very end of 2012. There was nothing done yet at that point, except for the KS promo material (put together by Chris and a couple of guys from Crytek). You can't really speak of any kind of actual development until mid January 2013. The game is in development for 3.5 to 4 years, not 5. Claiming otherwise is simply a lie.

You see, a simple, factual, easily verifiable fact like this is why the validity of the information in the rest of the article is now in question. Not that I expect better from Kotaku. (BTW you can downvote this post all you want, but everything I've said is verifiable online.)

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