The headline of “They can’t keep getting away with this” is funny. Obviously they can keep getting away with this. $1B here we come!
This is not hyperbole. They have ships for sale for thousands of dollars. Imaginary space ships for an imaginary game.
I don’t understand why the police aren’t at least investigating.
Allegedly, the production cost for GTA VI is two billion dollars. But later this year, a functioning game will be available for sale, and will almost certainly be an enjoyable and finished product.
What’s especially funny about Star Citizen is that looking at it, even if it were a completed product, it looks boring and unoriginal. Visually, conceptually, it’s just more of the same. It looks like EVE, Elite, or a game like Starfield. The ships are the same old shit, the environments what we’ve all seen before. What’s new about this?
For shits & giggles, read these old Star Citizen threads (they’re short) that showed up in the “related” tab. Full of innocence, hope and wild-eyed expectations.
Two ironic quotes from the first thread you linked:
If they only knew.
Airk certainly hit the nail on the head way back in 2012:
He also hit it here:
Ah, those innocent bygone days of yesteryear.
Look, it’s easy to make a typo and put 2014 instead of 2034.
Optimist.
He didn’t specify which calendar. The Muslim one, maybe?
Mayan. Didn’t it start it’s long count back in 2012? That was the start of the 14th cycle and at 5,125 years per long count I make it 10,321,737 years before the 2,014th one.
I may be off. Check with me when we get closer.
From what I can tell, Roberts has not actually produced a completed product since Freelancer, which was over 20 years ago.
I find it interesting that the media beyond gaming-specific websites hasn’t picked this story up. It’s a niche story but at a billion dollars it’s a big one. It’s the sort of story Michael Lewis in his prime was born to write a book about.
At this point it feels like a doomsday cult. Except instead of the apocalypse, it’s release day everyone is preparing themselves for.
“The end of development is nigh!”
That’s a total exaggeration and distortion of reality.
How dare you imply that Freelancer was a completed product.
The thing is, it’s the same story today that it was 10 years ago, and it’ll be the same story five years from now. The only difference is that the number keeps ticking up. There’s just not much to say that hasn’t already been said.
Well, most of them weren’t that old when development on Star Citizen started…
Or more seriously it’s a genuine problem with developing games over such a long period, even if one buys that it’s not a scam. It’s very easy for other games that didn’t take so long to make to be developed & released and turn what you are creating into something people have already gotten bored of even if you started earlier. You can easily end up making a “game out of time” that would have appealed to audiences years ago, but who have now moved on in their tastes.
It’s more that Roberts hadn’t been project lead for several years when the game was completed.
Microsoft bought the Digital Anvil in 2000. Roberts left the company and became a 'creative consultant on the game, which released in 2003.
I actually liked Freelancer a fair amount, but it did not exactly live up to the promises. Does this sound familiar to anyone (taken from the Freelancer wiki entry)?
In 1997, Chris Roberts began work on a vision he had since he first conceived Wing Commander. He wanted to realize a virtual galaxy, whose systems execute their own programs regardless of the players’ presence; cities would be bustling with transports and each world’s weather changes on its own time. Commodity prices in each star system would fluctuate, according to the activities of the computer controlled traders, who import and export goods. Roberts envisioned thousands of players simultaneously interacting with and influencing this world through a unique and intuitive user interface never seen before in other games. Each player could pursue a quest set up for their character, and join other players to attempt other missions together without needing to exit the game and start a new mode of play. Artificial intelligence would fly the players’ spacecraft, letting them concentrate on combat or other tasks. Roberts intended the cutscenes and gameplay visuals to be of equal quality so players would be unable to distinguish between the two.[34][35] By the end of 1997, it was officially announced that Freelancer was in the early stages of a two-and-a-half-year development schedule.[36]
They did actually ship, but nothing like what Roberts wanted. Hence Star Citizen.