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

[WhiteNoise]

I'm a backer since 2013 when i purchased the
Colonel - LTI Pledge
I later purchased the super hornet upgrade (the Colonel pack came with a standard Hornet)
I don't even remember how much i spent on the upgrade but the main pledge was $125

 

[R-T-B]

That estimated delivery is kinda cringe though...

 

[Dinnercore]

That estimated delivery is kinda cringe though...

Yeah it is. But put it in perspective, at that time the funding was below 20 million and they did not expect that people kept throwing cash at them ultimatly expanding all of the stretch-goals. If they had stopped at 20m$ they would have atleast run out of money years ago and might have gone for a slightly less complex approach.

But they got just another 15 million $ in may this year. One month equal to the sum they gathered over the whole first year.

People keep throwing money at it and increase the sum they spend with each passing year, while at the same time demanding more and more features and asking to implement every idea that anyone on the team ever had. RSI is in a comfortable spot, as long as the crowd keeps throwing money.

 

[Chrispy_]

Depends what kind of experience you are looking for. If you want to get a grasp of what Star Citizen is doing at the moment it is worth the download. There is a lot to see and a few things you can do in the alpha at the moment, but it is still rather limited.
For some fun dog-fights and testing out your ship or getting some nice screenshots of beautiful environments its well worth the time.

Your ship is flight-ready so you can join on the alpha and go explore it.

If you want to actually play something, don't bother. There are a few test-missions but no progress is really saved, there will be another big wipe clearing everything atleast once before the beta rolls out and while that is still far away you might regret building up credits now, buying some ships ingame only to find out you will loose it all again.

Sadly you also just missed fleet-week. A free-fly event where you can join the game and test out a few of the flyable ships for free. (well maybe not so sad that you missed it, it was a connection nightmare with server errors left and right).

Thanks for the info. I'll be waiting for the beta I think, perhaps indefinitely but I can hope!

 

[WhiteNoise]

That estimated delivery is kinda cringe though...

Yes and I don't even expect to receive any of the hard stuff like the thumb drive, map, hard cover manual, etc. I mean maybe I will like when I'm 70 and happen to check the mail and find my damn game map and stuff. Hopefully I'll still be gaming then. Hell maybe I'll leave my account to my son. He's 5 so when i croak maybe sometime in my son's twenties or so, he can play my game when it releases.

 

[dorsetknob]

just waiting for the Crowdfunding request for the VR Version..............................

 

[Splinterdog]

RSI is in a comfortable spot, as long as the crowd keeps throwing money.

...for a game that is not even practical to play, it seems.
I had considered it but even the cheapest deal at $45 seems like a complete waste when it's not even at the beta stage yet.

 

[bug]

...for a game that is not even practical to play, it seems.
I had considered it but even the cheapest deal at $45 seems like a complete waste when it's not even at the beta stage yet.

It's not even clear what you're supporting at this point. Crowdfunding makes some sense for independent, poor developers with good/great ideas that don't want to deal with a publisher. Crowdfunding for a company that has raked in $300mn+ and still hasn't delivered a beta version years later is a bit harder to explain.

 

[Decryptor009]

What is this irrelevant game you speak of?

 

[bug]

What is this irrelevant game you speak of?

It's not irrelevant, it could be a great title if it ever comes to fruition. It's just that discussing anything about it has become pointless in the meantime.

 

[Assimilator]

It's not irrelevant, it could be a great title if it ever comes to fruition. It's just that discussing anything about it has become pointless in the meantime.

It's relevant because it's the biggest scam ever perpetrated in the videogame industry, and quite possibly one of the largest in history. A scam that idiots continue to buy into.

I would love to work for Cloud Imperium Games. I imagine that a typical day at the office involves 7 hours of jacking off and an hour laughing at people who paid money for the game.

And yes, if you backed this game, I did call you an idiot. That was not a mistake and I will not apologise for it. You are an idiot if you preorder something, you are a bigger idiot if you back a KickStarter because at least with the former you are guaranteed to get something for your money at the end of the day.

 

[R0H1T]

It's relevant because it's the biggest scam ever perpetrated in the videogame industry, and quite possibly one of the largest in history. A scam that idiots continue to buy into.

I'd argue (modern day) Capitalism is also a scam but that's a much larger "philosophical" debate with no obvious light at the end of the tunnel, ciao

 

[bug]

It's relevant because it's the biggest scam ever perpetrated in the videogame industry, and quite possibly one of the largest in history. A scam that idiots continue to buy into.

I would love to work for Cloud Imperium Games. I imagine that a typical day at the office involves 7 hours of jacking off and an hour laughing at people who paid money for the game.

And yes, if you backed this game, I did call you an idiot. That was not a mistake and I will not apologise for it. You are an idiot if you preorder something, you are a bigger idiot if you back a KickStarter because at least with the former you are guaranteed to get something for your money at the end of the day.

I was just saying there's nothing discussion-worthy about SC. Nothing in your post suggests otherwise.
And I will not call those that backed the game names. They're free to do with their money as they see fit.

 

[dont whant to set it"']

Anyhow, it's in the budget realm of an in Earth's orbit space imaging telescope.

 

[r.h.p]

i was 1 of those , in 2012 i gave 40 bucks as a startup backer , haven't even tried to play it for 5 years lol

ok so after 2 days ive dl the star citizen . So far i have left the planet and jumped to positions in the galaxy . The game is Very Resources hungry , but my system did it all good at 1440p ultra
so after 8 years i spent 40 bucks , to fly around in space which is what i wanted anyway ...

 

[dorsetknob]

so after 8 years i spent 40 bucks , to fly around in space which is what i wanted anyway ...

Space is pretty Empty ........>>>> and no one can hear you SCREAM "wot i wasted 40 Bucks on this"
Sorry for bringing the mike

 

[sepheronx]

My friend who I built the new PC for was playing the game last night and I never actually saw the gameplay itself. So he streamed it for me on discord and it looks alright. The NPC's are bland from what I saw in most of the space stations except for one city on one of the planets. And there is no NPC dialogue from what I can tell. And he told me there are no monsters (aliens) so I was kind of disappointed. Although, he said they are adding in some kind of Yeti on one of the planets as a monster so that sounded kinda cool.

He told me he ended up spending quite a bit more than $500 on the game initially. I said that he told me it was $500. But he refused to tell me how much cause he knows I and his roommate will ridicule him for it.

 

[Vayra86]

My friend who I built the new PC for was playing the game last night and I never actually saw the gameplay itself. So he streamed it for me on discord and it looks alright. The NPC's are bland from what I saw in most of the space stations except for one city on one of the planets. And there is no NPC dialogue from what I can tell. And he told me there are no monsters (aliens) so I was kind of disappointed. Although, he said they are adding in some kind of Yeti on one of the planets as a monster so that sounded kinda cool.

He told me he ended up spending quite a bit more than $500 on the game initially. I said that he told me it was $500. But he refused to tell me how much cause he knows I and his roommate will ridicule him for it.

I must say, for all this drama it was 35 dollars well spent by now.

I mean, this just keeps on giving

On a more serious note; what I've seen from the game, the dogfights and the FPS mode... was just very smooth and good gameplay. I managed to get into the flow of dogfighting quite well, even if there are a ton of things to know and get used to; but I actually managed to hit stuff, the skill cap is high, and you can do crazy stuff with your ship. The FPS thing was buttery smooth and responsive. FWIW... that was all solid game design I saw.

I'm holding on to that, desperately, by now.

 

[Decryptor009]

Won't we need something along the lines of RTX 5090 recommended spec with Ryzen 4950XT ?

1,000,000,000 writes / reads per second storage.

 

[sepheronx]

I must say, for all this drama it was 35 dollars well spent by now.

I mean, this just keeps on giving

On a more serious note; what I've seen from the game, the dogfights and the FPS mode... was just very smooth and good gameplay. I managed to get into the flow of dogfighting quite well, even if there are a ton of things to know and get used to; but I actually managed to hit stuff, the skill cap is high, and you can do crazy stuff with your ship. The FPS thing was buttery smooth and responsive. FWIW... that was all solid game design I saw.

I'm holding on to that, desperately, by now.

I know nothing of the game. Just what he tells me and shows me. I found it interesting but it runs terribly. His 3700X machine is fine but that Vega 56 is just lacking at the game on high details (he has it at max at 1080p, I told him to lower it and he said no). He was showing me his space ship and I just kinda laughed. I told him if I ever pick it up, I'll be his Scotty in the game.

 

[r.h.p]

I know nothing of the game. Just what he tells me and shows me. I found it interesting but it runs terribly. His 3700X machine is fine but that Vega 56 is just lacking at the game on high details (he has it at max at 1080p, I told him to lower it and he said no). He was showing me his space ship and I just kinda laughed. I told him if I ever pick it up, I'll be his Scotty in the game.

yeah my 5700xt just keeps up , and the game uses 12gb of mem ,...

 

[Dinnercore]

yeah my 5700xt just keeps up , and the game uses 12gb of mem ,...

You are already hitting your memory limit, I have 32GB and it uses 24GB right from the start and climbs up to 28GB.

 

[Decryptor009]

Won't we need something along the lines of RTX 5090 recommended spec with Ryzen 4950XT ?

1,000,000,000 writes / reads per second storage.

128GB ram too.

 

[Dinnercore]

Won't we need something along the lines of RTX 5090 recommended spec with Ryzen 4950XT ?

1,000,000,000 writes / reads per second storage.

128GB ram too.

Oh cmon its not that insane. More and more games start to push 16GB RAM to the limit.

For what it is, SC is not super hardware intensive. The issue with performance atm is the alpha-state of the game. No config can push far beyond 60fps, doesn't matter what you have and at the same time an RTX 2060 can hold 40fps at 1440p for me. In fact it performed very similar to my RTX 2080 Super.

We can't say where the requirements will land, but the optimization stage has yet to come in so if you can play it now above 30fps you should be fine for the future. 32GB RAM and installed on an SSD and you are good to go. Even 16GB can run ok, they did a good job to make use of what your system has.

Seeing so many voices trashing the alpha for not having features or e.g. the NPCs walking funny and not interactable. Guys, its still an alpha. Of course its rough. Yes its super delayed and the people who see it as a scam have their valid points, but stop expecting a full game from a project in alpha.

Just to throw something out there, Cyberpunk 2077 took the same time to develop so far (maybe even longer) and it was build with a team only modifying an engine they knew the ins and outs of. They were already a connected group with work experience together and still took 7 years to, not even yet, finish.
Star Citizen is one step above a game like Cyberpunk in complexity and density and adds the persistant MMO aspect on top. And the whole staff had to grow into it, they had to modify and partly rebuild a game-engine that was previously unknown to the team members.

As little as there is to see and play, I'm still impressed that they did come up with something for the alpha and that they actually aim to implement all of the mindbending content. As it stands the alpha is already super enjoyable if you are into the simulation aspect of sci-fi and maybe enjoy a bit of role-play and deep diving into the atmosphere.
The designwork that went into the ships for example is beyond anything I have ever seen before.

Will it ever be complete? I don't know. I hope not, because it would imply they stop working on it at some point in the future. I'd rather like to see them establish a long term funding plan and continue to expand this project for decades.
So far it looks very promising. They got in a lot of new players during fleet-week and despite people trashing the alpha-state of the game and the super long 'perceived' development period, more and more people get interested and decide to drop money on it.

If you think this is a cheap project with no results and all just pooling money for roberts yacht-collection, then why do people who play the buggy alpha for the first time during fleet-week and experience heavy server issues and disconnects, still decide to spend 200-1500$ on this? And you have to sign off that you know this is burned money, they warn you that you may not ever receive anything.
It has the ghost of something huge starting to show through. If this project continues in the direction its heading, no matter the pace, it will be something super unique. I also don't see anything beyond it ever touching the same level of detail-density any time soon. Maybe we will be there some day when AI takes over coding, if civilisations even hold up the next few decades.

Sorry for the wall, wanted to drop some thoughts off

 

[moproblems99]

to throw something out there, Cyberpunk 2077 took the same time to develop so far (maybe even longer) and it was build with a team only modifying an engine they knew the ins and outs of.

The difference is hardcore programming didn't start until after TW3 and expansions were delivered, so 4-5 years. And it has a release date, sort of.

Cloud Imperium's biggest mistake is not finishing the game promised in the beginning and then adding the add-ons. However, I believe they did it this way to keep extracting money and creating an infinite development timeline. I do believe the game will be completed but not until people stop throwing stupid money at them which will force them to make hard decisions. That will prove whether it was a scam or just mismanagement.