This project is baffling
Star Citizen Just Had its Biggest Crowdfunding Day Ever With $3.5 Million in 24 Hours
Submitted 11 months ago by Goronmon@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Comments
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 11 months ago
weeahnn@lemmy.world 11 months ago
don’t judge until you’ve seen the dynamic cloth physics! that is what everyone wants, right?
Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I actually will only play a game with realistic sweat and tears. Oh, they are hard at work on that?! Well FINALLY, I’m SO fucking glad. Thank you SO much, Robert’s Space Industries. You guys are definitely NOT complete hacks.
Khrux@ttrpg.network 11 months ago
I paid for star citizen a decade ago and honestly enjoyed it enough for about 2 days. It always felt exciting to see how ahead they were of early Xbox 1 / PS4 games in their scope with volumetric effects etc.
The trouble is, 90% of their innovative content has been long overtook by general game progression, they’re making a game that could have probably launched with the PS5 and been innovative and are already falling behind there. I genuinely believe that they were Innovating their game slowly over time and there were amazing things in the works, but they missed the moment that it was exciting and new by so many years.
setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’ve been part of some amateur game dev projects and SC has the vibe of an amateur project where the devs are constantly focusing on whatever catches their fancy at the moment, going back and tinkering with things they’ve already made, and sort of aimlessly scope creeping. There’s nobody to strongarm them into writing, much less following a game design document.
All of that is initiative to me to understand.
Then there is “the dream” that is being sold to people who want this type of game. That level of very specific fandom is also easy to understand, at least from a distance. People get super into all kinds of games and spend outsized amounts of money and time.
Star Citizen is like the perfect storm of these elements.
dustyData@lemmy.world 11 months ago
If you don’t know what you want except a nebulous dream, you can’t tell that you’re dissatisfied with what you actually have, and don’t realize that what you’re doing isn’t actually getting you anything. This applies to both the devs and the fans.
sebinspace@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Think part of it is that Chris Robert’s comes from a time when games couldn’t be patched.
OttoVonNoob@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
I have a friend who is obsessed with it. I asked him if it was a money laundering scheme. He agreed its the most likely situation.
Summzashi@lemmy.one 11 months ago
I literally cannot think of a worse way to launder money then a public crowdfunding campaign.
canis_majoris@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
A few of my guildmates play SC as well and they try to get other people to play, but every time an open period happens, the servers always shit the bed with instability and the play experience for the new player is awful.
It’s so funny trying to hear them rationalize bad servers and inability to do basic things as just part of the experience.
c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’m convinced they made the game as a side project to their true goal of inventing dynamic server meshing.
We are talking about Chris “feature creep” Roberts here, though. The guy can’t stop himself from retasking a team with yet another “immersive” thing they need to waste their time on.
So who knows. Could just be bad management, but I wouldn’t put it past them to be doing this so they can license and sell the engine or something. That is, until other developers snipe their employees and use their knowledge to develop server meshing themselves.
MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 11 months ago
After a decade and an astronomical amount of money spent, this thing is still in pre-alpha. People have left school, got married, have kids, played and forgotten No Man’s Sky, Elite Dangerous, and now Starfield, and there is still no Star Citizen.
It’s time to accept that Star Citizen will NEVER be released, because what Chris Roberts is selling is “dream as a service” which can be anything you want it to be, and one that never has to end for as long as the “game” is still in development.
The moment an actual product is released is the moment the flow of money will stop.
dustyData@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I once saw a comment on a SC update video from a guy who claimed to have backed up SC as a teenager, went to college, entered the industry, was part of a team from start to shipping a video game. twice, and still SC is in pre-alpha. He said that now as a veteran of the industry he realizes that SC is a scam. Like, 99% of the stuff they hyped as their envelope breaking new tech for video games, has already been done by dozens of games at a fraction of the cost.
c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah, server meshing at the scale they did it has been possible for years. The issue is overlapping it at the planetary and multi system scale for hundreds of thousands of people and all of their inventory objects simultaneously.
They essentially just handed these objects to a master server that has to monitor all of them, instead of having each client server doing it individually. It’s like a backup technology that can respawn all tracked items in the event of a server failure. They’ve basically just added redundancy. I don’t foresee performance being improved when this overlord monitoring server inevitably gets taxed to capacity tracking everyone’s shit.
drislands@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Do you happen to have a link? I’d be interested in reading more.
c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That’s not entirely true, if they ever went full release there’s still a fuck ton they can charge players for and milk. It’s just their Kickstarter that won’t make money anymore.
That being said you’re correct, they’ve essentially pioneered the concept of “Game Development as a Service” in the same way live service and early access games are doing now regularly.
Personally even if SQ42 launches I don’t think they’ll get the persistent universe up to their original vision for another ten years. They absolutely aren’t going to hit their 100 solar system metric from the 2011/12 era. I’d be surprised if there ends up being more than ten at launch, but it would surprise me even more if the game ever has an official launch at all.
What’s most likely is that this game will remain in early access Alpha forever, allowing it to shield itself from criticism while taking it’s sweet time constructing the game they said would release back in 2016 originally. That will allow them to justify keeping the Kickstarter open forever while also spending most of their time creating and selling new ships in a game that doesn’t even have gameplay loops for most of them. Then they’ll occasionally drop a new star system or loop to keep the hopes of players up.
This new dynamic server meshing technology they just showcased (at the tech demo level of complexity) is their only hope for making the game playable. The performance of the game isn’t due to stress on your rig as much as networking latency because their servers are overloaded. If they can scale it to the planetary, and eventually multi system level, then they might have something worth picking up. I’m not going to pay for it until that game exists, though. Which it probably never will.
Epicmulch@lemm.ee 11 months ago
You know you can literally play the game right now?
Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz 11 months ago
You can play an alpha build of an unfinished game.
Shadywack@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Technically true, you can play the current build of a game that’s been in perpetual development with distractive milestones continually added so as to distract you from the promises made in years past.
infinitepcg@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s so frustrating to see people in this thread posting objectively false statements about SC. Yes, it’s behind schedule and yes it suffers from scope creep. But it’s not a scam and it’s not vaporware. People who give them money know exactly what they are getting into. You can buy a ship now and fly it immediately. You can spend hundreds of hours in the game in it’s current state. Even pointing out that it’s playable gets downvotes.
Heavybell@lemmy.world 11 months ago
“Pre-alpha” would be if they hadn’t started coding. It’s alpha. There’s something you can play, it’s just buggy and incomplete and thus not beta. Alpha for this long has enough stigma, you don’t need to exaggerate like that.
altima_neo@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
Wait, people are still dumping money into this?
Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
It’ll release ANY DAY NOW. -The idiots that keep giving RSI money
Veraxus@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It released years and years ago. You realize that, right? That it’s playable… and people like it?
CptOblivius@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I think it has turned into a sunk cost fallacy for so many now. They put so much money into it they can’t afford for it to fail/not continue.
infinitepcg@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Why is it so hard for people to imagine that there are players who like the game as it is and see value in buying ships? After 10 years of development, people have a pretty good idea of what they are getting into.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 11 months ago
But you could play it again in a new ship
defuru@lemmy.world 11 months ago
As a day 1 backer i would like to offer my sincerest apologies.
setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Get ‘em, boys.
EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 11 months ago
IMMA SHAVE HIS DOG
GenesisJones@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I gave them my 45$ at the beginning and said call me when it’s done.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Do you have any nachos I can murder? Or at least beat up a little?
finthechat@kbin.social 11 months ago
This is just like EVE Online for me - I am more interested in reading about the drama than the actual game itself.
Mango@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I have a subscription for my skill queue even though I literally have no computer right now.
When I get back, I’m gonna be able to fly most of the heavy assault cruisers and armor logi!
echodot@feddit.uk 11 months ago
Drama how you’re supposed to play EVE Online
thorbot@lemmy.world 11 months ago
How the fuck are people still falling for this scam? Oh right, half of our country worships a braindead cheeto blob.
crawley@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The people who are playing Star Citizen are not the same people who are voting for Trump…weird comparison to attempt.
avater@lemmy.world 11 months ago
not really. the essence is people are stupid and that’s the reason behind supporting trump or throwing money at star citizen
Summzashi@lemmy.one 11 months ago
Americans try not to make everything about us politics challenge (impossible)
criitz@reddthat.com 11 months ago
Everything IS about US politics 😛
Wodge@lemmy.world 11 months ago
“Scam” implies that they’re not delivering the product, and they are, as in you can actually go and play it. There is actually a fair bit to do. Not overly exciting non-stop heroics, but the game is trying to simulate what life in space would be like, and does a pretty good job of it so far.
Maalus@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Are they delivering the product? I was a kickstarter backer, and still don’t have the singleplayer campaign that was promised. How long ago was that?
TIMMAY@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I dont have the energy to care about this game, jusr like I dont have the energy to care about George RR Martin or Patrick Rothfuss never finishing their products either.
deus@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Writers, no matter how good, are just regular people. I have much higher expectations and not as much patience towards a game studio with infinite money and no released games whatsoever in over a decade.
TIMMAY@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah, that’s a good point, and I didnt mean to directly disparage them, only to say that at the decade point or so I just dont have the capacity to keep anticipating something entertaining. That was also my biggest reason for just not giving a shit about the avatar movie sequel. Kid me would have been all in, now I just dont care enough to spend the time money and effort on it
Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
God damn fucking Patrick Rothfuss… What a beautiful story to likely never have an ending. Don’t read into it, anyone… Not unless he releases that last book.
PDFuego@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Same. Until these things are physically in my hand I’ve got plenty of other stuff to get on with, what’s the point of wasting years chasing them. It’s the same with any marketing really, give me a title, pitch & release date, I’ll see you then.
INeedMana@lemmy.world 11 months ago
PlasticExistence@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Star Citizen is only available on a single platform too. At least Cyberpunk was multiplatform.
Furbag@lemmy.world 11 months ago
SC wouldn’t run on any console currently in production, and even if it could/did, you’d own a console several generations newer than what it was meant to play on by the time it officially released.
orrk@lemmy.world 11 months ago
why should they care about consoles, exactly? Especially when we know that a bunch of licensing requirements from consoles are literally giving control of your project to Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo
magic_lobster_party@kbin.social 11 months ago
Holy moly! Squaresoft really bet hard on FF7
OctopusKurwa@lemm.ee 11 months ago
If I had just made FF6 then I’d be pretty damn confident too
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 11 months ago
Shenmue! Shenmue is on that list, wholly crap that almost as embarrassing the people here saying that the SCs fans are not being scammed. And anyone who thinks this is a scam must be brainwashed/part of a hivemind.
Phegan@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Scam Citizen still hustlin
JdW@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I am not proud to say I was an original backer, but luckily only for like 25 bucks.
It became clear after a year or two it was bascially vaporware. even if a product ever comes out it’ll not be what I backed originally, which was basically just Privateer TNG. So I stopped following the game, never played any of the tech demo’s and just shake my head warily when I see news articles like this. Bernie Madoff is in jail for basically the same thing. How can people still support this travesty.
TheKracken@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I finally tried this game and holy shit is it terrible. The UI is janky and unintuitive. The movement is slow and stiff or sonic on crack and nothing in-between. The frame rate is terrible even on a decent machine with appropriate settings. Just overall a bad experience. I don’t care if it’s still “In development” get your fundamentals right before you go adding more shit.
randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Stop giving these scam artists money.
Send_me_nude_girls@feddit.de 11 months ago
Wtf
LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I dumped $60 into this like… 12 years ago I think? I knew it was a Chris Roberts scam but was willing to take a chance on modern freelancer.
How the fuck are people still pumping money into this? How is this not been exposed as a government or criminal front?
echodot@feddit.uk 11 months ago
It’s depressing to know that it’s actually apparently more profitable to never really release a game than to release one and it be moderately popular
Pratai@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Isn’t Star Citizen that grift game?
WangMagic@aussie.zone 11 months ago
Public broadcaster radio just struggled to raise $500k for charity, and then get to see this bullshit.
Kichae@kbin.social 11 months ago
I think I've reached the point where no one will be able to convince me that Star Citizen is not a money laundering front.
Epicmulch@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I really confused by all this hate. Has anyone here actually tried to play the actual game? It’s pretty damn impressive what they have now.
mlg@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Sometimes I wish Fdev had done a better job of updating elite dangerous and really putting in effort for cleaning up mechanics issues.
But then I see stupidity like this and realize I am so much better off lmao. At least I have a 1:1 milky way game to play whenever I want.
atocci@kbin.social 11 months ago
What exactly is this game trying to be?
ExfilBravo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Star Citizen players and Escape from Tarkov players. Both think their game will be finished before they are copied/cloned by a faster/better studio.
LucidDaemon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It seems a lot of people haven’t played it. It’s quite playable and has less bugs than the average new AAA game.
It’s currently got 4 planets, each with 3 or more moons, and many stations that can be visited. 6+ game loops and around 30 flyable ships.
Yeah people spend way too much real money on it, but 90% of the fly read ships are purchasable in the game. At least give the damn game a shot before you shit on it. The community is super nice and willing to help new comers.
yesdogishere@kbin.social 11 months ago
it's a huge success story for Star Citizen. I htink they are delighting the dreams of people who want to travel and work in space, but know they can never afford to really do so. Bethesda's Starfield is a sort of attempt to do Star Citizen, but it's just not as gritty and realistic as Star Citizen.
Defaced@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I literally can’t play this game, my PC has 16GB of RAM and it runs out of free memory after like 10 minutes and crashes to desktop. When your “fix” is to just buy more RAM or increase your page file size, then your game is a fucking scam. I understand new games require more powerful hardware, but this is Amazon lumberyard ffs.
FangedWyvern42@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I honestly feel like they should just release Squadron 42 now and then do Star Citizen. Let us have the ships and combat in an Ace Combat style game just in case Star Citizen never release.
ICastFist@programming.dev 11 months ago
Is it worth pirating to play it single player today and get an idea of its current state? Or is the game online only?
Spacebourne 2 immediately comes to mind. It’s only one dude doing everything, so it’s both amazing and lacking at the same time.
Also Evochron Legacy, a real passion project of a space sim.
RGB3x3@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Is that Mark Hamill?
therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
Sunk cost fallacy
dustyData@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I’m not kidding.
This thing is a scam, and you’re all being taken for chumps. The only worse fraud than SC is buying Fatalities on Mortal Kombat.
echo64@lemmy.world 11 months ago
There is this tiny company called Nihon Falcom. They make this game series called Trails that I adore. they have like three programmers work on each entry.
In the time since Star Citizen was announced they have released:
as well as a bunch of ports of older games to modern platforms and localizing them to the west. All of these are worth playing and some of these were GOTY material for me.
Its good to quantify how much time has passed, and how much you can get done with a smaller budget and focused scope.
zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 11 months ago
Trails into Reverie is not worth playing. Cold Steel was iffy. Trails is a shadow of its former self.
rigatti@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Do you play indie games? They seem to be exactly what you’re describing.
dustyData@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I play mostly smaller games, and am very patient with my gaming habits. Haven’t bought a AAA game in a very long while. Still follow these kind of news because they trend set the whole industry and encroach everywhere with bad practice as big publishers represent the majority of the industry releases and also the grossest revenue.
TIMMAY@lemmy.world 11 months ago
that’s a fucking thing?!
dustyData@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s now a season bundle. But it was $10 per fatality x 3. One for Halloween, one for Thanksgiving, and one for Christmas. That was a total of $30 for a whole minute of cut-scenes. They successfully Overtone it, apologized and now it’s $10 for the three scenes. But yeah, now buying Fatalities is a thing, look forward for your Easter Fatality edition.
verysoft@kbin.social 11 months ago
People will buy fucking anything, it's hopeless.
Rokk@feddit.uk 11 months ago
I’m all for having both. I personally prefer ‘AAA’ games over indie games but I think there’s just different flavours for different folks.
That said, SC is a mega scam at this point and I can’t believe people are still continuing to fund it to this level.
setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah, Underrail is pretty good.
orrk@lemmy.world 11 months ago
imagine a bigger game with great graphics and a whole ton of technical innovation, AND have people be paid well, that is for chumps