Derek Smart vs. Chris Roberts. Who will win? I’m guessing popcorn salesmen.
I recently wrote about Derek Smart’s ongoing crusade against Star Citizen, You may remember, for example, this piece, where Derek Smart asks politely for Chris Roberts and his wife to resign the company.
Give backers the opportunity to hire an independent forensics accountant, and an executive producer, to audit the company records, and give an accurate picture of the financial health of the company, and it’s ability to complete, and deliver this project in a timely fashion. I hereby offer to foot the entire costs of this effort. And I will put up to $1m of my own money, in an escrow account of an attorney’s choosing, to be used as-needed for this exercise. [Emphasis ours.] I will pay this price to prove that I had every right to seek these answers. So this money can either go toward a good cause (righting this ship), or to attorneys who are most likely to burn it all down anyway.
RSI tried to make Smart go away by simply refunding his kickstarter. Derek Smart was not amused. Still, Derek Smart is known for lavishing himself in a frenzy from time to time. RSI probably figured the best thing to do was to ignore him and hope it goes away. That became pretty impossible once the Escapist published this article with several employees operating under pseudonyms.
Several different sources have indicated that the company has already used the majority of its funding, but not much has been created to show for it. The number most often received from people has indicated that, currently, the company has less than $8 million of what was raised from the crowdfunding efforts left – a number that several employees have stated is “common knowledge” within the company – although it is important to note thatpledges are still being accepted for Star Citizen through the RSI website, with game packages and merchandiseavailable to purchase.
Chris Roberts responds with a response that is both valid and completely orwellian as hell.
“How do you or they know this? Which employees said this and what makes them qualified to make that judgement? I know it’s what Derek Smart loves to say but he couldn’t make a good game with $200m so I don’t think his opinion matters. Outside of that, no employee beyond me and a few other key people who are leading Star Citizen would have the appropriate information and overview to make any judgement about the cost of the total project.”
Yeah, well, if the article is false, Chris’ point is valid. If the article is true, then the anonymous source is pretty well justified at hiding. He continues in his response to the Escapist – which he claims the escapist recieved 3 hours before putting up their piece but did not include with initial publication (responses have since been inserted)
Do you really want to give a platform to Derek Smart? This is the same person who wrote a letter to Origin and me after Wing Commander was out claiming that we were infringing on his game and we had to cease publishing it or he would sue us. We told him we never heard of him and good luck with that. He never sued. His game was, of course, the now infamous Battlecruiser 3000AD that would take many more years to come out (I think I shipped four Wing Commanders before his game came out).
Chris then goes into a long diatribe about how this is just a GamerGate conspiracy. Zen readers know my opinions on GG are not positive, but there’s definitely some wandering into tinfoil hat territory in his letter.
My thoughts?
- There’s a lot of industry eyes on Star Citizen across the industry, largely because of its unique Kickstarted success. High-profile kickstarter failures depress future kickstarting attempts, so most of the games industry, particularly the indies, have a vested interest in this being a high profile success rather than a failure. Particularly now that Kickstarters are getting attention by the feds when they are too loose with their promises.
- Cloud Imperium’s Chris Roberts is, in fact, a notoriously big, strong personality used to throwing his weight around – he’s famous for it. So is Derek Smart.
- Most of the engineers I’ve known personally who went to Cloud Imperium here in Austin did not stay there very long at all — most a few months — and none have any eagerness to talk about it. Which is pretty weird, in an industry where people love to share their tales of horror over beers.
- MOST games have horrifying stories involved in their creation, be it crunch, cut features, heated tempers, etc. Games attract strong personalities, break into new and risky frontiers, and need to strive for important deadlines. As juicy as gossip about a projects’ worst day is, the worst stories are frequently not indicative of what’s actually going on.
- Back of the napkin math on financing games typically can be pretty frightening – for example, most AAA companies do back-of-the-napkin math of 15K per month per employee, and smaller companies do 10K per month per employee (Note: this is a value that includes all supported costs, including things like Salary, health benefits, office space, equipment, costs for external support, etc). Thus a 261 person team has a burn rate of 2.61-3.91M per month. That being said,that’s just napkin math, and in reality there’s a ridiculous number of variables at play here. No one knows what’s actually happening other than the accountants.
- The other thing that merits mention is that more and more companies use kickstarter-like funding mechanisms as a way to pursue more money from other sources. Chris Roberts has something that’s golden – proof that there’s enormous very real and tangible interest in his game – enough so that fans gave him 90M to make it. This would, in theory, make it pretty ludicrously easy to chase additional money from additional sources if he needs it. In short, think of 90M as the FLOOR of his available capital.
- The game that’s promised is… ridiculously ambitious. It’s equally fair to say that 90M won’t finish it. He will likely need that additional capital.
As one last thought, apparently the game allows people to preorder 5 figure ships. Now, I’m not anti-heavy spenders (“Whales”). I’m a Magic: the Gathering whale myself, and have successfully monetized two free-to-play games by nurturing the game’s most enthusiastic fans. Still, spending 15K on a spaceship on a game that won’t be out for years just seems flat out crazy to me.
I believe the actual expression is “lashing himself into a frenzy”. But please don’t correct it — “lavishing himself” sounds so self-indulgent that it’s a fitting choice of words given the gentleman involved.
I abhor “whales” (especially if in a pay-to-win context, as most games now are), but above all I abhor whales who splurge on a game that’s not even out yet, meaning that, at worst (as in, the game is a major disappointment, if it ships at all), they will have spent five figures on a bunch of pixels which don’t even fulfill their superficial purpose. An early discussion of Star Citizen at another forum led me to believe that this was also going to turn pay-to-win and that the whales were already banking on that — at which point, if you won’t or can’t blow five-figure amounts on a game, especially a game with high stakes as Star Citizen appeared to have, *why play at all*?
Isn’t that the entire problem with EVE Online nowadays? A few multiple-account people who have been playing for years (giving them a skill-leveling advantage) being so secure in their position that everyone else either turns into their prey or their lackeys?
Re: EVE, when it actually started out, the economy wasn’t nearly as big. Which is what you should expect when you finally start having people play in a new universe. It took several years of clashes before people starting dropping, say, the equivalent of $10,000 on a Titan ship, and then some time later before people realized with horror that a ship that big and expensive could actually be blown up.
EVE is 12 years old.
Oh, all I know about the current state of EVE comes from the usual doomsayers at MMORPG.com, so I have no idea if any of that is true.
As far as I know, though, CCP is in the same situation as Roberts’ company now, in that it has nothing to fall back on when EVE is finished. Dust 514 wasn’t that much of a success, and they canned World of Darkness, so what do they have in the pipeline to take over?
That’s true, but I think of that in terms of the Big Hole of Suck that affects more than one company. Everyone knows that portfolio diversity is important, but if you don’t plan carefully, you get a situation where every available resource is made to service one, huge, often unwieldy and obnoxiously expensive product, even if the other products are smaller and nimbler by design.
Star Citizen’s plan might be seen as a way to spread out the risk by making five or six different games all at once. But that’s very charitable.
Wasn’t that also what Curt Schilling’s company was planning?
Not really. They bought Big Huge Games from THQ’s fire sale, giving them one project they could call their own when it shipped. 38’s big project was called Copernicus, which was a straight on “EQ2 but better” MMO. Star Citizen is literally several different games, all in different genres.
Oh, my understanding was that Copernicus was the long-term project, and they had decided to start work on Amalur because they needed the cash influx from a single-player game.
What still amazes me about them is that by all reports Amalur sold relatively well, in spite of very average ratings (by game-reviewing standards), but the required sales numbers to just break even were unrealistically high. A bit like LA Noire, if memory serves.
Should Roberts fail on this, after burning through $90 million+, I wonder if it would threaten to bring down the entire crowdfunding edifice, for large-budget projects anyway. The guy after all has a name, a bit outdated perhaps, but still bankable — he’s not an unknown is what I mean. Then we’d get more revelations of what the money was used for – I’m especially drawn to the second page of The Escapist’s report where an employee says “deep down, Chris Roberts wants to make movies”. While I haven’t really paid attention to Star Citizen, my gut feeling is that the assessment is correct. That’s not fraud. That’s just being mistaken about game development priorities. Sounds like it’s Parkinson’s Law in full swing: we have all that money, we might as well use all of it even if we don’t need to. But logic would dictate that you blow extra cash at the end of your project, not at the beginning, and as a result of that it sounds like they’re going to fall short.
Big-name actors doing “voice-overs for commercials” when there’s no game to ship? Really?
Amalur sold “relatively” well, but quite a lot of the people who could have been playing it at the point when it came out in February 2012 were playing Skyrim, released 3 months earlier. Big Huge has since been revived by its originator and has new projects, now.
Just finished reading the Escapist piece.
I must admit I had my doubts about Roberts because of his extended foray in Hollywood, where he must not really have spent much time keeping abreast of new developments in video games. And knowing that old pros like Garriott have fallen by the wayside without ever leaving game development, I suspected Roberts would at least be outdated in his game design ideas.
The way The Escapist is describing it, however, he’s Captain Ahab and he’s brought his wife along in pursuit of an obsession that’s going to destroy the livelihoods of all involved.
Could it be that — dare I say it? — Derek Smart was on to something after all?
No i dont think Derek is on to something at all, i think hes just found something to cling on to keep himself in the limelight. His own game Line of Defense is currently 4 years over due and tons of features have been cut so he cant really say anything.
Is Star Citizen a big risk? Yes. Could it fail? Yes. Could it be the best game to ever release? Yes. But arent you tired of the same old games year in year out with no risk taking from any publisher and getting crappy console ports, basically developers just throwing PC the crumbs of whats left?
I am, if it fails im out of $400 but id prefer to waste $400 on getting something made that could be potentially amazing and might invigorate the big publishers into taking some risks again than waste $400 on the 700th assasins creed, 10,000th COD, 100th battlefield, if battlefront does well can guarantee thats going to slot in to a 2 year release window.
Well said, and I agree completely. Derek Smart has a long history of not delivering or delivering very unwhelming projects. I have no idea why anyone is buying what he is shoveling without digging deeper into the subject (the Escapist has been playing shady games regarding not interacting with the other side of this story such as demanding comprehensive responses with deadlines of only a few hours). I’m a bit baffled why Damion seems to lean towards Derek and Escapist on this whole fire (which appears to be as much of an invisible fire – ala Talladega Nights – as anything truly of substance).
TBH, I invested early because I would like to have a well-made space flight simulator again. The controversial stuff came later, and if that doesn’t pan out, I don’t really care. If the whole game gets scrapped…so what? It wouldn’t be the first time that I’ve spent $100 on something that didn’t work out the way I wanted. Heck, I’ve spent more than a $1,000 over the years on games that weren’t played for more than an hour.
Much ado about nothing comes to mind…
While I have not, ahem, “experienced” any of Mr. Smart’s work, I do think he is in a good position to determine what can, or cannot be done with regard to a space game project.
And even if you find him annoying and self-aggrandizing, it wouldn’t be the first time in history that annoying and self-aggrandizing individuals were nonetheless proved right.
Nah, this guy has absolutely no frickin´clue about anything. He´s in a totally different realm and it´s not what we call reality
I disagree about Mr. Smarts experience. He has tried multiple times to make a game similar to Roberts’, and never managed to deliver anything but late, bug-ridden messes. Being a failure does not make him an expert on what might or might not lead to success, especially since he has showed throughout is career that he is devoid of self-evaluation
@Vetarnis
Nope, sorry. And I don’t want to sound arrogant or rude here but you’re a plain wrong.
Derek Smart is a liar, a bad, bad, baaaaaaaaaad developer who has _no_ clues about game development and is known for being a troll and troublemaker of the web.
Even you don’t believe me, google him. Please.
And if you think Chris Roberts is outdate in game development you should take a look at what Cloud Imperium Games already archived under his lead.
I could easily find nine ex-blizzard people that would claim that ship has been sinking since 2007. They’d say all the same things the sources in the Escapist article said.
I’m still not paying for something that hasn’t shipped and has the potential to not ship. I really hope they pull it off. The premise is amazing. Plus the people I still know there would stay employed. To me it’s just gossip until it’s not.
This is my policy. Well stated.
It’s weird, I like kickstarting games but loathe preordering. I’d rather give my money to interesting ideas (that may yet fail) than to existing games that will come out soon and might suck. Logically the latter would be the better investment.
I also assume at least half of my kickstarter investments will fail and half of the ones that do eventually release will be disappointments, and it baffles me that people invest expecting 100% completed awesome.
But what about the part where the owner’s wife is calling people “f*gg*t”.
People are saying game development is a tough environment. But is that kind of stuff accepted in the industry?
(Honestly, with the way its accepted in most multiplayer games, it wouldn’t surprise me. But with all the talk recently about inclusion, it does make one disappointed).
As a follow-up, one of the other issues raised here is that people are crowdfunding a homophobic work place with a racist hiring policy (if the allegations are true).
The question then is: should crowdfunders have a say in inclusive hiring policies? (Would we ever see those as stretch goals, for example?). And also, how do SC backers feel knowing there money is supporting homophobia and racism in the workplace?
As an aside, isn’t it ironic that a Gamergate supporter (The Escapist) is making accusations of discrimination in the workplace? It’s like someone has switched their brains…
“As an aside, isn’t it ironic that a Gamergate supporter (The Escapist) is making accusations of discrimination in the workplace?”
I guess they decided to get into “consumer revolt” mode. Now that their impression is that the consumer is getting screwed, they’ll stack the deck even though they wouldn’t care under other circumstances.
And what makes you so sure that is true at all?
Oh wow: https://np.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/3n6lum/escapist_anonymous_sources_uncovered/
Assuming that’s true, I thought that article was a little too good for The Escapist.
Nah… Escapist wouldn’t use Glassdoor as a source….
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/138349-Carbine-Studios-Employees-Give-Negative-Reviews-to-Developer-of-Wildstar-MMO
The Escapist is standing by the story even as Roberts has threatened to bring suit.
I’m inclined to believe it. Derek Smart is annoying, self-aggrandizing, and a jerk. But he *did* take on the challenge of trying to build the kind of game SC wants to be. When he says it’s overly ambitious, I tend to agree.
Furthermore, I wanted SC for a space combat and exploration game. FPS modules? Fully exploitable internal models? These are not the reasons I loved Descent Freespace, WC, or X-Wing,
I was one of the three main credited programmers on Wing Commander 3 (along with Frank Roan and Tony Morone). All of this sounds very familiar, none of it surprises me. Take that how you will.
Then thank you for crafting one of the best games ever.
Single best tweet of this whole odyssey:
https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/651010467708674049
Ken White of Popehat isn’t a Derek Smart fan, but nor is he of Ortwin Freyermuth’s grandstanding. Summary of what he thinks: Don’t threaten lawsuits. File, or shut up.
https://popehat.com/2015/10/04/in-space-no-one-can-hear-you-threaten-lawsuits/
> spending 15K on a spaceship on a game
I’m 30K in right now. I did not “buy a spaceship”. I funded a VISION. A dream. I want this game to exist, period. Ships or no ships. (Although ships are cute, admittedly.)
Dreams happen now. https://i.imgur.com/aXNdJP1.png
Three things to consider about the budget of the game:
1 – The production NOW has 261 (and counting) employees. The production was considerably smaller last year and even smaller in the year before. So doing that kind of math along the lines of “260 employees costs 30 million USD per months, they are thirty months into production, add equipment and offices to the math – Wow, they will need more money!” leads nowhere. If you don’t even know how number of total employees has grown and developed over the last three years, you cannot do that math.
2 – Of course they need more money. That’s why they are still collection money.
3 – The game will never be “final”. It will continue to grow and and at some point CIG will simply switch from crowdfunding to retail sales. That will be “release” of the game. You don’t know what the game will look like and what it will or should have cost at that point.
One more thing I’d like to add: So far Derek Smart, The Escapist and the claimed sources have made many (mostly dubious) allegations and haven’t shown any evidence to back these allegations. There was no reason to not use that evidence in the article. Why make yourself suspicious of neglect or maybe even libel by quoting anonymous sources without evidence, if you the necessary evidence to back your story? Maybe because that evidence doesn’t exist?
Maybe because leaking that evidence opens them up to additional liability.
As a journalist: it’s common to see evidence I can’t report or have critical conversations off the record. Typically those are the most valuable kinds.
Joel, but every journalist needs to reveal sources on court order if sued for damaging article. If CIG proves they’re experiencing financial damage due to the article, they have legal base for bringing them to the court and then The Escapist must reveal sources and bring them to the bench.
You should really read the Popehat article I linked above. It’s a lot harder to prove than you might think. And expensive to lawyer up, which CIG has yet to do. No suit has actually been filed, yet.
True. I see now, it will probably end as a draw here…
“every journalist needs to reveal sources on court order if sued for damaging article”
You’ll find that journalists are a most tenacious bunch when it comes to being forced to divulge information. In some cases they’d rather be held in contempt of court than give away their sources. Because they know that if they do, nobody will entrust them with confidential information anymore.
I doubt confidential information about a stupid video game is worth risking to go to jail over, though.
Libel suits in the US are extremely hard to litigate.
I don’t know if the Escapist performed due diligence or not. But I can certainly confirm that naming sources who don’t wish to be named is how you ruin careers — including your own.