Thread by @dsmart

Speaking of Star Citizen, read this article that just went live. If you ever wondered why this is an absolute train-wreck, this should help you understand it. As one guy said, "It reads like parody, but it's not"

newsweek.com/star-citizen-u…

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, another battle over old money vs new money has started up again. Funny how that happens each time Star Citizen decides to stiff its backers when it needs more money.

robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/commu…

The idea of ship melting was created years ago to solve various problems such as player buying the wrong ship, wanting to upgrade to a different ship, tired of waiting for the ship JPEG to make it into the game etc.

Melting involves converting ship value to credits, then using that to buy a new ship with said credits.

As these things go, backers soon started to use it extensively. But CIG got nuthin’ from backers using credits.

So they introduced War Bonds (I shit you not) aka “New Money”. So you could buy new ships using War Bonds, and get not only a discount, but some additional stuff (skin, lifetime insurance etc).

Then they went overboard with it. For an example, take look at this sales page

robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/game-pa…

It is inconceivable to some backers that CIG needs to bring in new money in order to stay afloat; especially going by their monthly burn rate extrapolated from their UK financial filings.

So it’s like a charity. They have to constantly keep raising money - somehow - in order to stay afloat while having some in reserves for the slow fundraising months.

Which is why since last year, they’ve increased sales, and they make the most money in Q4 via CitizenCon bs and the anniversary (of the project inception) etc

They have NO incentive to stop because they have some whales in Sunk Cost Fallacy who believe money is the answer.

“We may not have 100 star systems yet, but just wandering around this one star system is more content than almost every game that has detail to this level,”

He promised 106. They haven't built a SINGLE one yet.

dereksmart.com/forums/reply/6…

“I thought the way that Notch did Minecraft was smart,” Chris recalled, “so I thought ‘what if I can build an alpha and charge people for early access before early access was a thing…’"

Funny how in Oct/Nov 2012 he promised to deliver 2 FINISHED games within 2 yrs, in Nov 2014

As I wrote in my yearly recap last week, it's SIX YEARS now since the Nov 2012 crowd-funding completed, and the project is NOWHERE near completion. Not even 25%.

dereksmart.com/2018/11/star-c…