After reading the last ten pages (and still haven’t caught up) I just had to weigh in on the current topic.
Is Star Citizen a game?
By any reasonable definition it is.
It certainly is mine. I considered Minecraft Alpha 1.4 a game. I considered the initial alphas of Stonehearth a game. I considered the Alphas of Elite Dangerous and Mechwarrior Online a game.
If that was truly the heart of the issue, then this this topic wouldn’t have reached Hotel California levels of posts. Unfortunately of many of us who were looking forward to SC, there are other issues at play here.
When I Kickstarted SC back in 2012, I did so asked on a promise of a game with certain features that would be released in 2014, had been a year in development, and already had a working engine and the prototype game. By this time, having backed other games, I mentally added a year to that release date.
As the years went by, it became clear that what I was promised for my money, a spiritual successor to Wing Commander and Privateer, wasn’t the game they were making. I found out that there had been no prototype, and the engine wasn’t anywhere near ready. I became aware of CIGs shady business practices, from predatory marketing, to welching on their deals with business partners (Crytek being a primary example) and backers, to shell companies and shades of “Hollywood Accounting.” All the while, their development strategy was essentially putting the cart before the horse, which has led to four years and counting delays, a barely functional Alpha, and repeatedly having to rework in-game assets that shouldn’t have been completed until the core design work was finished, and the engine in workable condition.
Thank goodness I got my money out of this project before CIG changed their terms of service again.
