November Set 10

I don’t have the time to go full , however I did want to really quickly jump on the dream. There are a lot of aspects to Chris’ ramblings that I always thought would lose dreamers pretty quick. The best specific is the whole “arma” combat comparison he loves making. I always thought that the prospect of handing their adventure over into the hands of a 2 second ttk (in a game with hours of travel and busywork) that will almost certainly favor the kind of player that most SC fans are desperately attempting to escape would cause something of a riot and demand for a softer combat form.

But things that don’t fit in with their specific dreams aren’t just disregarded, they’re set aside to provide a kind of reinforcing structure. There’s a tremendous emphasis on the idea of the technical. The combat wont be accessible to people who lack a technical knowledge, the pvp wont be something you can just walk into without the technical ability to fly a ship. There’s this sort of membrane comprised of a nebulous ability to grasp this manufactured quality of player that segregates those who can (the people who will win because of their experience and the money they’ve spent) and the “general population” who will flail hopelessly attempting to navigate the sophisticated and sensitive systems of their own best Star Citizen. You’ll recall the old forum threads where persons would enthusiastically discuss the weeks required to learn how to fly a ship properly. This years before Arena Commander was even available to the general public.

Players who pass through that membrane to join them in their own competency will be changed by the experience, becoming like them. All others will be on the wrong end of the “how do you like me now” moment of flying through space with their crew of space slaves manning all turrets.

e; oh shoot I typed too much

Every time CIG opened up a little and would lay out one of these new “hyper-realism” mechanics they wanted to put in game, I would talk about it in the channel and always try to frame it realistically, not in a dreamy make believe best case scenario.

The Time To Kill is a perfect example, I kept trying to stress to backers “Be careful what you wish for, because it’s entirely plausible for you to spend an hour or more on a mission in your ship only to have someone decide they don’t like your name, they are having a bad day, or whatever, so they kill you and it’s fucking over before you even have a chance to react. Now you’ve not only lost the time it took for you to do the mission up until encountering that player, but you’ve also lost the time it takes you to get back into a ship if you don’t have multiple ships available or the credits to “rush” a replacement, as well as the time it takes you to get another mission, load up, and head back out.”

These kind of arguments are almost always brushed aside with “Oh I’d kill them first cause I’m fucking Captain Reynolds bitch!” or some version of “That’s why you don’t fly alone!” or maybe if they are humble something like “Well that’s why there are bounty hunters and other pilots out there who will reign those kind of griefers in”…

No, there aren’t. If most of the best pilots aren’t griefers themselves, do you really think the others give a shit about you?

This game is very quickly developing into a griefer’s wet fucking dream. The amount of rage and suffering someone can inflict with minimal effort is near unprecedented. That never matters though because every backer I’ve ever argued with about this kind of stuff seems to live in a bubble of “it won’t happen to me”.

One of my favorite moments streaming the game for goons was when I kept running into a group of three guys in superhornets blockading Port Kareah or whatever the fuck the only interesting place in the PU is right now. It was so beautifully simple: an aspect of the game funneled me and anyone else caught in it to one place, and so these guys parked there and immediately blew up anybody that showed up.

Any good Citizen will tell you my Aurora should be just as capable in the hands of an expert pilot as a Super Hornet is in the hands of a mediocre pilot, but after the third time I got blown up immediately on exiting QT, I kind of started to wonder if that might not be the case lol. It was brilliant on the part of those guys though - there was no fun in the game so they made their own, and CIG made it so incredibly easy for them.

That’s part of the reason why Star Marine is my favorite thing to show people who don’t know about SC. Here you have this “incredibly tactical” first person shooter that was billed as being like ARMA and “More lethal than COD” and you go “okay yeah, TTK is gonna be super quick” but then wait a second, here’s a 10-page design document detailing how death is going to be permanent and you’re going to have to roll a new character to inherit all your shit. Something’s not jiving here, but maybe the shooter isn’t as bad as you thought. So you go play a round and people are dropping like flies. You don’t even have to aim really, you just hose someone down and they die almost instantly. So you think “Okay, well… there must be some way to mitigate this, maybe move super tactically like ARMA or maybe there’s some kind of gadgets or abilities to help you survive like Titanfall or something.” Nope, haha, go fuck yourself. The movement is horribly clunky and there’s no ‘sneaking’ anywhere because of the shit level design, and if you thought gadgets were here well actually no because see that was the Illfonic build and it wasn’t up to Chris’s standards so now gadgets are coming in 20XX. Just… none of this shit works together even the tiniest bit, and it’s amazing in how complex the stupidity of it all really is, especially when you see people defending it all by handwaving their own inability to cope with it away by being like “Oh well I’ll always have an escort,” or “I’m only going to stay in high-sec zones,” or “I’m just that good” like FTR said.

This shouldn’t be overlooked. This is, in a nutshell, what happens when crobbler is in charge of a game’s development. This is why it took 3 years after Microsoft took over Digital Anvil to release Freelancer.

This is a snapshot of what’s in his brain. He had to literally have told someone to track argon levels.

The backers want cargo, trading, bounty hunting, exploration, farming, repair scaffolds. They want research and design on weapons, power plants, and various ship subsystems, countless other things. Argon is being tracked.

This image alone is a stunning shot of why this project is in a death march.

Star Citizen: I had dreams but they all argon

insane rambling about goons spreading fud to snatch up accounts on the cheap

It’s a good thing CIG has helped us to reinforce the narrative that the game is shit and everyone should sell their stuff on the grey market by making a shit game and also by allowing ship trading on a grey market.

It’s a good thing CIG depressed the price of grey market trades by randomly denying refunds and instituting a one-trade limit, causing people to start panic selling their accounts at below-cost.

It’s a good thing that the guy who ran r/DS wasn’t recently caught with alt accounts pumping up his own trade history and trying to maintain positive opinions of the game even as he profited off of suckers by buying their accounts and reselling them on the grey market!

It’s a good thing that rumors haven’t been swirling for years of CIG gifting streamers and employees ships with the understanding that they will use the grey market to trade them for cash value!!!

Boy, I’m glad that it turned out that it was goons behind it all.

All of Star Citizen’s bugs are caused by elevated levels of FUD in the game’s atmosphere simulation. If THOSE FUCKING GOONS would just stop shitting on Star Citizen it would run bug-free at 120 fps.

Goon grey market illegal millions are simply pumped into LoD to launder the money. Derek is just our money washer. Obviously nobody sane legitimately buys LoD, however buying up thousands of copies with illegally scammed Star Citizen money is a perfect way to report taxable profit for goons and get clean money back. Derek’s cut is 25%. Then Lowtax charges his usual 6% on all goon profits as well, which is you know, as his name suggests, is pretty low. The fact that they finally figured out our system is pretty impressive.

This seems like a good time to bring this one back.

That was basically my experience. I watched SC for over a year from when I heard about it because even the initial pitch sounded like bullshit pipe dreams to me. I didn’t know who Chris Roberts was, and only cared enough to do basic diligence which almost immediately revealed an incompetent nerd hack who lies for a living. I finally bought in when a starter package was $25 just to experience it. Loaded into the hanger, and instantaneously knew that the project was completely fucked. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It was this visceral combination of confusion and depression, that I can only assume was some part of my brain close to the stem sending alarm signals through the entire cortex saying “Everything about this is WRONG, get OUT of here.” I loaded up Arena Commander and was treated to the lazy freakshow circus CIG calls a flight model, and after about 10 minutes of trying to shoot enemy ships in perpetual fly-by mode, I said welp, this entire design hopelessly fucked. Absolutely nothing in the game looks, feels, or controls right. It never has, and it never will. It’s hands-down the worst piece of gaming software I’ve ever had the misfortune of “playing,” and anyone who thinks Star Citizen will magically become “good” someday is too stupid to live.

I did the same thing, but my first real experience was playing star marine and I was all “well this is completely fucked in every way, from movement to shoot feel and I don’t think there’s much to be done about it except scraping it entirely and starting completely over”

Yes that’s standard procedure in a con job. There’s six steps to a good con and Star Citizen cycles through them about once a year.

Foundation Work

Preparations are made in advance of the game, including the hiring of any assistants required.

Approach

The victim is contacted.

Build-up Grey market trades and ship beauty shots here

The victim is given an opportunity to profit from a scheme. The victim’s greed is encouraged, such that their rational judgment of the situation might be impaired.

Pay-off or Convincer 3.0 launch here

The victim receives a small payout as a demonstration of the scheme’s effectiveness. This may be a real amount of money, or faked in some way. In a gambling con, the victim is allowed to win several small bets. In a stock market con, the victim is given fake dividends.

The Hurrah You are currently here, with the anniversary sale. Limited time only!

A sudden crisis or change of events forces the victim to act immediately. This is the point at which the con succeeds or fails.

The In-and-In

A conspirator (in on the con, but assumes the role of an interested bystander) puts an amount of money into the same scheme as the victim, to add an appearance of legitimacy to the scheme. This can reassure the victim, and give the con man greater control when the deal has been completed.

“Confidence tricks exploit typical human characteristics such as greed, dishonesty, vanity, opportunism, lust, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility, desperation, and naïvety. As such, there is no consistent profile of a confidence trick victim; the common factor is simply that the victim relies on the good faith of the con artist. Victims of investment scams tend to show an incautious level of greed and gullibility, and many con artists target the elderly, but even alert and educated people may be taken in by other forms of a confidence trick.”

Land Sales!?

RSI twitther says “Today at 12 Noon PST we are showing off something special.”

a picture of a land claiming beacon appears, but is removes after a few mins. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/f1yvpwz7k34t1r/source/Land_Claim_Beacon_Estate.jpg is 404 to this day. (imgur copy: STAKE YOUR CLAIM)

*** the deleted land claim image ***

Well, gollyee. I’m Prospector Crobber here to tell you about this opportunity to buy the worlds primer space mine. Their spacegold in them there Procedural generated height mapped hills, and Ol’ Crobber can get you in on the ground floor. So how many claims of old space mountain can I put you down for.

There’s no way they’re actually selling land plots. There’s just no way. I’m already peak citizen I can’t handle this level of scam.

Yeah, but what citizens see is :

Stealing someone’s goon valour

Come on CIG, get your shit together and faceplant already.

re land sales:

lol they caved

They literally showed a fucking claim flag, so at this point they’re probably begging Chris to change his mind.

Derek make a post that says if CIG doesn’t do land sales it will be because you scared them off.

Promo jpg gone and hour late on this noon thing. lol if they lost the nerve.

LAND SALES

$60.50 for a 4x4 plot. $121 for 8x8

Faceplant video is real.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link//16278-UEE-Land-Claim-Licenses

Both have 21% VAT

So Star Citizen is no longer a space game I guess.

Why is Dave even in the room, I skipped around and he never says anything. Chris really needed that moral support!?

Clifford the anime girl is going to buy a solar system.

Fuck, I have few words, most of them just sound like me laughing.

this thread is now proven, hands down, the best place for star citizen related information months or years in advance

I seriously love the “ITS JUST STUPID GOON FUD THERE NO LAND SALES ITS A LORE POST SHUT UP WITH THIS SHIT”

to

“yeah um well they will obviously make it fair and balanced and I believe in Chris Roberts and this is okay by me as long as it supports development”

THEY FUCKING SAID “DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU SEE ON REDDIT” AND THEN STARTED SELLING LAND FIVE MINUTES LATER AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

In space, no-one can hear you wriggle and sigh ecstatically as Chris Roberts’ hand slides smoothly across the top of your thigh, over your upper leg, into your hip pocket and - there, yes - deftly grasps the corner of a crisp hundred dollar bill, sliding it out oh so gently from between the receipts and pizza vouchers. Away with it, yes, take it, I want you to. Please, Chris, just promise me you’ll meet me in the ‘verse, looking up at Daymar’s cold sun. Our little patch of land, our little patch of heaven. My heart races as I vow never to go anywhere without a special something nestled in my wallet. For him. For dreams.

Guys

GUYS

HOLD ON

…

…

A week after the thermonuclear meltdown over lootboxes and Chris decides to go ahead with the $60 cash grab. There is no way this could backfire!

I wanna say hes gone too far, but theres really no telling with these spergs. Blatent pay2win hardly phases them.

“I have defended CIG at almost every step of the way, but selling land is absolutely idiotic and asking for trouble”

280 comments in under an hour. Yes that is fast.

I’m glad CIG gave the thread one last big cup of coffee before Christmas

circa 2016. God Bless you Christ Roberts.

Well, I was right again. On Nov 22nd, I wrote that CIG had a plan to start selling land.

This is all desperation.

I am on ecstasy right now. Thank you Chris, your desperation is delicious.

I wonder if there’ll be another Chris Roberts damage control post like https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/232661

That worked out pretty well in the long run.

Youtube votes are nearly even split atm: 997▲ 849▼

lol at Erin asking Chris questions like they haven’t been discussing this for months. timestamped youtube link (1148) (19:08)

RSI is basically a pyramid scheme at this point. It seems like they have no intention to actually release a playable, finished game to retail. None of their efforts are focused on gameplay loops.

Despite having no gameplay to speak of they will happily sell digital goods in a game that does not yet exist, exchanging these phantom virtual goods for real money. Then they “create” new virtual goods to sell, except that these virtual goods don’t even exist in game. They’re selling words on a screen. They’re selling a rendering of a digital spaceship.

At least lootboxes give you tangible things in game. It might not have been the thing you were hoping to get, but it at least exists in game.

Christ on a cracker. This debacle went from “11” to “12” on the dumpster fire scale.

13, punch it Chewie

This is good for Star Citizen. Hear me out.

Obviously the space adventure MMO, Star Citizen was never going to happen. This is just one giant step into refactoring the game into a more CryEngine Lumberyard friendly format.

One of the things I really love about Star Citizen’s comedy is how nickel-and-dime it’s become. They have what is easily the most rabid, generous fan base in the world. These people have given them hundreds of millions. Normally you would expect a game company that existed entirely on the basis of “Pledges” to express some… gratitude? Remember the “Loyalty rewards” in the early days and how original backer packages were steadily fluffed up with extra crap for the first 40 or 50 million worth of milestones?

That’s another part of Era 1 of SC development that has entirely departed. Now it’s like- you want forum access? Pay up. You want to see the keynote at our fan convention in person? 60 bucks. You want more weapons for your spaceship? Gonna cost ya.

It’s not just that they’re greedy, it’s that they’re nakedly hostile about that greed. They clearly don’t even like their fan base and have worked really hard to turn what used to feel like a community company into a big impersonal storefront where just getting through the door starts to cost you. This is one of the reasons I’m so skeptical about any of their sales numbers. There is absolutely no way that new people are coming into that kind of environment.

I know we all have our private too 10 lists of greatest thread moments but I will forever take enormous quiet pride in the knowledge the we Goons, we lowly losers with our obsessive fixation on this godforsaken project helped in our own not trivial way to get the ball rolling that lead to the huge Kotaku U.K. series that remains the single most intensive outside look at the project in distress. It didn’t produce the laughs of so many other great thread moments but it fired a shot across the bow of CIG in a big way, and they forced Chris Roberts, armed with too many quotes from too many sources, to finally acknowledge the truth about Star Marine.

That one tiny victory didn’t mean much in the grand scheme but I will cherish t nonetheless, simply savoring the satisfactions all but demanded by Chris Roberts’ completely inexcusable mismanagement of that project and his toddler-like tantrums and the voices calling for him to account for the whole thing. Since the whole affair proved a microcosm of CIG’s macro problems with scope creep, project mismanagement, and the hype and deceit cycles of their marketing department, the entire affair outlined by Kotaku U’K.’s in-depth look will one day be seen for the omen it truly was. For our small part in helping to make that happen I will forever be thankful, regardless of how little good it did.

I feel the same way about the entire Streetroller saga, even though I was more skeptical of his motives at first and booted him from the discord server due to suspicions he was try to con us. But he wasn’t, he was a straight up guy, a fighter, the best kind of troll and smartass end he joined the ranks and landed a major blow that put CIG on the well deserved hot seat with the spotlight overhead.

Charlie Hall wanted to dox him for the sake of his precious “games journalism” (and the noble work of defending the morally upright gaming studio under unfair siege by evils goons) but alas, he got forced to do the right thing and leave him be. And Streetroller did his part, as Kotaku UK did, to sound alarms and remind backers of their own legal rights. And while that story too wasn’t the laughathon so many other thread moments were, it still lead to the gut busting Streetroller / Derek Smart / James Brand livestream event that IS in my top 10 funniest moments of the Goon War.

Sorry to be getting all nostalgic and wistful. But damn what an incredible story this whole bloody mess has been… what a privilege to watch it all unfold from the best seats in the house in the good company of funny, clever and mostly quite decent people.)

VictorianQueerLit

I legit feel bad for anyone who still has passion for creativity and art that is dealing with Chris Roberts. I’ve worked in exactly the same type of situation a bunch of times. That’s why the leak about Chris Roberts taking an entire day to describe how a bomber jacket should look rings extremely true.

You’re spot on, especially with the Chris assessment. I worked with Chris years ago at DA, and was so frustrated (as was the entire team) with him coming in every 4th day to work and changing everything based whatever he had seen the night before from some movie or tv show.

One of the things we used to laugh about (and his coding skills were at this level back then too) was him sitting at avid suite editing console and slowly pushing a random button, then looking up at the screen for a minute, then slowly pushing another random button and looking at the screen (this would go for hours). And yet Robert Rodrigues would swing by, sit down at the avid, and start typing on it like a 1950’s secretary on meth and then walk away 20minutes later with several shots completed.

I’m here because I know the pain that is in his studios, and I was genuinely curious if he would actually make a game this time. Turns out I was completely wrong about where his skills are: He makes money, not games.

THE FAITHLESS

In other words, the mainstream mass of gamers. People who presumably have only dimly heard of the project until launch day. The people who will flock to the game on the glorious Day of Release, when the clouds open and Chris Roberts descends from Heaven to grant Idrises to the faithful and cast Smart and his Goons into Hell where they shall wail and gnash their teeth as they are never permitted to fly e’en the smallest of Auroras.

A good Citizen is naturally an elitist. He would prefer to disdain the masses as fools, people who turned aside the CRoberts when he preached his message and whose tastes are nowhere near refined enough for the Best Damn Space Sim Ever. However, they are caught by a tenet of Star Citizen theology - Star Citizen will be the best game ever and sell millions and millions of copies. The space stations must be bustling and full of players.

Someone must buy your mined space rocks. Someone must gape in awe at your 890 Jump, sometimes even try to attack you (and fail, and be sent to Pirate Jail to think about what they’ve done).

So the Faithless who buy after release get to be in Outer Heaven (a concept you sometimes see in real no-questions-asked cults). In the ‘verse, but firmly second class. They can man the turrets. Scrub the hot tubs. Be the redshirts and helm officers and people who report “Vanduul on the scope, Captain!” while the Faithful command from the bridge. There will be entire skillsets (like shield balancing or power management) that the Citizens never touch. But by heck they’ll toss peons out the airlock (and out of their orgs) if they don’t give their captain full shields when he calls for it in the heat of battle. It’d be like being the healer in a WoW raid if your tank was also paying your salary.

Perhaps, with much grinding and proof of their faith, the Faithless might aspire to own a ship one day (but it had better be after many months of tub-scrubbing). In which case they can be cannon fodder, escort fighters, perhaps pirates and targets for bounty hunters. The people who man all the dozens of planes lined up on the deck of the Citizen’s pocket carrier. The people who foolishly charge the Citizens’ guns and die so the Citizens can call themselves space aces.

It’s the Faithless who the insurance mechanics are for. A good Citizen has multiple ships and just flies off in another one. But someone with one ship they had to save for years to afford? Get scrubbing that jaccuzi. This is the dark secret of LTI; LTI on a ship means you never run the risk of being reduced down to Faithless level by a run of deaths.

It helps that a Citizen’s natural contempt for the masses means he expects the Faithless to log in and immediately become pirates and griefers, because they’re such dumb CODdies. They’ll run everywhere in the spaceports and ruin our immersion (so punish them. Ideally by forcing them to spend longer manning our turrets; some nice heavy fines would do it). They don’t understand the game like a Citizen does. Really, it’s what’s best for them and they’ll see that. Come the day.

A good citizen rebels when CIG suggest new players who haven’t proven their faith, haven’t sacrificed, haven’t paid and faced the real-world consequences of paying (a citizen’s going to have felt the impact on his wallet of all those ships, after all) might be able to own big ships in less than 100,000 hours. Surely Chris wouldn’t do that. We need people to stuff into crates and introduce to the inevitable consequences of piracy and it sure as hell ain’t gonna be the Citizens, they paid too much to put up with that. Their whole identity is built on being the big people in the ‘verse. On being whales.

This basically means the average Citizen sees themselves as a kind of MMO slumlord, keeping a horde of Faithless latecomers in poverty to keep their guns manned. It doesn’t occur to a Citizen for a moment that the Faithless might work this out and refuse to buy in. An unspoken tenet of the Cult of Star Citizen is the masses will kneel in awe when the glory of the full game is revealed to them. Kneel and beg for forgiveness, and in their mercy the Citizens will let them load cargo with their bare hands.

People who ask awkward questions about how, exactly, this is going to work get an incredible dose of rage. You’re threatening a core tenet of the Star Citizen fantasy.

Seen Space Jam? You know that vision of the future the villain gives Michael Jordan of being chained to a basketball hoop, terrifying children in cinemas across the globe? That’s where the faithless, the filthy faithless gamer on the street who didn’t buy in when he had a chance, sits in Star Citizen theology.

Enjoy your hot tub.

I’ve commented in the past that every time CIG had a marketing disaster the citizens reacted in a predictable cycle. That cycle is going on around us right now. So let’s get out our finest nature documentary gear, don some thick protective gloves, and take this wonderful opportunity to study firsthand the Five Stages of a CIG Marketing Fuckup.

You can break it down roughly into five stages as follows:

Stage 1: CIG makes a boo-boo. Chris throws a tantrum when his own game crashes, a demo goes wrong, the wheels come off on the ramp, they’ve started selling land plots, whatever it is. It’s deeply embarrassing and directly contradicts the narrative the Citizens wrap themselves in as a safety blanket.

Stage 2: Suddenly the rug is yanked out from under the Citizenry’s delusions and they’re confronted with the reality that they’ve sunk thousands of dollars into a disaster. They panic, and when the citizenry panics it freezes up as it tries to process (and justify away) whatever they’re seeing. Star…Citizen…bad? But but but nooooooo.

So we get a period of silence from the hardcore backers, usually a day or two but sometimes as long as week, as they struggle to come to terms with their situation. Into the silence emerge, blinking, a whole variety of less-crazy citizens who are usually lost in the glare, kept cowed by the threats and sheer volume of their nastier cousins. People who’d been shouted down in the past take advantage of the shocked paralysis to actually speak about their fears for the project in public for the first time. They can be surprisingly erudite and well-thought-out.

Some of those people, hearing the words coming out of their own mouths, realise they’ve been had and go on to demand refunds. More, perhaps too scared of the “refunder” label, quietly disappear and write off their investment. Others hesitate, knowing the backlash will come or fearing that if they do cross the wire the goons on the other side will mock them or seek revenge for past slights.

This phase lasts until the citizens can construct a reassuring narrative in their heads that doesn’t hurt so much to think about. CIG know this, which is why after a day or two we always see…

Stage 3: CIG releases a sanitised version of whatever has scared the citizens. A livestream with the cringeworthy bits cropped out. “It’s not really selling land”. See, it didn’t happen the way you were afraid it did, it actually happened like this. This is a nice safe version you can tell yourself is the real one. A kernel for the new Citizen narrative to form around.

Then the cry goes up and we’re on to Stage 4, THE PURGE. Buoyed by the new narrative and happy to embrace their worldview once again, the citizens regain confidence. They haven’t forgotten the pain of that horrible period when CIG’s incompetence yanked the rug out from under them, oh no, but they have enough confidence now to silence any painful introspection. And they’re angry.

So it’s purge time. All you filthy critics, you refunders, you people who made us think scary and painful thoughts that we want to assign to outsiders instead of CIG…you’re going down hard.

The citizens go berserk. Boldly defy THE SMART and His Dark Works! Seek out the enemy within! Scour the apostates from the halls of the faithful! All their pent-up venom is unleashed on any poor souls who voiced criticism and don’t get out of the way in time. Anything and everything is used as tool to vent the citizens’ anger - past post history, old grudges, being on the wrong side of innocuous debates about flight physics three years ago, showing a flash of heresy, the existence of one of the other Hated Subreddits. All must either display their loyalty or be purged.

One of the sad forces fuelling the loop is that sometimes abused becomes abuser; someone who felt the wrath of the citizens in the last cycle gleefully joins in the next, in self-defence and to vent their own anger at their past treatment.

Lastly comes Stage 5: Project, Project, Project.

Y’see one of the dirty secrets of the citizenry is that they’re not entirely terrible people. Some part of them is quite aware their behaviour is disturbing and cultish. But their greater investment in their self-image as Good Citizens drives them to suppress it. So after the initial outburst of rage comes a period of guilt and vulnerability, which a good citizen deals with by projecting it onto the enemy as hard as they can. I talked about how SC’s problems as a game get projected onto Elite and LOD; this period is when the citizens deal with their problems as human beings.

They raged? No, goons rage. That dancing cat is full of rage and anger (this is literally how that running joke got started). They shilled? No, Smart shills, with his thousands of shilling shills in every shadow. They hounded enemies from the subreddit? No, goons did that. Filthy goons, driving people from their safe spaces with their trolling and hate. Chris openly laughed and talked about how easy it is to sell JPGs? Well Derek sells JPGs all the time from his JPG truck which he doesn’t own because it was repossessed last week when his wife divorced him and also we don’t doxx, Derek doxxes.

This phase is when the choicest and most ridiculous conspiracy theories form, to repair the citizenry’s damaged self-image and explain away whatever excesses they need to excuse. Then everything returns to normal and the citizens can go about their business, refreshed and ready and ever-vigilant.

The citizenry don’t always process each stage neatly. Individual citizens can be at one phase while others have moved on, or are still stuck in phase 2. Right now we’ve seen an unusual double-disaster (3.0 followed by land sales) and the amusing result is collisions between citizens who are at different points.

Let’s take a worked example - Fandred trying to out jester86 as a goon spy.

Consider that from Fandred’s POV. He’s already smarting from his rejection from the refunds subreddit, is largely considered a joke verging on an apostate by the citizenry, and he wants attention. At the same time like any good citizen he distrusts the grey market as something that shouldn’t be needed because the citizenry should be Buying More Ships from Glorious CIG. Worst of all, THE SMART has been discussing how jester86 had a different identity as a grey market seller and he was openly caught trying to buy accounts from refunders.

But Star Citizen GOOD. Star Citizen fans GOOD. Star Citizen fan reddit moderators DOUBLEPLUS GOOD.

So he tried to project his fears onto someone else - see? SEE? The grey market subreddit mod is a goon plant! That’s why he runs the grey market subreddit (when all backers should be Buying More Ships from the Crobbler), and why he shut down the R/DS subreddit (which was a very painful defeat for its occupants, who suddenly found themselves unwelcome amongst the citizens they told themselves they were protecting), and why he consorted with filthy refunders. Above all that’s why jester86 didn’t conform to Fandred’s mental image of a Good Citizen. A Good Citizen who was so blessed as to be a subreddit admin.

So he must be a secret plant. Must be a spy and a heretic. Must be called out and the wrath of the faithful brought to bear (which incidentally should get Fandred promoted up the ranks and rewarded for his faith, because it’s horribly clear Fandred feels painfully isolated and really really wants friends).

There’s just one eeeensy problem…

…CIG’s image of the land claim spike got leaked.

Goons laughed. Citizens froze in horror. The cycle skipped to stage 2 and that meant Fandred unveiled his conspiracy theory too early. The citizenry can’t run a witch-hunt now, they’re too busy circling the wagons and trying to make the horrible horrible land sales go away. They’re too busy fighting the whispers inside their heads to throw away a valuable fellow citizen. So nobody sided with Fandred and he got roundly ignored, left to the less-than-tender mercies of his would-be victim.

If he’d waited a week or two…waited for the cycle to move on and reach the purge or guilt-flushing stage, when the citizenry is eager to grasp at straws…jester would have been in a lot more trouble. The subreddits would have been on the hunt for apostates to purge, and the very same evidence might have been more than enough to make them get the pitchforks and stakes.

Jester got lucky that time. Ironically he owes his deliverance to CIG itself tripping over their own egos…but then, jester is a member of the inner cult and he already knows that. He’s keeping his head firmly down right now and probably cursing CIG’s idiocy for ruining the value of his investments.

As Seen on SOMETHINGAWFULDOTCOM