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Star Citizen is a cautionary tale about how too much money can be a curse. Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous came around at roughly the same time but Elite has

• KingOfCoders 5y ago
  I thought so too in the past, I was ridiculing Star Citizen, I've called it a scam, now I'm happy that someone is not releasing another space game - Elite works - but tries to do something very very ambitious, something beyond everyone else. We'll see if they can generate money for the next 10 years, I hope they can. PS: I've bought Elite but not Star Citizen ;-) PPS: I've also bought Elite in 1984 and was blown away.
  • jerf 5y ago
    But that doesn't contradict what cletus said. Even if they wanted to be ambitious, with such a large scale there simply is no way there isn't some way to carve out a coherent core to deliver early and then iterate on. I've done some ambitious things in my engineering career... nothing like Star Citizen in absolute scope but relative to the resources I had they were ambitious. But I always made sure there was some core I could show off before the project was complete. If nothing else, Agile (by which I mean more the orginal manifesto rather than any specific thing like "scrum") recommends this sort of approach for a reason. The more parts you develop in isolation in your "ambitious" project, the higher the odds are that when it comes time to put them all together, they won't go together. Games have the extra problem that they can both technically fail to go together as expected, but they can also artistically fail to go together as well, making it even riskier to do this in gaming. Many is the game where the obvious fault lines between the various pieces are plainly visible in the final product. (Heck, The Ubisoft Game™ that they keep remaking and just slapping new skins on is all but a game structure designed to make this approach possible, which is basically why they keep remaking it over and over; it's not that they're artistically committed to it, it's that they've probably structured their entire game making organization around it and the rest is just Conway's Law.) I still see little reason to expect Star Citizen to ever be anything like the hopes and dreams. I still expect that whatever finally comes out of this process will be profoundly disappointing. The process just can't work.
    • KingOfCoders 5y ago
      I do think if they "deliver early and then iterate on." people would lose interest and it would be much more difficult to raise money. PS: I've introduced Agile in several companies as CTO, no need to convince me ;-)
      • jerf 5y ago
        In this situation, I'd fully expect them to deliver something early, and then sell another game in the next generation, or sell DLC, or something like that. It's more-or-less a proved revenue model; nobody's quite doing something exactly like Star Citizen, but there's plenty of games that are "the previous game's engine and possibly content, but more". It's popular to hate on sequelitis, but I actually often enjoy those games, because the developers are not struggling just to get the engine to do what it is they wanted or learn how to do the basics, and are now creating a game quickly and confidently based on experience.
        • georgeecollins 5y ago
          That just invites the disappointment of Star Citizen being like other games. As long as it is never finished it can potentially be completely revolutionary.
        • KingOfCoders 5y ago
          "It's more-or-less a proved revenue model;" Excatly, and it will exactly produce the games we currently have.
  • AlexandrB 5y ago
    > We'll see if they can generate money for the next 10 years, I hope they can. Even if they keep going to 10 years, they're doomed. To be relevant 10 years from now, SC is probably going to have to switch engines. That will probably mean starting from scratch on many game systems and assets. There's a reason you don't see many (or any?) successful games that have a 10+ year development time.
    • georgeecollins 5y ago
      I don't know if they have to switch engines in ten years. You could have made a game in 1997 with Unreal-- I can verify this because I was in a meeting with a demo at Activision where we considered this-- and Unreal is still a viable engine in 2021. Game engines went through a period where they evolved very quickly, and they are still evolving. But the rate of change is slower, like word processors. It starts to make more sense to evolve them rather than replace them.
      • BlueTemplar 5y ago
        Wait, it's the same Unreal evolved over the years, rather than brand new versions started from scratch ?
        • georgeecollins 5y ago
          That is a Ship of Theseus question I can't answer.
    • m0llusk 5y ago
      They already have plans to switch engines in the near future. That is in the progress tracker mostly as "renderer".
      • zlynx 5y ago
        That isn't exactly switching engines. That's the Vulkan renderer they're working on. It is a component of the same engine they're already using.
  • Bombthecat 5y ago
    I have a feeling that star citizen will also release in 3d the same time as time 2d release..
• spywaregorilla 5y ago
  > I've seen videos on Star Citizen talking about new systems they're adding like being put in prison and escaping On its face, this seems like an obviously awful idea. Escaping from prison the first time sounds awesome. Escaping from prison the fifth time sounds super boring.
  • zionic 5y ago
    It adds a consequence to griefing/PVP. If you’re a pirate who has been to prison multiple times you really don’t want to go back… so your behavior is different.
    • cletus 5y ago
      Hot take: trying to appeal to both PvP and PvE players is the biggest mistake game designers make. History is littered with the corpses of "WoW killers" in the MMORPG genre and nearly all of them touted PvP as their killer feature, usually some form of world PvP. And it never works. Even WoW largely moved away from world PvP in favour of sandboxed PvP (ie arena, battlegrounds). This focus on PvP is my biggest concern with Ashes of Creation. The reason it doesn't work is because of people. People do things in PvP because there are no consequences. You don't really die. You can communicate outside of the confines of the game. You know there are no consequences. This leads to antisocial behaviours like griefing even though the griefer gets nothing in-game for doing so. Many have tried to make in-game consequences to deter griefing and they never work and (IMHO) never will work because in-game isn't reality. Death isn't permanent. Even the permanent death of a character isn't permanent. Game designers spend so much effort on these systems to appeal to the minority of players and it literally kills games. But no one seems to learn this lesson. Or it's just hubris that "my game will be different". So what Star Citizen should do is just not have open world PvP, at all. That requires no development effort whatsoever. Maybe you could have an arena or some BG like concept but those are optional and can be added later. No system will eliminate pointless griefing and you just alienate those who don't want PvP.
      • wlesieutre 5y ago
        Agreed with all this. There was at one point a notion of a "PvP slider" that you could turn down to reduce encounters with other players (I assume via instancing) but it's gone away in favor of a totally in-universe "crime stat" and law system. Predictably, it does fuckall because the defense turrets on stations can't even hit anyone. I think the plan is for all landing pads to eventually be replaced with hangars so at least the pad ramming greifers will have to wait until you've gotten in your ship and taken off before they can ruin your fun for cheap entertainment.
• nixpulvis 5y ago
  I am a huge E:D fan, but they really botched the last expansion, to the point I no longer play at all. I get the feeling they are starving for programmers and designers.
  • cletus 5y ago
    I've honestly been meaning to get around to playing E:D for years but it never happened. First I tried No Man's Sky at I think the Atlas patch, which is the point where it started to become really good. And then... other stuff. Part of me was turned off by how long it seemed to take to travel between systems. I saw some streamers play this and taking an hour to do something like that is just way too much for me. I was excited about the idea of the new expansion. Like being able to walk around in a world you can fly in seems like such a good addition but I've come to realize that you're really developing a completely different game with almost no crossover.
    • lokedhs 5y ago
      That's true, and I think FD knows about this. After all, it took many years for them to deliver it, and it's pretty much presented as a hame of its own. But they had to develop this. The fans have been asking for it since forever. I think that what the fans actually really want, isn't just the ability to walk around their ships and look at space stations up close. The FPS game that is built around it isn't actually that interesting to most ED players, and I think the people who will be playing it is a different category of people. I haven't done much walking around since it's giving me single digit performance on my 4k screen, so I need to get a new graphics card. The flying part is perfectly fine at 60 fps at 4k.
    • apetrovic 5y ago
      My main problem with E:D is that you can't casually jump in and play for 20-30 minutes. I'm just a casual player who juggle work, parenting, some side projects and occasionally I have enough time to play games. But if the pause between two E:D sessions is more than a month (and usually it is), I need to sit down and do my homework - where am I currently, what I want to do and then start playing. So when I have time to play, I usually don't have patience to do everything I need to do, and just get Oculus and hop in in some training mission to look around for couple of minutes. The game is so pretty, and Frontier somehow nailed ship physics, at least for me. (To me Elite Dangerous is the VR experience. Anyone who love space and have a chance to try E:D in VR absolutely should do it. I refuse to play E:D in 2D, and I'll probably give Frontier money for the new expansion even if I will not play it for many months just in hope that the game will stay around in years to come to have a chance to scratch my space itch)
• notjustanymike 5y ago
  > 7 weeks: Enabling support for AI janitors to use multiple tools in either hand. I think I see your point.
• wiz21c 5y ago
  cletus i'm bored... ? ah nnaaah... Klytus I'm bored !
• bob1029 5y ago
  In my opinion, constraints (especially money & time) are critical for sustaining the creative spirit. If you aren't at least a little bit hungry or challenged, your brain is going produce some lazy uninspired trash that only happens to look fun on a 3 minute youtube trailer. If you are constantly trying to push some notion of a gigantic, ever-expanding open world, then someone is still going to have to paint within those confines in order to build a meaningful experience. The bigger you make it the harder it is to do this. If you find yourself in this position (tons of money & time), maybe double down on the idea that you might suck at building engaging creative experiences, but do have the ability to produce profoundly capable tooling & engine code. License the tech out to someone who has a more reasonable creative vision.
  • ASalazarMX 5y ago
    > If you aren't at least a little bit hungry or challenged, your brain is going produce some lazy uninspired trash This resonates with me. I know from experience that being comfortable stifles your creativity. I've felt more creative and focused while uncomfortable, be it by resource constraints, heartbroken, lonely or angry. At my age I prefer comfort, but I understand why some artists deviate from the norm, and even behave as if they were deliberately seeking a tortured life.
  • dash2 5y ago
    OK, but what about Dwarf Fortress? Tarn Adams has been working on it for 20 years, and though without making much money, money wasn't really the constraint. And he really has created a gigantic ever-expanding world.
• neversaydie 5y ago
  Yep. Never had much hope for Star Citizen and only moderate interest as a consequence, but my particular remembrance is some random line in one of the dev updates a while back. It mentioned how environment humidity would affect character endurance. Coming on top of many, many similar lines, that was pretty much the "yeah, this isn't going to work out" moment for me. It's stuck in my mind as a one-liner memento mori of sorts ever since.
  • castlecrasher2 5y ago
    Mine was their video of how they decided to spend months building their own headview algorithm instead of using the industry standard. The best part was that their end result is comparable and wasted months of effort getting it.
• deleted 5y ago
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• bane 5y ago
  It's also a leadership problem. Too much money can be a good problem to have, but it requires leadership that can drive focus and delivery. It's clear that isn't what Star Citizen has.
• MR4D 5y ago
  > Star Citizen is a cautionary tale about how too much money can be a curse. Star Citizen should be a B-school case study about how to raise money and make a good living doing what you enjoy. The fact that they continually raise money over years is telling that RSI is a huge success. [0] [0] - https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-03-15-star-citizen-reaches-USD350m-in-crowdfunding-after-record-2020 https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-03-15-star-citiz...
  • georgeecollins 5y ago
    I think it is interesting to see how much people want the dream of a game, the evolving story, and the community. It is a great example of the things people want from gaming-- and life I guess. The closest thing I can think of is Minecraft, which IMO is a 100x better game but still you can't play it forever. People loved the creativity of it, but even more they liked the idea and the story of the creativity. How many times did you see in a feed that some kid made a computer in minecraft, a display, a life size battleship or tv spaceship. I am sure people see those stories-- think I could do something like that-- and go back to the game. The dream informs the play.
    • platz 5y ago
      Making a computer or a display or many of the huge replicas in minecraft isn't creative. They are just technical achievements.
      • handrous 5y ago
        Do you feel this way because the behavior's largely imitative, or because it's happening on a computer? Is designing and building a replica of a Boeing 747 with LEGO also not creative? Or making some kind of Rube Goldberg machine with LEGO Technic parts and junk from around your house? I would expect not, under this framework for what is and is not creative. Where's the line, though?
        • platz 5y ago
• username90 5y ago
  The goals of ashes of creation are relatively modest though. It is basically a regular mmorpg but with a few different game design decisions. Many of the features looks big at a glance but when inspected further you realise that they don't do that much. Games with fully player built towns, sieges and destruction already exists, you just take one of those and add some pre crafted buildings to towns, and so on. Still, making everything required for a regular mmorpg takes a lot of time and effort and most doesn't deliver a quality product, so it is still very likely it wont be great.
• have_faith 5y ago
  No Man's Sky has come a long way and you can call it a complete game now but they seem to have pivoted somewhere along the way into focusing on base building, multi player aspects, etc (going after the younger minecraft crowd?). It's still fun but the planet variation, story and minute to minute gameplay is very shallow even after all this time. I find it hard to feel motivated by anything in the game. It is a great looking game though and exploring can be fun until the repetition sets in.
  • cletus 5y ago
    It's interesting you say they've focused on base building because (IMHO) they need to double down on this. It's come a long way but it's still so awkward to build bases and do basic things like flatten ground, snap a lot of base components to wood/cement/metal sections and so on. Also they do things no one asked for like limiting teleporter range. I understand your point about there not being a lot to do. I mean you're not wrong and if that's what you're looking for, I understand it may not be for you. To me, NMS is really about just chilling out and doing stuff. That stuff is largely self-directed like finding the right kind of planet ofr a base, building that base, getting the ship you want and fully upgrading it. You don't need to do any of that but if you enjoy that you can. Being open in this way is a key part of fostering emergent player behaviour. It's also completely OK to play it for awhile and then decide you're done. Personally I've played >200 hours. Every major patch changes and adds to the major storyline so it can be worth starting a new game to see what that's like.
  • skohan 5y ago
    I also found the game to be extremely underwhelming. It seems like they have added a lot of features, but there's still no core compelling gameplay loop. Also it's the worst type of procedural generation, where after a while you can practically see the perlin noise everywhere. IMO the most interesting thing about NMS is their marketing story. They were able to achieve enormous hype before launch, and since then they've been able to continuously grab headlines with the redemption narrative. I would love to know who's doing their marketing/PR because I believe they are very talented.
  • spookyuser 5y ago
• waynesonfire 5y ago
  i've come to accept that this IS the game--an idea that backers get to observe, are included in the development, and play the game in their imagination. You're paying for the buy-in to be part of a development process and feel like you're making a contribution via feedback and alpha gameplay. the company has made massive investments tech just around this feedback loop and to entertain these backers. it's a core to what they're doing. unfortunately, this is not how it was sold when they first launched but that ship has sailed. this is like WWF of game development. it's fake. now you get a progress tracker that's fukin versioned to further feed you packets of endorphins to build up this imaginary world that doesn't exist.
  • wavefunction 5y ago
    What was sold when they first launched was boring af but... the promise beyond that was worth backing the game. I logged in a few days ago (and I won't lie that they have a significant amount of work ahead of them) and I enjoyed myself. As I always do. I have enough real life commitments that my entire identity is not based around gaming, buying games, or complaining about games.
  • lowdest 5y ago
    Echoes of 2003 when we were forming corporations and organizing ranks and building websites for EVE Online before it was actually released. Except that game actually released.
• Grakel 5y ago
  Every time I reinstall No Man's Sky, I immediately go "Nope, not gonna stand here and mine with a laser for hours at a time." What a lame mechanic. It should be like StarCraft where you have drones do it from the beginning.
• rm445 5y ago
  Also, for anyone who just wants to fly and shoot without the grittiness and over-realism of No Man's Sky, check out Starlink: Battle for Atlas. I love that there's this spectrum of space games in the last few years. Starlink is a fun little game, with a bad rep due to the toys-to-life aspect. (Though also, if you like the toys, they're cheap/clearance nowadays).
• xioxox 5y ago
  There are also the X3 games from Egosoft (e.g. Terran Conflict/Albion Prelude), which are great fun for building a space trading empire, exploring, waging war or being a pirate. Warning: they can suck up a lot of time. They aren't the easiest to learn games and there's a lot of modding potential. They started with a lot of bugs, but are much more playable now. X4 Foundations is the new release, but I haven't tried it personally yet.
  • MrZongle2 5y ago
    I had heard great things about X3 for years, so I picked up X4 on release. Major mistake. The game was buggy, and the worlds cold and lifeless. The fanboys excused it as "well, every Egosoft game is released like this... but it gets better after a few updates...." Haven't played X4 in a long time. I've heard its better, but I would caution people interested in purchasing the game to do their research, and only buy it on sale. And never buy an Egosoft product within 6 months of release, at a minimum.
    • notjustanymike 5y ago
      Yep did this as well, but knew full well it wasn't ready. Checked back this year, lo and behold a full and wonderful game. It's just how Egosoft works apparently.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• SkyMarshal 5y ago
  >I've seen videos on Star Citizen talking about new systems they're adding like being put in prison and escaping and all I can think of is that this sounds cool but why are you spending any effort on this before you have a core game? This has been my impression too of Star Citizen for years now. I won't be surprised if they soon jump on the crypto bandwagon and start auctioning off ships as blockchain NFTs. Still can't use them in a working game, but you can trade them on crypto markets. It could be interesting to see markets apply sophisticated valuation tools to the net present value of future Star Citizen cash flows. I bet clever financial engineers could figure out ways continuing the funding and delaying Star Citizen's launch indefinitely.
• Zenst 5y ago
  Feature creep, though in a way in which that feature creep is used to keep people hanging on and reel in new investors. It has in near on become it's own business model. Difference from releasing and then adding updates every so often, they just keep tweaking, tuning and when you keep going on feature creep, you end up striving for perfection, which makes getting a balance right very hard. However, they seem too of done all-right as a business, even if they have a rolling beta. Though as it's beta - people are more accepting of bugs than they are if released and they await a patch/update to fix bugs. That in itself makes things different from a user perspective in a way that advantages the writers, also less pressure. Elite Dangerous took the more release and then add updates to maintain momentum. A more common approach and how many investors would hang on for all these years, yet for Star Citizen, when the investors are users and the extra's the offer sure do tap into that Whale momentum income and really does seem like a whole new approach to business the way it is panning. Though Kickstarter seem to of coined that.
• admax88q 5y ago
  I think its less a tale about too much money, and more of a cautionary tail about the importance of project management.
• EarlKing 5y ago
  I'd say Star Citizen is more of a cautionary tale about putting blind faith in someone just because of previous results. Chris Roberts has previously delivered, but in all cases where he has it's been where he's been under someone else's direction. Without someone to constrain him he tends to constantly expand the scope of his projects. If people knew about his involvement in the debacle that was Starlancer/Freelancer then they would've seen this coming. So no, it's not a matter of being 'too ambitious'. It's a matter of shifting the goalposts and expanding the scope of your project to the point that it never actually ships. When he had someone to stop him from doing that he delivered. Without that, he just keeps soaking up money as long as people will enable that behavior.
• Tom_neverwinter 5y ago
  What's really interesting is how long cletus has had an account pushing hate on this game.. While employing the tactics they claim this game is.... Project? Logic fallacies.. Then posting that this is some unique user on their hate bait reddit.. .