The problem is that literally all the various engines are incredibly restricted with regards to their multiplayer capabilities. They are all match-based at their foundation. What Star Citizen is pretending to try to accomplish, does not exist and never will exist, due to the restrictions everyone has to live by. Elite doesn't do it either, it's just REALLY clever at hiding its match-based nature by doing the matchmaking during hyperspace.

So, it appears that Star Citizen hopes to release a demo with at least a reasonably respectable number of simultaneous players, like a few dozen or so, because that is what Amazon's engine supports almost out of the box. They hope to buy some time with that, so that unless people are very knowledgeable, they will not start wondering about what Chris Roberts and company plan to do about the presently unsolvable problem.

Bioware discovers that they will never, ever, be satiated:

At BioWare, we strive to make games that are representative of our players and the broader world around us. We do this by actively consulting within our diverse workforce, as well as speaking with different communities.

In Mass Effect: Andromeda, one of our non-playable characters, Hainly Abrams, was not included in a caring or thoughtful way. We apologize to anyone who interacted with or was hurt by this conversation. This was never our intent, and was an unfortunate byproduct of the iterative process of game design and a change in the structure of the character's dialogue.

We have had several discussions with members of the transgender community, both internally at BioWare and in the broader community, and we are working to remedy this issue. Once the changes are implemented, Hainly will only reveal certain information to Ryder after they have developed trust, and only if the player chooses to support her.

As always, we appreciate the help, feedback, and support from the Mass Effect community.

Once you started feeding the SJW, he always ends up devouring you.

Derek Smart provides a post-CitizenCon update on Star Citizen:

The past few weeks following the CitizenCon event have been very difficult and dare I say disastrous for the Star Citizen project. From the post-show videos they did in an attempt to explain away why (read my Shattered Dreams blog for more on that) Squadron 42 wasn’t shown, to the controversy over lies about procgen planets, to the status of the patches (the much delayed 2.6 patch, as well as the 3.0 patch touted at GamesCom in Aug as coming end of the year), the flippant mention of SQ42 coming to consoles – and right down to last week’s uproar over the silence on the status of both aforementioned patches.

Well in the past 24hrs, things took a turn for the worse.

For some time now I have maintained that not only has Chris Roberts blown through $130 million (a huge amount, even though we have reason to believe that the funding tracker isn’t accurate) dollars of backer (plus whatever investor and bank loans source say they have) money, but has also run out of money to fund this pipe-dream to completion. Heck, at GamesCom he flat out said that 4.0 of Star Citizen – which won’t even be 50% of what was promised – won’t be out until end of 2017 – which, going by trends means “sometime in 2018”. The longer a project takes, the more money it needs to continue. And with over 400 employees and contractors worldwide, it’s easy to see how money will eventually become an issue. As of this month, the project which was promised to be released in Nov 2014, is now officially two years late.

Yet, there are those who, rather than holding them accountable for promises made, keep rejoicing in point digit milestones such as the recently reached $130m one. It’s hilarious, and now goes way beyond Sunk Cost Fallacy and Cognitive Dissonance. When the inevitable crash comes, psychologists are going to be digging deep to figure out how so many people fell so far, and so hard for what many believe to now be the biggest scam in video game history.

So anyway, given what they did with the pre-CitizenCon Polaris sale, the stunt they just pulled should come as no surprise to backers. See, ahead of the anniversary stream which is coming in two weeks, they decided to do another ship sale. This, while par for the course won’t have been all that surprising – except for the fact that i) they discounted it ii) made it cheaper if you paid cash and didn’t use store credits (obtained via melting existing ships). What that means is, not only do they need the cash (from new buyers), but they are also willing to devalue the existing backer inventory in favor of “new money”. And so the community was set ablaze (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). Again.

Read the whole thing. It's just... not... good. Not for anyone in the dev world.

This must come as a relief to the concerned parties:

The fallout from 38 Studios’ drastic shutdown in 2012 continues to play out, as Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilman and State Police Colonel Steven O’Donnell announced in a press conference today that no charges would be filed against government officials or former 38 Studios employees after a 4-year investigation.

According to local news station WPRI, the two stated that no criminal activity had been found in the arrangement of a $75 million loan for the production of an MMORPG called Copernicus that was backed by Rhode Island taxpayers. Civil investigations by the State and the SEC are still ongoing, and an 8-page report from the Attorney General’s office states that charges could be brought if new information is brought to light.

However right now, “the quantity and quality of the evidence of any criminal activity fell short of what would be necessary to prove any allegation beyond a reasonable doubt and as such the Rules of Professional Conduct precluded even offering a criminal charge for grand jury consideration,” the report states.

The downfall of 38 Studios was a calamitous event for both the people of Rhode Island and the 200+ developers of 38 Studios and Big Huge Games, who were working on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and Copernicus. The undying legal action in this case highlights how game developers can become embroiled in local political conflicts when the risks of game financing clash with taxpayer money.

I always felt vaguely bad about the catastrophe that was 38 Studios. Not that it was even remotely my fault or that I had anything to do with it, but I was casually acquainted with its founder, Curt Schilling, through both of us being players of Advanced Squad Leader and subscribers to the ASLML, and when I heard he was founding a game dev studio, I got in touch and told him that I'd be happy to talk to him and answer any questions he might have about the various pitfalls that awaited the unwary developer. He was appreciative, but assured me that he had a top-notch team around him, so I wished him well and promptly ceased to give the matter any further thought. Seeing how things eventually turned out, I rather wish I'd been a bit more pushy.

Derek Smart explains what every game industry veteran knows: scope creep kills:

Once Chris did what he has done before by overreaching, increasing the project scope – then not listening to the very people he hired to build the game for him – he subsequently killed the project. Thing is, him – and every single dev (past and present) who has ever written a single line of code, designed any component etc – knew over a year ago that they simply couldn’t build the game Chris now envisioned once he got this crowd-funding windfall. And on the record, several of them told him specifically that. He didn’t listen.

You see, here’s the thing with videogame development. It can get away from you very quickly. Once a design scope changes, the budget tends to go out the window. And when key people start bailing, there are bigger problems to contend with because bringing new people up to speed takes a lot of time. Design and programming are not like art, modeling and audio, whereby any replacement can hit the ground running. And the longer it takes, the more it’s going to cost. And if you don’t have the funding to keep at it, the project is basically dead. Our industry is plagued with nightmare stories of things like this happening; to the extent that many a studio and publisher has folded as a result of a single project going sideways, even after the delayed project ships.

This is why I teach that the primary role of the producer is to SAY NO. If the producer is capable of reining in the designer and his inevitable bright ideas, and fending off the even brighter ideas of the suits and marketing people, scope creep can be prevented.

The thing is, even designers who know better usually can't help themselves. That's why the better and more visionary the designer is, the stronger the producer usually needs to be.

A Russian fan dug out an old preview of Rebel Moon Revolution from a Polish magazine called Secret Service:

Games being shown lately are not entirely original. They are usually more clones of Command & Conquer or Quake. No different is the game freshly announced by GT Interactive on Friday, Rebel Moon Revolution, which will expand the circle of FPS:

Rebel Moon Revolution is the third part of the successful Rebel Moon series, although in this case the title is to be fully adequate to what we see on the monitors. First of all, the game will be based on the new graphic engine, which according to the developers will be able to easily compete with the Quake 2 engine. In general, the people in the RMR in the statements repeatedly compare their work with the boys from ID Software, claiming that their project will be qualitatively similar to the king, and in some respects, even better! Hard to believe, but hopefully it will be.

However, not graphics, and the layer itself merits a place in the forefront of RMR games of this genre. This time we will no longer participate in the senseless butchery, where we murdered everything all around, not knowing who were victims, and what otherwise. The RMR this issue will be explained at the beginning of the game by using eye-catching intros. Not only that, all missions will be linked for each thread feature, which in the opinion of the authors will allow for a better empathy in the form of a hero. Levels to beat will be about 16, perfectly designed and divided into squad action. On each board has a swarm of opponents who use excellent artificial intelligence algorithms written specifically for the game. To make the player's chances more equal, the player will be able to benefit from the impressive arsenal of weapons: grenades, mines, machine guns, lasers and plasma.

RMR promises to be a great title, and if the producers fulfill their promises, they will undoubtedly make a name for themselves.

Sadly, that never happened, as GT Interactive imploded and took down Fenris Wolf with it. A few screen shots remain, including this one of a rescue mission. One thing important to understand about game development is that for every game that is ever finished and shipped, there are probably ten more that fail at some step of the process from initial conception to what we used to call gold master.



As it happens, Rebel Moon Revolution was doomed from the moment that we signed with GT. But that doesn't mean that we couldn't have made different choices that might have allowed the game to survive the implosion of the publisher.