Around the Verse: Episode 1.20 (2014.11.13)

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:02

   [Music] hey everybody Welcome to episode 20 of around the verse I'm Sandy Gardner and I'm Ben Lesnik and the big news is that sy's back Sandy is back after a very long flight from Australia and I found it hard to get up this morning so it was a bit of a struggle I'm getting there it's 2 days of jet lag I think but tell us about the event how did uh how did Australia respond to Star Citizen the a these were actually very friendly towards me but they kept calling me American I was trying really hard to do my aie accent but then again I wasn't

2. 00:00:49

   drinking beer um I was drinking water mhm and somebody bought all teasers and I ate all of those I don't think they're Australian though but um but the fans were awesome The Fan event was great that we had at the citizen bar um we had all the osut there uh and we had some people who like had amazing costumes I don't know if they actually lived in Melbourne but those costumes were amazing I saw some yeah the RSI flight suit guy that was really cool yeah that guy's name was Chris I think he does actual real props and it showed uh so he showed us up so we had him on stage as you may or may not have seen from the live stream and um I think the uh the last part of the live stream we saw was they were pointing a gun at you and you were getting down on the ground and then it cut out yeah okay it didn't get weird from there it hopefully got better if

3. 00:01:38

   you have re watched it since then it is available at the uh at our YouTube and it's on the RSI site right now if you'd like to check out the full uh Pack's presentation it is and can you believe we're 20 episodes deep that's incredible and we've gotten slightly better I hope we've gotten better I it's just it's hard because every week I go you know what I'm going to read this text beforehand I'm going to be prepared it just doesn't happen I like was in a meeting until 5 minutes ago and then I'm like quick let me do my makeup and Ben sits here going yeah okay right I'm like I'm almost done I promise perfect that that was a perfect B impression was it oh gosh I know I'm not very good at that okay $61 million 61 that's incredible I I can't believe that we have hit this level uh I know Chris didn't even realize cuz I said hey did we do the $61 million letter he said

4. 00:02:26

   what $61 million letter we did the $60 million letter I said yeah I think we hit 61 course maybe a little bit jet lag yeah I I think so the relatively new concept of crowdfunding has soared to lofty New Heights in recent years in 2013 alone it's estimated to have raised more than5 billion doar globally if you haven't heard of it yet crowdfunding is the practice of supporting a project or Venture through financial contributions from large numbers of people usually through the internet video game designers have been quick to take advantage of this business model and among the most successful of those is Chris Roberts well Chris is currently visiting Australia and he's with me tonight in the studio Chris thanks so much for joining us tonight I'm more than happy to be here it's great now I should just mention that that video was actually made two years ago technology has improved so much since then now when

5. 00:03:15

   you made that video you were hoping to reach a goal of $20 million or $23 million initially then you wouldn't have to go to outside contractors yeah well well actually I was originally hoping to do between two and 4 million on crowdfunding just to prove to to private investors that there was a viable game there and I thought I'd need about between 14 and 20 million to make the game so I thought okay well if I can raise 4 million with crowdfunding then I could raise the rest with private investment and the uh response was amazing so we already did way more than four in the initial period and we've continued to to do that so there was a certain point where you said well we don't need outside investors we can just make it with the backing of the crowd and uh so that's what we've been doing and I'm really thankful to everyone that's been able to let us do that does influence someone to get behind a

6. 00:04:01

   crowdfunding project uh you know you look on the crowdfunding sites and some are struggling to raise a couple of thousand dollars yours $60 million what is it that's made yours so successful and doesn't in a way speak of what people want for their own lives immers yourself in a fantasy world can contribute towards that I want that to be made donate to someone trying to do a photography degree a little bit more distant from what I understand uh well I mean it's kind of hard for me to speak for everyone I mean my my guess is in general cuz I also back a lot of crowdfunded projects myself um it's always an emotional thing so for me it's something that I emotionally connect to and I go yeah you know I really yes I I want to see that and so it's an emotionally driven response I would say and I would say that in the case of Star Citizen it's something that a lot of Gamers wanted because this is a game

7. 00:04:49

   this is a style of game that hasn't been around for quite a while it used to be very popular back in the '90s when I was making games uh such as Wing Commander which was quite well known back there and that hasn't been around for a while plus uh very squarely U making a game for the PC which uh for a while has been not very well supported for games so people focus on Console games but not PC and so I think there's a lot of PC Gamers that said I want a game made just for my platform and I miss science fiction games and I want this big world I can eventure around in and so all those things sort of created a perfect storm to to create the kind of response that we had for Star Citizen I should also point out that uh although you're a develop game developer and a good businessman this has been your passion 8 years old you went to by Star Wars your mixed accent you grew up in Manchester you live in the US what is it about this world that you feel is so important to

8. 00:05:38

   be able to share with other people uh I it's it's hard I've always loved escapism so I've Loved other worlds I mean when I grew up I loved you know reading Tolen and uh reading hline and and um azimoff and and so going to different places and you know I love uh you know I spent a bunch of time in the film business and and creating worlds is something that I'm really into uh I don't know maybe because I grew up in Manchester and the weather's really miserable and it's rainy so you tend to be instey dreaming of other things uh but so i' I've sort of uh you know made my career about sort of creating other worlds and uh and so I think star in sort of the ultimate version of that because it's creating this world this universe on a level that I haven't had the ability to create previously because I didn't either have the resources or the technology wasn't there and and that's great and when you go around the world you're actually recognized you

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   people follow you around they come together and gather to see you've got your own Wikipedia page so you're kind of dissing that model of computer gamer who sits inside all the time and doesn't socialize what is it about you as a person that you think attracts other people to your vision uh I say that does I'm not very good at answering questions about myself um I mean I'm definitely not George Clooney in terms of getting anything like that but uh no I think I mean I think people you know if there's something that they really relate to I mean like for me you know like you know I I don't I don't get all star eyed about actors but you know being film business when you know meeting James Cameron or Steven Spielberg um you know that for me were my moments when I sort of got all sort of star ey because you know you know creating a world of directing stuff was something that I really um you know responded to so I think that maybe uh you know people that

10. 00:07:14

    play games I mean I I never realized it until I actually got to do star syon because in the past I made a lot of successful games but you know it was the old way where it would get put in a box go into a a computer store and someone would buy it and play it and I would know that a lot of people were playing it because we' sell a lot of units and I would see good reviews in magazines or on you know TV programs but I didn't really connect to the people playing it but with doing Star Citizen because we're going directly to the PE The Gamers that are giving the money for this game I'm actually interacting with a lot of people that say maybe played some of my games in the past and you know I I hear all these stories that I never would have guessed they're like oh yeah you know I became a pilot because I was playing Wing Commander all these years ago I went into NASA because you know I started dreaming about space playing win commander and and I I started to realize wow you know so some of the stuff I did in games Ed what people did when they were growing up in

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    the same way that maybe I was affected by Star Wars and what George Lucas was doing when he was making a film and and I think that's that's just sort of the evolution of of gaming and I think maybe that's what you know the few people that do recognize me they probably go okay I really played your game a while ago and I really liked it and it said something to me and um so yeah you know thanks for doing that well Chris Robert $60 million now I have no I have no doubts it's probably going to hit 100 million at some point so when that happens check in with us I'd love to see where the game's going thanks so much for Dr I'd be happy to back there for 100 see you but by the time you all see this hopefully the 61 letter will be posted along with the details of the uh pole winner which is the uh third starter ship I believe oh cool so um backers will be able to have another option for how to start stares and it'll give another uh low priced

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    extra ship we're we're really looking forward to building that one and when are we having our fly off because it's actually really fun right now it is it's it's really good fun we I was in with Dave hadock and William and we were flying around it was it's it's actually quite fun we really need to take advantage of Arena Commander before they break it again I guess so this weekend right I don't know why I'm s saying it's fun like I'm surprised but but but but genuinely it's I think when you've seen Stars isn't as broken as we have that's probably I'm always expecting the worst and so so when it's cool when it comes together true and Veterans Day yes um it's not Veterans Day when you were seeing this but it is when we're recording it um so we just wanted to take a moment to thank uh all our veterans out there um it's Veterans Day in the United States and Remembrance Day in some other countries um it's been an

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    absolute privilege to get to meet veterans from around the world through Star Citizen um something about the game seems to attract people who have served their countries and it's it's been really cool M50 we've had the M50 unlocked for a week now um just letting players uh test racing and other modes with it seeing how uh how it interacts when uh everyone in the game to play the same uh super fast racing ship and it's we've got some interesting feedback we will be uh building into future balancing updates um you guys have about 24 hours of M50 ownership left if you want to try it out uh it ends uh Friday do you have one I I have an M50 so I didn't need the free one it's a cool little ship I want to race you in my cutless that's not really very fair I think uh that would not be a fair race

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    yeah I know anyway 3:15 Arena Commander tomorrow we will be putting the uh origin 315 variant in Arena Commander tomorrow uh part of our sort of uh spinning up the process for getting variants into the game uh you saw the 325 recently we're going to do the 315 tomorrow and uh a bunch more ships before the end of the year and I think it happened while I was away Eric is no longer with us yes uh Eric wingman Peterson who kind of premiered the idea for this show has uh left clad Imperium games um I worked under Eric for a year in Austin it was uh it was a really good time he's a really good guy um I learned a lot from that it was great writing for wingman's hanger appearing in for form feedback uh we we're going to miss Eric uh yeah I miss his enthusiasm and

15. 00:11:16

    excitement for for everything so he was missed and he will be missed and we wish him well in his new Endeavors absolutely um and he said he's going to keep stuffing by the forums keeping us updated so he'll always be with us in that sense and now it's time for news from around the [Applause] verse let's do this module by module starting with Arena commander in the UK the team has taken multiple passes at game balance among all modes uh you probably noticed there were some changes with the balancing with the last patch and uh these were designed for the dog fighting modes but they also impacted racing that's one of the reasons we unlocked the M50 to see how it behaved With The Changes um so we're we're going

16. 00:12:05

    to use that feedback to make some changes to game balance in general for upcoming patches La has been investigating server optimizations with the Austin team uh that's basically what it sounds like uh we are exciting yeah um exactly that is exactly all we need to say about that I got look at my script and avoid eye contact La has been finished ing up the 315 implementation and testing as we said the 315 will be available in the game flyable starting tomorrow uh I should also note that if everything goes as planned we think we have a good patch as of Tuesday when we're recording this it's it's always possible that something will happen between now and then if it does we'll let you know on the forums persistent Universe cig Austin has created the design for jump Point scanning and

17. 00:12:52

    navigation in fact I have a good authority that in the very near future people are going to see their first art of a jump point O foris was telling me he really wanted to create a black hole from Interstellar I think everybody has Interstellar on the brain right now I know right in fact I think it was Friday night I I guess everybody wanted to see it and then I saw my inbox like flood with hey there's a there is a cool sequence we can use this for look Dev yeah they got a bit excited about that here okay Behavior Rebel and York and arrow view hangers have been set up for the preliminary room system so expect to start seeing rooms added to your hangers in future patches um one of these will be a simulator we're going to move all the arena Commander ships into like pods so they're they're separate from the ships you bought for the persistent Universe I love the rebel in y York hanger that's my favorite I like the the basic basic Hangar reminds me of the original alien

18. 00:13:42

    cig Austin created the inventory for the first shop in game uh you guys saw some of the shops in the persistent Universe demo um now you can actually go up to them and buy things it's it's it's it's really cool seeing the Game come together in a way that you know it's it's been all sorts of broken pieces for so long and now there's really a game there yeah I just actually had an event meeting this morning and we've got some exciting stuff for next year with what with what is coming online and being released so Squadron 42 cig UK Zer traversal set piece code has started that's going to tie in the uh Squadron 42 story line with the mechanics you're creating for the FPS where you get out of your ship move around for various reasons um boarding zg combat um all sorts of cool stuff Moon collider

19. 00:14:31

    continued iteration on FPS AI Behavior Uh the guys at Moon collider in Edinburgh are uh coming with kind of the routines for how the FPS background characters will respond how the AI opponents uh it's good stuff cig UK modular building layout designed for mission 7 as you know we're building all sorts of modular systems for the universe modular ships modular hangers it's also important for the uh Squadron 42 single player missions and you guys will see why in the near future ships cig UK the starf farer is getting further and further along in the concept phase they have uh they white boxed a lot of the interiors and if you check out later in this episode we may have a little uh piece of that to show off ciga I know we've been teasing it and we are

20. 00:15:20

    honing in on the design of the Carrick for unveiling at a redacted date it's soon Carrick is soon cig UK completed component layout pass for the Avenger uh a lot of people have been asking about the Avenger lately so let me let me clear this up uh we are now working to get the base model of the Avenger flight ready for arena Commander 1.0 um hopefully before the end of the year we are also working on variants for the Avenger which will not premere until uh early 2015 ciga are finishing damage States and lods for the 315p that we're looking forward to getting the 315p out into players hands seeing what needs to be changed uh once it's out there and flying FPS module IL phonic have hooked up first pass of prone animation expect to see people lying on the floor uh

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    actually what coolest thing about it is we now have a FPS module section of news from around the verse since eonic has revealed themselves as the former redacted doesn't mean that mean lying on the floor face down pretty much yeah right I think you did some of the mochap for that didn't you I did I was thinking okay yeah I did do some of the for that so they're literally putting Sandy into the game right now I know I'm just yeah the FPS module dral level breach assault has been completed breach assault that's the name James kept pushing he must have snuck that in there what is that uh it's one of our game modes you know how Arena Commander has uh like the racing mode and the capture of the core mode FPS module have a bunch of different modes as well and uh breach assault is kind of the boarding mode and finally they're putting together a list of animations needed for the next map shoot yeah one

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    question we get a lot is like why isn't the site in the hanger it's in the game why isn't in the hanger um it's because we have to go and record a lot of specialty animations anytime we add a segment like that so uh a lot of the production planning for any particular module is sitting down and saying okay we need a guy to stand like this and we need one who moves like this and so on uh which they're doing for some of the more advanced FPS features at the moment and I am not doing that good good it seemed like quite a chore last time no not happening let's go over to Will for this week's MVP take it away will hey everybody I'm lead moderator will here to bring you this week's MVP this week's MVP goes to Rogue fire for a thread and video called hype citizen

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    take a look n you can like eyes you can generalize

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    what they are watching this is a new time with a different kind they the so thank you very much Rogue fire you're this week's MVP thanks will let's go over to mark for this episode of bug Smashers what was he doing hey everyone welcome back to dancing with the bug tonight one unlucky bug will be obliterated bug bashes hey everyone today's bug is uh to deal with the radar signature

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    system and I'm going to show you what we currently have so right now as you're playing the game if you are going around and you're hiding behind like an asteroid in this case my little block layer you could still see enemies behind so there's my enemy and he's behind this object I can still see him we don't want that so I'm going to turn off the old feature and show you what our new feature is as you can see the guy vanishes when you go behind and that's a little bit of the thing that we're trying out in um Arena Commander one what I also want to show you is all the fun little signature stuff that we're currently debugging it's

26. 00:20:41

    messing with my head man so here's the scythe and let me move this guy down on the left is the infrared signature in the middle is the magnetic signature and on the right is the cross-section and one of the things that we fixed in Arena Commander 1 is debugging and emitting these signatures so not only you can't see things behind stuff but at least for infer electromagnetic no matter how you look at the enti it will emit that whatever value it is based on the power plant usage or even the Thruster usage but for cross-section which is this guy right here it will actually change depending upon how you look at the object so if you are I need

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    a little cup so here we go so if you're looking at the ship directly dead on here you're going to have a higher cross-section than if you're looking at the the guy this way so if you want to sneak up on some guy come up this way and you won't see them as much but if you're flattened out you're going to have a higher cross-section let me show you some of the code we did to fix that stuff up so this is our brand new signature class which handles everything you want for a given signature in case for the cross-section it will actually do some calculations depending upon how you're looking at it and since we want this to happen very quickly we only calculate the signatures once per frame and only if you request a signature so that way if

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    we have 100 things that all have signatures but our radar only texts within the sphere we won't ask everything what it is we'll only ask what we want and thus calculating what it is per frame so we have this nice little manager that goes around and says hey Bruster what IR are you emitting I'm going to get all that add it together and store it in and it does that for the IR the cross-section and the em and that's what you can see here and if you look at the um infrared on the left you can see all the things that are emitting um the CR or the infrared and then the grand total which is 360 about and as if the sighte were to move it would increase that the next thing that we did to bump up uh performance and make sure

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    you don't see things is the radar system this thing will basically periodically look for things that are within your radar range and then once in a while it'll send out a trace to see if you are in fact seeing this thing we don't want to send out a lot of traces so actually Implement a priority cue which will every frame we will send out eight rays and see if something's detected if it is then cool we're visible if it hits something else like an asteroid oh my gosh we're not detectable I can't it's not clicking into the head office knows your line I Know What's My Line Dan no one knows my line if I turned off my signal debugging and turn on my radar

30. 00:23:57

    debugging there we go this shows me what my actual radar is perceiving on the left it's what we're processed and on the right is the raw value and we're using a signal to noise ratio so that's why the values are a little bit slow or smaller as you can see the visibility is set to zero and then as soon as I move out of the way of this block it pops into view I leave it and it's invisible then it pops in there is a frame or two delay because we're not processing everything on the same frame just to make everything Speedy but it won't be that bad I mean we do want a sense of deterioration as well that is a fun little class now the

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    next thing we have a proxy for the entities and what this does is for every single entity we attach this proxy and then it could be shown onto the radar so now we could have everything we want to have a signal we'll have and emit a signal so now we could have asteroids emitting cross-section we could have radio stations or you know that big gigantic station in the middle of the death death match Maps emitting you know IR radio whatever signatures and soon um designers will be able to use this to emit noise spheres so then what we'll do with that is if we have a sphere and we have two objects between a sphere you may not be able to detect the two because of the high interference and that is going to be quite cool so that's something we'll be having for uh aren Commander one as well so there you see it um we have some major

32. 00:25:37

    signature improvements for arena Commander 1 and I hope uh you guys enjoy it and see you next time woo so this week was more of a demonstration of what we wanted to fix for arena Commander 1 um for the signature system we wanted to make sure that if you're behind an asteroid you cannot be detected and then we also wanted to do some things with the cross-section so depending upon how you know you're looking at it if you're detecting this ship this way you're going to have a smaller cross-section than if you detect it this way and that's going to be some interesting gameplay mechanics with that you know maybe you could stealth up on a guy closing in but then all of a sudden if you go like this he detects you so we're trying out some new things with some old you know stuff that we've had for a

33. 00:26:24

    while but we haven't had time to flush it out and that's what we're doing for arena Commander 1 hope you guys enjoyed see you next week tune in next week as we tune in next week as we uh tune in next week for tune in next week tune God all right tune in next week for a very special wedding of keeping up that tune in next week for a very special wedding with keep God tune in next week for a very special wedding edition of the bug smashan thanks Mark now over to James who is interviewing our new production coordinator Darien vck thanks boss I'm

34. 00:27:14

    here with Darion vck Darien how you doing pretty good thanks for coming on man thank you how's it like starting over at Cloud Imperium games it's been kind of an eye opening experience um been in the industry for about 10 years now and I don't think I've ever worked at a company like this before I don't imagine anyone has are you enjoying it so far though I wouldn't trade for anything Chris robberts has always been a childhood hero of mine ever since Wing Commander when I was eth grade seventh eth grade kind of gives away my age there uh so when I heard the opportunity that he's working on a new space game I jumped at the chance yeah me and Ben talk about the time how like we'll never have a job like this ever again like through all the good times and bad times it's like nothing like this will ever exist so we should really enjoy it well it's an

35. 00:28:01

    extra odd dichotomy for me cuz I was a biomedical engineering major I had aspirations of becoming a surgeon and then with further aspirations of becoming a serial killer profile for the FBI that's kind of a shift well the ironic part is everybody in my family of my generation we were all biology Majors all aspirations of med school we're all in the video game industry nice it's like a family business now pretty much um disappointed parents but now they they see we can make a living off of it yeah they're okay with it now you should have seen my mom when I said no I'm not going to go to law school I'm going to go make video games she's pretty pissed oh yeah well you want to get us some questions absolutely all right first question comes from Star Killer how different is it to manage a project in C as they have a way more open policy than let's say blizzard do you prefer the

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    former or the latter and why well Star Killer there are pros and cons to both clearly both ways of doing things have its benefit and lo to a consequences but differences there are there are differences there some things that are harder so as far as with being open and transparent um it makes expectations a lot clearer uh whereas if you're in a less transparent environment when you have a revelation of a new feature it's enjoyable to see the fans faces because it's something completely unexpected yeah but when you have something that's transparent such as Star Citizen seeing the involvement of the players the backers having players send us boxes of bagels for breakfast yeah you'd never see that at any almost any other gaming company well I'm I'm I'm pretty come on you tell me you never got bagels not

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    with the level of openness uh these are open Bagels yeah you know we cut them in half seen how many backers take tours MH um just look at yesterday we had a police officer who works nearby yeah came knocking on the door wanted a tour because he was one of the backers first of we thought someone was getting arrested or he's serving a subpoena or something he's like no I'm just one of the backers I just want to take a tour yeah I expected for us to jump the fence and take off so it's inspiring it it makes you proud of what you're working on so I don't think there's one that I choose over the other it's more of which one appeals to a certain personality type it also depends on the kind of game that you're working on uh something that's got this much fan input and Backer input I think the nature of how the development process is going is much more I guess relevator mm if that's a real word it's

38. 00:30:24

    easier to get feedback on which they way the game is going because there's much more of a community input so that kind of tactile feedback is incredibly useful especially when you're trying to make a game that's catering towards whether it's a large demographic or small demographic um getting that kind of player input I've always found that to be valuable um I've been on the community team at other companies before some that are not transparent and some that are so being able to interact with the crowd has a huge amount of benefits um even when we at uh citizen con just having players come up to me and having backers come up to me I'd only been with company for a week at that point asking questions wanting to give us input asking for my phone number to go to dinner and hang out like that that blew me away that kind of passion so yeah I don't think there's one that's better than the other I think they both have

39. 00:31:11

    their their benefits so and I'm glad that Star Citizen is working on that or it has that kind of transparency because it just makes it much more that that much more enjoyable to to work on yeah it's not you know this one's better this you know this one's better or worse it's just the difference you know different projects require or it says different structures and this one benefits immensely from the open structure but other games may not you know yeah yeah cool so next question comes from minus how do you coordinate your team so that you ensure that your scheduling timeline is followed do you have a sort of pipeline yeah it's a very large lead pipe that I hit them with if they don't follow a schedule as far as how do I handle scheduling our our programmers and developers one of the features that I'm a producer on is Arena Commander mhm as a producer I'm not a programmer

40. 00:32:01

    though I understand what some of the things they're working on I'm not an artist I tried to draw something in 3D Studio Max one time and it came out looking like a Salvador Dolly painting nice what we do is we keep people on track we're the ones who make things happen so ultimately the best way to keep them on track is by making sure that we're utilizing their talents to the best of their ability in a direction that is both beneficial to what they want to work on at the same time furthering the game's goals for example if we have one artist who is incredibly talented at drawing a particular type of landing gear if we realize that he's also someone working on another aspect and that aspect is due within the next first couple days but he really wants to work on that landing gear there may be times where I need to wave a carrot look look if you finish this piece tomorrow

41. 00:32:49

    I'll give you some time to work on that landing gear but I need you to allocate at least four or 6 hours of your time to before we get to that sometimes it may require lead pipe uh sometimes it may require just a box of donuts that's why I have a bag of candy right outside my my desk it's you do that's that's that's true motivation comes in different forms uh if there's a particular pipeline if you're referring to different project management methodologies one of the most common ones that are mentioned in the gaming industry especially among production is agile or scrum those are just tools and I'm going to quote some of the producers that I've learned from those are tools in the tool belt they don't always apply to the same situation over and over and over again sometimes you may need to use one methodology sometimes you may need to use another I'm going to say what I call it called the dit method DWI do whatever it takes my kind of crowning moment in

42. 00:33:38

    understanding production is when I go up to a developer and say Hey how do you guys keep a track this this this and this and they look me up with this Blank Stare going and I realize I have no one else to turn to for that information that's my job to give them that information if I want that information I have to find it somehow and whether it's through one project management methodology or another I've got to make it happen the nice thing about working here is that those hierarchies aren't necessarily set in stone one day I may be acting as a production assistant or production coordinator uh the next day I may be taking Char charge of a feature from the ground up such as different ship components or different features going into Arena Commander there's always flexibility in what my day-to-day tasks are like but at the same time I'm going to quote Alex maybery on this a good producer is always on the verge of being overwhelmed tiptoeing that line

43. 00:34:27

    while maintaining your stuff shows that you're doing something right so to kind of summarize it do whatever it takes Star Citizen is easily one of the most ambitious project in the industry at this moment with all the new Alpha content scheduled for implementation in 2015 what are going to be your biggest challenges well 56 I think one of the biggest expectations is actually ours we have great expectations for this project uh and no one else wants to see this this succeed more than we do so I think meeting our expectations is going to be the biggest challenge uh making sure we're matching Chris's vision and what he wants this game to develop into we've got a lot of talented people here um some of the most talented people that I've ever seen in the industry having them all come together and putting this thing this this mass of ideas into a a solid product that has driven so many of

44. 00:35:17

    our backers so passionately it's hard not to get caught up in that frenzy I think the biggest challenge at least for me is how do I exceed my own expectations on what I want this to become because if it doesn't meet our expectations how do we expect it to meet our fans expectations if we're disappointed in something we don't want to release that we want something that we're proud of to be out there for our players if we're not proud of it we shouldn't be releasing it all right I agree I do too next question comes from Harlot how does fan feedback an open development factor in coordination of a project like Star Citizen well to be fair this is kind of the first time this has ever happened so so far what have you seen

45. 00:36:05

    the differences are there's a lot more Community involvement whether it's ship designing competitions or just the amount of people who come by whether it's to give us input or give us ideas seeing that kind of openness it gives us different perspective on it may even present an idea that we never thought of in the first place we have like I said we have a lot of talented individuals but we're so hyperfocused on certain aspects of the game I don't want to see it keeps us narrow minded not not not even close to that but it's always good to see other perspectives ultimately it'd be great to have our players Visions align with our Visions align and both of us agreeing that this is the direction we want want the game to go and I think by getting that kind of community feedback that puts us at least on the right track to reach that Milestone what do you think about working without a publisher what are the

46. 00:36:53

    pros and cons of each method working without a publisher is is strangely liberating in some degrees because we're responsible for our own selves that gives us a certain level of freedom on pursuing what we want rather than what another organization wants what market research shows the fortunate part of that is with the other companies that I've worked at even though we've had a publisher in the past there was still a certain level of autonomy that was granted to us so working without a publisher at least from the mentality perspective it's not too different especially for you right knowing where you came from right and a certain level of of involvement is expected and not only expected but it's promoted so hearing our ideas on how to improve the game so when you don't have a publisher

47. 00:37:41

    there's a certain level of freedom for you to pursue an idea and see what the evolution of where that evolution of that idea takes you ultimately you want that idea to blossom into something that'll benefit the game MH so not having a publisher you have that advantage of being able to do so without having to I guess worry about a certain level of obstacles that usually are required when you have a publisher to answer to yeah I I mean I imagine I I worked other company I worked at we you know were a big publisher and I just saw the type of restrictions and the type of goals and Milestones that were laid down on them and I just thought sometimes and might looking at this company it must be freeing to know that the only people we have to meet these Milestones the only milestones we have to hit the only people have to prove it to are the people who actually paid for it well not only that you get to pursue projects of

48. 00:38:29

    passion and which this clearly is a project of passion so fortunately because we're an independent organization we have the ability to really invest a lot of that passion into their product Garner a lot of feedback from our player base and our backers uh and not only that but value the input that comes from all the players themselves or all the employees themselves it's interesting to sit in on on brainstorming sessions and just seeing how many ideas come out being able to distill those down into what's realistic and then kind of plot those out on the timeline and when we can Implement them the other advantage of not working with a publisher is things move incredibly fast whereas other companies a particular feature may take months to a year to fully develop and from there they have to look at is that something that is viable within the marketplace is that something that's

49. 00:39:16

    going to Garner more players less players where here we still have those same concerns but we have the ability to mobilize that a lot faster yeah we can pivot real quick and we do yeah a lot and going back to your thing of the input where I just think back to the thread about what are we going to call the FPS module and it's like 30 things long of people just throwing names out there it's like a huge brainstorming session just in an email thread it's like I don't this doesn't happen to their places like it's just really cool by the way you had a really cool name we're not going to spoil it here but all right we have one more question are you aware that your name makes you sound like a super villain do you work for Dr Doom as I steeple my fingers the name Darian is actually Persian even though I'm I think I have a little bit of Persian blood in me vck is a Czechoslovakian last name but I'm part

50. 00:40:03

    Japanese interesting story on another game you have an interesting Dr Doom story not Dr Doom okay but on another game that I worked on uh I wanted to see if I can get my name in the game as one of the monsters Darion doesn't sound especially Fierce or threatening vorc doesn't exactly sound especially threatening so what they did was they combined the two names d VC and added an e to it somewhere and a u in there so it became devour so there are monsters in the game called the devour that's awesome so that's sometimes what i' I've gone by and my friends will call me that once in a while but I don't think I've ever gotten Dr Doom now you have welcome to Star Citizen well Daran thanks for coming on you got it thank you it's a pleasure and back to you guys thanks guys well that's

51. 00:40:54

    about it for the show we're going to leave you with an art sneak peek as always this is is one that uh backers have been looking forward to for a while uh we just got this hot off the shotgun system from the UK check it out that's pretty cool I actually think you gave me a sneak peek of the sneak peek uh earlier I did and I I hope backers are happy with this uh it's one they've

52. 00:41:41

    been waiting for next week show we'll be interviewing Zayn bienen finally yes recent La transplant Zay bienen uh he's just moved out here to Santa Monica recently we're really happy to have him uh here with us we are and we're happy to have some of his furniture and goods out of our office cuz it came here temporarily I'm like what is that he's like that be my shoes I'm like okay well that's it for this week guys we want to thank subscribers for making the show possible and star s his backers for making star in general possible uh so thank you yep thank you and we'll see you next week on round the verse did we do it together I think we did thanks work keep them smashed

53. 00:43:00

    that has to go in there that can be our endc one