The Saga Of 'Star Citizen,' A Video Game That Raised $300 Million—But May Never Be Ready To Play

[theFOoL]

The development of this game was just too much for me to wait on. Like I mean I loved Freelancer and the developer wanted this game to be 100% Graphical, story and world space wise to explore as what Freelancer was when you complete the story

I loved the Freelancer Mod I played with called Tow "Tides of War" a StarWars Mod. I so much fun but it had to go to. Here's my journey...

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[moproblems99]

What about if the delays are infinite?

I don't care because I don't have any money invested in it. Space Sims aren't really my thing either so my heart won't be broken either.

That said, the ambitions are large enough that it could be a great game. I don't have much faith in the studio.

 

[64K]

I wonder if a big-name studio will swoop in and make a similar style of game to see if they can capitalize on what is clearly a "want" for a group of well-heeled gamers.

Doubtful......the buzz around the Star Craft Squadron 42 release is dying out for some years now. It's not a game that the vast majority of people give a damn about anymore anyway. Roberts has been slowly slipping in to a has-been forgotten Developer for years now and a joke.

Maybe that will change. I hope so.

 

[INSTG8R]

Doubtful......the buzz around the Star Craft Squadron 42 release is dying out for some years now. It's not a game that the vast majority of people give a damn about anymore anyway. Roberts has been slowly slipping in to a has-been forgotten Developer for years now and a joke.

Maybe that will change. I hope so.

Says you...All I bought in for is SQ42...the rest can go fly off into space...

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

Let me preface by saying that I have no stake on this game other than being amazed at their initial promise. But as an outsider it felt kinda irresponsible (to me) hiring hollywood actors for mocap cutscene.

 

[bug]

I'm disappointed by the feature delays, but am familiar with how common they are in a software development program of this size. I can see a lot of progress and there's great communication from the development team. I also regularly spend quite a bit of time in the PTU and Live servers watching game mechanics being deployed and refined. There's a long way to go, but it's pretty amazing already!

Please do share, because I'm a software developer and I'm not. Google itself didn't take 8 years to get something working that was better than the competition out the door, but hey, I don't know everything.

 

[Mescalamba]

I remember hearing about D3, when we still played D2.

It took some time to actually play D3.

And thats A LOT easier game to do than absurdly big MMO in space.

People are spoiled.

 

[bug]

I remember hearing about D3, when we still played D2.

It took some time to actually play D3.

And thats A LOT easier game to do than absurdly big MMO in space.

People are spoiled.

I remember Blizzard took one year between competing D2 and releasing the game to the public. They only did balancing during that year. But that obviously doesn't apply here.
And stop bringing in the scope as an argument: project management has cracked this problem decades ago, it's called iterative development. I.e. you can release a game where you can fly your ship in space and undertake missions and later on add the ability to land on planets and trade and further down the line implement the ability to buy plots of land and whatnot without affecting the quality of title.
This game is not huge in scope, it's a textbook case of how not to manage a software project.

 

[dorsetknob]

Call me Stupid or a fan of Descent but
they could have borrowed from that platform and updated/rewrote Engine.
You would have had a dam good basic level multi player Arena
use of the ftl/jump engine to move/spawn in another area ( different maps and Micro transaction/ access)
Use of Different maps /levels/Regions as they could be called would be add on (paid Content) and would be inifinatly Expandable ( only limited by Game Servers).
This Could have been Accomplished for a Fraction of what has/will been invested and it would probably have been on the retail Shelves 18 to 24 months ago.

I think of this game as a form of Electronic Ponzi scheme ( just update enough to keep the investors pumping in their $£).

 

[bug]

Call me Stupid or a fan of Descent but
they could have borrowed from that platform and updated/rewrote Engine.
You would have had a dam good basic level multi player Arena
use of the ftl/jump engine to move/spawn in another area ( different maps and Micro transaction/ access)
Use of Different maps /levels/Regions as they could be called would be add on (paid Content) and would be inifinatly Expandable ( only limited by Game Servers).
This Could have been Accomplished for a Fraction of what has/will been invested and it would probably have been on the retail Shelves 18 to 24 months ago.

I think of this game as a form of Electronic Ponzi scheme ( just update enough to keep the investors pumping in their $£).

Honestly, there's probably a zillion ways this could have been done that would have put something in the hands of backer by now, with a higher quality than what we see right now.
I'm reluctant to call the whole thing a Ponzi scheme, it's just consistent with what Mr Roberts does (see his history with Freelancer).

 

[Vayra86]

I remember Blizzard took one year between competing D2 and releasing the game to the public. They only did balancing during that year. But that obviously doesn't apply here.
And stop bringing in the scope as an argument: project management has cracked this problem decades ago, it's called iterative development. I.e. you can release a game where you can fly your ship in space and undertake missions and later on add the ability to land on planets and trade and further down the line implement the ability to buy plots of land and whatnot without affecting the quality of title.
This game is not huge in scope, it's a textbook case of how not to manage a software project.

The scope is pretty significant though.

Another big part of this, is that its a scope consisting of 100% moving elements. As in, the only thing they really had was a version of CryEngine, that later got switched to Lumberyard. Support came and went, Crytek nearly came and went, even.

But its not just the engine that's moving. People too. Dev teams were incomplete, located in the wrong place or lacking crucial skills. And then there is the project itself. The earlier years were not just building up the lore and game setting/world (easy to do without coding much, and independant of how you code game mechanics or handle them in the engine), but also doing what was possible with the people available at the time. There is also not the luxury of a copy pasted 'base' for the game. Literally everything is done from scratch. You can't do iterative development without a solid base. Well you can, but the result is a horrible mess you'll never get out of again. Its easy to get stuck in your own ground rules later on.

If you do 'a project' within a larger company that does lots of similar projects, or has already done one or two of them with existing teams and having some collective experience then sure, Star Citizen is the worst example of how to do it right. But if you consider all those moving parts... I think what we've got today is quite the achievement.

The element of time is a problem, but its mostly our impatience with that than anything else that causes the problem. Not the way the project is managed. We're just waiting too long for it - like you say, we need a product in backer's hands. And apparently, what's there today is not enough for many... but many also don't see how much is already built into that content we do have. The code base for iterative development is just about ready.

Besides, would you REALLY want an iterative singleplayer campaign? Its the worst possible invention in gaming. See Hitman. Totally didn't work. I'll take my campaign without cliffhangers... The iterative dev process starts and continues on the PU - they've figured out that a single star system or hub is quite a bit of work, so we'll get that spoonfed to us - and that seems fine to me, as long as they're not paid expacs...

And yeah one more thing that WOULD help is Roberts who needs to stop moving the goal posts all the time. Because I do agree that is one huge factor in this whole story.

 

[bug]

The scope is pretty significant though.

Another big part of this, is that its a scope consisting of 100% moving elements. As in, the only thing they really had was a version of CryEngine, that later got switched to Lumberyard. Support came and went, Crytek nearly came and went, even.

But its not just the engine that's moving. People too. Dev teams were incomplete, located in the wrong place or lacking crucial skills. And then there is the project itself. The earlier years were not just building up the lore and game setting/world (easy to do without coding much, and independant of how you code game mechanics or handle them in the engine), but also doing what was possible with the people available at the time. There is also not the luxury of a copy pasted 'base' for the game. Literally everything is done from scratch. You can't do iterative development without a solid base. Well you can, but the result is a horrible mess you'll never get out of again. Its easy to get stuck in your own ground rules later on.

If you do 'a project' within a larger company that does lots of similar projects, or has already done one or two of them with existing teams and having some collective experience then sure, Star Citizen is the worst example of how to do it right. But if you consider all those moving parts... I think what we've got today is quite the achievement.

The element of time is a problem, but its mostly our impatience with that than anything else that causes the problem. Not the way the project is managed. We're just waiting too long for it - like you say, we need a product in backer's hands. And apparently, what's there today is not enough for many... but many also don't see how much is already built into that content we do have. The code base for iterative development is just about ready.

Besides, would you REALLY want an iterative singleplayer campaign? Its the worst possible invention in gaming. See Hitman. Totally didn't work. I'll take my campaign without cliffhangers... The iterative dev process starts and continues on the PU - they've figured out that a single star system or hub is quite a bit of work, so we'll get that spoonfed to us - and that seems fine to me, as long as they're not paid expacs...

And yeah one more thing that WOULD help is Roberts who needs to stop moving the goal posts all the time. Because I do agree that is one huge factor in this whole story.

And again, we only have to look at Path of Exile to see how this was actually done iteratively. Sure, you'd be hard pressed to find similarities between the single player PoE campaign today and single player PoE v1.0, but really, who cares?

Also, iterative development only ends up in a mess if you're doing it wrong.

And if all you've said is true and there were challenges wrt the team, those would be reasons to bring scope under control asap, not expand it. So, again, mismanagement.

 

[Vayra86]

And again, we only have to look at Path of Exile to see how this was actually done iteratively. Sure, you'd be hard pressed to find similarities between the single player PoE campaign today and single player PoE v1.0, but really, who cares?

Also, iterative development only ends up in a mess if you're doing it wrong.

And if all you've said is true and there were challenges wrt the team, those would be reasons to bring scope under control asap, not expand it. So, again, mismanagement.

When working with people its pretty difficult to straight up compare projects. And even GGG didn't have a smooth ride... but let's face it, they're making a simple 2D ARPG that's been made a hundred times over, and even that one suffered from severe networking issues right up until a few years ago. The game was already feature complete but they still didn't manage to fix server desync. Whole sets of skillgems were unusable for a looong time. Tried a Flicker Strike build? It was good fun... not.

And let's not speak of the game's economy, because that one is pretty fundamentally broken. A separate trading site to find people ingame? What is this, Diablo 2 or is it 2019 by now? Whales dominate the online game and they've been doing that ever since it was released. GGG had some pretty shitty rebalancing going on, and there is a whole hoard of completely broken items out there, that will never be deleted. Lovely, that iterative development ey

So yeah... mismanagement? I think some nuance should be applied. The only reason to conclude that, is because you feel its taking too long. Not because the project is failing, because its really not. Content gets produced, builds get released, people see progress.

 

[bug]

When working with people its pretty difficult to straight up compare projects. And even GGG didn't have a smooth ride... but let's face it, they're making a simple 2D ARPG that's been made a hundred times over, and even that one suffered from severe networking issues right up until a few years ago. The game was already feature complete but they still didn't manage to fix server desync. Whole sets of skillgems were unusable for a looong time. Tried a Flicker Strike build? It was good fun... not.

And let's not speak of the game's economy, because that one is pretty fundamentally broken. A separate trading site to find people ingame? What is this, Diablo 2 or is it 2019 by now? Whales dominate the online game and they've been doing that ever since it was released. GGG had some pretty shitty rebalancing going on, and there is a whole hoard of completely broken items out there, that will never be deleted. Lovely, that iterative development ey

So yeah... mismanagement? I think some nuance should be applied. The only reason to conclude that, is because you feel its taking too long. Not because the project is failing, because its really not. Content gets produced, builds get released, people see progress.

Hey, I've only been into this software development thing for almost two decades now, but if you're telling me SC is not taking too long, you probably know better.

 

[Vario]

The only thing that Star Citizen seems to do well is very well detailed graphical models. The screenshots and carefully choreographed videos present the image of a successful game project. Its clearly focused around hype generation and selling virtual property. The actual gameplay is shallow.

 

[Vayra86]

Hey, I've only been into this software development thing for almost two decades now, but if you're telling me SC is not taking too long, you probably know better.

Nah, I dont... I guess I still give CIG the benefit of the doubt, especially because Ive also seen lots of successful projects that really didnt turn into great products either. You named POE.. as good as it is, it also carries flaws that relate to replayability in a big way. And those stem directly from early iterative development...

 

[bug]

Nah, I dont... I guess I still give CIG the benefit of the doubt.

Well, Freelancer was great even unfinished. With that in mind, SC may deliver as well at some point. But as brilliant as Mr Roberts is, project management is just not his thing.
I just chose not to follow the title at all (save for threads like this that pop up from time to time) and be pleasantly surprised if anything gets released eventually, rather than the other way around.

 

[moproblems99]

I don't really know what to think about to be honest.

On the one hand, I think people should have an out to get their money back because this process IS taking too long. On the other, I feel people should be punished for their stupidity. Investing thousands of dollars in a game that had not been built is not the smartest thing to do and they should be held accountable.

Honestly, I wish for the best from here out and the game development to intensify and release cadence increase. I want to see ambitious projects succeed because the industry will benefit as a whole. I just recently became aware of Ashes of Creation that sounds pretty cool but I just don't like subscription based games.

 

[Vayra86]

Well, Freelancer was great even unfinished. With that in mind, SC may deliver as well at some point. But as brilliant as Mr Roberts is, project management is just not his thing.
I just chose not to follow the title at all (save for threads like this that pop up from time to time) and be pleasantly surprised if anything gets released eventually, rather than the other way around.

Doing the same to be honest with you

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

The only thing that Star Citizen seems to do well is very well detailed graphical models. The screenshots and carefully choreographed videos present the image of a successful game project. Its clearly focused around hype generation and selling virtual property. The actual gameplay is shallow.

Yeah. I envisioned the game kinda to be like Eve. That street vendor? Yeah that's a real person not an NPC. Or that shady guy who wanted to buy you a drink? Not an NPC either.

But tbh I don't know what I imagined either. Maybe the game's taking so long because of people like me but who actually paid thousands of dollars per capita.

 

[Vario]

Yeah. I envisioned the game kinda to be like Eve. That street vendor? Yeah that's a real person not an NPC. Or that shady guy who wanted to buy you a drink? Not an NPC either.

But tbh I don't know what I imagined either. Maybe the game's taking so long because of people like me but who actually paid thousands of dollars per capita.

Yeah it sounds good in theory. I understand buying into the fantasy of having a total immersion in a sci-fantasy world. But when it comes to a realistic implementation, just imagine as a developer, translating these minute characters into playable roles. If implemented, it would be grind based like every MMORPG. You aren't going to get a virtual Star Wars where everyone is Han Solo. You are going to get Star Wars Galaxies instead.

Don't blame yourself and your monetary contributions for the delay in game development. The game development schedule is suffering because the developer Chris Roberts is not competent at managing a project of this size.

The other flip side of this genre is the idea of infinitely created worlds such as No Mans Sky. In practice, the worlds look aesthetically different due to random seed generation but the gameplay is the same on every world.

 

[ador250]

Isn't this game marked as the biggest scam in gaming community, Why people still get excited about this ?

 

[R-T-B]

Isn't this game marked as the biggest scam in gaming community, Why people still get excited about this ?

This whole thread would show you it's arguably still a hot debate.

 

[Splinterdog]

Isn't this game marked as the biggest scam in gaming community, Why people still get excited about this ?

If it was a scam, why do the devs issue regular game updates and roadmaps?
It's contentious, certainly, but I wouldn't say it was a scam.

 

[bug]

If it was a scam, why do the devs issue regular game updates and roadmaps?
It's contentious, certainly, but I wouldn't say it was a scam.

I've already posted I don't think this is a scam, but if it was that exactly how scam works: give/show you bits and pieces, but you never get the real deal.