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Comment by opdahl | Hacker News Reader

Star Citizen is actually the perfect game for me. What I’ve noticed over the years is that I almost enjoy the wait for a game more than when its released and I get to sit down and play it. I love reading up news about games, seeing announcement of new features and developer blogs. With Star Citizen never properly releasing I get to watch youtube videos of people dissecting new systems etc and looking forward to the new tech coming in a few years.

The moment Star Citizen releases I know for a fact I will lose all interest, so keep up the current pace CIG!

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You are gonna be Senior Citizen by the time you play it.

I've never heard anyone articulate exactly how I felt about Planetary Annihilation and Overgrowth: the only two games I bothered to pay for prerelease / dev news. In general, I think I've grown to enjoy reading about interesting projects more than playing games anymore, so it's almost like getting to go spend time at an interactive art exhibit after fawning over their work.

Is Star Citizen the first truly modern religion? This is basically the business model of a cult whose members gather every year for the end of the world, but when it never comes they just get more excited for the next one

It's like the Mormons in the Expanse with all the Star Citizen players going on a generation ship

It's about as close to a religion as the opposition is.

It sounds like the kind of game I'd like to watch other people play, with how big and expensive everything seems. Why would I want to spend $1k and wait to be bad at the game, when I can instead watch someone else who spent $10k and does cool things?

Removing the public road map is antithetical to what you seem to love so much about Star Citizen though.

Backed this in 2013 on Kickstarter, I try to play it once every few years but never get past installing the latest update and figuring what my login is.

People have been doing this for the last 18 years with World of Warcraft since it's release.

The future of gaming right here!

Well then you’re gonna love (waiting for) GTA VI

Sound like you simply dislike computer games.

That's like saying you enjoy buying lottery tickets because you like to fantasize about what you're going to do with all the money once you get it.

That seems accurate.

I mean, this is why I chuck 5 bucks in every once in a while. I know, realistically, I am not going to win, but the fantasy is a fun activity. The human brain is weird.

That's much more rational than buying lottery tickets because you are in desperate need of money.

How else would you explain why people play the lottery? It's well-known that the expected value of any given ticket is negative (except in rare cases), unless you place some entertainment/fantasy value on playing.

Why would you think lottery players are using your "expected value" model to decide whether to buy tickets?

If I believe "I'm lucky" the expected value is positive.

The expected value of insurance is also negative (it has to be, or else insurance companies wouldn't be able to pay their expenses), but people buy it for the same reason: the rare payoff is life-altering, while the much more common cost doesn't make much difference in comparison.

Isn't that the point of playing the lotto?

It’s true. If I won the (big) lotto I would no longer enjoy buying lottery tickets.

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