Kayla: So you said you wanted to banter. Oh, what are we gonna banter about?
Chris: Yeah. Well, no. Okay, first of all, it's not like I want to banter. I was just saying that, like, a lot of other podcasts seem to have that, and they're successful and, you know, like, what's the. My favorite murderer? They banter for, like, 10 hours before they do their thing. It's exactly time. And they. They're really successful. But. But here's the thing, though. I think if we do it, test banter. I mean, first of all, I don't know if we can be referential about it, but.
Kayla: Are you saying I can't say.
Chris: You can't say it? No.
Kayla: We have time for banter.
Chris: It has to seem authentic. We have to be. For our cult members that listen to us. They have to think that it's all real.
Kayla: So is that what we're calling our listeners?
Chris: Yeah. Their cult are just weird.
Kayla: That's not what you said. You said cult members.
Chris: They're cult members. That's what I mean. They're cult. They're just weird cult members.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: It's the culture. Just weird cult.
Kayla: What is it? If you're in a cult, you're just a follower.
Chris: Cultist. I believe it's cultist. Or. Yeah, or follower.
Kayla: I don't think if you're in the cult, you're not gonna call yourself a cultist.
Chris: That wasn't what you asked. You asked what we call them.
Kayla: No, no, I'm. Never mind. This banter's terrible.
Chris: That's your fault. You're like, what are they called? Cultists?
Kayla: What do they call themselves?
Chris: Okay, well, you didn't.
Kayla: I'm clarifying the question. So they would call themselves followers.
Chris: I really think it probably depends on the cult. Like, I don't know. It probably depends on what the organization is, especially for the stuff we talk about, where it's, like, middle ground stuff. They might not even think of themselves that way.
Kayla: Could just be weird.
Chris: Could just be weird. But, yeah, so, actually, I was gonna say that I think just because this episode is gonna be such a doozy, maybe banter. We'll do the banter experiment next episode.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: Because if we do too much banter in this episode, it's gonna be like, oh, my God. It's gonna be. So you're saying so long, we need.
Kayla: To do banter when we need filler?
Chris: Yes.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: Exactly. I don't think that's, like, a secret, right?
Kayla: Like, about us or about podcasts.
Chris: About podcasts. About. You're just, like, throwing shade at all news about every. Yeah, whatever. That's what banter is. It's filler. It's definitely filler.
Kayla: I thought Banter was a way for us to bond with our listeners, way for us to chit chat.
Chris: And this is weird, because we're bantering about banter. I don't know if I like it.
Kayla: It's, hello, meta.
Chris: Yeah. But anyway, I think. Yeah, just because this episode is. It's called content heavy. Okay, maybe we just get into it. So, this is Chris, this is Kayla.
Kayla: And welcome to cult, or just weird, the content heavy podcast, episode four. Oh, my God. We did it.
Chris: I know.
Kayla: We're all the way to episode four.
Chris: If you don't like content or heaviness and you're gonna be bored, then feel free to check out. Leave us a one star review on, you know, wherever you get your podcast.
Kayla: Or just listen while you're playing candy crush. We're really great background.
Chris: Yeah, exactly.
Kayla: That's what I do.
Chris: Exactly.
Kayla: I'm playing candy crush right now.
Chris: It's my honey voice. That just makes it so.
Kayla: You do have a honeyed voice.
Chris: I don't know about that. Okay, so this is episode four.
Kayla: Do we need to explain what we are as a podcast, or do. Are we assuming our listeners, we have.
Chris: Such a huge following at this point.
Kayla: True.
Chris: Well, okay. We can do it real quick, though. Yeah. Cause it's only episode four. We are a podcast that talks about groups. Groups that may just be weird, or maybe they are cults.
Kayla: Maybe they're so weird you encounter in your daily life. And maybe you go, huh?
Chris: And featuring our expertise and training of exactly nothing, we know how to keep curiosity. We talk about these things, and then we make a proclamation that should be definitive, as far as I'm concerned.
Kayla: Oh, yeah. No, we. The buck stops here. Like, we are the official be all and end all of cult classifications.
Chris: Yeah. So I'm assuming. I think probably we have a type of listener base where they've probably heard of this. I'm sure you have, but I heard.
Kayla: About it because of you.
Chris: Pascal's dilemma.
Kayla: Oh, I don't know what that is.
Chris: You've heard of Pascal's dilemma?
Kayla: I'm not smart, my friend.
Chris: So, Pascal's dilemma is. So, Blaise Pascal is a philosopher, and it was basically his reason for believing in God. And basically what it was. So there's two things you can do. You can either believe in God or not believe in God.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: If you do believe in God and he doesn't exist. Oh, well, no harm, no foul. There's no difference. If you do believe in God and he does exist, then sweet like, you get eternal salvation, right? You can make a little matrix of these results. If you don't believe in God and he does existential, then you're going to hell. So you have eternal hell.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And if you don't believe in God and he doesn't exist, it's the same as if you do and you do believe in him and he doesn't exist. Like, either way, he just doesn't exist. So, by his logic, he was saying you should just believe in God because there's no downside to doing it. You might as well do it just in case he's real.
Kayla: I have literally no idea why we're talking about this, and I'm so interested to know why.
Chris: I know why.
Kayla: Because I know what youre a topic is.
Chris: Yeah, this is the. So just for our listeners, I'm so.
Kayla: Excited to hear how this ties in. I mean, I could talk for 10 hours about, I know what this dilemma I didn't know is called. Pascal's dilemma. We could talk about this for 10 hours. I'm kind of hoping that's what we're doing.
Chris: No, unfortunately. I know. I wish we could be a philosophy. We're gonna have a spin off philosophy podcast philosophy or just weird.
Kayla: Or cult or just philosophy.
Chris: Ooh, yeah.
Kayla: Oh, shit.
Chris: Yeah. So, just for our listeners, this. I think this is probably gonna be the last episode where we know each other's topics ahead of time. And we're gonna try to, like, next time, we're gonna try to be secret about it.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And you're gonna try to surprise me, but, you know, we'll see. Cause we sort of live together.
Kayla: Oh, it'll be a surprise.
Chris: Okay. But, yeah. So, so Pascal's dilemma is it has a bit of a logical hole in that it doesn't account for the possible existence of competing deities.
Kayla: Right. That's the big problem.
Chris: So the big hole with it is, like, what if there's actually a flying species Getty monster and he's mad that you did believe in God, then all of a sudden, the believe in God piece of that choice is no longer the, like, oh, it's super safe.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: So that kind of.
Kayla: And you can't really, like, hedge your bets by believing in all of the gods because a lot of them are, like, only believe in.
Chris: A lot of them are little mutually exclusives. Right. So there's a bit of a logical hole. And that allows different groups to basically have different beliefs. And like you said, some of them are of mutually exclusive. So I have actually another question for you. Yeah, I'm starting with a bunch of questions today. So, yeah, there's a bunch of different groups of different beliefs. What do you think some of the.
Kayla: Weirdest, are you saying right now you're asking me to put a bunch of religions on blast?
Chris: No, I could be cults. Yeah, totally stack rank your top ten weirdest religions.
Kayla: I mean, the hale Bopp comet folks, they were really weird.
Chris: It was heaven's gate, right?
Kayla: Heavensgate. That's pretty weird. You're really.
Chris: Do you have any favorites?
Kayla: You're putting me on the spot here. I didn't know.
Chris: Well, we're on a podcast.
Kayla: I didn't know. I needed to prepare.
Chris: You need to react.
Kayla: Well, I also don't want to. I don't want to spoil any of my future topics because I'm thinking of.
Chris: Well, the thing is, I mean, the weirder ones are going to be ones that we're going to do, so it's fine. Because my answer is to. Because I was, you know, I have my own answers.
Kayla: Like, yeah, you're the one who actually got to prepare. So maybe you answer the question. Is that if you.
Chris: Why don't I. Oh, okay. So I'll just say self, what do you think the weirdest cult group beliefs are?
Kayla: Thank you.
Chris: I'll just. I'll be. I'll react to my own.
Kayla: Okay, how about I do this? How about I do a throwback to a previous podcast episode, the best Friends animal society slash foundation church of the millennium. They're like four quadrant. Like, we've God and Lucifer and Jesus and Satan.
Chris: Like, right.
Kayla: That was, I guess, honestly, when you really think about it's not weird, but it's weird in the context of living in, like, a very straight up christian heavy country. To have the Satanist plus straight up regular christian beliefs altogether that was out there.
Chris: I mean, it was definitely surprising. So, I mean, personally, I think, like, the flat earther thing is a little strange to. And a Scientology is right up there.
Kayla: Like, well, okay.
Chris: Like, okay, so also, sorry. Scientology is alleged beliefs.
Kayla: Or they're like, you know, first tier beliefs of, like, you can overcome your emotional blocks. Like, that's not that weird.
Chris: It's when, you know, well, there's some of the first tier stuff is weird, too. Like the e meters and the, like, all psychiatry is bad.
Kayla: Yeah, don't.
Chris: But when you get into the, like, alleged later tier stuff with, like, xeno and whatever. That. That's the truly weird stuff.
Kayla: So the lizard people. Lizard people.
Chris: Lizard people's weird.
Kayla: That's not Scientology. That's a different thing. But people who believe in the lizard people, I think that's strange.
Chris: Yeah. But most groups have a set of what you'd call beliefs. Have at least one or more weird ones, right. Kind of. No matter. Like, even, like, you know, even base Christianity has some, like, weird nephilim shit going on. You know?
Kayla: So, like, not. Not to put. I'm not criticizing, but, like, Jesus died and came back. Like, that's.
Chris: Yeah, totally. Resurrection.
Kayla: Normal thing to believe.
Chris: Strange. Like, it's a. You know, I was raised Catholic, and Catholics believe that you were literally eating the body and blood of Christ every Sunday.
Kayla: And it feels normal because a little cannibalistic. We're exposed to that often. So we're just kind of.
Chris: We're normalized to it. Yeah. So then I have one more question to kind of kick us off here. So you take some of these weird beliefs.
Kayla: Okay?
Chris: What if tomorrow NASA came out and said, oh, hey, my bad. The moon landing was actually a hoax and the earth really is flatden?
Kayla: Or are you saying, how would I react?
Chris: Yeah. Like what? Like, flip the fuck out. Right? Or what if Xenu was real? Like, what if all that. What if there were really Dc ten s flying around with thetans? Or. I'm not super sure because we haven't done this episode yet, what all their beliefs are.
Kayla: I'm so concerned about how this is gonna relate back to your topic. How. What. Why? Explain.
Chris: Well, would that. I mean, would that change your opinion of the Scientologists? Would they be a cult still?
Kayla: No. If what they believed in was real, they would not be a cult.
Chris: I mean, even though they have, like, a lot of other features about them that they're, like, there's insider, outsider. You have to give them a lot of money. It just so happens that on top of all that strange, bizarre stuff, they're right.
Kayla: I think that given our criteria is, like, given that our. One of the major criteria that we have is the, like, denial of truth and the obfuscation of truth.
Chris: So those things. Okay, right. I see what you're saying. So you remove that criteria and maybe it's not enough.
Kayla: I think so. I don't know.
Chris: And furthermore, what if Xenu weren't real and the Scientologists knew that he wasn't real, but they had the power to bring him into existence? If only they prayed and donated hard enough.
Kayla: Well, that sounds like the beginning of, like, a science fiction series.
Chris: Yeah, it's an interesting thought, right?
Kayla: Yeah. Why are you asking me these questions?
Chris: Yeah, good question. Well, why don't you hold that thought?
Kayla: No.
Chris: And I'm gonna take you all the way back to 2012.
Kayla: Oh, God.
Chris: To talk about Kickstarter.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: Perfect segue, right?
Kayla: Is Kickstarter a cult?
Chris: I mean, probably not. I don't. That's probably too far in the realm of normal for us to ever do on the show, but we're going to talk about them anyway. Okay, so just a baseline. I know probably everybody knows about this, but just. Just a baseline. What is Kickstarter? So Kickstarter is a crowdfunding site. And what that means is, and this is sort of the key, is that if you participate in a Kickstarter, you're a backer or a supporter and you make pledges, you are not an investor, and you don't make an investment. So basically there's these, like, projects on Kickstarter that anybody can go, I can be like, I want to make a. Yeah. Board game. That's pretty popular in Kickstarter, right? Or I want to write a book and I need money to do that. So you can go on Kickstarter.
Chris: You can say, I'm doing this thing. I need people to fund me. And then people basically just pledge. They donate. So for the creators, it's basically like low risk, you know, essentially risk free funding because you don't have investors or you're not borrowing money, and it's a high risk investment for the backers. But just because it's high risk doesn't mean it's bad. If that high risk comes with a high reward, then it's worth it for people. So, I mean, there are projects that have basically just been fans of some ip resurrecting it via Kickstarter, stuff that never would have happened before Kickstarter. You can say, oh, man, it's so risky. You can't get your money back. But it makes things possible that weren't possible before. You might remember Veronica Mars.
Chris: Veronica Mars was this tv show and literally fans, like, birthed a feature film production about it just by going to Kickstarter and donating a shit ton of money. And in fact, I saw CNBC headline that literally read the headline was, quote, Kickstarter campaign brings Veronica Mars movie to life. So there you go.
Kayla: That's. Yeah, I mean, that's what happened.
Chris: And you don't pledge for nothing. Like, you're not just saying, like, please do this. Like, depending on how much money you give to a Kickstarter project, you are promised some sort of real reward when the product is released or when the project is finished. So, like, I don't know. In the Veronica Mars movie, I have no idea. I'm just guessing. They probably got names in the credits, right?
Kayla: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: It can be as small as t shirts or, like, with the. I mentioned board games, they'll give you a copy of the board game.
Kayla: Right, right. I.
Chris: At larger amounts, you're promised everything from, like, having your name immortalized in the comic you backed.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: To, like, you get a card in the board game named after you.
Kayla: I think for some of them, like, some of these. More, like, we're gonna film something. You can, like, get a set visit. Like, different things like that.
Chris: Dude, great segue. Cause I was gonna say, also, sometimes they promise, like, meet the team, or, like you said, set. That's basically that. Set visit. So Kickstarter has been around for a little while, but I did say I'm gonna bring you back to 2012 and talk about Kickstarter. So why did I bring you back to that year?
Kayla: Yeah, why are we back at the.
Chris: Early days, the early days of the halcyon days of Kickstarter 2012, when the mayan calendar said everything was going to end?
Kayla: Oh, man.
Chris: In that year, one of the biggest crowdfunding projects of all time was born.
Kayla: Oh.
Chris: Partially on Kickstarter.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: In fact, this funding project was so big and took in so much money that it lived in two places on Kickstarter, but also on the project's own website, which, long term is actually where they wound up raising most of their money.
Kayla: Is that allowed? You're allowed to, like, raise on Kickstarter and elsewhere?
Chris: I mean, I guess, yeah, they don't give a shit. Like, I can't just. I can go make a website and be like, donate to the Chris Carlson fund, the human fund, please. And I can do that on Kickstarter, too. Like, that's just like, whatever. Nobody would do it for me because I'm not George Costanza.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: But maybe in the future, I don't know. But this project was record setting, and it was a tiny little video game, and that's sarcastic. It's not tiny at all. Called Star Citizen.
Kayla: This is why I'm confused as to why you started your episode with those questions that you had. Because all I knew is that were talking about a video game. And I'm really interested to know how that relates to the concept of God and worship.
Chris: Hold on to your butts. As Samuel L. Jackson's character from Jurassic.
Kayla: Oh, my God. I was about to divorce.
Chris: Dude, he's in, like, 87 different movies a year.
Kayla: If you were unable to recall the film that line was from, this would be the end of our marriage.
Chris: Could you. Could we go back and maybe cut out that pause, that slight pause to make it look like I just said it?
Kayla: I need to have that immortalized for whatever. Eventually. If. If I ever need to leave you, I need that as evidence as to why it was necessary.
Chris: I mean, you don't really need an excuse. You could just leave me.
Kayla: I know what I'm saying. For when I want to get the money.
Chris: Oh, right. When I want to sue you for all the money. Like $0. Yeah. So star record setting crowdfunding.
Kayla: I need to tell you before we get going on this. I know the name. I don't know anything about Star Citizen. I have no idea what kind of video game it is. I have no idea how popular it is, who plays. I know nothing about it, so I'm very excited for it.
Chris: Well, I am here to fill in all of those gaps and then some.
Kayla: Great.
Chris: So here's a few facts about the record setting crowdfunding. Currently fourth on the list of highest amount raised, all time crowdfunding projects.
Kayla: Fourth of all time. Fourth all time of all crowdfunding or just Kickstarter?
Chris: All time crowdfunding. It is only beat by three blockchain technologies. And for context, the next entertainment item on this all time list is another video game coming in at 24th place. And out of the top 30, 23 are blockchain related. So what I'm basically saying here is that for you to get to the top of the crowdfunding list, you have to be one of two things. You have to be either a revolutionizing technology and novel investment vehicle that has massive global inflow of capital. Okay, that's blockchain.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: Right? That's like. Like, the reason we're obsessed with blockchain is because everybody wants to be a bitcoin billionaire, right? Like, that's why. So you need. You either need to be that or star citizen. You need to be one of those two things to be at the top of the list.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: At the time of this recording, over 2.2 million backers have pledged more than $216 million to star Citizen. Just let that sink in for a minute. Think about all the movie budgets you know about.
Kayla: That's a lot of money.
Chris: Think of all the waterworlds.
Kayla: That's a lot of money.
Chris: That's more than Waterworld, I believe. Of course, Waterworld's not the record setting.
Kayla: Yeah, no. Why'd you buy Waterworld?
Chris: Well, cause I'm still living in the nineties in my head, and I remember in the nineties it was like, waterworld's budget is so crazy, and I know it's been beaten by 30 other things now.
Kayla: Yeah, that was just a weird one to.
Chris: And yet I had to hesitate remembering Jurassic park. So, like, I don't know, I guess I'm just getting old.
Kayla: Jurassic park was also in the nineties.
Chris: That's what I mean. That's why I'm getting old is cause I'm remembering one thing from the nineties but not the other.
Kayla: That doesn't make any sense. And also, I don't understand how much money. That's too much money.
Chris: It's a lot of money.
Kayla: It's too much money. That's an insane amount of money.
Chris: Yeah. So they were breaking land speed records to get to their goals. Like, you know, they started out with like 500,000 and it was like, whoa, that already happened. Oh, my God. Okay, okay, a million. Okay, 2 million. Wait, no, 6 million. I don't know. Like, let's keep going.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: And they were just blowing by their stretch goals and setting new ones as fast as they needed to. And the Kickstarter campaign actually ended the same year. It ended in November 2012.
Kayla: Wait, so you can't still donate money to this?
Chris: Oh, you can. Oh, you can just not be Kickstarter.
Kayla: Okay, okay.
Chris: So what that means is they are continuing to raise money on their own. And remember I said the majority was actually. The vast majority of their money has been raised, wait, on their own.
Kayla: So $216 million is only a part of what they've raised? And it's only a small.
Chris: No, no. It's the other way around.
Kayla: Okay, okay.
Chris: That's the amount they've raised. It's just only a small part of that was from Kickstart.
Kayla: Gotcha. Okay. I was about to flip my shit, and I was already flipping.
Chris: No, no. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's only. It's only 260 million.
Kayla: An insane amount of money, which is why I was gonna freak out.
Chris: But if you want to go ahead and flip your shit, guess how much of it was on Kickstarter versus how much they raised on their own.
Kayla: Well, I don't want to guess because I don't want to, like, say a ridiculous number and make you look bad.
Chris: 2 million.
Kayla: It's a very small.
Chris: Of the 216, two was on Kickstarter. And this is according to.
Kayla: That's, like, less than 1%.
Chris: The star Citizen wiki. There's a couple different sources out there. There are some sources that seem to suggest that it was more, but none that seemed as authoritative as the star citizen wiki. Okay, so, yeah, I mean, 2 million is such a small piece of 216. It's less than a percent or it's just like, under.
Kayla: Under.
Chris: It's just under a percent because of the 16. Yeah, it makes it almost. Just, to me, it almost feels like the Kickstarter was, like, marketing more than anything else. Right. It's crazy. So most of their funds come from. And we'll definitely get more into this, but, you know, I'm gonna be saying that a lot. We'll get more into this. But now most of their funds come from buying in game ships. Like starships, for real money. Gobs of real money. Like in game content. Yeah. So, like, anywhere from, like, $40 for, like, a small starfighter. Like, a little.
Kayla: Like, that's still. That's already too much money.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: That's a lot of money to spend on something in a game.
Chris: Yes. But the larger ships, like, the capital class ships, can cost up to hundreds of dollars.
Kayla: That's insane.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: I've never spent hundreds of dollars on anything.
Chris: Did I mention that the game isn't out yet?
Kayla: No, you didn't mention that. You did not mention that. So.
Chris: Okay, so I'm gonna ask you to hold that thought as well.
Kayla: I don't wanna hold it.
Chris: Hold onto it. So you might be wondering, at this point, aside from the thing I just mentioned, the little. Little tease I just mentioned is why did it raise so much money? Or, like, why was it this, like, record setting? Like, only in the, you know, the rarefied air of blockchain, you know, get rich quick stuff. Like, why is it so much money?
Kayla: Right.
Chris: Of course, it's a complicated question, and if we could answer it perfectly, we'd all be multimillionaires. But from my research and interviews, there are a few reasons for what one of my interviewees called the perfect storm of crowdfunding.
Kayla: Oh, you sound so official.
Chris: I know. So first, he convinced me that the audience for this game was an underserved audience, which plays actually a big role in this whole story.
Kayla: Before you continue, are you allowed to give us any info on who this.
Chris: I'll talk about that in a little bit. Yes and no. Okay, so there aren't a lot of really good. AaA, which is like a gaming way of saying, like, high quality, well designed space simulators out there, which that's what Star Citizen is.
Kayla: What is a space simulator?
Chris: We'll talk about that.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: You have games like Eve, which Eve. For listeners that are not gamers, Eve is another online game where you are basically piloting a starship in this far off galaxy. And the thing about Eve is that makes it really fun is that there's no rules. So it always makes headlines for players destroying each other's ships and these enormous epic battles, and it just kind of goes bonkers. But it's also been called, quote unquote spreadsheets in space because it's mostly an economy game.
Kayla: Yeah, it sounds boring, right?
Chris: Like, it's fascinating. Cool when you actually, like, have these massive battles. But, like, to get to that point, it's all like, well, you know, so and so in our corporation mined the minerals from Planet 572. And. Yeah, so it's a lot of that.
Kayla: Not a game for me.
Chris: Yeah, it's definitely game for some people, not for everyone. And then you also have, like, things like no man's sky, which again, for non gamers is a game that was released a few years ago now. One year, two years ago, something few years ago now. So no man's sky was basically like this. It was procedurally generating a universe and procedural generation. I'm sorry, like, a lot of explanation this time.
Kayla: Just say it was an infinite game.
Chris: It was an infinite game. No, procedural generation is important. Procedural generation means that the game itself is generating the content. So, like, rather than me go and, like, design a planet and, you know, make art for it and put creatures on it and whatever the game is, just through some sort of algorithm is basically saying, like, okay, let's make a planet, let's give this much plants, and let's put some water over here and some creatures over there.
Kayla: So it's not like a designer actively.
Chris: Correct.
Kayla: Designing that world. It's just like they, you know, put a bunch of algorithms in and then the game itself can just like, generate it.
Chris: Exactly.
Kayla: Infinitely.
Chris: Exactly. You're designing the designer. Sort of. Okay, so that's another game. But it was like very, what's the word? It was a big disappointment to a lot of people because while it was really fascinating in its, like, scope and infiniteness and procedural generation, right. There was nothing like, there was no meaningfulness to it.
Kayla: Clearly not a story.
Chris: There was no story. There were no quests. You couldn't even interact with other players. To do any sort of combat or Pvp. So it was just like. It was like a neat little sandbox for a little while, and then I kind of was like. And people were expecting a lot more, so people got a disappointed. And then the problem with that is that this audience that I'm talking about that feels underserved as an audience, so they're only getting convinced even more that they'll never see a good game that's for them.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: Because, like, well, no man's sky tried that, and that was a big debacle, so nobody's gonna try anymore. And then you also have just to kind of round out, like the, you know, the other, like, space sims out there. There's a game called Elite Dangerous, which is a legit competitor to something like Star Citizen, but it doesn't have the same sort of immersion aspects, which. I'll talk more about that for Star Citizen, but, you know, for elite dangerous, you're basically like a pilot and, you know, in a starfighter, and there's not the same, like, mmo. Like, I'm immersed, immersed. I'm immersed. I'm immersed in this universe the way you are with. With Star Citizen. So basically that sort of. And people are clearly craving that sort of immersion, right?
Chris: So that appetite drove people, and lots of them to pledge lots of money to this game that was like a dream of theirs, basically. So you have this underserved audience, and then the pitch was really good. So this is number two. The Kickstarter pitch was really good. I said dream. They basically sold a dream to their backers, which, of course, that's dangerous because everyone's dreams are different. But Star Citizen's ambitious feature set didn't help that either. So it's kind of like, it was like everything to everyone, which made it really compelling.
Kayla: Right. But that's gonna be hard to deliver on.
Chris: But then it's hard to deliver on.
Kayla: Trying to make a game that's literally going to please every gamer. Like, that's. There's so many different kinds of. There's so many different kinds of games and so many different kinds of gamers. Like, how can you deliver on that?
Chris: But there was a thing that legitimized this dream, and that's number three. The Kickstarter would not. The perfect storm of crowdfunding would not have been possible without this number three, which is none other than citizen nations. Can I call it citizen nation? I think I just made that up.
Kayla: What's citizen nation?
Chris: It's like the group of people that are into Star Citizen. Can I? I don't know. Anyway, I'll just say the Star Citizen fan.
Kayla: Call them citizen nation. Who cares?
Chris: Citizen nation.
Kayla: Are you come after us?
Chris: No, I mean, I think it's not even a bad name, but it's none other than their own charismatic leader, Chris Roberts. And we will definitely.
Kayla: That's a good name.
Chris: Yeah, it's a good name. We'll talk a bit about. More about him. I know we're doing that for a lot of stuff here, but let's just say his involvement as a founder and CEO made the pitch very compelling.
Kayla: Okay, I'm excited.
Chris: And then the fourth thing is that they had compelling rewards. So we talked about the rewards that sometimes you get from Kickstarters. And so theirs were very compelling. They were showing beautiful artwork of beautifully designed ships and.
Kayla: Right. Because you need to be able to see what you're gonna get if you're gonna want to donate millions of dollars.
Chris: To this thing, and especially if you're like, oh, I really want to play a space game. And there's, like, this beautiful ship art.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: Then that's really gonna drive people's interest. And I know I mentioned earlier you were talking about going. Flying out to the set or meeting the team.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: Well, some of the early high level backers were actually flown out to Santa Monica to meet with Mister Roberts himself.
Kayla: So this situation is ten minutes from us.
Chris: Yeah, I'm not sure if he's still there, but, yeah, they have studios. They have. They have studio locations in, like, five different places. Like, one in the UK, one in Texas. I think there's one here, but there's no game. We'll get to that. This is probably a good spot to mention since we're talking about those things that made this perfect storm of crowdfunding. Good thought to mention how intelligent and business savvy this company is that Chris Roberts founded. So what's the name of the company? The name of the company is called Cloud Imperium Games.
Kayla: Okay. Sounds like a cult.
Chris: It kind of does. We'll call it CiG because that's how it's referred to on the Internet, and it's easier to say, but, yeah. So when they got this massive influx of cash, this is just talking about how intelligent they are. They realize two things, which, you know, one is we have a lot of cash. I think everybody would realize that. That's obvious. But the second thing they realized is, oh, we have a community with, like, a massive amount of interest and engagement. So how do we take advantage of that going forward. So their community management is really spectacular, which is part of why they were able to keep raising money well past 2012 into today as we speak.
Kayla: So I could go on the Internet right now and donate money to them.
Chris: For a game that is technically not even released.
Kayla: Why do you keep saying technically?
Chris: We'll get to that. But yes, you could go on the Internet right now. You could go to their website. It's called Robert Space Industries.
Kayla: Why isn't their website called Cloud Imperium Games?
Chris: I'm not sure, but Robert Space Industries is like a fictional thing inside the Star Citizen universe. So maybe that's why they do it. I don't know, but you can go there and donate.
Kayla: I can't help but notice that Roberts is the last name of the guy that you were just talking about.
Chris: Yeah, that's fully. That's. There's. There's no. That's fully intentional.
Kayla: I know.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: But it's just interesting, right? For somebody to create a game and.
Chris: Then, like, name shit after himself. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, he has a godlike amount of power, so that's, you know, probably makes you want to do stuff like that. I don't know, but yeah. So that's the crazy gilded birth of the Star Citizen project from the womb of crowdfunding. But before we get into some of these details about the game and its creators and its fans, though, all these things I've been saying. Wait, we'll talk about it. Wait, we'll talk about it. I just want to make a quick interlude statement about this episode being near and dear to my own heart just because I work in the game industry.
Kayla: Video game industry.
Chris: Just to clarify, video game industry. Right. I'm not making board games. I'm making video games. Board games are super cool, but I make video games. Full fact disclosure. The game my company's working on right now, it actually uses the same game engine and AI backend systems that Star Citizen does.
Kayla: Really?
Chris: Yeah. So. But since I have these sort of, like, game industry connections, I was like, I can be a little more involved with this episode. So I figured I'd like try to slightly legitimize this podcast as being journalistic. So in addition to the normal online research, I also interviewed some folks about their experience with Star Citizen.
Kayla: You actually interviewed them?
Chris: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I, like, legit interviewed them for quite a long time, so I was able to get two of my friends to speak with me. They're big fans of the game and backers themselves. I told them I wouldn't say their names. They weren't scared or anything. They were just like, eh, don't. They were like, oh, my God, if you say my name, then the citizen cult will come get me.
Kayla: They're not saying that Chris Roberts is.
Chris: Gonna like, no, no.
Kayla: Call them suppressive people, right?
Chris: No, no. It's not like that. But they were just like, eh, let's don't use our names. And they're also backers themselves, so they've spent money on the game. I was really hoping that I would have a connection that either works or worked at CIG, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case. But as part of this research and interview process, I did get to play the game. And again, you might be confused as how I played a game that isn't out yet.
Kayla: You keep saying it's complicated.
Chris: We'll talk about it. But just to wrap up, like. So, the other research site. So, yeah, so I interviewed two people, which was fun, right? And then the other research is the normal Internet stuff, but, like, there's just so much content about this out here. In fact, the amount of content was like, you know, I was talking to you about this earlier, like, with some of our other topics, the challenge was finding out about this stuff, right? With this. There's just so much information out there that the challenge was sorting it into something, like, discussable.
Kayla: Right. You had a hard time, like, cutting this down to even be able to, like.
Chris: And there's stuff I'm leaving out, of course. Yeah. There's a lot of places where I don't actually cite anything or say, this is where I found this, so I just want to do it now. Wikipedia, Reddit, YouTube, Cig's own website, the Star Citizen, Wiki, Twitter, many articles, some forum visits, and even a slight short detour to IMDBA are all sources that I use for this. Yeah.
Kayla: Why is IMDb involved?
Chris: If we have time to talk about it, we will.
Kayla: Okay. You can also tell me in our personal lives.
Chris: Yeah, well, maybe we can post it in the show notes or something, just in case we run out of time, which I'm still worried about. So that was the research bit. I just wanted to tell you guys how I researched this topic and why it's relevant to me personally this time.
Kayla: You did, like, actual work.
Chris: I know. It was weird. I hate doing work, typically, but. Yeah. And then we've talked about the crowdfunding and how extreme the dollar amounts are and why. But what exactly was funded? You've asked this a few times now. What is Star Citizen?
Kayla: Yeah, what's the game. If the game doesn't exist but you played it, how do.
Chris: Okay, where to start? So we mentioned this a little bit, but this is a really important part of the metanarrative here is that Star Citizen is ambitious. Like insanely ambitious.
Kayla: Yeah, you said that they're trying to please all gamers all the time.
Chris: It may actually be easier to talk about what it isn't than what it is, but let's talk about what it is.
Kayla: That's terrifying.
Chris: The most concise I can possibly be is to just say it is a SCi-Fi simulator.
Kayla: Okay?
Chris: You're simulating a SCi-Fi experience.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: But I have a laundry list of the features and systems and things that cig wants to include in their game.
Kayla: Please hit me with this list.
Chris: Yeah. Okay. It's long, so gear up. First and foremost. Well, I don't know about foremost, but first on my list anyway, is that it's an MMO, which for listeners, again, are not gamers. MMO stands for massively multiplayer online, and typically they are persistent worlds, which that's what this game is as well. And persistent world is to differentiate a game. So you may think of a single player game as being, okay, when I play it, I'm in the world, and when not playing it, the world goes away. I shut the program down.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: For a persistent world, there's a world that's there whether you're logged into it and playing it or not.
Kayla: Right? It's like World of Warcraft.
Chris: It's just like World of Warcraft. So, like, whether you're logged on to wow or not, the world's there. The characters in the world are running around, there's other players there doing their thing, right? You may have stuff that's just sitting there, but if you're not logged on, it's there whether you are or not. So that's what persistent world means is it persists when you're not logged in. So it's that, and it's a persistent world that will include multiple star systems with multiple planets, which can have multiple moons and multiple stay stations, and then the planets and sometimes moons can have cities or multiple cities or sites on them.
Kayla: That's already too much. That's too much.
Chris: That's number one.
Kayla: That's too much. No, there can't be more than that. That's the end. That's the end of the list.
Chris: Sit tight.
Kayla: Oh, jeez.
Chris: It's a first person shooter with full quote fidelity. So fidelity is like a word that's very popular for Chris Roberts to use when talking about his game. He loves to talk about fidelity. It's like a kind of an inside term. It's like, you know, their own nomenclature. But when he says fidelity, I mean, yeah, actually that's. That's basically what he means is that he means, like, realism and detail when he says that. Right. So when he says full fidelity first person shooter, it means. The other thing it means is, like, you're not abstracting out pieces. You're not modeling things.
Chris: You're more like giving it to the player to do so, like, you know, like a full fidelity experience shooting a gun would be like, you have to load it and then you have to, like, cock the hammer, and then you have to pull the trigger and do the safety.
Kayla: So like a red dead redemption type.
Chris: Yeah, that's a good example. So red dead redemption. Yeah, where you have to, like, brush your horse and, like, you know, talk nice to it and it dies if you don't feed it. That's, like full fidelity. Right. So he wants his game to be like that. So first person shooter, and I'm talking, like, legit. Like, you are in first person and you have guns and you have equipment. And I've seen the loadout screen, like, you know, full, like armor and weapons and everything. So it's that. But three, it's also a space combat simulator that goes all the way from the smallest fighter ships. So, like, x wings and tie fighters all the way to giant interstellar battleships doing, like, you know, like, star destroyer type stuff.
Chris: There are space stations, but in terms of what a player can own, it's more like you can own a star destroyer all the way down to a tie fighter.
Kayla: But also it's a first person shooter.
Chris: But it's also a first person shooter. And actually, this, I'm putting this as its own number. Number four, because that connection between two and three, between first person shooter and space combat simulator, it's basically fully realistic. So when I say no abstraction layer, you may think that, like, okay, I go from one game mode to the other, and there's some loading screen in between. So, like, now I'm in the first person. I'm shooting a gun. I'm running around, and then I press a button, and now I see a loading screen. I have to wait for a second. And then now I'm in a ship flying around in space, right? No, no, my friend. Here's how you go from first person shooter to flying around in space.
Chris: You walk to your ship, then you get into it via an elevator and the ship is full size. And then you can walk around in the ship and then you sit down at the controls in the ship and then you use the controls in the ship to fly the ship around space. And when you're in hyperspace, you can walk around your ship and like do stuff in it. And then you get to a planet and then you're at the planet.
Kayla: So this isn't a game. This is just like recreating reality?
Chris: Yeah. Yeah, basically. Yeah.
Kayla: What's the game?
Chris: Well, I had that same question as a matter of fact. But let's continue through this list. Let's keep bulldozing through. So on top of those sort of like primary, I would call them maybe features, there's also a whole complex player driven economy. Just like, remember I was talking about Eve? And like, Eve is like an economy game. They basically want to have Eve in this game too. Like all sorts of economy stuff. Real ships being destroyed for value. So like if you have a big ship that you've like spent a lot of time in game like, you know, earning right, it can be blown up.
Kayla: No.
Chris: Yep.
Kayla: No.
Chris: Yeah. Six. Remember I talked about procedural generation in no man's sky? Well, they.
Kayla: Please don't tell me.
Chris: No, they have procedural generation here too. So as far as I'm aware, they don't procedurally generate planets and stars, but they do procedurally generate quests. Oh yeah, there's a quest system. So like, you know, go collect, you know, ten alien stomachs from, you know, Centauri three. And that whole thing is procedurally generated. So like the game will say, do this quest that has this criteria. Oh, I'm not done.
Kayla: How many do you have? Okay, okay, how many are there? How many? How many? Laundry list.
Chris: Oh, only 13. And we're on six.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: Number seven is all kinds of PvP. So like when you're out in space doing the flying around thing that I was talking about, you can engage in combat with other people. You can, you know, do your space shooting and blow up his ship. And he can blow up your ship and maybe there's pirates that can like take your stuff and then you get mad at him later when you're on the space station. So you can like do your first person shooter and be like, screw you, man, and like shoot him in your first person shooter version of the game.
Kayla: So this is every game.
Chris: It's just all the games. It's all the games.
Kayla: But in space in one thing.
Chris: And I mentioned pirating. So they want to, this is number eight. They want to include all kinds of different mechanics. So they want to include mechanics for smuggling. So like ways for, so they have like a customs system where like you can like get past customs or not if you're a smuggler. And I, they want to have, and not all this is implemented, by the way. In fact, most of it's not. But they want to have systems for pirating, mining, being a medic and more, as far as I'm aware. But those are the main things that I wrote down from one of my interviews.
Chris: Okay, number nine, there's a city that, and this is like, I guess number nine, maybe I'm getting a little generous with the numbering here because I already talked about cities, but I just want to like emphasize how detailed these cities are of, like, it's not like, it's not even like world of warcraft detail. It's far beyond that. It's like there's a city that I saw that was basically blade runner, Los Angeles. Like, it was what?
Kayla: You saw it in the game that doesn't exist?
Chris: Yeah, I saw it in the game that doesn't exist. Yeah, I mean, just fully detailed. Like when you land your starship there, you land at like the starport and you have to like sit on like a subway to get to the city for like three minutes. And then the city is like this big, huge industrial dystopian. Yeah. And then there are space stations. So that's like blade Runner. And there's space stations that look like Star Trek or Star wars.
Kayla: Like, are they supposed to look like these things?
Chris: I don't know if they're like direct references or if they're just like Sci-Fi tropes.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: But it has all of the tropes, I guess, is what I'm saying, depending on where you go. And there are different, this is number eleven. There are different manufacturers in game for different styles of ships, again, taking from all sorts of Sci-Fi tropes. So there's like, you know, this manufacturer. So Robert Space Industries is one of them. And they make ships that are kind of like industrially looking. I think I might be wrong about that. And then there's like another manufacturer and game that makes ships that have a style that are like very like 2001 e where it's like white with like clean lines and like, you know, smooth curves. They have all different styles for ships. Twelve, there will be player housing at some point. What does that mean, player housing? You'll have your own house.
Chris: Every single player will have their own house or the ability to get one in the game. Yeah. Somewhere.
Kayla: Okay. Not IRL.
Chris: No, no.
Kayla: But you can have a house in the game.
Chris: Yeah. That's a common request, by the way, for mmos. Like, that was, like, a long time request for wow. That ended up leading to. For those of you that are wow fans, that request sort of, like, transmogrified into the garrison system.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: The problem is, it's hard to give that many players housing when you're trying to build a unique world. Exactly. Like, it's like, where do you put them? Like, what do you. What if there's a new player? What if they abandoned. There's this. I mean, it's a very complex system. Like, player housing is not small. And here's number 13. They're making a whole separate single player game, a different game, a second game. And they're. I think they're pretty close. And it's in universe, it's called squadron 42, and it's supposed to set up the events that lead to the time period in which you're playing the star Citizen MMO.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: And it's not small. Here are a list of the voice actors in this separate single player game. And by the way, their appearance is pretty much identical to the actual actors. Like. Like, if you actually look at the CGI, they basically look exactly like them. Here's the list part of it. Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman, Gillian Anderson, Mark Strong, Andy Serkis, John Reese Davies. And for good measure, they also have Ser Davos from Game of Thrones. I forgot his real name.
Kayla: These are all huge people.
Chris: These are all A listers.
Kayla: Huge. Mark Hamill.
Chris: Yeah. Gary Oldman, Jillian Anderson. Mm.
Kayla: How.
Chris: And that's just for their single player game. That is basically, like a setup for the world.
Kayla: Okay. I really want to play this.
Chris: It's like, aaaa. Quadruple a game. It's insane.
Kayla: If a movie had all of those people in it would be like.
Chris: It would be big time. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so that's kind of. That's my list of game features. I'm probably forgetting stuff. I'm definitely forgetting stuff.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: I. Which is, again, is just to say that the scale and scope of this game is just unbelievable.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Unbelievable.
Kayla: I believe that.
Chris: So why are we talking about a video game on this pod, on culture? Just weird.
Kayla: Yeah. I'm really. I mean, I guess I kind of a little bit of the, like, infrastructure you're going for, but. Yeah, please explain.
Chris: Yeah, you can. You can probably see the smoke on the horizon, but let's go closer. To the fire. So the first thing is to say is that money makes things happen.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: Lots of money makes things happen quickly. But an absurd Scrooge McDuck amount of money makes things get weird. And with Star Citizen, basically all of that money was obtained in this strange space of, like, pledging, not investing or buying.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: So. And the thing is, it, you know the deal up front when you get into this. Right. Like, you know, okay, it's just a pledge. I know, right. Nothing might happen, but, like, to some degree, it doesn't matter that the pledges know the terms of their pledge up front. It's still a strange space to occupy when you're essentially, what you're doing is purchasing hope. Right, right. So that generates some strange stuff. Right. That's what drives this strange behavior of citizen nation. I don't know if you want to call it that still, but the company, the fans, all the interested parties, that's what kind of drives this weird behavior. But let's talk about the behavior itself, starting as I think we want to do. And in fact, one of my interviewees suggested we started this way with our aforementioned charismatic leader, Mister Chris Roberts.
Kayla: I've never heard of this person, and I'm so excited.
Chris: He's quite the person.
Kayla: Oh, man.
Chris: So here's his Wikipedia intro. Chris Roberts, born May 27, 1968, is an american video game designer, programmer, film producer, and film director. He created the Wing Commander series while at Origin Systems and is now working on the crowdfunded space simulator Star Citizen. That's his intro.
Kayla: So he's just a renowned artist in.
Chris: The entertainment sphere, sort of.
Kayla: What films has he directed?
Chris: So I'm glad you asked, but let's talk about it in order of his life. He's been working on games for a very long time, obviously, so remember earlier, actually, when I mentioned that he was one of the big reasons why their crowdfunding drew so much money? I was like, he legitimized it. Yes, well, a big part of that was his reputation as the guy who made Wing commander.
Kayla: I've never heard of this.
Chris: So that was one of the games they mentioned just a second ago in the intro on Wikipedia. Wing commander was successful enough. It's funny, I have a note here. Successful enough that you may have heard of it. Okay, so maybe not. Well, I don't know anything, but it is famous, though. Back in the early nineties, the flight sim game genre was very popular. So, like, you know, flying World War two planes or 747s.
Kayla: That was a thing?
Chris: Oh, yeah. It was super popular. But Wing Commander was basically the first really actually good flight sim set in space.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: It's still extremely highly regarded. It was one of those like industry changing products. It directly influenced things that came after it. Like, it basically was. Without it, you wouldn't have things like, do you ever hear of tie fighter or X wing? Yeah, yeah. So X Wing and tie fighter wouldn't exist without Wing commander and each of those franchise. I mean, they had like multiple published titles and were extremely successful on their own. Wouldn't be possible without Wing commander. Gotcha. So I don't know if you remember from a minute ago, the intro said he created wing Commander series while at Origin systems.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Fun fact. If you guys, if anybody is an EA fan or has tried to play Simcity or whatever, you might recognize the name Origin. Origin was later acquired by EA, like, after he left and became their publishing platform. So publishing platform is basically like Steam or battle.net if you're a gamer. If you're not a gamer, it's like itunes but for games.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: And so it's like EAs own branded iTunes. It's like, here's where you need to log on to this thing and buy EA games. Okay, so that's what Origin is for them. But like, back in the day, it was like the company that made wing Commander, which I thought was really bizarre.
Kayla: That is bizarre.
Chris: I know EA acquired it and like eventually made it their publishing platform. I really don't understand, actually. Like, I don't know if they like, turned those, the people that they acquired at Origin into developers for a platform or if they just like, rebranded. Like, they just kept the brand, but it's the same. They acquired it and made it. Like, I don't know how, but they did. It's like one of the weird things with this story. Okay, so anyway, Roberts left origin. So he left in 1996, and then he founded his own company called Digital Anvil. A lot of this now is from Wikipedia, by the way, this piece. So he found digital anvil with a bunch of people. He was like a co founder with a lot of people, including his brother Aaron Roberts.
Chris: This fledgling studio set up shop in Austin, Texas and worked pretty quietly for several years. And then finally they got a publishing deal. Well, actually, I guess one year. Sorry, got a publishing deal with Microsoft in 1997. You may have heard of Microsoft.
Kayla: No, I haven't. Please explain.
Chris: Roberts had stated that he desired to produce films as well as games with digital anvil.
Kayla: Okay, that's a bit of a crossover. They're not the same thing?
Chris: No. So in 1999, the feature film release of Wing Commander was directed by Roberts himself. That's one of the ways I thought you might have maybe heard of it, is that they made a movie out of it.
Kayla: No, I have not heard of this.
Chris: And it was starring Freddie Prince Junior.
Kayla: Wait, so it was like a legit thing?
Chris: Oh, it was like a legit movie.
Kayla: Yeah, not that, like, Freddie Prince Junior is the most legit actor of all time, but he's.
Chris: But it was definitely like a legit movie, right? Yeah. And it was featuring visual effects from digital anvil. However, it failed to get either critical or financial success. Like, it was. It was shocking, panned pretty hard, and did pretty poorly.
Kayla: Well, video game movies have a tough. They have a tough road ahead. They don't usually do well.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: So that, you know, makes sense.
Chris: So Digital Angel's first finished game was a game called Star Lancer.
Kayla: That sounds cool.
Chris: Yeah. Generally, Wikipedia says favorable critical reception. That was released in 2000, and the company was later acquired by Microsoft. And then at that point, Roberts left the company. I'm not sure why. Maybe he was cashing out after the acquisition. I don't know. But he basically abandoned the director position of his ambitious next project, which was called Freelancer.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: And this game was actually referred to by one of my interviewees as the roots of Star Citizen. But Roberts remained with the game freelancer in a consulting role for a little while. The game was commonly regarded as vaporware, which. What does that mean if you don't know what vaporware means? It's basically like, unfulfilled promise software. So it's like, we're gonna release this software, and it's gonna be awesome. And everybody's like, okay, I'm excited.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: When's it happening?
Kayla: Right.
Chris: What about now? One of the most famous game examples for that is the sequel to Duke Nukem. That was like, I think it's out now, but it took, like, decades, right? Like, a bunch of unfulfilled promises. But the reason for that is it was. It was commonly regarded as vaporware due to its promise release date of 2001. And then it, you know, didn't hit that. And. But it was eventually released. It was released in 2003 with a markedly different feature set than the initial plans. However, it did get a favorable Metacritic score of 85%. So. Caveat to caveat. After leaving digital, Anvil Roberts founded another company, point of no return entertainment, planning to produce films, television, and games. Notice games is listed third, but no projects actually came out of that company.
Kayla: How does he keep founding companies then?
Chris: So he founded another one called Ascendant Pictures and served as a producer for a number of Hollywood productions. And here's the Edison Timber Falls, Outlander, who's your catty, the Big White, ask the dust and lucky number seven and Lord of War. I've only heard of those last two.
Kayla: Okay. Literally none of those things exist except for the last two.
Chris: That's what I thought. Those are all fake in 2005. And this is all relevant, by the way. Actor Kevin Costner sued ascendant Pictures for breach of contract on an unreleased film.
Kayla: Mmm.
Chris: And that company later got acquired by a company called Bigfoot entertainment.
Kayla: Okay, I've heard of them.
Chris: And that's in 2010. And then in 2011, Roberts founded Cloud Imperium Games. Which brings us back to the top of the story where Cig begins crowdfunding Star Citizen in 2012.
Kayla: I have to say, I have literally no idea how business works. It seems like this gentleman, I don't either, has founded 4000 companies. And you'd think that you would need massive success to be able to just found company after company, or you would have to be Willy McFarlane.
Chris: So he's like Billy McFarland. If Billy McFarlane made one of the most beloved games of all time. So that's the thing. When you say massive success, Wing Commander was a massive success. You know, it was a genre defining game.
Kayla: But should it carry you through this far? Like, I mean, it has so interesting.
Chris: One of my interviewees also described Mister Roberts as a televangelist for gaming because he does interviews and speaks directly to his fans and is basically a top notch vision salesman. So that's kind of answer to your question of, like, how do you keep founding companies and giving people? So he's just really good at selling his vision.
Kayla: My question is, was the phrase televangelist used as a. As a. Like a positive or a negative?
Chris: Yes.
Kayla: Okay, I guess that makes sense.
Chris: But he summarized Robertson this way. Basically, he said, star citizens Kickstarter would not have been a thing without him. He's extremely ambitious, convinced many people to give him money before, and he's shipped a genre defining game.
Kayla: He's Billy McFarlane with a major success.
Chris: With a major success. Right. So anyway, yeah, you have this guy who's basically a legendary game creator who made wing commander, and his new company is selling this huge, ambitious dream of a game to an audience that feels underserved and thirsty for something like it. And oh yeah, all those wing commander fans, right? The ones who played it as kids and teenagers in the early nineties, right? All those computer nerds that were playing a space sim, right? All those computer nerds in 2012 are all grown up with high paying computer nerd jobs.
Kayla: So that's where all this 200 whatever million dollars comes from.
Chris: So when a childhood like, this guy made one of my beloved games from my childhood, is selling a dream that you feel thirsty for in your adulthood, and you have a high paying job as a coder or something, you're gonna spend money on it.
Kayla: It would be like if Steven Spielberg only made Jurassic park, and then ten years later, he was like, hey, crowdfund, my Jurassic park sequel, we would have all given that ten gazillion dollars.
Chris: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Kayla: Okay, I get it. Yep, I get it.
Chris: Yeah. And especially you cross section that with the type of people that were playing wing commander who are now, like, you know, probably working in Silicon Valley.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: You can see where some of this perfect storm for funding kind of came from.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: Speaking of the fanbase, probably time we talked about them for a little bit. So transitioning from Mister Roberts to the fans of his game, since if we are in fact dealing with the cult, they would be the cultists. So we should probably talk about them.
Kayla: The followers.
Chris: The followers. Pardon. Pardon me, citizen nation. So here's the thing, and this is super important, and in fact, it's so important that I almost made, like, theme of this episode around this. But fan bases for everything under the sun can get really weird and culty.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: You know, this is not just a sar. Citizen thing. In fact, I virtually guarantee you, our listeners, that we'll do another episode on a fanbase at some point in the future.
Kayla: Like, oh, I mean, literally every fan.
Chris: It'll definitely happen.
Kayla: Every fan base can veer into that cult. I mean, like, look at sports, look at movies, look at tv, look at fucking Comic Con. Like, comic books, like, everything that has. I mean, we're, like, watching YouTube videos about, like, roller coaster enthusiasts. I'm sure there's some weird behavior in even the most of, like, niche fan bases.
Chris: Exactly. Yeah. So it's not unique to star Citizen. What amps it up and gives it the particular flavor for Star Citizen, though, is the combination of these four things, I think is the massive amount of money pledged to the project, the weird nature of pledges being, like, risking your money on a hope and a dream, not like, buying something.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And then we've only sort of hit on this with sort of, like, some of Chris Roberts history and whatnot. But the fact that. And maybe you might have been able to tease this out just by looking at the dates like it's 2019, and we're talking about the crowdfunding getting started in 2012.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: But number three is the fact that despite having more money than most Hollywood blockbusters, a somewhat playable game took years longer than the backers were told in the original crowdfunding pitch.
Kayla: How long were they told?
Chris: I believe they were told 2014 for the two years.
Kayla: And there's no. And there's no full game yet?
Chris: No, there's no full game yet. Not even close. And then add number four to that. The crazy scope and scale of the game.
Kayla: The scope of this game sounds like what was promised in the Fyre festival situation, kind of. Yeah, it sounds like, oh, and there's gonna be a private jet for everyone and a private villa for everyone. For everyone.
Chris: And a private chef for everyone serving dinosaurs.
Kayla: And it's gonna simultaneously be a, like, a festival experience while also being a tropical vacation and also, like, a marketing.
Chris: Thing and also a cultural defining something.
Kayla: Something like, it's literally everything to the point where you're like, this doesn't seem possible, but the fact that you're promising it to me so vehemently makes me believe. Believe that it's possible.
Chris: Yeah. So that's the thing that kind of, like, makes this different than, like, your normal, sort of, like. And every fan base has something different that makes it unique. That's what it is for starsys. And is this. This crazy amount of money being thrown around the scope and the scale and all the delays? So. So, yeah. So that gives you this fan base that, I mean. Well, I do want to mention, by the way, that, like, other fan bases, like, most of it is just normal, everyday folks that are interested in the game.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: I is just, like, regular fans, just like, you and I are, like, regular fans of marvel stuff. But then there's some people that get really crazy about it. Like, that's just, like, with everything. Like, star citizens like that, too. But of course, they don't make the noise or the headlines.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: The people I interviewed.
Kayla: Fans versus super fans.
Chris: Exactly. The people I interviewed were pretty much normal fans.
Kayla: That's kind of a bummer.
Chris: I know. I know. I don't have any, like, totally psychotic friends, or at least not in that way.
Kayla: We got to make some.
Chris: I know. Well, most of my friends are psychotic in different ways, so. But, yeah, so you have this smaller group, though, that has this, you know, that's, like, you say, super fans, and they have this, like, weird schizophrenia of, like, skeptics. So, like, those are the people, basically, who think it'll never happen, right. And they're driven by feelings of disillusionment and betrayal and then what the community calls white knights, who are basically the true believers. And it feels to me like, a little bit like both sides can act a little strange. The skeptics less so because they have a pretty good reason to be skeptical at this point because it's been so long and the promises have been. So the differential between expectation of promises and what's been delivered has been so large.
Chris: So they kind of have a good point, but then they also get pretty upset. But the true believers from my research are what really drive the narrative that outsiders see as a cult. So, like, when you know, so there's been, like, there's been, like, a Forbes article and, like, a seriously Reddit post say that. Be like, there's. I think the title of the Forbes article was like, star Citizen may not be a scam, but it feels like a cult. And so that's what drives that is these sort of, like, true believers that basically react to, you know, people generating questions about the game, people being skeptical about parts of it and saying, like, well, like, are we gonna see this feature anytime soon? You know, like, anybody that sort of, like, generates any sort of question about the game.
Chris: These true believers basically come in, can come in and be, like, really aggressive and harass and, like, not tolerate any criticism of their beliefs and their leader, and you're just trying to attack Chris Roberts, and he's like, you know, has this vision and blah, blah.
Kayla: Like Billy McFarlane. Ja rule.
Chris: Right. Yeah. It's that we just watched the firefighters talk in case that wasn't clear to us. But that's what makes reporters and outsiders and people looking in at this say, is this a cult? These guys are not tolerating any dissent. And you're either with us or you're against us, and it's very insider. Outsider.
Kayla: Right, right. That's very dogmatic about dissent, especially because it's about something weird. It's about a video game, not like a belief system. System.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: That's kind of what feels like almost more culty than if it were like, a religion or a belief system. Like, this is about a video game, dude.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: Not that video games are unimportant or not something to be passionate about, but it's just interesting to see people get so dogmatic about entertainment.
Chris: Right. But you can see why it happens, though.
Kayla: Absolutely.
Chris: Because. Which brings us back to the money versus expectation things, right? It's not just a video game for a lot of these guys. A lot of these guys have given their pound of flesh, some of them, to the tune of several thousand dollars. I mean, there's people that I know. There's people that have donated, like, $30,000. There's some crazy backers.
Kayla: That's just like, fyre fest.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Okay. That's the last time I'll talk about Fyre Fest.
Chris: This is actually an episode about Fyre Fest, not Star Citizen.
Kayla: Well, we're just trying to kill two birds with 1 st.
Chris: Right. But, yeah, so those people have donated a lot of money, and it's not only, like, a sunk cost thing. So, like, I mean, that's obvious, right? Like, I have the sunk cost, so, like, I'm super motivated to, like, defend it and, you know, sit here and talk about how I want it to be real. But it's not just that. It's also that, like, there's this sense of desperation a little bit, that if it doesn't work, they'll never see their dream realized because they've seen things like no man's sky, and they know that there's not anybody else working on a game like Star Citizen. And I, you know, like, this. This is it, right?
Kayla: So, like, so sad.
Chris: If. If we don't make this happen, then, like, I'm not gonna get to play a game like this. Like, it's done like that. That market's over.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Which it is legit. That is sad. And then on top of that, and you add in these folks who are in for so much money, they've gotten some really nice in game rewards.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: So they've gotten, like, these, like, awesome ships for donating. So, like, the more it's gonna be real, the more they're gonna get their reward. And then finally they get a lot of community and social status out of it. Right? So, like, as a part of this community who's, like, backed it for a lot and has these awesome ships and is, like, a prominent Star citizen in the game, if it goes away, maybe they're, like, not that important in the real world.
Kayla: So, like, stop making this sad.
Chris: Well, I'm just saying, like, that motivates you to be a true believer, right? That's what generates the stuff. So it's, like, very understandable, actually. So, like, yes, it's just a video game, but it's actually so much more.
Kayla: That's a beautiful sentiment.
Chris: It's so much more. Buy Star Citizen. Now I'm being paid. But yeah, so people really get into this game, even the sort of like, quote unquote normal fans. It generates a lot of interest from people. Like, there's a whole Reddit community dedicated to making videos of what they hope the gameplay play will be.
Kayla: Like, I'm interested in this. Like, I kind of want to go.
Chris: Like, dude, I almost got, like, we'll get into it. Like, it was tempting. People on Reddit will debate what the gameplay systems will look like. And of course cig stirs the pot by dropping ideas and stuff into the subreddits and having community managers that interact with fans directly.
Kayla: I don't know how I feel about that.
Chris: We'll talk about their community management. It is best in class. So we've talked about Mister Roberts, we've talked about the fans now and some of their motivations. What about the game itself, the game.
Kayla: That doesn't exist but also you can play it but also doesn't exist?
Chris: Well, here's the thing. We've talked about the features and how many there are, and I did mention that it wasn't released yet. And I also mentioned that I've played it and you've been asking about that all episode.
Kayla: I don't understand.
Chris: So let me explain, please. So there is a playable version of the game that is out there.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: Star Citizen has released their features very piecemeal and what they call modules, which is sort of like another inside baseball term. It's what they call, like bits of the game, essentially. Okay, so they've released that piecemeal, the very first module they released, which was, oh, man, I had the year for this, but I forget when it was. I want to say 2013 ish or 2014, but it was literally just walking around in a hangar in like a ship hangar.
Kayla: Okay?
Chris: Just looking at cool starships. That was it.
Kayla: That doesn't sound like a lot of fun.
Chris: That was the first module. Walking around a hangar, that doesn't sound like fun.
Kayla: That doesn't sound like a game.
Chris: It wasn't a game promised. It wasn't a game. It wasn't what was promised, but it also wasn't. It was both not what was promised and also not what they promised. Like, they didn't say like, and this is the game. It was like, this is module one. We're still working on it. It's like making games is hard. So, well, I mean, there's an element of that which I don't go into too much, but like, you know, I read an interview that Chris Roberts did and basically was like, look, you know, there's delays in games, and games cost a lot of money. But the flip side of that is that if you release a game that's, like, missing stuff or has bugs or has a bad player experience or looks terrible, then, like, I. Then you get, you know, rightfully called out for that.
Chris: So, you know, so you want to try to get games to market and, like, you know, get people what they pay for, but, like, you also have to, like, protect your quality. And with the ambition of a game like Star Citizen, it's, like, the only way that you can actually really do that is to, like, have delays. Right?
Kayla: See, this is where they. This is where they did a better job than the Fyre fest, guys. This is why they're never gonna get found out is because you can just kind of keep, like, putting it off and putting it.
Chris: Off because fire fest had a date.
Kayla: Had a date, and it had, like, a physical location that people were going to.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: Sorry. I said I would not bring firefests.
Chris: Oh, man. I was just gonna make fun of you for that.
Kayla: But I can't.
Chris: You can't not talk about it.
Kayla: I can't not talk about it. And it's because this is so similar. This is so similar in the, like.
Chris: In the, like, selling a dream. Selling of the dream.
Kayla: Like, this charismatic dude that, you know, has a lot of, you know, business acumen but also has a lot of failure. And it's just the fact that, you know, Fyre fest had a lot of people being like, I don't know, like, people even who are going there. I don't know. Maybe this is gonna be nothing. And then also people being like, I sold all of my furniture so that I could afford a ticket, like, $30,000 ticket to go to this thing. This has to be great. Like, it just. There's a lot of similarities, and I think that. That obviously, it's not. It's not just Fyre fest. It's not just star citizen. There's a. This happens all the time. It feels like in one way or another, we can be sold a dream very easily.
Chris: Well, I think it's just kind of like human nature to a certain degree, that we're the only species that can imagine something and then bring it into reality. And I think that at the scale that we're doing that now, we're not just making a stone axe. We're making these giant, complex systems that have just a tremendous amount of execution, effort, and risk and all that stuff. So, like, I think that's why you see stuff like that is because like the only way to like birth a vision into the world like that is to have these, like you almost have to be a true believer.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: At a certain point.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: But yeah, so we were talking about modules. So, so the first one was just walking around a hangar and then they released like a very basic space flight sim combat module. So like you could, then you could fly around and fight with other people. At the time of this recording, they are in alpha, I believe, which backers and I think anyone, but I'm not sure can go play. And it is a persistent world. So they do have like their actual persistent world consists of one star system so far, but there's a couple catches. The first catch is pretty big. It's missing a ton of content. So it's missing like all of the other star systems they want to have. It's missing a lot of characters and quests, professions, cities. There's bugs. There's just missing a ton of stuff.
Chris: It's just like a playable slice, but they're missing a lot for what they want to do. And then the other big catch is that this persistent world server is going to be reset at some point before the game officially launches. It really is just in test mode.
Kayla: What does that mean? That means that everything that you do in this game is not going to carry through.
Chris: Won't carry through.
Kayla: So you're not actually playing the game.
Chris: I mean, you are, but it's not, you're not for a game where it's like you have to spend a lot of effort to eventually earn a really cool starship and then fly it around and do stuff with it for a game that's based on that and that's gonna go away. Like, you are technically playing it, but you're not like progressing or doing anything that. Yeah, so that's why I say it really is just in test mode and you know, and it's test mode. It is kind of just a big pile of unfulfilled promises so far and it's supported only by a community of self deluded weirdos on the Internet. Right.
Kayla: Don't insult them.
Chris: Well, if that's what you're thinking, and that's kind of what I was thinking when I went to finally go in and play this game and see it twist time, I could not have been more surprised.
Kayla: Is it really fucking cool?
Chris: So I think I talked about this a little bit before. Remember when I talked about their plans for having like, you know, you're walking around a space station, and you're first person shooter, and you look at your gear, and then you actually physically walk out to your spaceship. Physically go into it. Physically. I saw that happen, really? And actually, as before, and, like, walking around the space station, I mean, just fully immersion detail. Like, it really did look like just. It could have been, like, a space station from Star wars, and there were other people walking around. When he got out to the platform where his starship was like, this is your friend? This is my interviewee. Pardon me. I mean, I guess he's also my friend, but it's a legit source.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: So we. So he showed me, like, he, like, put on his jetpack and, like, flew around the platform a little bit.
Kayla: What?
Chris: And then he, like, went back, and he, like, flew on top of his ship. He's like, here's my ship. And then, like, he gets into the ship, and he's like, here's the ship. I'm gonna show you around. He, like, walks around it, because it's like, the bout this, like, think of it like the millennium Falcon, right? It's about that size, right? And then he's like, okay, I'm gonna go sit in the cockpit now. And then, like, the cockpit has, like, three seats that, like, two other players, if they wanted, could sit there. And because the ship has so many, like, onboard systems to manage, it's actually beneficial. So you can fly it as one person, and you can, like, fly it around and, you know, fire basic lasers.
Chris: But if you have somebody else sitting in the side, you know, the copilot seat, they can, like, manage the shields. And if you have somebody in the other one, they can, like, you know, fire the other gun in the back, because you can't multitask.
Kayla: Good God.
Chris: And there are two gun pods just like the millennium Falcon halfway back, the ship that two other players could, like, sit in and, like, fire those guns while you were in a space battle.
Kayla: So this game wants you to foster, like, a sense of community. It wants you to have friends that fight with you.
Chris: Yeah. Oh, totally.
Kayla: That's fucking cool.
Chris: Yeah, no, it's like the game. Yeah, it was crazy, and I'm not even done yet. So he got in the ship, showed me that. Then he's like, all right, we're gonna go to this planet. And then he went into this hyperspace thing, and he's like, okay, yeah, the ship's in hyperspace now, so we can get up and walk around and, like, show you some more stuff that's, like, autopilot. The ship was just in hyperspace. You could look outside and see the stars flying by or whatever. And he was, like, walking around, and she's like, here's the engine room, and, oh, here's the cargo bay. I wanted to get a ship that had, like, a big cargo bay because I wanted to be able to, like, you know, carry a lot of loot around and stuff. And I was like, oh, my God.
Chris: And so then he goes back, and he's like, oh, I think we're almost there. So he, like, goes back to the cockpit, and then, like, we arrive at the planet, and then, like, the planet's on the screen, and he's like, okay, now I got to find this. I really want to show you the city. And he finds the city, and he, like, has to fly around the planet to find it. And then. And again, there's no load screens at any point. Not a single load screen.
Kayla: I just want to make it clear for our non gaming listeners.
Chris: Oh, yes.
Kayla: That's insane.
Chris: Yeah. So loads a load screen is.
Kayla: It's like a trip when you transition from one mode of gameplay into another, from one area into another. And usually you need a that because the game needs to load this new.
Chris: Load the next thing. Think of it as. I'll give a really crazy example. LEt's say you played a game called MaRIo, then tetris, and so you played a level of MARIo bros. And then you played a level of tetris. So in between that, you would have to have a load screen to load up the tetris game. Well, this is alMost. That is basically that crazy, right? You are playing two totally different games. You're playing this first person shooter. This is just a human walking around in a suit and guns, right? And then you're playing a totally different game, which is flying starships, but there's no load screen in between those two games. They seamlessly transition based on realism.
Kayla: You know what it's like? You know what that, LiKe, the difference between the world. It's LIKE real life, this game, not having load screens. And, like, most games, having load screens.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: It's like how crazy it was when you had Titanic on VHS, and then you got Titanic on DVD, because Titanic on VHS, it was two tapes. You had to switch. You had to put one in, and then you had to finish the last half hour on the other one. But then Titanic on dvd was like, we got the whole movie, baby. You don't got to have no load screen. You don't got to switch nothing out.
Chris: That's the best analogy I think I've ever heard.
Kayla: I mean, I'm really good at analogies. And Titanic just kind of covers the, you know, covers all the bases, right?
Chris: So he flies around this planet, and. And there's no load screen here either. He flies, like, into the atmosphere, and, like, you can see the, like, the atmosphere is, like, heating up the front of his ship. It's like, there's, like, this whole, like, yeah, and then he flies through the clouds all the way down close to the surface. He's like, oh, there's this I have to look for. Oh, there's the city over there. Flies to the city, and then there's the city there. And then he has to land in the spaceport at the city and then physically get out of his ship, physically go through customs, physically get onto a tram, like a subway tram that takes him to the downtown of the city. And he's like, yeah, there's some shops here, and I think they're gonna put player housing here.
Chris: And there's, like, some quests and there's, like, all kinds. They're trying to make it look like a real city. And I was, like, sitting there just, like, with my mouth agape, like I am right now. Like you are right now. And I was just like, he showed me that, and I was just like, oh, my God. This game that is, like, I've heard and read is, like, an unreleased game. And it's missing, like, 80% of its feature set, which it is, right, because the feature set is so ambitious, but it's still, like, one of the most impressive pieces of video game content I've ever seen.
Kayla: Okay, how do I. Okay, I wanna play it. Can you help me play this?
Chris: We definitely can. I have some footage I can show you. But the. And the guy that was showing me this, like, it was interesting because he told me, like, he was a major skeptic too, for a while. Because, like I said, like, at first it was like, you can walk around a hangar. That's it.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: But he says the things that he's seen with this game now and the tech that they're building for it says that he's been converted.
Kayla: That sounds like flat earther to me.
Chris: It does.
Kayla: I was a skeptic, but it was.
Chris: All in good fun. So the thing is with, with people that are not jobs, that are fans of it, because both people I talked to sort of had this. It's like, yeah, the community knows that there's this stigma attached to it of, like, oh, my God, we're all crazy, and we're all paying for stuff that we don't have. I think for the majority of people, they know it, and they're like, I'm paying for the hope I'm paying to hopefully bring this thing into existence because I want it to exist. I might as well.
Kayla: I mean, it's literally, that's just capitalism. Like, it's literally, like, I was talking about earlier today where I was like, we have all this tea that we never drank, and it's just because it was fun to buy it, thinking like, oh, I'm gonna drink this tea and get the benefits of this tea and, like, be all cozy. Like, you don't actually have to have the actual event in order to get the enjoyment from the purchase.
Chris: Right. So it was. Yeah, so even though he used the word converted, like, they know the deal. It was all in good fun. Like, he's not a totally crazy devotee person. Person. Like, he was just kind of, like, he. I think he just liked to embrace the, you know, the stigma a little bit because it's. It's interesting and funny. So, yeah, so it was just incredibly impressive, and it made me ask this question, like, of my friend. I said, what do you even do in this game? Was actually the question you asked me earlier. Right.
Kayla: What's the game?
Chris: What is the game? Like? It's so huge. It just kind of feels like second life in space. You could do anything. Right? Like, literally, I was so enthralled. And all he did was, like, travel.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: That's all he did.
Kayla: That's not a game, necessarily.
Chris: Yeah. And. Well, and his answer was. Was. Was very interesting. He said, they want this game to be as much of your life as you want it to be. And backers hope that it's their one game that they play for the rest of their lives. Okay, that's a little one or primary.
Kayla: That's a little creepy. Like, I'm a little creeped out by that.
Chris: Like you should be.
Kayla: I don't want.
Chris: I was creeped out by it, too.
Kayla: I don't want anything I buy. I don't want the company to be like, this is the only one. We are the only one.
Chris: Well, those are. The backers say that. Like, he says that. They're frequently. Backers will say, like, I want this to be, like, my game, man. Like, this is the game.
Kayla: Okay. Okay.
Chris: The company is the one, I think he says that. The company says they want this to be as much of your life as you want it to be.
Kayla: That's still a little creepy to even have a company say that. I don't know. It's just a little creepy.
Chris: It's possible they didn't say that. I'm just going off the interview here. I think that's. I probably should have, like, double checked on it.
Kayla: Well, it's just. It's creepy that sentiment is part of the community.
Chris: Sure. Yeah. Let's call it part of the community, and maybe the company supports it, but honestly, it's not even limited to this game. If you think about it like, other games, like, we talked about, World of Warcraft, they ask similar amounts of engagement from their players. Right? World of Warcraft says, like, oh, yeah, you gotta play this game for, like, you know, a good chunk of your day if you want to be good at it.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: So, you know, like, that's. I don't think that's good. But it's not limited to Star Citizen.
Kayla: Right? It's not. That's not the only game that has that mentality or has that byproduct.
Chris: Would you like to take a look at some game footage?
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: So I brought it up here on YouTube. So here's them just, like, walking around a station. So just for our listeners.
Kayla: That's gorgeous.
Chris: So, yeah, this is. Or maybe this is the city. No, sorry. This is the city that they're in.
Kayla: It's fucking beautiful.
Chris: This is daytime in the Blade Runner city.
Kayla: This is not what I was expecting.
Chris: I know, right? Like, this is when this looks real, right? When you think, like, the game's not real. You don't think this, like, this looks like AAAA game. Yeah, it is. So let me see if I can get you some of the, like, it's not. So this is them, and they're, like, character. Loadout screen. So they're, like, looking at, like, their armor. And this is the ship that they have. The ship that I saw was much bigger than this.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: But this is just, like. See how they're just getting into the ship?
Kayla: Oh, my God. There's no load screen. Oh, my God.
Chris: They're just getting into the cockpit.
Kayla: Holy shit. Holy fuck.
Chris: And now they're about to take off. And you can go to an external camera, but you see how it's. Yeah, and now here's the actual. So here's the. So this whole screen here is functional. This dashboard that you're seeing that has, like, all of these, like, buttons and all of these graphs. All of these graphs are actually reporting things about this ship.
Kayla: No.
Chris: Like, this level of shields or its energy or, you know, whatever. And, like, over here is, like, the ship's shields, so I don't know how long it takes her to lift off here.
Kayla: This is insane.
Chris: Let me try to zip a little bit. Okay, so now the. So now the hanger. Yeah. The pod baby doors are opening. Hell. And I think she's about to take off here. Hopefully we don't cut out.
Kayla: Whatever. It doesn't need to be real time. Oh, my God.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. So you can go to a third person camera when you're on the ship.
Kayla: I have never seen a game do something like that.
Chris: No.
Kayla: Even a little. Even a little game.
Chris: Yeah, I. Yeah, I haven't either. And again, all totally seamless. There's no.
Kayla: Christ.
Chris: Yeah. And then you can.
Kayla: This is what people who. Watching the Titanic DVD, this is what they felt like.
Chris: I'm sure they did. And then you can fly this thing. You know, we won't bore our listeners with, like, a whole, you know, 40 minutes video, but you can fly this ship that she's flying. Like, you can fly it out into space. If it has, like, the warp drive thing. You can fly it to other systems. You can land on a starbase. It's totally out of control.
Kayla: I think.
Chris: I think I see all these buildings.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: That's not, like, Skybox or background. Like, there's people down there, like, doing things.
Kayla: I think I'm a convert. I think I'm part of Citizen.
Chris: I think you became part of the cult. I think I did, too. I don't know.
Kayla: I want to play this game. Let's give it money.
Chris: I know, right?
Kayla: I want to play that game.
Chris: That was the. That was the turn, man. Like, like, I was, like, all ready to be like, man, this is nuts. And then he showed me the game, and I was like, what the fuck?
Kayla: That's not Billy McFarlane. No, that's real. That's if even a quarter of Fyre fest happened.
Chris: So before we conclude, I want to talk a little bit, though, about Cig's community management and business practices.
Kayla: Ooh, you did say that.
Chris: Yeah. I think that aside from the bonkers gameplay itself, this is actually where their true genius lies.
Kayla: Interesting.
Chris: So I mentioned this earlier. CIg realized early on that they had a massively engaged community.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And don't forget, this is the community they had and was giving them a shit ton of money before the thing I just showed you existed.
Kayla: Right. When it was just a concept art dream.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. And they've leveraged that really well. And a big part of that leveraging strategy for them is that they are probably the most transparent game dev studio out there by an order of magnitude from what I've seen. Like, incredibly transparent.
Kayla: That is not what I would expect.
Chris: I know. One of the craziest things I've seen. But it's a little bit of a double edged sword, though, right? Because if you're transparent, then you give people more to work with to be like, hey, what the hell? Right? So one of the craziest things I've seen that they do is they expose their whole roadmap on their website. And a product roadmap, for those of you that don't know, is typically, like, an internal company planning tool. Like, nobody would ever see that outside.
Kayla: Of a company, right? Like, I don't even know what that is.
Chris: And then on top of it, basically, it says, like, it's just like, a really high level, like, calendar of, like, we're gonna do this general big thing here and then this general big thing there. But they go way more detailed than that. They actually have product milestones, and their project management software actually is hooked up and exposed on their website. So they use Jira, which a lot of software companies use. And it's basically like a task management system.
Kayla: So, like, to hear that is, like, as insane as watching.
Chris: I know that's what I said, dude. When I was shown that, I was like, are you kidding me? It's, like, literally their internal task management system that they use for, like, day to day. Like, all right, what's the next thing I have to build? Okay, I'm gonna record that. And the status on that is active or complete or, you know, transferred down the line to, you know, to Bob from, you know, graphics to add the graphics. Like, think about all of that is exposed on their website to the public.
Kayla: Like, think about the fact that, like, we have companies that are so opaque that they have to, like, be questioned in front of Congress just to get, like, some info, and then to have that, the complete polar opposite. That's crazy.
Chris: It's bonkers. Yeah. So they also have a weekly YouTube show where they talk about the development of the game, which, funny story, this show became big by itself. Everything that's a game, I guess, just becomes big and huge that they wound up selling subscriptions to fund production of their weekly show, Jesus Christ. Which, think about the implication of that. They are charging fans to build not just the game now, but engagement with the game.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: That's, like, unprecedented. February 2019.
Kayla: Is that insidious or is that genius?
Chris: Both, I guess. I don't know. And they're very careful to call their fans backers and not players. They're very careful with their language because they want them to feel like they have skin in the game. Right at the end of every one of those shows, those weekly shows, they say, we couldn't have done it without you.
Kayla: This is getting a little creepy again.
Chris: I know, right? It's like it keeps going back and forth. That's what. That's the same feeling I had doing this research.
Kayla: This is like watching making a murderer. Ping ponging.
Chris: Did he do it?
Kayla: Did he not?
Chris: They have a community forum on their website they called Spectrum, which is like its own big, huge feature. You can access it from the web and also from in game. So when you're in the game, you can like go to the community forum and like make a post. And that's the same posts that people see on the web.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: It's not separated. There's a discord channel. There are.
Kayla: I'm getting on the Discord channel now.
Chris: Freak. I went to it. It was pretty dead when I went there. Well, no, that's not true. The channel I went to was like. It was pretty dead. But I could see that there was a lot of activity on there. And again, for listeners, discord is like, yeah, it's just like a chat room. It's just very popular with gamers. They also have regular and frequent real life meetup groups called Bar Citizen.
Kayla: Can we go?
Chris: I wanted to go to one of them and I ran out of time.
Kayla: We can still go.
Chris: I also didn't want to be like a lurker. We totally can. Like, they happen all the time. And in fact, there's a whole like, website that's just bar citizen and it's like high production value and I shit you nothing. This game that's been in development for six years but is technically unreleased has a conference called Citizen Con.
Kayla: We're going. Where is it? We're going.
Chris: I think it's at a different place every year.
Kayla: I don't care. We're going wherever it is. That's the most amazing thing I've ever heard.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: How do I work for this company?
Chris: I don't know. I don't even know how I would work for the company. And I'm in the industry. No, I think they have saw. They have. They have some job postings, but. Yeah. So let's just say they place a big emphasis on community engagement to say the least.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: And honestly, I would say that their community gate, community engagement is like almost as ambitious as their game yeah, that.
Kayla: Sounds like a lot.
Chris: But they do all this for a very good reason, which it's like, look, community engagement is, I'm not like suggesting that they're like, you know the devil.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: You know, you do it for good reasons for like staying close to your customers and players and, you know, just generally being a good game developer. I think all of those are good reasons to do it, but it also helps the bottom line.
Kayla: Sure.
Chris: So remember when I said most, and by most, the vast majority of the crowdfunding happened directly with the company and not on Kickstarter?
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: And that the main mechanism for that is selling in game chips. Yes, let's talk about that.
Kayla: Oh, I'm scared of.
Chris: So you said, oh, can I go onto their site and donate?
Kayla: Right?
Chris: You can. What you do is you go buy.
Kayla: A ship, but you don't necessarily get the ship.
Chris: And they're really beautiful. Like you can go on their site and maybe I'll show you here in a second. And they have like these 3d renderings of them that you can rotate around and zoom in and out and then you can make like a wireframe of it. You can say, look at only the wireframe. So you're just seeing like the cool, sort of like bones of the ship. It's just really beautiful. And you look at it's like, oh, cool. But they're usually introduced just as the.
Kayla: Art, so you don't actually get a.
Chris: Ship and you can buy them at this concept point. So you're basically buying what will probably be released into the game as a ship.
Kayla: So you don't actually get the ship. You can, you get a picture of.
Chris: The ship, but generally if you're buying a ship that's like been out for a while and it's like final or been in development for a while, then you can get the ship in game. But it's really hit and miss, from what I can tell, which ships are actually released in game or not yet.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And don't forget, the game's not technically released. So even all these ships, you'll still get these ships when the game goes live. And in theory, if and when the game goes live. But right now people are literally spending hundreds of dollars and it's like, okay, we're probably going to do this ship. I mean, they don't say probably, they say we're gonna like, here's, it's just in development yet. But like, you're paying for ship art.
Kayla: I mean, people pay for other kinds of art.
Chris: Yeah, I guess. Totally. I mean, like I said, the ships are beautiful and the 3d art is great.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: It gets better, though. So remember how I said that this game wants to be a little bit like Eve online, where there's like, this dynamic economy and, you know, you can spend a lot of money to. Because you can't just. It's not just that you buy the ships. You can also earn them in game because you. You're really good at the game, and you've done awesome quests and beaten the bad aliens and mined all the planets, and now you have so much money, you can buy a badass ship. Okay, but that ship can be destroyed.
Kayla: Damn right.
Chris: Well, we talked about that.
Kayla: It's real world dollar, but it's real world. I don't think I put that together.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: So it's like you really pay for something and then it can go away.
Chris: Yes. So, so that's a big part of the game, though, is that it's like that, you know, it gives a sense of meaningfulness and the risk generates a sense of thrill. I mean, that's literally what drives the entire game of Eve online.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: But for ships that you buy with real money, and this was introduced early in the crowdfunding campaign when they started selling ships, even before you could walk around the hangar and look at them, they introduced something called insurance. And for early backers that were buying early ships. So you can buy insurance, I believe you can buy it in game. Like, if you want to insure your ship, it's like, hella expensive, but you can buy it.
Kayla: So, like, you can't get destroyed or you get money.
Chris: Well, it means if it gets destroyed, you get a copy of the ship back, basically.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: But they, if you are an early crowd funder buying one of those early ships, you get what's called lifetime insurance. LTI is what they call it. So there's another vocab word that they use, LTI. So lifetime insurance, as you can imagine, for someone that's really invested in this game and really interested in it or excited about it's pretty valuable, right? Like, it means that your ship isn't at risk. You can, I don't know, like, you can be reckless with it or it's not, you know, bad. Like, you can go to a dangerous planet. I don't know, like, it's not bad if it gets destroyed.
Kayla: Right? Right.
Chris: Lifetime insurance.
Kayla: Lifetime insurance.
Chris: And they still sell those. They still sell ships that have lifetime insurance. So, like, some of the ships you can buy now on their site have lifetime insurance. A lot of them though, don't a lot of them now will have what's called, like six month insurance.
Kayla: Oh, wow.
Chris: So, like, it's insured for six months, and after that it can get destroyed just like any other ship.
Kayla: Gotcha. Okay.
Chris: But there's something cool you can do or, well, cool from a business perspective, I guess, for CGI CIG, excuse me, is there's something called the upgrade system. Okay, so you can upgrade your ship, any ship you have. It doesn't matter what class it is or what manufacturer or whatever, you can upgrade any less expensive ship into a more expensive ship by paying the difference. So let's say you have a $40 fighter, and then they release a ship that's like $300 capital ship, and you're like, holy shit, I want that. It's so amazing, right? So you can pay $260 to upgrade, and basically you lose the fighter that you had, and now you get this capital ship instead.
Kayla: That's a pretty cool system.
Chris: But here's the trick, is that if the fighter had lifetime insurance on it, now the capital ship does too, even if you couldn't buy that ship with lifetime insurance anymore, because that's. It's kind of going, like, away. Because like, if they sell everything with lifetime insurance, then, like, that defeats the whole purpose of. Well, no, it defeats the purpose of the in game economy. Right, sure. Then there's nobody's ships are at risk, and then you just defeat that. Who cares? Right, right. So that's kind of going away. But if you upgrade to, you can upgrade a dinkier ship that had it to, like, a badass ship. That or a big ship. I shouldn't say they're all badass, whatever. But like, a bigger ship, it's a more expensive ship than I have.
Kayla: Okay, okay.
Chris: And the really cool thing about that from a business perspective is that if you think about insurance policies, like, you don't pay separate for the insurance policy. It just comes with the ship, right. But like, an actual insurance policy changes in value depending on the thing that it's protecting, right. So the insurance policy for a bigger ship is more valuable.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: So if you're a player, you're sitting there going, I have this insurance on this little tiny ship. I could totally have insurance on this $300 ship though, right? I better spend that $260 to upgrade.
Kayla: Oh, man.
Chris: So it's like super motivating, even though all of this, like, insurance risk system is just like built into the game.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: Isn't that crazy?
Kayla: That's fascinating. Fascinating.
Chris: So if you're wondering how they keep raising so much money, that's how. And if you're thinking this definitely sounds like sales and not fundraising, then, yeah, it sounds like that to me too. And it's actually a little fucked up.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Because if you go to the e commerce section of their site and, like, it has a cart and all the normal trappings of a storefront, but they keep using, like, the pledge terminology everywhere. So, like, you're not buying the ship, pledging, and then getting the ship. And that's what lets them get away with basically selling you a picture of starship.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: It was funny. The URL for your, like, your cart. You know, you're actually like, your checkout cart is robertspaceindustries.com pledge slash cart. So it's like, is it a cart or is it a pledge? Am I buying something? Am I at the grocery store? Am I donating? I don't get it.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: So it's like they're very careful about this terminology to make sure you still just donating. You're STILL baCker. You're not buying anything.
Kayla: It's creepy.
Chris: Which is what lets them get away with like, hey, you know, it's okay. It's not released yet. Cause we're working on it. You just pledged. It's a little weird.
Kayla: DAMN.
Chris: So I had, like, this whole section here for interesting stories. Cause there's like, so many other things that I'm leaving out about, like fans and industry folks and reporters talking about the game.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: I was gonna read you these posts where there's these redditors listing reasons why Star Citizen is a cult, which would have been perfect for this podcast. But, like, we've already kind of gone through most of them.
Kayla: Sure.
Chris: I definitely recommend going and checking it out on your own.
Kayla: Link a lot of this stuff in the show notes. Like, we have to.
Chris: Oh, yeah, we do.
Kayla: We have to.
Chris: It's awesome.
Kayla: Or we'll do a sequel.
Chris: But. Yeah, but we're going super long, so I'll leave those out. But I do want to include this one quote I read because I just thought it was funny. So there's this Greek proverb that goes, a society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
Kayla: Right, I've Heard that.
Chris: Yeah, MOst people have heard that. And then there's like a post by this redditor on the Sars, citizen subreddit. They goes, a game goes great when old MEn buy ships and who seats they know they shall never sit. Ancient star citizen proverb I just thought that was kind of funny. And then ThEre was like, it's kind of funny.
Kayla: And it's also like, are there people who really feel that?
Chris: Well, there are, because this thread was like, had a lot of replies on it. And like, some people were like, haha, good post opie, right? And then some of them were like, oh, man, yeah, that's true. Holy Crap. Like, some of them were like, oh yeah, like, I'm married now. And like, you know, my wIfe's pregnant. And like, when this game came out, like, were just dating, like, maybe I am just gonna give these ships to my kids and they're gonna be able to play, like, some of them were, like, thinking that it was nuts. So that's Star Citizen. So I want to go back all the way to the beginning of this episode, okay, where we talked about Pascal's dilemma and what if heaven were real? What if xenu were real? What if flat earth was real?
Kayla: Right?
Chris: As crazy as Star Citizen is, between the funding and the charismatic leader and the delays and perceived false promises, actual false promises, that portion of the fan base that gets obsessed and insane and true believer. But what if the religion winds up being true? I mean, you saw the footage, right? You heard me talk about it.
Kayla: Well, the thing is here is that there's not a really a negative aspect to not be leaving in Star Citizen until it exists, right?
Chris: Well, that's the thing, right?
Kayla: Hell right here.
Chris: Well, there's no hell. But for some of these people, it's like, I don't know, like, I might as well donate, right? Pascal's dilemma. Like, if I. If God doesn't exist, then no harm, no foul. But if he does, then I get this amazing game. So that's kind of what they're think. What they're thinking. But it's not just that, right? Because it's not just like, what if the mythology was real and Olympus existed and you could go to it, right? It's what if Olympus almost exists and you had the power to bring it into existence if you just gave it a bit more money?
Kayla: I have a question.
Chris: Yes?
Kayla: Is Star citizen Rocko's basilisk?
Chris: Oh, man, you're gonna piss some people off by talking about it publicly.
Kayla: Sorry. I can cut that out, whatever.
Chris: But it's more that it's, I think, not relevant to the whole. This. This line of reasoning.
Kayla: But it is, though.
Chris: With what? With, oh, bringing it into existence, I guess. Yeah.
Kayla: People are bringing this thing into existence. Like this thing doesn't exist without the people trying to bring you into existence.
Chris: Right, right. Well, that's the thing about selling a dream. Right. But, yeah, like, it's not like some.
Kayla: Dude just made a game. It's like these people have to believe in this game in order for it to get made.
Chris: Right. And it's not just you could bring it into existence if you gave it a bit more money. It's also like, what if you felt desperate? Like you've been hopeful before and you've been promised other olympuses like no man's sky, and they've only disappointed you. So Olympus may never exist via somebody else's efforts in the future if this one fails.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: What if your God died? If you didn't feed him?
Kayla: That got really dark.
Chris: Well, does any of this make it more like a cult or less like a cult? What do you think? Both?
Kayla: I think it's kind of both.
Chris: Yeah. So that brings us to that point in the episode when we must answer the question. Shall I bring out the criteria?
Kayla: Yeah, but what's the question?
Chris: Well, the question is it a cult or just weird?
Kayla: Yeah. Give me my, give me my.
Chris: Do you just want me to say the title of our podcast?
Kayla: Yeah. So, listeners, you probably remember our criteria at this point. I'll go through them quickly, unless you want to go through them.
Chris: No, go for it. You're the reactor.
Kayla: So we have six criteria that we have zeroed in on. One expected harm towards the individual in the cult.
Chris: Do you want to do it one at a time or do you want to do it?
Kayla: I was going to run through all of them and then evaluate.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Population of the cult, antifactuality, percentage of life consumed. Not like vampires, but like, how much time you're supposed to give to this ritual and a charismatic leader. And, you know, the more boxes you check, the more like a cult you are. So let's go through these one by one and decide what we think. So one expected harm towards the individual. That's, you know, socially, physically, mentally, emotionally, any kind of harm that can befall you.
Chris: Yeah, you lose your job, you lose your friends.
Kayla: I don't see a lot of harm here. Maybe financial.
Chris: Yeah, that was my feeling.
Kayla: You haven't told me any horror stories of like, you know, people who like fyre Fest, who like, you know, use their life savings to, well, this thing that may not exist.
Chris: I did see a few posts of people that were like, oh, my God, I feel like I've, like, you know, wasted my money on this game and I feel like I've been kind of like, you know, taken. I feel like I've been kind of, like, you know, defrauded. So there's definitely some people. So I think there's some harm because of that. Because of this, like, false promise, getting, you know, selling people on a dream, and then it's not materializing for them necessarily.
Kayla: Does that harm, or is that antifactuality?
Chris: Well, I think there's another thing that kind of comes in with the antifactuality, but. But, like, it doesn't necessarily cut you off from your family or say, like, stop being friends with non cultists.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: So I don't think it's really that harmful. Like, especially if you're, like, not a true believer. If you're just, like, a normal person that's, like, a fan of the game. But games can have that effect, though. So, like, that's. That's a slight caveat is that, like, you know, sometimes you can play a game so much. Like, again, we'll bring up World of Warcraft. Sorry. Wow. That it can cut you off from friends, family sometimes.
Kayla: Like, game addiction is a real thing.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely.
Kayla: Like, you know, playing a game too much can cause you to lose sleep or even give you something stupid as, like, eye strain or whatever, or, like, you spend. You don't even realize how much money you've spent on candy crush because you just kind of got in that zone or because you didn't realize that the game was taking actual money from you.
Chris: Right. So it can harm you, though.
Kayla: It can be harmful.
Chris: Yeah. All right, so that one's, like, mostly. No, I guess.
Kayla: I think it's like a 50, 70.
Chris: It feels mostly.
Kayla: No, 80 20.
Chris: I mean, it's like. It's kind of like, is Star citizen at fault for being that, like, any game can be addictive and.
Kayla: Sure.
Chris: Okay. Right. So, I don't know. I don't know.
Kayla: Star citizen, the expected harm is rarely, not never.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: So number two, population of cult. I mean, I'm assuming that this is.
Chris: A rather large population, given that 2 million backers.
Kayla: Yeah, that's a lot.
Chris: Yeah. So it's maybe not a cult because it's not like a tiny little sect then.
Kayla: Right. So that doesn't check that box.
Chris: It doesn't check that box, but it.
Kayla: Feels like it should. Okay, but, like, are we talking relative here? Like, relatively speaking, 2.2 million people is not that large a percentage of 7 billion or whatever.
Chris: I don't know. It's like, it's pretty big compared to the other ones we've talked about.
Kayla: Very, very true. Okay. Antifactuality, specifically, a closed logical system, that kind of thing. I gotta feel like there might be a lot of anti factuality here until you showed me that gameplay.
Chris: Right. It's weird. It's like, it's hard to. It's hard to figure out. Cause, like, I think there's definitely some antifactuality going on.
Kayla: Well, the fact that it was like, this game will be out in 2014 and we're in 2019 now, and it's.
Chris: Not anywhere close, but they're also really transparent. And they don't say that, like, oh, we lied to you. It's like, oh, you know, these are targets.
Kayla: Like, but is that production? Is that transparency just another way to kind of, like, dupe people? Because it's like, oh, look at how transparent we are. Of course this is real. Of course we're gonna be able to deliver the, like, 13 points you listed.
Chris: At the beginning, maybe. And I mean, there's also the point, too, of transparency, like, directly serving the community. Community engagement, which directly, you know, gets people to monetize more.
Kayla: Yeah. And just the really, like, the really careful word usage of, like, backers and pledge like that. Yeah, I know that doesn't feel like anti factuality, but it does feel a bit like obfuscation.
Chris: Yeah, it's definitely a little bit obfuscating. And then the other thing is, like, the true believers, like, it feels like they're engaging a little bit of anti factuality by saying, like.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: You are, you know, you're a heretic and get out. And you're just trying to defame so and so. And that's not true. And this is, you know, these ships will be real. There's. There's a lot of, like, motivated reasoning there. Right. Like, it's not. Maybe it's not so much anti factuality as it is motivated reasoning. It's like they're not looking at the facts. They're trying to fit the facts to their highly motivated wanting to make this game be a real thing.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: So I think that's where it kind of hits that.
Kayla: Okay, so that's a maybe percentage of life consumed. I guess it depends, right? Like any video game. Like, it really depends.
Chris: It really depends. But, like, with the level of ambition and immersion and, like, this is just real life in space, right. I do think that it gets some. Some plus points. Minus point, whatever.
Kayla: Well, if the community. If the, like, sense that is gotten from the community, whether it's just from the backers or it's from the business itself, the whole, like, this should be the only game that you'll ever play again. Like, this is the only game you need. We're the only one. Like, that feels kind of like, give. Give us your life.
Chris: Right. And from what. I mean, you. From what I said and saw and what you saw from just that little brief YouTube video, like, especially now, imagine they had all those features that I said, you could literally just spend your whole life playing this game.
Kayla: Well, if you have to literally wait. I mean, like, granted, okay, no load screens is awesome. But then that does mean, like, you have to wait in real time for the subway. It's like. It's like, you know, Red Dead Redemption. Are those kind of, like, open world games to a crazy degree where it's not just you're playing a game, it's you're playing a game in real time.
Chris: Right. It's like, the various militute is cool, but it's up to a point, but.
Kayla: It'S taking hours out of your life.
Chris: Right. It's like sitting on a subway immersion with, like, wasting time.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: You know, like, you want the immersion, but, you know, there's a cost now for ritual.
Kayla: The whole time were doing this, I was kind of thinking, like, well, there's not really a ritual until you started talking about the community management and the weekly.
Chris: Weekly shows.
Kayla: Shows.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: That, to me is like, ooh, is that. I don't know. I mean, granted, I haven't seen an episode, so maybe they're just really fun and cool and, like, anything you see on that game channel or whatever, I.
Chris: Would say maybe there's a little bit of ritual involved because it's, like a regular show, and, you know, and the.
Kayla: Fact that there's very specific words used, like maybe more backers and pledges.
Chris: Backers and pledges and use of the word fidelity and LTI. There's a lot of specific vocab.
Kayla: So I'm gonna say that there's, you.
Chris: Know, a little bit.
Kayla: A little bit charismatic leader, I think, is there in spades.
Chris: Yeah. Charismatic leader. It's, like, funny like that. We've done four episodes now, and, like, last week was Irvine, and that was kind of the only one that really, I think, hit really clearly on the head. It's funny that all four episodes, that's the one thing that they've all had as charismatic leader.
Kayla: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: I don't know.
Kayla: Well, the first one didn't.
Chris: Yeah. Didn't. I mean, not like, as much.
Kayla: The first one didn't have it on.
Chris: The live charismatic as Mister Romtha or as Mister Roberts. But, but it did.
Kayla: Yeah, no, you're right. They haven't been just like, you know, what is it when there's, they weren't decentralized? Like, none of them.
Chris: No, they weren't totally decentralized.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: But I guess that's maybe, like, I don't know. There's not many things that are so.
Kayla: Well, and just the fact that this guy has, like, Robert's industry is whatever, the website is, like, shit named after him. And, like, the fact that he has this whole, like, Billy McFarland successful background and, like, he's the reason why this was.
Chris: His fans love him. Like, they're devoted to, I mean, well.
Kayla: Just his personality is what got this off the ground to begin with. So it's like, this is. Yeah, this is because of him.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: He is a charismatic leader.
Chris: I think that's a clear hit.
Kayla: So is it a cult or is it just weird? I think I'm inclined to say it's just weird. I think it has a lot of really cult like aspects, but I think it dovetails so much with just kind of standard video game culture fan culture, that unless we're willing to say that all of those cultures are cults. Ooh, culture.
Chris: Cult. Oh, man. There's a connection there.
Kayla: Oh, my God. Unless we're willing to say that, like, intense fandoms are cults. I don't know if I can call this a cult. I think it's very cult adjacent, but.
Chris: It'S very cult like. But just weird. I mean, there's a few other things like that we sort of talked about in the episode, but, you know, didn't really come up with the criteria, but there's definitely, like, some faith involved.
Kayla: Sure.
Chris: Yeah. Like, so there's, like, you know, I've backed the game and I have to have faith that it's gonna come to fruition and there's some, like, money for nothing going on here. Like, donate to us and everything will be good and you'll, you know, like, it's kind of like, with, that goes.
Kayla: On with percentage of life consumed.
Chris: Right. Where it's like, don't give us your money and you'll get the, you'll get your heaven.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: And there's that sort of, like, insider outsider dynamic, too, of like, you know, if you're inside and you're part of the group, and if you're criticizing, then you're an outsider and fuck you, and, you know, I hate you and I'm gonna harass you. But on the no side. Yeah, we talked about like a lot of the stuff in the criteria and also like, I feel like the transparency is. Leans towards no, because I feel like cults aren't transparent.
Kayla: I'm not convinced. I'm not convinced. I think that can a be faked and not from what I understand.
Chris: How it works though, with them.
Kayla: And I think that can be, that can almost be like a manipulation tactic where it's like, we're gonna legitimize. There's no way you can think that this isn't real because we've made it so real. But it's not real. The game is not out. And it's been seven years.
Chris: I mean, the thing is, as transparent.
Kayla: As they want to be, they're not making a game. The game is not out. So how transparent is it really?
Chris: But you saw it. It is like, it is and it isn't right.
Kayla: What they promised has not been delivered. Like even a quarter. What they've, what they've delivered is not a quarter of what was promised.
Chris: I know, but it's also ambitious. Right. It's like when you promise, it's. Is the problem that they haven't delivered or is it the promise? Is it the problem with the promise? Did they over promise? Is that the problem?
Kayla: But they're not reneging on that. They're not saying, like, oh, we can't actually do this, but they're saying, well.
Chris: I don't know, we'll eventually do it, maybe. I don't know. Like, I get what you're saying. Like the transparency thing, I don't think it's. Here's what I think is that it's not self serving. Right. Like, it is self serving. Like, there is a reason for the company to be transparent that involves the bottom line.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: But there's also a lot of companies and cults that aren't transparent that, you know, like, that's a way to do things too. And they chose to do it this way. So I don't know, I lean more towards that being a good thing. And then, like you said, at the end of the day, actually, you basically already said this, but about fandoms, at the end of the day, it's just a game, right. It's just a fandom.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And fandoms get weird and have cult like aspects to them, especially when money's involved, especially when this amount of money starting and crowdfunding and expectations and not meeting them.
Kayla: So the more interactive a fan base can be the more, like, culty it's probably gonna be.
Chris: Of course. Yeah.
Kayla: It's like, if you're just, you know, if you're just watching a tv show, you really like, cool. But the second that tv show goes, oh, and you can also start giving us money and we'll make a movie.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: That's gonna change.
Chris: And go to our subreddit.
Kayla: That's gonna change the way the fan base behaves a bit.
Chris: Yeah. But I think that I am slightly leaning towards the same way you are.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: It's just weird.
Kayla: It's just weird. Yeah, you heard it here first. Our citizen. Just weird.
Chris: Our citizen, just weird. But, like, you know, I definitely learned quite a bit about this game, doing this research, like, and again, the really eye opening thing was just, like, seeing the actual gameplay. It was just like, oh, my God. Like, it's pretty crazy. And also, I think it helped talking to fans because they were like, look, I just like the game. I've definitely given it money. I want it to become a thing. I'm excited about it. But, you know, I'm not, like, on forums, like, shouting people down. And I think that's probably true for, like, most of the people that. That play and are fans of the game. I think it's just, like, you know, generates good headlines when, like, people do crazy stuff.
Chris: So, like, you know, it's the vocal minority, right, that ends up kind of making everybody look extra strange and makes people do podcasts about them.
Kayla: What? Us.
Chris: But I think we've taken up enough of our listeners time this episode, if at least, I don't know, maybe you've broken this up into two episodes by now, and that won't make any sense.
Kayla: But we'll see.
Chris: We'll see. But, yeah, I guess. Go check out Star Citizen. Go check out all of the links.
Kayla: We'll link everything in our show notes.
Chris: And then, of course, rate us, please.
Kayla: And please go on iTunes. Go on. You know, I mean, itunes especially, unfortunately, on tunes is, like, the be all and end all. Go rate us and subscribe to us. But whatever podcast platform you're using, subscribe, share whatever you want. And if you want to get in touch with us, we are on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and gmail. Cult or just weird culturejustweirdmail.com. You can find us anywhere on the social medias except Tumblr because they took away the porn, so that's why we're not gonna be on it.
Chris: Yeah, were gonna post all this porn there, but, oh, well, porn.
Kayla: Is it a cult or is it just weird?
Chris: Probably an episode somewhere there. I don't know. About some porn. I don't know.
Kayla: Probably.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Thank you for listening.
Chris: Great episode.
Kayla: Good job. Good job. And all that research, you really. You went for it, and I appreciate that.
Chris: Yeah. I like the fact that I was able to interview some people for this one.
Kayla: Yeah, get us some legitimacy, like you said.
Chris: This is Chris, and this is Kayla. And this has been cult or just weird.
Kayla: Is that what we usually do? I don't remember how we end.
Chris: I don't know.