Star Citizen reaches $600 million raised but the game future is really worrying
Cloud Imperium has been working on Star Citizen since 2011, which has already raised more than $600 million. When will its final version be released?
I was dumb enough to back this on Kickstarter. I've given up on ever seeing a finished game.
I kickstarted it 11 years ago, I'm sure squadron 42 will be out any day now, right?
Luckily, I really wanted a space sim, so I kickstarted elite too. It was far less hyped and star citizen fans always big up how they're not the same scope (which is true if you ignore everything else about SC), but at least it was released and very enjoyable.
I usually try star citizen out every time I get a new PC to see if it's any better just to make myself happy that I never sunk money into ship preorders etc
Yeah I spent 60€ to get the avenger titan much later.
The bright side is, it is about as finished as No Man's sky was. That is, buggy as hell game, but playable. It is fun to go in and fuck around in, but I definitely pity the people who have sunk hundreds or thousands into it.
That’s not an accurate comparison, The game breaking bugs in NMS on release were patched a day or two after release (I stupidly preorderd and experienced the hyperdrive blueprint issue). But the issue with NMS wasn’t really bugs, just over promises by the developers that didn’t match the final product. At least there was a few hundred hours of gameplay and complete gameplay loops.
Star Citizen, another game I stupidly preordered / Kickstarted (I’ma sucker for space games; kickstarted Elite Dangerous too) is a totally different kettle of fish. A decade later, there still isn’t a single, non-buggy / non-broken game loop in the entire game.
I so desperately want to like Star Citizen but for $600mil, having a few hours of “mucking about” with no real purpose nor way to achieve anything meaningful without experiencing migraine-inducing bugs, it’s pretty much unforgivable.
For the same money, I’ve been able to play Elite Dangerous for almost a decade and sink 1000s of hours, build a massive fleet of ships, and hang out with my buddies without screaming at the game. Sure, it’s shallower, but at least the loops are complete and the management were able to regularly make meaningful feature additions to the game over the years (although Odyssey was an utter shitshow at launch and took a year to patch into something stable and fun).
It's more like a piece of art than a game, meant to be looked at but not played
I have played the game maybe 10-20h and the content variety is not great, there is however an insane attention to detail in terms of ship design which you can get lost in.
For detailed ships all you need to do is hire a 3D artist, you don't need a game for that.
The rest is a mess. Free fly weekend? I load in and all the NPCs are T-Posing and standing around. Or sitting half in the ground. The surroundings are lifeless, there is absolutely nothing to interact with besides some doors/elevators. And don't even get me started on the bugs and performance (I have a 3080 and 5800X3D at 1440p, so it should run fine..).
So no matter how much content they might add in the future, it doesn't feel like they have the technical side down at all. And the technical part is the entire make or break it topic as they are trying to build something on a scale no one has done before (and a MMO on top..).
For years now my personal bet is that the game will never come out. And if it ever does it will get negative reviews for being an unplayable mess.
there is however an insane attention to detail in terms of ship design which you can get lost in
Those details do not change, however. The secret "smuggling" compartment on one of the ships, for example, is found in the exact same place with the exact same chess piece every time, rendering its novelty for "smuggling" actually worthless for actual gameplay if such gameplay ever happened.
There is no saving it for those who still continue to buy ships from the game
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Those who want to get lost in its universe can explore at their leisure a wide variety of space stations, moons and planets of the Stanton System that are home to wildlife, large futuristic cities and that are as beautiful as they are dangerous in equal measure.
In mid-May, Cloud Imperium Games released the Alpha patch build 3.18.0, the most complete and largest update that Star Citizen has received to date, with the intention of calming all those players who had been demanding news for the title for some time.
Today, the relationship between the creators of Star Citizen and some of its patrons is so tense and unstable that there are those who do not hesitate to point out that the video game will never be completed and that it is a scam , while on the other side On the balance we can find players who still believe in the project and support it financially.
The aforementioned former employee of Cloud Imperium Games has commented that the development studio has “incorrectly calculated its trajectory and the expenses” , in addition to the fact that managers should be somewhat more transparent with some decisions and that a significant amount of money has been wasted from project budget to purchase unnecessary items to decorate the company’s offices.
Focusing again on aspects related to the budget, Ryden-55 has highlighted that both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 need a constant flow of money to stay afloat, although he has assured that in recent months income has decreased due to growing distrust of the users.
However, in October, CitizenCon 2953 will take place in Los Angeles, California, a two-day hybrid conference – in-person and online – in which the Star Citizen development teams will gather to discuss their future plans for the title.
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With my usual metric of game enjoyment - hours of interesting playtime divided by price in $ - Star Citizen actually does rather well, for a $45 entry it's definitely generated way more hours of actual fun with friends than most $60+ games we've bought.
It's definitely also generated lots of frustrating hours, but that's rang true for said $60+ games as well. I really wish there were more other games which do some of what it attempts.
ED was fun, but me and every one of my friends who're into space stuff have all individually burnt out on that game due to the frankly insulting level of grind.
NMS turns out to simply not be the gameplay we're after, so I have even less playtime in that than ED.
So far, Space Engineers and Avorion have been doing the best in that regard, still hosting a 24/7 Avorion galaxy for us in fact.
X4 has been collecting plenty of hours of playtime for me as well, but it's lack of any kind of meaningful multiplayer with friends does lessen the enjoyment somewhat.
I use a similar measurement process for games and Star Citizen has also served me well enough.
I’ve been meaning to properly check out Avorion after picking it up in a sale some time ago; must get on it. Same goes for Space Engineers in fact.
Space Engineers has a bit of a learning curve, but it's definitely a nice sandbox-style game, just unfortunately a bit lacking in PvE content without mods.
Avorion on the other hand is much easier to get started with, but it's also quite shallow in regards to story and such. The galaxy it generates can definitely be interesting though, it has a remarkably robust system for reputation, organizations, etc - and it applies between NPC factions as well.
I can personally also recommend Stationeers if you're a fan of physics (in this case temperature/pressure/gas instead of movement) sandboxes, it has an even steeper learning curve than Space Engineers though, but it can also be loads of fun.
Google should have bought it out, finished it, and made it Stadia exclusive... Ah well...
Google, finishing a project?
CitizenCON this year in a few weeks is going to be very, very interesting. It may go down like DashCon and have a "free 30 minutes in the ball pit" level of downfall.
Or the aging gamedads that sunk so much into the grift already will keep it afloat a little longer. We'll see.
I want to see game dads in the ball pit
There was an exclusive big-spenders-only fancy le steak meme dinner that the grifting corporation put on (as a means to offer then another exclusive internet spaceship sale for another internet spaceship that is still not playable now) and I was hard pressed to see anyone there that wasn't at least in their 40s, it was white as mayonnaise, entirely male unless I lost someone in the mayo, and there was even a cringelord wearing a top hat and monocle prop to match the cringe prop in the game that is given to big spenders.
I bring it up because the game dads in the ball pit will have to contend with that sad image to stand out.
