Insider Trading: CitizenCon & Star Citizen

Jeff Williams
•
Oct 13, 2015 at 08:05am EDT
Star Citizen Cloud Imperium Games

Third Anniversary

Contributed by Adrian Ip.

Adrian has gamed on everything from an Apple IIe to a 5960X, Titan X rig with pit stops at various Commodore machines and other consoles. He has a long term love affair with most sci-fi/space genre games, particularly including space combat sims. Current backer/player of both Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous. Finance geek in my spare time. xD.

In the wake of the global financial crisis (crises, depending on your point of view), it’s a subject that most people have heard of and understand to a basic degree and I’m pretty sure that the unanimous conclusion is that it’s BAD! There are lots of different things that people associate with insider trading, but it ultimately boils down to one thing. Somebody, somehow got hold of some privileged information and used it to their advantage.

“Hang on, what the hell are you talking about Adrian?” I hear you ask. “I came here to read about Star Citizen, not some finance rubbish!” Well, keep going with me through this article and I’ll explain myself.

 

Full Disclosure

It’s no secret by now that I’m a Star Citizen fan. So when WCCF asked me to write up some of my thoughts having attended CitizenCon 2015 in Manchester over the weekend, I started thinking about what my biggest challenge would be. It was pretty obvious that writing an unbiased article about my first ever gaming convention and a game that I love was going to prove troublesome, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles so I’d better get on with the task at hand.

I’m an old school Wing Commander fan. My GOG account contains every WC thing they’ve got going (yes, even the much unloved WC Academy!). There’s even a rather embarrassing tale from my youth which I won’t share here but if you knew it, you’d think to yourself “wow, that’s one dedicated wing commander fan!”

Many of my formative years were spent in the company of Maverick, Maniac, Angel, Paladin, Blair, Tolwyn, Coriolis and others. The games had such an impact on me that years later I still regularly searched for any hint of a new wing commander game. Finally, my patience was rewarded with success and in November 2012 I stumbled upon the Star Citizen kickstarter, watched the promo video and immediately signed up for a Digital Bounty Hunter package.

Almost 3 years later, I sit here writing about the first gaming event I’ve ever attended in person. It’s been a wild ride so far and I have no reason to believe the next 3 years will be any less exhilarating. Am I a fanboy? Yes. Unquestionably. But I’d also like to think I’ve got a reasonable head and have the ability to put that to one side and look at things objectively, so let’s take a look at where we are.

The Story So Far

Yes, yes. We all know that SC is the darling of the crowdfunding world at over $92m and counting, but that’s meaningless to us. We want the game. Well here’s the thing, it’s not finished yet. What we do have though are:

AC currently has the following game modes available:

 

The game itself is seriously shaping up. Arena Commander is excellent and extremely playable and as the game powers on to a million backers (999,875 at time of writing) [ed note; they're over 1 Million now], the future has never looked brighter. Have there been delays? Of course, this is software development after all and it’s fairly safe to say that being an alpha backer is not for the faint of heart, but overall day after day, month after month and year after year, Cloud Imperium Games are steadily chipping away at the mountain of functionality to be delivered.

I spent the first couple of years following the game reading the comm-links, posting on the forums, playing the occasional match (my pc wasn’t entirely up to spec until earlier this year). Since I’ve gotten my new machine, I’ve found an increasing portion of my free time dedicated to the game and I now regularly play with a group of people a couple of times a week.

CitizenCon

So needless to say, when it was announced that Star Citizen would have its first UK event this year, I snapped up a ticket. I’ve been part of a UK based fan group for a while now and quite a lot of the others were also going. The months of anticipation were a killer. We saw other events come and go, always watching but frustrated that it wasn’t our turn to be there yet. Finally, last weekend our turn came.

What.

A.

Show.

The experience was amazing. You had to be there to understand it and no words I write will be able to do it justice. How to make an appropriate comparison to describe the experience of being there vs. watching a livestream? I suppose for the older people, it’s the difference between listening to music on LW radio while standing next to a road digger operating at full pelt and simultaneously being run over by a honking car to being in the front row for the live concert at Wembley Stadium. For the younger crowd? Uhmm, I’m not really young anymore so don’t know what to say. But go and find an old radio, try to pick up a LW music broadcast while standing next to a road digger operating at full pelt and (be very careful with this last bit!) get almost but not quite run over by a honking car (hey, don’t want any blood on my hands!). If you can do that and then go see the concert at Wembley Stadium while standing in the front? You’ll have an idea of the difference XD

I’m assuming you’ve seen either the livestream or the upload by now. If you haven’t yet, you can watch it here.

If you don’t have a spare 2 hours to watch the whole thing, do yourself a favour and check out the following:

The trailer for Squadron 42 (the single player campaign in the style of Wing Commander), including the cast list of Hollywood actors can be seen here.

The ARK Starmap is a thing of beauty and can be found here.

The tech explanation of the actors performance capture can be found here.

Everyone was very friendly and down to earth from Chris, Sandi and Erin to all of the staff from Foundry 42 in the UK who were on hand to talk the night away with backers as friends and passionate fellow gamers united with common purpose, they were the stars but there were no divas and you were as likely to get bought a beer by Erin as to get an autograph from Chris.

One of the many friends I’ve made in following/playing this game commented that Chris’ expression during the show while we were watching one of the videos was like he was looking at his first born so it was only fitting at the end of the show when the cake was broken out and we all sang happy birthday (and got to have some surprisingly good cake!).

All in all, a grand evening was had, new friends were made, existing friendships were cemented, brother and sisterhood was celebrated as we all came together to experience and celebrate what we are all looking forward to.

But…

There had to be one. I came away from that show exhilarated. In the real world however, there are still pessimists. Poring over the comments section on this very site, I see a lot of negative comments. That’s not surprising, the world would of course be boring if everyone had the same point of view. The thing is, I found myself wondering how it can be that such vehemently negative viewpoints can be around given the evidence before us, the amount of time we all know it takes to do complex development, the amazing progress made so far, the already very playable game that I regularly lose myself in for hours at a go, the detailed monthly reports telling us what they’re working on, the tech demos they publish, all of this and more surely flies in the face of any reasonable person thinking there is nothing here right?

Illumination

Then out of nowhere while I was thinking of my angle for this write-up, the answer struck me. I’m the Inside Trader. I’m the one with the privileged information. Not because I know any great big secrets or work for CIG or write for WCCF or have met Chris Roberts and shaken his hand, but for a few important reasons:

  1. I’ve followed the game since its inception, I haven’t read every comm-link or watched every episode of every video update they put out, but certainly most of them.
  2. I’ve worked in complex software development and understand the difficulties with large scale distributed modular development (on systems much more complicated than AAA games).

Here’s the thing. Software development is hard. I’ve spent the last 16 years working in finance, often on large scale software development projects significantly larger and more expensive than your average AAA game. I know some people will point and say it can’t be done. The thing is though, with enough time and money, pretty much anything can be done. Those who say it can’t be done are of course entitled to their opinion, but they should NOT interrupt those who are doing it. It’s easy to destroy, it’s harder to create. The internet has given a platform to any voice that wants to destroy and although that’s a shame, I respect that people are entitled to their own opinions but the amount of clickbait and self-promotion that occurs on the web today is a pity.

I separated out the last reason I’m the inside trader, because in some ways. It’s the single most important. With enough time and dedication, anyone can go and watch some video updates, read some comm links etc and get a decent picture of the project and software development as a subject in general, but this one makes the process of turning yourself into an inside trader like me infinitely easier. Namely:

  1. I’ve found a great community of people who I follow the game with.

“You what?” I hear you say, but it’s the truth. The bottom line is, not everyone knows everything about this game. Doesn’t matter how much you read, how many videos you watch, how much research you do. There will always be some piece of information that you’ve missed as nobody can do it all alone. Find yourself a community. It could be a local group of 2 or 3 people who get together every month or two for a beer or a coffee or lunch. It could be a subreddit, a facebook group, a fansite, a Star Citizen org, it could be people from the comments section of this very website. Talk to them, engage with them, learn from them. Find a friendly group. There will always be disagreements, but ultimately you will all gain from the experience. You’ll find friends, compatriots, in game opponents, sisters and brothers in arms and it will help you navigate the brawling and bewildering beast that Star Citizen can be to the uninitiated. If space games aren’t your thing, that’s fine, but there’s no reason to try to bring others down.

I’ve “met” a lot of people around this game, some in real life, most online who shared my passion, some my age or older and huge flight/space sim fans who I can reminisce with over old games, some the new younger generation who felt a yearning in their soul for a game richer and deeper than yet another yearly rushed update, pushed out the door half finished in order to make a holiday season cut off date. Star Citizen transcends this and calls to the true gamer in all of us.

I’ve always loved space. Since I was a kid, I’ve looked up at the stars and wondered what it would be like to traverse them. That wonder and excitement burns as deeply and brightly inside me today as it ever did if not more so. It’s unlikely I’ll get the opportunity to go into space in my lifetime but already commercial spaceflight has become a reality. Out of reach of most, but it’s there and the desire of humanity as a species to progress and move ourselves forward whether it’s something from our pre-history as simple as the discovery of fire to the rocket scientists of today who will create the spaceships of tomorrow is something that unites us all. Whether you like it or not, every single person that pushes the envelope should be applauded because whether they succeed or fail, they move us forward, nudging things on in their own way. This is true, no matter the subject.

Who among us doesn’t ooooh and aaaaah at the latest graphics card flagships from nVidia and AMD. How many actually buy them? We know the majority of the market is further down the price/performance scale than the flagship, but we know that the flagship has moved things forward somehow, that in a year or two, that level of performance will be within our grasp. Star Citizen is the nearest thing I can think of to a “gaming flagship”. Just look at the technology they’re bringing to bear in the performance capture for squadron 42 in the video I linked above. These kinds of efforts move everything forward and set new standards across the board. They’re reaching for the stars, so am I, that’s why I’m a backer and you should be too.

I’ll leave you all with a note I wrote to the community I’m part of when I was leaving Manchester after CitizenCon this weekend:

“All, as I pack my bags and get ready to leave Manchester I'm reflecting on a great trip and I'd just like to say that despite the fact that I didn't get as much time to spend talking and getting to know everyone in person as I'd like to have done, I can safely say that I didn't meet a single person from here who I didn't think was awesome.

CitizenCon was a great experience and I'm still sure the game will be awesome but it's you guys who will make the experience unforgettable. I know we had lots of plans to talk about group stuff and organising ourselves a bit more effectively which didn't happen due to the compressed schedule but I'd encourage everyone here to look at coming to Gamescom next year whether SC do a presentation there or not. I'll be there for a few days which should give a lot more time for us to all talk shit at eachother. XD

Peace.”

See you in the ‘verse.

Soleith.

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