No better way to rustle jimmies than to mention the likely truth that Star Citizen is vaporware and will never see the light of day. The more time passes the more likely that is. Anyone not invested in its success can look at the timeline of moves by the company up to now, the scope of the project and its bloat, and especially the CEO, and reach the same conclusion. Nonetheless, I expect to have this same argument with a starry-eyed dreamer 5 years from now.
I watched the game play demo they presented at the recent Citizencon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-fkMHOyswU). As I don't follow Star Citizens development closely, it was a fascinating view into that universe and the developers behind it. To me it felt they're getting lost in all the little details on the planets, instead of concentrating a bit more on the space and its use with space ships. After all, selling space ships is what they make a lot of money with.
They're talking about an incredible level of detail on the ground (e.g. a working subway system, physically correct ice cubes in drinks and plans to receive damage, when you're in a room with a fire, which consumes the available oxygen), but there was literally nothing about new stuff in space (or is that already completely done and working?).
Given their ambitions I hope they succeed long term and will continuously develop the game, similar to EVE Online.
As someone who doesn't play but has watched it through its development, I feel like the developers have a fatal weakness for shiny objects (not that anyone needed me to tell them this). I'd be much more bullish on such an iteratively developed mega game if it started out focusing on an MVP and added stuff from there, instead of this discordant feature vomit. I don't think there's anything wrong with the iterative model for game development (even "boxed" games are doing it; see Overwatch, Diablo etc.) but it needs to be managed sanely and developers shouldn't be afraid to redo stuff when the standard changes or get too caught up in sunk costs.
All this has done was to get Chris Roberts out of debt and now seriously rich, get his wife to star in a film next to Gary Oldman and give his brother a cushy job. Delivering a game at this point would be killing the golden goose. Chris is paying himself literally millions from your money and presumably laughing all the way to bank. He has nothing to gain from ending development as long as you're paying his exorbitant salary.
All this dough and no time to work on the Linux port they promised from a long-met stretch goal, or the only reason I originally backed it, something I now deeply regret.
There's a lot of negativity aimed at Star Citizen, but from where I stand they are the closest to building the game that a whole lot of people want to play.
Note: Closest != close
The idea of getting a crew together to fly a large spaceship around is a foundational piece of the sci-fi narrative -- from Leviathon Wakes to Firefly, Star Wars to Star Trek. We want to play those kinds of stories, but that's a challenging game to build. Star Citizen seems to be the first game to seriously try and build it.
Do I think they'll succeed? I'm not sure. Am I really, really hoping they do? Hell yeah.
SC is a huge disappointment for me. It is not playable yet, even though there are things to do if you log on. It looks like it has all the features of a bubble - a hype. If this had been a normal project everyone involved would be worried about whether or not they can deliver due to the continuous postponements. It is not a normal project however, people are still "buying the pitch". It's the idea of SC and the vision of SC that keep people enthusiastic, and SC are feeding the hopeful. It is however suspicious that they have changed their TOS to make them less customer (player) friendly in the "rights dep". If they finish the vision I will definitively use my license to try it out, even though they seem to take the "pay to win" concept to new highs. I very much feel that the money I have spent, though, has been lost to someone who did not succeed to deliver. That is not uncommon in early access games, and is what to expect from many projects I and others help by purchasing an early license. SC However is different, though. They seem to keep on building the hype instead of coming out clean and say it as it is. The game will most likely launch one day, but I expect it will be something completely different than originally sold to me and many many others. I hope they prove me wrong, but as of today SC is guilty of promising more than they can keep
What a lot of people seem to forget is their backers voted to keep going:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13...
To a lot of backers this isn't just a game, they wan't to build a space matrix.
Lets also remember that crowd funding is not the only way this game has been funded, primarily yes but there's always been private equity and I wouldn't be shocked if we hear about more in the future.
Star Citizen is the excuse to build a platform for a digital universe.
I was on the fence when Star Citizen first showed up, but in the end I avoided it because the goal just seemed so absurdly over complicated. The Wing Commander series was great, and Freelancer was tons of fun, but the idea of having a brand new studio turn that kind of skill based gameplay into an MMO was just crazy talk. I spent a fair amount of time in EvE so its not like I hated the MMO idea, it was just too obvious the core idea was overly ambitious at best.
If they had started with S42 as a single player game, with a massive universe you could actually have an effect on (like X1/2/3, but you know, good), and then said they were building out a MMO version of it, I'd have thrown my wallet at them.
I got there early (big fan of freelancer), and played a bit. The game is just technically bad for now. Like not even a pleasant alpha to explore. I won't get my hopes up.
I'm so frustrated with star citizens development. Don't get me wrong I'm a happy backer (only $20 so maybe that's why haha), but I spent months of my free time writing software to work with star citizen, and due to the glacial pace, I feel like it's a waste of time.
Full voice controlled copilot with onscreen overlays, voic support and fully customisable commands - useful for the dozen or so pilots I was able to get to test, but it's quite difficult to gain any sales when the game isn't anywhere near where we thought it would be by now.
Oh well, at least I learnt a lot (my first software release haha).
I'm a backer of Star Citizen and I've gotten my value out of backing it just from the community and all of the content that keeps coming out on the game. It's been $50 for me for hundreds of hours of entertainment so far, much better value than two tickets to the movies.
I do believe that there has been a bunch of mismanagement, which is a shame, but I still look forward to playing it sometime within the next 5-10 years. No game has ever been as ambitious as the scope of what Star Citizen aims to do.
The core problem here is how one goes about seeking funding. Star Citizen has been hugely successful in gaining funding, which has been more of a problem than a benefit. Every new round of crowd funding or investment was married to increased promises from the devs to deliver even more. The game had to be all things to all people. Which is always easy to do hypothetically in the future than practically in the here and now.
> including lifetime insurance, for £536.
uhm. Insurance? On your in game digital asset? Really?
Star Citizen, aka Feature Creep: The Game.
Why
6 years ago I was 20 years old in college. I got so excited a new a mmo to play in space and drank the kool-aid. Dropped $150, played with my super cool ship in my hanger at 15~fps having a good time looking at all the details on my aegis gladius, watching the stairs come out of the ship and so on.
Eventually I could fly it, and it was cool but of course it was alpha and there was nothing to do except drink more kool-aid. More ships, more promises, more stars, more space.
Now, my same ship can land on planets, I can walk around and it's great. Honestly it's pretty cool. The only issue is now I am 26, married, spend 75% of my awake time working or with my wife. I don't want an mmo.
I am no longer the target demographic, and the majority of the early adaptors are not either.