In this episode, we recap the latest news of Star Atlas from the past week.
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Podcast Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi, this is Matt with Intergalactic Herald. Welcome to my Star OS week in review podcast. This is podcast number 105. All articles and videos mentioned in this podcast are available on my website at intergalacticherald. com. Just look for news recap number 105. Oh, actually, sorry. I said those wrong.
[00:00:20] This is podcast number 56. Oh, well, it’ll be in the title correctly. So quick introduction of things I’ll go over this past week there was another Atlas brew. So we’ll talk about that. There’s a showroom test. Actually, I just realized it’s probably over. I’m recording this on Saturday afternoon.
[00:00:38] Late on Friday, a roadmap was released. So we’ll talk about that. And then just a few discussion topics that came up in my mind related to something posted in the economy distort channel and just some discussions about a potential or what is the quote contract between Star Atlas and the community.
[00:00:55] So before we get started, just a couple of updates. If anybody is interested in being a podcast, a guest on this podcast, please do reach out at intergalacticcarol. com. Just go to the contacts. Form there looking for any community members builders, Star Atlas builders other content creators employees.
[00:01:11] Yeah. Since we’ve had one already. So again please go to intergalacticcarol. com and you can reach me on my contact page. I do have two Star Atlas projects I am slowly making progress on. One is my merch store at intergalacticgear. com. Please go there and fill out my merch survey so I can get some feedback from the community on what kind of products you’re actually looking to purchase.
[00:01:33] And then I am slowly developing my own community to for Star Atlas gamers who are not really interested in joining a guild. Maybe solo players that nevertheless want a place to hang out and chat with other star Atlas gamers of kind of the same interests there. So if you go to intergalactic coalition.
[00:01:52] com, I do have an interest survey there. You can learn more about the community and some of the other some of the other things about it and fill out that interest survey if you’re interested. So let’s get into the body of the content here. So this past week, as is typical, there was an Atlas brew that was given, I guess, again, on Wednesday This was kind of a continuation of the previous one talking about the high risk zone.
[00:02:16] So Posey, again, person writing the lore, kind of give a lot more context for things that are could be occurring down the road in the high risk zone. I think the things that stood out to me was a lot more about there’ll be NPCs there. Again, I’m, I’m not sure. Learning more about the lore, but I’m not up to speed on it, that Iris, so I’m not sure who Iris is, but some, some thing in there is out to get us.
[00:02:41] So, you know, it won’t necessarily be a player player combat. So again, putting into context that some of the risks there, i. e. losing your ships aren’t actually things that may be player driven. It could be the environment. really is out to get you. So I think what was interesting was giving a lot more depth to some of the discussions and realizing that players do, will interact, but you will interact with the environment and NPCs and things like that.
[00:03:08] So, but as I mentioned last time, and why I’m not going to talk too much about it this is so far in the future. It’s just not appealing to me at this time. We’re just theory crafting. And again, I’m kind of been on the record. It’s not the thing I’m into. Some people are, and that’s great. Just not my thing.
[00:03:22] And again, this is my podcast. So so moving on, I think. I can’t remember which day it was announced, but anyways, they did announce another showroom test for this Saturday. So it kind of sounded like it was basically a test of a test. So I think they had mentioned earlier about having another meta gravity test.
[00:03:41] But they mentioned they’d like to kind of do it before that. So so we got a little more well, we got notice of it. It was kind of short notice. Unfortunately, I didn’t Already had plans for today, and I, by that I mean chores, so the timing just didn’t work. But, again, it’s, it’s great that they’re at least putting it on the weekend.
[00:04:00] I think the last one was on a Wednesday or something, so I think hopefully, you know, I’d be curious to hear any reports or if anybody did a live stream or something from that. So, good that they’re still working on it. Reaching out to the community. Apparently these are kind of open, open tests, no signups or NDAs.
[00:04:16] Just mainly get into the showroom and check it out. So hopefully we’ll hear more about that. The biggest news this week was late on Friday. So it kind of still hit my of when I was doing things that the roadmap that had been talked about being released was finally released. And there were a lot of caveats like, you know, things could change there was no dates.
[00:04:37] You know, lots of things. So again, I get it happy for the information, but. Yeah, I think we all know. So my first impressions were, one, it was great to see everything in one place. We’ve heard different things, either talked about it at was sprues or town halls or whatever. So I think it was kind of there.
[00:04:54] In fact, it kind of remind me of people who have been in the community a little longer that originally was a notion. So that’s a website. I’m not even sure what they call it. It’s not a database, but it’s a website tool where you can create different things. They had a roadmap there and lots of people were talking about that a couple of years ago and then it just fell out of disuse.
[00:05:13] So it sounds like this could be the next generation of that. So that’s cool. But I was kind of like, seems like we’ve kind of heard about all this. It was interesting how they were mentioning new ships that would be developed. And what’s the term? So for the showroom, they’d be fully built.
[00:05:30] That’s the wrong word. Good. Trying to remember. So some of the ships are in the gray model or something, so they’re flyable, but you can’t go inside. So the interiors would be done. I guess maybe that’s the key. So the exterior, interior completed ship where you can interact with it fully. So that was kind of cool to see that.
[00:05:44] I think that’s the first time we’ve seen anything about when ships will be. Coming down. But it did seem to be really focused on the UE5 part of the game, which is fine. It’s just like, I thought there was more, but then I realized it was totally me not understanding this roadmap. So there was a whole bunch of tabs at the top.
[00:06:02] I just didn’t see them. So apparently I was just in the, oh, actually, nevermind. I can click on the link. I’m getting better at putting these links in my show notes so I can read a bit, but do make sure to notice at the top some website called productboard. com. There’s a whole bunch of tabs.
[00:06:19] And once I finally realized that this was just, I was just only seeing the release 2. 2, so there were tabs for the preseason and then season zero through eight. So I was like, Oh, okay, my bad. I just didn’t see that. So my. Initial comment that is seeing kind of like things we’ve already heard about and maybe there that was just for the Release 2.
[00:06:40] 2, which is of course, predominantly a UE5 upgrade. So as you get into the earlier or future seasons a lot of the information that I’ve remember hearing about let’s see a two break points ago started to show up. And then I think a lot of the Sage game manual seems to have been. integrated also.
[00:07:00] So I kind of, I mean, my first impression wasn’t like, yeah, this isn’t anything. No, this is, this totally makes sense why it took so long. I think this is a great resource and it sure looked like this might be an ongoing living document. So that as things either get more fleshed out, they’ll add more descriptions to it.
[00:07:19] Maybe things move between seasons or not. I’m not sure, you know, with inevitable delays, but again, I think this is just a really great resource and lots of informations there. So definitely worth the wait. So you know, give credit where credit is due. This is a great resource to show to the community, even, again, don’t need the dates.
[00:07:37] Just again, kind of how everything fits together and where, where things slide in. So I think that’s really great. And again just like when I was talking with Jose and he mentioned kind of having a lore Bible that someday he wants to expose. If this is more on the game design side of Star Atlas this is a great resource to show to the community.
[00:07:54] So, and. to put a even more positive spin on it reading through all those things again, kind of helped me really get out of maybe a little of the doldrums because again, Solana is just so slow. I mean, even using Faction Fleet, the score thing is just excruciatingly painful to have to click four or five times just to restock your ships or something.
[00:08:16] I’m not sure how anybody in Sage Labs is doing it. And again, maybe they’re all using the, the tools that kind of do it behind the scenes. So but humans clicking buttons, I can’t, just way too painful. So, A lot of the things that were mentioned in the roadmap kind of reinvigorated me to, about the things that I really was interested to play as when I first heard about Star Atlas, because back then it was much more about here’s where we’re going and, you know, the different factions and things and to see these broken down into different the ships they’re coming with the play features, both in Sage and the UE5, again kind of adding a little more to the excitement.
[00:08:54] So. Yeah. So I’ll be really interested in what other content creators dig out of what’s in there. Cause it was, it was once I found the tabs, there was a lot there. So that’s, that’s pretty much it kind of from the team and, and, and things that came up in discord. So, but I did have two things that kind of popped out to me.
[00:09:10] One was actually a discord comment early in the week let’s see. Well, wow, really early in the week, 16 Monday, Sunday. Oh, wow. Last Saturday, a week ago. So I, I skim most of the channels. Again, just can’t read them all, but it was interesting. There was a little bit of discussion or something popped out.
[00:09:29] Maybe it’s cause it was from Michael Wagner, the CEO that caught my attention. Cause you know, they got the different colors and things like that. But anyways, he was mentioning, somebody was saying, Something to the effect, hey, the team should have known this was happening. I think this was related to the Solana issues.
[00:09:43] Again, I’m not really sure. I should have copied more of the message to remind myself. But Michael Widener’s response back was that, hey, you’re using early alpha, excuse me, early access pre alpha software. You should know what you’re getting into. And first, I mean, Text is text. I’m in a different generation and we always say, you know, you can’t detect the tone that somebody’s saying.
[00:10:07] And I think that applies to Discord too. There’s also, I think the idea on Discord, you’re kind of a being a little more of a, I don’t know what the right term is, but you know, people are kind of, I don’t know what the right thing is, but again, it’s, it’s kind of a back and forth. If it’s a little more, um, harsh. I don’t know. I don’t know what the right word is for, but you probably know what I mean. The atmosphere on, on internet chat boards and things like that takes on a different tone than if you were hanging out in real life at a coffee shop or a bar talking. So, but I thought this was actually something really interesting and it kind of got me thinking again about what, what have we as a community been told?
[00:10:47] So again, I’m not quoting this to You know, trick up the CEO. But I, but I think it’s really interesting the five words he uses. Early access pre alpha software. So as we know in software development, not just games, but you know, there’s bugs, there’s things like that, but he used two important words pre alpha.
[00:11:09] So it’s not even beta. It’s not even alpha it’s pre alpha, but then he also mentions early access. And I think In hearing more and more about the term early access in the form of game development, especially I think Steam has early access to different things. And I’m pretty sure they have that phrase on the Epic Game Store.
[00:11:26] And then the second sentence, you should know what you’re getting into. And I guess it got me thinking now that, you know, I’ve been in this for a couple of years now, I was like, were we ever told there was going to be a playable game? And I was like, well, yeah, of course it was, but then I was thinking, what was it?
[00:11:44] I mean, there was a white paper, there was an economic paper, there was a website with all this information. And again, I came in after the, the poster sales, which I mean, in retrospect, it sounds like that was the funding plan, you know, you sell posters, in this case, NFTs to make or Fund investment or funding.
[00:12:08] So no different than a Kickstarter or an IPO on the stock market. So, but there was obviously some idea of, well, I’m giving you this money for something. And of course I interpreted when I got involved that, you know, my, my involvement is that someday there’ll be a game, but got me again thinking, were we ever told and more particularly, were ever told what the game was?
[00:12:31] I mean, we were given a grand vision of a game. Metaverse and all that. And, and anyways, it just got me thinking, I mean, what have we told? And then through the last, some of the releases of things specifically some of the early stage of the browser. Cause again, I think at this point in time. To say that UE5 is a game, nobody is claiming that it’s, it’s a tech demo.
[00:12:57] It’s you know, moving forward. I mean, you, you see that, you know, you have to develop some of this stuff. I mean, just a place to load a ship and fly it around. I mean, you, and at some points there’s boundaries in different parts of the show, and you just physically can’t go any further. So again, it.
[00:13:12] And I think of the word too, showroom. They haven’t called it a game. They’ve called it a showroom. And that seems to me to go back to car dealerships. It’s a showroom. You go and you look at something. So that’s never been said as a game. So maybe some of this goes back to Sage, but again, we knew Sage Velocity was a test that pretty clear about that.
[00:13:32] The next version was called Labs. I mean, again, we call it Sage. We probably forget the labs. Labs does not denote a game. Labs denotes laboratory. And what do you do in laboratory? You test your hypothesis. You test your theories. I do remember a few people during, again, Pre the salon outage we’re having now, but earlier on, you know, saying, Hey, you know, people were going to help beta test and they get an unfair advantage because they got early access.
[00:14:00] And so we said, Hey, you know, these issues have real money impacts. I was like, wait, money impacts. So again, games don’t traditionally have real money impacts investments do or something. So I guess where all this is leading me to is, I think, It is helpful, and I’m glad the CEO did respond to someone, even if, again, it was one of those, you know, typical internet back and forths, that we probably might have had lost sight that again, it’s software, it’s not a game, there’s never been a game Score, Faction Fleet was definitely not a game it was a way to get some utility UE5 is a showroom.
[00:14:44] It’s not a game. Now, this next version with racing and all that again, it’s definitely getting closer, but again, that still hasn’t come out yet. And in Sage is, is this next version, Starbase going to be more of a game where there’s strategy and there’s competition and things like that. Even pre combat.
[00:15:02] Yeah, that fits more of the definition of a game. Are there real world money impacts up until now? Yeah. I guess because we’re using crypto coins that have the ability to be traded in for quote, real money. But as everybody always says, this is not financial advice. You know, don’t think of this as an investment.
[00:15:24] You know, it’s a game that just happens to have a crypto coin. So anyways, kind of going off on that soap box and kind of going through, but I guess finally kind of dawned on me that Yeah, maybe being frustrated with Solana, which again isn’t technically Star Alice’s fault, but again, they’re using it.
[00:15:40] But, you know, when, when Sage itself has bugs or when the marketplace doesn’t work again, independent of Solana, different changes the team makes. Again, maybe we do, we should know what we’re getting into. And when those things occur, as much as we want to be frustrated, we want to, you know, post something in discord or something and say, Hey, maybe they should have known better.
[00:16:02] Again, they never claimed it was done. They never even claimed it’s a game. They never even, they just said, here’s this thing. We’re going to test it out in a labs, laboratory. So anyways, I guess just taking maybe step back from all this stuff. I mean, if you’re putting real money in and you’re expecting a real money return, well, that that’s, that’s you.
[00:16:22] Nobody ever claimed you were going to get something. If, if you want to make money, then. Go to places that are stable and have their things. So I guess at the end, just, you know, yes, we were promised this grand vision of a game. We’re never given a date for that grand vision. We’re not even given a roadmap for it to go.
[00:16:42] We’re getting more. They’re testing things. They’re building things. They’ve had their own they mean, sorry, Alice, have their own ups and downs as far as Staffing and financing and things like that. So yeah, just remember, I guess, to quote Michael Wagner, the CEO, it’s early access pre alpha software.
[00:16:58] You should know what you’re getting into. So anyways, it was just an interesting one, small little tidbit, but definitely kind of like, yeah, I guess we shouldn’t get too frustrated when things don’t go right, but move on to last topic. Kind of building upon that, I kind of thought, well, Is there a contract?
[00:17:16] And I use contract in quotes here, but I’m using it because it does have an actual definition between the star, between Stardust and the community. And in other words, was there an agreement that set up this? And I’m almost again, wondering if we have on the same thing, taking that to too far of a thing.
[00:17:35] So To me, yeah, maybe there was a good faith agreement that eventually there’ll be a game built, but Is that really it? I mean, what, what have we been agreeing to? And, I Kind of thought about more and more, and the way I can’t come with it, really the only kind of contract right now is It’s a crowdfunding experiment.
[00:18:01] No different than any Kickstarter project. You Like the idea, they present an idea, and again, Kickstarter just morphed into white papers and economic papers and websites for crypto and web3. They say, hey, here’s our vision for something we want to do, here’s a team we put together, and do you want to give us money?
[00:18:21] And instead of just literally, like on Kickstarter, you, you know, put your credit card in and give them money, you say, hey, great, I’ll give you something for your money for future projects. access or future involvement, i. e. an NFT that happens to be a ship in this case for Star Alice, but really we’re just crowdfunding.
[00:18:38] So is that really it? And I’m thinking, more and more, I’m thinking, yeah, that really is what this whole thing is. Now here’s the downside That was years ago that the crowdfunding part occurred, and now we haven’t got anything for that. Yes, we got these ships, and maybe you could trade them, and maybe you’ve made some money on arbitrage in the marketplace, and maybe you’ve done some something in stage and all this other stuff.
[00:19:03] But really, the contract hasn’t changed. It’s still just that good faith agreement that eventually a game will be built. And again, If you’ve listened to me for a while, you know I’m all about the gaming aspect, not the investment aspect or the politics aspect. I mean, I’m, I’m here to play a game. It’s great that I own ships.
[00:19:20] It’s great that my wallet has a little bit more now that Atlas is up and Solana’s up, but I’m still looking for engaging, engaging experience to spend money on. Not necessarily looking for the other things that other people are, which is fine. Everybody has their own thing. Yeah. So I realized probably what’s occurring in a lot of this is that the downside of where we are right now is time.
[00:19:46] We’ve all invested time in trying to stay motivated, being interest, following the next town hall or atlas brew or announcement or whatever. But in reality, it kind of goes back to the first part. Nothing may actually ever be built. Businesses go out of business all the time for lack of funding for bad product.
[00:20:08] client fit. I mean, a whole lot of things. And some current examples, again, I’m not totally familiar with Star Citizen, but I know it’s been around for a long time, and I think it was more of the traditional Kickstarter crowdfunding thing. Now, I think there’s some playable aspects, but I think it’s also been around for a long, long time.
[00:20:27] Another game, an actual game that people say a lot is inspiration or where we hope to go is EVE Online, and I believe it’s too existed for a long time. And it’s actually a game. There’s got, there’s a game studio behind it. I don’t know their revenue model, but they’re, they are building things. So I consider it a playable game.
[00:20:48] So we’re not different than any of those, especially if you go back probably to the early runs, I’d be shocked at Star Citizen or EVE Online during their first two years was anywhere where they are at this point, again, wherever they are again, just examples that I don’t really know enough. So. I guess to kind of wrap this one up and the other one, I guess at this point we are just sort of still in a phase where we just are committed.
[00:21:16] One, for spending time to keep staying engaged, you know, reading discord, going to town halls, maybe doing a showroom test you know, looking for the next version of Sage. Some of us decide to keep putting money in for You know, whatever purposes, we want more ships, we want more structures you know, again, some people are now saying they’re, they’re bullish on everything and they want to buy the big Titan ships.
[00:21:42] But really I think the commitment is basically to spend time, sometimes money, to just continue believing in a vision. That someday there’ll be this thing that we read about whenever we engaged with Star Atlas. so much. And as long as we’re, I guess, got our eyes open to this and kind of understand the, the unofficial contract that again, we’re, we’re dealing with early access, pre alpha software.
[00:22:07] And again, we should go in with our eyes open. We know we’re getting it, then, then everything’s fine. There’s, there’s actually no problems. It’s just when, you know, you expected something that wasn’t ever said, either promised or not. Or actually in a contract, then that’s where the frustration comes into play and other things.
[00:22:26] And I guess just to wrap this up again, we just need to be aware of what we’re doing because the vision still sounds really cool, but there’s no timeline. There’s no guarantee that we’ll complete it. But things like the roadmap coming out, it’s like, Hey, yeah, I remember all these things. I was told I kind of forgot about them because again, when you can’t.
[00:22:44] move your ship and undock it in a web browser thing. Yeah, it is kind of frustrating. So anyways, so kind of leaving it on a ambiguous note there. Cool roadmap, awesome things coming. But again, lots of time and efforts don’t used to occur before we get to the point where there, and I guess, I guess maybe to summarize where, where I am personally, again, I am looking for something that’s engaging, playable game that I’m interested in.
[00:23:13] Coming back to on a very frequent basis. That’s, that’s the thing I’m really looking for in the short term, long term. It would be great to have a long term ecosystem, metaverse game, whatever. That’s constantly being developed obviously financially stable for the team because they can’t make money.
[00:23:32] They can’t keep building and, and we move forward to something that we like for a long time. I’m still interested in that. So I’m going to be around again next week. So, We’ll wrap that up again. If you’re interested in, in a couple of the IP, or excuse me, the star Atlas intellectual property builder projects, I’m in again, I’m trying to develop a merch store.
[00:23:51] Please go to intergalacticgear. com and fill out my merch survey. If you like to hang out with other gamers, maybe not. looking to join a guild or a DAC please go to intergalactic coalition. com and sign up for the interest survey there. Once I get enough people we’ll be able to create that again, I’m trying to get a group before I spend time building out the community.
[00:24:11] So that’s it. Hope you have a great week ahead. Again, this is Matt with the Intergalactic Herald.
