Star Citizen Alpha 3.10
robertsspaceindustries.com
robertsspaceindustries.com
Star Citizen is without a doubt a total scam, with development pushing out the absolute mimimum[0] to keep more sucke^H^H^H^H^Hpeople investing more money. They're pulling in more money every year, with this year on track to be the biggest year yet[1].
I'm far from the only person who thinks it's a scam[2] and there's entire subreddits[3] devoted to people complaining and trying to get refunds.
The SC rabbit-hole is deep and (if you're into the industry drama) very entertaining, and while I don't feel sorry for the rabid fanboys who go into every SC thread defending their tens of thousands of dollars spent on a tech demo, I do absolutely feel sorry for the MILLIONS[4] of people who got suckered by these predators and led to believe they'll ever get what they paid for.
[0] https://starcitizentracker.github.io/
[1] https://www.gamerspack.com/2020/05/13/star-citizen-funding-r...
[2] http://dereksmart.com/2018/11/star-citizen-year-six/
He's making vastly more money NOT shipping a product than he would have actually completing the the thing, it actually would make a great biz school study. On the scale of tech industry scams, it's also been overshadowed by the many VC busts that delivered even less and pulled in even more funding (looking at you, Magic Leap).
I don't know if it was always a scam, but it certainly feels like it has been for the last few years.
Though my rule of thumb for Kickstarter projects is "get my money's worth from the entertainment value of development updates" and by those heuristics Star Citizen seems a great value for the money, and quite successful.
My general rule for Kickstarter is don’t back software, I am just not good at estimating the likelihood of delivery with software. It’s a rule that I have only broken twice (font awesome and star citizen). In total I have backed 24 projects and Star Citizen is the only one not delivered.
I've actually think I had more projects not deliver that weren't software, though, than software projects. At some I should review the statistics. Under the "did the backer updates entertain" heuristic though, I don't count any real losses.
I'll totally buy into some scammy behavior like ship purchases. But that's basically the only source of cash until it actually ships (lol), and we all know that big engineering teams are very expensive.
I backed SC at the smallest level way back, and I still enjoy it from time to time. It's definitely very cool and unique, the progress is just slow. They're trying to do way too much, IMO, and they don't really know how to communicate timelines well with the community. Hell, I don't know how to create estimates well.
I think if the game had been in the hands of a talented game studio, things would have gone much differently. Having to build out the studio and company along with the game is likely a big task. Processes that already exist in a studio have to be created from scratch. Plus, a studio would have a much easier time cutting the scope to meet deadlines. :P
But I could totally be convinced that it's a real scam in the future. The amount of work that has been put into it so far seems quite large by my estimation, and I doubt they are just doing that work to run away with folks' cash. 300 engineers would cost enough that I could see them being tight on cash anyways, even with the large crowdfunding efforts.
They sell ship concepts for a lot of money. And are only now getting into the real meat-and-potatoes of the critical development. Things like server meshing, and appropriate object culling server/client side.
There are NO gameplay loops that don't involve a small variation of the following: Kill bounties / mine minerals / trade goods to earn money. Use money to buy ships. And even that is kinda bogus because your purchases may/may not persist between patches!
Any PVP is completely optional and not really a real gameplay loop.
Any group events are completely optional and not really a real gameplay loop. There are a few things you can do to speed up say mining loops by having a scout + cash maker(s).
There is ZERO logistics. There is ZERO economy (8 years in and they finally created money transfers).
Overall this is a project that has every incentive to keep developing forever and not deliver. Because of this they over-promised so so so much that it is almost impossible to meet these expectations.
Also development has been... insanely slow. Took them 7 years before they gave you a mobile respawn point on some ships. Took them 8 years to get aiming even remotely okay. Took them 8 years and NPCs still can't glitch out and stop moving/acting. 8 years later and only the latest top notch PC can even attempt to get 30fps in this game, and even then, not in most areas.
This has to be Fyre festival. The same thing happened there. "Just fund it, we'll figure it out." until... they couldn't figure it out. So they asked for more funding.
I have not purchased Star Citizen but I did have a free weekend where someone who owns one of the most expensive ships in the game gave my a virtual tour of the system on their drop dead stunning space yacht that Elite could only dream about.
Atmospheric flight was a blast and the planets are gorgeous, especially compared to NMS and the lifeless husks of Elite.
The city world was a whole nother level and I actually got lost in the bustling city.
I sort of loved that we had enough time on the return jump to head down to the bar on his yacht (complete with ridiculously deeply modeled bottles behind the bar) to "have a drink" and chat while sitting and watching stars stream by like in Star Trek.
Start Citizen has a lot that is wrong with it and the business side is a nightmare. But as an avid space geek, I'll be damned if they didn't break a new barrier for immersion with me.
All I want now is a game that blends the flight and universe mechanics of Elite with the procedural generation of planets and some gameplay loops like NMS, but with the graphics and jaw droppingly beautiful graphics and immersive fine details of Start Citizen. In VR, with whatever Frankenstein of a machine could actually run it smoothly without melting.
I guess you could postpone 60% of the outstanding features, get the game released and then work on add-ons with those features.
Oh, and also another game (Squadron 42).
The game content actually seems pretty quick to produce, given that it's been highly automated. They went from next to nothing to 20+ planets/moons with a mix of procedural and hand placed locations to visit in a short time frame. The technology means the artists basically paint the planets content in real time with brushes. Then the missions/social content is also a mix of hand written and procedurally generated content, eventually backed by an economic model that fuels the missions and NPC behavior. This all makes sense because it's an infinite open world, not a story game, but so far it plays pretty well.
The "hero" landing zones seem to take the longest. My guess is they will launch with only a handful of the star systems and build from there.
And apart from the initial backlash, it seems to be doing quite fine now, from what I hear.
I think they have a much clearer idea of how to finish the project now, and it's just taking the time execute it. Four year ago I honestly doubt they had it under control, and it's just lucky they had money beyond their wildest expectations coming through the door, which gave them the opportunity to fail enough times to begin to succeed.
- Bartenders will be seen keeping their work environment tidy by wiping down counters, disposing bottles, and polishing glasses, and chatting with patrons dynamically.
- Action that lets the player wipe their visor clear when it has become too obstructed by snow/rain/moisture. This action is available through the default keybind of LShift+Z or through the Inner Thought menu.
- We are introducing a new mechanic to planets that causes the temperature to rise and fall with the day and night cycle. This means that planets should be warmer during the day and cooler during the night.
Meanwhile, players still fall through the floors of ships, experience disconnects every 10 min, and PvP is an unplayable lag-fest. At least bartenders will now wipe down the counter after a player falls though it.
As well, there are three entire studios working on this project, they can do more than one thing at once. Working on NPC interaction does not stop the whole show until it's done.
I'm in agreeance because part of me wishes they'd stop fussing with the open development and just finish the game. But that's not fair or realistic.
It seems to be evidence that they are not even thinking a single feature through.
That sounds like a scam.
Just look at the latest offering (removed from steam by the looks of it) that was a $99 early access thing started around 2012 I think: http://lodgame.com with a last update 2 years ago.
I would definitely take his claims with some grains of salt. That said, Derek calling it a scam doesn't mean it's not a scam.
Agreed, but neither does it make it a scam. Any input he has on the subject is compromised and basically meaningless as evidence one way or the other. So we really should avoid citing him.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2019/05/01/exclusive-...
So you're saying because it's still in dev and still raising money, so it's not a scam?
At no point have I weighed in on if it is a scam or not. All I am saying is that citing Derek Smart as an authority on the matter is not really a good idea either way. He is hugely biased and is basically praying it fails.
Citing other, probably less biased sources? Great, go ahead.
http://lodgame.com/news/16-04-29-01/
http://lodgame.com/16-11-01-state-of-play/
The Steam page is still over here.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/266620/allnews/
You may not like him or his games, but at least he's still making games and he has people buying them. So I don't quite know why you have a problem with that when he has made so many games for a very long time now.
As to Star Citizen, well he has been right so far hasn't he? Didn't he say five years ago in July 2015 (I don't have the blog link, but go to his website at www.dereksmart.com) said the game could never be made? At the time they had raised about $85 million. It's not over $300 million and there is still no game. Even with almost $100m in additional investor money.
Thanks, didn't know that. However this was 4 years ago based on those blog posts. If we are considering games over-running and not deliverying then I think Derek Smart and LoD are in a very brittle glass house here.
> You may not like him or his games, but at least he's still making games and he has people buying them. So I don't quite know why you have a problem with that when he has made so many games for a very long time now.
You can see a list of the games made here: https://www.metacritic.com/company/3000ad-inc & https://www.metacritic.com/company/quest-online-inc
You cannot help but notice that none of them are well recieved (with only BC Millenium approaching a rasonable score) and most of them are iterations on a similar/ same idea. This, to me, reduces his authority in regards to game development and how it should be done, to basically 0.
> Didn't he say five years ago in July 2015 (I don't have the blog link, but go to his website at www.dereksmart.com) said the game could never be made? > It's not over $300 million and there is still no game. Even with almost $100m in additional investor money.
We still don't know if it will be made or not, work is ongoing, dev is happening and patches are being released. If the makers of Star Citizen go bankcrupt without the game being made then at that point he will be correct.
What we do know is that Star Citizen has a huge scope (And to be fair, it does sound like a lot of that scope is Chris Roberts brand scope creep) and lots of technical challenges, it could (probably will) take 10+ years go make.
Basically my point is that Derek Smart is infamous in gaming circles and, given his history and behaviour, I am shocked anyone would consider him an authoritative, reliable, even vaguely unbiased source.
I have gotten hours of fun and atmospheric gameplay out of the scam to date and every quarter I get more to play with. Suits me fine.
The situation is far, far more easily explained by an intense project management incompetence and a vastly expanding scope.
My biggest fear is that they can't deliver on some of their technically challenging goals before running out of money due to wasteful project management, but so far they have executed all the big tech pillars.
I have never seen so much hype in a game that has yet to come to fruition for so long.
Internet Historian's "The Engoodening of No Man's Sky" is surprisingly a well told, heart-warming (albeit quite long) video telling the story of No Man's Sky, how it got so hyped, and the good-faith steps the developers took to do their best to make good on their promises. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5BJVO3PDeQ
Also, playing it on PSVR is incredible. No cut-down “VR Experience”, it’s the full game in VR. Doing VR dog fights in an asteroid belt against waves of fighters, then transitioning through the atmosphere as the fight follows you down to ground level is an awesome experience.
No, the core gameplay is the same, it's incredibly shallow, even by survival standards. I understand some people love busy work, but let's not pretend they did something incredible. They barely fulfilled their original promises (multi-player). Murray still needs to apologize publicly for his lies on TV though.
Biggest disappointment in gaming I ever had.
Recently played it again. Has it more content? Sure. Has it multiplayer? Well.. I guess you can see each other, but it's a terrible experience in so many ways. Has it most of the features promised to be in the game even before it launched? Not.. even.. close. It might be an "okay" or for some people even "good" game, but compared to what has been promised, it would still deserve the steam rating of "mostly negative"
It was pretty cool for the first 4 hours, but got repetitive fairly quickly.
Caveat: I'm not really into the big open survival games anyway; Subnautica was alright, but Fallout 4 and Rust (the game) put me to sleep.
I'm still waiting for something on par with Freespace or the old Playstation classic Colony Wars (1 & 2).
So I encourage people to play No Man's Sky. It's a good game. But I will never, ever give Sean Murray my money again.
Their advertising materials including their post-launch Steam page featured large-scale space battles, rivers, formation flying with wingmen, etc were so egregiously false they triggered an investigation by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority.
But hey, at least the rubber hit the road when the game was released.
I have other games I spent $60+ on and maybe got about a week of entertainment from.
Twice a year I install SC. The mechanics are confusing, some places too big to get around, and constant lost connections, an issue I’ve never had. I really want this to be the MMO I get in on the ground floor of, but I’m losing interest.
Also, when they sell ships for real money, insurance should be permanent. I refuse to buy any new ships beyond the starters until they figure this out.
Personally I think LTI should not have been offered at all, since it could potentially break the game if offered on expensive Ships that people will then use as suicide bombers without consequence, but that is a different issue.
SpaceX founded in 2002 and first reached orbit in 2008, so 6 years.
Tesla founded in 2003 and first deliveries was 2012, so 9 years.
Development of Star Citizen began in 2010 and it's still not even in beta.
As one might imagine, an unbounded project takes infinite time to deliver.
And they seem to be keeping to that schedule.
tl;dr - Don't give artists unlimited time and budget. Bad things happen without constraints.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals
Currently at ~300 MILLION dollars? imagine if this game broke the 1 Billion $ barrier in funding.... that would be insane!
At this point its almost a "meme" to donate to this project. Like rich crazies on wsb's throwing money around, this projects donation button, probably hits the dopamine receptors too
But that's not so much for such a game, for comparison:
"Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" - $200 million
"Grand Theft Auto V" - $137.5 million to $265 million
"Destiny" - $500 million
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-expensive-video-gam...
Star Citizen 215+
But again if you compare SC to SW.....
They are both pretty much failures?
Expect only one of them took money from customers before having anything to show for it.
If something is not finished you cannot tell :-)
But one of them are a failure.
They also had a failed attempt at Squadron42 developed by a partner agency that was thrown away.
Could someone explain this, please? Is that wall street bets or something different?
But it already went way too far in scope before they stopped scope creeping.
Not a scam, just bad planning IMO.
Kinda extreme but still not a scam IMO.
But it's ultimately unprecedented, and we are all learning as we go. I doubt there will be a crowd funded game like this again for a while.
They actually hired and empowered a PM to ride herd over the project (including Chris Roberts), and that's helped with forward progress.
Previously, it seemed there was a lot of unnecessary technical churn for artistic reasons. E.g. the "We can make this thing 5% better, but it will take a 50% increase in time because we'll have to rewrite a lot of code" request.
What is out today would have been really promising in August of 2013.
I make no claim that it's done, mind you. Only that it is playable, and that it is a game.
Problem is there are still so many bugs that it is completely unplayable. Every time I've given it a chance over the last 7 years it's been the same story. As much as it pains me to admin it, it is likely they will run out of money before they can achieve stability.
Also it's a bit of a misunderstanding with the use of Alpha, it has been in Alpha for years now. It is a perpetual alpha, more like a WIP not an initial release of a full game.
That said their roadmap is a joke - it doesn't even have the non-alpha phase on it.
It's painfully obvious now that as long as the developers remain in this early development phase, they are able to raise large amounts of money through the sale of virtual spaceships. As soon as there is a real game to play, this well will likely dry up. Will there be other source of capital? Probably, but they may not be as rich.
My perspective is that they're losing too much momentum, and looks like the game (if ever will have a full release), will be for a niche of the niche that started following the project.
I mean, how will they even market this among triple A titles budgets? They can't even take the ride for the "new space age" hype from media entertainment/tech achievements.
Part of the strength of this type of "business model" is precisely the backing of a community that want things to happen... but like you said, they're stretching it beyond what's reasonable.
I can only assume that with this development budget - which is in the AAA level - they must need AAA sales level, right? Or are they marking up this game for 200 USD annual subscriptions (assuming is 10x20 USD (avg season pass for AAA gamees?? no idea)?
The long term goal though is to sell in game currency, and it's that simple I think. I imagine we will see ship sales continue after launch, but you will instead have people paying for in game currency and buying the ships in game. While you could grind for them in game, many people will just buy the currency to save time.
I mention their recurring whale investors whenever I need to explain what Stockholm Syndrome means.
http://dereksmart.com/2018/11/star-citizen-year-six/
A con man knows better than anyone how to spot a fellow con man, as they say.
It's easy (and somewhat justified) to criticize the creators here, but I don't think they're the root problem. The root problem is that gaming media and wishful-thinking funding platforms like Kickstarter reward insanely ambitious elevator pitches over more modest but achievable ones.
The vision since has changed so much, I probably won't enjoy the MMO part. It looks more and more like a job in a space simulator, rather than a game that might not be 100% realistic, but at least fun.
Nowadays I'm just looking forward to Squadron 42, hoping they will at least manage to release episode 1 before running out of money
My biggest excitement for this game is how it's being built with systemic gameplay at its core. For me, that has always been my draw to games. Their ability to model interesting systems and let you play and tinker with them. It adds almost immeasurable depth to a game.
I implore anyone with a negative or shallow opinion on the project to dive a bit deeper and check out their approach. It's such an impressive technical achievement already, and it is already a fun game to play with more content than some games have on release.
It gets plenty of negative press, and I think it's entirely down to poor communication. I can't see how anyone could be disappointed by what is being delivered, except for the timeframes.
It looks like a fraud scheme[&] where the previous customers money is being used to gain new customers without actually providing the finished product.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_g...
[1] https://starcitizentracker.github.io/
[&] is there a specific name for this type of scam, it doesn't follow the typical Ponzi, pyramid scheme blueprint.
Honestly, if you try the game, for the first hour or so it's beautiful. Going down to a planet and flying around is pretty magical but it quickly wears out and you won't play again until the next big release.
It does have real potential, but they need to cut 99% and focus on the basics.
Repeated changes to the ToS
Repeated changes to the schedule
Not a single commitment met
6 years late and no sign of shipping a feature complete beta any time soon (certainly not by 2022)
Selling virtual ships for thousands that aren't even playable and probably never will be
Never even shipping the original promised scope and being absolutely nowhere near the impossibly large current scope.
Respectfully - fuck DNF, fuck NMS, fuck Prey, fuck 3000AD.
Star Citizen is the absolute king of gaming vaporware bullshit.
I absolutely loved the Wing Commander series and it still ranks as one of my all time favorites so I eager to see what Chris Roberts would produce.
I've played the game co-op with a friend on and off over the years and have definitely gotten more then 35$ enjoyment from the game. As long as they keep moving forward, I have little to complain about.
The newsletter gets annoying sometimes ha, hope they finish it someday
Sigh, guess we’ll have to wait a little longer for The Oasis.