The Star Citizen Thread v5
- Thread starter Brett C
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I agree....by the way I just discovered all that "drama" today and personaly I think that she just show her weakness by removing herself from the public for a while which can only attract some possible future "attacks"....and yeah when you decide to be PUBLIC person and earn your living like that you should forget about luxury of privacy.....
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CR's vision appears to be just to make it more.
It will be an impressive feat if everything could be hooked up, but once you split SC/SQ42 out into components and then try to be best-in-class for all of them you're going head-to-head with the specialists.
"This game lets you do everything!" is a weird USP. You're selling integration as opposed to actual gameplay, and there are also several existing games that have massive worlds and multiple game mechanics (GTA springs to mind)... and all of the best are the result of an iterative process from established studios.
This is difficult enough for a single player experience, but you want to make it an MMO? Hoo boy. I note that the network layer isn't ready yet, and a lot of the gameplay mechanics (like AI) aren't in an active state either. And, if the interview with CR a few pages back is true and they're still working on features depending on what their income is... Ugh, they'll never get to a product finished enough for a general release. Still, it's a novel funding strategy and I can see it being a case study for a wide number of academic disciplines in the future.
Tony Zurovec's quote is fair enough if the core requirements have been locked down. I have a feeling that CR is out of the loop for developing games of this size - a massive problem if he is the Voice of God who's suggestions are law. People who aren't aware of the complexities of a system who ask "can we just change xxx? It's minor." may not be aware that fundamentals may need to be rewritten to complete.
A simple example of this is CR's insistance of using a single character model instead of different ones for 1st & 3rd person. Hm.
The article then goes on to state that development started in 2011/2012.
The article then goes on to state that the game took three and a half years to develop.
Where do you get that 10-year number from? None of the articles seem to support it other than a off-hand mention of a “decade”, even though the consistent starting date is quoted as 2007. And how does this prove anything other than even Blizzard productions aren't allowed to go on forever?
…which again goes to show that more years is not the same thing as better. Quite the opposite — more time = more likely to not even come out.
In other words, development stared — at worst — in 2009, with the cancellation of Outsider. But it started in that “figuring out what the game should be and how to get it made” way that Citizens think do not count as development. It would take almost 3 years of project planning before any actual development started.
If you want to suggest that ED started its development in 2001, then SC started its development in 1993, and is now 20 years behind of the 3 years the developer said it would take…
There is nothing to suggest any real correlation between groundbreaking:ness and development time or delays. There is even less to suggest that SC will in any way be groundbreaking, so its 23-year road to not-even-close-to-release wouldn't even be a factor in any of that.
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To address this I would say, sure it's beliveable that Kickstarter was the only way to get the ball rolling on it all, I can agree with that. It's what's happened since then that is the issue, the increase of money did increase the scope via the stretchgoals after Ks, but those are not the only things that have been added to the games 'scope' as CR is very fond of saying 'yes' to features and ideas he should really never entertain. Iterating slowly and cautiously, deliberately is absolutely always the only proper option, throwing everything at the wall and hoping some of it sticks is not. Also they changed the scope using the wallet as an reason rather than any scope change really being needed so early in the cycle.
Their method would be good had they demonstrated any solid groundwork, which going by what is avalible to us is not the case, the whole engine seems very prone to fiddlesome faults and errors and has little to offer anyone looking for a stable and polished experience. Of course layering on more and more features and ideas are going to weaken the structure further and eventually (as I've been waiting for) there will come a time when a straw will break the camels back and the whole engine will need replacing, it's not far away going by the performance of the engine to date.
The amount of money is a crutch, as is the claim of 'fidelity', the money is used to prop up the notion that the product itself, even though still mostly on paper, is something special to the games industry and the 'fidelity' so far applies to graphics alone as nothing else in the avalible builds, including sound, controls, physics, backend, networking, layout or structure and everything else that combines to create a good solid product, remotely works as nicely as it looks. And to be honest, you can see the age in the engine now, its no spring chicken of cutting edge graphical excellence like it was three years ago. Lot's and lots of shouting about how great it is, but very little to corroberate the claims.
So really, what you're left with, is a massively costly, hollow and featureless yet reasonably pretty experiment in how far out of control a developer can go once they have no accountability. I personally would like to see a publisher step in and sort this mess out, but they won't touch it with a barge pole, and despite claims of "it'll sell millions" not a single one has shown any confidence in it's apparent and perceived future success, and publishers love to chase easy money.
Again, I'm just rattling off my thoughts.
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Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat
Banned
That's because they are not here to actually *discuss* Star Citizen, they are here to obfuscate, deflect and then blatantly promote Star Citizen as being on a level platform with some of the great games of all time, even when it hasn't come out yet, nor has shown any ability to achieve even a fraction of the boastful claims made by the people both making the game and those backing.
Also that is a nice graph that you posted there, showing a far more realistic representation of what the development time scales of a lot of those games.
It also needs to be remembered that for some of those titles in that graph, like Elder Scrolls Online, they were also working on other titles during that development period (Skyrim anybody?).
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To emphasize.
Publishers can be ruthless. They will shutter projects after years of development if they decide that the income received from selling the game is outweighed by development costs.
Star Citizen has sold >$120m already.
Ironically the amount of sales so far generated by SC counts against a publisher rescue if the worst happens and CIG run out of cash.
Another thing to take not of in this particular context is how many of them could even be considered “groundbreaking”. Of the ones John listed, only Elite comes close, with its galaxy simulation, and even then it's somewhat debatable.
As far as development time goes, and looking at that graph, there are only really two games with properly long times and any kind of claim to having broken new ground: Spore and LA Noire. One ended up being an almost complete failure; the other killed the studio that made it. Hardly examples to aspire to.
Huh? Whats wrong with LA Noire? It got great reviews and shipped over five million copies within the first year alone...
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The game was neat and sold like gangbusters. And after being very close to cancellation on multiple occasions, it ended up brutally murdering Team Bondi.
The driving was godwawful.
Bought it, put about an hour on it, uninstalled it.
Hmm. I wonder if I can get a refund on Steam as this was years ago!
EDIT: It says 44 minutes on my Steam account. [uhh]
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I find it ironic the general label of FUD ; "fear uncertainly and doubt", applied to criticism and detractors
When we have statements that stretch goals, that was for concepts or RnD only, and the actually pace of development is based on the ship sales.
That is fear uncertainly and doubt in of itself.
Someone was going to
So provided they don't spend $120,000,000 developing the game, they might make some profit out of it. Given the grandious nature of CIG's development infrastructure I would be surprised if that's going to be the case and I severely doubt they will ship enough copies post release to see another $120,000,000 come in. Considering how much games like GTA and Tomb Raider cost to make, and how much they made - being vastly more accessible titles for a wide range of players - I honestly cannot see the business sense in Star Citizen.
I loved that game, just outstanding...
CMDR_Orlando
Banned
New ATV was short but to the point: Drake Caterpillar showcased once again, seems finished and kinda dwarfs the Starfarer in length.
Full album: http://imgur.com/a/iL2Ib
Light and Medium Marine Armours also showcased:
Character work also continues: https://gfycat.com/IllustriousImpishBream
Oh and that graphic showing 2011 as the start of development... [big grin] Making a pitch video and launching a crowdfunding campaign to gather money to start making a game is not "Game Development". Yes they made assets to showcase their idea, early tech demos to sell their vision. In which they amazingly succeeded all expectations, leading them to scrap the old work and start from the ground up with much better access to talent/tools.
So again, disingenuous "facts" from the same folks to try and spread a narrative that suits their charades. Things like the planning of the crowdfunding campaign, the assembly of the studios and people from scratch should not be ignored when accounting for comparisons with other games. But ofc, when the whole narrative resolves around saying that "Everything Star Citizen" is incompetent and the main reason of missed (outdated) deadlines is Chris Roberts fault when all he is doing is making what he promised! Using the huge amount of funds that the backers pledge so that he could make the best game possible. I understand that people get impatient and restless I just don't see the need for the distortion of reality to suit their needs, well I do actually. [big grin]
Full album: http://imgur.com/a/iL2Ib
Light and Medium Marine Armours also showcased:
Character work also continues: https://gfycat.com/IllustriousImpishBream
Oh and that graphic showing 2011 as the start of development... [big grin] Making a pitch video and launching a crowdfunding campaign to gather money to start making a game is not "Game Development". Yes they made assets to showcase their idea, early tech demos to sell their vision. In which they amazingly succeeded all expectations, leading them to scrap the old work and start from the ground up with much better access to talent/tools.
So again, disingenuous "facts" from the same folks to try and spread a narrative that suits their charades. Things like the planning of the crowdfunding campaign, the assembly of the studios and people from scratch should not be ignored when accounting for comparisons with other games. But ofc, when the whole narrative resolves around saying that "Everything Star Citizen" is incompetent and the main reason of missed (outdated) deadlines is Chris Roberts fault when all he is doing is making what he promised! Using the huge amount of funds that the backers pledge so that he could make the best game possible. I understand that people get impatient and restless I just don't see the need for the distortion of reality to suit their needs, well I do actually. [big grin]
But that's totally the norm in game development circa 2016. Devs go from studio to studio and teams are assembled from scratch, expanded from a small core group. It's a volatile industry, not very well paid, high turnover, with most new companies failing HARD. You're just trying to excuse CR's incompetence by grading them on a curve... while the project plummets off a cliff.
You probably shouldn't be ignoring the unbelievable records of accomplishment and genuine competence exhibited by the world class studios with stacks of bestselling games you routinely compare to an untried company with zero releases, led by someone who hasn't been in the business for ages. They simply aren't comparable. When CR ships a Witcher 3, you get to compare him to CDPR. Blizzard and Rockstar crap bigger than the Wing Commander franchise, let's face it. Nostalgic childhood memories of space kitties don't put CIG anywhere NEAR their orbits. They are not equals and no amount of "reputation management" is going to elevate CR to their levels of sales and critical success.
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…is straight from Chris' own mouth. Unlike similar graphs that citizens have invented to try to excuse the lethargic pace of SC's development, it not only uses official accounts from the developers themselves, but it also tries to accurately separate the different stages of development to make it clear exactly what happened when. This makes the whole “but development didn't start until…” argument bunk — it's already in the chart, and trying to use it means that the person doing so didn't actually look at what's in there.
So you're saying that Chris is trying to spread a charade about his own game? If not, then how is it disingenuous to use actual indisputable facts — ones provided by the developers themselves?
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CMDR_Orlando
Banned
Going from studio to studio is quite different than crowdfunding your way from 6 people in a rented office to 4 studios and 330 dev's and developing 2 ambitious games at the same time. I think people are too harsh just with CIG/Chris Roberts because of things that escaped his own control. Yes some things were (badly) communicated. Increase of scope should have been reiterated that would mean an increase of the deadline, gamers don't have to know (but should) how making a game works.
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