I remember when Star Citizen first started being talked about I was worried I wouldn’t be able to run it on my GTX 770 lol. Both that gpu and any desire to play star citizen have been gone for years.
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I scoped my PC build in 2013 with a GTX 770 with Star Citizen in mind. Even then SC becoming a reality was a coin flip - I was (and still am) a huge fan of Freelancer so I knew what I was in for on a Chris Roberts project before I backed. Built the PC, popped $25 down on an Aurora, and figured we’d see how it played out.
I’m still using that PC as a daily driver, granted with an upgrade to a GTX 980 and some extra ram in the time since. It’s long in the tooth and is probably going to be retired by years’ end, but I laugh a little thinking about how that computer had a whole life in the time SC has been in development.
I did run the hangar module when it first came out, so at the very least I did get to see my ship using that machine.
Absolutely no way Star Citizen isn’t a massive scam. I mean, people can be incompetent, but
over $580 million
…seems like it has to be some kind of upper limit of incompetence?
It’s subject to absurd feature creep and overambition, in addition to regular ol incompetence.
The design goals for Star Citizen are kinda absurd. It’s like how the No Man’s Sky devs claimed at one point they’d individually simulate air molecules and a unique periodic table, except the difference is that NMS axed that (or more accurately, were never actually doing it) instead of spending the next decade trying to make it work.
At the same time, it helps that their supporters have essentially given them a financial incentive to keep adding feature creep instead of releasing, because if they release a game they can’t keep asking for more donations for increasingly lofty goals.
Like a fission reaction between cope, capitalism and hypetrain grease. Compels me though 🤔
This game is going to be No Man’s Sky 2.0. I’m calling it now. Watching that whole demo the other day, all I could think of was, yep, no man’s sky of 2023.
No disrespect to No Man’s Sky, because they got that game pretty much sorted. Not sure Bethesda will ever throw that much resources, especially with this news, at Star Citizen. I’ll be waiting for the first Steam Sale, and only if they have it mostly sorted by that point. Their track record isn’t awesome, in that regard.
You’re definitely thinking of Starfield, which is the new Bethesda game. Star Citizen won’t be No Man’s Sky 2.0, because Star Citizen is never going to come out.
You are definitely right! Can’t keep my star games straight anymore lol
And NMS eventually got good enough to drop a few dozen hours into.
It’s a different kind of beast.
NMS released. They put it in a box and said “This is the finished game”. It was then torn to shreds and the long road of updates was a redemption story for an already released product.
Star Citizen will NEVER be done. It will always exist in some weird development alpha-beta limbo. It’s never going to go on Steam or shelves as a finished product. This allows the developers cover to always say the game is in development as a shield against any and all criticism. From their perspective it’s kind of perfect. Fans throw money at it endlessly and the development never really needs to reach a coherent state of being finished. Why would they ever want to actually release a finished game?
You really think nobody legitimate would have blown a whistle on a project like this years ago? Yet the only opposition claiming to be of that sort of whistleblower, turned out to be an incompetent and even more scammy failed game developer than said slanderer claimed Star Citizen was, and said slanderer never actually worked for the developers of Star Citizen.
A glorified tech demo? Maybe. Admittedly 2022 didn’t look like a good year for the developers, but progress was and is being made on the game, with the main issue being that at the rate they’re going, they’ll still be developing the game’s “100 star systems” in 2033. That being said, World of Warcraft was in development - in a sense - for 20 years and is only now being made irrelevant.
You also have to understand that the first 3-4 years, they had to deal with the feature creep by both hiring tons of employees and upscaling drastically, and also by saying what should be said; enough was enough, even if funding continued to accumulate it couldn’t continue to promise anything and everything. The last checkpoint for new “guaranteed” features was in 2014. Then there’s the effect that COVID-19 had on development.
Is it perfect? Far from it. Is it a scam or a failure? Also far from it. If you want scams, take a look at “Star Atlas” and how it just added NFTs to the Star Citizen funding model and jacked up the price, while not even ever leading to any progress after 4 years and yet continuing to put out trailers and marketing material.
Keep in mind that from the trailer to the AMD “Mustang Omega” deal, all marketing for Star Citizen was word of mouth, and the AMD deal did not become a habit for it, while Star Atlas is nothing but enticing marketing material.
I get the urge to point a finger, but Star Citizen has been criticized by people who haven’t actually done any research for 7+ years now, and yet something like Line of Defence, Star Atlas, or even Voidspace are only uncriticized because they scammed away less money than has been legitimately put into Star Citizen to date.
If you want something to complain about, how about the sheer time investment that has gone into Star Citizen? At this rate, the Metaverse (VRChat, Neos VR, Decentraland, etc.) could displace Star Citizen’s appeal within the next 5 years.
EDIT: Even worse, Star Atlas is not providing even the most basic proposals for real gameplay. 1 year into its development, Star Citizen’s developers were proposing basic gameplay documents and lore. 1 year into Star Atlas’ development, the proposals were “trade currency X for currency Y and then trade Y for Z” like a few other NFT crowdfunded game scams.
To compare Star Atlas to something other than Star Citizen for perspective, look at the difference between Star Atlas and Decentraland; The former is focusing on the appearance of being fun and using doublespeak to hide that its all about the NFT speculation. The latter isn’t intending to rip you off (at least, not visibly so, I checked and people do not have good things to say about Decentraland) and STILL ends up failing because it actually is incompetantly-programmed, has no userbase and charges too much just to register a username. NFTs in gaming or the metaverse might have a future (see Viverse, for example), but not if greed continues to play a role in things. $100 of real money worth of cryptocurrency to register a username is not conducive to a metaverse economy, so why would a $500 imitation of a mashup of several Star Citizen ships be worth its price tag?
I think you’re thinking of Starfield?
I am. I’m an idiot.
No, you are not :)
To have spent that much money and yet not have anything really resembling a game, just a glorified tech demo, is pretty sad.
I have a friend who just got into Star citizen and I just don’t understand why. There are actual games to play.
I know what you mean, but even the idea of “getting into Star Citizen” doesn’t make sense to me because, well…what in the world is there really to get into beyond the few demos they released?
In fairness, the “Persistent Universe” stuff they have going right now can be pretty fun with friends, and the jank is kind of novel for a while. I tried to deliver a box and got a concussion trying to figure out how to get a drink on my journey.
Without friends or a tolerance for jankiness though, it’s pretty hard to get into. You really get the sense the devs have been figuring out what a wheel looks like the hard way, and still insisting on their own, uniquely terrible spin on things.
The thing is, there is no “actual game to play” that fulfills the dream that star citizen promises.
Well, at least maybe until starfield comes out.
Don’t forget all those jpgs they have too!
What do you mean, just a glorified tech demo? I thought it’s almost done??
I think you’re thinking of Starfield, because Star Citizen is nowhere near done. They only have one solar system, with only a few people per instance, terrible optimization, very little features or anything to do, etcetera. It’s very immersive (aside from all the glitches and low FPS) but there’s not much actual content.
I dunno, seems incredibly competent to me.
And it was all spent social models.
The development of this game makes construction of a nuclear power plant look timely and cheap.
This game is a scam at this point. Half a billion dollars and all people have gotten is a glorified tech demo. Yet they continue to sell ships for hundreds of dollars a pop.
I used to be a believer, one of my worst purchases ever.
Almost bought it when they posted the first Squadron 42 trailer in… 2019? The one with all those great actors. I thought it was almost ready at that point, at least the story part.
Then I remembered to never preorder anything, when it comes out, it comes out, and if it’s good, then great, I’ll get it then.
I got in pretty deep for a teen without a day job, 375 bucks or so. I eventually saw the writing on the wall and sold my account on the grey market, but even then part of me was saying “what if it finished and I regret the stuff I have up?”. We’re years later now and I’m glad I played it safe.
I was so excited 10 years ago for star citizen. I played eve online and was in a corporation there with my best friends at the time, I couldn’t wait until the day we’d all be standing together on the bridge of a ship and actually fly together for a change.
It’s just been a downhill disappointment since then, with CR seeming more of a scam artist with every lie he’d make over the years and SC getting further away from that initial dream. I tried it a year or two ago and it’s barely functioning, and even less of a game. I thought that by 2020 we’d have at least SQ42 for sure, but not it looks like they can’t complete even that.
And the community still eats it up and defends the project vehemently. I’ve never seen such a fanatical fanbase that can’t see what’s in front of their eyes. And I’m still not even angry about it… just sad and disappointed.
I always wondered if Star Citizen became something that, in an effort to fulfill the ridiculous laundry list of Kickstarter promises, just got away from CR. It seems like an impossible project that was doomed from the beginning.
Without a doubt. You don’t get to these numbers without trying to throw money at problems. But without proper planning and proper project management, that’s all it is. Throwing money.
I used to think that too, give them the benefit of the doubt and attribute it to ambition and lack of experience. I just don’t buy it any more, there’s a years long list of evidence pointing to outright lies and misinformation done by CIG, cases of nepotism within the company and overall mismanagement. Even few years ago youtube videos documenting all of these in detail started popping up, not that I need them since I was there in 2016 for the “SQ42 demo was only hours away from being ready but canceled due to animation issues lie”, followed by a sob story weeks later and then years of silence about state of sq42.
It’s just too much to excuse at this point, at least for me. If other people don’t mind it good for them but I’m done with CIG, even if the game is completed one day I don’t see them successfully managing and maintaining it so it’s fun to play.
Same.
I wasn’t convinced at the very beginning, but once they had the hangar demo out, with that insanely detailed, intractable spaceship, I was so impressed I spend about a hundred dollars on it to “help development”.
At this point I’ve long since given up hope this mess will be finished in a reasonable timeframe. I’m just glad Starfield is coming up and from the trailers and interviews it’s looking like a suitable replacement.
And since it’s the creation engine again, any major or minor mistakes will have a mod that fixes them sooner or later.
They rewrote their engine and framework multiple times, this kind of stuff is stupidly complicated to do. I think they originally went with Cryengine, Amazon Lumberyard, and whatever else by now. So yeah, the problem is, they are rewriting everything from scratch multiple times that they fail to make any deliverable. They basically netscape themselves to hell.
Lumberyard was just a fork of cryengine, that’s not what required a rewrite. They threw away all the FPS work that they hired a company to make for them, and redid that from scratch, and then also just rewrite systems all the time because they have no plan.
But even that was like 5+ years ago, ancient history by software dev standards. It’s hardly an excuse for the state it’s in today.
Well honestly, I remember they did mentioned that it require a rewrite on various parts for transition from Cryengine to Lumberyard though it been years.
That’s a great article.
Star Citizen Forever.
Remember when they released their roadmap…for their roadmap? Lol
this is worse than announcement of announcement of teaser trailer
So it’ll be better than all those games combined right?
… right?
:(
Does anyone realistically expect this game to come out?
Its supporters bounce between “It’s already out!” and “Developing such a huge game takes time.” depending on which stance is more convenient in an argument.
I mean, I wonder how much time is wasted refactoring with software and hardware that has been invented post the start of their development. Considering how long their development has been.
Well, you’re shifting from a fan POV to a developer POV here.
From the developer POV, it’s not wasted time. They are getting a constant stream of money. As long as they can tread water and make their motion look like progress they have an endless source of income.
And put on a consumer hat next. How about an offical release for people that have funded a game. Be that a 1.0 release with promised features in later updates. Their model at the moment is confusing for anyone outside of they diehard fan base. But why should they care right? As long as their commercials work, that’s what it’s all about.
Oh as a consumer I, personally, am not touching this thing with a ten foot pole.
I think the people who do continue to fund this thing are sucked in by the dream of what it could be and have developed a kind of personal ownership of the project in their heads. They are psychologically invested in seeing it succeed and you can’t convince them it’s never going to. And the developers are cynically sucking money out of them like cult leaders.
I purchased this game as a kid in college. Now I’m a whole adult with a family and career, while the game still has not released.
I was a $20 Kickstarter backer of this complete disaster.
Though, at this point, it’s been a decade of absolutely hilarious drama, so I really do feel like I got my money’s worth out of it even though I literally have never installed nor played any of the “betas”.
Star Citizen will go down in history as the biggest gaming scam ever.
It’s just revenue, the game is never being finished.
I wanted Star Citizen to work out so badly. In 2012(ish? I don’t remember exactly) when I first heard of the game I backed it because a space game where you weren’t just your ship but could move around and board other ships sounded like my perfect space game. Now it looks like Starfield may fill that want perfectly. Who knows though maybe one day in the future Star Citizen will actually release.
I’ve been playing Star Citizen pretty regularly for years, and still do. While it’s not progressing as quickly as I want it to, it’s definitely progressing… and so long as their current funding model keeps everyone working, I’m happy with that.
The thing that concerns me about Starfield right now is how little they’ve shown of flight mechanics. I’m starting to get the feeling that space flight is going to be a half-baked afterthought and atmospheric flight might not be a thing at all. We’ll know soon enough, but I am still not going to let myself expect anything more than “Fallout/Elder Scrolls in Space”.
When they showed off Starfield a year ago, it was nearly proven that the take offs and landings on planets are entirely “on the rails”. Same holds true after the recent Starfield showing - Note all the take offs and landings are a cinematic camera. I will bet it’s certainly fun to fly around in space, but it will be as deep as No Mans Sky, just without the ability to fly down to the surface. Probably a “warp” between systems by selecting them on a map as well. I bet it will be fun though! Star Citizen is an MMO that centers completely around flying spaceships, Starfield is all about an RPG throughout space with spaceflight as a minor feature.
Sing with me, Momma don’t let your developers try to be project managers…
I will never understand why how much a company spends on their products is considered newsworthy. Blows my mind.
I think people kind of just like laughing at how ridiculous Star Citizen is, and kind of rightly so. Over half a billion dollars and a decade in development just for what they’ve got is pretty wild.
To be clear, what they’ve got right now with sharded persistance and asset streaming is extremely novel on a technical level, but there’s no real substance to it yet as a game, just an impressive engine with an absurdly large scale and a tech demo running on it.
If they ever actually stop fiddling and make the damn game it’ll be impressive, I’m sure, but so will the earthshattering cost and scale of waste getting there. Then 2 years later someone else will put out something 90% as impressive for 1/100th the cost.
Ya, I agree that what they have is promising. I really do hope they can finish the game as I’m really excited by the ideas they have.
People like to call the game a scam, but they’ve actually delivered something tangible. I personally don’t think I’d enjoy the game in it’s current state (and it kind of shocks me the amount of money people have put into Star Citizen), but the fundamentals seem to be there for a real game. They just have to “finish the owl,” so to speak.
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Scaling up as a game developer (or any software company) is hard, but not “it takes a decade and half a billion dollars” hard.
Maybe I’m missing something, but what’s so remarkable about persistence? EVE Online has had persistence since before Star Citizen was even announced. It’s nothing new to the MMO world. Especially since it’s sharded, so it’s not even synced between shards/servers. It’s literally just numbers in a database somewhere. Where’s the novel technology? They don’t even have server meshing yet.
It might have been hard to code, but that has as much to do with their choice of engine as anything.
The level of depth with persistence they are going for hasn’t really been done anywhere. It’s difficult to really explain in a comment because it’s explanations they have made throughout 1000s of hours of videos and demonstrations. EVE never really had to deal with full ship interiors being seamlessly integrated into the universe. Most MMOs deal with purely static assets that can’t be affected where Star Citizen is planning everything is dynamic.
Ultimately, though, these articles about how much money has been spent on Star Citizen development are kind of inaccurate. CIG is making 2 games. Star Citizen and the single player Squadron 42. The engine work translates a lot between the 2, but the narrative work doesn’t and the single player campaign has been the primary focus for a couple of years now.
Servers that run the MMO with dynamic persistence would likely need GPUs for keeping track and computing vectors/matrices for each player/asset.
I always theorized that if Eve Online developers actually bothered, they could utilize their GPU on the servers to track all of the activity in space and they would easily support 10,000+ players on the same system without issue or time dilation (considering the capability of GPU today.)
Assuming you have for an example, a GPU Server with 8 slots for GPU, and each GPU is a 7900 XTX and you use Vulkan Compute for it. You got 192 GB of vRAM and absurd amount of computation capability with ~1 PFlops on FP16 and 528 TFlops on FP32. Assuming you have 100,000 players on the same system, that GPU Server would be able to handle it with ease even with theoretical complication that can results from programming on GPU. You could store ~2MB worth of data about each player’s ship for 100,000 players on that GPU Server alone.
Dynamic Persistence in MMO is basically Server with GPU that keep track of everything. (You can’t just defer GPU operations to the end-user, server have to be the one to do it.)
They are targeting a dynamically scaling mesh that will transfer ownership of players as they move across the universe.
One server could end up handling a single planet or a single small patch of space depending on how much activity is happening in the area at the time.
Regardless of people’s feelings, CIG is definitely moving game tech forward with a lot of this stuff.
