Star Citizen, Roberts Space Industries - Chris Roberts' life support and retirement fund [2012-]

[tuna]

Everything is pretty much vague regarding the project as a whole.
From the scope and the end goal, that changes every few years, to the customer satisfaction, that, without (user) reviews or player participation numbers, is simply impossible to be definitively determined (there is a reason Steam allows reviews for early access games).

We do have revenue numbers for Star Citizen, and they are steadily going up. So it seems like one part of the user satisfaction is going well.

 

[techuse]

Will this game get to a billion in crowd funding before squadron is released?

 

[Niebotskick]

This is definitely a more interesting argument.

What's crazy though is that Chris Roberts was already saying back in like 2017-2018 that they had locked down features already promised(which were already massively expanded in scope) and were not going to add anything new. They recognized the complaints about scope creep even back then, and this was their answer to it.

But Chris Roberts is Chris Roberts and it lasted all but on one mild segment of time before he started agreeing to expand the scope and detail of the game massively. And like some drug addict, he's reverted entirely back to adding feature and details since without question.

In other words, they probably could have had some proper gameplay loop before now, but it's simply not their priority to do so. Cuz as soon as they do, the shades will be pulled off and a lot of people will realize they aren't remotely capable of providing a good, complete game. And so it's in their best interest to just keep pushing this 'dream' of what the game will ultimately be at some point down the road, as conveniently as they can get away with. That's gonna be their balancing act going forward.

At this stage, it's the kind of feature creep that would make even George Broussard raise an eyebrow.

 

[hughJ]

Sales(money), reviews(words), and playing(time) are all proxies for assessing customer satisfaction. Money might be problematic if the overall donations are carried by an unrepresentative minority. Words are just words, and are naturally going to be dominated by vocal minorities. Time would ordinarily be a great proxy, but here we're talking about a work-in-progress where a lot of people are inclined to wait (or at least not engage regularly).

Even if we had comprehensive data on all of the above I don't think it would change the common positions in this thread. People will still argue that customers are suffering from mental illness, or that CIG behaved unethically, or that Roberts is a bad project manager, or that the dollars could have been better spent on XYZ. Even if SC turns out to be some kind of masterpiece it wouldn't be a refutation that feature creep is something generally to be wary of. If the game finds success with players there'll always be a very vocal group that don't like, in principle, the pay-to-win mechanism of buying ships or that some of the ships are thousands of dollars.

 

[Daozang]

We do have revenue numbers for Star Citizen, and they are steadily going up. So it seems like one part of the user satisfaction is going well.

Sales mean nothing in this case, come on dude, let's not play that game.

Sales(money), reviews(words), and playing(time) are all proxies for assessing customer satisfaction. Money might be problematic if the overall donations are carried by an unrepresentative minority. Words are just words, and are naturally going to be dominated by vocal minorities. Time would ordinarily be a great proxy, but here we're talking about a work-in-progress where a lot of people are inclined to wait (or at least not engage regularly).

While I agree, playing time would tell us if this is an actual game people play.
You can definitively draw some conclusions If for example a minute percentage of the people that bought the game are actively playing, or if the amount of playtime is very small for each account.

Even if we had comprehensive data on all of the above I don't think it would change the common positions in this thread. People will still argue that customers are suffering from mental illness, or that CIG behaved unethically, or that Roberts is a bad project manager, or that the dollars could have been better spent on XYZ. Even if SC turns out to be some kind of masterpiece it wouldn't be a refutation that feature creep is something generally to be wary of. If the game finds success with players there'll always be a very vocal group that don't like, in principle, the pay-to-win mechanism of buying ships or that some of the ships are thousands of dollars.

I can only speak for myself, and my concern is not if this is going to be a good game, with a fair financial model, or if it will be ptw.
After all, not all games are for everyone, and nor should they be.
My primary concern is that it might never actually become one.
Then, it's the possibility that if/when it does become one, the people that gave their money to fund it, gave them for something entirely different than what they might get.

 

[tuna]

Sales mean nothing in this case, come on dude, let's not play that game.

Why does not current sales mean anything? It is those customers that are funding Star Citizen and SQ42.

 

[Daozang]

Why does not current sales mean anything? It is those customers that are funding Star Citizen and SQ42.

No, I agree, current sales are important!
Although what they mean is open to interpretation.
I meant sales as a whole.

Anyway, I think I said my piece for this thing...
I'll try to refrain from posting.
I sincerely hope you guys get the game you wanted eventually.

 

[Bludd]

No, I agree, current sales are important!
Although what they mean is open to interpretation.
I meant sales as a whole.

Anyway, I think I said my piece for this thing...
I'll try to refrain from posting.
I sincerely hope you guys get the game you wanted eventually.

dont give up! in the spirit of star citizen you should T pose for dominance!

 

[Davros]

I think what Daozang meant is you cant judge the quality of a game by how many copies it sold, some of the most highly rated games didnt sell in huge numbers - System Shock anyone ?

 

[Daozang]

dont give up! in the spirit of star citizen you should T pose for dominance!

T-posing indefinitely is a hard thing to do, but come 2026, I don't think I'll be able to hold from posting in this 14 year old thread again.

 

[MfA]

I think the selling point of Star Citizen is that it's doing it all in one contiguous multiplayer game world.

Except the engine/server can't handle that. They aren't trying to be EVE but better, unfortunately.

Even if they did, LTI and people with hangar queens make it really hard to create an economy now. They paid to win ... and they paid a lot.

 

[Broopster]

I have little interest in funding an unfinished game that already has more than enough money. I can’t he the first person to say this, but CR should go into for his next fortune, I’ve never seen someone create such an enduring army of fervent believers after so consistently undelivering.

Oh wait. I live in America. Ok, he isn’t the only one I’ve seen, but he started in 2012 so he was the first!

 

[homerdog]

Look when this thread was created. And this game still isn't even close to release. WTF I've never seen anything like this in my life. It is cool though.

Poll idea: will SpaceX build a real capital ship before Squadron 42 releases?

 

[cheapchips]

Not capital ships, but in the years since the Star Citizen's kick starter there's at least three or four companies that have been founded and successfully launched orbital rockets. Game development is clearly harder than actual rocketry.*

* If your company is run by an incompetent arm waving gooseberry

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Not capital ships, but in the years since the Star Citizen's kick starter there's at least three or four companies that have been founded and successfully launched orbital rockets.

At what cost though? It's easy when you have money. SC is strapped for cash and muddling by as best they can. If people just paid more, the thing might be finished by now.

 

[Subtlesnake]

Not capital ships, but in the years since the Star Citizen's kick starter there's at least three or four companies that have been founded and successfully launched orbital rockets. Game development is clearly harder than actual rocketry.*

* If your company is run by an incompetent arm waving gooseberry

Game development involves developing, refining and stabilizing technology, using that technology to build gameplay, and then iterating and refining on that gameplay and feeding new requirements back into the technological loop. So I think it can involve extremely long timescales for reasons that are not due to the inherent "difficulty" of the endeavour.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If you don't pick and adhere to targets, definitely. But that's generally classed as bad management if the execs can't settle on a project target and manage the team to its release.

 

[Subtlesnake]

If you don't pick and adhere to targets, definitely. But that's generally classed as bad management if the execs can't settle on a project target and manage the team to its release.

I think SC's scope is so ambitious that the only way to accomplish it using a "standard" development model would be to launch multiple "mini-versions" of increasing complexity, like Star Citizen 1, 2, 3 etc. So the first game wouldn't have planetary landing tech. The second game would have planetary landing tech but limited professions and economy, etc.

It's not clear to me this would increase the pace of progress towards the eventual vision, though obviously people would have polished games to play in the meantime.

 

[tuna]

Look when this thread was created. And this game still isn't even close to release.

"Release" is not a relevant word to apply to Star Citizen. You can play it now and some people even have fun with it when they are not killed by all the bugs.

 

[cheapchips]

At what cost though? It's easy when you have money. SC is strapped for cash and muddling by as best they can. If people just paid more, the thing might be finished by now.

Well, $100's of millions less than Star Citizen has raised to date if you're only talking Firefly, Astra, Relativity (sort of), LandSpace, CAS Space... To be fair, these rocket companies only have to buy tooling and bend metal. They don't carry the massive JPEG licencing overhead CIG incurs.