Stick and Rudder: The five types of Star Citizen guys
I've been through my share of alphas, betas, and early release communities over the years, and without exception, every one of them is chock-full of the same five guys. Oh sure, these guys have hundreds of different forum handles, and in the case of a nostalgia-drenched core title like Star Citizen, some of them may even be old enough to know better. But they're still the same five guys.
These guys are in the good pre-release communities and the bad, and while their passion is largely laudible, their busy-body forum hijinks are nothing if not high-lariously predictable.
You've seen this guy before, and he's a fixture in every forum community, not just the pre-release flavor. He's the one who gets his undies bunched when a newly registered forumite doesn't take six hours to page through 15,000 posts to make sure his question hasn't already been asked. Because, frankly, asking a question that has already been asked is just inexcusable. It's the worst kind of criminal behavior imaginable, on par with child molesting and talking at the theater, in fact.
And woe be unto the rookie who doesn't study the stickies posts and study them hard, says this particular guy. My goodness, forum space is at a premium, you see, and games like Star Citizen run out of it quite quickly when users ask repeat questions. The no-repeat-questions guy has a lot of time on his hands, and in addition to spending way too much of it on his favorite pre-release boards, he's also prone to peppering them with threads of critical importance featuring titles like REQUIRED READING!!11!!!1! and ALL NEWBS HERE THIS!!
It doesn't even have to be World of Warcraft, really. You can substitute any game apart from the pre-release title in question and get the same effect. See, this guy is laser-focused on one thing about the upcoming game and one thing only. In Star Citizen's case, it's space combat. This guy thinks that anything outside of pew pew doesn't belong in the game, despite the fact that Chris Roberts has demonstrated otherwise on multiple occasions. The go-back-to-WoW guy routinely berates "butthurt casual carebears" and points them toward The Sims or Second Life or any number of other stigmatized virtual worlds that he very likely knows nothing about, usually with a snide comment about playing house or playing dress-up.
Like everyone playing video games isn't playing with virtual action figures, amirite?
Anywho, this guy just wants to blow stuff up. His imagination begins and ends with destruction. Which is fine, of course; a world like Star Citizen certainly needs single-minded combatants. He often forgets that it is a world, though, as well as the fact that he's not the center of it.
This guy is usually a bit smarter than his four compatriots, particularly in his own mind. He's probably played a lot of games and been part of a fair number of pre-release communities. As such, he's bored with AI and scripted content, and he sometimes supposes that everyone else is too.
Occasionally this guy's temper gets the better of him and he lashes out at the teeming carebear masses who outnumber him 10 to 1. Other times he pens posts imploring said carebears to try PvP. This tactic always reminds me of my grandma imploring me to try brussel sprouts or eggplant casserole in spite of the fact that the last time I did, I threw them up all over her spotless linoleum.
Apologies again, grandma, truly, but I know what I like!
And it's not really about broadening carebear horizons, is it? Because, hey, the carebear who tries PvP and finds that yep, it's still as unenjoyable as ever has at least provided content for the you-must-PvP guy, which was the actual goal all along.
This guy, hmm. I don't really know what to make of him. He kinda bugs me, to be quite honest. He says he's a gamer, and maybe he was once; I dunno. Now he lacks the time, though, and whether it's because of reasons or, you know, reasons, he just can't find a couple of hours a night to consistently play games.
He wants to have the time. Desperately. But because he doesn't have it, he wants complex space sim sandboxes like Star Citizen to find a way to cater to his time-poor needs. So, naturally, he lurks on the boards (in the free time he doesn't have) and posts about "accessibility."
Brilliant!
Then there are these guys, and there are so many of them that they've nearly pushed Star Citizen's crowdfunding totals past the $10 million mark. Most of them have done so quietly, with little forum-related fanfare and even fewer demands on the development team. They sit back, and they read; they watch, and they simply cannot wait for this interminable pre-launch circle-jerk to end.
Some of it amuses them, of course, and thanks to Cloud Imperium, this particular pre-launch circle-jerk is more informative and exciting than any other they've ever seen. But if they had a time machine capable of rocketing them forward a couple of years, they would activate it in a heartbeat.
Whether it's interviews with Chris Roberts and the Cloud Imperium team or tips and guides for pushing your ship's performance envelope, Stick and Rudder is your inside source for news and commentary on the world of Star Citizen. Join Jef Reahard every other week during the run-up to alpha, beta, and beyond.
