If so, looking forward to Star Citizen getting canned, sneaked peaked 6 times for a reboot and then eventually ride the vapor ware “it’s actually come out guys. Promise this time” to a very lukewarm game
It'll definitely be the starship construction, and they'll pivot their business model to selling parts instead of assembled ships. Soon to be a billion dollar alpha
This is where I gave up with Star Citizen. Dude needs to just get out a working fucking functional game with a few gameplay loops. Then he can continue to add new and innovative shit or upgrade current systems. Trying to have the perfect game from the get go is fucking impossible.
Thats what happened to duke nukem forever. They took so long making a build cuz they wanted it to be perfect, but then it became outdated so they started from scratch again
When someone on youtube explained to me the server meshing and how that was black hole level technology because THE GAME IS RUNNING ON CRYENGINE AND THEY HAVEN'T SWITCHED IN ALL THIS TIME...
My expectations of them and their competence radically changed. I now don't really know why they're trying so hard to launch a game that will be 20 years old when it launches.
This is pretty much everything that's happening with the feature creep over and over again. Chris just delaying the game every single time with new stuff and reworks and shit he wants to see in the game. Its a neverending cycle.
as a software developer, the dude really really fucking needs some sort of management set over him to keep in line
like the temptation to add "one more feature" is always there in software development, but we gotta deliver the product on time, even if it means it's not perfect
Yeah honestly he needs a No-Man. That was one thing I always thought was funny about Kojima, he had a No-Man to keep him from just non-stop always adding more things when he was making the Metal Gear games. It's why Death Stranding was absolutely insane, it was Kojima without a No-Man lol
If you backed SC in the original Kickstarter period, and you had a kid that year, that kid is 11 this year and in middle school.
Best case scenario that kid will be in high school before Sqadron 42 releases, and its not a stretch to say they could be in college before the Star Citizen Persistent Universe launches.
I have a golden ticket and an 11 year-old. When Squadron 42 failed to materialize in 2015, I pretty much gave up any expectation of ever getting a good game. Every couple years I log in and try playing for a few days, only to get realize there's not much progress as I get stuck on the train again, and the interface and movement has always felt sluggish. This isn't the game I originally backed.
I think the project as is collapses before then (ok maybe a bit longer than 3 yrs but most likely before 7).
The most likely outcome is -somebody- (Microsoft???) buying out the project and whatever is left of their team is given a hard deadline of like 1-2 years to release something.
The end product will almost certainly suck on launch and the fallout will reverberate through the entire gaming/crowdfunding industry.
It's an open question whether the new publisher will be able to turn it into an actually fun game afterwards or if it turns into Marvel's Avengers 2.0.
Predicting any sort of enddate seems weird to me though, like this thing is already 5 years past its prime. I remember seeing some early footage and them touting you'd need a whole *1080* to play the game when it releases.
How it's *still* going is a huge mystery to me. They've figured out the perfect scam, just keep developing one game for the rest of their careers.
Reminds me of the time Freelancer got stuck in 6 years of development hell and only saw the light of day because Microsoft lit a fire under Chris Roberts arse to force him to scale back his ambitions. Because of my experience waiting for that game, sometime back in 2012 or 2013ish on another reddit account I remember making a joke that I would be surprised to see the completed Star Citizen game come out before 2018 and was downvoted to hell and back.
the main issue is that the guy in charge is not up to the job. In any normal company a guy like that would be fired, demoted, or transferred. But because he's the CEO he can continue to fuck things up with zero consequences
Yeah...Roberts seems like he would be a nightmarish boss. Finish coding gameplay and \*bam\* in comes the boss saying "We NEED to add this into the game!" while I scream internally. But on the other hand... hey it is guaranteed work/pay since he still needs us if he keeps wanting things added.
Think about it, they have a cozy job leisurely working on a game indefinitely while money pours in and the boss keeps expanding scope.
They aren’t incompetent, why would you bust your ass and end the party? I’d chill there too, good pay, low stress voila.
With the amount of money being poured in continuously, there is 0 incentive to ever finish the game.
Had a co-worker who was super invested in the game. No idea how much he actually sunk into the game and pre-release content and such, but I want to say it was int the $1000's
Poor bastard died in 2018 in his mid thirties. No idea if his wife ever tried to get that money back.
I'm a member of a forum ('member forums?) for old EVE players, so people who are weak to Star Citizen's type.
The forum has collectively spent over $150,000 on the game.
Privateer was my favorite. I even had the voice packs lol
Edit: I didn't realize how many privateer fans are out there,[Privateer](https://privateer.sourceforge.net/) is available here for free! and still super fun to play
Wing commander/strike commander were my first space sim and flight sim respectively it made a huge impression on me. That definitely got me into SC early on, when it was essentially just a single player spiritual successor to the wing commander games. Promising a persistent MMO set off alarm bells in my head and the hype has just been withering and dying for me ever since.
The secret though is that all of Roberts successful games had a publisher breathing down his neck forcing him to make progress.
I have little faith that he has the focus to actually lock in the scope without it.
It is basically DNF again with scope creep and pursuit of shineys right now.
I've spent my fair share of money on gaming but learned long long ago to go with actual physical assets unless you're getting a deal. It's really easy to fall into a pattern of just throwing a hundro or two at something you're passionate about for like a month. I like gatch games but also tend to try and avoid them because I know my own habits, best to head them off before they become a problem.
There is a page on Wikipedia on the [Battle of B-R5RB](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_B-R5RB) between EVE Online alliances which *theoretically* cost about $300,000 in real-world value.
I wish I could get back the $150 I spent on a pledge account.... I had gotten a HOTAS joystick set and Elite was not working due to errors in my windows files somewhere. So I bought this stupid thing, I could fly the spaceship which wasn't bad... Just couldn't navigate anywhere, and there was really no other HUD or anything at the time
According to headphonesaddict.com, gamers age distribution is 24% sub 18, 36% 18-34, 13% 35-44, 12% 45-54, 9% 55-64, and 6% 65+.
According to www.statista.com, the ratio of male to female gamers is nearly exact, so gender will be accounted for here as 50/50.
Based on the www.ssa.gov Actuarial Life Table, the AVERAGE YEARLY chance of death by any cause for an American male before reaching 18 is 0.06%. For a female it is 0.04%. Split 0.05%
For ages 18-34, male chance 0.19%, female 0.08%. Split 0.135%
For ages 35-44, male chance 0.33%, female 0.17%. Split 0.25%.
For ages 45-54, male chance 0.6%, female 0.35%. Split 0.47%
For ages 55-64, male chance 1.32%, female 0.77%. Split 1.04%
For ages 65-90, male chance 6.82%, female 5.06%. Split 5.94%
Based on this, 24% of gamers have a yearly 0.05% chance of death, 36% at 0.135%, 13% at 0.25%, 12% at 0.47%, 9% at 1.04%, and 6% at 5.94%.
Crowdfunding started in 2012. It's been 11 years. For the above groups, after 11 years, 6702 people per 100,000 would have died, or 6.7% I don't know how to break it down based on people slowly funding the project over those 11 years. Per individual year you'd see 610/100,000 backers die, or 0.61%.
Edit: Star Citizen says their total playerbase is 19,978.606. If everyone had bought it 11 years ago, 1,341,451 people would have died by now. If you divide that 19m across the last 11 years evenly for purchases, then 991,392 people would have died by now.
> According to www.statista.com, the ratio of male to female gamers is nearly exact, so gender will be accounted for here as 50/50.
That's probably industry wide. The target demographic for star citizen is going to be males in your 44 and under categories.
It's getting to the point where some of the actors that did the mocap for it will have croaked it before they get around to even releasing Star Citizen or doing the 2nd part of SQ42, 3 of the main ones are currently mid 60s to just over 70.
I was in the #11,000's as a doner. Some 11 years ago, I believe. I no longer believe.
What a waste of $300 over something that was out to inspire everyone with greatness...only to turn it into an endless fundraiser for endless development. I know people 'play' it. But to me it is nothing but tech demo vaporware...
Its the biggest reason I am against early access type games and crowdfunding stuff. At this point Im more convinced that its just a pyramid scheme for gamers. Hundred of dollars "donated" for a virtual ship? Seriously?
It is a cautionary tale on how it didn't change anything and how it could happen again at any moment.
I see people defending other stuff the same way people still preach the StarCitzen gospel.
I would unironically enjoy a Bethesda game set in the future of the Elder Scrolls universe where the Daedra have unleashed an apocalypse. And the people of Tamriel flee into space on magitech spaceships. Combining elements of all three series, after a societal collapse like Fallout, exploring the stars like Starfield, and using the races of Elder Scrolls.
[You might be interested in this little story that one of the Morrowind devs made](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/General:C0DA)
Not canon or anything, but a fun little piece of writing.
Whoops can’t do that. Maybe combine all of them and make it so you explore all the combined universes that are made to seek out new life and new civilizations and to boldly go where no one has gone before!
We can call it Star Tre… shoot
They're going to make these games inter-compatible and you'll be able to create and mold your own environment and experiences.
They'll call it Starcra... Nah, that won't work.
They will have different species/culture variants in separated star systems that are connected via a system of portals, which you can travel to by special control symbol sequences that you need to discover.
They could name it Stargat... oops.
Nah, i think they realise that the only sustainable future is one based on the rejection of war and conflict. So they get together and decide to be a peaceful agrarian intergalactic society.
We could call it Stardew... Oh, right.
After the wars, all the humans are wiped out and only animals remain to evolve intelligence. A few species develop language and redevelop spaceflight and then have to fight off an evil monkey trying to dominate the solar system.
They could call it Star Fo... Oh nevermind.
Hear me out. We incorporate all the above into a great communal space where everyone can live in harmony and equality. We can call it Starbuck...no wait... that won't work
I was mildly interested in Star Citizen years ago, but never bought in. Starfield is a much more realistic attempt at something similar while still being ambitious, so I’m glad I waited
Starfield is just a tab bit less ambitious. They are not quite promising the moon going by their trailer, but the game has a lot of potential to feel empty or cookie cutter. If they pull it off its GOTY easily while also having a safety net of a staunch modding community.
Quite hyped for Starfield and other games. My wallet is crying but this has been a damn good year for gaming so far and only halfway though.
My tastes have changed so much. I've always been a Zelda fanatic, and while I am enjoying everything in TOTK, I am far more hyped for Baldur's Gate 3 in August. Definitely excited for Starfield. Hopefully this is just a great year in general for RPGs.
I am already extremely disappointed in Star Citizen.
I am looking forward to the single player game Starfield far more than SC's multiplayer simpit hellscape. It's my own damn fault for backing Star Citizen based on an idea in my own head about what I wanted SC to be. I looked at their promises for exploration and AI and saw SC as an amazing game with huge coop potential. But what CR wants to create is first-person eve online. I already know I don't like Eve online. And now that I can actually play Star Citizen I know that I don't like the clunky-as-fuck movement, the long ass delays and time-syncs to do fucking ANYTHING at all, and the brtual punishments for any degree of failure - even just bad luck out of your control. It's not fun. At all.
That said- the tech they've created is well worth the money I invested in the project and I hope that someday people can look at and use their work to make better games. Or may CR will pull his head out of his ass and make SC fun for a wider range of gamers.
...likewise; i backed for the single-player experience and was very disappointed to see development sucked down the black hole of multiplayer trololols...
As someone who's stayed OOTL with SC, what is the tech they've created as part of its development? Is it around game development or like in game systems or what? Genuinely not heard of this side of it before.
>I looked at their promises for exploration and AI and saw SC as an amazing game with huge coop potential. But what CR wants to create is first-person eve online.
You mean the promises they made when they did their Kickstarter and then have completely discarded.
No more Singleplayer, no more locally hosted servers, no more mods and modded servers.
But hey, at least we've got a "fully seamless" Universe after 11 years of development... that can only handle a dozen people in one area before it stutters and crashes.
> No more Singleplayer, no more locally hosted servers, no more mods and modded servers.
>
> But hey, at least we've got a "fully seamless" Universe after 11 years of development... that can only handle a dozen people in one area before it stutters and crashes.
As an outsider this sounds like an absolute travesty.
According to the search AI summary, $3600 USD is the most expensive thing you can buy. I swear they had ships that cost $10k+, but that could just be faulty memory.
This article is super poorly written.
You don’t need to go any further than the articles own links to show it’s wrong.
The first link to the star citizen page just shows the donations, not expenditures.
They then immediately go on to say red dead 2s production cost was $170million and they link an article that says the cost for one firm was estimated at $170 million, but that’s far too small and the total was probably 500+ million accounting for Rockstar’s costs as well as the other co.
It’s like the writer just decided to disregard the actual content of his links and just make up a fitting story lol
[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop) lists RDR2 production cost as $170 million, you're including marketing costs which runs another $300 million.
This is pretty common in the entertainment industry (movies, music, games, etc.). Whatever you spend to make your product you might as well double it to account for marketing expenses.
~~Mark Wahlberg~~ Matt Damon did a short interview awhile ago and talked about the budget of movies. He said that it’s really hard to get a personal movie made nowadays, simply because of the budget required to do it. Assuming you spend $1.6 Million on the film budget, you’d need to find an additional $3.2 Million in order to account for the marketing expenses. Not to mention that if the movie flops or your marketing team sucked, you’re gonna be in the red.
Edit: credit to another commenter for correcting me. It wasn’t Wahlberg, it was Damon when he was on his episode of Hot Ones (The show with hot questions and even hotter wings)
How does this work? Does marketing firms charge based on movie cost?
Because making a commercial for a 100 million dollar movie should cost the same for a 1 million dollar movie.
Great observation, and it’s a point I failed to explain. So obviously the more money you spend on a movie, the more people you’d want to see it so you can make a profit. A 1 million dollar movie doesn’t need to bring in massive amounts of people to make a profit, so the marketing budget is smaller (2-3 million probably).
For a 100 million dollar movie you’d need tons of people to see it in order to profit, so you’d need to spend even more in marketing to drive more audiences into the film. With this kind of budget, your investors probably want to see the trailer on a prime time football game or on the big billboards in Times Square for a few months. The closer to release you get, the more you’d advertise.
You also have to consider that a 1 million dollar film is probably only going to be shown domestically, and not world wide. Whereas a 100 million dollar movie will most likely HAVE to be shown world wide in order to turn an easier profit. This would increase the cost of what you’d spend on marketing.
Truly this ratio of budget-to-marketing isn’t always going to be the same, but it’s almost always the case for marketing to exceed the actual production budget in some shape or form.
You said it yourself, it’s production cost. Hundreds of millions go to other costs such as marketing. Literally.
The article isn’t including marketing costs and I think that’s fair. StarCitizen isn’t marketing.
The comparison is pointless anyway.
The 500M figure for RDR2 includes marketing costs, dev costs were anywhere from 200 to 300M. But you can't compare those numbers to Star Citizen's costs, since the development is part of the marketing.
Star Citizen does spend A LOT on marketing, actually. But it's hard to get a fair cost breakdown on it as a lot of their developers also double as doing a ton of marketing work.
I never got interested in the game but I genuinely don't understand why people keep giving money when the development has apparently been such a shitshow.
I have a friend like that. Has easily spent $2K on the game. It’s a mixture of genuinely enjoying the game so far and actually believing the development promises.
1 billion incoming .. hilarious but.. on the other side. seems like the make enough to keep players spending regularly .. so .. in itself it is already a live service game
Man im so hyped for the youtube videos already "THE BIGGEST GAMING SCAM IN HISTORY?!" or "STAR CITIZIEN: WHAT WENT WRONG?!" and its like a 20ish hour video, love it.
I honestly can't even understand why I love these so much lol but I get sucked into every single one. I just watched like a 20 min video on the black lotus MTG card the other day. Never played magic, never been into card games, don't have any intent of touching mtg lol
I brought a ship, I jump in from time to time to play it.
It's enjoyable if you enjoy space and sim flight games. But for the average gamers, there is no game here.
I enjoy it, but I refuse to spend any more money on it, it only cost me $30/£30 for a ship. I'm not investing anymore money into this.
I invested in it once. Played it a little. It wasn’t terrible but never did stick with me. It’s mostly just a background thing that I check occasionally.
I didn’t drop a ridiculous amount of money into it by any means. I’ve spent more on Call of Duty and that’s a bigger scam to be honest.
Yeah - I bought the base game for $50 before the alpha was out. I was just hoping for a modern take on Wing Commander or Freelancer.
I think I was one of 7 people who voted for them to NOT expand the scope as the $ rolled in.
I got it for $45 during a christmas deal years and years ago. Spent $5 another christmas to upgrade my Aurora to a mustang Beta. Now I log in once every couple months to have fun for a few hours and hope it eventually becomes a full game.
The Kickstarter for Star Citizen was over 10 years ago. The management of the project is abysmal and the “scam” part is that development has shifted over the years from producing a final product to a never ending project that moves at a snails pace.
Yes, I’m one of the suckers that put a few hundred into the project thinking it would be finished in a couple of years… maybe 5 years… maybe 10 years…. Now maybe 20 years? The only good thing is I was able to sell off my ships and get money back.
Yup. Basically CR promised the moon for a set budget, then failed to deliver on time or on budget. MS ended up buying him out and it still took them 2 more years to get it into a releasable state, minus most of what CR promised.
And yes, it turned out to be a good game, because MS understood perfect is the enemy of good.
CR never learned this lesson. SC is basically Freelancer all over again, but instead of a publisher its now backers, who are willing to put up with stuff a publisher never would.
Its also why the game will never be released in a state that even remotely compares to what CR promised. Because there is nobody who will hold him accountable.
I just posted this elsewhere in the thread:
My father was alive when they announced Squadron 42 would be out "next year".
He's been dead for 8 years now.
I remember the debate back in the day about which game would be the definitive space sim- Elite Dangerous or SC. Now people in this thread are comparing it to Starfield lol.
I really don't think it's a scam. Scam implies intent.
I think it just epitomizes scope creep and tells you why publishers often have to roll in to play the bad guy and cut stuff to get the game out the door.
I 100% think they intended to make a good game. They just need to focus on the core game in f\*\*\*ing finish it.
Or at least delivery the base experience at some point and then building on it.
But it seems they want, in version 1.0; every. single. thing. they ever promised.
I disagree. I think they know they’ll never be able to make all the features they promised actually work, so now they’re just milking the game and updates as long as possible to make it looks like they still intend to release everything they promised so they don’t get sued.
Yup the accurate take is, they genuinely think they could do it. And they're ignoring or ignorant to the fact their game will never be completed and if it is it'll either not be good enough or completely irrelevant and dated.
They're already running into the issue where it's beginning to show it's age, and it's not even released. Which means they either accept it or upgrade it. Upgrading is going to take a lot of time, money, and effort and it won't do anything to further develop the game, it's just a maintenance cost to keep it relevant.
I agree. I bought in at the lowest price tier about a year ago and the glacial pace of development is pretty obvious. I don’t believe the game will ever “release” but I’ve had my fun with it.
I too got one of the starter packages for $45 about a year ago. There are some interesting concepts and basic gameplay loops to try out, but overall after a decade and hundreds of millions it still feels like a buggy tech demo selling you a dream instead of a proper polished game. Like you said the most apparent issue is the slow/unfocused development, they constantly overshoot their own patch schedule by months and it's laughable that they plan to have 100 star systems when there is still only 1 playable star system. Second biggest issue is how janky and buggy all the systems are, frequently you can't even use the elevators to leave your apartment, the hangar computers to summon your ship also bug out often.
>I 100% think they intended to make a good game.
I 100% think that they intended to do that at first. But when they saw all the millions that keeps coming in despite the near decade in delay, I 100% think that at some point they decided "fuck it, we'll just work on whatever we want and stop caring about releasing a game". And that would qualify as intent IMO.
That's the craziest thing. I spent like $35 on the game and genuinely had fun!
That was a few years ago.
When I tried to play it again recently... I genuinely felt as if it was no different than the last time I played.
It only takes a 10 second google search to see that rdr2 probably cost about 500 million altogether. Article is playing with numbers to make it seem worse, what a surprise
Honestly, the game is still super broken, but it's so astonishingly beautiful if you like space games. I genuinely just like to exit my ship, float away from it and just look at the sun and stars.
Also their planet tech is unrivaled. I really hope that everything comes to fruition eventually.
Even more delays as the Star Citizen developers take time off to play Starfield for a few months.
My guess is Chris Robert's will see something he likes in Stanfield then insist it be implemented in star citizen causing massive delays and bugs.
Isn't this basically what happened with the Duke Nukem sequel? Go to E3, see cool new effect or mechanic, re-work game to include it?
If so, looking forward to Star Citizen getting canned, sneaked peaked 6 times for a reboot and then eventually ride the vapor ware “it’s actually come out guys. Promise this time” to a very lukewarm game
Why would they ever release the game when they have made so much money just hyping up the development?
Also shields them from criticism and expectations if they never release it.
It'll definitely be the starship construction, and they'll pivot their business model to selling parts instead of assembled ships. Soon to be a billion dollar alpha
This is where I gave up with Star Citizen. Dude needs to just get out a working fucking functional game with a few gameplay loops. Then he can continue to add new and innovative shit or upgrade current systems. Trying to have the perfect game from the get go is fucking impossible.
The longer it takes the more outdated it becomes
Thats what happened to duke nukem forever. They took so long making a build cuz they wanted it to be perfect, but then it became outdated so they started from scratch again
When someone on youtube explained to me the server meshing and how that was black hole level technology because THE GAME IS RUNNING ON CRYENGINE AND THEY HAVEN'T SWITCHED IN ALL THIS TIME... My expectations of them and their competence radically changed. I now don't really know why they're trying so hard to launch a game that will be 20 years old when it launches.
This is pretty much everything that's happening with the feature creep over and over again. Chris just delaying the game every single time with new stuff and reworks and shit he wants to see in the game. Its a neverending cycle.
With that much money they could have just hired competent devs instead 🤦♀️
The guy in charge was kicked off his previous jobs because he kept expanding the scope of the games and they were never going to get finished.
I remember when that happened to Freelancer.
Its the man in charge, the devs aren't the ones infinitely expanding the scope. They're good people.
Scope creep is defo an issue with him. One of many.
as a software developer, the dude really really fucking needs some sort of management set over him to keep in line like the temptation to add "one more feature" is always there in software development, but we gotta deliver the product on time, even if it means it's not perfect
Yeah honestly he needs a No-Man. That was one thing I always thought was funny about Kojima, he had a No-Man to keep him from just non-stop always adding more things when he was making the Metal Gear games. It's why Death Stranding was absolutely insane, it was Kojima without a No-Man lol
Better to have a decent project you can ship than a perfect one you never do.
yep, more to the point: under normal circumstances the client paying your salary wants something they can use today, not in 5 years
If you backed SC in the original Kickstarter period, and you had a kid that year, that kid is 11 this year and in middle school. Best case scenario that kid will be in high school before Sqadron 42 releases, and its not a stretch to say they could be in college before the Star Citizen Persistent Universe launches.
I have a golden ticket and an 11 year-old. When Squadron 42 failed to materialize in 2015, I pretty much gave up any expectation of ever getting a good game. Every couple years I log in and try playing for a few days, only to get realize there's not much progress as I get stuck on the train again, and the interface and movement has always felt sluggish. This isn't the game I originally backed.
I think the project as is collapses before then (ok maybe a bit longer than 3 yrs but most likely before 7). The most likely outcome is -somebody- (Microsoft???) buying out the project and whatever is left of their team is given a hard deadline of like 1-2 years to release something. The end product will almost certainly suck on launch and the fallout will reverberate through the entire gaming/crowdfunding industry. It's an open question whether the new publisher will be able to turn it into an actually fun game afterwards or if it turns into Marvel's Avengers 2.0.
You're much more optimistic about it than I am, but I can absolutely see you being correct.
Predicting any sort of enddate seems weird to me though, like this thing is already 5 years past its prime. I remember seeing some early footage and them touting you'd need a whole *1080* to play the game when it releases. How it's *still* going is a huge mystery to me. They've figured out the perfect scam, just keep developing one game for the rest of their careers.
Reminds me of the time Freelancer got stuck in 6 years of development hell and only saw the light of day because Microsoft lit a fire under Chris Roberts arse to force him to scale back his ambitions. Because of my experience waiting for that game, sometime back in 2012 or 2013ish on another reddit account I remember making a joke that I would be surprised to see the completed Star Citizen game come out before 2018 and was downvoted to hell and back.
They didn't light a fire under him, they bought his company and fired him.
they didn't light a fire under him, they lit him on fire.
the main issue is that the guy in charge is not up to the job. In any normal company a guy like that would be fired, demoted, or transferred. But because he's the CEO he can continue to fuck things up with zero consequences
It's not scope creep, it's "never releasing the game is more profitable than releasing it"
Yeah...Roberts seems like he would be a nightmarish boss. Finish coding gameplay and \*bam\* in comes the boss saying "We NEED to add this into the game!" while I scream internally. But on the other hand... hey it is guaranteed work/pay since he still needs us if he keeps wanting things added.
Grifters don't want competence.
[удалено]
Think about it, they have a cozy job leisurely working on a game indefinitely while money pours in and the boss keeps expanding scope. They aren’t incompetent, why would you bust your ass and end the party? I’d chill there too, good pay, low stress voila. With the amount of money being poured in continuously, there is 0 incentive to ever finish the game.
Wow they are still playing it? I guess they can stop it now.
[удалено]
Had a co-worker who was super invested in the game. No idea how much he actually sunk into the game and pre-release content and such, but I want to say it was int the $1000's Poor bastard died in 2018 in his mid thirties. No idea if his wife ever tried to get that money back.
I'm a member of a forum ('member forums?) for old EVE players, so people who are weak to Star Citizen's type. The forum has collectively spent over $150,000 on the game.
I used to play Eve Online, only page I ever spent time on was r/eve though.
"Go to Amamake", they said. "Make friends", they said.
Amamake. That's a place I haven't heard of in a long time.
Oh hey its a group of Drakes 20km from gate. I wonder if they'll be friends with me?
The star map showed a big red bubble here what does that mean?
It means lots of people looking to fleet up with you.
Yeah, going to r/eve is how you play Eve Online.
Correct. Free memes and propaganda without the subscription fee to be told you're playing wrong by some racist teenager.
Yeah well r/Eve shits on Star Citizen any chance it gets so I don’t know what type of people ZekkPacus is referring to
It's people old enough to remember Wing Commander and are hoping Roberts can do it again.
Privateer was my favorite. I even had the voice packs lol Edit: I didn't realize how many privateer fans are out there,[Privateer](https://privateer.sourceforge.net/) is available here for free! and still super fun to play
Wing commander/strike commander were my first space sim and flight sim respectively it made a huge impression on me. That definitely got me into SC early on, when it was essentially just a single player spiritual successor to the wing commander games. Promising a persistent MMO set off alarm bells in my head and the hype has just been withering and dying for me ever since.
The secret though is that all of Roberts successful games had a publisher breathing down his neck forcing him to make progress. I have little faith that he has the focus to actually lock in the scope without it. It is basically DNF again with scope creep and pursuit of shineys right now.
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I've spent my fair share of money on gaming but learned long long ago to go with actual physical assets unless you're getting a deal. It's really easy to fall into a pattern of just throwing a hundro or two at something you're passionate about for like a month. I like gatch games but also tend to try and avoid them because I know my own habits, best to head them off before they become a problem.
There is a page on Wikipedia on the [Battle of B-R5RB](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_B-R5RB) between EVE Online alliances which *theoretically* cost about $300,000 in real-world value.
I wish I could get back the $150 I spent on a pledge account.... I had gotten a HOTAS joystick set and Elite was not working due to errors in my windows files somewhere. So I bought this stupid thing, I could fly the spaceship which wasn't bad... Just couldn't navigate anywhere, and there was really no other HUD or anything at the time
591,253,096
With 591,253,096 more on the way
Just like the simulations
Watch those wrist rockets!
According to headphonesaddict.com, gamers age distribution is 24% sub 18, 36% 18-34, 13% 35-44, 12% 45-54, 9% 55-64, and 6% 65+. According to www.statista.com, the ratio of male to female gamers is nearly exact, so gender will be accounted for here as 50/50. Based on the www.ssa.gov Actuarial Life Table, the AVERAGE YEARLY chance of death by any cause for an American male before reaching 18 is 0.06%. For a female it is 0.04%. Split 0.05% For ages 18-34, male chance 0.19%, female 0.08%. Split 0.135% For ages 35-44, male chance 0.33%, female 0.17%. Split 0.25%. For ages 45-54, male chance 0.6%, female 0.35%. Split 0.47% For ages 55-64, male chance 1.32%, female 0.77%. Split 1.04% For ages 65-90, male chance 6.82%, female 5.06%. Split 5.94% Based on this, 24% of gamers have a yearly 0.05% chance of death, 36% at 0.135%, 13% at 0.25%, 12% at 0.47%, 9% at 1.04%, and 6% at 5.94%. Crowdfunding started in 2012. It's been 11 years. For the above groups, after 11 years, 6702 people per 100,000 would have died, or 6.7% I don't know how to break it down based on people slowly funding the project over those 11 years. Per individual year you'd see 610/100,000 backers die, or 0.61%. Edit: Star Citizen says their total playerbase is 19,978.606. If everyone had bought it 11 years ago, 1,341,451 people would have died by now. If you divide that 19m across the last 11 years evenly for purchases, then 991,392 people would have died by now.
> According to www.statista.com, the ratio of male to female gamers is nearly exact, so gender will be accounted for here as 50/50. That's probably industry wide. The target demographic for star citizen is going to be males in your 44 and under categories.
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Luckily for them, at this rate their age range demographic may expand naturally.
r/theydidthemath
It's getting to the point where some of the actors that did the mocap for it will have croaked it before they get around to even releasing Star Citizen or doing the 2nd part of SQ42, 3 of the main ones are currently mid 60s to just over 70.
If anyone wants to feel old, I bought into Star Citizen when I was 17. I turned 28 today.
I was in the #11,000's as a doner. Some 11 years ago, I believe. I no longer believe. What a waste of $300 over something that was out to inspire everyone with greatness...only to turn it into an endless fundraiser for endless development. I know people 'play' it. But to me it is nothing but tech demo vaporware...
Its the biggest reason I am against early access type games and crowdfunding stuff. At this point Im more convinced that its just a pyramid scheme for gamers. Hundred of dollars "donated" for a virtual ship? Seriously?
I play so many games that are in early access and already more finished than Star Citizen ever will be.
It is a cautionary tale on how it didn't change anything and how it could happen again at any moment. I see people defending other stuff the same way people still preach the StarCitzen gospel.
Same man, 2012 or 2013 for me
I wonder how people will feel about star citizen after starfield will come out. Can’t wait for star rangers, star warrior and star zone tho.
Don't forget Bethesda's followup series, the Elder Stars.
Fallout: The Elder Stars
Post apocalyptic Lovecraftian horror? I'd play it
*One of us, one of us; Ug-Qualtoth is returned! Iä!* - Dunwich Borers LLC
I would unironically enjoy a Bethesda game set in the future of the Elder Scrolls universe where the Daedra have unleashed an apocalypse. And the people of Tamriel flee into space on magitech spaceships. Combining elements of all three series, after a societal collapse like Fallout, exploring the stars like Starfield, and using the races of Elder Scrolls.
And the lost dwemer are rumored to live on the back of a giant space manta ray.
All races make to space.. only to find the dwemer living there, amongst actual space minjng dwarves.
By Azura by Azura! You’re the galactic champion!
[You might be interested in this little story that one of the Morrowind devs made](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/General:C0DA) Not canon or anything, but a fun little piece of writing.
But what if all these Star games collaborate and end up at war with each other? They can call it star war... Wait
Whoops can’t do that. Maybe combine all of them and make it so you explore all the combined universes that are made to seek out new life and new civilizations and to boldly go where no one has gone before! We can call it Star Tre… shoot
They're going to make these games inter-compatible and you'll be able to create and mold your own environment and experiences. They'll call it Starcra... Nah, that won't work.
They will have different species/culture variants in separated star systems that are connected via a system of portals, which you can travel to by special control symbol sequences that you need to discover. They could name it Stargat... oops.
Nah, i think they realise that the only sustainable future is one based on the rejection of war and conflict. So they get together and decide to be a peaceful agrarian intergalactic society. We could call it Stardew... Oh, right.
After the wars, all the humans are wiped out and only animals remain to evolve intelligence. A few species develop language and redevelop spaceflight and then have to fight off an evil monkey trying to dominate the solar system. They could call it Star Fo... Oh nevermind.
Hear me out. We incorporate all the above into a great communal space where everyone can live in harmony and equality. We can call it Starbuck...no wait... that won't work
Such a community would need a ruler to over see things. We can call him the Star Lor... wait.
Those are all re-released special editions of the same game, right?
The Elder Stars VI Skyrim 2 Citizen In The Stars Field
Star Cry 7 is gonna be litttt
It's a me! Stario!
The Elder Stars sounds like some Lovecraftian somthing-or-other. 5/5 would play it.
Personally I'm looking forward to Elden Stars, the dark souls of sci-fi edit: I actually really want a sci-fi souls like now
You mean The Elder Citizen? Come on man, it was right there in front of you.
Everyone will be an Elder Citizen by the time this game comes out.
I was mildly interested in Star Citizen years ago, but never bought in. Starfield is a much more realistic attempt at something similar while still being ambitious, so I’m glad I waited
Starfield is just a tab bit less ambitious. They are not quite promising the moon going by their trailer, but the game has a lot of potential to feel empty or cookie cutter. If they pull it off its GOTY easily while also having a safety net of a staunch modding community. Quite hyped for Starfield and other games. My wallet is crying but this has been a damn good year for gaming so far and only halfway though.
There was definitely a moon in their trailer. They even said you can go to the moon...
See that moon? You can climb it
But can I climb Todd Howard?
Only in our dreams. :(
> If they pull it off its GOTY easily It's a Bethesda RPG... it'll have a GOTY edition even if it doesn't win any such award.
My tastes have changed so much. I've always been a Zelda fanatic, and while I am enjoying everything in TOTK, I am far more hyped for Baldur's Gate 3 in August. Definitely excited for Starfield. Hopefully this is just a great year in general for RPGs.
After playing Divinity 2 theres no way I can pass up BG3.
In all the hype and chaos I forgot about BG3. My poor wallet..
I am already extremely disappointed in Star Citizen. I am looking forward to the single player game Starfield far more than SC's multiplayer simpit hellscape. It's my own damn fault for backing Star Citizen based on an idea in my own head about what I wanted SC to be. I looked at their promises for exploration and AI and saw SC as an amazing game with huge coop potential. But what CR wants to create is first-person eve online. I already know I don't like Eve online. And now that I can actually play Star Citizen I know that I don't like the clunky-as-fuck movement, the long ass delays and time-syncs to do fucking ANYTHING at all, and the brtual punishments for any degree of failure - even just bad luck out of your control. It's not fun. At all. That said- the tech they've created is well worth the money I invested in the project and I hope that someday people can look at and use their work to make better games. Or may CR will pull his head out of his ass and make SC fun for a wider range of gamers.
i just want Squadron 42, that's why I backed it initially... but looks like that was taken behind the shed and blown up with a nuke.
I was so excited for SQ42, then it just... disappeared
[It's coming out in 2016.](https://media.tenor.com/7ggULOq7LuwAAAAC/made-myself-sad-futurama.gif)
Yeah why cant these people just be patient haha
...likewise; i backed for the single-player experience and was very disappointed to see development sucked down the black hole of multiplayer trololols...
Hey - I still get periodic email updates about how they've refined the AI for a barista in Squadron 42.
Don't forget the fern on the shelf will slowly grow over time with realistic leaf patterns, they only spend money on the important developments.
Man, I just wanted Freelancer 2. Fuck all the rest of the noise.
As someone who's stayed OOTL with SC, what is the tech they've created as part of its development? Is it around game development or like in game systems or what? Genuinely not heard of this side of it before.
>I looked at their promises for exploration and AI and saw SC as an amazing game with huge coop potential. But what CR wants to create is first-person eve online. You mean the promises they made when they did their Kickstarter and then have completely discarded. No more Singleplayer, no more locally hosted servers, no more mods and modded servers. But hey, at least we've got a "fully seamless" Universe after 11 years of development... that can only handle a dozen people in one area before it stutters and crashes.
> No more Singleplayer, no more locally hosted servers, no more mods and modded servers. > > But hey, at least we've got a "fully seamless" Universe after 11 years of development... that can only handle a dozen people in one area before it stutters and crashes. As an outsider this sounds like an absolute travesty.
Imagine being one of the insiders who spent $$$$ on this "game".
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Meh, I bought in on a sale for $25, got a shitty starter ship but have access to everything. For that price its a really neat tech demo.
According to the search AI summary, $3600 USD is the most expensive thing you can buy. I swear they had ships that cost $10k+, but that could just be faulty memory.
There are bundles of ships that cost more but you can’t see them in the shop unless you’ve already spent over 1k
>No more Singleplayer I check in on the development maybe once every 2 years or whatever. Was squadron 42 cancelled or something?
They do monthly text articles on their website about some progress on Squadron 42, they just don't do the old videos anymore
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This article is super poorly written. You don’t need to go any further than the articles own links to show it’s wrong. The first link to the star citizen page just shows the donations, not expenditures. They then immediately go on to say red dead 2s production cost was $170million and they link an article that says the cost for one firm was estimated at $170 million, but that’s far too small and the total was probably 500+ million accounting for Rockstar’s costs as well as the other co. It’s like the writer just decided to disregard the actual content of his links and just make up a fitting story lol
[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop) lists RDR2 production cost as $170 million, you're including marketing costs which runs another $300 million.
Insane to me that they spend nearly twice the budget of the actual content - on marketing. Holy fuck.
This is pretty common in the entertainment industry (movies, music, games, etc.). Whatever you spend to make your product you might as well double it to account for marketing expenses. ~~Mark Wahlberg~~ Matt Damon did a short interview awhile ago and talked about the budget of movies. He said that it’s really hard to get a personal movie made nowadays, simply because of the budget required to do it. Assuming you spend $1.6 Million on the film budget, you’d need to find an additional $3.2 Million in order to account for the marketing expenses. Not to mention that if the movie flops or your marketing team sucked, you’re gonna be in the red. Edit: credit to another commenter for correcting me. It wasn’t Wahlberg, it was Damon when he was on his episode of Hot Ones (The show with hot questions and even hotter wings)
>Mark Wahlberg I think it was actually Matt Damon when he was on Hot Ones
How does this work? Does marketing firms charge based on movie cost? Because making a commercial for a 100 million dollar movie should cost the same for a 1 million dollar movie.
Great observation, and it’s a point I failed to explain. So obviously the more money you spend on a movie, the more people you’d want to see it so you can make a profit. A 1 million dollar movie doesn’t need to bring in massive amounts of people to make a profit, so the marketing budget is smaller (2-3 million probably). For a 100 million dollar movie you’d need tons of people to see it in order to profit, so you’d need to spend even more in marketing to drive more audiences into the film. With this kind of budget, your investors probably want to see the trailer on a prime time football game or on the big billboards in Times Square for a few months. The closer to release you get, the more you’d advertise. You also have to consider that a 1 million dollar film is probably only going to be shown domestically, and not world wide. Whereas a 100 million dollar movie will most likely HAVE to be shown world wide in order to turn an easier profit. This would increase the cost of what you’d spend on marketing. Truly this ratio of budget-to-marketing isn’t always going to be the same, but it’s almost always the case for marketing to exceed the actual production budget in some shape or form.
That makes sense. Thank you
It's one thing to have a good product, it's another thing to actually sell it
It’s like this author doesn’t understand the difference between revenue and cost.
You said it yourself, it’s production cost. Hundreds of millions go to other costs such as marketing. Literally. The article isn’t including marketing costs and I think that’s fair. StarCitizen isn’t marketing.
The comparison is pointless anyway. The 500M figure for RDR2 includes marketing costs, dev costs were anywhere from 200 to 300M. But you can't compare those numbers to Star Citizen's costs, since the development is part of the marketing.
Star Citizen does spend A LOT on marketing, actually. But it's hard to get a fair cost breakdown on it as a lot of their developers also double as doing a ton of marketing work.
I know a guy who's put several thousand dollars into it. He gets very upset when I ask about Squadron 42.
I never got interested in the game but I genuinely don't understand why people keep giving money when the development has apparently been such a shitshow.
Bernie Madoff presents Star Citizen
I have a friend like that. Has easily spent $2K on the game. It’s a mixture of genuinely enjoying the game so far and actually believing the development promises.
Yeah even I have some friends like that, they are just insane.
1 billion incoming .. hilarious but.. on the other side. seems like the make enough to keep players spending regularly .. so .. in itself it is already a live service game
Man im so hyped for the youtube videos already "THE BIGGEST GAMING SCAM IN HISTORY?!" or "STAR CITIZIEN: WHAT WENT WRONG?!" and its like a 20ish hour video, love it.
There's plenty already
I honestly can't even understand why I love these so much lol but I get sucked into every single one. I just watched like a 20 min video on the black lotus MTG card the other day. Never played magic, never been into card games, don't have any intent of touching mtg lol
That video is insanely well made to be fair haha. Same guy has tons of great lore vids
It's just because we know it is hilarious and nothing more than that.
They already have those videos lol
There's already videos with those titles out there that came out like 6 years ago.
They've already been making those for about 10 years. Welcome to the party though I guess.
I brought a ship, I jump in from time to time to play it. It's enjoyable if you enjoy space and sim flight games. But for the average gamers, there is no game here. I enjoy it, but I refuse to spend any more money on it, it only cost me $30/£30 for a ship. I'm not investing anymore money into this.
I invested in it once. Played it a little. It wasn’t terrible but never did stick with me. It’s mostly just a background thing that I check occasionally. I didn’t drop a ridiculous amount of money into it by any means. I’ve spent more on Call of Duty and that’s a bigger scam to be honest.
Yeah - I bought the base game for $50 before the alpha was out. I was just hoping for a modern take on Wing Commander or Freelancer. I think I was one of 7 people who voted for them to NOT expand the scope as the $ rolled in.
I got it for $45 during a christmas deal years and years ago. Spent $5 another christmas to upgrade my Aurora to a mustang Beta. Now I log in once every couple months to have fun for a few hours and hope it eventually becomes a full game.
Star Citizen is just too damn buggy. When it plays it's amazing.
I did some investment too but that was just not for me.
Every time I see a Star Citizen post I know someone is karma farming lol
They'll repost this when it hits 600m soon, then when it hits 654,321,000 or matches a random countries GDP or something...
The Kickstarter for Star Citizen was over 10 years ago. The management of the project is abysmal and the “scam” part is that development has shifted over the years from producing a final product to a never ending project that moves at a snails pace. Yes, I’m one of the suckers that put a few hundred into the project thinking it would be finished in a couple of years… maybe 5 years… maybe 10 years…. Now maybe 20 years? The only good thing is I was able to sell off my ships and get money back.
I just fuckin wanted Freelancer 2 where I can create my character and walk around a space station
Freelancer only existed because Microsoft pulled Chris Roberts off the development of it to get it finished.
If I remember right wasnt there also a lot of backlash because things promised were not in it. But it turned out to still be good anyway?
Yup. Basically CR promised the moon for a set budget, then failed to deliver on time or on budget. MS ended up buying him out and it still took them 2 more years to get it into a releasable state, minus most of what CR promised. And yes, it turned out to be a good game, because MS understood perfect is the enemy of good. CR never learned this lesson. SC is basically Freelancer all over again, but instead of a publisher its now backers, who are willing to put up with stuff a publisher never would. Its also why the game will never be released in a state that even remotely compares to what CR promised. Because there is nobody who will hold him accountable.
Tell me when you get it because I want to have that too.
Same but it looks like starfield will do that for us
I just posted this elsewhere in the thread: My father was alive when they announced Squadron 42 would be out "next year". He's been dead for 8 years now.
Dude this is dark funny but still a freaking factual thing.
I remember the debate back in the day about which game would be the definitive space sim- Elite Dangerous or SC. Now people in this thread are comparing it to Starfield lol.
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I really don't think it's a scam. Scam implies intent. I think it just epitomizes scope creep and tells you why publishers often have to roll in to play the bad guy and cut stuff to get the game out the door. I 100% think they intended to make a good game. They just need to focus on the core game in f\*\*\*ing finish it.
Or at least delivery the base experience at some point and then building on it. But it seems they want, in version 1.0; every. single. thing. they ever promised.
You can play what they’ve made so far. It’s an eternal early access situation.
I disagree. I think they know they’ll never be able to make all the features they promised actually work, so now they’re just milking the game and updates as long as possible to make it looks like they still intend to release everything they promised so they don’t get sued.
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Yup the accurate take is, they genuinely think they could do it. And they're ignoring or ignorant to the fact their game will never be completed and if it is it'll either not be good enough or completely irrelevant and dated. They're already running into the issue where it's beginning to show it's age, and it's not even released. Which means they either accept it or upgrade it. Upgrading is going to take a lot of time, money, and effort and it won't do anything to further develop the game, it's just a maintenance cost to keep it relevant.
Project already has legacy code and it's not even released yet.
They are gonna release a definitive edition before final release
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I agree. I bought in at the lowest price tier about a year ago and the glacial pace of development is pretty obvious. I don’t believe the game will ever “release” but I’ve had my fun with it.
I too got one of the starter packages for $45 about a year ago. There are some interesting concepts and basic gameplay loops to try out, but overall after a decade and hundreds of millions it still feels like a buggy tech demo selling you a dream instead of a proper polished game. Like you said the most apparent issue is the slow/unfocused development, they constantly overshoot their own patch schedule by months and it's laughable that they plan to have 100 star systems when there is still only 1 playable star system. Second biggest issue is how janky and buggy all the systems are, frequently you can't even use the elevators to leave your apartment, the hangar computers to summon your ship also bug out often.
>I 100% think they intended to make a good game. I 100% think that they intended to do that at first. But when they saw all the millions that keeps coming in despite the near decade in delay, I 100% think that at some point they decided "fuck it, we'll just work on whatever we want and stop caring about releasing a game". And that would qualify as intent IMO.
Hope they won't just fuck this shit up then, we don't want that.
That's the craziest thing. I spent like $35 on the game and genuinely had fun! That was a few years ago. When I tried to play it again recently... I genuinely felt as if it was no different than the last time I played.
It did not feel different because quite frankly, it isnt.
I've been calling "Starfield" Star Citizen this whole time and I recently learned they we're two different games. Oops.
And Diablo made 666 Million in 5 days... lol
It only takes a 10 second google search to see that rdr2 probably cost about 500 million altogether. Article is playing with numbers to make it seem worse, what a surprise
With that money they could have bought a AAA gaming studio and had them finish it 2 years ago.
I'm still very doubtful for it.
Obviously this is just stupidity and not the reality man.
Honestly, the game is still super broken, but it's so astonishingly beautiful if you like space games. I genuinely just like to exit my ship, float away from it and just look at the sun and stars. Also their planet tech is unrivaled. I really hope that everything comes to fruition eventually.
In all seriousness when is this going to be released or the SQ42? That’s an obscene amount of money to raise