Over 10 Years After It Was Announced, Star Citizen’s Single-Player Squadron 42 Is ‘Feature Complete’ - IGN::Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games has said Squadron 42, the single-player portion of its controversial space sim, is finally “feature complete”, over a decade after it was announced.
Once I can buy it, and download it, then install it, then open it, configure my settings, create my characters, and start the campaign, then, and ONLY THEN will I believe it.
This is the best take on here. There's no more "just trust me bro" tolerance anymore, too many things have just turned into vaporware over the years and now until I physically see it, it doesn't exist
This game has taken so long that it's either money laundering, the devs are just incompetent, or they suffer from the inability to edit themselves down
I'm sure there have been mistakes, but calling them incompetent is a bit of a stretch. Yes, it's an absolutely eye watering amount of time and money, but they are trying to make an online universe with a high level of detail in which you can move between planets and all kinds of environments completely seamlessly. If they weren't trying to make something with such a high level of difficulty, then I suspect they would have released a finished product by now, but they are making stuff nobody has made before, at least not at this scale.
Perhaps inability to scale things back is a bit of a problem, but I think Chris Roberts realises he's not likely to get a chance to get a basically unlimited amount of money (in game dev terms) to make the ultimate dream game he and many other people always wanted, so I'd imagine that's the reason they are just going all out.
How come other ambitious early access type projects don't have this problem.
Beam.ng comes to mind, it's not complete, but the pricing is reasonable, the progress is consistent and plentiful, and the product has been in a very fun engaging state for years and years.
And beam.ng is an incredibly ambitious project aiming for very high performing and accurate solid body physics simulation.
I don't think Star citizen would get nearly the level of hate if they had a more sensical pricing scheme. $45 +$15 for the base game, ok makes sense, but then there are multiple subscription tiers, additional 1 time lifetime versions of the subscription, different shops for different subscription levels, individual ships, insurance, a mobile game like freemium/premium model (earn credits to buy real money stuff), as well as branching the single player and multiplayer experience into standalone products.
A big ambitious game is great, but no amount of tech CEO promises will make the segmented and confusing monetization scheme seem legit. The game has raised half a billion dollars. It has already made more money than 99% of games will ever make.
That's enough money to pay 300 people 120k for the 13/14 years the game has been in development. They have the ability to have a large studio that rivals (or beats) large AAA studios in talent, and they have used more time than even the most notorious studios use to develop games.
Laugh at Scam Citizen backers. Mock Scam Citizen backers. Make memes of Scam Citizen backers. Launch the hopes and dreams of Scam Citizen backers into the sun. Dunk the self esteem of Scam Citizen backers into a trash can. Funnel the dignity of Scam Citizen backers into a wood chipper.