Interview with ex-CIG employees

BoredGamer did a good job. I would definitely like to see more this kind of stuff in gaming sites.

Yeah. Kotaku (Nathan Grayson) did a few pieces where they talked to current and former employees.

If you like that you'll probably appreciate these

https://kotaku.com/why-star-citizen-is-taking-so-long-1724835913 goes in to a lot of the reasons behind the delay and the general feeling of micromanagement and management ignoring industry experience

And https://kotaku.com/star-citizen-developers-fed-up-after-being-expected-to-1846443110 goes in to how CIG is so dedicated to launching ships on time that they expect employees to work through natural disasters

Sure, I know those articles. There has been few writings over the years which has based on "nameless sources", faked classroom writings, etc. I'm not too interested to read those kind of writings.

BoredGamer, Montoya and some others has covered Kotaku's and other articles multiple times already.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGRZviA4KAI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yF-KbLkMr4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owH4MAcNg1Q

...

@spacegg: Why do you carry so much water for this developer? Do you believe that all of the bad things said about them are just made up?

@spacegg: So.... "fake news"?

Like, Nathan Grayson is pretty well respected (I specifically pointed that out since Kotaku can vary wildly) and generally it is very rare to see someone go, on record, against a former employer for obvious reasons. Similar sentiments have been corroborated by other journalists so... yeah.

@bladeofcreation: Not necessary, I honestly don't know. I recommend to get familiar with "other side" of the stories as well. Everyone can make their own mind and believe them if they find them trustful.

I find the interview in OP pretty interesting although nothing major new information there. I personally would like to hear/read more interviews like these in gaming sites but unfortunately they very seldom do them.

There is. NoClip is founded and run by a current GB contributor.

To be fair you're kind of making me start to worry given how often I see your username posting about a singular title many on this site have low expectations for. Surely CIG have an avid community better suited to such discussion?

I feel the need to say this because you're making me resent SC, which seems far from the desired effect.

I think @spacegg is single handedly keeping the Star Citizen forums alive on here at this point.

Couldn't help but notice the Youtuber who did this interview is heavily into Star Citizen, being an "Evocati Member", which seems he gets NDA'd Early patch tests. I'll trust non-biased journalists instead thanks.
I'm kinda curious how much you have put into this game, because this amount of shilling feels kind of weird. I know I consider the 37 bucks I chipped in back in 2014 as lost and wasted.

@kunakai: I've definitely noticed that (and may be slightly responsible for a current push to spam even more RSS feed updates...)

But, for what it is worth: Star Citizen is an interesting game and a FASCINATING product. If you have any interest in elite games I recommend either keeping an eye out for the next free weekend or watching a more general space sim influencer from one of the last ones.

I like Down to Earth Astronomy since I had his stream on last (?) free weekend and felt he 100% mirrored my own feelings toward the game. The first 30 minutes is AMAZING as you see how finely detailed everything is and go through all the systems and menus. Then the game crashes. Then you pop back in and try to make a beeline for the hanger. Five minutes later you find your ship and maybe take off before the next crash. Then you FINALLY get "into a mission" as it were an hour later and it is cool and maybe you even successfully complete the arma-esque CQB shootout. And you don't get enough currency to do anything with. AND your game crashes again.

I probably install and play star citizen once every two or thee years, have an entertaining hour, and then uninstall the entire thing never to look at it again (until I do). Because those articles that go into the developmental issues and the problem with micromanagers who want to reinvent the wheel rather than listen to industry experience are apparent everywhere. Interfaces are the kind of stuff that seem cool and would be believable as something a patient on House was working on before they shat out their left lung during the cold open. But if you actually think about how those would work in an overall game loop... it is hell... And I just realized that Star Citizen is basically space Shenmue.

But for all of that, I still argue that anyone even slightly interested in space games should check it out and I really hope we get a detailed postmortem in a decade or two when the money runs out/legislature forces the studio to reclassify and close. Just maybe don't buy it until you are REALLY sure.

@jaqen_hghar: About 45€ for SQ42 and Star Citizen PU.

Star Citizen is an upcoming game I'm interested the most. There are few others games like In The Black and Starbase I look forward but they are not quite type of games I'm hugely interested in.

There is huge amount of information coming about this project every single week so it is easy to be steadily excited. For example they are going to publish June's Monthly report today. I expect lots of interesting information to read.

@spacegg: Is it an upcoming release if it's never intended to actually release?

@gundato: That's part of the problem. Anyone interested in space sims has likely heard of it, followed and played it.

My issue isn't wanting complete ignorance of the project. My issue is seeing a new thread every time Roberts shits, farts or takes a breath.

Given the contentious nature of the game I feel like the kind of support SpaceEgg is giving would be better suited to the SC community, for the benefit of his own psychological state at the very least.

I'm at the point where the only thing that brings Star Citizen to a store shelf is the money running out. The money keeps coming in and the very specific way that Star Citizen is developed has to continue.

@shindig: Even that feels like "if Steam ever goes out of business then I am sure Valve will remove the DRM from every game" kind of thought. When CIG goes under/whatever, they aren't going to have the money to likely still redo another 30% of the existing game to release the rest.

I suspect it will be like any game and what you see is what you get. Maybe there will be a mad rush to release something that legally can be called Squadron 42 but there won't be significant dev work as they bleed off resources and employees.

@jacksmedulla: I'm confident that Star Citizen, In The Black and Starbase devs has intention to release their games.

It is interesting to see how games are being developed and how development is progressing. Interviews like in OP are nice way to learn new things and details.

I hope GB keep posting information about upcoming games to this forums. It would be really interesting to hear about Starfield and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. I don't personally mind if there would be multiple of new threads to discuss per day.

To go back to an earlier topic/discussion point, I want to say that I am not impressed by the provided video interview. It feels like a puff piece rather than an actual investigative effort. Additionally, the host of the video has no formal credentials related to journalism. As such, I see no reason why not to trust articles done by Kotaku, whose author is a journalist, that have painted a contrasting image about the studio in question and its lack of direction.

Shouldn't threads be more substantial than just a video off youtube being posted? According to the community rules:

creating any threads with little to no text where off-site content is linked or embedded

Taken from the Youtuber video's description:

I am suspecting to see something more mainstream for Star Citizen's PU by the end of 2022 with permanent progression, though it will be a while after that before the game is considered "feature complete" which would be closer to 2025 in my opinion.

It's a very dead horse but it continues to be absolutely insane that I backed this for a Wing Commander successor and this is seems to be the projection of a very optimistic finish date. Elite has entirely eaten this games lunch and seems to be beating them to every promised feature.

EVE Online will have walking-in-stations before this game comes out.

Thats a little joke for you EVE heads out there.

@spacegg: Most good journalism involves anonymous sources. Watch All The President's Men sometime.

@zombiepie:

I agree that the content could have had more in-depth content in it. It would have been nice to hear about their daily routines and way of working in general. We can read from Monthly Reports what different teams has done recently but it is always interesting to hear in more detail how things are being done.

Since sites like Kotaku doesn't give voice to employees who are talking with their own names, it is good that they have at least some way to get heard.
When you get information from different perspectives and angles it is easier to make your own mind who and what information to believe.

First, the reason why the employees did not "talk with their own names" is because they requested anonymity due to fear that their testimony could impact their ability to find work. Using anonymous sources, alone, does impugn the integrity of the original report as long as it follows the AP's recommendations for anonymous sources. Using anonymous sources is a necessity in the field of journalism and often the only way to make reports ethically. Second, the monthly report you provided is from the developers of Star Citizen. Obviously there is an inherent bias from a source that comes from the developer who is actively working on the game in question.

Finally, I will echo a point from another user that I forgot to mention in my first post. Please ensure in the future that when linking a video you provide more substantial commentary in the original post.

@zombiepie: I'm not against using anonymous sources but I do think the articles would have been much better and more balanced if he would have talk with employees who are ready to talk with their own names.

Maybe these CIG employees who has talked publicly are all lying - I don't know.

We can only reflect Monthly Reports against testable alpha versions so in context we can confirm not all of information are plain lies.

Agree, OP was badly made and didn't include enough content.

@spacegg: But the two kotaku articles that are linked in this thread both have reached out to CIG and include their response. They do what you want them to do: Adding a different view on the issue, providing balance.

Roberts’ account of the Menu Helmet is quite different.... etc.

Roberts, for his part, argues that those ex-employees didn’t have a full understanding of why he chose to spend so much time on this animation feature..... etc

In response to employees’ criticisms, CIG provided Kotaku with a statement.

Surely you understand that when someone airs out a company's dirty laundry under their own name that they are damaging their career. Such people are seen as 'nuisances' 'a pain in the butt' 'leakers' 'bad teamplayers'. That's why those kind of tell-all's only tend to appear once a person has retired or a company has gone out of business. If you want to shed light on an current issue, that endangers your position, it makes sense to be anonymous. If Nathan Greyson cares about his reputation, and he does, he will make sure that he only publishes information from sources he deems trustworthy, seeks additional information or reaches out to other folk to confirm that it's not a made up story.

@onemanarmyy: I guess everyone has something to say about their employers and probably not many would be ready to say anything negative using their own names. So yes, it is understandable.

What we have here is word against word. I'm sure all CIG employees cares about their reputation as well. They put their career, reputation and credibility on stake going against Kotaku's article. It is not something lots of people would be ready to do. I wonder if many would be ready to even work in company they know lying all the time or even worse, being completely hoax.

I wonder if many would be ready to even work in company they know lying all the time or even worse, being completely hoax.

Well CIG still have employees so...

Not sure what you mean by this. In one article employees outline how they've been treated around the statewide snowstorm after CIG made a statement on how they would offer support to those affected. Naturally CIG would jump at the chance to be able to provide a statement in such a article. Of course they're going to outline how well they handled that situation in their eyes. There's no danger that they'd get in trouble with the company. They are not putting anything on the line. They are mitigating the damage.

In the other article, Roberts acknowledges that the menu helmet was fairly quickly canned but offers context to why that was the case. He acknowledges that he spends a lot of time on making sure that the first person and third person animations are both the same, but provides explanation why this is the case. He points at other big studio's doing the same, when he's asked about the high amount of features being added and scrapped. there's absolutely no way that someone at CIG wouldn't want to be included in an article to be able to provide this kind of context.

I also don't understand why you'd think that the world is so black & white that a job has to be a constant stream of lies if anyone dares to speak out about it.

You can have a completely fine job but then a natural disaster strikes. To the outside world, your company states that safety is the primary concern and that they'll be offering support and assistance in abundance. Internally, all you hear is that you better start figuring a way to get back to work ASAP or you'll be kissing your vacation hours goodbye. Well, if you have them, otherwise you're SOL. Have anything to say? Figure out a way to communicate with your direct managers that are also dealing with this snowstorm and are without power.

It's one thing to be unprepared for such an unusual situation and not deal with it optimally. That's understandable. It's another to offer a public statement that the company is doing whatever they can to help these people out, and that you're in constant communication with the team when that's not the case. Surely that will not sit well with anyone. Even if you straight up love your work.

@onemanarmyy:

It is not just official statement but employees from Texas office were answering from their private accounts as well. Tyler Witkin, Kraiklyn, etc.

https://twitter.com/CaptainZyloh/status/1370060606875832328

https://twitter.com/CaptainZyloh/status/1370061663626485761

Years back Escapist wrote some articles based on nameless sources and CIG had to made a response. It was dirty, nasty and didn't end well.

Since it has been almost annual that such an article will be published, one could almost expect something published around October this year again.

There are people who seems to seriously think Star Citizen is a scam. There has been so much all kind of FUD, blamings, accusations, etc. done over the years that most of the supporters are probably totally lost interest care them at all. I have. It is just impossible to know what in the articles are true and what not so personally I feel it is waste of time to spend time to them.

@spacegg: Naturally not everyone is going to have the same experience, but those tweets fit in with the article. Ultimately, no one had to use up PTO's

In the wake of everything that happened, management at the Austin studio offered to help employees find better solutions to the missed work issue, and ultimately, CIG director Chris Roberts sent out an email, which has been viewed by Kotaku, telling employees that they would “get fully paid this cycle.”

And in the initial communication provided in the article indeed stated that personal safety was of the utmost importance, just like Tyler states.

The first communication, which Kotaku has viewed, began by saying that employees’ “safety is of the utmost importance and should continue to be prioritized over everything else.” In it, CIG also promised flexible work schedules and made ovations in the direction of supporting employees through ordeals like power outages. Ultimately, though, the email came back around to the same idea as prior messages from managers: Time off would require use of PTO, and work would continue, in some capacity, despite a statewide emergency.

It's strange that Tyler therefore tells his Twitter audience of Star Citizen enthusiasts that the article contains outright lies when his 2nd tweet poses a much more likely explanation. Not everyone has the same manager, and it could've been a localized issue that didn't get handled properly. Or not everyone was upset by the way CIG handled the incident, because it was a crisis-situation and at the end of it everyone got paid. No hard feelings.

Now what would be more likely? Is CIG responding to a Kotaku article but don't refute the claim that only after the storm they told people that they would get fully paid by email? Did they provide the email, but Kotaku didn't include it because it didn't fit the narrative and CIG didn't decide to clear their name by posting it themselves?

Or is this employee, that had a positive experience with the company throughout the storm, leaving out some of the kinks in the cable along the road because eventually it turned out all right for him? All while making sure that his audience of Star Citizen fans don't trust the media when it comes to Star Citizen news. Because that's only a source of negativity for the project, so it would be beneficial to the team for fans to not even look at these articles. They can get Star Citizen news straight from CIG.

@onemanarmyy: So we have many developers from CIG who has not experienced or heard things claimed in article vs the article and the nameless developers. I can't personally say where the truth lies here but maybe one day we get the answer.

I'm sure many Star Citizen fans trust the game media and many who doesn't. I'm somewhere between.

@spacegg: I count one employee saying to his star citizen fans that he & his team have not heard of the issues at the time, and agree with the article that everyone got paid but conclude that the issues these people might've had are outright lies, eventhough he realizes that it might've been a localized issue that he was not aware of. You mentioned another guy, so i assume there are like 10 of these employees telling people via their twitter that it's no biggie. That still doesn't mean that the people in the article didn't experience the situation as described.

CIG responded to the article that apparently contained outright lies, but hasn't bothered to refute that PTO's were on the line during the snowstorm or that other offices weren't even made aware of the situation in Austin? One email or internal memo that would out Kotaku as complete liars and thrashed their reputation, which would be a relief for CIG, given that employment news is pretty much always negative. When everyone's happy there's no news. CIG just chose to just take the punches in front of a massive audience and only told fans through twitter that it was an outright lie?

Look, a natural disaster is something no one plans for. Communication can get rough. Certain folk can fall through the cracks when the entire company is having to deal with shit. Choices can be made that at the time seem sensible, but afterwards people realize that it was a wrong one. Like CIG realized afterwards that this was nothing like a few days of snow-fun off for the employees and corrected it payment-wise. But that doesn't mean that some employees saying on twitter saying that they have not had any issues is something that invalidates these experiences.

Just stopping by to say I enjoy seeing "ex-CIG" on these forums every time I load them up throughout the day because it reminds me of one of my favorite band names (that I've almost never listened to), Diet Cig.

Thanks, ex-CIG thread.

@onemanarmyy: As far as I remember CIG has responded only once when Escapist were "punching" them for a while.
It seems this "storm" ended quickly. No drama afterward, no mass resign - nothing. Maybe the story continues later if these nameless devs sends proves, who knows. I'm surprised if nothing comes up by October (citizencon 2951).

Meanwhile the development continues and I looks forward to read interesting articles about the project. GameStar and Eurogamer has at least wrote some.

Thanks to BoredGamer for his effort to give gamers more information about the project. Maybe he will do more interviews with the devs in future.

Because these sources are talking about their experience through the snowstorm being messy with a lack of support and communcation from the company. Afterwards, as the article states, and the CIG-employee tells his twitter followers, CIG eventually decided that no one had to use their PTO's during a statewide emergency. Quite an unique & temporary case, that got resolved, so it makes sense why people wouldn't mass resign afterwards (Especially if Tyler is right and this was a localized issue that only happened to one or two teams somewhere, small enough that his team didn't even know). and the sources would just feel bummed out with the way it all went at the time and how the outward statement from CIG didn't apply to their situation. Not every bad experience at a job has to end with a resignation and a jobsearch. Bad experiences can happen to happy employees that love their job too.

But if CIG responding to an article that apparently contains outright lies that they are not willing to correct doesn't lift your eyebrow, but a CIG employee being able to say that this all is a complete lie, just because he claims he & his team didn't hear about people having these issues, i don't know what to say.

@spacegg: I think I mentioned this to you before but it bears mentioing again:

Please be INCREDIBLY careful. You have repeatedly jumped through mental hoops to argue why a puff piece that says something you like holds more legitimacy than an article written by a journalist with a pretty good track record. And then the details of WHY anonymous sources are not a problem have been mentioned you actively ignore it or try to "both sides" everything

"Fake news" is not just for politics. It is a mindset that will likely have a large impact on why humanity gets wiped out in the next century. It is more or less a focused effort to discredit journalists and scientists (and recently "tech" companies and organizations) to discourage critical thought and encourage people to treat everything as "two people talking" which favors those who will speak the loudest and with the least authority. This is why employee abuse gets ignored. This is why people think injecting Scrubbing Bubbles into their veins is safer than getting vaccinated. This is why fraud is so prevalent.

So please, for your sake and the sake of the world, please take some time to learn about ACTUAL ethics in journalism and make yourself more able to engage in critical thought. People in this thread and others have repeatedly tried to explain things to you and you consistently ignore them in favor of "both sides"ing things or outright accusing respected journalists of fraud because they said something you don't like. That shit is INCREDIBLY dangerous.

@gundato:

Thanks for the warning.

I'm just wondering what has happened. Tyler and few others who commented the article should have pretty good coverage of the whole Austin studio, which AFAIK is not huge (~100 staff?). Are they collectively lying? It is hard me to believe that and I'm not ready to call anyone of them a liar either.

In Escapist case they presented some fake ID cards as a proof that their nameless sources were valid. I don't remember were Escapist journalist being tricked or did they try to do trick by themselves, but pretty interesting and weird twists there as well.
PC Gamer's responsible journalists called the project "Scam Citizen". Didn't raise confident either.
Our local game magazine's journalists are gamers without any sort of journalism education. It is hard to say what kind of ethics they have.
I know nothing about Kotaku's journalists so I can't say anything about them. I'm just saying it is not always easy to plainly trust game "journalists" either.

As said the whole storm died very quickly but maybe we will here more about it later. I hope for everyones sake that things gets cleared up.

It would be interesting to know what kind of effect these "drama articles" has made. So far the project has been growing steadily so it could be that they have been doing only good. At least these kind of articles keeps the name on headlines.

@spacegg: Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about journalism and news in general?

@spacegg: "game magazine's journalists are gamers without any sort of journalism education" - Based on?

"It is hard to say what kind of ethics they have" - The question of ethics is usually brought up when developers are receiving favourable coverage, rather than criticism. Ask the same questions about the interviewer you've praised to no end and you might end up questioning your own endorsements.

You say it's good that SC grows, but is that opinion still valid if it turns out to be trash when released?

@spacegg: Well, the best way to understand the credentials of a journalist is to do some research. Rather than just assume anyone who says stuff you don't like is bad and those who say stuff you do like is good.

As for "the whole storm died very quickly": I take it that you think all of the abuse at Ubisoft was fake news? Same with the vast majority of the MeToo movement? I mean, people stopped talking about those pretty fast so it must have been fake news?

You are exactly demonstrating how this kind of mindset is fucking up the world. You don't like something so you just imagine that the source is not credible and move on.

@gundato:

You assume these articles includes stuff I don't like. Why wouldn't I like to know what has happened in development as much in detail as possible? That's exactly the information I like. The growing problems, outsourcing issues, technical issues, etc. are all interesting. The journey how they have got this far is interesting.

I take your word that Nathan has the facts and only the facts. I will read his upcoming articles about development of Star Citizen with big interest.

I'm just waiting for my Squadron 42 game. I'm already bought in. Guess I'll just hang out and sit in my space BMW while I wait.

@spacegg: So I take it you aren't going to respond to people asking for your thoughts on journalism as a whole, why you insist your local magazines are frauds, and why you immediately dismissed articles that were less favorable while cheering for a puff piece by an influencer who primarily covers Star Citizen content?

And as for why I would think the kotaku articles include content you like: No idea. I am sure you have some other reason to instantly call the writers liars, accuse them of fraud, etc. And continue to refer to them as "drama articles"

If you want to engage in a good faith conversation: I and many others am more than happy to. Otherwise... I guess see you next time you spam the latest tweet from the official star citizen account and call anything that is slightly critical of it fake news.

This is likely about to be a dead thread and maybe the whole conversation is in bad faith (absolutely love to see the word journalist in scare quotes), but I've been thinking about SC for a long time so here's my take:

- I believe in the vision of star citizen, and it's a dream game for me. I really enjoy what I've played of the alpha and I follow the development closely.

- I believe that the vision is unlikely to be achieved by this team, at this time. They don't know when to stop, and neither do the many people who have put their hope and money into the project.

A ravenous fanbase is demanding an enormous and very specific list of wish fulfillments and many of them have already bought into those features in the form of ships. That means the team is obligated to build those out fully. But not before delivering ships that are sooner in the queue. and that has to happen while they build the persistence that the game requires. Oh, and they have to keep people who already bought into the alpha interested for the next 5 years while they finish their Sisyphean to-do list, so now time is spent running live events for community engagement. In an alpha for a game that lacks meaningful gameplay loops or progression.

Maybe that's dour of me, or unfairly pessimistic... but after waiting over a decade for a world-class developer with a proven track record to make the game of my dreams, in the setting of my dreams, with sales momentum and goodwill behind them, they failed to release a feature-complete product and instead have now spent over half a year in a panic applying bugfixes to their 7/10 RPG. I'm never spending that much energy on hope again.

tldr; Hope SC comes out someday and is even a fraction of what they're promising, hope the folks who are working on it are afforded good conditions for that labor, put exotics into CP77 you cowards

@gundato: I have no idea why did you get an idea that I think our local magazines are frauds. That's not what I think at all.

Star Citizen drama is what it is being called. Sometimes it starts from some article but most often inside community itself.

I have not called anyone liar so far. At the moment I simply don't have enough information to call anyone liars - not Kotaku's journalist or CIG's employees.

Well, it is pretty obvious it is not very easy to discuss about this project here so probably better not. I think it is unfortunate.

I will stick around and hope to see people discussing many upcoming games and shares all informations they know, especially S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 and Starfield.

If you actually read my messages, the article, or Tyler's tweets you'd know how it ended. Because you keep saying that everything is someone's word vs someone else's word and that the truth is impossible to know somehow. Eventhough everything we have discussed points towards the same resolution:

While PTO was on the line throughout the snowstorm, After the snowstorm CIG eventually decided to pay everyone in full.

All the information that we've discussed on this situation, the article, Tyler's tweets, they all fit together. CIG's first communication stated that safety was of the utmost importance (as Tyler & Kotaku said) but also contained the information that these sources had heard from their direct managers. Time off would require use of PTO, and work would continue, in some capacity (as Tyler didn't bring up, but Kotaku & CIG did). At the end of the snowstorm, the issue got resolved and CIG decided that they would pay out fully (as Tyler & Kotaku said) but throughout the snowstorm, CIG was asking these employees to work from home (CIG statement in Kotaku article: “Our staff’s safety and well-being are a priority to us at all times. The Austin offices have remained closed to general staff since the beginning of the pandemic, with teams working from home.) and if they didn't have power or take care of their loved onces through a snowstorm, that would cost them their PTO's. This is all information that Tyler didn't talk about to his star citizen audience.

Look, no one is telling you to believe people on their blue eyes because they have a 'journalist' tag under their name. It's not a golden word that makes it so you have to believe them. It means that they try to have a reputation to uphold and have to stick to certain standards. Some journalists are quite good, and therefore have a good reputation. Others are not very good, and therefore people take them with a pinch of salt and wait for more information to unfold. But ultimately, it's the words they produce that you should focus on to figure out how legit something is. It's okay to be critical and seek out other sources to figure out if their story makes sense and fits in with other people's accounts. But you have to be critical and try to understand why you see the messages that people post and what motive there could be behind those messages. Everyone has motives to post the things they do. Like right now, my motive is one of concern for a GB community member that seems have fallen into a 'fuck journalists, they write clickbait about my fav game' hole, which is only one step away from 'fuck journalists, my favorite youtuber knows exactly what the real issue in my country is.' It's concerning and can be an unhealthy way to disseminate information from the world.

Naturally, Kotaku posts this story because they have a focus on hearing stories from devs in the gameindustry ever since Jason Schreier started to do a lot of that. Star Citizen is a project people have strong emotions towards, so people will be interested to read about it. The Austin snowstorm is an interesting issue, and exactly the kind of circumstance where it becomes incredibly hard for a company to treat all it's employees as good as they can, because there are numerous problems to be solved throughout the organization and communication can easily break down. A golden opportunity for Kotaku to write about employees that feel wronged by the company they work for. Throughout the article, they focus on the various struggles from these sources throughout the storm, instead of making it clear from the get-go that eventually the whole PTO situation was solved by CIG, because that makes it a more harrowing read. But they do include the positive parts of CIG in this story. Their statements from CIG itself, how CIG eventually paid everyone in full. That should be an indicator that this outlet is at least trying to have some journalistic standards for itself. The article clearly wants you to feel bad for the employees struggles, but it's totally possible to read this and come away with the feeling that the company was in a very hard situation, had difficulties communicating with employees during a power outage but eventually handled it as good as they could by paying everyone in full throughout this difficult time even if they couldn't work as much as was expected of them.

On the other side of the coin, it's also good to be critical of the message of these CIG employees on twitter. Why are these CIG employees deciding to tweet about this case to their personal twitter audiences? Why has CIG provided statements to Kotaku, but failed to correct these outright lies that this employee spots? Are there different expectations and standards between an official statement from the studio and a personal twitter message? Would these employees be able to post tweets that are damaging towards Star Citizen or the company on their twitter accounts? What would the best outcome for Star Citizen be regarding to this article? What would an CIG employee want it's audience to focus on? What would be the repercussions if their statements weren't truthful? What's the relationship between CIG and traditional games media? What's the audience make up of the people that decide to follow CIG employees? When someone like Tyler says that it's all lies, what lies have they found and what kind of evidence have they provided to make it clear to their audience that it is a lie? Was Tyler aware of every team's situation throughout the storm to be able to call them out for lying? Is it impossible for his statements to fit in with the article, making it a situation where either the article is wrong or Tyler is wrong? Or is this a case where it all fits together but the article and Tyler focus on different aspects?

You're free to answer these questions yourself, but if you want i can also take a stab at it myself.

Who cares? If the game ever comes out, great, I'll probably play it. Until then, I'm sick of hearing about it. I was watching a UPF from 2013 a few weeks ago where Patrick Klepek talked about his Star Citizen interview, that's how long we've been hearing about this stupid game.

@onemanarmyy:

That was interesting read. Thanks.

What I have read is that no PTO was need to be used, there was no expectation people being available to work in Austin and CIG was extremely supportive and not only during this pandemic but during all other situations as well. It seems many felt that the article didn't give an accurate picture about the situation and company in general.

Of course I don't have any relations to these people or the company so all I can hope that things went well for everyone.

I have high respect for journalists. Especially now when there has been seen raised concerns over freedom of press/media. I'm lucky to leave in a country where press is still free and the situation is good but that doesn't mean the situation is set in stone, it need to be guarded and fight for.

But now, PUAlpha 3.14 has been released for wider testing so that's how I'm going to spend my spare hours for next few weeks.

But that's the thing. This article was not about the company in general. It never pretended to be anything more than an account of CIG employees about their struggles and lack of communication with CIG throughout the Austin snowstorm. That's all it ever was. It wasn't supposed to be a deep dive into the culture of the company and how great or awful of a place it is to work for in general.

From the outside looking in, the relationship between the game media and Star Citizen seems to has become this very tense situation where every article that contains negativity towards CIG is seen as this attack that must be defended against. And then the devs add wood to the fire through twitter. Why would Star Citizen fans be upset that an article about some CIG employees having a rough time with their employer during a snowstorm, doesn't give an accurate picture about the company in general? Aren't you guys fans of Star Citizen because you enjoy the game itself? Like i enjoy the Witcher games a lot, but you won't find me carrying any water for the mess they created with Cyberpunk.

Is it the fear that an article like this would deal a devestating blow to the project, eventhough some employees feeling left in the dark during a snowstorm doesn't seem to be something that is 'big enough' to be all that damaging?

Enjoy PUAlpha!