[karajorma]

Sounds about right.

[Familiar]

Great article.

The comments though, all the citizens coming out of the woodworks to say how all of this is a good thing, and reinforces their believe. It never ceases to amaze me.

This gif is so amusing, can't stop watching it 
Like he saying grab cash here here and there then run run run

[The E]

The last part of Kotako UK's SC series has been published.

Quotes:

It is difficult, after all these months of research and having heard from so many people involved with the project, to seriously entertain the notion that Star Citizen is some kind of intentional scam. Hundreds of people all over the world are working hard on it, and have been for years. Although there have been plenty of scandalous allegations, not one of them has checked out in our research – though of course nobody outside of its management team has full visibility on Cloud Imperium’s finances. If Star Citizen goes down – and it yet might – it will likely be because its sheer scope is out of step with the reality of actually making it, or because the money runs out, or because it’s taken too long and its funders have finally withdrawn their support. If there is anything more nefarious than that going on, we have found no convincing evidence of it.

If you examine some of the true moral disasters of the last decade or so in the tech world, in which invested money has been misappropriated, Star Citizen does not look like these projects. To take the very well-researched example of Tiger Telematics, which made the ill-fated Gizmondo handheld after sourcing a huge amount of money from investors: it had an executive team made up of people with criminal convictions; there were clear hallmarks of financial excess, like £2m parties and ostentatious yachts; it had gigantic debts that came to light when the company went bankrupt; its one development studio never made a single game. Cloud Imperium Games self-evidently spends money, sure – on offices that look well-outfitted, on events like Citizencon – but Star Citizen has none of these hallmarks. There is abundant evidence of its past and ongoing development, more than enough to account for the money that has been raised.

I don’t want to end such an exhaustively reported series of articles with something woolly like “we’ll just have to see what happens”: I want to give a more specific assessment of what we’ve learned from all these months. So, here goes: based on all the evidence, I believe there is a decent chance that Star Citizen will make it to some form of release. But I don’t think it will happen within the next couple of years, and by the time it does happen, there’s a chance that other games like Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Star Citizen’s great rival Elite Dangerous may well have already given us great versions of the things that Star Citizen is trying to achieve.

[Luis Dias]

I think those conclusions are fair and balanced.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

So, here goes: based on all the evidence, I believe there is a decent chance that Star Citizen will make it to some form of release. But I don’t think it will happen within the next couple of years, and by the time it does happen, there’s a chance that other games like Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Star Citizen’s great rival Elite Dangerous may well have already given us great versions of the things that Star Citizen is trying to achieve.

Yeah, that's pretty much the vibe I've been getting on this whole Star Citizen business.

[Cobra]

By the time Star Citizen releases proper, it'll likely be obsolete.

[Col. Fishguts]

Meanwhile the RSI forums explode over the issue of implementing scanning mechanics with a golf-swing minigame (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50Jk-mQ9_pw#t=325s)
The most hilarious thread about it seems to have already been deleted, but in short, those backers that have been theory-crafting/daydreaming for years how their ships will have complex simulated crew stations for the different subsystems are not amused to have console-style mini games instead.

I guess this kind of incidents will repeat over the next few months leading up the the 3.0 Jesus patch, now that CIG have to implement at least some of the gameplay features that CR has been

about. They cannot match the fidelity of the dreams of hard-core backers.

I pity the poor low level devs who have to somehow shoehorn some of CRs hand-waving into CryStarEngine

[The E]

They cannot match the fidelity of the dreams of hard-core backers.

But remember, this is soooo much deeper than what Elite is doing. (It actually is! scanning in Elite is just keeping a target in view and holding a button while a progress bar fills)

[Mikes]

So, here goes: based on all the evidence, I believe there is a decent chance that Star Citizen will make it to some form of release. But I don’t think it will happen within the next couple of years, and by the time it does happen, there’s a chance that other games like Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Star Citizen’s great rival Elite Dangerous may well have already given us great versions of the things that Star Citizen is trying to achieve.

Yeah, that's pretty much the vibe I've been getting on this whole Star Citizen business.

Seeing it like this ... I would have to conclude that Star Citizen is an amazing achievement. Not as a game, but as kick in the industries collective rearend in order to get them into the Space Sim Business again. ;-)

I mean ... what would the chances for seeing something like COD:Infinite Warfare from ef*ing EA have been without SCs crowdfunding campaign success? Zero? Nada? Zilch? Not even when hell freezes over?

[General Battuta]

They're still zero because EA doesn't make Call of Duty

[Luis Dias]

no senzu beans for that burn...

[General Battuta]

Meanwhile EA published Titanfall, maybe the best multiplayer science fiction arena shooter ever

[666maslo666]

Neither Titanfall nor CoD directly compete with Star Citizen niche, they are not AAA MMO spacesims. The only existing competition / alternative is Elite, and that game, while quite good, still suffers from being "mile wide, inch deep", lack of walking mode, and slow pace of continued development progress. There is also Hellion, which may (or may not) turn out to be a hidden gem in the future. And thats about it.

So even if SC releases and fails to deliver on a lot of its promises, it will probably be the best (or among the best) games in its category simply by there being only a handful comparable games.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Yeah, of course CoD & Titanfall they don't compete with SC directly, 'cause so far there's nothing to compete with. Everything points to Star Marine being canned for the time being, and given the apparent glacial pace of Star Citizen, it seems doubtful than anything of significance is going to come out before 2018 or somesuch.

Elite's "slow pace of continued development" seems, for an outsider's perspective, to be going much, much faster than anything Star Citizen is doing, and I'm yet to see proof that A) Star Citizen's gameplay will be any deeper than Elite's and B) will be any fun to play. I mean I've spent more than my share of time on Freelancer & its various mods, on a number of MMOs and open world sandboxes, so what exactly is it about SC's proposed final gameplay model that's going to make it significantly deeper than other games ?

I agree that, from everything I've seen, the game has scope. Scope however does not mean depth, if anything it would point to the game being "AUs wide, inch deep".

[0rph3u5]

what would the chances for seeing something like COD:Infinite Warfare from ef*ing EA have been without SCs crowdfunding campaign success? Zero? Nada? Zilch? Not even when hell freezes over?

Still pretty slim. Crowdfunding success does not translate into "this franchise/genre/what-have-you is fiscally viable" to anyone in the industry anymore.

A good example for that you can see in cRPG genre:
- Wasteland 2 was a modest success for inXile, with critical acclaim and lot of buzz from the hardcore fans (esspecially those who have been screaming "not my Fallout" at Bethesda). Financially it was successfull enough beyond the Kickstarter that inXile is gearing up for Wasteland 3 while still developing Torment: Tides of Numenera.
- Divinity: Original Sin was breakout critical success for Larian, who have been producing rather mid-tier fare in the past (and I am a fan of the Divnity-Series). It's financial success was enough to launch development of a sequel which is already in the pre-order cycle.
- Pillars of Eternity showed that Osidian still has it and was a success on both fronts. They are also going ahead with new IP in same genre with Tyranny soon.

However does any major company touch this genre with ten foot pole? - Nope, the closest we get are Witcher 3 (which is excellent on its own right, but also an outlier considering how much CD Project was staked on the Witcher-franchise since the inception of the company) and Dragon Age (which seems to be headed in the opposite direction as far as the gameplay genre is concerend). We might see some movement considering EA chained Bioware to some nebulous project so they can get certain people back for Mass Effect: Andromeda.

There are lot of contributing factor in the mix why this is so: From the apprication of nostalgia, to the proliferation of the MMORPG, to need to get as broad a customer base as possible upon, to the weight of past entires.
A single games success makes some ears stand up in attention but nothing more. Esspecially considering how much voodo-consumer forecasting is going on (e.g. EA realizing that that Mass Effect has only 30 precent brand-recognition among the group of "Sci-Fi fans" their market research company dug up).

Meanwhile EA published Titanfall, maybe the best multiplayer science fiction arena shooter ever

I see that Battuta enjoys that in-industry pissing contest ...

[Aesaar]

Neither Titanfall nor CoD directly compete with Star Citizen niche

CoD competes directly with SQ42, being an FPS/Space Fighter hybrid.  That you don't like the idea of CoD (of all games) beating SQ42 to the punch despite starting development later doesn't change this fact.

Kinda gives the lie to the notion that "it's normal for an AAA game like SC/SQ42 to take this long to develop" though, doesn't it?

[666maslo666]

CoD competes directly with SQ42, being an FPS/Space Fighter hybrid.  That you don't like the idea of CoD (of all games) beating SQ42 to the punch despite starting development later doesn't change this fact.

Kinda gives the lie to the notion that "it's normal for an AAA game like SC/SQ42 to take this long to develop" though, doesn't it?

SQ42 is only a minor part of SC, tough. If SC gave up on the rest of the game and restricted themselves to a heavily scripted single player campaign and a simple arena shooter (which is what CoD is), then it would probably be out by now. But thats not what the backers paid for, is it.

[Aesaar]

CoD competes directly with SQ42, being an FPS/Space Fighter hybrid.  That you don't like the idea of CoD (of all games) beating SQ42 to the punch despite starting development later doesn't change this fact.

Kinda gives the lie to the notion that "it's normal for an AAA game like SC/SQ42 to take this long to develop" though, doesn't it?

SQ42 is only a minor part of SC, tough. If SC gave up on the rest of the game and restricted themselves to a heavily scripted single player campaign and a simple arena shooter (which is what CoD is), then it would probably be out by now. But thats not what the backers paid for, is it.

The backers paid for a game, but I don't see that anywhere either.  Meanwhile, other, actual games are destroying any claims to unique gameplay SC/SQ42 has.  CoD: IW is releasing in a month, and E:D has a more complete and deeper sandbox.  SC has CR's vague promises of something bigger and a trail of incompetence stretching back years.

[General Battuta]

The thing about Elite is that the moment to moment flight gameplay is superb, really something else. It's the high-level systems that suck.

SC hasn't managed to make flying fun or polished yet: I don't have any confidence they can nail the bigger problems.

[Det. Bullock]

All I know that for all this talk of the resurgence of spacesims we still don't have a new X-wing game, and with EA we probably never will.

I'll spare you the usual wall of text on how I'd bring the series back for modern audiences, I think I wrote it about a thousand times on this forum alone.

Why had to be Chris Roberts and not Lawrence Holland? WHY!?