Straight Dope Message Board

[defenderofjustice]

If you are a gamer and haven't heard of Star Citizen, then you might be interested to hear about it... or even play it. With over 1 million people playing it currently, and with it raising almost $94 million for its development, it's looking to be a very impressive game.

In a nutshell, it has these qualities:
- open-world
- seamless transitions
- space MMO
- Single player campaign (so something similar to Mass Effect)
- FPS elements (real-time combat)
- Multi-crewed spaceships (fly ships with friends or AI)
- Living economy based on player interaction


They are currently doing a "free flight" promotion that allows you to try out their space combat module. Here's how to access it:


This game is the most crowdfunded anything to ever exist. I think it's going to be the next big PC game.

If you disagree, then say why. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about the game, as I have been following it since it started development in 2012.

Anyone else been following Star Citizen? 1

[Oakminster]

Reported. 2

[madsircool]

Originally Posted by Oakminster

Reported.

Why? This is The Game Room and this post is helpful.

Originally Posted by defenderofjustice

If you are a gamer and haven't heard of Star Citizen, then you might be interested to hear about it... or even play it. With over 1 million people playing it currently, and with it raising almost $94 million for its development, it's looking to be a very impressive game.

In a nutshell, it has these qualities:
- open-world
- seamless transitions
- space MMO
- Single player campaign (so something similar to Mass Effect)
- FPS elements (real-time combat)
- Multi-crewed spaceships (fly ships with friends or AI)
- Living economy based on player interaction

They are currently doing a "free flight" promotion that allows you to try out their space combat module. Here's how to access it:


This game is the most crowdfunded anything to ever exist. I think it's going to be the next big PC game.

If you disagree, then say why. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about the game, as I have been following it since it started development in 2012.

Anyone else been following Star Citizen?

3

[Quartz]

Originally Posted by defenderofjustice

Anyone else been following Star Citizen?

Yes. It's becoming a bit of a joke for selling ships and being nowhere near complete. 4

[Grumman]

I very much hope that Star Citizen is not the future of PC gaming. One, there's an incredible amount of bloat in the art assets that would make it impossible for me to download it, let alone play it. I would much rather have a game with "good enough" graphics that is relatively lightweight and runs well than one that subscribes to the All The Pixels! mindset. Two, it is the most crowdfunded anything ever. There is obvious appeal to being able to foist all the risk off onto the customer, but as a customer I'd obviously much prefer that they have a working product before they ask me for $100, let alone $1,000. 5

[lisiate]

Hmm? Have the developers burnt through their $90 million already? Time to rope in some more suckers? 6

[Ike Witt]

$90+ for an in game ship? Is that for real? Pay to win is no way to make an MMO. 7

[Johnny Bravo]

Originally Posted by madsircool

Why? This is The Game Room and this post is helpful.

Because it's a spammer trying to get people to use a referral lin

You can just go to the base link and register, though.

A quick search showed that he put up the exact post on Amazon's forums and it got deleted fairly quickly. He's just trolling for referral in-game money. 8

[Skywatcher]

Originally Posted by Ike Witt

$90+ for an in game ship? Is that for real? Pay to win is no way to make an MMO.

Nor is spam to win. 9

[Teuton]

I actually have Star Citizen (I got a free key with a graphics card purchase). My advice at the moment to anyone looking is to hold back until they actually provide some of the promised features - at the moment, all it currently is is a context-free fly with your spaceship.


I'll give them one thing - whilst you can pre-buy a bigger ship before the launch, all the ships are promised to be available in game with in-game cash, similar to the new Elite.

And, frankly, I think the arrival of Elite has stolen Star Citizen's thunder.

Also note that buying an expensive ship doesn't even let you fly it yet - only a couple of the ships are available to fly currently.

((also, at the very least, those links should be taken out)) 10

[DigitalC]

Originally Posted by Ike Witt

$90+ for an in game ship? Is that for real? Pay to win is no way to make an MMO.

Those are the cheap ones. They have ships up to 2500, and packages up to 15000. For a game that does not and seems unlikely to exist. 11

[Gothic]

It's spam. Try putting the weekly Robert's Industries e-mail you get into your blocked senders list. I look forward to playing the game, but their marketing is sleazy. 12

[The Hamster King]

As a professional game developer, I don't have a good feeling about Star Citizen. I'm obviously not in a position to know about the internals of their development process, but the little bits I've heard make me nervous.

For example, a recent article mentioned Roberts staying up late coding. That's a red flag. The creative lead on a $94 million project should NOT be coding. There are WAY more important things for him to be doing. I've been the creative lead on large projects, and there's no way you can operate as an effective leader if you're wasting time on line production tasks. That little detail suggests a problem with micromanagement or inexperience with managing a big team.

I also get the feeling that a lot of work is going into promotional materials to keep the cash flowing in. It's really easy for teams to get trapped in a bad demo cycle where they're constantly building stuff to promote the game, while neglecting to actually make the game. Again, I don't have evidence that this is what's actually happening with Star Citizen, but I've seen it happen before and the flash-to-substance ratio of what they're showing to the public is worrisome.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing implodes next year. Hopefully for everyone who put money in it, I'm wrong. The concept is indeed very cool. 13

[Kinthalis]

I too worry about the whole demo cycle here.

They should NOT have been so focused on releasing these piecemeal modules. All they've done is exacerbate the image of the game as "incomplete".

Aside from this possible issue, I think the main problem is an image one. Because it's a crowd sourced game there's been a huge need to be transparent about development, but maybe the process has become too transparent.

Every arm-chair developer out there can complain and nitpick the process and the current level of progress to death. Imagine if we had this level of insight into... well just about ANY AAA game out there?

We've had people like Ken Levine (Bioshock) and many others come out and say, that games are sometimes utter, disastrous messes until mere months before release. But the masses don't understand that, and they don't understand how long it takes to make a game of this scale, nor how much money is required.

I think there's also a weird backlash from the mainstream against a company and a game that didn't go through the "Regular" publisher channels - couple it with it's no minced words about it: this is a PC game through and through, and the whole thing appears to rub some people the wrong way. 14

[Teuton]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

I think there's also a weird backlash from the mainstream against a company and a game that didn't go through the "Regular" publisher channels - couple it with it's no minced words about it: this is a PC game through and through, and the whole thing appears to rub some people the wrong way.

I'm not sure about this, there have now been some very successful crowd-funded games - Minecraft, Pillars of Eternity, that other one - and they don't seem to be suffering from this.
I don't think the backlash against Star Citizen is because it's a PC game that's gone through different channels to get published, I think it's because, as Quartz says above, they are charging a lot of money for something that's not appeared yet.


Elite: Dangerous has gone from funding to release to nearly the first expansion in less time than Star Citizen has been being built. 15

[DigitalC]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

Aside from this possible issue, I think the main problem is an image one. Because it's a crowd sourced game there's been a huge need to be transparent about development, but maybe the process has become too transparent.
, nor how much money is required.

I think the main problem is massive overspending leading to a pyramid scheme type business cycle where you need to keep raising money to fulfill previous promises. They seem to be severely mismanaged by someone with a massive ego who simply wasn't up to the task of delivering a triple A 100 million dollar budget game. 16

[Tom Scud]

Which is of course something people have also achieved through conventional funding schemes (see Schilling, Curt). 17

[Simplicio]

Originally Posted by DigitalC

I think the main problem is massive overspending leading to a pyramid scheme type business cycle where you need to keep raising money to fulfill previous promises. They seem to be severely mismanaged by someone with a massive ego who simply wasn't up to the task of delivering a triple A 100 million dollar budget game.

Yea, I don't think Star Citizen is a scam exactly. The developers appear to be honestly trying to develop a game. They just seem to be over their heads on the game-development side, while at the the same time, the success of their marketing and fundraising seems to have created a sort of self-perpetuating cycle thats become an end in itself.

On the other hand, there seem to be a bunch of people who like buying fake ships for a game that doesn't, and might never, exist, and are willing to pay a lot of money for them. As hobbies go, that's kinda weird, but I guess not really any weirder than, say, betting on horse-races or collecting Star Wars merchandise.

So maybe they are delivering a product of sorts, albeit one that's almost totally imaginary. Sort of like lotto tickets, the actual product you're buying is actually nothing, but some people have fun imagining how cool it could be if they really get to fly their awesome ship around space/win a million dollars. And that's what they're really buying. 18

[The Hamster King]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

We've had people like Ken Levine (Bioshock) and many others come out and say, that games are sometimes utter, disastrous messes until mere months before release. But the masses don't understand that, and they don't understand how long it takes to make a game of this scale, nor how much money is required.

I've been making games professionally for 20 years. My current job is unfucking fucked projects, so I'm very familiar with normal development chaos.

As I said above, I have no facts to back this up. I don't know anything about their development practices aside from tiny snippets I've read in the press. But my gut instinct is they're in trouble: Premature focus on making things pretty. Potential micromanagement. Development spread across a large number of remote teams. Lots of money spent on high-priced voice talent.

Also, what they've released so far doesn't seem like the sort of thing that builds toward their MMO goal. 4-player games require a different server architecture than 32-player games, and 32-player games require a different server architecture than 1000-player games. Releasing a dog-fighting module for a small number of players actually hurts them in the long run because it locks them into a variety of decisions (server architecture, data packet structure, poly counts, physics simulation, control mechanics) that won't scale up to a persistent world. It feels like stopgap to keep backers from freaking out instead of a natural step toward building the game they promised.

The whole thing just smells wrong to me. Maybe they're super-clever and I'm full of shit. If they do release an amazing game over the next two years I'll be happy to come back to this thread and admit it. 19

[muldoonthief]

Originally Posted by Tom Scud

Which is of course something people have also achieved through conventional funding schemes (see Schilling, Curt).

Is borrowing/stealing $75 million from taxpayers a conventional funding scheme? 20

[Skywatcher]

Originally Posted by Teuton

I'll give them one thing - whilst you can pre-buy a bigger ship before the launch, all the ships are promised to be available in game with in-game cash, similar to the new Elite.

And, frankly, I think the arrival of Elite has stolen Star Citizen's thunder.

Unless Star Citizen's circumstances significantly change in the next couple of months, Elite's expansion certainly will.

Battle arenas and players participating in the actions of major political powers are already in. Ground-based combat and multiplayer crews are definitely coming. Wouldn't be surprised if player-operated bases are planned for next year. 21

[Kinthalis]

Originally Posted by The Hamster King

I've been making games professionally for 20 years. My current job is unfucking fucked projects, so I'm very familiar with normal development chaos.

As I said above, I have no facts to back this up. I don't know anything about their development practices aside from tiny snippets I've read in the press. But my gut instinct is they're in trouble: Premature focus on making things pretty. Potential micromanagement. Development spread across a large number of remote teams. Lots of money spent on high-priced voice talent.

Also, what they've released so far doesn't seem like the sort of thing that builds toward their MMO goal. 4-player games require a different server architecture than 32-player games, and 32-player games require a different server architecture than 1000-player games. Releasing a dog-fighting module for a small number of players actually hurts them in the long run because it locks them into a variety of decisions (server architecture, data packet structure, poly counts, physics simulation, control mechanics) that won't scale up to a persistent world. It feels like stopgap to keep backers from freaking out instead of a natural step toward building the game they promised.

The whole thing just smells wrong to me. Maybe they're super-clever and I'm full of shit. If they do release an amazing game over the next two years I'll be happy to come back to this thread and admit it.

Well even if they do, that wouldn't necessarily mean you were wrong about their situation today.

I certainly don't know either, and I agree that some of these decisions they've been making don't seem conducive to the end game being what they've described ot the fans.

I do hope it comes together eventually. I don't think it will next year, I think 2-3 years is more likely.

I would say you should offer them your services, except I know you work for Sony and you'd make it a PS4 exclusive ;p 22

[Kinthalis]

Originally Posted by Skywatcher

Unless Star Citizen's circumstances significantly change in the next couple of months, Elite's expansion certainly will.

Battle arenas and players participating in the actions of major political powers are already in. Ground-based combat and multiplayer crews are definitely coming. Wouldn't be surprised if player-operated bases are planned for next year.

Wait what? Ground combat and multiplayer crews are coming to Elite? Haven't checked in on that game since my flight stick broke a few months ago. This is news to me. I guess I'm going to have invest in a new one. 23

[Skywatcher]

Yep. Elite: Dangerous: Horizons, the paid expansion coming in time for the holidays, will have vehicular ground combat and (ISTR) commander avatars. A recent newsletter featured an image of a multiplayer bridge, not sure if this will be part of Horizons or soon after. 24

[Idle Thoughts]

I have taken out all links to the site. This is, without a doubt, spam. Helpful or not, it still falls under the definition of spam and also intends to further someone's cause by bringing them in money and traffic.

Don't spam with those links again, defenderofjustice, or you will be banned. Only reason you're not being banned as a spammer automatically is because some people think your info is/was helpful and it's spawned some discussion. At this message board, though, that is clearly spam. I'm sure if someone really wants to know where they can register and use codes or pay for the stuff, they can easily find it via search engines.

I've also taken the links out of others posts, don't link to it, please...but I'll leave this thread open for any further discussion. 25

[Skywatcher]

According to this, the steep cost of Horizons is actually for a group of four expansions. 26

[The Hamster King]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

I do hope it comes together eventually. I don't think it will next year, I think 2-3 years is more likely.

The question is, do they have the money to sustain themselves that long? If they were working for a deep-pocketed publisher, they would have a well to go back to. I'm not sure how long their donor base is willing to wait.

They're in a weird bind. If they show the public anything that doesn't look amazing, they run the risk of turning off the crowdfunding tap. So there's a built-in incentive to promise more and more and dig themselves into a deeper hole.

I would say you should offer them your services, except I know you work for Sony and you'd make it a PS4 exclusive ;p

27

[MichaelEmouse]

I'm sure Randy Pitchford will be there to buy the IP and finally release it for us. : )

Originally Posted by The Hamster King

Premature focus on making things pretty. Potential micromanagement. Development spread across a large number of remote teams. Lots of money spent on high-priced voice talent.

What is the sequence their focus should have followed? 28

[Teuton]

Originally Posted by Skywatcher

According to this, the steep cost of Horizons is actually for a group of four expansions.

It's a bit of a hijack, since it's about Elite and not Star Citizen, but I'm not terribly happy about being asked to pay again for stuff that was in the original crowdfund I bought into. 29

[Skywatcher]

Originally Posted by Teuton

It's a bit of a hijack, since it's about Elite and not Star Citizen, but I'm not terribly happy about being asked to pay again for stuff that was in the original crowdfund I bought into.

Pretty sure all Elite expansions are free for those who were in on the original beta. I bit the bullet and got the Season Pass, which is basically the same thing for those who weren't in on the original beta. 30

[Skywatcher]

That should have been Lifetime Season Pass. Edit window closed. 31

[Teuton]

Originally Posted by Skywatcher

Pretty sure all Elite expansions are free for those who were in on the original beta.

If this is true (I was), then I would be less unhappy 32

[Skywatcher]

Confirmed: Alpha/Premium Beta backers also have the lifetime pass. Standard Beta backers do not. 33

[Skywatcher]

Perhaps discussions of Elite should be taken over here. 34

[The Hamster King]

Originally Posted by MichaelEmouse

What is the sequence their focus should have followed?

1. Create concept pieces to establish a visual target.
2. Create a crude set of gameplay assets for development and testing
3. Get the foundations of the engine sorted, particularly with regards to server/renderer/physics. This gives you a sense of polygon/texture/effects budgets.
4. Iterate on the game to make it fun to play. Use this information to iterate your gameplay assets. Do ships have distinctive silhouettes? Does your damage model look right in-game?
5. Execute a vertical slice. Build out a narrow bit of the game to high quality. Verify your previous assumptions. Get production metrics for asset production. Adjust scope accordingly.
6. Ramp up to full production. Hire a bunch of artists or bring an outsourcing house into the picture. Start building the game for real.

If you start making final art too soon you find yourself throwing away a lot of work. If you start SELLING final art too soon you find yourself locked into decisions that hurt you when you try to get the game to actually play the way you want. 35

[Jophiel]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

I think there's also a weird backlash from the mainstream against a company and a game that didn't go through the "Regular" publisher channels

Seems that crowd funding doesn't even raise an eyebrow these days. In fact, I've noticed a few games seem to be going that route when you'd think they could easily secure "traditional" funding today. Divinity: Original Sin 2, for example.

From the sound of it, the criticism about Star Citizen seems to be the enormous amount of money they've taken in but not really "justified" via results. Maybe that's part of the sausage making process of video games but there's also enough failed games that it's legitimate to question it, especially as they continue to pass the hat for more funding via what may be virtual swampland. 36

[Mnemnosyne]

Originally Posted by Jophiel

Seems that crowd funding doesn't even raise an eyebrow these days. In fact, I've noticed a few games seem to be going that route when you'd think they could easily secure "traditional" funding today. Divinity: Original Sin 2, for example.

A proven studio using this kind of funding seems good to me in the sense that it gives them more freedom to make a good game. Especially if it's a studio that's proven itself able and willing to just deliver a good game even if it's not perfect, and - this is important - even if it doesn't deliver every little thing they promised.

I funded Divinity: Original Sin, and some of the stretch goals that were reached weren't delivered in the final game and have been completely cut; they're never going to appear. While disappointing in a way, the fact is they proved that they will deliver a good game without torpedoing themselves trying to reach perfect by fulfilling unachievable promises. Sure, ideally they wouldn't make these promises, but it's not practical to never make such mistakes without being absurdly conservative on your projections of what you can achieve. There's always going to be things you think are reasonable goals that turn out to be much more difficult for one reason or another, and successfully producing a finished game at all requires being willing to cut those things once they turn out to be impossible. This made me confident in funding Divinity: Original Sin 2. I know they will deliver a good game, and won't get hung up on trying to deliver a perfect game.

Now, to bring this around to the topic of Star Citizen, it seems very likely that their first project was way too ambitious. As far as I'm aware, this is the first game by the development studio; it was basically formed to publish this game. They should have tried to release a few much smaller, solid, good games, so that they could establish the experience needed in order to know how to produce and actually release a game via crowdfunding, and then, as a proven studio, go on to crowdfund and release Star Citizen, and perhaps that would have been a good path to a good, or even great game.

As it is, even if there's no malfeasance going on (and rumors are full of potential malfeasance as far as where the money is going goes) they seem overwhelmed and unable to handle it. They've gotten into the perfect being the enemy of the good, where they keep coming up with awesome stuff that has to be included because it's so awesome, and absolutely everything has to be done. 37

[PSXer]

all I know about Star Citizen is the Something Awful threads making fun of it for how long it's taken to develop and how they keep asking for more money 38

[Simplicio]

Originally Posted by Mnemnosyne

As far as I'm aware, this is the first game by the development studio; it was basically formed to publish this game..

Chris Roberts has been basically making variations of this same game since the mid-90's. So its not totally crazy to give him money and expect him to make a game out of it.

But I think you're right that stretch goals can kind of create a tread-mill effect for projects like this, where to meet the last goal the developers have to raise more money, and so then offer more stretch goals to do so. 39

[Johnny Bravo]

Originally Posted by PSXer

all I know about Star Citizen is the Something Awful threads making fun of it for how long it's taken to develop and how they keep asking for more money

So I did some Googling and it turns out The Escapist ran an extraordinarily damning article earlier this month about the game.

They also put out an equally interesting article talking about how they vetted their sources for that story. 40

[RandMcnally]

I have never heard of this game and now I'm glad I had. This reads like a giant clusterfuck. 41

[Czarcasm]

Star Citizen blows yet another release date...but Roberts says he's just going to turn it into a 400 quadrillion cubic kilometer expansion of the main game.
By the time this guy is done, he's going to have a vaporware too large for one universe to hold. 42

[gnoitall]

And OP never came back.

Spam seagull. Flew in, crapped all over everything, and flew away.

In a sane world, this thread would have been throttled in its cradle, but I guess since it attracted some commentary it has to stay. Apparently, as a warning to the uninformed. I guess that's a form of fighting ignorance. 43

[Johnny Bravo]

The referral links got removed, which is good enough for me. 44

[running coach]

Originally Posted by gnoitall

And OP never came back.

Spam seagull. Flew in, crapped all over everything, and flew away.

In a sane world, this thread would have been throttled in its cradle, but I guess since it attracted some commentary it has to stay. Apparently, as a warning to the uninformed. I guess that's a form of fighting ignorance.

Actually, in this case, it's exposing what a total cock-up the game and company are and maybe some potential customers will find this thread.

Sometimes, spam bites back. 45

[Johnny Bravo]

At the end of the day, I'm glad Star Citizen is a thing.

The game's ridiculously successful Kickstarter helped popularize the idea of crowdfunding, and that has led to a lot of great products being put out. Star Citizen itself has been circling the drain for so long and in such spectacular fashion that its inevitable demise will not be an indictment against crowdfunding, but against mismanaged game design (not new or surprising in any respect).

And if it does end up producing a game that matches its own hype? Well, good for them and good for the rubes who have spent thousands of real life dollars chasing a digital dream.

Me, I'm happy spending 60 bucks on No Man's Sky, which will likely also be a letdown in comparison to its hype. 46

[Johnny Angel]

Actually, I've been meaning to start a thread asking what the hell other people here thought about a long post by Derek Smart about what a boondoggle Star Citizen was turning out to be. I didn't ever get in because everytime I checked in it seemed like the price of a decent starting configuration had gone up and it had a whiff of pay-to-not-suck. But now it's looking like the problem is a lot worse than that. 47

[Johnny Bravo]

Smart is looking a lot less loony after The Escapist's expose, no doubt. 48

[Skywatcher]

Somebody should turn the (non?)-making of this game into a movie. 49

[Johnny Bravo]

Yeah, I suspect that some really interesting stuff will come to light if/when the game crashes and burns. 50