Even Chris himself isn't sure of the difference - this is him in September last year waving his hands and absolving himself of "alpha, beta, charlie or delta" in response to the question "Where do you draw a line in the sand between alpha, beta, Early Access? Are they just labels?"...
They are just labels.
But they are labels with meaning. Now, to a degree, a developer is free to call a preAlpha anything he wants. CIG are therefore justified in calling it an Alpha. Or Beta. Or preAlpha. Or Polka Dot Pink.
Me? I like things simple. Neat. Structured.
The games engine isn't finished. Ergo - preAlpha.
The games devs are still talking about doing basic design work on stuff like instances and server meshing. Ergo. preAlpha.
CIG are polishing the games assets? That could be preAlpha (if being shown to a publisher) or Beta (getting ready for release).
Since I would argue they are being shown to the backers as a way to garner funds......preAlpha.
Of course, there is the slight issue that reworking the engine and all the other work they are doing will inevitably create certain problems with game assets and mechanics and so on that will inevitably lead to a necessity for such assets and mechanics to be redone, recoded, reworked....I call that a colossal waste of money.
preAlpha, Alpha, Beta and so on are just labels that help define the different stages of development, and provide at least a rough idea of what the development team needs to be doing, needs to be concentrating on. And the reason such labels have developed and stayed around so long is because they work. While one can argue there is a degree of bleedover between the phases and that such is inevitable, it is (in my experience anyway) usually a good idea to have the design done at the start of the project, even if that only gives you an idea of what the engine you will use needs to be capable of...because then you can select the engine knowing that it will do the job you want and support the game you intend to create. And once you have the engine up and running with everything in place, you can do a more detailed design, create assets, develop gameloops and mechanics and put everything together.
CIG created Star Citizen to be a spiritual successor to Wing Commander. Whatever initial design work that was carried out was devoted to that cause. The engine was selected with that game in mind. Development via third party started with that goal in mind.
Not an MMO - but a spiritual successor to WC. As far as I can tell, that game was doable. Even with CryEngine. CryEngine wasn't perfect, IMO, but it was viable. Still is.
I'll be kind and suggest Chris got ambitious but the fact they are still doing basic design work today suggests they didn't do any when Chris Roberts decided to change genres. What he should, IMO, have done would be to continue development of the game he had the kickstarter for and develop an entirely new game, from scratch for the MMO he wanted to build. Instead, it looks as if he thought an MMO could be tacked on as an afterthought and that is when the problems with Star Citizen and its development began.
I am still hopeful a game, a good game, can be salvaged from this mess. You can see the promise, the potential in the releases. But I think anyone expecting the game we all hoped for needs to face reality. That game is dead. CIG would need to effectively scrap the entire game and start from scratch in order to realise that game. It's possible they might...just might...be able to essentially do just that through various upgrades and content patches over the next ten years but I doubt it.
