Things could be a lot worst.

[HurstLlama]

I've been following Star Citizen's development with interest for quite some time and he seems pretty much spot-on to me.

When the Star Citizen actually have a game to bring to market I will have a look at it and if I like what I see I will buy it. Until they have that game in a state that they want to sell it then it is no more than vapourware.

Meanwhile, the number of hours of entertainment I have had from ED so far has brought the cost down to less than £0.01 per hour and there are still great chunks of the game that I haven't really explored (e.g. fired up a Frame Shift Drive Interdictor in anger for the first time this morning). That said I'll probably move away from ED before I have "finished" it simply because I am starting to miss mainline flight sims and I know the longer I leave it the more problems I am going to have in getting back into Rise of Flight and Cliffs of Dover (the SE5a doesn't have lateral thrusters and you can't fly backwards).

 

[technophebe]

I have to agree re. Star Citizen; once a project reaches a certain level of complexity throwing more money and resources (ie. people) at it will actually slow it down and make it more likely to fail. This is a well known effect in the software development business. Star Citizen has become way more complex than even other triple-A games; RSI have vastly over-promised and although I hate to say it (I'm a backer), at this point it's pretty much guaranteed to be a big disappointment.

ED on the other hand, is very late with its promised features (which seems to be a guaranteed for crowd funded games) but is still manageable in scope and thus will hopefully (eventually) deliver on its promises.

 

[Herik]

Extremely good post and repped.

I am also more heavily invested in Star Citizen and I hope it will be great.

If it gives me as many fun hours as Elite has given me, it would have been a splendid success in my eyes.

The Elite community here on the forums comes off as extremly entitled and at times puerile.

Cheers.

And also quite unique and excellent.

 

[Kayweg]

Why do people insist on looking at gaming as an "investment"?

Sure on the surface you pay money and get a return, i.e entertainment, but it's not something that increases the value of the initial stake which is the accurate definition of "investment".

If you're looking for increased value of something when you play games you're always going to be disappointed. Surely gaming is a hobby, leisure, entertainment. These thing have always been stuff you spend your cash on for a finite reward, not growth of your initial expenditure.

There's a lot of truth to this, but with modifications i might add.

When you buy and play a game "out of the box" (as it used to be), yes, there's a finite entertainment reward to be had.

Hopefully that reward will make you feel you got value for money. Like you, i think investment is the wrong terminology.

But let's be honest, that's rarely how it works anymore.

Publishers, FD being no exception, soft launch their games at early development stages, with the prospect AND promise that there's more to come and that the entertainment value will indeed increase.

They are deliberately trying to AVOID the concept of finite entertainment value, with the single purpose to retain players and entice them to spend more money along the way.

Some publishers do that in a reasonable and consumer friendly manner. Others, well, not so much...

It's not a new concept, expansions have always been there, but it's a concept that seems have become the center piece of game development.

DLC, microtransactions, expansion passes, gold memberships, cash shops, etc...all of these are on offer, because the industry does NOT want you to think in terms of finite entertainment value.

We're being drip fed.


On topic:

Good and reasonable post overall. Of course it would be easy to create one with the title "Things could be better" too.

But ok, we probably have plenty of those, so nothing wrong with a different angle.

You clearly made an effort to keep it objective, no flaming, no name calling....kudos.