Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are using Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine | Hacker News Reader

Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are using Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine

venturebeat.com

116 pointsdv35z117 comments

The link should probably be updated to point directly to Venturebeat [0] instead of the AMP version. I think submitting the AMP version might break the guidelines, which ask you to submit the original source.

I preordered Star Citizen a few years ago, but I stopped keeping track of all updates after a while. To be honest, I kinda assumed it'd just become vaporware.

Although I'd heard about Amazon Lumberyard before, I hadn't considered this before: I wonder if Amazon will start a game studio at some point, since they seem to have a hand in pretty much every other tech scene. Are there any big avenues open for disruption in the videogame scene?

[0] http://venturebeat.com/2016/12/23/star-citizen-and-squadron-...

Amazon actually already runs a game studio: https://games.amazon.com

Well, that doesn't surprise me, but still... I'm absolutely amazed at how many things they seem to be doing over at Amazon.

I wonder if Amazon will follow Google's route and start splitting up into smaller companies at some point?

I think it is already split into a lot of sub-companies.

https://www.quora.com/List-of-all-Amazon-properties-subsidia...

https://www.google.com/amp/www.geekwire.com/2016/amazon-now-...

Amazon recently reorganized itself into three gorups, with Andy Jassy becoming CEO of AWS, Jeff Wilke CEO of retail, and Bezos keeping digital.

Not sure how much still goes all the way to the top but the impression from an investment perspective is the three main arms of the company can operate more independently.

I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon bought Crytek soon.

Amazon Game Studios has been around for a few years now (released a facebook game back in 2011) and a few mobile games. Their strategy has been a bit different from Lumberyard, though, which seems to focus more on console/PC as well as Twitch (due to their ownership of the popular game streaming platform). We will see if it coalesces into a larger strategy.

Ok, we changed the URL from https://www.google.com/amp/venturebeat.com/2016/12/23/star-c.... Thanks!

Upwards to 70% of the XBOX360/PS3 generation AAA games ran on the Unreal Engine. For the XBONE/PS4 gen its 60% Unreal 30% Unity 10% stuff like CryEngine. It'd be very hard to knock Unreal off its throne since it's very, very well written and essentially free (you pay 5% of profits for commercial use when you go above a certain threshold). So no, there aren't any real openings for disruption unless Epic does something massively stupid.

That's assuming that all game engines are created equal.

I'll give you that Unreal and CryEngine are similar enough to make that comment, but there's plenty of space for innovation within engines. Amazon seems to be trying their hand at it with twitch integration for example.

In general, game development is filled with archaic processes, boilerplate, inefficient workflows etc. Unity3d was the jQuery of game development in that regard, and we're nowhere near peak.

For AAA games, it's mostly in-house engines. Frostbite for EA games. Call of Duty games use the IW Engine. Bethesda uses either idTech or something geared for their RPGs.

Bethesda has been using the Gamebryo/Creation Engine for their RPGs (Fallout/Skyrim). I think Bethesda has only used idTech for Rage/Doom.

The Wolfenstein games and The Evil Within are both idTech as well.

They are too many to name. Check this[1] page for each gen. From gen 2 onwards, you'll be astounded.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games

Look at the top-selling Xbox One games:

http://www.vgchartz.com/platform/68/xbox-one/

You have to go down to #31 to find an Unreal Engine game (Batman: Arkham Knight). The only licensed engine game that I know of in the top 30 is Titanfall, which licensed the Source engine from Valve. The situation is similar for the PS4.

#9 Gears of War: Ultimate Edition uses UE FYI

So, this is correct and I thank you for the correction. Having said that, I don't think that changes my point much if any -- there's one game in the top 30 sellers that uses Unreal Engine, and it didn't use it as a third-party engine -- Epic developed both UE and Gears of War.

By and large, the developers of AAA games don't license an engine from a third party.

Bethesda's subsidiary id uses idTech. Bethesda Game Studios (Elder Scrolls, Fallout) has used their Gamebryo/Creation engine for about 15 years.

So, as I've noted above, other studios besides id use idTech at Bethesda -- you could argue that MachineGames doing the Wolfenstein games is still an id property, but Tango used it for The Evil Within, too. And I did say "or something geared for their RPGs." I couldn't remember the name Creation Engine when I was posting on my phone at a Christmas gathering.

MachineGames and Tango are owned by ZeniMax[0], the Bethesda parent company. I faintly remember someone (Carmack, maybe?) mentioning that idTech5 would only be licensed to studios within ZeniMax.[1] Of course, anyone can use idTech up to 4, since those are open source, and were licensed out.

[0] https://www.zenimax.com/studios

[1] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29886/id_Tech_5_Rage_Engi...

Yes, MachineGames and Tango are owned by ZeniMax. They are published by Bethesda Softworks, the parent company of Bethesda Game Studios and a ZeniMax subsidiary. I don't really understand the point of this faux pedantry, seeing as there is a meaning of Bethesda that fits my post.

I didn't expect this, but it makes a lot of sense in retrospect. CIG had already hired a bunch of the crytek devs and invested a ton into their engine. They're also already pretty tightly coupled with AWS.

I suspect this is the nail in CryEngine's coffin.

I massively disagree with the decision, though. I think CIG could have taken CryEngine under their wing and continued developing it, releasing StarEngine (their fork) as another competitor on a field which simply doesn't have enough high quality competition as it is. Maybe they thought about it; maybe they couldn't get the rights, or didn't have enough cash for it. Maybe Amazon made them a massive offer just for the name recognition, too.

I suspect Lumberyard hasn't diverged from base cryengine much otherwise they wouldn't have been able to as quickly switch.

Amazon probably focused on code for autoscaling the backend server pieces and left the front end mostly alone.

That's my assumption as well. They have done massive amounts of custom work in CryEngine, so I'm guessing they are just using some features of Lumberyard.

A reddit comment [0]:

> StarEngine was based on CryEngine 3.7 (last big integration) with cherry picked changes from CryEngine 3.8 (mainly some Animation/Serialization fixes/improvements). The Lumberyard builds we used had the same CryEngine 3.7 base with the main changes on the Editor/Tools side. We heavily changed or have completely rewritten CPU/GPU side rendering, memory management, multithreading, entity/game object handling + added tons of engine features wich neither CryEngine nor Lumberyard have. Everything else is relatively easy to merge, thanks to the same code base + adding independent Lumberyard only features is straightforward too, especially with the help of Amazon developers. We are pretty good at handling the rest of the old CryEngine codebase, which CryEngine, Lumberyard and StarEngine have in common, ourselves ;)

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/5k06v9/letter_...

I don't see how fragmenting CryEngine benefits that much considering they're all on the same licensed CryEngine. Amazon paid $50m for the CryEngine and Amazon said Lumberyard is free to use with their AWS services.

I think it makes sense for CIG to use Lumberyard's engine with AWS integration, especially it saves them a lot of money not licensing their own CryEngine fork and they're using AWS anyway.

CIG probably has more crytek talent than crytek themselves. It wouldn't be fragmenting, at this point.

As far as I knew, the plan was to use the various Google Cloud services for the backend, but I wonder if CIG found the offerings from Google too paltry. AWS seems to have better geographical proximity for Australia and South America, along with Asia in general, which was a complaint/concern among backers from Asia and Australia and South America.

As far as the license for CryEngine, I believe that wasn't an ongoing cost per se. I know CIG has done a bunch of customization (64-bit floating point precision vs 32-bit floating precision the biggest) but they were originally talking about folding some of those changes back into the general CryTek offering. I wonder if they're instead going to offer that to Amazon for Lumberyard as a cost offset to their use of the services.

Star Citizen would be a pretty big feather in the cap for Lumberyard, as well. I'm optimistic about the game's development.

As someone who actually wants the game to come out, I'm glad they didn't.

After getting my refund, I've been watching the SC narrative unfold from the sidelines with interest. There's enough things that've gone awry in this project to write a book about (and I guess if you were to collect all of Derek Smart's writings, that's what you'd have).

For me, the main deal breakers and why I got out were that I felt substantively bait-and-switched when you compare the current "game" to what was originally promised, and a complete lack of any confidence whatsoever in this game actually coming out. The latter is mainly due to things like this, where core technologies are forever iterated on at a fundamental level even this far (5 years) into development.

They were already using CryEngine, and Lumberyard is based on CryEngine (I assume the changes are mostly licensing rather than technical), so I doubt this was actually hard at all. In fact if you'd read the article:

> Because we share a common technical vision, it has been a very smooth and easy transition to Lumberyard. In fact, we are excited to announce that our upcoming 2.6 Alpha release for Star Citizen is running on Lumberyard and AWS.

All the bait & switch over-promising, over-ambitious probably-never-finished criticisms are true, but it's silly to say that this is one of those Duke Nukem Forever style start from scratch again mistakes.

>> compare the current "game" to what was originally promised

That's a real issue with crowdfunding. More often than not, the devs truly have no idea what the final game will look like. Much of the early funding goes into what are essentially extended market research projects. Alphas are released, feedback taken, and changes made. Everyone expects that devs have some final version of "done" in their heads, but the truth is that such pictures constantly change in response to user/market feedback.

There are only a handful of indi games that ever developed towards a finite picture (Prison Architect). Most bounce around trying to please all the fans until some financial tipping point causes them to slap "1.0" on the latest build and push it out the door (KSP). That crowdfunding and traditional funding result in very different game development should be no surprise to anyone. StarCitizen will release when they need to release. Until then the cycle of feedback and iteration will continue.

KSP was steam early access rather than crowdfunded per se, and was one of the early successes of steam's "early access", the funding made it into a very complete game and had regular updates and progress throughout the early access stages and didn't re-invent itself.

It wasn't only on steam. They also sold through their own store. I certainly didn't buy through steam. Whether the game is complete or not depends on when you got in on the process. What it does have is the layered and rather disconnected set of features that are typical of game development in response to market feedback rather than cohesive vision. It's a good game, but does show the telltales.

What about Divinity: Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity and quite a few other crowdfunded games that were released and are good?

I wasnt talking about good or bad. Thats a different issue than the process of their development. SC might or might not be good. Either way, its development follows a known pattern and the lack of set goals is part of that pattern.

Except you equated that pattern with crowdfunding which is rather untrue. Several examples were provided of successful games which delivered exactly what they set out to do more or less.

Derek Smart has basically put himself back in the public consciousness on his Star Citizen ranting alone. It's hard to take him entirely seriously, because of how solely reliant on CIG for attention he presently is, and it seems like he's never gotten along with Chris Roberts either. He's fun to read for an alternative perspective, I suppose.

I feel like with 2.6 we're finally starting to see the vision, this is kinda the sort of experience I want to have in my space games. Being able to have spaceships and first person combat in one game is a big part of why I got so excited about EVE Online's "Walking in Stations" and the release of DUST 514. Unfortunately, while CCP doesn't receive the same stress for overpromising and underdelivering (even though they do, regularly), they failed to accomplish that vision.

We know, pretty much 100%, that Star Citizen is going to disappoint a lot of people. The number of promises they've made are ridiculous, and it's impossible to live up to that.

But what Alpha 2.6 delivers on it's own (yes, apparently running Lumberyard), I'd argue raises the bar for what a space simulation game should be capable of. I've never seen a game that even comes close to accomplishing the fidelity of Star Citizen, in a generalized way that isn't dependent on pre-rendered cinematics or triggered events.

Yeah, people complaining or nitpicking clearly haven't played the alpha yet. It is going according to plan. I am an original KS backer from November of 2012, and have since dumped a couple thousand into development, and I'm happy with the way things are going. I, as then, trust Chris Roberts to make his magnum opus, and I know I'll enjoy playing it.

This gets to the root of my problems with the game's development history.

The switch to Lumberyard makes a lot of sense. It's basically Cryengine. With Crytek shutting down, I'd want to switch to a still maintained but pretty much the same engine too.

When Star Citizen was originally announced on Kickstarter I was hyped as hell that Freelancer was going to get a spiritual successor. But I held off because it felt like they were already promising a really big scope at the time of the Kickstarter. Like the size of several games.

Destiny also had a huge vision, but even with an experienced studio and fewer promises, they still had issues delivering on the hype they marketed until many DLC's later.

The vision for the game still felt achievable until they added the FPS elements, at which point I more or less wrote off that the game would ever come out as a fully realized vision. It's just too goddamn big.

Crytek shut down? That's not what they said in the recent press release at all. They closed several studios in order to focus more on their core which is CryEngine.

Yeah you're right, they closed five studios, not a total shutdown.

While I'm sensitive to people who gave money to this project, I have to ask:

If Chris Roberts, with his name and reputation in the games industry, were still capable of making quality games, wouldn't he have been able to find a publisher to fund Star Citizen instead of having to beg thousands of his fans?

My attitude towards crowdfunding is to never contribute. If the product's successful, I can just buy it off-the-shelf when it's finished. (Like the new Elite, for example.) If it fails, I'm not out anything. (Sure, there's a small chance I might miss out on some Kickstarter exclusive deal, but I'd rather miss out on that then have an Ouya collecting dust in my living room.)

I could believe that a talented game designer was capable of getting money from publishers, but not for the game the actually want to make (at least without substantial compromise).

And the downside of sitting out on crowdfunding is the reduced chance that something you like will get funded/made. Whether that matters to you depends on how excited you are by a project, and how likely you think it is to produce something matching your expectations.

In the field of video games, there's already far more good games than I can play in a lifetime. I'm willing to let someone else do the vetting in my stead.

EDIT: to respond to your first sentence, I get your point, but it seems like that particular market has been severely under-served recently (as demonstrated by, well, Star Citizen's funding campaign for example). It shouldn't be a hard-sell to a publisher to make a game for a market that's been badly under-served for a decade or so.

And it's not like Chris Roberts is a game design savant who isn't capable of doing the wheeling and dealing-- the cast he got for Wing Commander 3 demonstrates he can deal.

I find it hard to believe if he had taken his pitch to, for example, EA, that they'd just brush him off unless they had good reason. I think now what we're seeing with Star Citizen development is the reason.

He could have rushed out an uninspiring space simulation game and made a lot of money. Star Citizen is an attempt to raise the bar and advance the state of the art. This alternative development methodology is a part of that.

Given their comments about having rewritten over half of the original CryEngine codebase (including things like 64-bit map sizes, local physics grids, physically based rendering, and more), my guess is that this engine switch is primarily about licensing, networking, and use of AWS. They'd also stopped taking updates from CryEngine a while back, so at most they've swapped out some of their networking code.

This sounds more dramatic than what it actually is, a merge of two CryEngine forks.

Apparently "The most open game development in history" involves briefly mentioning an engine / platform switch at 5pm on a Friday before christmas

Did you see their EULA change a while back? If you upgraded to the latest beta, you absolved them of all liability if they never deliver the actual product.

This is a sinking ship, they just won't (publicly) admit it yet.. though a bunch of their staff jumped ship, so they realize it.

So if you don't update, then you can still hold them accountable? Do you know of people who are watching (maybe you didn't update?)

Are you serious? Have you actually even tried the game?

"A bunch of their staff" jumped ship? What are we talking there? 5 people? 10? 50?

Unless you're talking about a mass exodus, more high ranking employees left Blizzard Entertainment the past couple of years than that. Is Blizzard a sinking ship as well?

Blizzard actually puts on new games, content for their games, and turns an enormous profit. So no they are not.

I am really curious if you are either an employee at CIG or just a really passionate backer of the project based on your unrelenting defense here. I am not sure why you are surprised by the candor of the comments here - CIG is seen as a running train on fire and is quite literally a joke in the gaming industry. It's unfortunate for those who work there and the people who want the game to succeed, but CIG has earned this reputation.

I'm not affiliated with CIG (edit: I am an early backer as I mentioned elsewhere), but I am passionate because I work in the games industry and I see what CIG is doing as incredibly beneficial to the industry; open development is huge for both studios and consumers but it needs all the love it can get.

So I'd really love a source for your "is seen as a joke in the gaming industry", because that is not at all what it's like here and is making me doubt your intentions. CIG is producing a game that people are passionate about years before it's released, completely self-funded and all that off a kickstarter. They're the reason Kickstarter got so popular in the gaming industry: everybody wants to be them.

I agree it's beneficial but not for the reasons you think: it's turning thousands of people away from the ill-conceived crowd-funding model of game development.

BTW it has roughly about $140 MILLION of "all the love it can get". Does it really need any more than that? It has enough. That's well more than Skyrim's budget.

> They're the reason Kickstarter got so popular in the gaming industry: everybody wants to be them.

If you're backing Star Citizen because you think it proves the crowd-funding model, I'm sorry to break this to you, but it's more likely people in the know are rejecting the crowd-funding model due to Star Citizen, not signing up for it.

> it's more likely people in the know are rejecting the crowd-funding model due to Star Citizen, not signing up for it.

And your source for that nonsensical statement is?

Star Citizen is the most successful crowdfunded project to date and second most successful kickstarter project at the time of its completion (after Oculus Rift). The two successes together that year were what made Kickstarter famous and turned it from a niche site to "the american dream 2.0" where anyone's greatest ideas can be funded.

I don't care about the crowdfunding model and you're completely mistaken about my reasons on why I backed Star Citizen. I don't particularly like or dislike it and I do appreciate your stance that you prefer buying the finished product - I think it's a healthy stance.

But your comment on people rejecting the crowd funding model "due to star citizen" is absolute nonsense. And so is your comment on budgeting, by the way - You should keep in mind that the number on there isn't "Star Citizen's budget", it's CIG's budget. There's no particular point in time where anyone says "Alright guys, time to pack up, stop making sales, we'll do with the money we have right now because it's more than enough to finish the game".

Most successful? Measured in what, money spent? I'm sure other kick-started projects are more successful in that they actually produced a product that resulted in profitability.

Please stop trolling and read my actual post.

I don't see the trolling? How is Star Citizen the most successful crowdfunded game? It's still not released.

The point I now made several times is that it's one of the two major projects that turned kickstarter into a popular platform. It was extremely successful at the time it was released and while projects have since outranked SC in most spend on Kickstarter, it's still one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns of all time by any financial measure.

As for "not released", they've released a lot more than other projects have. Colossal failures such as Everquest Next have absolutely nothing to show for it - if SC stops development tomorrow (which is unlikely), they have in fact released an early stage game and a ton of near-game content.

How can a game that's something like 3 years behind schedule be considered "successful"? Even Half-Life 2 only added one year to their development time. I think your definition of the word "successful" is quite different from the popular one. The only thing Star Citizen is successful at is suckering people into paying for nothing.

Ok; so the number I gave isn't Star Citizen's budget. What is? Reminder: Skyrim had a total budget of $90 million, was released on time, and also managed to hire some kick-ass voice talent to-boot. I highly doubt Bethesda had an additional, what, $50 million in operational costs separate from the Skyrim development costs.

A simple linkedin search returns about a hundred. With the total number of employees about two hundred and the company having been around for about five years, it's hardly comparable to Blizzard, which has thousands of employees and contractors and had been there for decades.

The point I failed to make is that high (double digit) employee turnover is extremely common in game dev, especially at low ranks; and unlike Blizzard, CIG is not an exceptional place to work at.

If you want to see what "people jumping ship" looks like, you should be directing your eyes towards Zynga: Constant layoffs, extremely high turnover including the executive level and plummeting revenue. Nothing like CIG.

High turnover is indeed extremely common in the games industry but I fail to see how it excludes a failure. It is common because failure is also extremely common. How the fact that Zynga is a sinking ship and displays the same signs as the CIG does is filling one with optimism about CIG?

Because it doesn't display the same signs as CIG. Zero executive turnover. Much lower employee turnover. Steady revenue.

I feel like I'm talking to an aquarium.

Zero executive turnover

I just found one in 5 seconds on linkedin. You could too if you did not imagine yourself talking to an aquarium. https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-mayberry-166325

Much lower employee turnover

In absolute numbers? Sure. A company with several thousands employees will have higher number of people leaving over longer time even if it's doing great than a failing company with a couple hundred total employees. I guess this is what makes you optimistic? Because relative to their workforce they churn through a huge number of people. At this time every game studio in Santa Monica has few people from there.

Steady revenue

Are there numbers for CIG? I thought it's a private company and its revenue numbers are not available. What source do you base your assertion on?

Are you serious? Mayberry leaving is from 2015. You're not proving your point here.

> Are there numbers for CIG

Yes. Nearly all of their revenue is from Star Citizen. And that's public.

Sorry, I've lost you completely. You had been talking about turnover right at this moment? In this case Zynga is peachy, they have not had a layoff today and no executives have left today either. As for revenue, I am not sure what you mean. Is there some public record of their revenue? If so, please show me. JFYI, somebody saying "I've made a gazillion dollars!" is not a public record of making a gazillion dollars.

>If you upgraded to the latest beta, you absolved them of all liability if they never deliver the actual product.

What kind of liability? I'm an early backer and I'm pretty sure I never had terms that gave me any kind of leverage. I got standard Kickstarter terms: I give them money, they promise by their honor to make a best-effort attempt to deliver a good product.

Sources in case people are interested:

About the ToS change blocking refunds:

http://dereksmart.com/2016/07/star-citizen-this-war-of-mine/...

About the staffing issues:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/fe...

It's not really a platform switch. It's a merge of two cryengine forks. There's no point in starting a melodramatic flamewar when other people here are genuinely discussing the implications for CIG and Amazon.

Still waiting on that Linux support. I only backed because it was promised.

Amazon Lumberyard game engine = fork of CryEngine maintained by Amazon. So they just changed from were they get Engine support, the engine is the same.

CryEngine got forked and improved from Ubisoft before and is used in FarCry 2-4 series (now called Dunia engine). The original FarCry 1 was from Crytek.

This isn't nearly as big of a deal as the headline sounds since Lumberyard is just a free version of CryTek with extra bells and whistles. Why would any dev that was using CryTek not switch to Lumberyard?

Because they could never again use any 3rd party cloud services for their game except AWS?

Yeah I didn't check the agreement before, I had assumed the integration with AWS was there to make it attractive, but you're right it locks you out of any other third party service. That does make it a real choice.

When do they start with the "bottom line" and try to finish the game?

A month more here, another month more there another switch of engine, concept,plan etc there.

It's basically the next installment of Duke Nukem.

exactly.

They did the math and found out that they would have the least expenses if they didn't actually release.

Amazons engine IS Crytek. They licensed the engine and SC switched. Which really isnt the biggest difference given that its basically the "same" engine.

Soo, how different is this new game engine since it a offshoot of the crytek engine? Is it going to add another x years to the development? Because it took my company almost a whole year to switch engines for a game that is a tiny fraction of the size of SC

Does anyone know if there is a comparison or even lumberyard is comparable to Microsoft's azure game services ?

Azure for Gaming [1] is just a collection of Azure services that are related for games, like Notification Hubs, Media Services, etc. Presumably, there's some common SDK for games but I haven't really used it so I can't say.

I suspect (although I haven't looked into it) that the backend services that Lumberyard uses are also just standard AWS services packaged up in nice way like Azure.

Lumberyard is really just CryEngine with the AWS integration I mentioned above, so it's not really directly comparable. I'd say the two backend services would be a more apt comparison, but as I said above, I haven't used the two myself, so I can't give more details.

[1]: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/gaming/

I was gonna be like "that's gonna be so expensive when they hit a large playerbase"

Then I thought about it

Is there a reason why this links to the AMP page as opposed to the actual VentureBeat article?

HN Feature Request: calculate the domain by stripping the "google.com/amp" prefix if present.

I'd rather shame people who do this to break the habit, and shame Google into fixing the problem.

My fault - submitted this on a mobile device and pasted in the wrong URL. -J

Most likely because there is no user interface to get a non AMP link when you follow a link from Google. It's nuts.

Yep, this drives me crazy. Finally found a solution (Request Desktop Site) but it's incredibly buried.

Shocked that content providers arent suing over this. Google removes all ads (which as a user I like), and any links to the content they are serving. If I were a provider I would be pissed.

Can we get the redirect link changed to the target of the redirect? http://venturebeat.com/2016/12/23/star-citizen-and-squadron-...

Sure thing.

To abuse a phrase: it is difficult to make a dev finish a project when his livelihood depends on him not finishing it.

I think the devs deserve slightly more respect. Nobody wants to spend years of their lives on an unfinished product.

CIG deserves a lot more respect than that. I'm appalled at the quality of the comments here.

They are one of the best studios in the industry right now when it comes to consumer and dev friendliness. Their blog is a treasure trove of interesting posts on the internal development of the game, far more often and rigorously updated than anything else.

Seriously, keep the unsourced/unresearched flames to Reddit. You'd think that HN of all communities would be more appreciative of what CIG brings to the table.

You're praising them for being developers, rather than actually making anything finished. I'm glad you respect their effort so highly but that doesn't mean anyone else is "flaming" them for pointing out the constantly pushed-out schedules and the convenient fact that they're making plenty of cash without ever releasing anything... and the betas they have released shows an ever-more-ambitious vision when even 3-5 vision-elevations back it was doubtful they could do what they're trying.

> You're praising them for being developers, rather than actually making anything finished

This is a developer forum more than a gaming forum, so I think it's appropriate, don't you?

> plenty of cash without ever releasing anything

Come on now. I haven't at all kept up with the game for the past year and half and I can still tell you that they are regularly pushing out content simply because my inbox gets spammed with their content update newsletters.

In fact, the latest email is from 17 hours ago, announcing Lumberyard alongside "Alpha 2.6 with Star Marine", their big FPS patch. Saying they "aren't releasing anything" is disingenuous.

If you're saying they're not releasing anything you want to play, then sure - they haven't released anything I want to play either. It doesn't change anything.

Sample Email: "Here's another pretend ship you can buy for a game that isn't remotely done!"

The post I was replying to claims that the game is releasing zero content. I replied with the most readily available example that it in fact is releasing content.

That you are unhappy that they're making money before the game is done is another problem. I don't get why you would be; there's far less chances of the game ever being done if they're not making money than if they are.

I dunno what to tell you. Don't buy the ships? I stopped buying the ships a long time ago, nobody needed to tell me to do that.

Nobody said zero content. The parent comment even mentions the Beta (technically, Alpha,) so it's clear they meant that no finished product is being released.

Yet at this stage other studios with publishers probably have only shown a teaser.

The fault isn't with CIG, the fault is with open develoment in general. It's just not going to work.

Star Citizen started development in 2011. They started crowdfunding four years ago. Hell, studios and companies come and go in that timeframe and they still haven't released the full, finished game that they promised their backers would get released two years ago. [1]

People's criticism isn't that they're releasing Alphas. Sure, they have been pretty consistently. It's instead that that's all they've been releasing. There hasn't really been any indication of a coming final release, and timelines keep on being shifted out.

[1]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen/descri...

I was one of the first few hundred backers for the game, I'm well aware when they started crowdfunding :)

People complaining that they're late, have too much scope creep, aren't releasing good enough content, etc; all these are valid (albeit completely irrelevant to HN) complaints.

But the comments I'm seeing here are essentially just people disliking the game/the company because they're making money "unfairly". I would simply dismiss them as trolls were they not written by regulars and long timers.

Lumberyard being adopted by a AAA studio is huge news and instead of discussing that, people are shitting on the game. Like, what?

I wouldn't really go so far as saying those comments are irrelevant in a topic about the game. Tangentially relevant? Sure, I'll give you that. The topic is about Star Citizen and their engine switch, not about the game not being released. But people are interested in discussing all aspects of the game/company, both good and bad, and a topic that is at least partially relevant is better than, for example, a link about an NTP server costing $500/yr. If it were in that topic, then sure, I'd say irrelevant. :)

I mean, I've seen plenty of tangentially related comments on HN across topics, companies, and products, and people never complain that it's irrelevant to the topic at hand. As long as it has some relevance, it seems to be fine.

I didn't downvote you, but I'm guessing that a community of developers would be especially inclined to resent apologist rhetoric regarding a 70 million dollar software project that can only produce alpha software with no sign of being finished within the decade, especially because so many of us know what it's like to bust our asses on a tight schedule with limited funding.

I think the SC tech does seem impressive, but when compared to a game in a similar vein like Elite Dangerous, which took a lot of well-deserved heat for not quite meeting expectations, yet still managed to produce an overall fun game that engaged the community while it continues to improve, its hard not to feel like SC could be doing more to give the backers something other than tech demos.

I noticed that you've posted many comments in this topic, but I'm answering this one specifically because of your edit. I didn't downvote you here, but I did downvote other comments you made. Since you asked, I hope you'll take a moment to consider why I did it. Based on other comments I read, I don't think I'm alone in my reasons.

It's clear that you are passionate about the game. I appreciate that you are, because as a developer myself, it's really nice to have people who are enthusiastic about the work that you do.

But having said that, your comments as a whole have been defensive. Phrases like "come on now," "these comments are unworthy of Reddit," and calling others' comments disingenuous are fueling the flames. You're making it hard to have a real discussion with you because I don't feel like also ending up on the receiving end of your comments.

I appreciate the feedback. I was honestly more annoyed that some really low effort comments further down weren't being downvoted, but it looks like it shifted.

>You'd think that HN of all communities would be more appreciative of what CIG brings to the table.

Like what exactly? How to deliver nothing but keep being funded with internets-fedaykins fighting tooth and nail to keep your image unsullied?

> They are one of the best studios in the industry right now when it comes to consumer and dev friendliness.

I think it's hard to judge that when the game hasn't been released. Prior to release you could say that about Peter Molyneux or anybody else who promises the sun, moon and stars.

I don't think taking people's money and not delivering anything for 4+ years isn't particularly friendly myself.

But... they're not, though. You can at best say that of the original kickstarter backers (a now-tiny minority who backed a very different vision of the game - I'm part of that group, by the way), but not of somebody who's buying a ship today.

There is a plethora of information available about the vision of the game and that is very much because of CIG's approach to openness. They make everything available. They release countless youtube videos, blog posts, etc about design work on the game.

The people putting money into this, they're not preordering a game they're expecting to come out 3 months later, and then ending up disappointed because it's still in development.

And I've seen CIG offer complete refunds (sometimes worth thousands of dollars) to backers unhappy with the vision shift.

On these points alone they're doing a hell of a lot better than most game studios out there.

And yes, they're "promising sun moon and stars", but unlike Molyneux's games, NMS or whatever other overhyped project you can think of, they're constantly delivering updates about it, delivering content.

People will always be disappointed. I've been in the games industry long enough to know that gamers never know what the hell they want, and when they see something they think they want, they're usually wrong about it. Opening the gates of game development for consumers to peek inside, try out the product during its earliest days, is a ballsy move and one that simply isn't getting the credit it deserves, especially here.

Closure is very hard as well.

I think you're needlessly questioning the motives of the dev team.

While there's something to be said about misaligned incentives, half of a dev's reputation and career advancement comes from a track record of finishing projects.

Please don't post drive-by snark to HN. You provoked a whole flamewar with this uncharitable snipe.

The following links give an overview of the kind of discussion we're hoping for on HN. Please (re)-read them and post civilly and substantively. We're not against campfires, but throwing matches around carelessly in a dry forest does none of us any good.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Dont get your hopes up, this game is shaping to be something between Theranos and No Mans Sky (aka No Mans Gameplay[1])

Here is a critique of FPS portion from seasoned FPS player (Beagle - former ShackTac etc) https://www.twitch.tv/beagsandjam/v/109477776

TLDR: devs dont have any idea how FPS games work and what makes them fun.

[1] I used that sentence during the hype train and got downvoted to hell and back ;-) People are blind when they go fanboy mode.

There is a big difference between a game that was developed entirely in secret that does not live up to its hype once released, and a game in early alpha that has disappointing gameplay.

Of course, I have no fucking idea why this has to be explained on hacker news, to people who most likely are familiar with the differences between an alpha-quality product and a release-quality product, so I'd love your input on that.

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