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

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171–180 of 185 posts

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

#171

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.

Why would you think Linux support would be something they would prioritize for a game that's not even finished yet?

That stuff comes at the end of the development, not the middle.

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

#172
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention it took two years to build the AAA team to begin with. Also, immense scope creep. The game to be delivered is nothing like the game people backed originally, and hopefully that's a good thing.

Until a game is delivered isn't it premature to label it a AAA team?

AAA refers to production quality of a game. The quality of what we're seeing is already AAA.

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

#173

I'm not sure why they didn't just "Build the $10m game" and release that, then spend the rest on expansions to that game. Would have been a much more predictable approach (assuming the original game is setup to be appropriately expandable.

You don't build a mansion on the foundation of a shack. That's not how it works. Elite:Dangerous is exemplifying this right now.

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

#174
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm.. have you not seen Eve Online?

Wow, no, thank you! :-)

Eve is a game I have never played, but enjoy reading about. It may be the largest, longest running economic simulation out there. Two good stories: https://www.polygon.com/features/2014/2/24/5419788/eve-onlin... and https://www.polygon.com/2016/3/31/11334014/eve-online-war

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

#175
post #20

It seems like a safer use of extra funding is for free expansions. It may seem unfair to take $140 million and build a $10 million game, but people funded you with your $10 million game, deadlines included, in mind.

This is false. CIG has promised that every single dollar backed to the game before retail release will go into development of the game, server costs, and post development updates.

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

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"BUG-SMASHERS!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMcLjNW8-SA&list=PLVct2QDhDr... Watching Mark Abent demo bugs in his "handy dandy test level", all the "shenanigans" that result, and then show us the code and what the actual issues were, has been pretty much worth what I pledged right there :)

Oh, very cool. Not sure how I missed this. Thanks.

Also check out the Happy Hour GameDev episodes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSDsKT3xDQg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3g8aBnBiwE

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok, but it is like every single project ever. The PO comes up with an idea, we break it up and enter it into jira, etc... I guess it is interesting for people who don't work in IT projects.

Yep, that's me!

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

#178

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 b…

So basically, a crowd funded No Man's Sky

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

#179
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty much what the current Persistent Universe Alpha is. An actual playable version of the Star Citizen MMO half, with the currently built technology.

Ah, it wasn't super clear how much of anything is available to play. Is it like Minecraft where it receives rapid improvements?

Heh. I don't think "rapid" is the right word. Last year they had said they were hoping for monthly-ish patches, but that went by the wayside pretty fast around Alpha 2.3 or so, when they began integrating the backend persistence systems.

The Persistent Universe Alpha is currently at 2.6.x. It currently includes one "limited" area of space around a gas giant in one specific solar system. (Note that "limited" here means that it's only a fraction of the planned final solar system, but thanks to CIG's 64-bit map size technology, it's legitimately several hundred million KM^3.) There's a few space stations, several quests, and some limited economy. All fully playable, but gameplay-wise, it's still mostly at the "tech demo" level in a lot of ways.

The "holy grail" version that we fans have been waiting for since last fall is Alpha 3.0. The /r/starcitizen subreddit has a ton more info on what it's supposed to include, but off the top of my head: a larger chunk of the Stanton solar system; several moons or planets that will be 100% "see it -> fly there -> land there"; the first iterations of several professions; and a whole lot more.

The current production schedule for Alpha 3.0 is at https://robertsspaceindustries.com/schedule-report . They originally projected it would come out around June 29, but just pushed it back a couple weeks. Realistically, I would expect them to bump it back into August. Once that's out, they'll probably get out another couple good-sized updates later in the year.

So, definitely not "rapid", but given the scope of what they're doing, not surprising. (Besides, my laptop actually can't even handle playing the game right now, so I've just been watching the development progress. I'll probably upgrade later this year sometime after Alpha 3.0 comes out.)

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

#180

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…

Well said, but I think you're missing the point. People aren't upset because they paid for something and got a nice experience (or not) out of it. They are upset because they paid for something and they still have not received it. To use your Casino example, this is like going to that casino and paying for a shrimp appetizer, never receiving it but saying "well at least I got a nice experience and story out of it". P…

That's definitely fair, but I think if what you really want is a disc or a download, then you shouldn't back games that don't exist yet. Like I said, I won't invest in a game (or anything) that might not materialize unless I think there's some possibility for a payout--either the thing I want, or a nice experience.

So for those people who are mad, it's really more like going to the casino and expecting to get a huge windfall playing blackjack. Like yeah it might happen but don't think of it as an investment opportunity.

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