I doubt the media narrative will change much. On the contrary, general opposition from the media would probably weld believers more closely together and fuel the "us underdogs gainst the unjustified doubters" narrative. The only way that I think would really take the whole construct apart is unrefutable proof that people have been willfully lied to and misled to believe in things that were never in the cards or are not possible with the given budget/teams etc.. But without a "1.0" release of SQ42 and/or SC, this project is "Schroedinger's BDSSE". It's both, the ultimate space game and the largest crowd funding failure at the same time. It just depends on what you believe. Could be that that broken mess "Alpha 2.x" turns into the "BDSSE" with just another 100$ Mio., no?
If there is no such proof, then it's just "game development". We don't understand anything about it, remember?
Sure, things go different than planned all the time. What about it? So there's no cocktail mixing mini game with AI passengers? Hey, it could be coming some time down the road, but all the other things (procgen planets) took precedence etc.. Did I mention how fappable all the shaders and high res textures are?
Unless believers will be faced with being actively mislead and lied to (although even
that customer service tagging people didn't really harm CIG much in the end) or the whole project is subjected to a reality check like the NMS release, the charade goes on and on and...
Wanna buy an Idris?
Btw, this graphic made by an org from another forum tells a lot about the fantasies Star Citizen fuels in people. I know, because for a brief period between 2014 and 2015 I fell victim to the hype.
It contains the ships from backing packages from a number of people in that forum alone.
How many of those ships can be in a single instance again? How much crew does a single of the larger ships require? Nevermind, how do capital ships in Star Citizen's PU work again?
