
‘Star Citizen,’ a video game that raised $300M but may never be ready to play - pseudolus
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2019/05/01/exclusive-the-saga-of-star-citizen-a-video-game-that-raised-300-millionbut-may-never-be-ready-to-play/#3d3007b75ac9
======
deadbunny
Eh, I chucked them $50 or whatever it was for what was clearly a 10+ year
project (at the time I gave them my money). I've had fun playing the modules
already released but if they never deliver a full game I can think of worse
things I've spend $50 on.

I've always seen crowd funding as chucking a little money at an idea that
interests you, if it works then cool, if not then it wasn't (and shouldn't
ever be) an amount I'm going to lose sleep over.

As for the people spending thousands of dollars on promised future digital
shiny things? I just don't understand it, why are you paying money for virtual
things that don't exist yet in a game that doesn't even exist yet? But then
I've never understood the (reasonably) recent trend for paying
hundreds/thousands of dollars on cosmetic items for games that you're actually
playing so maybe I'm missing something.

~~~
pjc50
Given the reception of No Man's Sky, I would say that the advantage of
spending money on things that will remain forever in the future is that they
will never disappoint you; they will remain Peter Pan objects, never to age or
confront reality. You're buying an aspiration, a dream, and if you can get
thousands to dream along with you, all the better. The real "game" is not some
bytes in a database nor pixels in the screen, it's in the head of the players,
and as such does not require physical referents to play. This makes it the
ultimate postmodern game.

Who needs virtual reality when you have hyperreality?

(I could go on like this but I refer you to Baudrillard on the hyper-real and
simulacra. Buying a virtual object that doesn't even have a virtual existence
is clearly a stage 4 "simulacra". This comment should not be taken entirely
seriously or literally, either.)

~~~
sgift
> Given the reception of No Man's Sky, I would say that the advantage of
> spending money on things that will remain forever in the future is that they
> will never disappoint you

I think it's important to add this: No Man's Sky turned out to be a great
game! It just took about a year longer than expected and in the meantime Hello
Games got the full fury of the internet. But they didn't stop. They buckled
down and worked on it. And it turned out just fine.

~~~
pjc50
Yes, I've got a good number of hours of enjoyment out of it - but only by
ignoring the hype and waiting until the first Steam discount. As a Roger Dean
art generator it's _fantastic_.

------
radcon
I was considering "pledging" to this game a year or two ago. Luckily I didn't,
and it was because the supporters on every SC forum were the most cult-like,
rabid fanboys I've ever encountered in the gaming world.

It felt like they were all using the same playbook to respond to any question
that could be considered negative. E.g. If you asked about the game being Pay-
to-Win, they'd all say "There's no such thing as winning an MMORPG, so it
can't be Pay-to-Win", which is an impressive feat of mental gymnastics when
literally everything in the game can already be purchased with real money.

There are people who have "invested" over $20,000 in this game. Other people
built gaming PCs _three years ago_ specifically to play it, most of which will
be woefully inadequate by the time it launches.

I hope someone makes a documentary about this one day. Or maybe that was Chris
Roberts' plan all along?

~~~
atoav
I never backed the game but I watch their dev videos on youtube from time to
time and quite enjoy doing so, because they are quite transparent about a lot
of issues as well as solutions they came up with. There are e.g. Episodes
where they specifically explain how they do project managment, which tools
they use etc.

From what I saw I didn’t have the feeling the game was in apathological state.
There seems to be a lot of movement (but it is a huge project).

Not sure if I would ever play it, but they came up with many interesting
solutions that seem to work better than many existing things out there and I
kinda like their way of sharing it without assuming the viewers are idiots

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
It started out in a pathological state, and it's been getting worse ever
since. The specific pathology is one of excessive scope. The game is trying to
do and be far too much, even with the level of funding they've gotten. They
seem to want to do Eve Online, X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, and Halo, but all in one
game.

Eve Online alone took fifteen years to get where it's gotten, and probably
spent _much_ more than $300 million to do it over that time period. That's
just for one of the three things Star Citizen is trying to be. By the way,
it's a lot cheaper to build out a game like this when you do it gradually.
Doing anything fast is generally more expensive than doing it slow, because
you need a bigger team and there is consequently more coordination overhead
and risk. You also run less risk of building the wrong thing when you take it
slow, because you have an established player base that's telling you what it
wants.

------
newsgremlin
It's really frustrating because there are multiple great games that have come
out of kickstarter like hollow knight and hyper light drifter, but many people
getting burned by undelivered promises has halved the amount of money being
donated to video game related kickstarters between 2014 and 2016 [1]. There's
a lot of potential and there is a lot to lose if indie game companies do not
get the opportunity and resources to make great games that are competing
against an oversaturated and established and continual growing industry that
is focused on micro-transactions and further monetization of in-game content.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdfunding_in_video_games#Re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdfunding_in_video_games#Reaction)

~~~
chupasaurus
The funniest example of a game from Kickstarter would be Elite: Dangerous - a
spacesim by a well-known author without most of the features Roberts tries to
deliver.

~~~
Razengan
What makes it the funniest example?

~~~
exelius
Because Elite delivers on a lot of the promises of Star Citizen, and it’s a
mature, actively supported game with a dedicated player base that you can buy
today. The fact that you can’t walk around with your avatar actually makes the
game more immersive; though you can deploy a rover on rocky planets without an
atmosphere. It’s lacking a lot of non-gameplay features, but the space flight
and combat systems are tight — the physics are accurate if you accept the
existence of “frame shift drives”.

I find any time you can walk around in an open world game, it ends up becoming
an MMORPG. Elite very much does _not_ feel like an MMO. You really only
encounter other players around major trading hubs and combat zones inside the
bubble, and even then not many due to the way they shard the instancing. Space
is empty and unforgiving.

~~~
jdc0589
as soon as VR headset resolution gets a little better (and we have GPUs that
can drive that higher res well), I might start spending a DANGEROUS amount of
time in Elite.

It's already incredible with the HTC Vive, and you definitely get used to how
it looks, but the resolution just isn't quite there (e.g. its especially
noticeable if you are trying to railgun someone from a significant distance)

~~~
exelius
It’s pretty boss on a Vive Pro. You’re right, the extra resolution and screen
refresh really help.

------
modeless
You can play Star Citizen for free this week with their "free fly" promotion:
[https://robertsspaceindustries.com/promotions/35-Free-
Fly](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/promotions/35-Free-Fly)

I installed it last night. It's a ~40 GB download. Right from the start it's
very confusing and quite buggy. I'm sure there's some cool tech in there but
they need to work on the initial experience if they want to attract new
players with a free play week.

I also think it has "too much realism" disease. It's delivering on the dream
of a space simulator where you can wake up in your bunk, walk to the flight
deck, use the computer console to request your ship, walk to your assigned
landing pad, climb the ladder into your cockpit, run through a preflight
routine, and take off. But is all that fun?

~~~
jcastro
A friend and I bought some ships a few years ago because it looked neat and
the scope was so huge that it could be fun. We try it every point release to
see if we can spawn in the same area, get in a ship, and then go do stuff
together. We figure even if the game is unfinished, get some friends in a
ship, find some pirates, and we can make our own fun at least.

The most infuriating bits is the intense attention to detail and realism in an
alpha. For example, you can never just do stuff in the universe, you have to
put your character into a mode so you can interact with objects, so you can't
just like, open a door by hitting x like you do on a normal game, you have to
point your cursor to the handle and then hit a button, and so on. Take that to
the extreme and you find yourself spending tons of toil trying to figure out
how to do basic things like ... partying up with a friend. Oops, someone
opened the back door of the ship and Billy didn't have his helmet on, so he's
dead and respawns back at Port Olisar so it will take him 45m to get here,
except his ship is out of gas so he's stuck in space forever.

Those kinds of mechanics would be fun, in a _finished game_ where that was a
balanced, but for now even sending messages to people is annoying because each
and every interaction with the universe is via their little holodevice wrist
thing that looks cool, but is unusable.

In the past like 2-3 years we've never been able to successfully pile a group
of people into a ship and move from point A to point B. People do it all the
time in videos and stuff, but so far watching other people play on twitch is
much more fun than trying to do it yourself.

------
skocznymroczny
The main problem with Star Citizen, is that many of the crucial promised
gameplay elements seem to be impossible to realize nowadays, especially when
it comes to network architecture. Many MMO games struggle with 100 players
fighting each other in the same spot. Star Citizen promised hundreds of ships
fighting each other, each ship being a separate flying level with rooms,
ladders etc. and people running within. The expectation is that you can blow a
hole in the ship and then board it, all on a single game level, without any
loading screens or special modes.

I wish the design team had courage to say "No, we won't implement that".
Instead, everything that the players suggested was met with "That sounds
interesting, we'd like to have that in the game at some point". This leads to
unrealistic expectations. Many backers that haven't gave up yet have the
unrealistic idea of the game in their minds, one that will never flourish. A
game to end all games, a game in which you can be everyone, do everything.
Whether you want to flip burgers on a passenger liner or lead an army to
unexplored lands, Star Citizen has got you covered. Except it won't, because
it's struggling to deliver the basic gameplay loops.

------
lbj
"This is not fraud—Roberts really is working on a game—but it is incompetence
and mismanagement on a galactic scale."

Beautifully put.

~~~
m0llusk
It is only mismanagement if it is judged by common goals such as returns for
investors and shareholders or meeting deadlines for release to customers.
Instead Star Citizen gives priority to the quality and richness of experience
and have allowed that to determine the schedule.

Under any circumstances buying into a software prerelease is high risk. In
this case the project lead has described this as his dream project and spoken
of how quality will drive the schedule. Expecting such a strategy to deliver
early or even on time seems optimistic.

------
raesene9
If anyone's interested in the financial side of things, as the companies
involved are UK entities all their accounts are available for free through the
excellent UK Gov site.

[https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08815227/filing-h...](https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08815227/filing-
history)

and

[https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08703814/filing-h...](https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08703814/filing-
history)

seem to be the relevant ones.

~~~
arethuza
Seems appropriate that "CLOUD IMPERIUM UK LTD" uses Coutts and Co.!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coutts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coutts)

------
michaelcampbell
> Those 100 star systems? He has not completed a single one. So far he has two
> mostly finished planets, nine moons and an asteroid.

Lord. I had no idea it was THIS bad. This game was my son's first taste of
Kickstarter pseudofraud. He got a good machine out of it from his dad (me),
but he's still bitter 5 years later not being able to play what was promised.

~~~
TheCapn
I had a big StarCitizen fan for a coworker for a while and I asked him what he
thought of that. His response was that the original 100 star systems weren't
as vast and detailed as the singular system they're building now. He says the
content and depth of the current system is far better than 100 empty systems.

I'm not sure entirely how I feel about that response. While I agree that fewer
fully fleshed systems are better for a game it feels a lot like they promised
things they had no clue about in the first place. Unless someone can possibly
link me a brief overview of the original scope vs. what is in the works now
I'm lead to believe my coworker had just been drinking the koolaid and will
hand wave any scope creep that this project presents.

------
RenRav
I remember backing a language learning game over 6 years ago on kickstarter. I
still receive emails about its progress and development, it's almost
depressing.

------
mtw
I was positive on crowdfunding but cases like this show that giving teams
money before they deliver is not good for consumers. It gives an advantage for
marketing-driven teams while there's no accountability and no hard reason to
deliver. See Kickstarter and Indiegogo with lots of slick videos but really
not much to actually use

~~~
vlunkr
There are plenty of success stories, among many highly publicized failures. I
don’t think we should write the whole thing off. When backing a product,
remember that you’re playing the role of an investor, rather than a consumer,
so you have to be more wary. When you pay to back an MMO, remember that it has
probably the hardest road to success of any type of video game.

~~~
raesene9
You're really not playing the part of an investor on Kickstarter or IndieGogo.

An investor stands the chance to make a profit if a venture is successful.

That does not describe the model of this kickstarter or any other one I've
seen.

If a kickstarter says "pledge at this tier and get x in return" that's a
supplier-->consumer relationship.

~~~
Retric
Money is only one kind of investment, regular exercise has a different but
still valuable reward.

Getting something that does not exist yet is the payout. Handing over money
for say a 1/3 chance of the reward is what separates this from a normal
purchase. But, hopefully you understand that risk going in.

~~~
raesene9
The comment to which I was replying implied that participating in a
kickstarter was like being an investor (from context, in the financial sense
of that word).

So we're talking financial investments, not regular exercise.

In the financial sense, an investment is where you put money in with the hope
of getting more money out. There are levels of risk, and generally the more
risky the investment the higher the expected payout.

That's not what kickstarter is, at all, as you have zero chance of getting
more money out (in this kickstarter for example)

you're giving someone money in exchange for the hope of a product downt the
line.

~~~
Retric
Nothing in that post mentioned monetary returns.

Still, you can get more value out than you put in depending on how you value
the output. Many kickstarter’s are not items that you can buy but rather art
projects. How valuable is it for something to exist in this world even if you
don’t own it?

Now, that’s less true if games or flashlights. But, even if that specific item
does not get created simply proving a market for it exists can provide value.

Consider, if 10$ helps creat a great restaurant near you. Simply being able to
eat at it would provide value even without getting a discount.

~~~
raesene9
So when someone uses the phrase (which is what I responded to)

"remember that you’re playing the role of an investor, rather than a consumer"

you don't take from it that this was meant as a short-hand for financial
investor?

If not then semantic differnce, but there is a persistent meme whenever
kickstarter is discussed on HN that backing is akin to financial investment
rather than purchase, and I disagree with that meme.

Sure you can back something purely for the hope that it will happen, and I've
done that, but you're not a financial investor in that product/service/etc

~~~
Retric
It’s descriptive as you are a financial investor as you’re investing money not
time etc.

I think they promote the term backers which is also used for people who donate
to charity. Unlike with charity you can get meaningful payout rather than a
token item. Still, the highest rewards are often symbolic in nature just like
charity’s “gold donor” lists etc.

~~~
raesene9
To quote [https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-
use](https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-use)

"When a project is successfully funded, the creator must complete the project
and fulfill each reward. Once a creator has done so, they’ve satisfied their
obligation to their backers. "

 _if_ a kickstarter has symbolic rewards, then sure that's fine.

But otherwise it's a contractual obligation to provide a reward in exchange
for money. Not a donation, not an investment.

~~~
Retric
A bond is a contract with specific terms and an investment at the same time.

The only real difference between a kickstarter and a bond is handing back
money vs handing back something other than money. Well, granted interest
payments don’t compound.

------
norswap
The world needed a new Duke Nukem Forever, and it got one. The cycle must
continue.

~~~
fluffything
Only this time the project is infinitely and forever funded.

------
nwhatt
I'll peek at people playing star citizen on Twitch from time to time. It seems
like the game crashes a lot, and it takes forever to get into actual action
(like getting your ship and leaving the atmosphere takes like 10+ minutes),
but the game has come a long way.

[https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Star%20Citizen](https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Star%20Citizen)

------
asdfasgasdgasdg
BTW, this article lists Pebble as a failure of crowdfunding. But . . . didn't
they deliver a smart watch? I had one once upon a time, and it seemed to work
fine, especially on Android. The company did not ultimately succeed, but it
did at least deliver on its promises. I'd call it a kickstarter success,
personally.

~~~
pluma
That really struck me as wrong too. The first kickstarter was certainly a
success, as was at least the second one too.

Pebble failed when it tried to pivot to a more explicit fitness-focus,
directly competing with Fitbit (though I'm not sure if this was not maybe
intended to lead to the acquihire).

I'm still happily using my Pebble Time Steel as a wearable that tells me the
time, notifies me when I get notifications on my Android phone and lets me
dismiss calls, quickly send canned responses to messages on WhatsApp and
control my phone's audio.

Ironically the only feature that seems to have stopped working that I notice
is the step counter (because pressing the "up" button on the watch face tries
to invoke it).

------
crankylinuxuser
I had hopes long ago when kickstarter first came out. Now, not so much. It's a
graveyard of 'almost succeeded', 'good idea but execution failed', and
'scammers'.

What I was hoping long ago was that KS would have been a place to buy shares
of equity, and be part owner of these ventures. Instead it turned into a "ebay
of almost buy". That way would have been a way of democratizing ownership
without doing a traditional IPO - yet also targeting people who believe.

(As an aside, the SEC also punishes people under the 1% class, by preventing
many types of investments to the rest of us. Note how IPFS's FileCoin IPO was
only for the millionaire class. Risk is risk, but the SEC prevents new risk
and opportunities except to the millionaires.)

~~~
b3lvedere
It is what it is. Ideas put into work by using money from (lots of) small
resources. Most are very passionate about it and really want to succeed, but
the risks are huge due to various reasons.

I have kickstarted a videogame that's still not available after years, but the
developer gives monthly honest feedbacks which have been very entertaining. I
don't expect to have a game within the next 3 years, but i don't really care
much. He got his adventure, i got mine.

I also kickstarted a board game that has never ever been finished completely
and never will. It works, but there is zero communication or updates. Just
silence. That hurted way more.

------
Kiro
I'm not a backer but I think people forget about what Star Citizen has
actually accomplished. It's far from vaporware:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgjTf41QAnY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgjTf41QAnY)

------
bovermyer
It's worth noting that you can play it _right now_. It's just not finished
yet.

~~~
canadacorner
It's terrible.

~~~
sgift
I disagree. Now it's opinion vs opinion. I could play a few missions, did a
bit of bounty hunting, a bit of mining. I've played "finished" AAA games which
had less.

There's much to do, but the game is in a far better state than a year ago.
Everything else is subjective and it's hard to have a discussion if all you
provide is two (and a half) words.

~~~
VoltairePunk
Please provide a list of "finished" AAA games that you've played that had less
so we can accept your opinion as viable.

~~~
sgift
Anthem for the most current example.

------
BlackholeHairs
Be careful with grouping/simplifying people into specific troupes. I have been
closely following the details of Star Citizen's development for years, and
even interviewed Chris and a few lead developers personally. They did have
problems prior to late 2015 but since then the company drastically improved in
a ton of areas (except marketing mistakes) as well as develop technologies no
one else has. The company is legit and so is the game they're developing with
backer funds.

But decide yourself, right now it's free flight all weekend which means you
don't need to buy the game to test it out. It's pretty wild to see what it's
like as a new comer, very different from other space games out there right now
even as an alpha. The official site to register for Star Citizen is the
roberts space industries website, and if you use a star citizen referral code
you get bonus ingame currency but I recommend to people to use this code STAR-
GN2F-6JLW because it's from a high level backer group that allows everyone who
uses the code to have access to an INSANELY large fleet, the site it's from is
enlistcitizen.

In any event, people shouldn't take the article for more than face value as
basically a tabloid piece, come to your own conclusion, try the game out when
it's free. Which is any week they do free flight, which is usually once every
3 months or so.

------
TadaScientist
It was September 2012 when a friend of mine and I pledged some money. I was
backer number ~ 2000. My friend jokingly said "We will have children by the
time it comes out". Guess what.

They could have avoided the expensive actors, changing engine half-way, and
they still should come out and say - we promised 1000 things. We can do 50 to
get the ball rolling and we will do the following 950 in due time.

I really do hope that they put together at least the single player. We've
spent money on the same sport simulators since '97\. What's $50-$60?

I am rooting for them.

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
They didn't really change the engine too much. Lumberyard is based off of
CryEngine. And I believe they did that to minimize work.

------
rado
What do you mean, "may"?

------
burgerboy
You can literally play it right now and it is awe inspiring

~~~
canadacorner
"they spent how much money and time, and this is all they have?!" awe indeed.

~~~
atoav
Even if they had finished and shipped that game 2 years ago without a single
bug and all the promised features it would’ve not been the right game for
everybody. This is IMO part of the very concept from the very start. Space
games are not for everybody. Even good ones.

I wonder how many of the people who dislike Star Citizen as a game actually
like space games?

Even with FPS elements, mining, trading and dogfights, space is a huge place
and it takes a certain type of person to enjoy flying around in a ship for
longer than a minute.

------
MrBlue
SC is playable right now. #FakeNews

~~~
swarnie_
Honest question - Is it anywhere close to a finished product?

