Star Citizen Alpha 3.8 Live Now, Adding Tons of Content and Features

erek

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Is this still vaporware? Quarter of a billion dollar budget seems pretty hardcore for a game.

"Star Citizen still doesn't have a release date, but the latest CitizenCon filled fans with hope as the developers showcased the upcoming new system Pyro (and Jump Points) and even an interesting 'Theatres of War' game mode which combines space, vehicles and on-foot combat for a Battlefield-like experience. Meanwhile, the game recently broke through the incredible milestone of $250 million gathered through crowdfunding."

https://wccftech.com/star-citizen-alpha-3-8-live-now-adding-tons-of-content-and-features/
 
Every time this perpetually in alpha development "game" comes up in a news story I can't help but wonder who in their right mind would still be sending money to these "developers".
Even if you invested some money in the beginning why send more good money after bad investments. If they haven't returned on investment in 7+ years from their original development start date with an actual playable game that is reasonably finished to specification they set out to accomplish, then why haven't people just walked away by now.

From the Forbes article in May 2019,
Forbes Magazine said:
The company Roberts cofounded, Cloud Imperium Games, has raised $288 million to bring the PC game to life along with its companion, an offline single-player action game called Squadron 42. Of this haul, $242 million has been contributed by about 1.1 million fans, who have either bought digital toys like the Kraken or given cash online.

How does this company blow through 288 million in only a handful of years Linkedin says they have less than 1000 employees and since the product they have developed is still no-where near the player experience they promised in the beginning, its hard to believe they could have so many people working on this thing with so little progress toward actually finishing the game to get it into production. Its like they have made this into perpetual DLC that is sold before the actual game you use the DLC on is complete or even reasonably built.

I do wonder how long this will continue to go on before the "backers" finally realize whatever is going on is not working and the money finally dries up.
 
people who backed the game forget about it's actual existence.

Original backers are sent an email to their defunct address stating they need to confirm their mailing address or give up the physical portion on whatever they ordered. They will be given a 24 hour window from when the email was sent.

Chris Roberts will have yet another employee leave the company. And Start and finish and publish a video game before they leave alpha.

Star Citizen fans will continue to claim it isn't vaporware because there are alpha versions. (vapor ware is when the finished program never sees the light of day.)

Fans will discover that inn addition to the star ship package they bought they also purchased a new car and house for Chris Roberts and his wife the head of marketing.

It will be discovered that Chris Roberts actually is an Eastern European badguy.

Chris Roberts will put his developmental might to fixing the voting machines. Politicians will be pleased because they know it will become a perpetual hole they can throw money down without ever receiving anything thus always appeasing their backers for trying to 'do something about it.'.

Methuselah will be able to recall backing this game back on kickstarter and how they regret it.
 
How does this company blow through 288 million in only a handful of years Linkedin says they have less than 1000 employees and since the product they have developed is still no-where near the player experience they promised in the beginning, its hard to believe they could have so many people working on this thing with so little progress toward actually finishing the game to get it into production. Its like they have made this into perpetual DLC that is sold before the actual game you use the DLC on is complete or even reasonably built.

I do wonder how long this will continue to go on before the "backers" finally realize whatever is going on is not working and the money finally dries up.

Ya, that's pretty bad. Initially I thought that well, it is in line with what you'd expect from a big budget AAA game that went long in the development cycle... but those numbers, $200+ million are WITH marketing budget. Not just development. Even for games that go long on their development, like The Old Republic, and ones with extremely expensive designs like GTA 5 you are still usually talking less than $150 million on the development side. Also you'd expect more of a deliverable 7 years in. I mean you wouldn't expect it to take 7 years in the first place but the idea that at this point you'd still have very little in the way of content and gameplay is unthinkable.

I don't know how long they can keep people giving them money, I never thought it would last this long, but man.
 
Wasn't Duke Nukem Forever mothballed for a number of years in a legal wrangling over ownership of the Duke Nukem franchise ip?
I thought that was most of the reason they didn't get a product our for so long?

Shooting from the hip here based on memory so I could be totally off.
 
I just want SQ42 to be released. No idea if/when that will happen, but that's really all I've ever cared about with this whole debacle.
 
Sadly you can't say zero effort has gone into this. Many people have put many hours of labor into this project. But it's just floundered so terribly. Imagine trying to make a movie like this?!
 
The next change up and re-schedule will come when Roberts announces they will start from scratch in order to take advantage of the latest tech from GPU makers. RT from AMD and Nvidia. Almost there now folks, almost there...
 
The next change up and re-schedule will come when Roberts announces they will start from scratch in order to take advantage of the latest tech from GPU makers. RT from AMD and Nvidia. Almost there now folks, almost there...
Did you see my joke thread in the video game sub forum?
 
Wasn't Duke Nukem Forever mothballed for a number of years in a legal wrangling over ownership of the Duke Nukem franchise ip?
I thought that was most of the reason they didn't get a product our for so long?

Shooting from the hip here based on memory so I could be totally off.

No most of the time was just fucking around. For the longest time 3D Realms basically had 100% control over it, it was self funded. Boussard said this would let him make the game the way it should be, without pressure. However he wasn't a good manager so lots of time was wasted and worse, he was always chasing the next new technology. A new game, like Unreal, came out, and he'd decide they needed to switch engines to keep up. Eventually the money ran out and went bankrupt. Then there was some legal wrangling, IP buyouts and so on and eventually the crap we have now was shat out. However the major delays were all with the original studio.

Sadly you can't say zero effort has gone into this. Many people have put many hours of labor into this project. But it's just floundered so terribly. Imagine trying to make a movie like this?!

That's the thing is making a good product isn't about raw effort, it is about effort focused in the right things at the right time. For all the crap you can say about Todd Howard, he has a very good saying about game development: "We can do anything, we just can't do everything." You have to pick and choose where your time is spent, otherwise you will have a mess that can't be made in to a game. It isn't feasible to just put everything in. You have to focus your resources, you have to decide what works well with what you have,you have to create a fun experience. That's what's not happened with SC and probably never will. They build some neat tech simulations, make lots of art assets, but have no clear path as to how to get it all together in to a game because their scope is too broad to ever be executed. So they focus on doing little things and act like that is progress, ignoring the elephants in the room.
 
"As a special holiday gift to all of you, we put together this visual teaser reel, highlighting some of the work we’ve done on Squadron 42 over the course of 2019. ------------------------------------------ Roberts Space Industries is a spacecraft manufacturer within the persistent-world game "Star Citizen" and its companion single-player spaceflight sim, "Squadron 42." RSI is also your portal for information, updates, and purchases of your very own spacecraft with which to trade, plunder, and protect the citizens of Star Citizen."

 
"As a special holiday gift to all of you, we put together this visual teaser reel, highlighting some of the work we’ve done on Squadron 42 over the course of 2019. ------------------------------------------ Roberts Space Industries is a spacecraft manufacturer within the persistent-world game "Star Citizen" and its companion single-player spaceflight sim, "Squadron 42." RSI is also your portal for information, updates, and purchases of your very own spacecraft with which to trade, plunder, and protect the citizens of Star Citizen."



No lack of balls over at RSI.
 
Things that will probably happen before Star Citizen is released:

1) Brexit

2) Successful Mars landing mission

3) Congress balances the budget

4) Democracy is embraced In China

Anything else we should add to the list?

rumor has it Jesus was in on the kickstarter, so he’s going to be here when it launches.
 
SO in other words, the game continues to progress. People who who are interested/appreciative of what it can be/is growing into are still so, people who have whatever deep-seated objection will continue a criticism that nothing is ever good enough/fast enough/progress enough/results enough to keep it from being a scam/failure or whatnot in their eyes. People who only see a "square peg into square hole" development style as viable, will completely lose their shit over the possibility of this thing called "round", be it peg or hole, because it fails at being square.

Everyone else can watch a long-arc attempt to do something significantly different and enjoy the steps along the way, or ignore it entirely until something equating to the 1.0 release of a MMO arrives and judge it then.
 
SO in other words, the game continues to progress. People who who are interested/appreciative of what it can be/is growing into are still so, people who have whatever deep-seated objection will continue a criticism that nothing is ever good enough/fast enough/progress enough/results enough to keep it from being a scam/failure or whatnot in their eyes. People who only see a "square peg into square hole" development style as viable, will completely lose their shit over the possibility of this thing called "round", be it peg or hole, because it fails at being square.

Everyone else can watch a long-arc attempt to do something significantly different and enjoy the steps along the way, or ignore it entirely until something equating to the 1.0 release of a MMO arrives and judge it then.

So you see no scam here? Nothing suspicious about this at all?

Ok.
 
SO in other words, the game continues to progress. People who who are interested/appreciative of what it can be/is growing into are still so, people who have whatever deep-seated objection will continue a criticism that nothing is ever good enough/fast enough/progress enough/results enough to keep it from being a scam/failure or whatnot in their eyes. People who only see a "square peg into square hole" development style as viable, will completely lose their shit over the possibility of this thing called "round", be it peg or hole, because it fails at being square.

Everyone else can watch a long-arc attempt to do something significantly different and enjoy the steps along the way, or ignore it entirely until something equating to the 1.0 release of a MMO arrives and judge it then.
....hate to break it to you, but they haven't done anything different at this point other than make a pretty screen shot generator.
 
Wasn't Duke Nukem Forever mothballed for a number of years in a legal wrangling over ownership of the Duke Nukem franchise ip?
I thought that was most of the reason they didn't get a product our for so long?

Shooting from the hip here based on memory so I could be totally off.
Yeah DNF wasn't actually being worked on for all those years it was in development hell for at least half the years in the middle.
 
In the year 2076 young adults will be faced with the decision whether to use the money they've saved for a down payment on their first house or to buy early access to this game.

More like whether to spend the money on a ship in the game or a real interplanetary ship.
 
Every time this perpetually in alpha development "game" comes up in a news story I can't help but wonder who in their right mind would still be sending money to these "developers".
Even if you invested some money in the beginning why send more good money after bad investments. If they haven't returned on investment in 7+ years from their original development start date with an actual playable game that is reasonably finished to specification they set out to accomplish, then why haven't people just walked away by now.

From the Forbes article in May 2019,


How does this company blow through 288 million in only a handful of years Linkedin says they have less than 1000 employees and since the product they have developed is still no-where near the player experience they promised in the beginning, its hard to believe they could have so many people working on this thing with so little progress toward actually finishing the game to get it into production. Its like they have made this into perpetual DLC that is sold before the actual game you use the DLC on is complete or even reasonably built.

I do wonder how long this will continue to go on before the "backers" finally realize whatever is going on is not working and the money finally dries up.

How did they go through all that money?

Marketing, nepotism, conventions/fund raisers, setting up 3 dev studios, setting up their own mocap studio that they assumed other people would pay them to use, paying a ton of people up front for mocap and voice work that'll likely be largely useless by the time they're ready to put something together, and a healthy serving of Chris Roberts' notoriously terrible project management except now this time he doesn't have a publisher breathing down his neck.

Remember when they promised an audit a few years back, that of course never happened(it's entirely possible it did, and roberts was afraid to publicly release it)?

Remember when they finally quit adding stretch goals, but then continued adding crap people didn't ask for before the scope of the base game was even established?

Remember when they changed game engines, likely resulting in a bunch of work tossed out?

Remember when they spent more public effort paying artists to make fake brochures of dune buggies no one asked for in a space sim, than actually working on the game?

I can think of lots of ways they blew through an assload of cash.
 
Sadly you can't say zero effort has gone into this. Many people have put many hours of labor into this project. But it's just floundered so terribly. Imagine trying to make a movie like this?!
More blow has been snorted during the creation of this game, by weight, than you will ever use of sugar/sugar supplement in a lifetime.
 
$40,000,000 a year.

I work in a health care company that employs almost 4000 people and covers 3 states, and see tens
SO in other words, the game continues to progress. People who who are interested/appreciative of what it can be/is growing into are still so, people who have whatever deep-seated objection will continue a criticism that nothing is ever good enough/fast enough/progress enough/results enough to keep it from being a scam/failure or whatnot in their eyes. People who only see a "square peg into square hole" development style as viable, will completely lose their shit over the possibility of this thing called "round", be it peg or hole, because it fails at being square.

Everyone else can watch a long-arc attempt to do something significantly different and enjoy the steps along the way, or ignore it entirely until something equating to the 1.0 release of a MMO arrives and judge it then.


how’s that timeline looking now?

still on target for that 2014 release?
 
$40,000,000 a year.

I work in a health care company that employs almost 4000 people and covers 3 states, and see tens

how’s that timeline looking now?

still on target for that 2014 release?

Sadly, still the best thing I have from being a very early backer of the "game" (long before it became a way to sell jpegs):

StarCit.jpg


Cool, not unlike the Ultima cloth maps, but... it would be even more cool to actually have a space combat game at some point. I do not see that happening, and have resigned myself to the thought that I bought a 25 dollar plastic card.
 
Sadly, still the best thing I have from being a very early backer of the "game" (long before it became a way to sell jpegs):

View attachment 211316

Cool, not unlike the Ultima cloth maps, but... it would be even more cool to actually have a space combat game at some point. I do not see that happening, and have resigned myself to the thought that I bought a 25 dollar plastic card.

I've got my Scout one around somewhere. I also have some sort of dog-tag thing.
 
I bought the Connie package with lti I'm sure when the game comes out I'll either play. Or sell that.
 
maybe Star Citizen will turn out to be the catalyst for a major resurgence in PC gaming :barefoot:
 
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