I've followed SC since the beginning (backer 101, I think?). One of the more frustrating things to hear people fill conversations about SC is that what we're now seeing 'wasn't in the original pitch'. I don't think anyone disagrees with this.
Well, I
kinda do
. I do genuinely think Chris Roberts has stuck pretty close to the original pitch. Granted, there are many things that are much more detailed than the original pitch indicated - but then again, the original pitch doesn't spell out point by point how each feature will look. It would be a different story if we were comparing the current project with some sort of full design document - then we'd undoubtedly see massive differences. But his pitch was basically, for a complete universe with complete freedom to do anything - there's a lot of room for expansion in that statement without going off pitch.
I'm a bit surprised that no one else has mentioned the sordid stuff around Chris' wife in the article. I don't care where any of that is true or not, but it felt very out of place and inappropriate in relation to the rest of the article. It's nice to see there are still journalists around that know how to read a court document or two, but I just found myself asking 'why am I reading this? How does this have any relevance to SC'?
I think the reason nobody has mentioned it is precisely because people don't see the relevance, and so chose to ignore it. As for me, I could see why the journalist felt this was an important potential lead to follow - but recognising that it was a lead worth following is not the same as recognising that the results of the lead were worth reporting. Is Chris Roberts' wife's (and his own) behaviour in her personal life relevant to Star Citizen? Potentially, yes - after all, she is an extremely important member of the company, who undoubtedly bears a lot of responsibility for how the project has been conducted. So, who she is in her private life, how her relations with Chris Roberts have developed, and all the earlier strife, these are all potentially important things in establishing character. You see that in law, as well - things that are relatively circumstantial are brought in to establish points about the accused's character. The trouble is, though, that we're not in court. A journalist has the freedom to follow up leads, decide whether they are relevant or not, and then make the decision to include or cut them from the article. From an ethical standpoint, he also has a duty not to include anything that even remotely reeks of slander, and that doesn't just mean avoiding falsehoods, but also avoiding irrelevant truths.
In this case, it definitely seems to me that this lead ultimately went nowhere interesting. Granted: it definitely makes both Chris Roberts and his current wife less sympathetic, and indeed it suggests that they are utterly untrustworthy (anyone who breaks a marital vow, is by definition capable of breaking any lesser vow or promise as well). However, people today have a remarkably schizophrenic approach, and you see in many, many, many cases that someone who is a total scumbag in their private life, treats their professional ethics as sacred. Considering this, the author would really have to prove that the way they behave in private somehow has bearing on their professional behaviour. Since he fails to show any evidence of this, at the end of the day, he ends up with a lot of dirt of no demonstrable relevance - which, from the perspective of journalist ethics, is extremely questionable. Then again, in the modern era, most journalists hardly have any ethics left, so what else could we expect?
