Stepping up the war on ISIS

The US State Department was complaining that Russia wasn’t really hitting ISIS. It will be interesting to see what they will cry about next now that the Russian air force has increased its efforts:

Those of a skeptical persuasion have been inclined to suggest that
perhaps the US isn’t fully committed to the fight. Explanations for that
suggestion range from the mainstream (the White House is loathe to get
the US into another Mid-East war) to the “conspiratorial” (the CIA
created ISIS and thus doesn’t want to destroy the group due to its value
as a strategic asset).
The implication in all of this is that a modern army that was truly
determined to destroy the group could likely do so in a matter of months
if not weeks and so once Russia began flying sorties from Latakia, the
world was anxious to see just how long the various rebel groups
operating in Syria could hold up under bombardment by the Russian air
force.

The answer, apparently, is “less than a week.”

On Saturday, the Russian Ministry of Defense said it has conducted 60 bombing runs in 72 hours, hitting more than 50 ISIS targets. According to the ministry, Islamic State fighters are in a state of “panic” and more than 600 have deserted.

Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t. But regardless, it’s clear that Russia isn’t playing around. And with Iran poised to send ground troops into Syria, it increasingly looks like the Obama administration and the neocons are likely to get an epic lesson in the unintended consequences of hubris.

Denying supply and demand

The US Employment-Population Ratio and Labor Force Participation Rate continue to fall:

A record 94,610,000 Americans were not in the American labor force last month — an increase of 579,000 from August — and the labor force participation rate reached its lowest point in 38 years, with 62.4 percent of the U.S. population either holding a job or actively seeking one.

The EPR is down to 59.2 percent. Imagine how many of those 94.6 million Americans could find jobs, and how much their wages would rise, if the 59 million post-1965 immigrants were repatriated.

Mea culpa

Apparently one of my game design innovations is a “trend that needs to die“, as far as The Escapist is concerned:

Escort missions

Is there anything more annoying than an escort mission? You have to make sure that one NPC get from point A to point B, and you have to make sure they get there alive. Almost invariably, the NPC gets himself into trouble. Maybe he walks too slow and you’re constantly waiting on him, or he walks too fast, plunging into danger before you clear the way. Sometimes they take a path all their own, and it’s never the shortest one to your destination. In a similar vein, let’s do away with Assassin’s Creed’s eavesdropping missions as well, since they’re just escort missions wearing a Halloween disguise.

Yes, believe it or not, Rebel Moon Rising was publicly recognized by Computer Gaming World for being the first shooter to introduce escort missions. The issues the writer mentions are all legitimate, but they were obvious from the start and I believe we handled them pretty well. Other designers would not have followed in our footsteps if it hadn’t worked, but it seems not all of them have been as successful in addressing them.

Of course, the pathing is considerably easier in a 2.5D game than a 3D one, although I don’t know why escorted NPCs wouldn’t have an optimal path pre-programmed into them in the first place.

What I find a bigger problem with the escort mission is the way in which the story situation is so often handled ineptly. That first escort mission in RMR involved escorting baby aliens, who naturally wouldn’t know to run or to defend themselves if attacked by soldiers with lasers. But escort missions where armed adult warriors don’t defend themselves or even run away when attacked are just poorly designed, so it shouldn’t be a surprise if there are other problems with the implementation.

Mailvox: Catalonian independence

MT writes what amounts to a primer on Catalonia and the complications surrounding its independence movement in asking about the American Right’s response to it. I will respond to it in a future post.

I’m writing to ask you a question that has puzzled me for some time. The American right (without a single exception that I know of) enthusiastically supports independence movements in Europe even when these movements hold views radically opposed to those of the American right. I understand that the American right may consider independence so good in and of itself that it is desirable even when pursued by the ideological antagonists of the American right. And so they would be delighted to see the South and each of the leftists coasts abandon the Union because that would leave a more decent, more genuine America. OK. But my question is: why does the American right persist in speaking of these movements as if these European independentists actually held the ideals of 1776?

I find this attitude of the American right strange because most of these movements espouse views that are diametrically opposed to anything that one might call right-wing (anti-austerity, pro-multiculturalism, pro-homosexuality, pro-EU, anti-State-church separation, vastly corrupt schemes, pro-environmentalism, pro-feminism, politically-controlled media, politically-controlled education, politically-controlled language usage, etc.) But the American right invariably ignores—indeed they don’t seem to care at all—about the actual views or deeds of the pro-independence movement. They are so determined to defend the independentists that they always take it absolutely for granted that the pro-independence movements just espouse the ideals of the Founding Fathers.

And this goes against all evidence.

This is truly spectacular in the case of Catalan secessionism (the case I know best) because they have actually been ruling their region for about 40 years now. So it’s not like their views, policies, speeches and attitudes are a matter of abstract speculation or inventive futurology. This is not like wondering what would happen if the Free State Project achieved its goal or how a Rand Paul administration might be like. These people have already done plenty of actual politics, actual ruling. Their actions are not a state secret.

For decades the independentists have spread their propaganda while the other side only broke their silence from time to time to agree with their supposed adversaries (a typical feature of the modern left-right divide), so it is only natural that foreigners will be much more acquainted with the Catalanist point of view. And since the ideals of the American right are inseparable from the ideals of 1776 (perhaps with the exception of the likes of Moldbug and maybe Hoppe, I guess), it is perfectly understandable that the American right will tend to side with other peoples who also seek to break free from another European monarch. The problem is that this sympathy is explained under the pretense or delusion that these particular independentists are carbon copies of the Minutemen whereas they hold views and actually enforce policies that are as far removed from the ideals of the Revolutionary War as you can get in modern politics, and that’s very far away indeed.

If I go to one of these American conservatives and comment that I am surprised that the American government could make this or that blunder, they’ll quickly inform me that I’m being naïve—it’s not a blunder, it’s a feature! The leftist politicians in Washington, DC are not acting in the best interests of the American people, and the Republicans—they’ll quickly add—are not much better. But mention instead the Catalan politicians and suddenly it is all milk and honey: brave, well-meaning, freedom-lovers who only want to get rid of an oppressive government. Braveheart in the 21st century, seems to be the way they think of it. A reenactment of 1776 in another land. They usually can’t name more than one of these politicians and not even one of their policies, but that doesn’t stop them.

I understand that American conservatives are very comfortable with this unique interpretation, but most of these Americans are people who have gone to great lengths to free themselves from political naiveté when it comes to their own politicians.

By the way, I am not against independence per se. I do believe that it may be good in some cases. Yes, maybe even in the Catalan case. But to me, that’s entirely beside the point. What perplexes me to no end is how the American right stubbornly keeps misinterpreting the pro-independence movements.

Also, I speak the Catalan language as a native speaker because I am from a region where we speak what the Catalonians consider a dialect of their own Catalan language. I lived in that Catalan-influenced region for two decades. I also lived in Catalonia itself for fifteen years. Now I live in Madrid where Spanish-speakers routinely mistake me for a Catalan, because of my accent and family names (Spanish people have two family names). Indeed, a Catalanist taking a look at my family tree would have an orgasm seeing only Catalan-sounding names for, at least, half a millennium. Not that this should matter, but Catalanists have repeatedly stated the capital importance of one’s family names, so there is that.

And so I find myself in the privileged position of witnessing this whole mess with an unusual amount of knowledge and an ideological open-mind. I’ve had countless conversations about this with people from all over, mostly with Catalanists. And yet, a conversation about this with the American right is always doomed to fail. Much more doomed to fail than with the usual pro-independence Catalanist. I speak of Catalonia, and the American conservative says “Catalonia” but his mind is in the Thirteen Colonies over two centuries ago. His entire worldview: every secessionist is a George Washington, everybody else a vampire.

When I speak of the Catalan issue I mention economic policies, electoral laws, legislations of all sorts, political corruption, ideological values, but the American right only hears: redcoats, redcoats, redcoats everywhere! When speaking about the facts of Catalonia to the American right, the facts of Catalonia are entirely irrelevant, it is all about the Boston tea party. I find this militant solipsism quite alien to conservatism, but there it is.

I mentioned in your blog that since 1992 the population of Catalonia has grown from 6 to 7 million due to the Catalanist policy of favoring North African and Middle East immigration to counter the Hispanic immigration from the American continent. Yet the American right keeps talking about a would-be independent Catalonia that would have “less forced Muslim invasion”. http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/catalonia-votes-for-independence/ This is not a matter of supposition or futurology, this is already fact. Catalanism has deliberately engaged for years now in massive Islamic immigration, yet the American right dreams that a triumphant Catalanism will actually help reverse the very trend that Catalanism initiated. This is bizarre.

I’ve mentioned repeatedly to many American conservatives how the Catalan-designed tariffs—particularly the “Arancel Cambó”—prevented the industrialization of most of Spain while protecting the industry in Catalonia and the Basque Provinces. But the American right keeps repeating the inverted tale that wronged industrious Catalonians have been robbed by Spain.

Catalonia has been receiving enormous amounts of tax money and extra benefits at the expense of the rest of the nation, in part due to the unfair Spanish electoral law which vastly over-represents Catalonia in the national parliament, often leaving the two big Spanish parties in the uncomfortable position of literally having to buy the support of the Catalanist party to form a national government in Spain. And they have repeatedly bought it with money that went from Spanish taxpayers to Spanish politicians to Catalanist politicians to accounts in tax havens.

For many years now, the rest of Spain has had to pay for the Catalan Social Security that seems doomed to eternal deficits. And the Spanish government has bailed out the Catalan regional government in excess of 20,000,000,000 euros already since the crisis began. And Catalonia (since before the days of the Franco regime) has received more money for public infrastructure than anyone else. Presently, it is the only region in the nation that has each one of its 4 provincial capitals linked by the Spanish-funded high speed train. Obviously an irresponsible extravagance, but this is reported in the Catalan media as “Madrid steals from us”.

Not all regional governments are funded according to the same laws: Navarra and the Basque Provinces have a unique system—popularly known as “el cupo vasco” and supposedly a continuation of the historic “fueros” that have limited the power of kings for a thousand years—which allows their regional governments to collect their own taxes while at the same time strictly limits the contribution of these regions to the national tax revenue. This has made it very difficult for Basque and Navarrese leaders to engage in nonsensical spending and has allowed these regions to have an unparalleled prosperity. Interestingly, very few in the rest of Spain have complained, and a growing number suggest the system should be extended to every corner of the kingdom. The Eurocrats, on the other hand, insist it should be abolished.

But why am I mentioning how the Basque regional government is funded? The Catalan leaders were offered this system in 1978 but they refused it because they didn’t want to appear as tax collectors to their people: let Madrid play bad cop and then let the Catalan politicians go to Madrid and sell their votes for money. And in each new election the Catalan votes are overrepresented and then there is a new charade where the two main Spanish parties bid for the Catalanist whore. But as years passed, these Spanish parties raised their bids by offering to share ever larger percentages of tax revenues. The national government keeps looking as the bad guy for collecting the taxes, and the Catalonian politicians keep looking as the good guys for (over)spending it. Then Catalonia runs into preposterous deficits and the regional leaders run to Madrid to get more Spanish tax money. And the singsong goes on about Madrid being a thief. This is systematically described among the American right as Catalans needing tax freedom from oppressive Spain.

In the early 2000s, the Spanish conservative government made a zero-deficit law. The problem was that most spending was done by the regions while most tax collecting was done by the central government. So long as most regions were ruled by the conservative party, things were manageable, and the deficit problem seemed to be solvable at last. But by the time the crisis came, the new socialist government had eliminated the zero deficit rule. And they also reformed the law regulating the financing of regional governments explicitly bragging that it was to the detriment of Madrid, Baleares and Valencia and to the benefit of Catalonia (the Spanish government that did this was socialist, while the conservatives were running the abused regions). When the socialists lost the last national elections, the conservatives now in power could not reintroduce the no-deficit rule in part because Catalonia had gotten very cozy with its overspending practices. Catalonia has about 14% of the population but has incurred in about 25% of the debt.

All this while the government of the region of Madrid lowered taxes and embarked in liberalizing reforms. Last year alone, of the 4.000 businesses that left Catalonia, nearly half of them relocated to Madrid. When this trend began, the media was quick to inform us that this had nothing to do with Catalanist interventionism, now the pretense is over. The farce has gone so far that it can only be sold in Catalonia to a brain-washed populace. Even one of the sons of the Pujol clan (the family who created and embodied modern-day Catalanism) moved to Madrid to avoid the taxes imposed by his own family in Catalonia! This is where I’d expect the American right to say “you can’t make this shit up” but no. They are a very smart family, always bragged about being humble middle class from the rural heartland, all they’ve done is politics, and now they have a collection of luxury cars, and bank accounts in several tax havens… meanwhile patriotic Catalanists dream of having “their own” tax agency so they can pay all their taxes to the likes of the Pujol clan. And the American right goes on with their stories about Spain sucking the blood of the hard-working Catalans, because the British Crown invented the unconstitutional IRS to piss off the colonists, or something.

The Catalan government refused to make any spending cuts in its gigantic media conglomerate that includes six TV channels (in a region of 7 million people) while they stopped paying their share of publicly-paid medicine. The Spanish government, again, sent extra funds to the Catalan government AND extra funds to the medicine suppliers. But somehow Spain is the thief.

This reminds me of how scientists initially thought that electric current moved in the direction of positive charges but when they found it was actually the negative electron that moved, they kept the criterion: it goes this way but we’ll say it goes that way. Scientists can do this because it doesn’t interfere with their understanding of the actual phenomenon, the same cannot be said of the American right.

Obviously, the Catalan media conglomerate runs its own huge deficit, which is paid by Spanish taxpayers to convince the Catalan population of how evil Spain is. And the conglomerate kept hammering the same old tune about “Madrid is robbing us”. With the crisis, other regions have had to downsize and in some cases close altogether their public regional TV stations, but the Catalanist propaganda machine remains untouched. Patients can live without their medicine, medicine suppliers can live without their money, but Catalans can’t live without their six public TV channels.

As an economist I tend to focus on the financial and fiscal aspects of all this aberration, this “Himalaya of lies” as Besteiro said. But it goes far, far, far beyond that. The tip of the iceberg: the Catalonian regional government ran an over-the-top TV ad bluntly promoting sexual promiscuity, pedophilia, homosexuality and even sexual violence but when a Spanish conservative commentator criticized it, he was severely fined for saying that the political leader (a Catalanist woman) responsible for this was a “swine”. Catalanism has devastated Catalan society to the point that nobody from Catalonia dared criticize this ad: no media, no church, no heart-bleeding NGO. It had to be someone from evil, evil Madrid. Sexual promiscuity, pedophilia, homosexuality and even sexual violence are a-ok but to call a female pro-independence politician a “swine” is an intolerable offense. The American right that is so quick to criticize these things everywhere mysteriously went blind, deaf, and mute that day. Just like the feminists, sexual degeneracy is evil, except when it’s perpetrated by “one of ours”, I guess.

Then, of course, there are the huge money-laundering scams by the Catalanist leaders. Which became public knowledge in the early 1980s, the first one being the Banca Catalana case. But the Spanish government chose to manipulate the judiciary and the media to save the Catalanist leadership and make people forget the whole business. Yes, I know, this planet is overflowing with governmental wisdom and journalistic integrity. Mysteriously, silencing the judiciary and the media about the first cases of corruption did nothing to prevent further Catalanist corruption. Actually, more cases appeared over the years: De la Rosa, Casinos, Planes de Muns, Estivill, Hacienda, Palau de la Musica, Cullell, Alavedra, Pallerols, etc…. Eventually, the headquarters of Pujol’s party had to be foreclosed due to the debts caused by the scandals. And the show goes on.

An innocent mortal can be accused of faults much milder than any of these cases and his life as a free man is ruined forever. But the Catalanist leaders engage in this behavior all the time and they are the figureheads of the eternal victims. “Bizarre” doesn’t begin to describe this.

When the national government is covering your back and you have a media empire of newspapers, radio stations and 6 TV channels, and the nominally private media busy licking your parts, then nobody among The People seems to know a thing about corruption. That’s why for years Catalonia was known as “el estanque dorado” (the golden pond): a piss puddle that stinks but where nobody dares make waves and so it looks gilded and peaceful.

A turning point for the golden pond came one day when the supposedly private media had become so much part of the Catalanist elite’s scam machine that they began issuing unanimous op-eds. I mean, literally unanimous. Each and every major newspaper in the region printed the very same op-ed. Word by word. Suddenly everybody in Catalonia had one single idea about one single issue and, of course, it just happened to be 100% in sync with what the Catalanist-controlled media had been preaching for decades. Oh, did I forget to mention that the regional elite also controls the education system and the regional police?

So, when Pujol had to publicly explain to his people that he had been hoarding large amounts of money in tax havens, well, it was a big shock. Good old Pujol stealing from his own people of Catalonia! Impossible, stealing is what Madrid does! The TV says so! All TVs say so! And the teachers say so! It can’t be true! But Pujol has said so, therefore it can’t be false! Robbie the Robot’s circuitry didn’t suffer that much.

Spain would be much better off without the parasitical Catalonian elite. Except that the place is already a Muslim beachhead, and sooner than later someone will have to deal with that mess. And I don’t mean hashtags. But who? The Catalanists will be the dhimmis of the Muslims, the EU is already cheering the Muslims, as is the red-profaned Vatican and the UN, the Americans are already busy in their War against Christendom, and Spain will perhaps not exist—to everybody’s delight. Which reminds me of Don Pelayo and his battle at Covadonga. But it also reminds me that in 1770, the 4-year-old Russian Imperial Navy anchored at the Spanish coastal city where I was born—where hundreds of Russian sailors are buried—on its way to defeat the Turks at Chesma.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of the many, many things that can be said about the Catalanist movement. I’ve mentioned many of these things to many an American conservative, but until this day I’ve never found one who even wanted to listen, they just want to dream on with their mental movie about Braveheart in the 21st century. I am perplexed by this attitude of the American right.

Media with a spine

Ocala Post appears to be one of the few media outlets not infested with SJWs attempting to conceal black criminality:

 Ocala Post recently received several e-mails and Facebook messages from individuals complaining about the names and photos of juvenile criminals, drug dealers, and a recently arrested business owner, being used in some of Ocala Post’s recent articles.

One Facebook message called an article slander, defamation of character, and made mention that it was causing “pain and suffering.” An e-mail also asked; “WYA?” Which is street slang for “where you at.” A common phrase used by criminals and wannabe gangsters when they intend to inflict harm upon another person.

Oddly enough, one e-mail even accused an Ocala Post article of fueling an arrestee’s drug addiction.

Some of the threats have included lawsuits, burning Ocala Post to the ground, and, in so many words, the loss of life.

This is not the first time Ocala Post has dealt with these types of issues.

RESPONSE FROM THE EDITOR:

It is not only absurd, but also very unlikely that Ocala Post contributed to an individual’s drug addiction.

In order for an article to be considered slander or defamation of character, the contents of the article would need to be false.

Ocala Post will stop printing names in articles, and stop using photos, when criminals stop breaking the law. As long as Freedom of the Press is protected by the United States Constitution, and Florida allows the press access to public records, Ocala Post will continue to print the names and photos of criminals in all articles. Ocala Post staff are instructed not to leave out any details from official reports, unlike other media outlets. And Ocala Post always strives for accuracy.

Marion County residents have an absolute right to know who is living next door.

We’ve now reached a state where the media is more concerned about hiding news than reporting it. If they’re not going to report the identities of the newsmakers, why report the news in the first place? Why not simply announce daily that neither crime nor homosexuality exist in the Glorious Democratic Republic, which has always been at war with Eastasia?

I particularly enjoyed this brutal rhetorical beatdown: “If you do not wish to have your child’s name or photo published on Ocala
Post, perhaps you as the parent should be more aware of your child’s
behavioral problems and know their whereabouts at 2 a.m.”

The arrogance of the inept

America’s empire-builders are receiving a humiliating lesson in the limits of human power:

Fourteen years after we invaded Afghanistan, Afghan troops are once again fighting Taliban forces for control of Kunduz. Only 10,000 U.S. troops still in that ravaged country prevent the Taliban’s triumphal return to power.

A dozen years after George W. Bush invaded Iraq, ISIS occupies its second city, Mosul, controls its largest province, Anbar, and holds Anbar’s capital, Ramadi, as Baghdad turns away from us — to Tehran.

The cost to Iraqis of their “liberation”? A hundred thousand dead, half a million widows and fatherless children, millions gone from the country and, still, unending war.

How has Libya fared since we “liberated” that land? A failed state, it is torn apart by a civil war between an Islamist “Libya Dawn” in Tripoli and a Tobruk regime backed by Egypt’s dictator.

Then there is Yemen. Since March, when Houthi rebels chased a Saudi sock puppet from power, Riyadh, backed by U.S. ordinance and intel, has been bombing that poorest of nations in the Arab world.

Five thousand are dead and 25,000 wounded since March. And as the 25 million Yemeni depend on imports for food, which have been largely cut off, what is happening is described by one U.N. official as a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

“Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years,” said the international head of the Red Cross on his return.

On Monday, the wedding party of a Houthi fighter was struck by air-launched missiles with 130 guests dead. Did we help to produce that?

What does Putin see as the ideological root of these disasters?

“After the end of the Cold War, a single center of domination emerged in the world, and then those who found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think they were strong and exceptional, they knew better.”

Then, adopting policies “based on self-conceit and belief in one’s exceptionality and impunity,” this “single center of domination,” the United States, began to export “so-called democratic” revolutions.
How did it all turn out? Says Putin:

“An aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions. … Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster. Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life.”

The arrogant neocons who “create events” would do well to understand that when you’ve reached the point that a Russian autocrat looks preferable to neutrals and Americans alike, you should stop digging and reassess your assumptions.

Reading material

Father John Zuhlsdorf’s travel reads are pretty much the definition of “eclectic”.

Organizing Creativity posted a nice recommendation of the book as well:

I’ve seen a couple of recommendations of Vox Day’s “SJWs Always Lie — Taking Down the Though Police” (incl. from @ProfessorF, whose highlights are here, but also on Reddit and in other places). So I had a look at it and — yep, I like it as well…. So, while I am still on the fence whether SJWs are just over-caring (care as sole moral foundation, and totally helicopter-caring in overdrive), have mental problems (Borderline? Narcissistic? Psychopath?), or are Machiavellian players in today’s society, this book is likely going to be helpful in fighting back.

Peeple is fair play

I’m very amused by the widespread fear of this new app that will permit people to be rated being expressed:

You can already rate restaurants, hotels, movies, college classes, government agencies and bowel movements online.

So the most surprising thing about Peeple — basically Yelp, but for humans — may be the fact that no one has yet had the gall to launch something like it.

When the app does launch, probably in late November, you will be able to assign reviews and one- to five-star ratings to everyone you know: your exes, your co-workers, the old guy who lives next door. You can’t opt out — once someone puts your name in the Peeple system, it’s there unless you violate the site’s terms of service. And you can’t delete bad or biased reviews — that would defeat the whole purpose.

Imagine every interaction you’ve ever had suddenly open to the scrutiny of the Internet public.

Congratulations, world. Now everyone online will discover what my life has been like since 2001. And to be honest, it’s really not a big deal as long as you don’t have a problem with people not liking you. You’ll soon find that you are defined by your enemies as well as by your friends, and the more idiotic your enemies are, the better you look to the sort of intelligent, open-minded individuals whose opinions actually matter.

I welcome Peeple, as I’ve never been a fan of the cowards who think they can attack you because you are a public figure, but then start whining that it is unfair and you are “doxxing” them by posting links to their online, publicly accessible posts the moment you strike back at them. But lack of an audience is not synonymous with privacy and the moment you post anything online about anyone, you are a fair target for their online reprisals.

The $90M crash of Star Citizen

Lizzy Finnegan opens the floodgates on what is looking like one of the biggest crash-and-burns in the game industry since 38 Studios and Flagship, if not Atari’s ET.

Crowdfunding in general has seen a harsh decline in consumer trust in the past year, particularly when more prominent names are behind the projects. Mighty No. 9 has seen repeated delays, and fans voiced concerns when Shenmue 3 reopened crowdfunding after more than tripling their initial goal.

On September 22, independent developer Derek Smart penned a lengthy blog post that called into question Star Citizen, a title from game designer and producer Chris Roberts that was successfully funded on Kickstarter, raising over $2 million through the popular crowdfunding website. The game raised over $89 million total through a variety of sources, and remains the most crowdfunded video game project of all time.

Smart has been regularly critical of Roberts’ company Cloud Imperium Games, subsidiary Roberts Space Industries, and the development of Star Citizen, writing a total of five bulky blog posts since July. In these posts, Smart questions the allocation of funds, delays in the game’s release, changes to the format and features, silent changes to the Terms of Service agreement, and the ability for the company to produce the game at all.

Not all backers share Smart’s concerns, with a Change.org petition demanding that Smart “immediately desist in your ongoing actions against “RSI” (CIG) and Star Citizen.” The petition has garnered over 2,000 signatures.

In August, Smart wrote of his intention to send a “demand letter” to Cloud Imperium Games insisting on a “complete forensic accounting” of the money that has been spent on the game, as well as a solid release date and a refund option for anyone who wants one. Smart offered to pay for the forensic accounting out of his own pocket. In addition, he said that failure to deliver on any of those demands would lead to the immediate filing of a class-action lawsuit. That demand letter was sent on August 21.

Lawyers for CIG reportedly responded in a letter, which Smart shared online, stating that Smart had been a backer for the project, contributing $250 in 2012. The letter continued, stating that Smart “commenced his defamatory actions in early July 2015 on his blog – without any basis or backup, and with many links to his own game in development – that the “Star Citizen” project was a fraud and that it was never going to be delivered.” The money that Smart contributed to the project had previously been refunded to him, a refund that was not requested but rather initiated by CIG. The letter then points to Smart’s career and financial issues, accuses him of “desperate efforts to harm [Star Citizen] for his own publicity gains,” and concluded with the assertion that Smart has no legal basis and the demands were being rejected.

One major point of concern includes the seemingly silent alterations to the Terms of Service. In total, a revision to the Terms of Service includes 178 removals and 199 additions, and was instated after the initial release window for Star Citizen had already passed. The original ToS that backers agreed to when contributing the project was ToS v1.1 listed on the RSI website, and stated that if the game failed to be delivered within 12 months of the original Kickstarter estimated delivery date, refunds would be available. At the time, the project held a November 2014 release date, making the non-delivery period November 2015. This was changed on February 1, 2015 to ToS v1.2 to reflect a new timeframe of 18 months. The anticipated delivery date had also changed at this time, to the end of 2016.

“This company was given millions of dollars to deliver a product. They have not delivered that product. And in all likelihood, the company – and project – will both fail before they even get to delivering even 50% of what’s promised,” Smart asserted in his most recent post. “There isn’t a single pro developer on this planet, who after looking at what has thus far been delivered, compared to what was promised up to $65m funded, will say that they can deliver this product within the next three years.”

As it happens, I have been casually acquainted with Chris Roberts since the Wing Commander days and I consider him to be one of the game design greats. Along with Richard Garriott, John Romero, and Steve Fawkner, he is one of my game design heroes. I don’t merely like and respect Chris, I look up to him. The five or six hours I spent talking with him, John Romero, and Epic’s current audio director over drinks at the Santa Clara Westin one evening was one of the most fascinating, informative, and educational experiences of my life… and Chris paid the entire $700+ bill himself. I am still an Origin fan and Wing Commander is one of my all-time favorite games; I even gave Ender a fancy joystick last Christmas just so he could play through the first two games and the secret missions, which he greatly enjoyed doing. I was absolutely delighted when I heard that Star Citizen was in the works.

As it happens, I also had the responsibility of going through Chris’s plans in great detail when Star Citizen was still a Wing Commander reboot with a license from EA and a $25M budget. I ran into one of the guys from the fund this summer and we talked about whether the top man’s decision to reject it had been a mistake in light of Chris’s unprecedented crowdsourcing success; it is now looking as if the decision to not fund the game may have been the right call after all. I strongly recommended that we do it; I still think that an updated Wing Commander would have been hugely successful as it was originally conceived.

At one point, Chris and I even discussed the idea of Star Citizen making use of my Psy-AI design for wingmen, but I didn’t seriously pursue it, partly because I couldn’t tell if Chris’s interest was genuine or if he was simply being polite, and partly because the new game was bigger in scope and I didn’t see the focus being on wingmen the way it was in Wing Commander. And as time has gone on, and the scope of the project continued to grow, my dev-spidey sense began to twitch just like every other experienced producer’s has even though I wasn’t paying close attention to it anymore.

“Without disrespect to anyone, I’m just going to say it: it is my opinion that, this game, as has been pitched, will never get made. Ever. There isn’t a single publisher or developer on this planet who could build this game as pitched, let alone for anything less than $150 million. The original vision which I backed in 2012? Yes, that was totally doable. This new vision? Not a chance. The technical scope of this game surpasses GTAV, not to mention the likes of Halo. Do you have any idea what those games cost to make and how long they took? Do you know how many games which cost $50 million to make took almost five years to release? And they were nowhere [as big] in scope as Star Citizen?”
– Derek Smart, 6 July 2015

Every producer and executive producer knows the feeling of a project that is beginning to slip its date. And every producer and executive producer learns to distinguish between a game that is going to be late and a game that is simply never going to be the game it was promised to be. Unfortunately, when seen from the outside at this point, Star Citizen could not look more like the latter if it was called Battlecruiser 2015 AD.

Derek Smart has a reputation for spectacular failure in the industry, but it’s not really a fair one, and more importantly, that particular failure took place a long time ago. Nor was it anywhere nearly as bad as most people who have only heard about it secondhand tend to believe. And one very significant thing that the Star Citizen defenders are neglecting to note is that besides David Braben, there is no one in the industry who is better suited to recognize the danger signs of a large-scale space combat development project going awry than Derek. Now others are starting to look more closely into the situation, Forbes, for one, and unfortunately, Chris Roberts’s response to Smart’s observations and Finnigan’s article sounds a lot more like messenger-killing than allaying what increasingly appear to be substantive fears for what has become a gargantuan project.

The problem, I suspect, is not uncommon in the game industry. Chris is a visionary and a brilliant game designer. He is not a producer despite having successfully produced games in the past. But as too many developers have done before him, he appears to have effectively combined the lead designer’s role with the lead producer’s role into a single Game Director’s role for which he and many other designers – including me – are temperamentally unsuited, and as a consequence the project appears to have gone off the rails as a direct result of too much money combined with too many good ideas and too little focus on actually implementing those ideas and getting things done.

One thing game developers scraping by and wishing for more resources need to recognize is that funding is as much problem as panacea. Just as the crude state of early graphics technology partially dictated the gameplay and made it easier to focus by virtue of its limitations, a lack of money forces the development focus that is always needed to complete a project. Too much money means no strict externally imposed limitations, and if those limitations are not internally imposed by the producer, the project will tend to grow in scope and scale before collapsing.

I sincerely hope that’s not the case with Star Citizen. The success of Star Citizen after such a brilliant crowdfunding campaign would be absolutely wonderful for the entire industry and could launch a much-needed new era of creativity and innovation. The success of Star Citizen is in the material interest of every professional game developer. But after more than two decades in the game industry, I’ve learned to recognize the danger signs of a derailing development project and more than a few of them are observable around RSI of late.

Perhaps he didn’t see the sign

I wonder how many more “gun-free zone” failures are necessary before people begin to conclude that perhaps mass disarmament is not the ideal way to avoid large numbers of victims:

Up to 15 dead–
Several more injured…
WCNC reported:

    A shooter who opened fire at at Umpqua Community College Thursday in southern Oregon injured as many as 20 people before he was downed, a Douglas County official said.

    KATU-TV reports that Oregon State Police say there were multiple fatalities, but that could not be immediately confirmed.

    County commissioner Chris Boice told KGW-TV that 15 to 20 people were injured in the melee, including one woman shot in the chest.

Shooter is down…

People worry that lots of people carrying openly will lead to a “Wild West” situation, forgetting that four times more people were shot today in this Oregon “gun-free” zone than in the highest annual body count Tombstone ever saw, which was five.

“In cattle towns such as Tombstone or Dodge City, the average number of homicides was only 1.5 or 2 a year, according to path-breaking research by Robert R. Dykstra of SUNY-Albany.”

UPDATE: Mike Cernovich smells a rat:

Something is up. Shooter is Muslim or transgender. Otherwise we’d have a name and race by now.  

“The shooter then asked people to stand up and state their religion and then started firing.”

Sounds Muslim, as it was a feature of previous attacks in Kenya and other places, but could be atheist. The fact that the police and media are sitting on the shooter’s identity tends to indicate the former; they haven’t previously shown any tendency to resist identifying atheists.