Thread by @dsmart

Yesterday I was on a stream with @RobinAtTheHouse, @FocusBreak and crew. Among other things, we touched on the issue of scope creep in Star Citizen.

Let me take this opportunity to explain how scope creep has killed MANY a game project over the years.

Every. Single. Time

1/

First, let me use the latest unfolding fiasco that is the Star Citizen "prison gameplay" as example.

This video by one of the faithful, @SaltEMike, shows this new feature; and is the best one yet. He did an excellent job with it.

Like so many “features” before it, this “prison gameplay” came out of nowhere.

This was the dev roadmap as of Oct 25, 2019. No word about prison gameplay.

i.imgur.com/5uFDsmY.jpg

This was the dev roadmap as of Nov 8th, 2019

i.imgur.com/pSxSBVb.jpg

It appears under the guise of “renamed”, though this "prison" gameplay term or feature, let alone anything related to it, has never appeared in the dev roadmap since the first one was released back in 2016.

This is the 1st dev roadmap ver from Nov 2016.

web.archive.org/web/2016111823…

Unlike me, this guy only started tracking them since April 2018.

reddit.com/user/Odysseus-…

This is the 3.9 dev roadmap as of Dec 13, 2019.

i.imgur.com/dgrmIHI.jpg

This is what the 3.9 dev roadmap changes look like as of Apr 20, 2020.

i.imgur.com/N5e5WKP.jpg

All those missing features are what sparked the recent backer uprising that's been making the news since last week.

robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/commu…

reddit.com/r/pcgaming/com…

pcgamer.com/star-citizen-p…

So, with ALL the stuff they removed from 3.9 in order to make this release, they spent time and resources building that massive level, gameplay elements etc - for a useless, boring, glitch-ridden feature that nobody asked for.

Why? It's simple....

Because they know - fully well - that they’ve hit the tech wall on this game whereby most of what they promised either cannot be achieved (at least not in this lifetime) or they don’t know how to do them with the inferior tech they have at their disposal.

As a game dev, I know what goes into allocating resources and talent to implement a feature in a massively complex game; as well as what amount of resources need to be thrown into doing such a level (like this prison) as well as the programming involved in it.

It's not the sort of thing you casually "throw" into a game that's already almost $340M over budget and going on 6 [of 9] yrs behind schedule. Unless you needed to fill in the holes & gaps in an already anemic release.

Why would you do this?

Simply put, ALL the 3.9 features removed - and which were already way behind schedule (amid other removals) simply couldn't be completed (for whatever reason) within the allotted roadmap timeframe.

e.g. if task1 was to take 4 wks to do, is already 6 wks in and has another 3 wks to complete, adding task2 which is scheduled to take 2 wks is how you end up in a dev black hole because guess what? Now you have bugs & issues to address in both tasks.

If task2 shows "something" to take attention from task1, it's how you mislead your publisher, investors, backers etc if you have to show "something" as either a distraction or as "some" progress being made.

That's the bane that is scope creep.

This has plagued the project since day one, and I've written about this several times over the years. Heck, through 5 yrs of the project, much has been written about this very thing. Why? Because Chris Roberts' claim to fame was primarily because of this.

arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/07…

In June 2016, I wrote another blog (The Fidelity Of Failure) about this in which I stated why this was going to get out of control real quick if there was no accountability in the project. That was 4 yrs ago - and it DID get worse, while still continuing.

dereksmart.com/2016/06/star-c…

But wait! I have to mention the previous attempt which we can assume got canned in favor of prison gameplay. That would be the Theatres Of War "battle royale" mode. I shit you not; that was totally a thing that was being worked on and revealed at the Oct 2016 CitizenCon.

This is one of the best review explanations of that one.

"Currently scheduled for release in "early 2020", Theaters of War still requires some work."

altchar.com/game-news/star…

"I'm pretty happy with it now," - Sean Tracy, tech director

Listen, CIG even did a 1hr show in Jan 2020 about it. No, really - they did.

This Mar 2020 community thread about it says more than I could possibly hope to articulate in Tweets.

robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/commu…

That was then. This is now (thread since removed)

i.imgur.com/Nbss4rD.png

So they shit-canned yet another extensive scope creep feature, in favor of yet another scope creep feature - barely months later. So, basically, in the time it took them to can ToW, they were already embarked on yet another such creep: prison gameplay.

And so it goes.

CIG uses these scope creep features to deceive backers & investors about the project state in a bid to continue raising money in what has evolved into a dev Ponzi scheme whereby new money is needed to pay for things that old money didn't succeed in doing.

And that's why we came to find out in Dec 2018 that the project was literally *insolvent* for the better part of its dev lifecyle. I laid it out extensively in my "Star Citizen - New Dawn" blog from Dec 2018.

dereksmart.com/2015/07/star-c…

As of this writing, Star Citizen claims to have raised over $278.5M from backers + $46M (a sizeable portion of which went to Roberts personally) in 2018 bailout money from an accredited investor + $17.5M from the same investor in 2019-20.

That's 9 yrs (2011-2020) at a financial tally of $342M (that we know of publicly).

NO GAME COMPLETED.

Backers so far have nothing that resembles the $2M game promised in 2012, nor the $65M game promised in 2014.

Roberts, family & clan got rich though. So there's that.

At the risk of breaking this thread - because Twitter is crap like that - this was back in 2019 CitizenCon, not 2016.

In case you wanted to see the tracking of this fundraising, here is their chart which, hilariously, stemmed from the $65M goals - from 2014.

robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals

A better M2M charge (WARNING massive load time)

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

"My god prison gameplay is HORRIBLE"

reddit.com/r/starcitizen_…

Another die-hard streamer gives it a whirl. I watched it so you don't have to.

Yes, it's horrid.