Star Citizen: A PC-Only Space Sim by Chris Roberts

I'd be shocked, but at this point it's just funny.

There's gonna be internet warriors bravely going to defend the practice "it's necessary so Citizencon doesn't take money away from development."

Like, I'd decry RSI but really, they know at this point their audience will pay for anything, so I can't get myself mad over them milking an audience that's still going "Take my money".

Edited by Ghilz on Aug 31st 2018 at 10:43:11 AM

Is it that different than what Blizzard does for their Blizz Con stream?

Blizzard games aren't crowdfunded.

Edited by M84 on Aug 31st 2018 at 11:00:42 PM

The greed of the devs in the last couple years is just astounding, doesn't help that the fanbase behave more like a cult than a funding crowd.

Still boggles my mind they raised roughly £60 million

How is this game not finished?

Or at least considered finished?

I think feature creep and "Holy shit,look at all this money!"

After playing the game personally and noticing how much content is barren or missing, I'm thinking it's more about the ship models than anything else.

Say what you will about all of the bugs and incomplete features, but boy howdy, Cloud Imperium made some BEAUTIFUL starships and actually bothered to model both their interiors and hull damage, something even games like Elite: Dangerous would rather skip out on. Not gonna lie, I probably spent a good ten minutes examining all the intricate details on my Avenger Titan and Aurora ES the first time I laid eyes upon them.

So it's quite possible that some of the folks playing this game are akin to model collectors, merely purchasing expensive kits solely for the purpose of bragging rights and display.

Here's an article regarding Star Citizen's troubled development.

Short version: Roberts has no idea what to do with all that money, and sometimes you need Executive Meddling to get the creative types to just freaking do something.

It reminds me of what happened with Anthem, a little. Designers lose track, keep starting over, insist on perfecting things, and never make real progress.

The issue with Anthem was precious little direction from Bioware's heads. It took an EA executive to get them on track by pointing out that what they gave him to play was boring.

There have actually been people who have gone so far as to claim Star Citizen has effectively become a Ponzi scheme of sorts. Chris Roberts convinces people to give money by promising new ships, but that adds to workload and expenses since the previous stuff still isn't anywhere close to finished. As money runs out, he promises new ships, but a lot of work is still not finished from before. Repeat.

Edited by M84 on Aug 25th 2019 at 3:00:24 AM

As of this month, Star Citizen's crowd funding has surpassed $268 million dollars. Safe to say this game has received a larger budget than some AAA titles received.

It's telling that the only update in this thread in a while has been about how much money SC has raised.

Much like their Kickstarter page.

Edited by Kayeka on Feb 17th 2020 at 3:21:45 PM

How does Star Citizen have this type of fanbase that keeps throwing money?

Edited by RedHunter543 on Feb 17th 2020 at 6:25:12 AM

Sunk costs, earning social status through conspicuous consumption, promising the moon to a hungry niche audience...

For all their failings as a game developer, they have an excellent marketing wing.

No different from a cult really.

Cloud Imperium and Crytek have agreed to settle their legal dispute.

For the unaware, Cloud Imperium initially made an agreement to use the Cry Engine to develop Star Citizen. Upon realizing that while Cry Tek's software is great for making things look really pretty, it doesn't handle vast open environments and scaling very well, thus leading to Cloud Imperium deciding to (supposedly) change game engines to Amazon's Lumberyard, which is partially built out of Cry Engine and Unity. Hence the problem: Cloud Imperium was claiming Star Citizen's development was no longer utilizing Cry Engine and wanted to back out of their technical and financial agreements, whilst Crytek claimed B.S. since Amazon Lumberyard still uses their tech.

At any rate, it's all probably going to be in the past now, since the issue has been solved out of court.

In other Star Citizen news... Chris Roberts is really dead-set upon making this game's scale seem as epic and accurate as possible, isn't he? Those nebula clouds you can pass through aren't just triggered textures or scripted changes to the lighting: they're actual physical entities in space with sources of light and everything.

Edited by SgtRicko on Feb 26th 2020 at 6:33:22 AM

I think Chris Roberts strategy is now making its component parts so epic and wonderful it can never be finished and thus never has to be paid off.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Feb 25th 2020 at 12:29:29 PM

Test-drive Star Citizen's ships in a free trial event this week

From May 22nd to June 1st you can test-pilot a rotating roster of the game's starships at no cost. Not all of the ships are included, since a good deal are still in development and can only be viewed via holograms (most of which I assume will consist of the capital ships and freighters).

The ship is fully functional, but sadly you can't repair or resupply it in the spaceports. Even crazier is how the capital ships are partially functional: you can't do much due to the "thought bubbles" not working and the chairs being invisible, but the AI npcs can control the ships.

Credit to them, what they've built is amazing. Ev E but zoomed in, basically. I REALLY hope this does bear fruit and we see a fully interactive system, fully engaged ships and planets and combat.

I just want Squadron 42 to fix my WC itch. Rebel Galaxy Outlaw scratched the Privateer one... but it's far more cartoony and exaggerated. This looks fairly intense.

Best I can recommend is Everspace or House of the Dying Sun.

Or, if you don't mind combat with jets, try out Ace Combat 7 or Sky Rogue. Yeah, Wing Commander they ain't, but the dogfighting is great.

Edited by SgtRicko on May 27th 2020 at 1:37:00 AM

Everspace I tried - but for some reason the arcadey controls just feel really OFF to me and I can't seem to get the hang of it. It's weird. Can do it in other games...

HOTDS - I do have that in my library really enjoyed it. But gave up I think a few missions in, not sure why.

Ace Combat.... I've heard good things and it looks silly good fun. May give it a whirl!

I think the idea behind SC - that you could, if you want, grab a ship, fly to space, find another ship, board it, gun your way thru the crew, capture it, fly down to a planet and repurpose it... yeah that whole thing just SOUNDS great. So I do hope they manage it.

Edited by JerekLaz on May 27th 2020 at 1:18:43 AM

Strangely enough, a game all the way back in 2003 attempted (most) of that concept. It was called Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter, and while it was mostly an FPS, the gameplay frequently had segments involving dogfighting in space and boarding enemy vessels. And it was almost seamless too: you'd dock your ship into a hanger, land, exit your vessel, and continue on foot with no loading screens. No open world exploration or freely ejecting from your starship though.

Sadly I don't think it's available for purchase online. You'll have to pirate a copy.