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Star Citizen's Executive Producer might have quit the project

S

ShogunDarius

Member
Star Citizen’s really not having a good time as of late, especially if recent rumours are to be believed. First, the FPS module Star Marine was put on hold/delayed, and now it looks like the executive producer has left the project.

Cloud Imperium Games’ Executive Producer (maybe with an emphasis on the ‘ex’) Alex Mayberry’s LinkedIn page lists him working at the studio only up to June 2015. You have to manually add in an ending date on LinkedIn, which means it’s less likely this is an error.

de996ba5098e06c61914a78bd7f86836-620x.jpg
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http://www.destructoid.com/star-cit...3.phtml?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
 
D

Dictator93

Member
He moved to blizzard to work on a different project. He was not fired.

Gotta love that crazy rumour milling when he talked about it at length to SC's community.

Oh, this is not about travis day....


Well, nvm!
 
B

Bernbaum

Member
It'll be ages before this is in a condition that I'll want to play it, but I still think I'll get my $40 worth of Kickstarter support eventually.
 
A

ashecitism

Member
Well, Doug Lombardi did forget to update his for a while I think, which made people think he left. This was around the layoffs.
 
B

bj00rn_

Banned
The the dataset resolution used for jumping to conclusions is embarrasingly low - Even for tabloid journalism.
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
Wasn't all this speculation instigated by the Derek Smart blog post?

Either way, I don't get the speculation. Alex Mayberry was hired last year while the project was already in development. There are numerous reasons why he quit etc.
 
D

Daedardus

Member
Raytow said:
No, I meant the MMO part with houses and the like.
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Houses? They aren't selling houses at all, they only sell spaceships. There aren't even actual houses in the game, they are more of a social hangar which serves more as a garage, since your ship is the actual place of living.
 
A

ashecitism

Member
Raytow said:
wat? they are working another game?
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tuxfool said:
yeah, that is nonsense.
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Daedardus said:
Houses? They aren't selling houses at all, they only sell spaceships. There aren't even actual houses in the game, they are more of a social hangar which serves more as a garage, since your ship is the actual place of living.
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Illfonic, the guys behind the FPS modul are working on an MMORPG called Revival. He means that.

https://www.revivalgame.com/
 
K

KiwiLannister

Member
This is going to fail, then maybe if people are lucky a very rushed limited feature game will be released.

Prime example of feature creep. They needed to define their scope way earlier on instead of promising the world and spending their time making ships. I didn't pledge but you could tell pretty early on that a project of this scale was going to be impossible for this studio.
 
S

SnowTeeth

Banned
KiwiLannister said:
This is going to fail, then maybe if people are lucky a very rushed limited feature game will be released.

Prime example of feature creep. They needed to define their scope way earlier on instead of promising the world and spending their time making ships. I didn't pledge but you could tell pretty early on that a project of this scale was going to be impossible for this studio.
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Lol
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
KiwiLannister said:
Prime example of feature creep.
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This is certainly arguably true.

They needed to define their scope way earlier on instead of promising the world and spending their time making ships. I didn't pledge but you could tell pretty early on that a project of this scale was going to be impossible for this studio.
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This isn't. The scope of the entire project has been fairly defined since the beginning. Where the scope was to be expanded based on funding. It should be known that there are currently 6 studios working on the game.
 
M

mclem

Member
ashecitism said:
Well, Doug Lombardi did forget to update his for a while I think, which made people think he left. This was around the layoffs.
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I haven't poked around LinkedIn in quite some time, but I thought it was possible to leave your employment history open-ended?
 
U

Urthor

Member
Pretty sure now is the time for publications to find some anonymous industry sources, read disgruntled ex-employees, and start publishing articles about Star Citizen going off the rails.

Unless they get a boot up the ass at this point in development and a change in personnel at the top, more than likely everything's going to go down the toilet and it'll end in tears.


Personal opinion, but judging by his E3 video, the CEO looks like he's barely organised enough to tie his shoes in the morning, and is completely unqualified to manage a business with dozens of employees.
 
Z

Zabojnik

Member
Urthor said:
Pretty sure now is the time for publications to find some anonymous industry sources, read disgruntled ex-employees, and start publishing articles about Star Citizen going off the rails.

Unless they get a boot up the ass at this point in development, everything's going to go down the toilet and it'll end in tears.


Personal opinion, but judging by his E3 video, the CEO looks like he's barely organised enough to tie his shoes in the morning, and is completely unqualified to manage a business with dozens of employees.
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Amazing, lol. It was like, what, a minute long? And they were in the middle of a big performance capture shoot in the UK.

When it comes to Star Citizen, the general public has generally no fucking idea what is going on with the project and only deals in absolutes.
 
U

Urthor

Member
Perhaps, but for all the parables about don't judge a book by its cover, that doesn't mean you need to know someone for a decade to see that they're a lot closer to a back office system admin than a Todd Howard style game lead in the human food chain.

First impressions about someone aren't necessarily right every single time, but if you've ever been part of a job search for corporate roles or somewhere else in life, the sad part is how much of a time they're actually spot on.

What you see is pretty much what you get I'd say, 80ish percent of the time when it comes to interviewing confident, well spoken leaders and communicators. Not to say he's not a smart and talented guy, but he's not someone I'd feel in safe hands working for, or in fact trusting my money to.
 
T

thebloo

Member
tuxfool said:
This isn't. The scope of the entire project has been fairly defined since the beginning. Where the scope was to be expanded based on funding. It should be known that there are currently 6 studios working on the game.
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Expanding the scope and bringing in new studios is basically a rescope, which is usually unhealthy for any project that actually wants to keep a semblance of timeline.

The main "problem" with SC is that their development is really transparent, leading people to jump to conclusion. Most of the games that people have played and enjoyed go through similar situations and end up being OK. Its' just that we don't know about it. This doesn't mean that SC won't fail.
 
D

DieH@rd

Banned
This game has large development team [well, several of them]. People move from job to job, get better offers, retire from gaming due to various reasons [personal, family illness, etc.].

Star Citizen has ~2 more years of development, staff changes will happen for this project many times more.
 
thelastword

thelastword

Banned
Just something about this project never gelled with me, there seems to be no end goal, milestones seem to be an afterthought. If someone asks, what is Star Citizen, can anyone say they really know, everything about this project has been too disjointed, almost as if there's no direction at all. They've got a lot of money, but I'm not optimistic about their results so far and the project's future outlook.
 
D

Dictator93

Member
Urthor said:
Perhaps, but for all the parables about don't judge a book by its cover, that doesn't mean you need to know someone for a decade to see that they're a lot closer to a back office system admin vs an alpha male Todd Howard style game lead in the human food chain.

First impressions about someone aren't necessarily right every single time, but if you've ever been part of a job search for corporate roles or somewhere else in life, the sad part is how much of a time they're actually spot on.

What you see is pretty much what you get I'd say, 80ish percent of the time when it comes to interviewing confident, well spoken leaders and communicators. Not to say he's not a smart and talented guy, but he's not someone I'd feel in safe hands working for, or in fact trusting my money to.
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So, you are saying the personal video performance of someone over a 1 minute vignette is enough to judge their leadership qualities, experience, and drive to develop ambitious games?

Also... alpha male? Wth am I reading?

Perhaps you should read up on Chris Roberts and his past projects along with this one a bit more.
thelastword said:
Just something about this project never gelled with me, there seems to be no end goal, milestones seem to be an afterthought. If someone asks, what is Star Citizen, can anyone say they really know, everything about this project has been too disjointed, almost as if there's no direction at all. They've got a lot of money, but I'm not optimistic about their results so far and the project's general outlook.
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That is because you are uninformed. There is a goal, direction, and of course milestones.
 
C

Clarkus Darkus

Member
Hopefully i'll have a PC by the time this game comes out, Wonder what will come first, SC, FF7 remake, Shenmue 3.

I'll take all 3 in the same year!
 
M

Mr. Nice_Guy

Member
I feel like there are two camps here for the most part.

People who invested in this game and will refuse to hear anything negative about it no matter what.

And people that did/did not invest and are only speculative about this ever coming out in its promised form. Which I don't blame them because it is a lot of big promises.

Honestly I hope it does meet what they promised because it looks so cool, but at the same time it sure does look like a lot to accomplish. Time will tell and all of that I suppose.
 
U

Urthor

Member
Dictator93 said:
Perhaps you should read up on Chris Roberts and his past projects along with this one a bit more.
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I mean sure, to tl;dr his Linked In

1987-1996, worked at Origin systems on the Wing Commander games in the dawn of video gaming

1996, founded Digital Anvil, with the stated desire "to return to small studio gaming." studio spent 4 years to develop and release 1 game, Starlancer, before being acquired by Microsoft in 2001. Roberts moved on in the same year.

2002-2010 founded and ran an independant films distributer using his own money, small vanity company from the looks of things, that folded after releasing a handful of films with little success.

2008-2011, chief creative officer of Bl!nk Media International, a company so anonymous I can't even find out what it does or what he was doing, so presumably I'd imagine he was just unemployed and/or invested in Star Citizen at this point.

2012, crowdsources Star Citizen


So from the looks of things, this is a game developer who left Origin games in 1996, then (badly) managed a gaming company focused on small development teams from 1996-2000, which only managed to release one game in that period, Starlancer.

Following this he ran a failed independant film studio founded by him and from the looks of things largely funded by him, before coming up with the idea to crowdsource Star Citizen while he was unemployed in 2011. After that he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, named his company after himself and ploughed onward into an incredibly ambitious game development process, managing far more people than he has ever managed before with more money than sense.

So tell me, is it that unrealistic to think Star Citizen might be in a bad place, and he's not a kickass CEO?
 
M

mclem

Member
Mr. Nice_Guy said:
I feel like there are two camps here for the most part.

People who invested in this game and will refuse to hear anything negative about it no matter what.
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FWIW, I did invest, and I think I'm at the "patient but mildly uncomfortable" stage. I'm mainly interested in Squadron 42, and that's not scheduled until the end of this year, so I don't think I'll get into too much of a tizzy unless they fail to meet that target.
 
O

old manatee

Banned
Urthor said:
I mean sure, to tl;dr his Linked In

1987-1996, worked at Origin systems on the Wing Commander games in the dawn of video gaming

1996, founded Digital Anvil, with the stated desire "to return to small studio gaming." studio spent 4 years to develop and release 1 game, Starlancer, before being acquired by Microsoft in 2001. Roberts moved on in the same year.

2002-2010 founded and ran an independant films distributer using his own money, small vanity company from the looks of things, that folded after releasing a handful of films with little success.

2008-2011, chief creative officer of Bl!nk Media International, a company so anonymous I can't even find out what it does or what he was doing, so presumably I'd imagine he was just unemployed and/or invested in Star Citizen at this point.

2012, crowdsources Star Citizen


So from the looks of things, this is a game developer who left Origin games in 1996, then (badly) managed a gaming company focused on small development teams from 1996-2000, which only managed to release one game in that period, Starlancer.

Following this he ran a failed independant film studio founded by him and from the looks of things largely funded by him, before coming up with the idea to crowdsource Star Citizen while he was unemployed in 2011. After that he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, named his company after himself and ploughed onward into an incredibly ambitious game development process, managing far more people than he has ever managed before with more money than sense.

So tell me, is it that unrealistic to think Star Citizen might be in a bad place, and he's not a kickass CEO?
Click to expand...


Star Citizen is totally being made by one dude.
 
Z

Zabojnik

Member
Mr. Nice_Guy said:
I feel like there are two camps here for the most part.

People who invested in this game and will refuse to hear anything negative about it no matter what.

And people that did/did not invest and are only speculative about this ever coming out in its promised form. Which I don't blame them because it is a lot of big promises.

Honestly I hope it does meet what they promised because it looks so cool, but at the same time it sure does look like a lot to accomplish. Time will tell and all of that I suppose.
Click to expand...

Yeah, see, it's really not like that. Of course those invested in the game want it to succeed, but at least here on GAF, SC backers have been pretty cricital of the game's development in the past. It's just that they are immensly more informed about what's going on with the game, how things are progressing, what are the goals, and so on ... while the other group generally really has no fucking idea what is going on and is prone to ignorant drive-by comments. Just because the ITK people are trying their best to correct said ignorance doesn't mean they aren't capable of being critical.
 
K

KHlover

Banned
So is this like the Ubisoft Open World game of Indie games? Lots of studios working on different parts of the game but no one knows what the rest does, resulting in a barely coherent game? The more I hear about Star Citizen the more I get that impression.
 
D

Dictator93

Member
Mr. Nice_Guy said:
I feel like there are two camps here for the most part.

People who invested in this game and will refuse to hear anything negative about it no matter what.

And people that did/did not invest and are only speculative about this ever coming out in its promised form. Which I don't blame them because it is a lot of big promises.

Honestly I hope it does meet what they promised because it looks so cool, but at the same time it sure does look like a lot to accomplish. Time will tell and all of that I suppose.
Click to expand...
I think there are multiple camps of blind followers, critical followers, etc... Humans in general are a diverse group. But along side all those people with different perspectives on the project based on information they have, there are also people who do not read at all about the game and nevertheless comment on it in a negative fashion. If anyone says there is a lack of direction or milestones, they just aren't reading enough of the MASSIVE amount of information CIG hands out to the public.

Urthor said:
I mean sure, to tl;dr his Linked In

1987-1996, worked at Origin systems on the Wing Commander games in the dawn of video gaming

1996, founded Digital Anvil, with the stated desire "to return to small studio gaming." studio spent 4 years to develop and release 1 game, Starlancer, before being acquired by Microsoft in 2001. Roberts moved on in the same year.

2002-2010 founded and ran an independant films distributer using his own money, small vanity company from the looks of things, that folded after releasing a handful of films with little success.

2008-2011, chief creative officer of Bl!nk Media International, a company so anonymous I can't even find out what it does or what he was doing, so presumably I'd imagine he was just unemployed and/or invested in Star Citizen at this point.

2012, crowdsources Star Citizen


So from the looks of things, this is a game developer who left Origin games in 1996, then (badly) managed a gaming company focused on small development teams from 1996-2000, which only managed to release one game in that period, Starlancer.

Following this he ran a failed independant film studio founded by him and from the looks of things largely funded by him, before coming up with the idea to crowdsource Star Citizen while he was unemployed in 2011. After that he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, named his company after himself and ploughed onward into an incredibly ambitious game development process, managing far more people than he has ever managed before with more money than sense.

So tell me, is it that unrealistic to think Star Citizen might be in a bad place, and he's not a kickass CEO?
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All I can say is "yikes". It is like you are reading from the Electronic Art's guide to history regarding this guy's career.
But first some clarification:
He was nominally "unemployed" in 2011 because he was building and coding the Squadron 42 prototype which was used in the crowdfunding campaign. It was not some idea of desperation/ or the next scheme as you paraphrase it. He in fact had secured funding for the game which was then later dropped in favour of using a fully crowdfunded model.
---
Beyond that, considering how wildly sucessful the entire wing commander series was (the numbers it pulled in the 90s were collosal at a time when PC games were relatively small) and how ambituous the "-lancer" games were for their time (they came out, btw), it is hard to fault CR. He has always made games that were detailed, ambitious, and of a high fidelity. They also almost always came out and had success.

There is a reason why people have those images of MS and EA executing game studios into mass graves.
 
Buggy Loop

Buggy Loop

Member
CaptainAhab said:
Star Citizen is totally being made by one dude.
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Well... its his call to outsource modules to satellite studios. Which imo is the biggest mistake they could ever do. These kind of things rarely go well, for any industries. You bleed money on a company that could just give no shits about what the product ends up being as long as they fill their end of the contract to avoid the lawyers. Then have fun debugging someone else's coding method..
 
K

KingBroly

Banned
KHlover said:
So is this like the Ubisoft Open World game of Indie games? Lots of studios working on different parts of the game but no one knows what the rest does, resulting in a barely coherent game? The more I hear about Star Citizen the more I get that impression.
Click to expand...

The potential fallout of Star Citizen being bad would be devastating.
 
thelastword

thelastword

Banned
Dictator93 said:
That is because you are uninformed. There is a goal, direction, and of course milestones.
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I can only judge what I see, but right now this game tries to do too much; space combat/exploring, first person shooter, space trading, coop multiplayer. This game was pitched like the Peter Molyneux's version of MMO's but what we have so far does not inspire any confidence, as well as the outlook of some of their modules.

I look at something like Shenmue Kickstarter and everything is clear. Shenmue is a third person action/adventure game, 2 mil got it off the ground, 4 mil will enlargen it's scope, so will 10 mil, and yet, what do we know? all these "would be" milestones are fairly detailed for all to see. Persons pledging know exactly what they will be getting, the physical disc is now an option too. SC is definitely not as organized as Shenmue and it's been in development for much longer. This is people's money, it's not a good outlook, important persons leaving the project mid-development is also not a sign of confidence either. SC has been under fire of late and I think it's justified, usually where there is smoke there's fire.
 
T

Trojan X

Banned
As long the main Producer is there then all should be fine. The Executive Producer is mostly the "sign-off" person and just to check how the project is going now and again. That is usually the case unless that Executive Producer for that project is really hands-on and the mastermind of the Game Director aspect. I.e. I wouldn't worry.
 
D

Dictator93

Member
thelastword said:
I can only judge what I see, but right now this game tries to do too much; space combat/exploring, first person shooter, space trading, coop multiplayer. This game was pitched like the Peter Molyneux's version of MMO's but what we have so far does not inspire confidence.

I look at something like Shenmue Kickstarter and everything is clear. Shenmue is a third person action/adventure game, 2 mil got it off the ground, 4 mil will enlargen it's scope, so will 10 mil and all these would be milestones are detailed. Persons pledging know exactly what they will be getting, the physical disc is now an option too. SC is definitely not as organized as Shenmue and it's been in development for much longer. This is people's money, it's not a good outlook, important person's leaving the project mid-development is also not a sign of confidence either. SC has been under fire of late and I think it's justified, usually where there is smoke there's fire.
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Why are you writing in absolutes regard the game's projected vision but are not informing yourself about said vision? Everything you need to know about the game can be found on their website or is updated daily through various communication channels. The entire game's scope has been documented and presented throughout the project's existence. Go to the funding portion of the website, or the part that tells you about game mechanics (death of a spaceman for example).

You can know exactly what you are getting by backing just by reading. In fact, this is probably the most open project in the history of all of gaming (especially one of this scope). When you back you are presented with what you are getting in a bulleted list even: a singleplayer game that is like wing commander, access to a persistent universe sim which comes online later, and then arena styled FPS and space ship shooting for pick up matches.
 
Z

Zabojnik

Member
Buggy Loop said:
Well... its his call to outsource modules to satellite studios. Which imo is the biggest mistake they could ever do. These kind of things rarely goes well, for any industries. You bleed money on a company that could just give no shits about what the product ends up being as long as they fill their end of the contract to avoid the lawyers. Then have fun debugging someone else's coding method..
Click to expand...
It's not like the modules are separate, sealed-off entities. All studios have contributed heavily to every single one of them. Well, Arena Commander so far, but it's the exact same story with Star Marine, social module, etc. The tech that gets developed by any one studio is then shared and refined across all the others, and it really couldn't be any other way, given the nature of the beast.

If you can't wait to pass judgement on Star Citizen, at least wait for Squadron 42, Star Citizen's story-driven single player (with co-op) campaign due sometime in 2016, which will be CIG's first "commercial" release.
 
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