
Six years later, Star Citizen is still raking it in - briatx
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-10-13-six-years-later-star-citizen-is-still-raking-it-in
======
SurrealSoul
6 years ago I was 20 years old in college. I got so excited a new a mmo to
play in space and drank the kool-aid. Dropped $150, played with my super cool
ship in my hanger at 15~fps having a good time looking at all the details on
my aegis gladius, watching the stairs come out of the ship and so on.

Eventually I could fly it, and it was cool but of course it was alpha and
there was nothing to do except drink more kool-aid. More ships, more promises,
more stars, more space.

Now, my same ship can land on planets, I can walk around and it's great.
Honestly it's pretty cool. The only issue is now I am 26, married, spend 75%
of my awake time working or with my wife. I don't want an mmo.

I am no longer the target demographic, and the majority of the early adaptors
are not either.

~~~
spir
Perhaps you will still enjoy Squadron 42, Star Citizen's single player
campaign that's an on-ramp to the MMO.

~~~
Paul_S
Squadron 42 was meant to be released in 2016. It's 2018. It's not getting
released in 2018, is it? Want to bet 10$ it's going to be released in 2019?

~~~
7000skeletons
That's $10 I'd rather save, my dude.

------
patient_zero
No better way to rustle jimmies than to mention the likely truth that Star
Citizen is vaporware and will never see the light of day. The more time passes
the more likely that is. Anyone not invested in its success can look at the
timeline of moves by the company up to now, the scope of the project and its
bloat, and especially the CEO, and reach the same conclusion. Nonetheless, I
expect to have this same argument with a starry-eyed dreamer 5 years from now.

~~~
Pfhreak
I agree with you and disagree with you.

I am not a hardcore supporter of Star Citizen, and I have not put any money
towards the game. But I have played the Alpha during their free weekends, and
they are slowly making me a believer.

I played a game with three of my friends where we loaded into a space station,
jumped into a multicrew ship, and headed out to find our way among the stars.
We were able to do things like jump out of the ship on EVAs into open space,
jam speeder bikes into the back of other ships and drop them out over the
surface of a moon, and generally do awesome (read: silly/idiotic) space
adventure stuff.

It's not really a 'game' yet, but they are pretty clearly putting together
some sort of experience that is very much playable. It's not enough to make me
spend money, but it's closer than anything else I've seen in the genre for
sure.

~~~
Agentlien
As someone who hasn't looked at it closely, does it still feel like a set of
diverse tech demos or is it beginning to come together as a cohesive
experience?

~~~
Pfhreak
What I've played:

You start in a space station, you have a set of four ships you can take out to
go explore -- a quick racer, a speeder-bike, a small multi-crew gunship, and a
mining vessel. You can fly around a single solar system at super-light speed,
doing missions, mining, pirate hunting, and generally doing space game stuff
(like deliveries, commodity trading, etc.) The basic game loops are there,
including player driven quests.

For example, I received a notice that a player had stranded themself on the
surface of a moon with no fuel, and needed transport back to the station with
some cargo. They were offering N credits. I accepted the mission, got a
marker, flew out to the moon and rescued them. They turned in their mission,
payed me my reward (I think this was automatic), and then went on their way
(presumably to refuel their ship.) It was super slick.

You can buy upgrades for yourself and your ship, and you can fly from space
station to the surface of planets with no loading screens or barriers. There's
little to no consequences for failure, so that part still feels very demo-y.
Lost a ship? Click the 'Gimme my ship' button back at the space station and
wait 10 minutes.

It's still janky from a performance and stability standpoint, but it's a
prerelease game, so expect that. (FPS stuttering, difficulty connecting with
other players in my squad, etc.) Initial load times are very long, and
sometimes UI elements don't work correctly.

~~~
kidsnow
>> payed me

Should be "paid me". I see this so frequently on HN, is this how it is taught
in school now?

~~~
Pfhreak
Nope, just fat fingered that one while typing up my response. I'll keep you in
mind if I need someone to check my posts for typos in the future though!

~~~
kidsnow
It was not meant to be personal, it was a serious, if off-topic, question. For
example, check out this search:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=payed&sort=byDate&prefix&page=...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=payed&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

------
Dunedan
I watched the game play demo they presented at the recent Citizencon
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-fkMHOyswU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-fkMHOyswU)).
As I don't follow Star Citizens development closely, it was a fascinating view
into that universe and the developers behind it. To me it felt they're getting
lost in all the little details on the planets, instead of concentrating a bit
more on the space and its use with space ships. After all, selling space ships
is what they make a lot of money with.

They're talking about an incredible level of detail on the ground (e.g. a
working subway system, physically correct ice cubes in drinks and plans to
receive damage, when you're in a room with a fire, which consumes the
available oxygen), but there was literally nothing about new stuff in space
(or is that already completely done and working?).

Given their ambitions I hope they succeed long term and will continuously
develop the game, similar to EVE Online.

~~~
danso
That’s been one of my red flags too, the lack of significant progress on
fundamental parts of the game, such as the flight model and even just the
combat AI. Nevermind the parts that will require real groundbreaking work,
such as the game-wide economy, AI, and shipmate AI. Nevermind the balancing
work. That they’re even thinking about how ice cubes are modeled really seems
to indicate that work is expanding to fill the time.

~~~
jessaustin
Expanding to spend the money that they've raised, perhaps? After all if
they've already raised it, it doesn't really matter _what_ they're spending it
on. In normal game dev they would have to make a game that people wanted to
buy.

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AWildC182
As someone who doesn't play but has watched it through its development, I feel
like the developers have a fatal weakness for shiny objects (not that anyone
needed me to tell them this). I'd be much more bullish on such an iteratively
developed mega game if it started out focusing on an MVP and added stuff from
there, instead of this discordant feature vomit. I don't think there's
anything wrong with the iterative model for game development (even "boxed"
games are doing it; see Overwatch, Diablo etc.) but it needs to be managed
sanely and developers shouldn't be afraid to redo stuff when the standard
changes or get too caught up in sunk costs.

~~~
rjbwork
Just look at Elite Dangerous or Rim World. Amazing, fantastic games that
started off very primitive, with the core of the gameplay at least prototyped.
And now, a couple to a few times a year, in both games, we get an update that
makes it more awesome.

And those effects are compounded - both games are far superior than other
games in their genres because they steadily improve and focus on the core
gameplay features.

Elite dangerous has had a working game for 6 years and has released at least
15 pretty big updates (with another one only like 2 weeks away). Star citizen
is focusing on ice cubes and the rest of the game isn't even really a playable
game.

I feel bad for people who are thousands deep into SC.

~~~
geoah
Difference is that a lot of people don’t care about ED just because they
released a flight simulator first. So for me ED will always just be that.

The promise of what SC wants to be is what is keeping people excited. 6 years
in and the demos are still amazing. It’s nice to have a game to hang your
hopes to.

If we actually get to play it one day I’ll br even happier :p

~~~
rjbwork
That's a really strange viewpoint to me. By that logic we shouldn't really
care about most things because of what they once were.

The U.S. because it was an up-jumped violent militia.

Linux because it was some Finnish dude's hobby project.

Nintendo because it was just some family company that made playing cards.

Things evolve, improve, and become far more than their initial incarnation.
And they may do so for decades. Bringing it back to space sims, I'd rather a
solid playable base that can be continuously improved, than a series of half-
playable cobbled together tech demos. But hey, only time will tell eh? Maybe
I'll revisit this comment chain and feel like a fool in a year. Or 5. Or 10.

------
Paul_S
All this has done was to get Chris Roberts out of debt and now seriously rich,
get his wife to star in a film next to Gary Oldman and give his brother a
cushy job. Delivering a game at this point would be killing the golden goose.
Chris is paying himself literally millions from your money and presumably
laughing all the way to bank. He has nothing to gain from ending development
as long as you're paying his exorbitant salary.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
All this dough and no time to work on the Linux port they promised from a
long-met stretch goal, or the only reason I originally backed it, something I
now deeply regret.

------
Pfhreak
There's a lot of negativity aimed at Star Citizen, but from where I stand they
are the closest to building the game that a whole lot of people want to play.

Note: Closest != close

The idea of getting a crew together to fly a large spaceship around is a
foundational piece of the sci-fi narrative -- from Leviathon Wakes to Firefly,
Star Wars to Star Trek. We want to play those kinds of stories, but that's a
challenging game to build. Star Citizen seems to be the first game to
seriously try and build it.

Do I think they'll succeed? I'm not sure. Am I really, really hoping they do?
Hell yeah.

~~~
eximius
Most polished maybe. Space Engineers is like minecraft in space. Some friends
and I have been messing around the last two weekends. We've mostly been
concerned with getting our production facilities up so I don't know how well
it supports multiple crew members controlling the ship independently (i.e.,
turrent control vs. pilot vs. whatever else)... but then again SC doesn't have
that yet either, I think.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Star Citizen definitely supports a pilot, turret gunners, and an engineering
station simultaneously being managed on the multi-crew ships.

That being said, there's neither PvE content on the scale to need that, nor
PvP density to support it either.

~~~
smcameron
My little one-man indie open source space game supports multi-crew, pilot
(navigator), turret gunner, engineering, comms, damage control, science
(scanning) and game-master stations. It's called Space Nerds In Space. I also
lack sufficient PvE content and PvP density, but I'm raking in $17 a month on
patreon.

~~~
rtisdale
Link?

How many players are supported at a time?

I frequently get together with friends and chill on some Discord’s and Slack
Channels for gaming.

I can probably scrounge a few people together to give it a go.

Also: shoutout to FOSS game dev. I help out on Cataclysm:DDA, which is also
rather large in scope

~~~
smcameron
[https://spacenerdsinspace.com](https://spacenerdsinspace.com) It's really
more of a LAN game. I've run as many as 20 clients.

------
Manheim
SC is a huge disappointment for me. It is not playable yet, even though there
are things to do if you log on. It looks like it has all the features of a
bubble - a hype. If this had been a normal project everyone involved would be
worried about whether or not they can deliver due to the continuous
postponements. It is not a normal project however, people are still "buying
the pitch". It's the idea of SC and the vision of SC that keep people
enthusiastic, and SC are feeding the hopeful. It is however suspicious that
they have changed their TOS to make them less customer (player) friendly in
the "rights dep". If they finish the vision I will definitively use my license
to try it out, even though they seem to take the "pay to win" concept to new
highs. I very much feel that the money I have spent, though, has been lost to
someone who did not succeed to deliver. That is not uncommon in early access
games, and is what to expect from many projects I and others help by
purchasing an early license. SC However is different, though. They seem to
keep on building the hype instead of coming out clean and say it as it is. The
game will most likely launch one day, but I expect it will be something
completely different than originally sold to me and many many others. I hope
they prove me wrong, but as of today SC is guilty of promising more than they
can keep

------
koiz
What a lot of people seem to forget is their backers voted to keep going:

[https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-
link/transmission/13...](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-
link/transmission/13944-Letter-From-The-Chairman-46-Million)

To a lot of backers this isn't just a game, they wan't to build a space
matrix.

Lets also remember that crowd funding is not the only way this game has been
funded, primarily yes but there's always been private equity and I wouldn't be
shocked if we hear about more in the future.

Star Citizen is the excuse to build a platform for a digital universe.

~~~
Krasnol
It's surprising that only 55% voted yes considering how many spend a lot of
money for nothing (nice pictures of items that may come) and still voted "no".

------
AcerbicZero
I was on the fence when Star Citizen first showed up, but in the end I avoided
it because the goal just seemed so absurdly over complicated. The Wing
Commander series was great, and Freelancer was tons of fun, but the idea of
having a brand new studio turn that kind of skill based gameplay into an MMO
was just crazy talk. I spent a fair amount of time in EvE so its not like I
hated the MMO idea, it was just too obvious the core idea was overly ambitious
at best.

If they had started with S42 as a single player game, with a massive universe
you could actually have an effect on (like X1/2/3, but you know, good), and
then said they were building out a MMO version of it, I'd have thrown my
wallet at them.

------
hartator
I got there early (big fan of freelancer), and played a bit. The game is just
technically bad for now. Like not even a pleasant alpha to explore. I won't
get my hopes up.

------
marak830
I'm so frustrated with star citizens development. Don't get me wrong I'm a
happy backer (only $20 so maybe that's why haha), but I spent months of my
free time writing software to work with star citizen, and due to the glacial
pace, I feel like it's a waste of time.

Full voice controlled copilot with onscreen overlays, voic support and fully
customisable commands - useful for the dozen or so pilots I was able to get to
test, but it's quite difficult to gain any sales when the game isn't anywhere
near where we thought it would be by now.

Oh well, at least I learnt a lot (my first software release haha).

------
kevining
I'm a backer of Star Citizen and I've gotten my value out of backing it just
from the community and all of the content that keeps coming out on the game.
It's been $50 for me for hundreds of hours of entertainment so far, much
better value than two tickets to the movies.

I do believe that there has been a bunch of mismanagement, which is a shame,
but I still look forward to playing it sometime within the next 5-10 years. No
game has ever been as ambitious as the scope of what Star Citizen aims to do.

~~~
freshhawk
I just came in here to sarcastically say something like: "This is a
fascinating new business model where the product is DLC trailers and hype and
the act of buying DLC but not playing anything".

I did not expect someone to say that non-ironically and be happy about it ...

~~~
wlll
You can play the game though. It's nowhere near finished, sure, but I've put
way more hours into Star Citizen than I have some other games.

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InclinedPlane
The core problem here is how one goes about seeking funding. Star Citizen has
been hugely successful in gaining funding, which has been more of a problem
than a benefit. Every new round of crowd funding or investment was married to
increased promises from the devs to deliver even more. The game had to be all
things to all people. Which is always easy to do hypothetically in the future
than practically in the here and now.

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Havoc
> including lifetime insurance, for £536.

uhm. Insurance? On your in game digital asset? Really?

~~~
koiz
There's in-game insurance, everyone and anyone can get it for any ship.

Some of the pledges have it as a bonus so you get it for free for that ship or
for a few months. If you get destroy you can get everything back for basically
nothing and faster.

Insurance isn't that big of a bonus but it solidifies your pledge. You tend to
see lifetime attached to higher priced or rare packages/pledges. Which is a
good message to send to backers that are willing to hand over 500+

------
7000skeletons
Star Citizen, aka Feature Creep: The Game.

------
ducreux
Why

~~~
Pfhreak
Because it's closer than any other game in the genre to the genre ideal. I
have not put any money in, but I have played in their free alpha weekends, and
that game is right on the edge of being incredible. (Where "on the edge" is
defined as, "Has a crap ton more work to go".)

Honestly, that game in its current alpha state has given me experiences
totally unlike anything I've seen in another game.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
That's the thing that's insane to me. When I think "hey, can I do this", and
it's something the designers didn't expressly intend, but because everything
is done to the fidelity that they've made possible... there's nothing
mechanically preventing you from doing so.

It's missing a _lot_ still, and the scope creep has been incredible. Who knows
when or if they'll ever meet even the basics of their original promises.

But for example, I found a strategy to board (and steal) spaceships that were
intended to be "locked", because I managed to get to an entrance that was not
locked, once. I watched some entertaining videos, like where people boarded
NPC fighters mid-flight, or parked spaceships inside other spaceships they
weren't really intended to fit into.

A lot of AAA games "cheat", where the visuals and the actual game mechanics
are pretty different. For instance, in Tomb Raider, a dramatic ledge sequence,
underneath, is just a couple arrow keys you can use to balance a value and
progress forward. All the wind, leaves, character movement, all of that means
nothing, it's just the art layer. Meanwhile, Star Citizen has dealt with bugs
like the flashlight coming unstuck from a pilot's suit midflight.

It's incredibly unique. And maybe it's an incredibly unique tech demo that
will never go anywhere. Maybe Crytek will take RSI for everything they have.
Maybe eventually someone else will take the reigns after they go bankrupt and
finish it up somehow with more manageable expectations. Who knows?

But it's the most interesting thing anyone's done in the industry in a long
time.

