I've seen that article, and others like it, a number of times, and this is going to sound harsh, but I'm afraid what's said in that interview is the verbal equvalent of what's become known in the gaming industry as a "bullshot". It's an ideal vision of a game they'd like to make, and we'd all love to play, but not a reality they have proven they can deliver, yet still needed you to believe in, in order to get your support.
That's not to say it cannot be done, because many games before Elite: Dangerous already provide elements of that vision on some level, or in some form. Games both outside the space genre, and even within it, such as EVE and X3, that have far more sophisticated gameplay mechanics and player interactions.
However, looking only at those games for a moment, both have evolved from a pedigree over a decade in the making, with a cult following of players and a steady progression of improvement and iteration. This is something Elite: Dangerous doesn't have, yet, but it could. So then, is there a chance that the glorious future Braben speaks to in that interview could become a reality? Yes and no, because both of those depend on time and money:
Time is something that largely depends on how the gaming in the space genre develops over the next few years, and how much competition arises in the meanwhile. There are already a couple of interestingly similar prospects on the horizon in the shape of No Man's Sky and Star Citizen, so Frontier will be acutely aware that the "ten year plan" delivery schedule of the main course of any stated vision is actually a lot less than that to keep existing players motivated, and attract new ones in the near future.
Money is intrinsically part of making that timescale longer or shorter, and so is the monetisation model realistic to produce this masterwork? Well, EVE Online uses a subscription model to fund a highly focussed development effort on its product answering to the monthly needs of its playerbase, and is the second biggest MMO after WoW. EgoSoft has built a solid series in X, with far less resources, that has a cult following since the late nineties, sequel by sequel to get to their finest and most sophisticated product, X3. (Rebirth was a failed console initiative, hurridly re-packaged to the PC market, so let's not got there.)
Elite: Dangerous, on the other hand, is made by small but growing studio that has done anything but a game of this proportion before, and is relying on microtransactions and expansions to fund ongoing development. All of those different approaches share one thing in common, which is that they depend on the size of the maintained playerbase for ongoing success. To that end, Frontier made some controversial and unscheduled decisions in the last year that the community didn't expect either at all, like the Steam release, or so soon, such as the push onto the consoles. It seems then, that they are very much aware they need more sales and a larger playerbase to make anything more than what you are playing right now.
Given the rather unfortunate, but accurate, assessment that the current product is a "mile wide but an inch deep", in terms of its gameplay, the beautiful visual spectacle can only impress a player for so long before the graphics start to look geener elsewhere - let's not forget that this is a game that has less content and sophistication than its own immediate predecessors!
So if the game a) fails to get enough new customers, and b) fails to keep those players invested for the long term (for the repeat business from the micro-transactions and expansions) then the answer is no, you won't likely see much more improvement from Elite: Dangerous past next year, and there will be even more upset forumites here highlighting articles like that one then there are now.
However, Frontier has invested too much into Elite: Dangerous to abandon it to that fate so easily, and the re-ordering of priorities away from the DDF is most likely a part of a change in strategy they think is best to garner wider appeal. Yet, Elite: Dangerous will only survive in the face of future competition like Star Citizen if it is able to offer a better experience; or if equal, different and unique. So I would also not be surprised if in a year the monetisation model has also changed to accomodate a larger budget and a more sustainable income. In other words, don't rule out a free-to-play or subscription model.
So the current playerbase might be wise to expect more changes to, and deviations from, the grand vision as laid out in the early presentations. Which brings us to the reveal of Powerplay a couple of weeks ago, with its perceived convoluted disconnection to the existing game. However, looking beneath the vaneer of a 90's game on top of what looks like an online boardgame, the fact is they've created a mechanism that can fundamentally change the attributes of systems within the galaxy based on player actions.
Even if right now those actions seem familiarly simplistic, being altogether not far removed nor much developed from the missions we've already been used to doing up until now, that doesn't mean the Powerplay engine is not something that is ingeneously scalable in ways we can't appreciate yet. The potential might very well be there to build on it to add far more variety and diversity to gameplay. So does that mean that David's visionary statements about emergent gameplay are coming true?
No, the very fact of the game we are playing right now proves they can't afford that vision yet, and that it was just a statement of an ideal scenario to sell the concept, not a realistic promise that was properly thought out and based on a real technology being developed at the time. Still, Powerplay shows the underlying technical potential is there for something that may slowly start to bring parts of that kind of gameplay to fruition, albeit in a curated and orchestrated way, at least initially.
