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Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

nytimes.com

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Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#121

Post by wlesieutre »

megablast wrote: post #116
wlesieutre wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've fairly recently published a schedule for the alpha 3.0 release (first public access to the procedural planet tech, among other things), along with a video about estimating timelines for the project. The folks who develop software for a living might not find it as interesting as I did, but it's a decent look at where the project is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOjXfNnhxf0 I've gotten some fun out of the al…

I am not sure if that video is meant to be impressive. The first guy talking about how hard it is having to work with designers, developers, audio etc, um ok. Like every single game out there. I just see so much cruft, so many useless people such as producers, talking a lot but not doing a lot. Taking all the credit, but not actually working apart from meetings.

I don't think it's meant to be impressive, it's meant to give people a window into how large game development projects work. Maybe it's like every single game out there, but the point is I don't work at any game studios and none of the other ones publish their production schedules or host weekly studio updates.

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#122

Post by Neeek »

shusson wrote: post #108
thesuitonym wrote: post #24

This will probably not be a well-liked response but I'm going to post it anyway. I preordered Star Citizen back in 2012 or 2013. Whenever the original Kickstarter was. I've kind of forgotten about it. I've never preordered another game--or anything really. And I don't think this was a bad experience. I haven't received a game yet, but I have played some demos that were really fun. I've seen hours of content (Sure, th…

Your expectations are probably in line with reality, but Star Citizen does not sell itself as a casino. They entice you to spend money and promise you something great with little mention of risk. I really hope they create a great game, but like a start up that took on too much funding, I have grave concerns.

Is there development timeline really that absurd though? I'm sure there are plenty of AAA titles that have taken this long to get out the door, they just leave the announcement till sometime just before it's ready. I know that development times have drastically decreased in the past 10 years but still... I'd be skeptical if studio told me they were taking any LESS time with something this big.

Editing to add that we're not even mentioning the fact that they are basically building a global development company with studios sprinkled all over the US and EU to keep up with the new funding expectations, those things don't happen overnight.

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#123

Post by sjg007 »

canada_dry wrote: post #29
dntbgoat wrote: post #9

How have people not yet realized that supporting a video game hype train will end in disappointment

It reminds me of the people who put significantly larger amounts of money into the "Aido" home robot - a heap of unrealistic promises in an unrealistic timeframe for an unrealistic price - it's way behind schedule but has yet to pull the rug out. (More on Aido here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aido-next-gen-home-robot-... )

Someone should start a kickstarter to investigate scams on kickstarter..

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#125

Post by sjg007 »

djsumdog wrote: post #93
sergiotapia wrote: post #31

Star Citizen will probably release when Overgrowth and Day Z come out of Early Access alpha.

Duke Nukem Forever did eventually come out.

Too early in my opinion.. they should've waited for kickstarter.

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#126

Post by storrgie »

thesuitonym wrote: post #24

This will probably not be a well-liked response but I'm going to post it anyway. I preordered Star Citizen back in 2012 or 2013. Whenever the original Kickstarter was. I've kind of forgotten about it. I've never preordered another game--or anything really. And I don't think this was a bad experience. I haven't received a game yet, but I have played some demos that were really fun. I've seen hours of content (Sure, th…

I'll echo that I'm in the same boat. I feel the development team has provided a very enjoyable experience outside of the game platform, as well as within. I have hopes for their 3.0 release, but if I never play again I still feel my money was spent on something that was far more artful than EA cramming another shitty franchise down my throat.

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#127

Post by sjg007 »

AnOscelot wrote: post #56
dkns wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The owner/lead developer (I don't know what position exactly Sean Murray holds) straight up lied about features in NMS (e.g. multiplayer) that weren't there nor will be ever added so I'd say it was a scam.

If it's a scam, he's not scamming very well. A scammer would have taken the big payday and done little else. Whereas Hello Games has released a couple of large updates, and quite a few smaller updates / bugfixes, with more planned. The evidence largely points to a developer who is good at his core job, but inexperienced at managing hype. And who was overly optimistic about what he and his team can accomplish in X amo…

If he's smart he's making a documentary/movie about it.

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#128

Post by jlarocco »

brilliantcode wrote: post #53

My theory is scope creep. These guys have done a good job of convincing people that they can live the ultimate space exploration fantasy that's been talked about since the 80s. It's the ultimate simulation. We know very little about space and even fiction (ex. star wars) seems to generate even more demand. As people got excited and started throwing money at them, so did the scope obviously. I love Star Citizen's atte…

No theory required:

> “I’m already building the best game I can,” said Mr. Roberts, who acknowledged the bumps. “But imagine — the game I can build with $140 million is going to be very different to the one I could build with $10 million. If I can build a bigger and more robust experience, I will.”

My guess is they keep going until donations taper off and they're about to run out of money, then rush out a massively buggy release that disappoints everybody.

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#129

Post by BEEdwards »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #64

I ended up with a free copy of Star Citizen when I bought a graphic card. At the point when I got it there wasnt much to do. I somehow still get weekly email updates from them but I've been expecting them to stop over the last 9 months or so because it seems the full game will never be finished.

GTA 5 took 5 years to developed, they've proposed a much more ambitious game.

I'm not saying they're going to accomplish they're goal, but their dev time isn't even approaching unimaginable yet.

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#130

Post by Neeek »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #106

I bought into SC when they promised Linux support. All this cool stuff that people are getting to play with early is Windows-only. I have significantly less patience with Star Citizen because so far as I'm concerned they've broken their promise.

I feel you.

It's not a reason I originally backed for but I've been increasingly more linux focused so it's something I'd love to see. PCI passthrough with KVM looks to be the solution for now, but it does mean having a chunk of machine resources reserved for windows :(

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