Maybe, but it's still not a great way to go about gamedev.
Star Citizen, Roberts Space Industries - Chris Roberts' life support and retirement fund [2012-]
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their market being a few whales is not really healthy though is it. my total spend on this was 30 usd on the kickstarter back in november 2012
I think the selling point of Star Citizen is that it's doing it all in one contiguous multiplayer game world. If you break it up into separate instances with loading screens you get a Starfield, if you break it up into separate module/DLC releases you get an Elite Dangerous, if you break it up into entirely separate game releases then you get an assortment of games that have already existed in the market for the last few decades.
I think we need other studios than Rockstar attempting mega-project games, and especially a PC-focused studio where it's not crippled by the needs of the console UI/controls and the console audience. I don't think the GTA/RDR series are very good games frankly, and I don't think they will ever be good because they've become the studio's formula.
I think we need other studios than Rockstar attempting mega-project games, and especially a PC-focused studio where it's not crippled by the needs of the console UI/controls and the console audience. I don't think the GTA/RDR series are very good games frankly, and I don't think they will ever be good because they've become the studio's formula.
GTAV made $800 millions in its first day of release.
Yes. I find this to be a decent step below past games considered to have good animation.
I guess my memory of Wing Commander is extremely different than your memory of Wing Commander.
I do remember the cheap joysticks I destroyed dogfighting in those games.
Look I'm a graphics whore just as much as most of us here in this forum, and yes, the visual tech is impressive, but if I didn't know that there is an element of ship-flying in this, I'd say the demo felt like a bellow average knock off of Mass Effect wrapped in beautiful paper with a nice bow on top.
And yes, all that turret shooting gave me that Duke Nukem Forever vibe!!!
I didn't see any Wing Commander in there whatsoever.
I get it, it's a dream game.
The only way it can be made is with the support of those people that want to play it (although I insist that those people don't have the same dream in mind and that no game can give them that).
But I personally cannot get over the lack of accountability, especially with this kind of money...
Turret section was good. The UI, the explosions, the sound and the music. I watched it multiple times on my enthusiast home cinema system and it comes across really well.
Too little can be said about the battle on foot. When watching the video I don't see why it should be bad.
Zero G without the EVA suit worked very well. The interaction with the environment did too.
It's only the prologue and not even a tutorial. There will be plenty of space battles as a pilot.
Where was that worse than Mass Effect? That's too imprecise for me.
Good summary of 14 hours CitizenCon
Too little can be said about the battle on foot. When watching the video I don't see why it should be bad.
Zero G without the EVA suit worked very well. The interaction with the environment did too.
It's only the prologue and not even a tutorial. There will be plenty of space battles as a pilot.
Where was that worse than Mass Effect? That's too imprecise for me.
Good summary of 14 hours CitizenCon
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cheapchips
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The gall it must take to come out on stage and give a 2026 release date, having said it was feature complete in 2023 and entered it's 'polish phase'.
This channel just slags of CIG, but it's easy to do if you just put together montage of 11 years of Croberts bullshit handwaving.
This channel just slags of CIG, but it's easy to do if you just put together montage of 11 years of Croberts bullshit handwaving.
That comment was me saying I didn't see wing commander in that demo.
What I saw was a sci-fi action adventure game hence the Mass Effect comparison.
To me Wing Commander was tight control dogfighting in space, with a lot of banter / character and a campy story I liked.
And yes, the first Mass Effect had comparable shooting mechanics, although if you hold the line long enough, they will have many years to fine-tune it to acceptable levels.
The fact that the enemies didn't react to hits, and didn't even register the first few, is very clear to my eyes.
Snarky comments aside, two years are plenty enough for these things to get fixed.
Provided of course this wasn't a vertical slice (it could very well be since the only gameplay shown was walking through corridors, occasionally interacting with UI elements through scripted actions, shooting turrets and subpar FPS), and the problems the game has, are the problems you could actually see.
I'd be lying if I said that I don't have, objectively justified, doubts about the completion state of the rest of the game.
The turret thing is a case of non gameplay, the most basic form of interaction, (especially in this case where skill isn't a requirement) that either serves as a graphical showcase or as a means to progress a story.
Also, never have I claimed that the game isn't pretty, and since you mentioned it, it has such a long way to get even close to the sound design of Elite Dangerous, although to be fair, that game might have the best sound design ever.
It sounds sooooo good on my enthusiast home cinema system.
Couldn't resist.
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Whoever was responsible for ED's sound design should have been snatched up by Roberts. The great thing about nailing the sound is that it's something that everyone gets to experience (no special CPU or GPU requirement), and it's not something that's going to age over the course of a comically protracted development cycle. A decade from now ED is still going to sound great.
I got a laugh out of that.The gall it must take to come out on stage and give a 2026 release date, having said it was feature complete in 2023 and entered it's 'polish phase'.
This channel just slags of CIG, but it's easy to do if you just put together montage of 11 years of Croberts bullshit handwaving.
Especially the lines about the AI.
I cannot imagine what they scraped back then, if this is what they have now.
Perhaps all that polishing is going into the cutscenes.
In the end, it's basically this, most of the things that come out of their mouths in those community informing videos, should be considered marketing.
They are spending basically all the money they bring in, so it's not really 'making' any money whatsoever.
Worth looking for comparisons:
Development costs (2023 Inflation adjusted)
Star Citizen : $500M
Cyberpunk : $100M
COD MW2 : $90M
Estimated
GTAV : $180M
RDR2: $200M
Elite Dangerous started with an £8 million but that had grown 'quite a lot'.
SC initially wanted $2 million on KickStarter to produce a final game. They secured $15 million in their first year.
Seems like the money CIG has used could have funded a complete GTAV plus Cyberpunk plus COD plus Elite Dangerous with money left over for NMS and more besides.
Development costs (2023 Inflation adjusted)
Star Citizen : $500M
Cyberpunk : $100M
COD MW2 : $90M
Estimated
GTAV : $180M
RDR2: $200M
Elite Dangerous started with an £8 million but that had grown 'quite a lot'.
SC initially wanted $2 million on KickStarter to produce a final game. They secured $15 million in their first year.
Seems like the money CIG has used could have funded a complete GTAV plus Cyberpunk plus COD plus Elite Dangerous with money left over for NMS and more besides.
I'm backing up the notion that shooting for 'bigger than GTA' scope is/was a big mistake. The idea that they're 'making' as much money as they spend is not the same as 'making GTA money', which implies actually making huge profits. So I dont think it's a good defense of CIG's strategy.
Again, I don't know how you can read that sentence as anything other than him using the money they're making as a proxy for customer/market acceptance. That's all he said. Getting into a "well actually..." over the definition of "making" over a concise and on-the-point observation like that is silly.
I think his point actually is worth not losing sight of in these discussions. There's no argument here over whether CIG is spending its money efficiently or that the money could have been spent on a bunch of AAA console games. I don't think even CIG or the most die-hard SC supporters would argue otherwise. The fact remains that CIG exists, SC is a project they're making, and there's on-going financial support direct from the end-users. You couldn't have a more transparent business model than that. Whatever argument there may have once been about a bait-and-switch went away a decade ago; people have been giving money knowing full well what they are and aren't getting. The fact that the money could have funded another GTA or COD or insert-AAA-console-game-here is irrelevant. One may as well be debating how the money could have financed an orphanage or hospital. The world is filled with such examples because people put their money where they want to, not where they should, especially in the realm of entertainment where its guided by personal taste.
If anything I would say the takeaway here should be that there's clearly not enough CIG-like entities to fill demand if everyone's piggy bank is getting emptied and a bet placed on a single horse. If the latest Rockstar, Ubisoft, Bethesda, Activision, EA titles aren't delivering what you want, then where do you put your money? I feel like the Kickstarter trend came and went, but there's evidently still an interest to back projects that aren't otherwise being served by traditional game publishers/studios industry.
I think his point actually is worth not losing sight of in these discussions. There's no argument here over whether CIG is spending its money efficiently or that the money could have been spent on a bunch of AAA console games. I don't think even CIG or the most die-hard SC supporters would argue otherwise. The fact remains that CIG exists, SC is a project they're making, and there's on-going financial support direct from the end-users. You couldn't have a more transparent business model than that. Whatever argument there may have once been about a bait-and-switch went away a decade ago; people have been giving money knowing full well what they are and aren't getting. The fact that the money could have funded another GTA or COD or insert-AAA-console-game-here is irrelevant. One may as well be debating how the money could have financed an orphanage or hospital. The world is filled with such examples because people put their money where they want to, not where they should, especially in the realm of entertainment where its guided by personal taste.
If anything I would say the takeaway here should be that there's clearly not enough CIG-like entities to fill demand if everyone's piggy bank is getting emptied and a bet placed on a single horse. If the latest Rockstar, Ubisoft, Bethesda, Activision, EA titles aren't delivering what you want, then where do you put your money? I feel like the Kickstarter trend came and went, but there's evidently still an interest to back projects that aren't otherwise being served by traditional game publishers/studios industry.
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I think player participation and activity could be a huge part of transparency.
Out of curiosity, is there a way of knowing how many people are actively playing the game?
You're.....joking, right? A whole lot of Star Citizen's continued funding is coming from people who have fallen 10,000ft deep into the sunk cost fallacy.
So, a bit of a tangent, but a guilty pleasure of mine is following memestock cult communities. Mainly just to laugh at the endless idiocy and insanity. But I mean it when I say insanity. These people have become deluded to the core, living in a completely different universe to the rest of us, and despite most all having lost tons of money on it, continually invest ever more money into more stock, even to the point of financial ruin and losing their houses and wives and children and friends over it. But they keep investing, ultimately undeterred, confident that it's all going to have a magic, fairytale ending.
Point is, I do not at all think that plenty of the people constantly throwing big bucks at Star Citizen truly do understand what the reality of things actually are. Sunk cost fallacy can get people into deep delusions, and ever moreso if they spend their time in echo chamber communities that provide continual reinforcement of the delusions.
I don't really get that "sunk cost" discussion regarding Star Citizen. You have the ships you have paid for, you don't really have to pay anything more to continue playing the way you have. It seems different from WoW etc. where you have to pay a subscription to keep playing and be a part of the community.
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