My GOD! This game is going to be the biggest flop in the history of video games. It will make some serious, serious headlines. I live in a small poor country, Greece (yeah i know most of you have heard of our economic crisis by now ), and when i hear that a video game project got more than 150 f**ing million dollars and squandered them, i have no words. These money could have financed pensions for quite a lot thousands of older people here… On what did they spend them on? Where is the game?
I mean, they have already gotten more than 2x times the budget of Witcher 3. Where is the game?
I really hope the people responsible for this managerial mess never hold positions of authority in the industry again. Just become code monkeys and write scripts or something.
As someone who played Earth & Beyond just the other day (it’s still running thanks to intrepid fans!), I can totally agree with this.
dsmart
4932
Thanks. Despite my own personal and professional biases - not to mention the infused hyperbole - there is so much crap about this game, that a lot of it is getting lost in translation. Such that when it finally collapses, as we’ve seen in the past, a lot of people (including pretend media) will just be making shit up on the fly in order to promote their stories. That’s why I have been cataloging and writing about this for so long, so that at the very least there is some record that can be used for reference and people can take that as they will, do their own research etc.
When the collapse comes - and trust me, it’s coming hard and fast - it’s going to be one of those things where people are going to be coming out of the woodwork to drop in their own nickel. It’s going to be glorious.
dsmart
4933
I absolutely agree. And apparently X4 which was also announced during GC2017, has a lot of the elements that SC has been pushing, though I have yet to see any fps stuff yet.
Brooski
4934
I backed this way back at the beginning - according to Kickstarter I paid $30 for a digital scout. I’d love to see it succeed but it seems like even the most optimistic prognosis is poor.
Derek, if you were developing a space game with the two million bucks Chris Roberts got for his initial Kickstarter, what would you concentrate on out of the gate? I mean, foundational stuff. Flight model and weapons? Then environments? I mean, assuming you had an idea for the actual gameplay.
The development of Star Citizen reminds me of games that a childhood friend and I would “design” in our heads together. I remember one that we talked about when we were camping with our families - I don’t think we were much older than 15. We talked about all this stuff we wanted, and how cool it would be to have this and that, and whatever got into our heads. We talked about it for days. Then one day it occurred to us - we were just designing a game of “the world.” We laughed and moved on.
I feel like Chris Roberts just wants to create some kind of space world in his head that has all the details he has ever imagined and doesn’t realize that it can just go on forever.
Oh that’s awesome!
I was obsessed with this game back in the day when I got into the beta, so I kept my PC on for days at at time to download the multi-hundred-megabytes updates over my 56K connection. That I had lied about in my beta application, since only people with T1/DSL/cable and up were allowed in. . .
I kinda wanna play it again >.>
RichVR
4936
Daikatana in SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!
Say what you will for Daikatana, but it wasn’t THAT bad, it didn’t have 150 millions in kickstarter backing, and it was delivered in a shorter timeframe. Yeah, it didn’t blow other shooters away, but was a decent game. Some friends of mine liked it. I didn’t, but i was never a shooter fan, i even struggled to finish Half-Life, i find them boring.
This will make Daikatana look like Witcher 3 in comparison.
You totally should! It’s totally free now, and still quite fun, though it’s so, SO 2002.
dsmart
4939
- world design (in tandem with everything else)
- multiplayer/single player build out
- flight dynamics
- vehicle dynamics
- fps dynamics
- weapons
- gameplay features
That’s how I’ve made all my games.
With my current tech, I could build Star Citizen - exactly as pitched - for $20M.
I would totally play The World According to 15-Year-Old Bruce Geryk.
-Tom
Gorath
4942
Maybe Cleve could teach them a thing or two. Good devs ship! ;)
Or they can hide in Cleve’s bunker when the end comes.
dsmart
4943
LOL!! Yeah I’m laughing, though the very thought of being trapped in a bunker with a certifiable mad - but hilarious - Cleve Blakemore, is the sort of thing that only Stephen King finds funny.
RichVR
4944
That’s some 10 Cloverfield Lane level shit. :)
Quaro
4945
Elite Dangerous was announced at a similar time with a much smaller budget. Less ambitious but actually works and makes for a pretty great Space-Truck simulator with occasional combat.
For the sake of comparison, I watched the 2016 Gamescon and CitizenCon presentations and I am trying to figure out the difference after another year of development. Inventory management? Some janky capital ship combat? Last year’s demos were the same mission-giver NPC. The same go-find-a-box mission structure. The same planetary stuff.
Except this year was even more riddled with issues.
I’ve tried to be a bit of a Star Citizen Pollyanna but these guys are making it tough.
So how do you get a refund again?
Miramon
4949
That boggles the mind. I had no idea it had been resurrected. Everything about E&B was really great, though, except, sadly, for the core gameplay, because the designers had no idea what they were doing with the three central combat and mining and trading systems. I remember hearing a horror story from the creative director about how the gameplay lead was running rogue because the head of the studio gave him free rein despite all criticism.
Yeah, some things about it are head-scratchingly odd.
