That’s actually the best question submitted so far.
If you’re going to help them prepare for an AMA, help them to prepare for hostility and baiting. They can answer the easy stuff off the top of their heads - they’ve been thinking about all this stuff for the past two years. But hostile questions could throw them.
We already have two big space games. Why build another one?
How do you expect to compete with Star Citizen and Elite:Dangerous with $300,000 and a part time team?
Does your entire game revolve around flying down to planets?
As friends of Derek Smart, do you also think Star Citizen is a scam?
You’ve been working on this thing for 10 years to get to the prototype stage. Why should we believe that you can go from prototype to alpha test in one year?
In the questions, assume that the asker is already convinced that INS or the product will fail and they’re just looking for confirmation.
What’s the meanest, cheapest shot that you think somebody could take at the team? That’s what they need help preparing for. Especially questions that are cleverly worded, such as number 4 above. It just assumes that the team is friends with Derek Smart. If that’s not addressed first, folks will assume that the team is and they will draw whatever conclusions they like from that, good or bad.
Just 1 thing – not trying to be argumentative, just want to watch our step here.
Wouldn’t it be better to simply not mention Derek Smart? He has no actual input on the game. Not financially or artistically, etc. It just seems too much like mentioning that other GG thing; no matter your intentions it will attract trouble.
Assuming connection with DS seems like asking if you beat your wife. E.G. A lot of people on Reddit didn’t even know about him till it started showing up regularly in Reddit.
I’m going to start grouping the questions together for easier reading when I get a chance tonight/tomorrow.
Yeah while I don’t think mentioning DS is automatically bad, talking about him and then going on about the whole SC controversy right after would just make a LOT of mad people.
Yeah that’s what I was thinking. I’ll put those questions at the bottom or something.
The purpose is to help INS see/think of all the questions/comments/etc that could come up in an AMA. As much as I’d also like to just avoid the subject altogether, if there’s nothing to avoid it coming up then we might as well be ready.
Axe them altogether the only Derek Smart related question could be “what does DS think about you” and if someone really asks that you have DS tweet that he thinks game is good. That’s kind of it.
This is by far the biggest comment I’ve seen regarding I-Novae’s progress. We really need to hammer out a short, to-the-point answer for people. Something like “Contrary to popular belief, this game has only been in production for a year. The rest of that time has been spent developing the engine behind I:B” maybe.
I made the one DS question in the OP the only one that matters as far as I:B is concerned. If someone asks about what the INS team thinks about SC, that’s already answered in #3 - why another space sim?
@Magellanic
I’ll separate the list into categories that way when I get a chance.
That’s one of the KS FAQs. I’ll list those here in full instead of just linking to them. The devs probably know that FAQ by heart but readers here might not.
More to the point, @Cinder, a loooooot of people are throwing around the term “vaporware” to describe I:B. It’s lazy on their part (because they didn’t do any research) and it’s sloppy negativity for the sake of brevity. We really should push a PR campaign of “this is not vaporware” in order to calm the storm. Got any ideas on how?
In my opinion, the list is far too academic. I presented my questions as combative as I could so that the developers would be forced to deal with their initial emotional reaction and then respond in some calm and measured manner. Ideally, with wit and class.
The Derek Smart question specifically tries to implicitly tie the team to him. It is the implicit tie that is significant to the question, not what they think of Star Citizen.
This is about rhetoric and debating techniques. They already have an intellectual grasp of their own product.
If we know it’s just lazy keyboard warriors, then it seems like admitting that something they made up has some truth to it, to get into an actual campaign against [whatever strawman]. I have to get some work done and then I’m going out pretty much all night… I’ll think of something for tomorrow.
Now I of all people will interject here and say that that is one BAD idea. Just post actual videos screenies and don’t go “NO VAPORWARE!!!” about it, that will only make people think why the hell you are doing that and plenty of them will get a bad idea from all of it.
You have to realize that people assume a lot of things automatically. A game that they see in front of their eyes is assumed to be real for instance. Bringing up the idea of it being vaporware does the opposite of what you think.
I have the same issue with Flavien constantly talking about how framerate is choppy or prototype is bad in this or that because people usually assume it’s not bad and it’s not choppy and all is fine and pretty… Until someone brings up said topic and then they start overanalysing everything and the magic is broken.
Show, don’t tell and it’ll work because this game has A LOT to show.
Well I dunno then. That kinda sounds like beating around the bush… If AMA questions are just trolling, is it really worth trying to think of all the non pertinent things people could make up?
I’m not much of a PR/PC guy. If something is mostly BS, I just ignore the BS and address only the pertinent bits. It just feels like we’re turning this thing into a paranoid Rube Goldberg thing, if ya know what I mean?
I have to go for now. I guess the list will have to be completely redone tomorrow. I was only suggesting what I could think of spontaneously, it was always meant to be collaborative like a wiki of sorts.
@TheCoach
That sounds like a quick and dirty way to shunt the questions into two main categories. Real vs mistaken concerns. I’ll think about it overnight.
Maybe he was busy or too sleepy, but I do remember a number of times when streamers asked Flavien tech/gameplay questions, and the answers were really small and sheepish. It seemed like he wasn’t ready for them.
There’s already an I:B FAQ right here! LOL! What a knob. I’ll add those in, regroup all questions into categories so it’s easy to skim thru, and include all the more non pertinent stuff that can/could/will come up in relatively candid stuff like an AMA. You’re right, it’s definitely better to include those questions/comments.
Watch his first gameplay video and you’ll find him speaking in fairly “small and sheepish” terms. What he’s actually doing is speaking precisely and concisely, communicating information. It’s just his style. He’s a humble perfectionist, engineer, and intellectual, not a screaming rock star. I hope he stays that way.
I don’t think it’s a personal fault, I do think it isn’t enough in a similar way that limiting the above to those strictly academic questions is not enough. The audience for the KS is not all made of space nuts and experienced space/sim/arcade combat players who can grok all the implications of what INS have in the tech demo at this point.
Like… Most people in the “general” audience will not put 2 and 2 together to see the astronomical potential of full scale space combat fleets in seamless full scale star system with 3 and maybe 4 digit player #'s in a single instance. And then you add to that the esthetic level of the engine, all the not yet incl. enviro FX etc, and what could be a really deep and wide gameplay toolbox (e.g. sensors and fleet warp effects etc etc) by the time the game is first released.