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Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

Star Citizen reminds me very much of that story about the Danish artist who was commissioned by a museum to produce a new piece for $84k and gave them two empty canvases entitled "Take the Money and Run".[0]

Cloud Imperium is, at this point, a modern art studio that is constantly trying to see just how overtly they can make fun of their patrons while still receiving big checks.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2021/09/29/1041492941/jens-haaning-kunst...

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This is pretty disengenuous.

At the end of the day Star Citizen isn't a blank canvas. There is a real playable game, not tech demo, right now. Sq42 is a bloody circus, but this pervasive belief that the project is a scam is trivial for anyone to prove false without spending a dime: just wait for the next free fly weekend.

I wouldn't call it playable. It can be played, but the experience is very unstable with game breaking bugs everywhere.

The joke among my friends is never put on a suit you like, because the game is going to crash and you'll lose it.

And 400+ Millon to get to where we are?

I think it's disengenuous to ignore the chronic, glaring deficiencies in planning and execution while pointing to a streaming pile of shit and saying "look, it works".

I backed the original Kickstarter. I have the game. I can start it. I can walk around a space station in terrible framerate and enter my ship.

Or, I can launch into what appears to be a PvP game with terrible flight mechanics (compares to Elite Dangerous).

If there is more game in there, they sure did a great job at hiding it.

The biggest point of comparison that I'm making isn't the blank canvas per se, and I'm not calling the project a scam. I'm calling it modern art. I'm saying both types of artists share the constant boundary pushing: how much can we taunt our patrons before they'll give up and leave?

I don't believe that anyone at Cloud Imperium actually cares about bedheets. They simply recognize that Star Citizen is now a work of performance art, and this is the next stage of the performance.

Though many of the patrons still enjoy the various demos, tech reels, and developer videos coming out (ex. the comment below me), so it feels like these are the actual product rather than the game itself.

It’s weird, how you can get so attached to something that you start to forget what really attracted you in the first place.

That's a great point. I hadn't thought of it that way before.

There is a huge audience for gaming videos on YouTube and twitch, and a lot of people in the audience aren't also playing those games. Their enjoyment is just in the story, and the visuals, and the commentary. I always wondered why the money keeps rolling in -- maybe because the anticipation and the imagination are already giving them enjoyment of a not-yet-fully-playable game.

I bought a $45 ship probably 5 years ago, and I just bought another one about a month ago. I've never even downloaded the game, I just love checking in every few months to see the game, and I'm happy to support its development. Seeing Morphologis' architecture reviews of the ships alone has been worth my [what has amounted to] $1.50 per month.

I makes me wonder why the artist would do this. It seems it would pretty much preclude him from getting offers for commissions in the future?

Art is often about the value of art these days. It's conceptual rather than beautiful.

"How clever!" they think. And remember that the canvasses would be sold for much more than what it cost.

Perhaps an extreme take on art for art’s sake: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_for_art%27s_sake

All publicity is good publicity, but especially so in the art world.

Balloon Girl Shredding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy#Balloon_Girl_Shredding

Classical art was sold on the perceived quality of the art. Contemporary art is sold on the notoriety of the artist. A framed copy of what was originally a stencil graffiti was sold for > $1 million because it was Banksy. After being shredded as part of a prank, the then shredded work was resold for > $25 million.

The value of those empty canvases are now likely worth well north of the $84k paid, because wow what art. And yes, /s.

It's art (most importantly modern art), and the museum might have gotten their money's worth and then some with those two blank canvasses.

Do you think the artist should have duct-taped a banana to them instead?

It was a commission. I would expect there would be some form of request or discussion on what was being commissioned. What did they write on the invoice?

To me it reminds Borges’ short (one paragraph) story “On Exactitude of Science”

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