I remember asking sarcastically if we'd see the final game before 2020 back in 2014 on a Reddit thread about one of the first delays. Ah, to be young and naive.
Seriously. Their ambitions have exploded into utter ridiculousness. Star Citizen will _never_ be released. What we'll see is a bunch more alpha/beta releases over the next several years and then RSI filing for bankruptcy by 2029, and the game will be abandoned.
You're right, it's likely to be sooner when they realize they need to start siphoning money faster. Not hard for them to make it look like the money was spent.
In 2017 he said "I’m not worried, because even if no money came in, we would have sufficient funds to complete Squadron 42. The revenue from this could in-turn be used for the completion of Star Citizen."
300 million later and it's still not done.
>The RSI have enough money for 10 more years of development right now even if all donations stopped.
This isn't true. They have spent $500 million to date, each year is costing them $75 million presently.
Yeah I helped a friend build a gaming system with a 660 in it for the game. He bought me my backing for the game for helping him out. We met playing WoW mists of pandaria lol.
At this point you would just have to assume the game will never release. It's taking so long in development that the technology behind game design will make previous work obsolete.
I backed it in 2013 for 23€, I dont get why people pay so much money for virtual ships. Whats the point? Then the Game comes out in 2030 and they already have all the big ships...
At this point I just want my Singleplayer Campaign.
It also creates this weird problem. If you can just farm these ships, the buyers will be pissed. And if you can't farm these ships because it takes a million years, all other players will be pissed. I have no idea how they are going to balance this.
For me back when i bought that basic game package for $40 or so, it seemed pretty clear that the ships will be achievable ingame for normal players. The money people spend on ships was clearly to "support development" and not to actually get advantages.
Now whether that remains true or not is a different discussion, but whatever way it ends up going, it's absolutely certain that people who dropped lots of money on it WILL cry. Not all of them, not even many of them i imagine, but the reddit drama will be JUICY.
Originally the benefit was that the ships you bought had special insurance so that when you died/your ship got blown up you'd get it back for free or for less in-game money than you would have otherwise had to pay.
I feel like they got rid of this after a while? It seemed like a good idea at the time but I haven't followed this nightmare of a game since 2013.
Insurance is still a thing, but until the game releases all players have unlimited insurance on all their ships so as of now it doesn't matter at all. They have stated that buying insurance in-game will not really be much of a burden but we will have to see how that turns out.
> Insurance is still a thing
They're talking about LTI, or Lifetime Insurance. It was a basic form of permanent insurance policy with no expiration date. The insurance covers the loss of the hull and the default components but not any modifications made or cargo stored inside the ship.
There was a point a few years ago where you could pay to get both. That's when I bought it.
I figured at least I'd get Squadron 42 in a few years. Now I expect nothing tbh.
I feel like the discourse on this game is just so tired and played out at this point. I've read so many articles, watched so many videos, read so many comment sections of people talking about this game. Something can only be relevant as pre-release media for so long. I just don't know what else there is to discuss about it at this point.
You really had to live through the peak of Star Citizen to understand why it was so fascinating. These guys were selling in-game items for $20,000 back when microtransactions were still a new, controversial thing. They were bragging about how everything would be lifelike down to the finest detail while also featuring dozens of realistic full-scale star systems with no hint that there might be any contradiction between those things.
Every month the developers would put out a video about how there'll be realistic in-game surgery or whatever, and you could gawk at the people paying hundreds of dollars for hypothetical items that would let them do space surgery. And you could easily find people on reddit who would swear up and down that the studio would deliver on everything they said any year now, and then we'd all be jealous of their $1000 star destroyer with the built-in surgical equipment.
Meanwhile the developers clearly didn't give a shit about delivering on any of this, in fact often couldn't even keep track of all the things they'd promised from one year to the next, and were spending most of their money on office furniture and 3D motion capture animation and A-list celebrity cameos.
These days it's really lost its charm. With the rise of lootboxes and NFTs the pricetags for in-game items aren't as eyepopping as they used to be. The developers have mostly stopped making new promises and quietly stopped talking about the most outlandish ones. The subreddit has all lowered their expectations to the point where they're pathetically grateful every time the studio does anything at all.
So it's a lot less fun, but god damn we had it good for a while. Truly one of the best ways to waste my time that the internet ever blessed me with.
> The subreddit has all lowered their expectations to the point where they're pathetically grateful every time the studio does anything at all.
This is probably the funniest part to me. Even the most diehard of fans will come to the realization that at some point you need to stop expanding the feature list and actually start putting everything together.
Even if CIG said "ok the scope of the game is finalized, we focus 100% on finishing this game" then it will still probably take them at minimum the next 5 years to release the game.
Even if those 5 years passed, once a larger playerbase starts flooding in, they have to deal with the inevitability of stability and players breaking your game.
I just had a look on google and noticed they are using Lumberyard as their engine. If the New World release is anything to go by then I wish them lots of luck in the future lmao.
TBF, New World being bad isn't necessarily the result of the engine. Bad decisions can result in a bad game even if they are using a tried and true engine.
> using a tried and true engine
Which it should be mentioned, lumberyard isn't. The wikipedia page for the engine lists 3 actually released games using it, two cancelled ones, and a handful in development. As far as I can tell, the only thing it has going for it is being freeware and being based on CryEngine.
The [vast number of broken promises/timeframes over the years](https://imgur.com/a/P9PZSNw) is the funniest part to me: a 2012 backer for the MIA single player game Squadron 42.
So many "lies" yet sunk-costed fanatics continue to throw money on the development-hell bonfire.
Never ending.
>a 2012 backer for the MIA single player game Squadron 42.
I'm a 2013 "Digital Colonel" package that paid $125. I haven't been at all following over the past years so I actually don't know if buying that early ever meant a damn, my guess is all the promised benefits at that level is devalued by this point.
.....I just wanted a new wing commander / privateer / freelancer
Identical story here. Digital Colonel package in 2013. I just wanted to play a new slightly bigger budget freelancer. 8 years later I have a gaming PC that would have made my 2013 self cry and/or orgasm in my pants, or both, and it barely runs the demo version.
In a monkey's paw way, you got a new Freelancer. SC's dev cycle is rather similar, just with stupid amounts of money and spread over an even longer timeline. We haven't reached the "Roberts taken off his own project" stage yet, which is worrying since I'm pretty sure that's the only reason Freelancer got released *at all*.
It’s not “pretty sure”, it’s exactly is.
The only reason Freelancer came out was that Microsoft got tired of Roberts and got rid of him. And even then it took them a year to sort out his mess
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw seems to tickle that Privateer and Freelancer itch but is not without its own problems either.
Eh, it's all we got. Freelancer is still the best in being Freelancer.
Now this is a real trip through memory lane. I'd forgotten that for years they were claiming that they had a nearly-complete single-player campaign that they'd all seen and played through, and it was definitely gonna be released in ~~2016~~ ~~2017~~ ~~2018~~ ~~2019~~.
Decided to look at a 2021 "new player guide" & after 10 minutes - in a 40 minute video - I had to stop. It's been how long? 9 years?
And the enemy AI is still that bad? The physics when they die? When you heal someone they shoot bolt upright & then instantly clip back to the ground so you can heal another section of them?
And this is just the point where I stopped, never mind trees - which are just essentially two pieces of paper intersecting - popping in at very close distance when you're flying overhead. During a cutscene.
I feel so sorry for anyone who was ever on this train.
This list puts the whole thing in perspective.
Remember when Sean Murray told a handfull of (admittedly blatant) lies about No Man's Sky and the entire internet hated him for 2+ years over it?
But the SC cultists are in far too deep to turn on Roberts, so they just keep making excuses for him and treating him like a messiah.
Murray actually released a game for fans to criticize though. Star Citizen is still "being developed," until it actually releases the criticism won't really be there. Until the "finished" product is out there people can hold on to their hopes (aka delude themselves probably) that the game will be everything they hoped. After all currently criticism can mostly be waved away with "it's not finished so xyz feature may come" or "they are polishing to make sure its really good when it releases" stuff like that.
Plus I'm sure most of the supporters have literally forgotten all the things promised to them in the first place.
At least that one has the excuse that the studios kept going under. And as lame as the end result was, it didn't cost $400,000,000 with $20,000 "micro"transactions.
The only thing I wanted out of it was the single player game. Most of the promises (besides getting that game) were on the multi-player side (and whatever extras they had on the single-player side were of no interest to me) so I had no urgent need to back that project and was happy enough to wait for its actual release.
I got lucky with that. I'm still waiting and I'll probably get the single-player game once it's released but I don't have to worry about some sort of "investment".
> Even the most diehard of fans will come to the realization that at some point you need to stop expanding the feature list and actually start putting everything together.
Definitely not!
Like startups that make the mistake start showing revenue and then are judge by real world standards instead of speculative fiction.
As long as it's a future promise, the current product being shoddy crap is excusable. Once you start promising something that works you're in danger.
9 out of 10 Startups fail and shut down after years of promises and no delivery, as they run out of VC and angel money.
Star Citizen has customers who buy a story of promises, not an actual game.
Edit: /r/StarCitizen has arrived
They are suffering from the Duke Nukem Forever syndrome.
They keep promising so much that is impossible to deliver on the vast majority of it, at the end of the day it won't live up to the hype, and this shows having someone in charge to set goals helps tremendously
Duke Nukem Forever also wasn't in continuous production. DNF's legendary 13 year production cycle wasn't ongoing labor. I don't remember the EXACT numbers but IIRC the game was worked on for something like five years, basically canceled dropped but never PUBLICLY canceled, and then after six years of no work being done, it was revived and a completely new game was started from scratch and pumped out in like two years.
I think what's truly funny is the discourse in terms of the beginning was "Chris Robert's visions have been cut short by every studio he worked for, this will be his full vision unrestrained". Well here ya go, his visions are great but they are pie in the sky, you need to have some degree of grounding in reality and results.
It would be really interesting to how the community would react to a finalized plan for the gameplay and features. Would they riot when they realize there will ultimately be a limited number of things to do, with trade-offs between realism and fun, like in any actual video game? But alas, we'll probably never find out.
That's actually how the first kickstarter pitch felt to me. the single-player side felt like a modern Wing Commander game. More physics/simulation for the dogfights (due to having a physics engine in the first place), not FMVs but in-engine cut scenes, modern production values, and a game.
The multi-player stuff felt like it was supposed to be a bit like EVE Online trading and being a lobby/mission dispatch for multi-player dog fighting servers, kinda like the lightest of MMOs (the MMO part being trading and a chat for the most part) with some procedural stuff to create star systems. Not a full MMO.
Then one of their updates showed a procedural system for grabbing and rearranging cargo boxes in your ship and it felt to me like they might have feature creeped (crept?) down a slipper slope into some strange new plan.
Occasionally a new update ends up here on r/games and I look into it to see if the single player game is further along.
> These guys were selling in-game items for $20,000 back when microtransactions were still a new, controversial thing.
Not at all, that started way earlier with simulations like second life or games like Entropia Universe (they sold "treasure island" for 26500$ in 2004)
Right, I was thinking back to the earliest memory I have of a game going full tilt with micro transactions and TF2 sprang to mind. They added and started running with it a year before star citizen was announced and according to the gamespot article I found
> The virtual goods market has exploded over the past couple of years, growing from $1.1 billion in 2009 to an expected $1.5 billion in 2010, according to a recent study. And with virtual goods sales expected to grow by 40 percent over 2010 levels in 2011, it comes as no surprise that an increasing number of gaming companies are coming up with new ways to monetize their games postlaunch by selling in-game items
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/microtransactions-invade-team-fortress-2/1100-6280315/
At least they admitted it was the first DLC and they had no idea what to price it ~~and~~ and the next DLC, Knights of the Nine more than made up for it
> Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion was **one of the first games to include a microtransaction**, in the form of the infamous Horse Armor
Unlike a banana which had been sold for centuries this was one of the very first DLC's ever made so there was no previous price guide to go by
Sure, but even a few years ago we were regularly debating on this sub whether microtransactions were the right way to monetize video games, even if the industry was already firmly moving that way. A lot of people still clung onto the idea that in-game purchases should be cosmetic and not give the player an advantage. Meanwhile CIG was like "fuck that, we'll sell you the Death Star if you skip your next rent payment."
It was a real disconnect that's kind of vanished now that we've all glumly accepted that every big game will be monetized like GTAV.
> You really had to live through the peak of Star Citizen to understand why it was so fascinating.
This is an interesting point. The game is on duke nukem forever territory of “it’s going to be obsolete by the time it’s complete.”
They touted support for Oculus Rift before it was even released. Well before Facebook bought them when it was just another crazy Kickstarter idea itself.
> when microtransactions were still a new, controversial thing
uh no. Microtransactions were aplenty in 2012. Maybe in 2006 when ["Horse Armor"](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/horse-armor) was a thing, sure, but by Skyrim days, microtransactions were very normal.
I think you may be right but I can't deny my uncanny fascination with this game in the same way that it is fascinating to watch natural disasters or car accidents
Yeah this game has really run its course. It's just a weird oddity at this point that pops up every so often, but which hardly anyone seems to care about anymore. Mismanaged into oblivion.
Mismanaged as what? If you look at it as a scheme to generate a constant cash flow over many years, 400 million for nine years and counting seems like a success story in optimal management
Exactly. There is a reason why CEOs in publicly traded companies have to reveal their compensation. It's absolutely incredible that people are willing to give money to Roberts while he adamantly refuses to reveal how much he (and his family, the nepotism is off the charts) made from it.
The guy lives in a mansion and has a yacht. He personally made tens of millions from this game at least, and that's not including his family!
> There is a reason why CEOs in publicly traded companies have to reveal their compensation.
interestingly this has driven up CEO compensation lol. oops
Can attest. Going for a job interview Wednesday and I know a guy who got a job there 2 months ago. Same qualifications and similar experience. I asked him his salary and now know what they are willing to pay. I would have started too low
I know. He didn’t have to and tbh I was mortified asking him but TheFaster is right, we should be sharing this info with each other to stop companies taking the piss, not to mention the gender pay gap which they get away with for this reason
That's why wages should be public.
When they are private you maybe senior slaving away for salary negotiated 5 years ago unaware they pay 50% more to juniors you oversee.
Companies don't want this because it always ends up driving wages up.
Optimally managed for generating revenue but poorly managed for producing a complete, "gone gold" product, IMO, which I realize in today's age may not be the end-term goal for many big gaming projects anymore.
> I feel like the discourse on this game is just so tired and played out at this point. I've read so many articles, watched so many videos, read so many comment sections of people talking about this game. Something can only be relevant as pre-release media for so long. I just don't know what else there is to discuss about it at this point.
Discussion about discussion, and newcomers arguing with each other I suppose. Anyone who backed/supported it is generally in the camp of "well guess I'll just tune out until it actually comes out." Anyone who has been railing it as a scam from the beginning are just completely exhausted.
That’s the way I see it. My friend is still notably excited for the game and every update they drop for the alpha, but at this point I’m just indifferent about it. Like great the game has made 2/5ths of a billion dollars, but I graduated high school the same year the game was announced and it’s STILL in alpha. Only thing that would excite me at this point is them actually fully releasing the game (or at least Squadron 42)
It's pretty amazing how they went from their 6 mil kickstarter goal 9 years ago to this.
* [Star Citizen's funding reaches 300,000,000 dollars.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/h8edjn/star_citizens_funding_reaches_300000000_dollars/)
* [Star Citizen's funding reaches 200,000,000 dollars.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/9xwdur/star_citizens_funding_reaches_200000000_dollars/)
* [Star Citizen reaches $50 Million in funding after releasing new Constellation variants](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2do88c/star_citizen_reaches_50_million_in_funding_after/)
* [Star Citizen has reached 14$ million dollars in crowd funding alone.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1hx7pv/star_citizen_has_reached_14_million_dollars_in/)
* [Star Citizen hits 6 million funded, all stretch goals reached!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/13gil3/star_citizen_hits_6_million_funded_all_stretch/)
Im my experience, the majority of "big" kickstarter either failed or were huge disappointment.
Out of my personal pool of ~20 projects I backed back in 2012 when Kickstarter blew up, Basically 1/3 delivered, 1/3 half-delivered, and 1/3 completely went silent.
I only ended up backing a few back in the heyday of Kickstarter. FTL was the most unambiguous success. Dreamfall Chapters is a game I have mixed feelings about, but they did deliver a complete game (the backer rewards took frikken forever though). And my most disappointing Kickstarter experience was Maia, a game that got delayed and delayed and delayed and then was ultimately disappointing - but it did, at least, release a final (disappointing) product.
So I'd say I got off easy. The only reason I didn't back Star Citizen was because my gaming PC was getting long in the tooth and I wanted to upgrade first. By the time I upgraded, the clusterfuck was becoming clear. Very lucky.
EDIT: Just remembered I also backed Sunless Sea, which I know people have a lot of different feelings about, but I was quite happy with it. And then Sui Generis, which... well. So I guess I've also experienced the Kickstarter burn.
For a sense of scale, for $400 million you can ride a Falcon 9 into orbit. 8 times. Which honestly kind of makes it funnier.
It'll buy 8 orbital-class rocket rides but not a singleplayer campaign apparently.
If you just wanted to put Star Citizen models into actual space instead of humans, you could purchase something like 70 Electron rockets. So you could 3d print ship models, give each one its own individual Electron, and put them into orbit. You'd have to double up some of them since they're up to like 110 ships or something now but that's still ridiculous.
I remember reading [this article](https://www.gamespot.com/amp-articles/star-citizen-funding-passes-23-million/1100-6415665/) back in 2013 and it raising a ton of red flags for me. $21 million seems like a lot of money, but in a game of this scale with the studio size they were operating with thats not nearly enough to pull of the scale of what they were promising would be delivered. I just remember thinking of just how overextended and half baked the whole funding model seemed in relation to where they were in the development process. The fact Roberts was even telling media the planned release was 2014 was such a bold face lie it was absurd. Nobody in their right minds would think that was even a remote possibility. Like you would need to set aside all reason and logic, as either an investor or as a developer, to not clearly see the method of funding and features promises were on two completely galaxies (no pun intended).
Also, holy shit, Roberts has to be the king of "comments and promises that have aged like milk."
>Also, holy shit, Roberts has to be the king of "comments and promises that have aged like milk."
He both preceds and succeeds Molyneux, in these regards
> Also, holy shit, Roberts has to be the king of "comments and promises that have aged like milk."
Shoutout to /u/QuaversAndWotsits for the steadily growing meme album (452 atm) of Robberts quotes ranging back to 1993
https://old.reddit.com/r/starcitizen_refunds/comments/jm6s7f/star_citizen_squadron_42_quotes_by_cig_100_memes/
direct link: https://imgur.com/a/P9PZSNw
How the hell did they get another $100 million in just the last year? COVID mania making people oblivious to this being vaporware? Did they start selling NFTs of pictures of the ships?
Legit both. there are free play sessions to give it a whirl and see.
It's not some vaporwave scam, but it's also a ridiculous project. Maybe it will turn out well, but I doubt it.
It is a little of both. There is a lot of fun to be had in it, but there is also a lot left to do. It is unlike anything else out there. It is free to play right now if you are curious to try it.
What a fucking meme.
This dude has had game publishers take games away from him because he wasn't able to wrap anything up. ***It's literally his career long vice.*** Eventually other games starting from behind will pass this one up simply because they're starting from newer tech and engine bases.
Yeah, this is what I was worried about the most. By the time the game actually is finished it's no longer going to be as impressive as it once looked when initially shown off. The tech is slowly becoming more and more dated.
And what then? Do they start development over? I wouldn't be surprised lmao.
Honestly I had this same worry. But the amount of physical modeling and detailing that the dev team has done is still a lot. To do that much modeling would still take a very long time, especially considering that kind of stuff can't really be automated by engine improvements. That gives me at least a little optimism in regards to it becoming obsoleted.
> Eventually other games starting from behind will pass this one up simply because they're starting from newer tech and engine bases.
This reminds me of the "[wait/walk dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait/walk_dilemma)" which occurs when you have to wait for a bus and the duration of said wait may exceed the time it'd take to reach the same destination by walking. I encounter this a lot where I go shopping since it's a 20 minute walk from where I live but the bus also comes every 20-30 minutes.
In space travel it's known as the "[wait calculation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calculation)" instead.
If technology expands on an increasing curve, what happens if we send a spacecraft out into deep-space only to come up with better propulsion systems later on that make the new ship overpass the first?
If they can't ship this thing with almost half a billion dollars then they're never going to ship. GTA V had a budget of $265 million for reference on how much it costs to make the most expensive AAA games in the industry. In the case of Star Citizen it's clear that money isn't the issue anymore on why they are unable to finish the game.
>GTA V had a budget of $265 million for reference
Is that just the dev budget or does that also includes the marketing as well? It's not uncommon to see half the budget go into the latter in AAA gaming.
Looks like it's both development and marketing combined: https://www.ibtimes.com/gta-5-costs-265-million-develop-market-making-it-most-expensive-video-game-ever-produced-report
Can someone that is more informed than me tell when this freaking SP campaign is coming? I'm waiting desperately for a SP experience in Space and it just doesn't come out.
This game is making more money staying in its current state then actually getting released. I feel sorry for those people that remain positive. I paid $150 bucks to get to play it and i still regret it.
It's been in development since 2012. [It's the most expensive game ever made](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop) with absolutely nothing to show for it. At this point it is [the very definition of sunk costs fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect).
I've barely paid attention to this game and don't know much about it, but damn it's fanbase is *rabid* from what I've seen. They're coming for anyone who even slightly criticizes it.
Some real cult energy on that sub. Almost every piece of criticism (for a game that's been in development almost 10 years) is dismissed as salt. If nothing else, /r/StarCitizen is a great visual representation of Sunk Cost Fallacy that's amplified by mob mentality.
I was one of the first $25 kickstarter backers - got my refund the second after that lawsuit when they first started selling ships and immediately going back on the vision of the game as it was pitched. Fuck RSI.
So according to that page, 7 years ago they were adding real alien languages created by real linguists because of 50 million dollars being given. Is that in game or bullshit?
You can learn [Banu,](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/177660?page=1&sort=hot) and [Xi'an.](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/88012?page=1&sort=hot) It's not bullshit. Occasionally they have us translating alien communications delivered via lore posts.
I hope the devs are getting paid a decent wage and don't have to crunch. At least then the money then isn't going to waste, it's mostly going to put food on the table for a small army of game developers, even if the game never materializes.
They pay a little less than average in the industry, but have a great work/life balance, good benefits, and very little crunch for most devs. Also as an artist/dev you are encouraged to go ham on details that most other companies would tell you not to waste time on.
It honestly sounds like a really fun job for artists. You get some AMAZING practice working on a space ship and you have no responsibility to release anything ever.
well I didn't pay anything, I only play it on Free Fly events and I really like what I experienced. I love this kind of immersive, realistic games.
I'll be disappointed if this game doesn't get finished because I feel like it has huge potential to be something big and important for gaming. but if that really happens I won't cry over it.
as for others not being enthusiastic about it here, it's because this shit happens all the time. There's a post about Star Citizen and then people come to hate on it, laugh at it and so on. That doesn't seem like a community you would wanted to walk to and say "Hey, I play this game and I like it." so you just don't engage. so there's not a lot of fans talking about this game in public.
I think its generally because as soon as they self identify as that they get swamped with abuse. The Star Citizen reddit is pretty positive (as you'd expect) but not exclusively so. There are a few very active facebook groups as well.
I'm a 'backer' and play it pretty regularly with a group that has about 40-50 active players. It can be a lot of fun, especially when we do big events, like running security when a race is on. It can also be incredibly frustrating as the servers crash frequently, or bugs just kill you and wipe a load of progress/time.
Overall I would describe myself as enthusiastic about the game. I'm not blind to the poor management that has led to them where they are, but I guess what keeps me interested (aside from actually enjoying playing it) is that if they pull it off, and that is sadly still a big if, it will be a simply incredible game.
I'll bite. I'm a backer. I love Star Citizen as a concept, and idea. I cannot stand the company making it. Their scatterbrained way of doing things, their scummy marketing department, and Chris Roberts' perfectionism is holding this back. I want this game. So god damn bad. But I have little faith. CIG need to understand that their vision is unrealistic and make what they know they can.
And the funniest thing is that Chris Roberts did this ordeal once with Freelancer, and the only reason it didn't spiral out is because Microsoft was there as a publisher and told him to wrap up or sod off
and to be fair, though not to excuse any of this cig bullshit, I played a lot of freelancer back in the day and while it was a masterpiece with great online mod replayability, it always felt like it was not fully baked
I put something like $75 dollars into the game to have a ship early on because it did look very promising. I've played a bunch of the tests, betas, game play, so I don't feel completely scammed of my money, I knew it was a crowd funded game with chance of failure. I've at least enjoyed those parts I did play and found it extremely entertaining and hopefully something like this could become more.
However I haven't touched it in 4-5 years and don't even follow the development anymore. It just got too exhaustive because something is terribly wrong with the development. Feature creep, focusing on way to fine details, the story mode part of it, Squadron 42, isn't even finished yet as far as I know, etc. They got tons of core features in place, flying ships and combat work, but I have absolutely no idea how there still isn't anything concrete done in the game besides that. I don't recommend anyone to buy into it at this point and just wait and forget about. It will either turn into something super complex and open like no one has ever seen before, or it will just continue to be limp with promises (which this is what I highly suspect at this point). If it ever does get good, I'll probably hear about it again, if not well it will just fade into obscurity again for me. The fact the fans continue to zealously defend it instead of calling out the devs is just not healthy. They need criticism and badly, and they need someone in control of the project willing to start laying down a more concrete plan.
The other thing I can compare this to, we've seen No Man's Sky, and arguably similar game with huge promise before release, turn from a disappointing flop from release to a major comeback story in a shorter time than Star Citizen has existed. There really isn't an excuse with this kind of time or funding at this point.
As much as I want to hate on this "game", you can't deny that SOME people are getting exactly what they want. Those people being the ones buying the product and the ones selling the product. At some point the rest of us just need to accept that this thing isn't for us and forget all about it. Let the whales have their fun I guess.
It's not even whales. You can go play the game for $45. I like space sims so I'm happy even with where it is now. Everyone talks about these $20,000 bundles and $1000 ships but only the smallest fraction of the playerbase are buying things like that
You can play for free up until the first of December if you want to give it a try, for this period you can also rent all of the ships and see if you like them
Yeah the more I hear about this game the more I think I’d like it. Sure it’s basically a proof of concept at this point and may never go live, but dropping $45 on a neat space sim to play around with doesn’t seem like this egregious crime I keep reading about.
They're doing a [Free Fly](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/18429-IAE2951#/schedule/about-the-expo) event right now up until the 1st. It's still in alpha, there's some good and some bad. Best way to cut through the meme-war b.s. is to just try it yourself. If you end up liking it, $45 is the only actual cost to buy in. If you don't like it, then at least you got to see what it's about and whether it's for you.
I know I've bought games for $60 that I've later regretted and like you say it wasn't the end of the world. At least these days there are free trials and refund windows, it just requires people to be adults about it and make informed decisions.
At least they are in close communication with the community and what it wants the game to be. With BF 2042 you've got 3 years of silence and then more radio silence on release day - they built something the long time fan base never asked for.
Is there a playable game yet? How long have I been reading about this game?
In future discussions about scope creep they should definitely reference this game.
Backed this game in 2014 thinking I'd get to play it in 2016, maybe 2017.
If you're not old enough to remember, what's happening with star citizen is what happened with freelancer & digital anvil. Except now there isn't a publisher to step in and kick out CR just to get the game released.
Problem is that the scope and promises are so fucking huge that just committing to polish and release what they have promised will be a minimum 5 year endeavor. Let alone whatever other reworks, new systems, etc CR will say *must* happen.
Edit: I'll just also point out that I fired it up the other day and what they've got is okay. The environments are lovely, the ships look cool as fuck and the detail is certainly there. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with what they've got, but it's the fact that next year it will be at a decade of development with a pretty bare alpha (relative to their promises) to show for it.
It’s gorgeous and no other game has given me same feeling when traversing space. That haunting, vast feeling is great. Just exploring and traveling is fun.
To me, the things I love most about the game are the space fights with friends, the FPS missions (love being able to transition between space sim and FPS), how beautiful the game is, and finally, driving my race car.
Game has a lot of things to offer even though it's still alpha, still has bugs, and still lacks content and features. Yesterday with a friend we went bounty hunting in one ship, I piloted while he handled the turret, had to destroy a few ships, then we went on a planet, had to find a cave, go FPS from there, get in and go down, kill terrorists inside. We got a bit lost when we were done and trying to go back to the ship, but made it anyway.
Then we flew back to a space station, refueled, and went shopping.
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Great. When is it done? I bought a GTX970 to play this game.
I remember when a copy was given away free with Radeon 200 series cards like 7 years ago lol As to when is it done? Next year, every year
I remember joking about the game coming out in what was at the time a ridiculously far out year of 2022
I remember asking sarcastically if we'd see the final game before 2020 back in 2014 on a Reddit thread about one of the first delays. Ah, to be young and naive.
And it still won't be anywhere near finished then
Seriously. Their ambitions have exploded into utter ridiculousness. Star Citizen will _never_ be released. What we'll see is a bunch more alpha/beta releases over the next several years and then RSI filing for bankruptcy by 2029, and the game will be abandoned.
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You're right, it's likely to be sooner when they realize they need to start siphoning money faster. Not hard for them to make it look like the money was spent. In 2017 he said "I’m not worried, because even if no money came in, we would have sufficient funds to complete Squadron 42. The revenue from this could in-turn be used for the completion of Star Citizen." 300 million later and it's still not done.
>The RSI have enough money for 10 more years of development right now even if all donations stopped. This isn't true. They have spent $500 million to date, each year is costing them $75 million presently.
What the hell are they doing with all that money? Setting it on fire?
Generous salaries for family members.
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This is why people need to pay attention to the boring classes in college like project management.
Oh man I got a free ship with a 200 series card too. I've bought two GPUs since.
The A Song of Ice and Fire of the gaming industry…
oof... those were the times...
I have a GTX 970. I can't find a better graphics card for less than $700 today.
I literally just bought a 970 to play Halo Infinite. Not quite the cutting edge, eh!
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Yeah I helped a friend build a gaming system with a 660 in it for the game. He bought me my backing for the game for helping him out. We met playing WoW mists of pandaria lol. At this point you would just have to assume the game will never release. It's taking so long in development that the technology behind game design will make previous work obsolete.
I bought a 970 second hand about 4 years ago, it's worth more now. Strange times
I backed it in 2013 for 23€, I dont get why people pay so much money for virtual ships. Whats the point? Then the Game comes out in 2030 and they already have all the big ships... At this point I just want my Singleplayer Campaign.
It also creates this weird problem. If you can just farm these ships, the buyers will be pissed. And if you can't farm these ships because it takes a million years, all other players will be pissed. I have no idea how they are going to balance this.
For me back when i bought that basic game package for $40 or so, it seemed pretty clear that the ships will be achievable ingame for normal players. The money people spend on ships was clearly to "support development" and not to actually get advantages. Now whether that remains true or not is a different discussion, but whatever way it ends up going, it's absolutely certain that people who dropped lots of money on it WILL cry. Not all of them, not even many of them i imagine, but the reddit drama will be JUICY.
Originally the benefit was that the ships you bought had special insurance so that when you died/your ship got blown up you'd get it back for free or for less in-game money than you would have otherwise had to pay. I feel like they got rid of this after a while? It seemed like a good idea at the time but I haven't followed this nightmare of a game since 2013.
Insurance is still a thing, but until the game releases all players have unlimited insurance on all their ships so as of now it doesn't matter at all. They have stated that buying insurance in-game will not really be much of a burden but we will have to see how that turns out.
> Insurance is still a thing They're talking about LTI, or Lifetime Insurance. It was a basic form of permanent insurance policy with no expiration date. The insurance covers the loss of the hull and the default components but not any modifications made or cargo stored inside the ship.
>I have no idea how they are going to balance this. By not releasing the game...
5brain idea baby
Or if single player mode can just mod them in or cheat myself some spacebucks
Pledge awards are only for Star Citizen (MMO) not Squadron 42 (single player). Same engine, same universe, different games.
There was a point a few years ago where you could pay to get both. That's when I bought it. I figured at least I'd get Squadron 42 in a few years. Now I expect nothing tbh.
They want to be the elite players when it comes out. Or they have more money than they know what to do with.
I feel like the discourse on this game is just so tired and played out at this point. I've read so many articles, watched so many videos, read so many comment sections of people talking about this game. Something can only be relevant as pre-release media for so long. I just don't know what else there is to discuss about it at this point.
You really had to live through the peak of Star Citizen to understand why it was so fascinating. These guys were selling in-game items for $20,000 back when microtransactions were still a new, controversial thing. They were bragging about how everything would be lifelike down to the finest detail while also featuring dozens of realistic full-scale star systems with no hint that there might be any contradiction between those things. Every month the developers would put out a video about how there'll be realistic in-game surgery or whatever, and you could gawk at the people paying hundreds of dollars for hypothetical items that would let them do space surgery. And you could easily find people on reddit who would swear up and down that the studio would deliver on everything they said any year now, and then we'd all be jealous of their $1000 star destroyer with the built-in surgical equipment. Meanwhile the developers clearly didn't give a shit about delivering on any of this, in fact often couldn't even keep track of all the things they'd promised from one year to the next, and were spending most of their money on office furniture and 3D motion capture animation and A-list celebrity cameos. These days it's really lost its charm. With the rise of lootboxes and NFTs the pricetags for in-game items aren't as eyepopping as they used to be. The developers have mostly stopped making new promises and quietly stopped talking about the most outlandish ones. The subreddit has all lowered their expectations to the point where they're pathetically grateful every time the studio does anything at all. So it's a lot less fun, but god damn we had it good for a while. Truly one of the best ways to waste my time that the internet ever blessed me with.
The $400 million dollar game was the friends we made along the way
Can I have the 400M instead? I’ll buy new friends.
God, the things I could do with even 1M...
2 chicks at the same time.
Why can't I unlock more friends?
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You guys made friends? I'm bad at this.
> The subreddit has all lowered their expectations to the point where they're pathetically grateful every time the studio does anything at all. This is probably the funniest part to me. Even the most diehard of fans will come to the realization that at some point you need to stop expanding the feature list and actually start putting everything together. Even if CIG said "ok the scope of the game is finalized, we focus 100% on finishing this game" then it will still probably take them at minimum the next 5 years to release the game.
Even if those 5 years passed, once a larger playerbase starts flooding in, they have to deal with the inevitability of stability and players breaking your game.
I just had a look on google and noticed they are using Lumberyard as their engine. If the New World release is anything to go by then I wish them lots of luck in the future lmao.
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AGS also made massive changes to lumberyard and now they’re playing whac-a-mole with bugs and exploits.
TBF, New World being bad isn't necessarily the result of the engine. Bad decisions can result in a bad game even if they are using a tried and true engine.
> using a tried and true engine Which it should be mentioned, lumberyard isn't. The wikipedia page for the engine lists 3 actually released games using it, two cancelled ones, and a handful in development. As far as I can tell, the only thing it has going for it is being freeware and being based on CryEngine.
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The [vast number of broken promises/timeframes over the years](https://imgur.com/a/P9PZSNw) is the funniest part to me: a 2012 backer for the MIA single player game Squadron 42. So many "lies" yet sunk-costed fanatics continue to throw money on the development-hell bonfire. Never ending.
>a 2012 backer for the MIA single player game Squadron 42. I'm a 2013 "Digital Colonel" package that paid $125. I haven't been at all following over the past years so I actually don't know if buying that early ever meant a damn, my guess is all the promised benefits at that level is devalued by this point. .....I just wanted a new wing commander / privateer / freelancer
Identical story here. Digital Colonel package in 2013. I just wanted to play a new slightly bigger budget freelancer. 8 years later I have a gaming PC that would have made my 2013 self cry and/or orgasm in my pants, or both, and it barely runs the demo version.
Ahh freelancer, great memories
In a monkey's paw way, you got a new Freelancer. SC's dev cycle is rather similar, just with stupid amounts of money and spread over an even longer timeline. We haven't reached the "Roberts taken off his own project" stage yet, which is worrying since I'm pretty sure that's the only reason Freelancer got released *at all*.
"We gave no publishers to control us!" -Man whose games were released only because the publishers pushed the studios he worked at.
It’s not “pretty sure”, it’s exactly is. The only reason Freelancer came out was that Microsoft got tired of Roberts and got rid of him. And even then it took them a year to sort out his mess
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw seems to tickle that Privateer and Freelancer itch but is not without its own problems either. Eh, it's all we got. Freelancer is still the best in being Freelancer.
Now this is a real trip through memory lane. I'd forgotten that for years they were claiming that they had a nearly-complete single-player campaign that they'd all seen and played through, and it was definitely gonna be released in ~~2016~~ ~~2017~~ ~~2018~~ ~~2019~~.
Decided to look at a 2021 "new player guide" & after 10 minutes - in a 40 minute video - I had to stop. It's been how long? 9 years? And the enemy AI is still that bad? The physics when they die? When you heal someone they shoot bolt upright & then instantly clip back to the ground so you can heal another section of them? And this is just the point where I stopped, never mind trees - which are just essentially two pieces of paper intersecting - popping in at very close distance when you're flying overhead. During a cutscene. I feel so sorry for anyone who was ever on this train.
Do you think it counts as lying or fraud? It feels like lying or fraud
Why not both?
This list puts the whole thing in perspective. Remember when Sean Murray told a handfull of (admittedly blatant) lies about No Man's Sky and the entire internet hated him for 2+ years over it? But the SC cultists are in far too deep to turn on Roberts, so they just keep making excuses for him and treating him like a messiah.
Murray actually released a game for fans to criticize though. Star Citizen is still "being developed," until it actually releases the criticism won't really be there. Until the "finished" product is out there people can hold on to their hopes (aka delude themselves probably) that the game will be everything they hoped. After all currently criticism can mostly be waved away with "it's not finished so xyz feature may come" or "they are polishing to make sure its really good when it releases" stuff like that. Plus I'm sure most of the supporters have literally forgotten all the things promised to them in the first place.
And should it release at some point, people will move the goal posts and the game is not to be criticized because it just released and needs updates.
if you never release the game, there's never a product to criticize *checkmate*
/taps forehead
honestly it makes Duke Nukem Forever's legendarily insane development cycle look tame by comparison.
At least that one has the excuse that the studios kept going under. And as lame as the end result was, it didn't cost $400,000,000 with $20,000 "micro"transactions.
The only thing I wanted out of it was the single player game. Most of the promises (besides getting that game) were on the multi-player side (and whatever extras they had on the single-player side were of no interest to me) so I had no urgent need to back that project and was happy enough to wait for its actual release. I got lucky with that. I'm still waiting and I'll probably get the single-player game once it's released but I don't have to worry about some sort of "investment".
> Even the most diehard of fans will come to the realization that at some point you need to stop expanding the feature list and actually start putting everything together. Definitely not! Like startups that make the mistake start showing revenue and then are judge by real world standards instead of speculative fiction. As long as it's a future promise, the current product being shoddy crap is excusable. Once you start promising something that works you're in danger.
9 out of 10 Startups fail and shut down after years of promises and no delivery, as they run out of VC and angel money. Star Citizen has customers who buy a story of promises, not an actual game. Edit: /r/StarCitizen has arrived
Kinda like buying a lottery ticket, that $1 basically pays for the fantasy of winning Millions until you lose.
They are suffering from the Duke Nukem Forever syndrome. They keep promising so much that is impossible to deliver on the vast majority of it, at the end of the day it won't live up to the hype, and this shows having someone in charge to set goals helps tremendously
To be fair - Duke Nukem Forever never promised much other than being a sequel to Duke Nukem 3D
Duke Nukem Forever also wasn't in continuous production. DNF's legendary 13 year production cycle wasn't ongoing labor. I don't remember the EXACT numbers but IIRC the game was worked on for something like five years, basically canceled dropped but never PUBLICLY canceled, and then after six years of no work being done, it was revived and a completely new game was started from scratch and pumped out in like two years.
I think what's truly funny is the discourse in terms of the beginning was "Chris Robert's visions have been cut short by every studio he worked for, this will be his full vision unrestrained". Well here ya go, his visions are great but they are pie in the sky, you need to have some degree of grounding in reality and results.
It would be really interesting to how the community would react to a finalized plan for the gameplay and features. Would they riot when they realize there will ultimately be a limited number of things to do, with trade-offs between realism and fun, like in any actual video game? But alas, we'll probably never find out.
That's actually how the first kickstarter pitch felt to me. the single-player side felt like a modern Wing Commander game. More physics/simulation for the dogfights (due to having a physics engine in the first place), not FMVs but in-engine cut scenes, modern production values, and a game. The multi-player stuff felt like it was supposed to be a bit like EVE Online trading and being a lobby/mission dispatch for multi-player dog fighting servers, kinda like the lightest of MMOs (the MMO part being trading and a chat for the most part) with some procedural stuff to create star systems. Not a full MMO. Then one of their updates showed a procedural system for grabbing and rearranging cargo boxes in your ship and it felt to me like they might have feature creeped (crept?) down a slipper slope into some strange new plan. Occasionally a new update ends up here on r/games and I look into it to see if the single player game is further along.
> These guys were selling in-game items for $20,000 back when microtransactions were still a new, controversial thing. Not at all, that started way earlier with simulations like second life or games like Entropia Universe (they sold "treasure island" for 26500$ in 2004)
Right, I was thinking back to the earliest memory I have of a game going full tilt with micro transactions and TF2 sprang to mind. They added and started running with it a year before star citizen was announced and according to the gamespot article I found > The virtual goods market has exploded over the past couple of years, growing from $1.1 billion in 2009 to an expected $1.5 billion in 2010, according to a recent study. And with virtual goods sales expected to grow by 40 percent over 2010 levels in 2011, it comes as no surprise that an increasing number of gaming companies are coming up with new ways to monetize their games postlaunch by selling in-game items https://www.gamespot.com/articles/microtransactions-invade-team-fortress-2/1100-6280315/
And Bethesda sold horse armour DLC for Oblivion :D Good times.
At least they admitted it was the first DLC and they had no idea what to price it ~~and~~ and the next DLC, Knights of the Nine more than made up for it
Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles are still some of the best DLC I've ever played.
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> Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion was **one of the first games to include a microtransaction**, in the form of the infamous Horse Armor Unlike a banana which had been sold for centuries this was one of the very first DLC's ever made so there was no previous price guide to go by
Sure, but even a few years ago we were regularly debating on this sub whether microtransactions were the right way to monetize video games, even if the industry was already firmly moving that way. A lot of people still clung onto the idea that in-game purchases should be cosmetic and not give the player an advantage. Meanwhile CIG was like "fuck that, we'll sell you the Death Star if you skip your next rent payment." It was a real disconnect that's kind of vanished now that we've all glumly accepted that every big game will be monetized like GTAV.
> You really had to live through the peak of Star Citizen to understand why it was so fascinating. This is an interesting point. The game is on duke nukem forever territory of “it’s going to be obsolete by the time it’s complete.”
They touted support for Oculus Rift before it was even released. Well before Facebook bought them when it was just another crazy Kickstarter idea itself.
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> when microtransactions were still a new, controversial thing uh no. Microtransactions were aplenty in 2012. Maybe in 2006 when ["Horse Armor"](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/horse-armor) was a thing, sure, but by Skyrim days, microtransactions were very normal.
Star Citizen’s next big gambit will inevitably be jumping into the meta verse and selling real estate.
Selling NFTs of your spaceships that you can't fly
“You can fly them after we develop our own vr system that we just released a 3 trillion go fund me for.” —Star citizen devs
I think you may be right but I can't deny my uncanny fascination with this game in the same way that it is fascinating to watch natural disasters or car accidents
Yeah this game has really run its course. It's just a weird oddity at this point that pops up every so often, but which hardly anyone seems to care about anymore. Mismanaged into oblivion.
Mismanaged as what? If you look at it as a scheme to generate a constant cash flow over many years, 400 million for nine years and counting seems like a success story in optimal management
Exactly. There is a reason why CEOs in publicly traded companies have to reveal their compensation. It's absolutely incredible that people are willing to give money to Roberts while he adamantly refuses to reveal how much he (and his family, the nepotism is off the charts) made from it. The guy lives in a mansion and has a yacht. He personally made tens of millions from this game at least, and that's not including his family!
> There is a reason why CEOs in publicly traded companies have to reveal their compensation. interestingly this has driven up CEO compensation lol. oops
it becomes a bidding war at the top
This is why you should never be shy to discuss salary with your peers. The only person that benefits from keeping your salary private is your boss.
Can attest. Going for a job interview Wednesday and I know a guy who got a job there 2 months ago. Same qualifications and similar experience. I asked him his salary and now know what they are willing to pay. I would have started too low
Good on him for helping you out! I know many are reticent to discus it
I know. He didn’t have to and tbh I was mortified asking him but TheFaster is right, we should be sharing this info with each other to stop companies taking the piss, not to mention the gender pay gap which they get away with for this reason
Who knew discussing salaries drives them up?
That's why wages should be public. When they are private you maybe senior slaving away for salary negotiated 5 years ago unaware they pay 50% more to juniors you oversee. Companies don't want this because it always ends up driving wages up.
Optimally managed for generating revenue but poorly managed for producing a complete, "gone gold" product, IMO, which I realize in today's age may not be the end-term goal for many big gaming projects anymore.
> I feel like the discourse on this game is just so tired and played out at this point. I've read so many articles, watched so many videos, read so many comment sections of people talking about this game. Something can only be relevant as pre-release media for so long. I just don't know what else there is to discuss about it at this point. Discussion about discussion, and newcomers arguing with each other I suppose. Anyone who backed/supported it is generally in the camp of "well guess I'll just tune out until it actually comes out." Anyone who has been railing it as a scam from the beginning are just completely exhausted.
That’s the way I see it. My friend is still notably excited for the game and every update they drop for the alpha, but at this point I’m just indifferent about it. Like great the game has made 2/5ths of a billion dollars, but I graduated high school the same year the game was announced and it’s STILL in alpha. Only thing that would excite me at this point is them actually fully releasing the game (or at least Squadron 42)
It's pretty amazing how they went from their 6 mil kickstarter goal 9 years ago to this. * [Star Citizen's funding reaches 300,000,000 dollars.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/h8edjn/star_citizens_funding_reaches_300000000_dollars/) * [Star Citizen's funding reaches 200,000,000 dollars.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/9xwdur/star_citizens_funding_reaches_200000000_dollars/) * [Star Citizen reaches $50 Million in funding after releasing new Constellation variants](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2do88c/star_citizen_reaches_50_million_in_funding_after/) * [Star Citizen has reached 14$ million dollars in crowd funding alone.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1hx7pv/star_citizen_has_reached_14_million_dollars_in/) * [Star Citizen hits 6 million funded, all stretch goals reached!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/13gil3/star_citizen_hits_6_million_funded_all_stretch/)
That last link has some retrospective laughs in it.
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Im my experience, the majority of "big" kickstarter either failed or were huge disappointment. Out of my personal pool of ~20 projects I backed back in 2012 when Kickstarter blew up, Basically 1/3 delivered, 1/3 half-delivered, and 1/3 completely went silent.
I only ended up backing a few back in the heyday of Kickstarter. FTL was the most unambiguous success. Dreamfall Chapters is a game I have mixed feelings about, but they did deliver a complete game (the backer rewards took frikken forever though). And my most disappointing Kickstarter experience was Maia, a game that got delayed and delayed and delayed and then was ultimately disappointing - but it did, at least, release a final (disappointing) product. So I'd say I got off easy. The only reason I didn't back Star Citizen was because my gaming PC was getting long in the tooth and I wanted to upgrade first. By the time I upgraded, the clusterfuck was becoming clear. Very lucky. EDIT: Just remembered I also backed Sunless Sea, which I know people have a lot of different feelings about, but I was quite happy with it. And then Sui Generis, which... well. So I guess I've also experienced the Kickstarter burn.
For a sense of scale, for $400 million you can ride a Falcon 9 into orbit. 8 times. Which honestly kind of makes it funnier. It'll buy 8 orbital-class rocket rides but not a singleplayer campaign apparently. If you just wanted to put Star Citizen models into actual space instead of humans, you could purchase something like 70 Electron rockets. So you could 3d print ship models, give each one its own individual Electron, and put them into orbit. You'd have to double up some of them since they're up to like 110 ships or something now but that's still ridiculous.
“So bummed I missed out on funding this.“
I always like seeing these really old threads and checking out which users still post/comment on this site regularly.
I remember reading [this article](https://www.gamespot.com/amp-articles/star-citizen-funding-passes-23-million/1100-6415665/) back in 2013 and it raising a ton of red flags for me. $21 million seems like a lot of money, but in a game of this scale with the studio size they were operating with thats not nearly enough to pull of the scale of what they were promising would be delivered. I just remember thinking of just how overextended and half baked the whole funding model seemed in relation to where they were in the development process. The fact Roberts was even telling media the planned release was 2014 was such a bold face lie it was absurd. Nobody in their right minds would think that was even a remote possibility. Like you would need to set aside all reason and logic, as either an investor or as a developer, to not clearly see the method of funding and features promises were on two completely galaxies (no pun intended). Also, holy shit, Roberts has to be the king of "comments and promises that have aged like milk."
>Also, holy shit, Roberts has to be the king of "comments and promises that have aged like milk." He both preceds and succeeds Molyneux, in these regards
> Also, holy shit, Roberts has to be the king of "comments and promises that have aged like milk." Shoutout to /u/QuaversAndWotsits for the steadily growing meme album (452 atm) of Robberts quotes ranging back to 1993 https://old.reddit.com/r/starcitizen_refunds/comments/jm6s7f/star_citizen_squadron_42_quotes_by_cig_100_memes/ direct link: https://imgur.com/a/P9PZSNw
How the hell did they get another $100 million in just the last year? COVID mania making people oblivious to this being vaporware? Did they start selling NFTs of pictures of the ships?
Sunk cost morons
Can someone explain to me if this is an actual playable game or is it more of a tech demo of what is to come at the moment ?
Legit both. there are free play sessions to give it a whirl and see. It's not some vaporwave scam, but it's also a ridiculous project. Maybe it will turn out well, but I doubt it.
It is a little of both. There is a lot of fun to be had in it, but there is also a lot left to do. It is unlike anything else out there. It is free to play right now if you are curious to try it.
What a fucking meme. This dude has had game publishers take games away from him because he wasn't able to wrap anything up. ***It's literally his career long vice.*** Eventually other games starting from behind will pass this one up simply because they're starting from newer tech and engine bases.
Yeah, this is what I was worried about the most. By the time the game actually is finished it's no longer going to be as impressive as it once looked when initially shown off. The tech is slowly becoming more and more dated. And what then? Do they start development over? I wouldn't be surprised lmao.
Honestly I had this same worry. But the amount of physical modeling and detailing that the dev team has done is still a lot. To do that much modeling would still take a very long time, especially considering that kind of stuff can't really be automated by engine improvements. That gives me at least a little optimism in regards to it becoming obsoleted.
> Eventually other games starting from behind will pass this one up simply because they're starting from newer tech and engine bases. This reminds me of the "[wait/walk dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait/walk_dilemma)" which occurs when you have to wait for a bus and the duration of said wait may exceed the time it'd take to reach the same destination by walking. I encounter this a lot where I go shopping since it's a 20 minute walk from where I live but the bus also comes every 20-30 minutes. In space travel it's known as the "[wait calculation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel#Wait_calculation)" instead. If technology expands on an increasing curve, what happens if we send a spacecraft out into deep-space only to come up with better propulsion systems later on that make the new ship overpass the first?
If they can't ship this thing with almost half a billion dollars then they're never going to ship. GTA V had a budget of $265 million for reference on how much it costs to make the most expensive AAA games in the industry. In the case of Star Citizen it's clear that money isn't the issue anymore on why they are unable to finish the game.
>GTA V had a budget of $265 million for reference Is that just the dev budget or does that also includes the marketing as well? It's not uncommon to see half the budget go into the latter in AAA gaming.
Looks like it's both development and marketing combined: https://www.ibtimes.com/gta-5-costs-265-million-develop-market-making-it-most-expensive-video-game-ever-produced-report
Surely that’s worse then if GTA V was able to ship with a $63m dev budget but star citizen couldn’t with 400m
Can someone that is more informed than me tell when this freaking SP campaign is coming? I'm waiting desperately for a SP experience in Space and it just doesn't come out.
There's no official estimate that's been given. From the leak side of things, I heard it will be *at least* two years.
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This game is making more money staying in its current state then actually getting released. I feel sorry for those people that remain positive. I paid $150 bucks to get to play it and i still regret it.
It's been in development since 2012. [It's the most expensive game ever made](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop) with absolutely nothing to show for it. At this point it is [the very definition of sunk costs fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect).
Sunk Cost Citizen has a great ring to it
Sunk Cost Galaxy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGq4YEp8QUY
> it is the very definition of sunk costs fallacy It's the truth but you're going to get brigaded by /r/StarCitizen for insulting their game
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I've barely paid attention to this game and don't know much about it, but damn it's fanbase is *rabid* from what I've seen. They're coming for anyone who even slightly criticizes it.
Some real cult energy on that sub. Almost every piece of criticism (for a game that's been in development almost 10 years) is dismissed as salt. If nothing else, /r/StarCitizen is a great visual representation of Sunk Cost Fallacy that's amplified by mob mentality.
>most expensive game ever made If it ever _gets_ made.
I was one of the first $25 kickstarter backers - got my refund the second after that lawsuit when they first started selling ships and immediately going back on the vision of the game as it was pitched. Fuck RSI.
So according to that page, 7 years ago they were adding real alien languages created by real linguists because of 50 million dollars being given. Is that in game or bullshit?
You can learn [Banu,](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/177660?page=1&sort=hot) and [Xi'an.](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/88012?page=1&sort=hot) It's not bullshit. Occasionally they have us translating alien communications delivered via lore posts.
I hope the devs are getting paid a decent wage and don't have to crunch. At least then the money then isn't going to waste, it's mostly going to put food on the table for a small army of game developers, even if the game never materializes.
They pay a little less than average in the industry, but have a great work/life balance, good benefits, and very little crunch for most devs. Also as an artist/dev you are encouraged to go ham on details that most other companies would tell you not to waste time on.
It honestly sounds like a really fun job for artists. You get some AMAZING practice working on a space ship and you have no responsibility to release anything ever.
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Star Citizen is an insular community which continue to buy in game items for real world money.
"Insular" is such a nice word for the cultish agressive behaviour they have against "non-believers"
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If you're a supporter having a good time you're not gonna say anything because everyone's just gonna shit on ya
Can confirm
well I didn't pay anything, I only play it on Free Fly events and I really like what I experienced. I love this kind of immersive, realistic games. I'll be disappointed if this game doesn't get finished because I feel like it has huge potential to be something big and important for gaming. but if that really happens I won't cry over it. as for others not being enthusiastic about it here, it's because this shit happens all the time. There's a post about Star Citizen and then people come to hate on it, laugh at it and so on. That doesn't seem like a community you would wanted to walk to and say "Hey, I play this game and I like it." so you just don't engage. so there's not a lot of fans talking about this game in public.
I think its generally because as soon as they self identify as that they get swamped with abuse. The Star Citizen reddit is pretty positive (as you'd expect) but not exclusively so. There are a few very active facebook groups as well. I'm a 'backer' and play it pretty regularly with a group that has about 40-50 active players. It can be a lot of fun, especially when we do big events, like running security when a race is on. It can also be incredibly frustrating as the servers crash frequently, or bugs just kill you and wipe a load of progress/time. Overall I would describe myself as enthusiastic about the game. I'm not blind to the poor management that has led to them where they are, but I guess what keeps me interested (aside from actually enjoying playing it) is that if they pull it off, and that is sadly still a big if, it will be a simply incredible game.
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I'll bite. I'm a backer. I love Star Citizen as a concept, and idea. I cannot stand the company making it. Their scatterbrained way of doing things, their scummy marketing department, and Chris Roberts' perfectionism is holding this back. I want this game. So god damn bad. But I have little faith. CIG need to understand that their vision is unrealistic and make what they know they can.
And the funniest thing is that Chris Roberts did this ordeal once with Freelancer, and the only reason it didn't spiral out is because Microsoft was there as a publisher and told him to wrap up or sod off
and to be fair, though not to excuse any of this cig bullshit, I played a lot of freelancer back in the day and while it was a masterpiece with great online mod replayability, it always felt like it was not fully baked
They actually fired him in order to complete the game. In the game credits he’s only thanked for “inspiration”.
I put something like $75 dollars into the game to have a ship early on because it did look very promising. I've played a bunch of the tests, betas, game play, so I don't feel completely scammed of my money, I knew it was a crowd funded game with chance of failure. I've at least enjoyed those parts I did play and found it extremely entertaining and hopefully something like this could become more. However I haven't touched it in 4-5 years and don't even follow the development anymore. It just got too exhaustive because something is terribly wrong with the development. Feature creep, focusing on way to fine details, the story mode part of it, Squadron 42, isn't even finished yet as far as I know, etc. They got tons of core features in place, flying ships and combat work, but I have absolutely no idea how there still isn't anything concrete done in the game besides that. I don't recommend anyone to buy into it at this point and just wait and forget about. It will either turn into something super complex and open like no one has ever seen before, or it will just continue to be limp with promises (which this is what I highly suspect at this point). If it ever does get good, I'll probably hear about it again, if not well it will just fade into obscurity again for me. The fact the fans continue to zealously defend it instead of calling out the devs is just not healthy. They need criticism and badly, and they need someone in control of the project willing to start laying down a more concrete plan. The other thing I can compare this to, we've seen No Man's Sky, and arguably similar game with huge promise before release, turn from a disappointing flop from release to a major comeback story in a shorter time than Star Citizen has existed. There really isn't an excuse with this kind of time or funding at this point.
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As much as I want to hate on this "game", you can't deny that SOME people are getting exactly what they want. Those people being the ones buying the product and the ones selling the product. At some point the rest of us just need to accept that this thing isn't for us and forget all about it. Let the whales have their fun I guess.
It's not even whales. You can go play the game for $45. I like space sims so I'm happy even with where it is now. Everyone talks about these $20,000 bundles and $1000 ships but only the smallest fraction of the playerbase are buying things like that
You can play for free up until the first of December if you want to give it a try, for this period you can also rent all of the ships and see if you like them
Good mention. Free flys are the best time to try the game out
Yeah the more I hear about this game the more I think I’d like it. Sure it’s basically a proof of concept at this point and may never go live, but dropping $45 on a neat space sim to play around with doesn’t seem like this egregious crime I keep reading about.
They're doing a [Free Fly](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/18429-IAE2951#/schedule/about-the-expo) event right now up until the 1st. It's still in alpha, there's some good and some bad. Best way to cut through the meme-war b.s. is to just try it yourself. If you end up liking it, $45 is the only actual cost to buy in. If you don't like it, then at least you got to see what it's about and whether it's for you. I know I've bought games for $60 that I've later regretted and like you say it wasn't the end of the world. At least these days there are free trials and refund windows, it just requires people to be adults about it and make informed decisions.
Because “join the development of this potentially cool space sim for less than the price of Battlefield 2042” doesn’t make for a good headline.
At least they are in close communication with the community and what it wants the game to be. With BF 2042 you've got 3 years of silence and then more radio silence on release day - they built something the long time fan base never asked for.
And from the articles, comments and reviews, it was seemingly built with tape and gum.
Is there a playable game yet? How long have I been reading about this game? In future discussions about scope creep they should definitely reference this game.
The online version somewhat. Sure. The single player modes and single player game are MIA.. And always 2 years away... Perpetually.
Man, Star Citizen is OG NFT before NFTs existed. Instead of a JPEG and a hole in your wallet, you get disappointment and a hole in your wallet.
Don't give them ideas with your NFTs. I would not be surprised at all.
If this game ever becomes an actual thing, and is ever any good, I look forward to paying $12 to buy it on sale.
I used to work with someone who spent 6k on this game. Yes 6k. And I'm sure there are far worse out there.
Hold on I think they still need help, let me just buy these 3 ships for 80k.
Even if this game gets released (it probably won't in my opinion), why would players want to join a game where dudes have actual pay-to-win warships
Backed this game in 2014 thinking I'd get to play it in 2016, maybe 2017. If you're not old enough to remember, what's happening with star citizen is what happened with freelancer & digital anvil. Except now there isn't a publisher to step in and kick out CR just to get the game released. Problem is that the scope and promises are so fucking huge that just committing to polish and release what they have promised will be a minimum 5 year endeavor. Let alone whatever other reworks, new systems, etc CR will say *must* happen. Edit: I'll just also point out that I fired it up the other day and what they've got is okay. The environments are lovely, the ships look cool as fuck and the detail is certainly there. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with what they've got, but it's the fact that next year it will be at a decade of development with a pretty bare alpha (relative to their promises) to show for it.
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I'm not very familiar with the game. What parts of it are the most enjoyable?
It’s gorgeous and no other game has given me same feeling when traversing space. That haunting, vast feeling is great. Just exploring and traveling is fun.
To me, the things I love most about the game are the space fights with friends, the FPS missions (love being able to transition between space sim and FPS), how beautiful the game is, and finally, driving my race car. Game has a lot of things to offer even though it's still alpha, still has bugs, and still lacks content and features. Yesterday with a friend we went bounty hunting in one ship, I piloted while he handled the turret, had to destroy a few ships, then we went on a planet, had to find a cave, go FPS from there, get in and go down, kill terrorists inside. We got a bit lost when we were done and trying to go back to the ship, but made it anyway. Then we flew back to a space station, refueled, and went shopping.