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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

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..

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..