I swear social media people with a very limited grip on what “scam” and “grift” means are more obsessed with Star Citizen than us who actually play it. I log on to do some space trucking when I need to relax, or want to check out whatever new has been added. I’ve gotten more value out of that game in the last couple of years than any I’ve bought since. Many AAA games I don’t even remember playing.
It seems like there are ‘victims’ caught up in the hype and sinking way too much money into SC. But if the gameplay is enjoyable, and fits your budget? Enjoy it. Hell yes.
I backed it a lifetime ago and have gone back and forth between “it’s a scam” and “maybe it could happen” so many times that I just don’t care any more. As broken as it is and as slow as progress has been, there has never been anything like it. I check in a couple of times every year and usually have fun seeing the sights for a week or two. I think I’ve had enough enjoyment from it to justify my original cost.
Even though their goals are unreasonable, irrational, and completely mad, they have somehow managed to fund stable development for over a decade and have actually made meaningful progress. Will I live to see it realized? Who knows. I wish them luck for both their sakes and the people who spent big money on this ridiculous dream, but unlike many others, I have no hard feelings personally. I’d like to see it realized someday, but I have no more money to give them even if I wanted to.
That’s how I feel too. I only bought the $40 entry years ago. Check back every so often and they add more and more. It may feel like a scam but from the hundreds of played hours I got my money’s worth many times over. And if they continue to improve every few months it’s a win win for gamers.
Any and all time I hear of this 'game', I can't help but think that it is a scam. It is perhaps the most decorated and sugar-coated of scams to ever exist. Simply because they're saying 'yeah you can kindof play it' and that alone, is their cover-all excuse. It wasn't too long ago that they invested in some very expensive office and they proclaimed that they needed it to help further development or whatever bullshit reason they stated it was for.
But yeah they can just do whatever they want and fools will still throw down their money, even though they probably will almost never know where all of it will go to. I won't be surprised if some of the money is making one guy rich. I wouldn't be surprised if the money is used to funnel some political campaign. Something. We won't ever know, but because this project is technically playable, they just throw up their arms being like "what? it's still developing! we just need more time and money!".
It is projects like Star Citizen, that has made me have an extremely soured perspective with early access projects. One other game that came to mind was 7 Days to Die, I remember getting that through Humble Monthly. At that time, the game was like 5 years in development and was still in the alpha stages.
It went through numerous changes, both unnecessary and unneeded while progressing. But the years kept piling up. I think it is now fully released but it still doesn't look 100%. It just lacked what direction it really wanted to go and even then I thought that project was grifting people who bothered supporting it.
Me having spent zero dollars on this. Only interaction ever was installing that hangar thing back when it was the only thing. Maybe there was some demo when the space station first became available and some fps gameplay test.
Still looking forward to it. If the story is good, works on Linux, I’ll buy it. I remember a decade ago being worried the Haswell and Maxwell PC I was putting together wouldn’t be good enough when Star Citizen would drop. Not very concerned anymore
Star Citizen works well on Linux via a community-maintained tool called LUG. Getting other fancy peripherals like head tracking requires some creative use of a Windows VM, because those peripheral makers don’t support Linux. If Squadron 42 ever actually materializes, then the community will have it covered.
My friends were very excitedly talking about setting up a corp in this when it was first announced.
They wanted my buy-in, and I asked if I could be head of HR, to which they said “yes”.
So I bought it, created our corp, and performed my ideal goal: set up a corp recruitment posting called “entry-level Star Citizen player” which required 10+ years in Star Citizen.
We’re now at the point where I have to find my log-in and change that to 20+ for the joke to make sense again.
I spent 40$ on it back in 2013. I looked forward to playing the single player campaign.
Then I found a girl. Went through university. Got a career. Had two kids. Got a divorce. And now I have time to play it again, but feel like I’ve mostly grown out of gaming.
Appeal to the authority you give yourself based on *past experience (leave out any negative past experience) *religious/spiritual “insight” can be a substitute here
Present an ambitious “vision” that claims to require said past experience to fully grasp
Allow your targets to start building the product in their imagination based on the crumbs you gave them with step 2
Sell disjointed tangential products that don’t interfere with the player’s dream logic and promise they will connect to your cohesive vision with time
Find “technical delays”
Express that you need backers to buy more of the dream to help get through the “technical delays”
Repeat for 9 years until the market begins to retract
Open the dream up to asian markets
???
Profit
All it requires is being a soulless piece of shit.
Man I was so stoked during the kickstarter. No suits controlling Chris Roberts, crowd funded, open development of an epic space game.
Now, I’m pretty sure I won’t even have time to play it by the time it’s released. They got my $45 a long time ago, and I’ve spent more time on SC than a lot of $45 games, but…yeah, I’m not excited about it anymore.
I can somehow understand the people who funded it in the first place, but who invests now in a project which has already been in development hell for more than a decade and produced barely anything playable. Every whale has already been milked - what return of investment can an investor expect from Star Citizen?
Not to defend SC too much, and full disclosure I don’t play it. But I have friends who DO play it and it seems like they are having a lot of fun?
They aren’t evangelists for the game or anything, so its not a fanboy situation. They just play it a lot, and with lots of other people. They have an online community and meet up IRL for events. Post vids of their exploits. It seems fun to me? I asked them about the bugs and stuff and they fully admit it is buggy and things are broken, they make no apologies for it. They figure out workarounds and share it with the crew. I don’t know, these guys are usually pretty critical of games but they seem happy weirdly. Maybe a cult?
There is no fucking way that I am ever going to pay for a fake star ship or anything so I’m not even considering it. And the entire funding model of the game seems batshit insane to me. But to me it seems like the idea that the game is unplayable doesn’t really match the reality? Its clearly not a good value proposition at all.
It definitely is actually “playable” now, and I’ve had a good amount of fun playing it this year, but it certainly isn’t ready for release or anything.
That said, the network infra they have created is pretty cool: 600+ player servers with relatively little issue, and the goal of 1000 long term is quite a feat of engineering.
They fucked themselves overpromising so much back at the beginning by giving the release dates they did while using like, Unity or something, and now they have the infra/engine to deliver, but nobody trusts them to actually do so.
Are 600 player servers impressive? I’m sure they have plenty of hardware and engineering involved but that doesn’t sound exceptional as much as expected for the scope they’re aiming for.
WoW is a simpler game, in that it’s effectively 2 dimensions and doesn’t involve physics, but that would be a fairly low server population, especially back in it’s heyday. Ditto for many other big MMOs.
EvE has 600+ player battles on a fairly regular basis, much less on a server instance in general.
Is it 600+ players on a single server, or is it like WoW/UO/EQ where the game world is spread across multiple servers, so it’s not ever actually that many people on a single server? It was kind of important for PvP to know where the server lines were because crossing them caused a spike of lag as it switched the server you were on.
If it was a single server that would be impressive. Otherwise, it’s pretty laughable.
I can’t imagine it’s a single physical server anymore but a server instance across many blades / VMs / whatever. But absolutely there are many games where “600+” on a server would be considered a sign of a dying population.
I’m not super knowledgeable with how it works, but it is essentially a system for seamless jumps between multiple servers “meshing” them together so there is zero noticeable lag time between them. There isn’t a single loading screen going across multiple star systems, which is a pretty significant achievement, especially given how detailed the game itself is.
I’ve never played World of Warcraft or really any MMO, but it is my understanding that there are areas to load into new places (a short black screen on entering a building, a “portal” to another zone, etc.).
It’s still $45 to access the game if you don’t have it yet(and that counts as a pledge, and therefore part of the game’s funding), but yea as a player and a backer I essentially agree. You’re basically spending money to skip game progression after the final wipe before release(whenever that happens).
IMO it takes some of the enjoyment out of the game even in its current buggy alpha form. You can earn basically everything except for the most recently(ish) released ships(and some cosmetic items) entirely within the game.
You do get a game to play for $45 though. A game with a zillion bugs and issues but a game nonetheless. I personally feel like it was worth $45 for the entertainment value I’ve gotten out of it. Not worth the amount I spent(like a decade ago), but the first $45 feels worth it now.
That being said, don’t buy the game if you expect a polished experience.
pcgamer.com
Najnowsze