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It's definitely not a scam, just a highly ambitious project that spends more time on mechanics and infrastructure than content. The ships by themselves are wor

by aeonik 2y ago

It's definitely not a scam, just a highly ambitious project that spends more time on mechanics and infrastructure than content. The ships by themselves are works of art. And their main funding apparatus, so of course the put an inordinate amount of effort towards this. The bugs are definitely a problem, though they are migrating the entire infrastructure at the moment into a highly available cluster that is intended to keep all players on a single persistent universe like Eve online. The combat is pretty good, but much of the game breaks down because of poorly performing code/servers. I think their current clusters accumulate a lot leaks that eventually degrade the experience. I'd honestly be very curious what their internal architecture looks like in more detail.

aucisson_masque 2y ago
Cmon, I sure hope with 750 millions they managed to hire artist to make ships. That’s maybe a few dozen or hundreds of thousands of dollars. In 10 years with that amount of money surely they could hire very talented people to manage development of server backend. The state in which the game is currently is a disgrace. It should be done or close to the end, not still at the beginning where you’re trying to make everything persistent. The infrastructure is what takes the most time and what you build first, like a house foundation. Instead they made the roof and the wall, sold them with lots of promise and now are working on foundations. I sure wouldn’t trust or buy from a such a contractor.
- aeonik 2y ago
  I played Chris Robert's stuff starting with Wing Commander in the early 90s. A lot of us did. He's not a scammer, we know who he is, flaws and all. The project might fail, though I don't think it will, but it really doesn't make sense that he would be running a scam. He wants this game as much as anyone. Technical mistakes and all that kind of stuff make sense and aligns much more with what I have seen over the course of my career. I do agree that they could move faster on the backend infrastructure if they had the right talent, but they started off really small over 10 years ago. They basically bootstrapped all their knowledge and talent.
harrall 2y ago
I remember an ambitious project that spent more time on mechanics and infrastructure than content… Starbound. And in the end, there was no game.
- aeonik 2y ago
  Star Citizen is playable now. The community overwhelmingly voted for the scope screep. Myself included. They could freeze the features now, fix the bugs, and finish the content and it'd be the best space game ever. But the vision is bigger than that for better or for worse. I really do have a lot of fun with it right now when it's not bugging out. Which changes like the seasons.
- dgellow 2y ago
  I don’t get the comparison, I’ve played a lot of starbound. What do you mean „there was no game“?
- gambiting 2y ago
  Wait....what? Starbound is definitely a game that's done and finished and you can sink hundreds of hours into it. What are you talking about?
moralestapia 2y ago
>It's definitely not a scam, just a highly ambitious project that spends more time on mechanics and infrastructure than content. That's twice or perhaps triple the amount of money and time spent on Grand Theft Auto V. A great game that consistently scores 9 or 10 out of 10 on every single list you find it. I found it easier to believe that is a scam that to believe they will put out a game twice as good than GTA V.
- usrusr 2y ago
  You can have just about any amount of inefficiency in game making before it's a scam. Some are both highly funded and effective, others only the former. Just look how little Zwift has achieved with a similar amount of funding. I mean sure, it's playable and and does what it's supposed to do, and played by thousands of paying users at any given moment, but the same was true when they had burnt through a tenth of that money.
- gorbachev 2y ago
  That's because they're now on something like v4 (v3? v5?) of most of the technology behind the game. They keep reworking everything over and over and over again. And at this point why wouldn't they? Their customers have pretty much shown they'll continue to pay for all of that rework in perpetuity.
- aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
  I have no interest in Star Citizen or any other MMO, and parts of its funding and development are shamelessly dishonest, but GTA V is not a fair comparison for a number of reasons: - In a broad sense GTA V has fewer gameplay features and smaller constructed playable areas: Star Citizen is a bigger game, it is natural that it is more expensive. Your comment doesn’t really refute the point that SC spends its money on mechanics and infrastructure (though it seems to me that they spend a stupid amount of money on cosmetics). - Star Citizen has fancier graphics and more detailed assets - RDR2 is a more relevant comparison here and that game was $500m. - The GTA V figure is for a single-player game and (on release) a fairly middling and empty online mode. It does not include ongoing development costs for GTA Online, which has grown substantially over the years. GTA V + Online would be a more appropriate comparison: the $750m for Star Citizen includes ships added in 2023, but the GTA figure doesn’t include cars in 2023. I would add that the $2bn estimate for GTA VI is credible based on Take-Two’s financial reports.

by aeonik 2y ago

aucisson_masque 2y ago

Cmon, I sure hope with 750 millions they managed to hire artist to make ships. That’s maybe a few dozen or hundreds of thousands of dollars. In 10 years with that amount of money surely they could hire very talented people to manage development of server backend. The state in which the game is currently is a disgrace. It should be done or close to the end, not still at the beginning where you’re trying to make everything persistent. The infrastructure is what takes the most time and what you build first, like a house foundation. Instead they made the roof and the wall, sold them with lots of promise and now are working on foundations. I sure wouldn’t trust or buy from a such a contractor.

aeonik 2y ago
I played Chris Robert's stuff starting with Wing Commander in the early 90s. A lot of us did. He's not a scammer, we know who he is, flaws and all. The project might fail, though I don't think it will, but it really doesn't make sense that he would be running a scam. He wants this game as much as anyone. Technical mistakes and all that kind of stuff make sense and aligns much more with what I have seen over the course of my career. I do agree that they could move faster on the backend infrastructure if they had the right talent, but they started off really small over 10 years ago. They basically bootstrapped all their knowledge and talent.

harrall 2y ago

I remember an ambitious project that spent more time on mechanics and infrastructure than content… Starbound. And in the end, there was no game.

aeonik 2y ago
Star Citizen is playable now. The community overwhelmingly voted for the scope screep. Myself included. They could freeze the features now, fix the bugs, and finish the content and it'd be the best space game ever. But the vision is bigger than that for better or for worse. I really do have a lot of fun with it right now when it's not bugging out. Which changes like the seasons.
dgellow 2y ago
I don’t get the comparison, I’ve played a lot of starbound. What do you mean „there was no game“?
gambiting 2y ago
Wait....what? Starbound is definitely a game that's done and finished and you can sink hundreds of hours into it. What are you talking about?

moralestapia 2y ago

>It's definitely not a scam, just a highly ambitious project that spends more time on mechanics and infrastructure than content. That's twice or perhaps triple the amount of money and time spent on Grand Theft Auto V. A great game that consistently scores 9 or 10 out of 10 on every single list you find it. I found it easier to believe that is a scam that to believe they will put out a game twice as good than GTA V.

usrusr 2y ago
You can have just about any amount of inefficiency in game making before it's a scam. Some are both highly funded and effective, others only the former. Just look how little Zwift has achieved with a similar amount of funding. I mean sure, it's playable and and does what it's supposed to do, and played by thousands of paying users at any given moment, but the same was true when they had burnt through a tenth of that money.
gorbachev 2y ago
That's because they're now on something like v4 (v3? v5?) of most of the technology behind the game. They keep reworking everything over and over and over again. And at this point why wouldn't they? Their customers have pretty much shown they'll continue to pay for all of that rework in perpetuity.
aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
I have no interest in Star Citizen or any other MMO, and parts of its funding and development are shamelessly dishonest, but GTA V is not a fair comparison for a number of reasons: - In a broad sense GTA V has fewer gameplay features and smaller constructed playable areas: Star Citizen is a bigger game, it is natural that it is more expensive. Your comment doesn’t really refute the point that SC spends its money on mechanics and infrastructure (though it seems to me that they spend a stupid amount of money on cosmetics). - Star Citizen has fancier graphics and more detailed assets - RDR2 is a more relevant comparison here and that game was $500m. - The GTA V figure is for a single-player game and (on release) a fairly middling and empty online mode. It does not include ongoing development costs for GTA Online, which has grown substantially over the years. GTA V + Online would be a more appropriate comparison: the $750m for Star Citizen includes ships added in 2023, but the GTA figure doesn’t include cars in 2023. I would add that the $2bn estimate for GTA VI is credible based on Take-Two’s financial reports.