SC: "Don't boot it up alone, you have no direction and don't know where to go." "It's so open-ended it's daunting" 9/10 ED: "Elite just didn't give me any direction." 4/10 SC: "The player base is just so starved for content they'll do anything, even play a shooter that's full of lag." 8/10 (really solid) ED: "A mile wide and an inch deep." 2/10 SC: "You don't even know what to do, cause the keyboard icons all look the same." "The UI just got really improved (it was garbage before)" 7/10 ED: "The controls just aren't really intuitive. It's hard to learn." 3/10 SC: "Literally anytime we try to do a quest of any sorts the game glitches out and we randomly blow up and have to do it all over again." 7.5/10 The longer this game goes on, the more its fans demonstrate to the American Psychological Association the effects of long term stockholm syndrome and the human potential for gaslighting yourself.
I think the scammiest thing about Star Citizen outside Squadron 42 is the whole "we're not even worried about 1.0" shit. Because by doing that, they've effectively immunized themselves to criticism of their broken game forever. Any issues that players have with bugs, missing features, or sparse content can be handwaved away by reminding you that it's not "done" yet. It really rubs me the wrong way that they have any kind of cash flow with a development philosophy like that. For pretty much every other "early access" game, the only money they can depend on is the initial purchase everyone makes to support the game. If they ever want to monetize it further, they have to actually finish the damn thing and then sell DLC or whatever. I remember when ARK got a ton of shit for trying to do this out of order, selling an expansion while the main game was still in early access. Star Citizen has basically been doing that for over a decade. I agree with you guys that this isn't really a problem today as everyone knows or should know Star Citizen's deal. If you give them any money at this point, that's on you. You know what the game is (or isn't), so it's hard to call it intentionally deceptive or scammy. But I still can't help but think of all the people that backed SC when it was more or less getting pitched as a normal video game that would function properly. I don't think anyone thought they were signing up for a barely playable, life-sim adjacent sandbox back in 2012, especially when Roberts was still pushing Squadron 42 so hard. And to your guys' point about the whales, I do think a lot of them have spent the kind of money they have because they're hoping and praying for that 1.0 that fixes everything. I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation that a game that's raised 700 million dollars would be past the Alpha stage after 12 years of development.
I was thinking that myself. The whole watch a VOD thing wasn’t relevant before there was even a functioning game, when having a hanger was the only thing that existed.
They are not informed, actually. SQ42 is feature complete and in beta. SC 1.0 is now being planned. 4.0 is coming out this summer and is a large portion of the way towards 1.0.
This is misinformed. They are pushing hard for a 1.0 release and they have been clearly communicating this intention. There is one major update left targeting a release later this year. After that they are pushing for a 1.0 release. A lot of the content they have been working on for Squadron 42 is now making it into the persistent universe (MMO) They planned from the start to make a lot of the technology they have been working on in the single player game also be usable in the MMO and since the Single player game is now in the polishing phase they have been pushing updates to port that content over.
1.0 isn't the point, doing what's not been done before is, that's the point and whilst it might not make sense to everyone logically, it's certainly ironic that the people whining are the same people that keep also whining about modern gaming being trash at every opportunity, the money doesn't matter, you can't take it with you when you're dead, it's taken 12 years for multiple reasons first was the 3 year screw up with a subcontractor building assets at different scale to the main studio, second is no engine does what was needed, so you have to heavily mod/customise an existing one and the third reason is that they are developing 2 games in parallel, one with most of the functionality whilst simultaneously supporting a separate online platform, that slows development down because it eats into resources, so it's a trade off in it's own right, which comes with the added benefit of being able to demonstrate features and functionality as proof of concepts to generate additional funding in order to continue funding the project.
Holy crap! I'm sure you can't say what game, but I'm assuming it is one that is still going and/or popular? Is it at least a game that has some sort of mechanics or gameplay? Just curious.
Reminds me of a player in China who spent the equivalent of one mil USD on a character in Justice Online, only for his friend to accidentally sell it for the equivalent of about 400 dollars.
I think the issue with Star Citizen is they kept expanding the scope without finishing the base game. Elite Dangerous has for sure gotten a lot bigger than it's original plan, but they released a full product to start then expanded
Elite did not get bigger, it didn't even deliver what they promised in the Kickstarter. Ship interiors, anyone? CIG promised way more than they should have, but to their credit they hunkered down and are trying to deliver everything they initially promised. There's a reason why Elite has had such a major drop-off in recent years and why most of the people who used to play Elite are now backing Star Citizen, and it's precisely because the Eagle Engine just could not scale to include some of the things that Braben and crew initially promised, and so instead of refactoring the engine like CIG did (which has been refactored so much they just call it the StarEngine), Frontier just culled content and put out a game and added modest updates since. It's the exact sort of thing that dampens people's perspective of crowdfunding projects because they feel they don't deliver on what they promise (and in Elite's case, it did not).
Except Elite Dangerous' base game isn't even comparable to what Star Citizen was/has been promising. I like Elite Dangerous, but it's "base game" is a less interesting Euro Truck Simulator. Star Citizen wants to create a persistent first person universe. That's been the goal since like, 2014. The scope hasn't really expanded since then, it's just taken a long time because it's an unprecedented amount of game and they've spent a long time developing the tools to actually realise that vision. Take some time to watch the dev logs about their planetary tech and server meshing. It's the kind of technology that's not been seen in games before. As a programmer myself I find the technical aspects of Star Citizen really interesting and can tell just how much work they've had to put into it.
@@Empty12345 it was feature complete (VFX, logic, etc.) at CitCon 2023 and since then has been content complete (music, narration, assets, cutscenes, etc.) few months ago. Now it's polishing and debugging phase, before preparing for the commercial release a little after. Late 2024 or 2025 my guess
About 10 years ago there was an article about whales in mobile games where the reporter dug pretty deep and supposedly had interviewed anonymous developers. Maybe you guys missed it, but I am sure you can find it if you are actually that interested. It was called something like "The truth about whales" or "The dark truth about whales". Obviously mobile games are different to PC/console games, but it's probably comparable. Long story short, in Mobile games they collected ALL THE DATA they could, and once you are identified as potential whale, they will use that data to create in-game items specifically tailored for you, both thematically and pricewize
I'm sure CIG does something similar, monitoring concepts that had/have a lot of traction and developing something along those lines with a wicked price tag attached.
Some people have immense amounts of money. If spending 1000 bucks on something that will give them a bit of joy is an option, someone will pay 1000 dollars.. If you have a package in your store that's like a "get everything, 2500 dollars" the whales will INSTANTLY BUY IT the exact same way that I pay .99 for an ad remover in a mobile game. Not having a 2500 dollar bundle means you're just missing out on whale-dough. Most of the people with immense amounts of money spend their days doing next to nothing. You don't get rich from work, you get rich from other people working for you OR stock your daddy left you/trust funds etc. There are tons of people like this, and their kids are the same, just spend hella money on whatever. Those same whales exist in other games as well, and I have no doubt that there are people out there who have spent probably tens and tens of thousands of dollars on this, and it has had zero impact on their finances. Rich people lose more than that on one night of gambling. Gotta milk those whales.
@@JimmyNuisance I remember the article specifically focusing on poor whales. People that don't have a lot of money, but spend it all on shiny items in games because developers are looking for ways to get them hooked... One lady in particular won an all expense visit to the developers studio but she couldn't afford to get a taxi to the airport to catch her free plane and all.
Star Citizen is the cautionary tale of the lack of a producer who puts feasible goals in a realistic timeline, and the folks running show don't care about time or a finished game.
Or maybe it will be the game that benefited from not having a producer constrain what is possible if you shoot for the stars. One will never know, until it is delivered or shutdown. A producer may have led them to have already released the game by now, but would it have been good? Would it have been a Starfield or a Cyberpunk 2077 or would it have been a Buldars(sp) Gate?
@@sevilnatas I'm referring to Star Citizen, a game that hasn't gotten a 1.0 release yet. Because the current version available to the public is way too rough to call a proper game.
@@TheSpectator64when a game has been worked on for 10 years doesn't mean it's "not good". Many AAA games coming out lately have been in the works for average 10 years regardless, it's becoming the new standard norm. Many gamers have zero clue how long and complicated game dev actually is. All you see is the trailer a year prior to release and assume that they've been working on it for 2 years.
I remember watching Bruce and Lawrence reporting on the single player for Star Citizen when I was a freshman in high school. I am about to graduate from college and it is STILL not out.
I bought an AMD R9 280 graphics card that came with a free ship promotion for Star Citizen. It's got amd branding all over it and all. That GPU is 11 generations old.
Bruce, Lawrence; you guys should really go speak with Space Tomato. He is a Star Citizen content creator & covers the game in a similar calm, rational perspective that you two do with other games. He is always reaching out to other creators to try and give them a really deep inside perspective on the game.
People should watch streams and videos prior to jumping in. I knew what I was getting myself into, so I capped myself at $70. I certainly got my money’s worth, but it can be a very frustrating experience.
I watched videos for a year before I made the plunge. I ran the game using a shadow account for two years and learned a lot. Then I upgraded to a PC that could run it. Five years into this and I'm still enjoying playing. Frustrating at times for sure! Seeing progress first hand makes a huge difference.
I think it's fine people can enjoy this, but I also think the more time that passes from a Kickstarter the less angry people will be about the thing that was promised vs what was delivered. Time has won the argument for the crowd of people who constantly disagreed with others complaining and defended the game saying "But it'll be there later." Even if they never get things they were promised (which, the outcome of a Kickstarter's quality is up to discretion, sure), people just get less angry about some things with time.
Lawrence, X4 Foundation is probably the closest you'll get to capital ship vs capital ship / fleet vs fleet combat where you can pilot all of those ships in your command and "walk around" in your cockpit. It's a way bigger game because its more about building an empire and economy, but it shows what could be if star citizen succeeds, but in a multiplayer setting but with the added value of FPS combat, interactions, higher level of detail etc.
I've been a backer for almost 3 years now and will continue to support the game development, not because I'm expecting a finished product in the coming decades, but because the dollar per smiles ratio is way up there. I can't count the times where I log in to do some menial tasks and end up being in a crew of 6 in a gunship, firing on NPC warships. Those who claim that there is no game, I'd suggest playing it first.
I have to say, I log in at least one a day, and even if it’s to leave my hab and fly out of my home station and just fly around for a min and come back… it’s why I back the game. I’ve responded to people who need help and have ended up in a 3 hour experience unlike any other.
Yeah a lot of times when I play there is something crazy that happens sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes great and its something you just never see elsewhere.
I don't know where Bruce is getting the 22 million players, but the star citizen website has a live tracker of the amount of people who have joined the universe at around 5.2 million. Making the average cost per player around $135. I love the game though and really hope squadron 42 isn't a scam.
Top Grossing Video Games: Fortnite: $9B+ in first 2 years. Call of Duty Series: $30B+ total. League of Legends: $8B+. Candy Crush Saga: $4.9B. Pokémon Go: $6B+. GTA V: $6B+. FIFA Series: $20B+. Diablo IV: $600M+ at launch.
Yes, good point. Not to mention, Star Citizen is really 2 games for that $700M and also, the $700M is both development cost and profit. For every game package and ship they sell today, those are dollars that won't be collected once the game goes live. Those people have spent those dollars and that money has been spent on development. A true apples to apples comparison would be to take Diablo IV and Diablo III revenue, then subtract development costs and also the development time and compare it to SC's total revenue and development time. Then you would have a good sense in how it stacks up to other games.
@@frankiecedeno3724 So is SC. It's not complete, but it is definitely playable. That's why the more playable it gets, the more money players send them has grown each year.
@43:54 This should be the mentality when buying any early access game. If you are buying it for what it could be... but not what it is... PUT YOUR WALLET AWAY!
I would tweek your comment, just a bit: If you are buying it for what it could be... but not what it is... DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, IT'S YOUR MONEY AND WHO AM I TO TELL YOU HOW TO SPEND IT!!...there, fixed, your welcome.
@@sevilnatas I 100%, unequivocally, agree with you. It also doesn't hinder my statement pushing for people to be more informed consumers. Crazy how that works. Cheers lmao
@@nonyabisness6306 True, Valve is smart enough to know they will catch strays if thing go down on their platform even if they weren't involved. Cloud Imperium Games has no such limitation, and as long as most of the buying don't get off the ride they don't have to stop.
@@nonyabisness6306 True, Valve does generally a good job at policing their platform. They’re incentivized to do that but it doesn’t mean they don’t deserve credit. But I gotta give a little credit to Cloud Imperium Games for somehow keeping the Star Citizen hype train going for a decade.
Those are complete games. 700 million is basically star citizens budget and the game is not even released. That is the issue. To compare it to revenue from finished products and microtransaction revenues is dishonest.
@@takayama8060 Revenue significantly impacts the budget. For instance, GTA VI is estimated to cost over $2 billion, even though Star Citizen's scope is much broader. Additionally, how much does GTA V earn from microtransactions? I imagine that’s where a substantial portion of their revenue comes from.
@@Dodo-hk2ue That is not how it works. EA, blizzard, and zenimax does the same thing. When a company aims to dedicate extra funds to a project that is to maintain the game for its future life cycle if it works out. It is not the actual development budget for the game. The GTA developed are not crowd funding their games. Again that is dishonest.
@@takayama8060 You forget that SC is not beholden to shareholders or a publisher. They can take as long as they want and I applaud them for that. Too many games get rushed and for better or worse, I want to see Chris Robert's vision be realized. I'd rather that than a half-baked game.
There's plenty of space, moons and planet surfaces to hide. You can get lost in a cave while mining for gems, just don't fall or jump into a hole or you'll die. Some people do not understand that you do not have to use the missions. You can go almost anywhere. Some areas are private property. You can cross the lines and get shot from turrets. Criminal NPCs can sometimes find you. There are risks.
I'd like Bruce and Lawrence to interact with some of the bigger SC content creators. The people who have way too much time to delve into the actual development of the game. Also the SC RUclips channel is also a place with a lot information. QnAs and devlog type videos.
Sq 42 not being at thing or not existing? have they not seen the Squadron 42 In game trailer from just a few months ago that was all over the internet?????
As a game programmer i may have some unique insight on s24 and star citizen. First of all it would be crazy to have these games finished by now, i know that sounds crazy but lets break it down. 2 AAA games one of these aiming to be an MMO, Built a studio from the ground up, building a game engine with tones of unique and untested tech, keeping star citizen "playable" at every stage of development. Normally with game dev the game is often much more broken and unstable then this up to the final weeks of development when it all comes together. Key feature can be missing until much later in development if they are dependent on tech that is not ready. Star Citizen doesnt have that luxury they had have spent so much time implementing feature to make the current version playable that have/will be rebuilt or replaced as new tech and development progresses. That essentially double there workload on much of the game. As for squadron 42 they are sharing a development team with star citizen from what i can see. This means that whilst on the outside we see 10 years of development internally thats only like 5-7 years worth of resources. You also have to keep in mind often when we see games announced they have had 5 years of development prior to showing a very very narrow slice of the game that they pushed specifically to showcase. So in terms of development they are actually still in a reasonable state. Its where i would expect a AAA game of this scale and team given the constraints and time taken. As for things like marketing, pricing and commination i feel then yes they can be criticized a lot. All considered id say this is very very far from being a scam.
You are a programmer just like I am an astronaut. You are just doing copy&paste of propaganda material, riddled with technobabble that actual programmers can easily see thru. All these nonsense you throw as an excuse: dude, we have already seen plenty of SC code. It is *well* below junior-level, and in fact, juniors I trained wouldn't write something so bad. And no, it is a complete write-off. There is no fixing that mess, no matter what marketing tells you to parrot.
@@vcc_pdr no need to be so hostile. Doesn't matter to be If you believe me. I also avoid anything technical in my post so no idea where your seeing technobable
@@dragonCASTjosh Technobabble is defending their "technologies" which are just things that already exist, but with a new name. Like persistence which is just a DB+API+glue code, and even beginner developer can do that. And any other nonsense, too many to list them. "Build a studio from ground up" - that is just a Bingo card item. You should have added "they walked 3 miles in show, both ways".
@@Shawnsrumi Show me their github profiles. I don't want to look at videos using technobabble to defend technobabble, we have CiG already. I mean; it would be impossible for a company lying for 12 years to pay someone and pretend to be an expert, right? 😉
@@vcc_pdr it's not as simple as using a normal database in this case due to performance requirements and scale. Persistence was also not a huge hurdle for them. The bigger issue is dynamic server messing on a multi-solar system scale. I can't think of a another game that does Persistent single shard simulation on the scale they are trying. It's not that technologies don't exist its that current solution don't have the scale and performance for there goals. Networking is not my field but I know there are not many devs with mmo experience. I also know cryengine 3 that they are based on really struggle past 32 players due to how it handles its replication. My experiences are in graphics and gameplay so I can speak in detail on the rendering challenges of planetary and solar system rendering in addition to how many of the gameplay systems currently in the game will not scale to an mmo but an mmo implementation would not work in the current limited player counts.
I dont know if it was said anywhere in the comments yet but as of around a year and a half ago you cant buy Squadron 42 as an addon or standalone anymore. the only way to obtain it is through Packs like the UEE explorer pack for $1100 and the more expensive packs that exist for high tier backers. The reasoning behind the options being removed are murky with official statements only saying that the options would return at a later date with a price increase, some people believe its removal was because of EU laws saying you cant presell a game without an announced release date.
We get a squadron 42 monthly report every month that details what’s work has been done. We’ve been getting it it as long as I was backer and that was fall 2022z. It was announced that the last citizen con that is now feature complete and that they’re only working on buck fixes and polishing. That was November 2023 space. A release date has been teased to be announced this October with “internal leaks” being set for spring 2025. That last part is to be seen though.
Yeah I gotta say, Bruce calling Squadron 42 a scam saying there's been nothing about it in years is just blind ignorance. Citizencon 2023 had a huge focus on S42 and the monthly reports have a wealth of knowledge. Just because they don't produce video content for it any more (many reasons including spoilers) doesn't mean it's not coming.
Always two years away... 2019 backer, saw that announcement in person last year and there isn't a chance that leak is accurate, but the October release date teaser might be. I'll be at that one too, so I'm hoping we'll hear something concrete about the release date, and even then I highly doubt they're gonna stick to it.
"A release date has been teased to be announced this October" This is so funny. Don't take this as an attack, I hope those reports are accurate and you get what you want you this game. It's just a bit funny from the outside looking in.
I just think it's wild the pricing on some of the higher-end packages for the game. And that if you're a "big spender" you unlock additional options in the store that, iirc, go up to something like $42,000 it just "feels" predatory.
while i dont care if ppl still support this game because they are excited for it, im kinda p.o.ed because 14 yrs ago i put quite a bit of money into it and expected to be able to have a cool game in a couple of years. if they would have stated "this is an investment for a lifetime and it will never be complete" then i would have saved my money. i feel dirty now.
5:30. The term you’re thinking of is “sunken cost fallacy” and it’s when you put so much money into something that you can’t bear mentally to accept that the money you spent was wasted on something that will never happen or function.
As a 12 year backer I will always have a love, hate relationship with this game but when your lucky enough to get some, more or less, bug free playing in there is absolutely nothing like it in my opinion. I think part of the bug problem is there are far to many sycophant gamers in SC that just cheer everything on and don't put the pressure on CGI to get there sht together more on what they have created before they move on. There commodity trading system is basically Brexit in Space and totally broken. It relies on being randomly punitive ilo of a simple price fluctuations scale to simulate demand for example so it's been essentially a waist of time for me to try and sell salvage or refined ore be cause every damn time I try and sell there is "No Demand" or "Cannot Sell" as long as those two options are there it will always be broken. Then other players say just try it again in 20 minutes, I have been there done that so many times with no luck it's a joke and the last thing I want to do is hang out in a city or space station hoping a can sell. They designed an entire line of ships for along with a cool game play mechanic yet I constantly get stuck with everything I mine or salvage unless I turn selling it into a full time job seeing if what I have is finally in demand again. Now all Chris wants to talk about is Death of a Spaceman, I'm like try playing the game you fool that's is essentially what SC should be called right now. Death of a Spacemen is the most common and consistent game play there is??? Snap out of it and fix the sht that matters so we can actually play the game before you ramble on about making it worse.
Or, and I'm just spitballing here, you could go look at all the official reports about progress on Squadron 42, we get regular updates. While you're at it go look up the cast..
Lotta people have issues with this game that I've never seen, and for a while I was like "what are ya doing to cause that". I really needed to step outside myself and realize that I built my system to run SC because it will run everything else if it runs sc stable. It shouldn't be that way.
Imagine how much money some people pay for battle passes to get skins on fortnite. Skins that do absolutely NOTHING. Ships on Star Citizen at least have different functionality to one another.
I’ve spent a couple thousand over the last few years on my son’s Fortnite skins/ battlepass cost… I feel pretty darn good for backing this game with a fraction of that lol 😂
I can remember when I started hearing about star citizen back in 2012 and from the beginning it sounded like a MLM scheme. TBF the fact there is a game that can be played now is kind of surprising.
@@BoostlessJoe as long as development continues to hit significant tech progress markers or improve/add gameplay, i am happy. They operate on a technically undersized budget compared to even just individual AAA games, let alone MMO/Single Player paired. Comparing them to the more that 1 Billion dollar and budget if the last Grand Theft Auto before release, and taking into consideration the formation and construction of a company, multiple studios, and the massive tallent pulled for the campaign, i am more than happy with their budget managment so far given their independance from shareholder or publisher limitations and virtually transparrent development process.
@@ParagonFangXen you can have that opinion, but i don't agree with it. Everything must work to reach a goal. Let's say that when they started, the original goal was "goal 1". as of today, they have not delivered on "goal 1" but constantly say they are working for "goal 2", "goal 3" etc. After all this time, it would be fine if they had finished goal 1 and kept developing other things, but that is not what is going on. Working on other goals keeps goal 1 from being concluded. And so, the danger is that they might not ever finish goal 1 because they say they will work towards "goal X". In practice, they will develop a bit here and there for other cosmetic things, maybe add some new areas, but the main goal is never finished. I don't know if i was able to get my point across, regardless, have a good day
@@BoostlessJoe you got your point across. I disagree with parts of it. Goals are not all "end goals" for example. A single step in the right direction is a goal. I can make and achieve new and lesser goals at any time even if they are encapsulated in a larger and older goal, or even a seperate goal in a different direction. Im always glad to have a civil back and forth, its annoyingly rare on the internet, so thanks for your replies. Even if we disagree, i think it was a productive exchange of ideas :) o7
I literally never fall through the ground or elevators but I also delete the shader folder on almost every login.... like the patch notes ask us to at least for patches or anytime you start seeing graphical anomalies. SC badly needs a proper shader compiler since players will never do it themselves [nor should they have to]
@@TheEPICskwock That's just for Vulkan which CIG not have implemented multi-threading for SC yet and is still very buggy for some people. SC still needs a proper compiler. We will have one eventually.
@@Podokodo23 well it is true shader pre caching. You you log in woth vulkan it says shader pre compiler at the menu please wait lol. Yes vulkan is buggy but it is the only way to get shader pre caching. Directx 11 doesnt support shader pre compiling its impossible. Only vulkan and directx 11 support it, so vulkan api is star citizens only hope for that and they just need to optimize it
You guys should really look into the higher tiers of buy ins, it’s in the 10k, 20k and above ranges, you get every ship with them. But you’re only allowed to see those ones you go for the highest value available. So you buy in at the highest level, a new tier opens up in the shop only those who bought in can see. And it keeps going up and up in price. That’s very scammy from my pov
Its not scammy at all. In Fact its the Opposite of Scammy as they aren't pitching new Players $10,000 packages from Day One. Basically they used to have the entire store available to everyone but the Players TOLD them to NOT do that as it was scaring away the new players so they put it behind a Paywall only people who are willing to pay $1,000 are even shown the giant Whale packages.
How? As some one who played for years and never spent more than the cheapest package, its never a problem for me. The fact that it wasn't there for those who might not even bother, doesn't scream scam to me. And owning those big ships is nothing if you don't have the player to run in with, and at that point, a 3k ship that had to be run by minimum of 50-100 players, that is no longer a 3k ships. How about then focusing, that you only need yourself as a player, 45 bucks (maybe less on an event), grind for a week. And you can own them big ships by buying it in game. For that whole week you have played many gameplay loop, enjoyed your time, and then you reward yourself with an Anvil Carrack and take it for a spin with your friends.
The purpose of those packages is consolidation of your fleet once you've reached a certain point. The packages are usually purchased with store credit gained by "melting" your various stand-alone ships. The package comes with a deep discount vs the sum of stand-alone ships in the pack, so you end up freeing store credits for other purchases. The most expensive single ship pledge is the Javelin ($3000), a capital ship intended for orgs, in concept, requiring a crew of 12-80 players.
The comparison with Oblivion really does frame the discussion perfectly in my opinion. Situations like Bruce suddenly suffocating in his bunk bed are the exact kinds of funky experiences that really make games fun to me especially if they are going for grand visions.
The majority of Star Citizen ship owners take their 40-dollar package and upgrade to the next level. So over 10 to 12 years of doing this every year comes out to thousands of dollars. So the real problem is what is the point of the game? They need crafting, shops, base building, a true player economy! Right now you can steal ships and can't sell the.... you can chop shop them down now... so an improvement but still it needs a lot more. As for SQ42 they announced it's in polishing and is fully feature complete. So... this year an announcement? Release date? They did remove SQ42 from the site for price change according to reports. Loved the video this was a very grounded discussion of SC.
YES! I'm so glad you guys are finally talking about this a little more. I fell in love with the game in 2018 and since then it's only gotten better. Haven't spent more than $60 bucks.
Skull and Bones took Ubisoft 11 Years to make. One of the biggest studios in the world. And was largely funded by Singaporean government grants. Games take time nowadays. Doesn't mean it will be good of course.
Dreadnought was a fantastic game of 6 ships v 6 ships space combat and it was great too look at, and great to play. It just couldn't continue due to several shortcomings of new games, as well as environmental changes, snd the shifts in the markets. 47:46
"Caveat emptor." I honestly see Star Citizen as *less* of a scam in 2024 than I did in 2014. I think everyone playing knows exactly what they're getting. I think Candy Crush is more harmful than some closed-circuit space role playing game. Would love to hear some counterpoints.
Is it a scam? - probably Is it a game? - probably not Does it use dark patterns to sell useless digital items to people who think the game will one day be completed? - definitely
@@Empty12345 that is a very terrible argument, you can't hide behind the term alpha for over a decade. I backed when the only playable part was the hangar module, there was zero warning or indication that it'd take anywhere near this long. How many people do you think would've backed if they'd included the warning that it might take 15 years to get to a barely functional game with not much content? They've missed so many release dates that they stopped giving them.
...but if it never gets out of Alpha, that's just a scammy way of selling you somethng thats broken with the promise one day it will be fixed If you believe it will be fixed - you probably dont think its a scam. But that's a faith based decision as the evidence isn't strong.
@@KrikZ32 And why would you pledge into an unknown project and after act surprised when they didn't even set a date for it? What are you an idiot? That's literally how you invest into anything, it's a gamble. If you think any other studio could make a game like star citizen with the same scale, why aren't there any similar games? You're complaining the game being still in Alpha over a decade when the game development started exactly then.
@@KrikZ32 Why would you pledge into an unknown project without any date when it's going to finish and then act surprised? What are you an idiot? That's literally how investing works, it's a gamble. Do you know how life works? "Alpha over a decade" You'r saying it could've been done sooner? If it's possible to do 2 games, Squadron 42 and Star Citizen under 10 years with the same scale and detail, why hasn't any other studio made a similar game? For a comparison, GTA6 has been in development since 2014, let that sink in. Talk about a terrible argument.
Idk, the shit has something to offer me most things still can't even if it's jank house central. Would probably feel different if it made this much money and was nothing but trailers, but I can interact with this thing. Sometimes it's fun and seeing it become something (stable) that everyone would at least want to try would be cool.
It's been in development for 12 years at this point and everything people said could not be done is included in the unreleased alpha build currently and people are still using clickbait titles talking about this being a scam. It's not a scam, it's a game in open development and people just need to be less ignorant regarding what that means.
If you pay for something, and keep paying for it, and keep waiting (14 years) for the finished product to be delivered, it's a scam. If you don't think it is, I would like money for my game, Scam Citizen 2. I plan to release it eventually...
You don't have to keep paying for it? I paid $35 for Star Citizen in 2014. I haven't spent another cent on the game since then. I still have full access to the game. I can understand criticising the game for how long it's been in development, even if I think that's not fair due to how much time they've spent developing the underlying technology for the game like server meshing and their planetary tech, but calling it a scam doesn't make sense to me. They publish weekly dev logs showing progress, CIG has over 800 people on payroll working on various aspects of Star Citizen and Squadron 42, there is a playable product available that is consistently updated. If it's a scam, it must be one of the worst scams in history.
@@Kyle-yn5hy I'm glad you didn't keep spending money only beyond your initial investment. The amount of money they have raised, and how people describe it as being broken after 14 years, doesn't change that I consider it a scam. If anything, they learned how to do the bare minimum to keep people interested in paying more. My question is this, how long can they continue to scam people by having an unfinished game and still make money on it? I'm sure EA is watching.
@@thebigunodos3559 But it's not even a scam by definition. Also, if they were doing the bare minimum, they wouldn't be paying software engineers a high salary to work on really groundbreaking technologies like server meshing. As a programmer myself, I know how much they're likely paying their engineers at Foundry 42 and I know just how complicated and difficult it must have been to make something like the replication layer for servers work at scale. That's not the kind of thing a scam produces, even by accident.
The way I look at it is 1. it is 2 games. Star Citizen and Squadron 42, so to be fair, they have taken 10+ years to deliver 2 games, that isn't actually to bad, compared to other large games. 2. they have taken in $700M, for 2 games. That is $350M each. A good chunk of that money is money they won't get after they release the 2 games, because people have already bought in. If you compare that with other large games, I would be surprised if a Starfield made $350M, only difference is that they didn't collect the money at the start of development but they also gave no one outside of Bathesda access to what was going on, up until it was getting close to deliver the game. We get true early access, go ahead and try it, the game exists, and we have gotten a somewhat transparent view into their development progress, from the very beginning. I'll take the Star Citizen Model over the Starfield model, any day. Finally, I will second the person that mentioned that the tech that Star Citizen is delivering, is far more ambitious than any other game out there. I think it willl all be worth the wait.
The story about the guy that hauls rocks cracks me up. During my sadly short time with EVE, I was in a mining guild. Couple times a week we'd all group up and head into risky areas to clean out asteroids while cussing about our jobs on TeamSpeak for a few hours, and just hang out watching the numbers go up. Honestly miss it. Wonder what those dudes are up to 15 years later...
Star Citizen is not a game in it's current state. It's a theme park, similar to Harry Potter world, where you can pretend to be a wizard and explore Hogwarts. In SC you can pretend to be a space man and explore one star system, planets, cities, or even pretend to have a job. But with bugs.
Well its still feels like kind od scam or money laundering to me not in strict sense of word or i hope not intentional but the thing bloated so much it never be done. They delivered something but its ten years and still going on. That thing burned thru the budget of small nation. Also it can easily grow too big an complex to be good. PoE is great game but is also hell and intimidating and overwhelming for casuals.
@@Pedgo1986 I can understand that. And I think Star Citizen will never be a casual friendly game. Similar to X series. They just throw you in the open space without introduction, guides, or tutorials. You just have to find fun on your own. And it's only possible if you are a true fan of space. But Squadron 42 should be a different story. A linear, story driven action packed adventure in space that serves as an introduction to the world. And if you liked it, you probably will like SC (or at least get a motivation to explore it on your own and dig through the difficulties). But currently it's too many IFs and WHENs (or even IFATALLs), and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone (even though I enjoy playing it very much, I wouldn't take that risk)
As someone who has played a lot of less-popular games through out the years, such as Operation Flashpoint and ArmA 1 2 3 and Planetside and stuff like that - the jank that comes with enormous scale is just a guarantee.. If hugeness is the point of the game, you just have to accept flaws in abundance. With hugeness comes jank, it's always been like this, we've just grown so used to being funneled down a straight path in modern games, we have grown unaccustomed to jank again. We lose it if there's any kind of bugs... Which is partly why games are MOSTLY menus and cutscenes now, not a whole lot of gameplay. Hard to make janky menus, and janky cutscenes are beloved by all. We need to accept that stuff will be a bit janky if we're ever going to see large games again. WoW was janky as hell, laggy, there were performance issues.. It was also one of the most awesome games of all time in spite of all that crap. These days we get hyper focused tiny games, or what I'd call polished turds. Devs don't make big games anymore, not the same kind of big games they did in the 2000s. I can not express strongly enough how awesome Planetside was back in the day, I can also not describe the amount of jank and performance issues it had because it was UNBELIEVABLE. 100++ players in one server on a massive map in the early 2000s was always doomed to be bad tech-wise, but the good parts were SO GOOD! Planetside 2 as well, janky, but there's nothing else remotely as big and awesome as Planetside 1 and 2. Almost everything else is puny. And that's where Star Citizen comes in.. It is freaking ginormous. It will have bugs. If you want to play games like this, you must accept bugginess as a reality, it will ALWAYS be like this. You can't have enormous AND polished. That's just not doable, proven by every "large" open world game ever. And those large open world games are ACTUALLY kinda tiny. Altis in ArmA 3 (which is just one of the maps) is about 4x the size of gta5. There WILL be bugs.. Cause those games are made by a team 1/20th the size of the gta5 team. Embrace the bugs. It is what it is. We're already playing games with a typewriter and a mouse, let's not pretend we're doing things in the most optimal way and can't accept sub-optimal shit if the game is engaging. Get used to bugs, get bigger games. That's how it is. No one dares make huge games anymore because it's going to be compared to the super simplistic relatively bug free shit that we churn through on autopilot and instantly forget.
Joining SC at 3.23.1. This vid explains exactly how i feel about the game. GTA5 like Roleplaying. No direction. Working around bugs. It's definitely better playing with friends. It's niche, but after playing so much of elite dangerous, eve and X4. There's still an itch that only star citizen can scratch.
They would make so much more money if they actually made the game and not two games. Also if they complete the backlog and deliver on promises. Time will tell.
You mean "median". When whales "pull the numbers way up the "number" that is raising is the "average". The median player does likely only spend 45 dollars, or is a free-flight only plsyer (if we count those)
Anyone just watching the video in the bottom right? I'm at 18 minutes and have watched him take off with the back hatch open and just now eject himself while looking at the buttons on his dash. 😅 I remember doing all this! Also I started about 4 years ago when every ladder and ramp was a death sentence, with no knowledge or person to play with. I had to look up a guide to figure out I had to request to leave the hanger. I blew up in the hanger twice before I knew I had to understand the game better.
I'm a long term backer and I've spent a lot of money on the game but I've probably spent the same amount on games that I either stopped playing or just havent touched in years. The game is definitely a big mess but its still one of my favorite experiences I've had in a space game. I've played a lot of space games but I keep coming back to SC because there's just no other game that's doing what its doing currently. If there was a game that did what SC does but better, I would play that lol. I definitely think that there has been a TON of miss-steps on how they have focused their development and overall direction but it seems to be moving a long a lot faster (comparatively of course) to previous years. We just have to wait and see what happens. Is it a scam? Idk, it doesn't feel like it as a space game enjoyer but I'm probably biased. I've gotten my monies worth and I didn't have to have an outrageous buy in to start playing. If you've got the money and want to try it out, go for it! You've got 30 days for a full refund if its not your jam, which I feel is more than fair. I loved the video, great conversation
@@ShawnsrumiI feel like cig addressed all these concerns in November with the sq42 update video, and they stopped selling it till they have a release date.
Because people complained that they were selling it, so they stopped selling it until it's done, then the same people started complaining that they were no longer selling it.
You mean HOTAS right? Because it is most definitely not designed to be played with a controller. And even with mouse and keyboard it makes sense. You are flying a complex space ship, and for that the keyboard controls are very manageable, once you get used to it.
Ummmmm. You guys know that you can grind out in game money and buy the carrack right? I only spent 70 on the game and i own a carrack and 890j. You can buy ships at stores in the game. They are also creating a game engine.
Just to clarify, you say it's not an MMO because it doesn't have levels. You're talking about a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game). Those have levels and all that RPG stuff. MMO has been used for a while to refer to generic big multiplayer games, not necessarily RPGs (hence why the letters RPG aren't included). Of course, it's missing a noun, so I guess MMOG would be more appropriate. But it's being used more like a prefix: MMOFPS, MMO-blank, etc.
I bought in during the original kickstarter and we did it by buying one of the group/guild packages. I think my total cost was around 10 to 15 dollars. I have barely touched it since then, I do think it is getting near a time that i will actually try it out. I certainly do not care much about how much I put into it compared to some games I wish I could refund. At the same time I know a couple people who have passed the five digit mark on Star Citizen.
As someone who's been playing star citizen for 3 years on and off now, and spent 150USD for probably 1200 hours of gameplay, no I don't think it's a scam. I can see how it is seen as one. The marketing practices are appalling, the technical state of it is pretty shocking at times, and I don't think it will ever be what was promised. I think we will see a cut down release candidate in around 2 years from now. However, it has given me some truly amazing moments that no other game has. Flying my hoverbike into my buddies cargo hold mid fight after boarding a ship, or massive dogfights over jumptown. But these moments don't happen instantly and take a lot of prep, and one dodgy server can ruin it instantly. Some days the servers just tell you to go touch grass, you're not doing ANYTHING today. It's also trying to do something no other game is, and is improving massively especially within the last 18 months, but is still not in a state where I can say "it's good you should buy it". I can however guarantee if you have a little patience you'll get your 50 bucks out of this. I cannot in good faith spend more money until it works day in, day out, without fail though. Still glad I spent money on this rather than some skins in some F2P game with no ambition.
As a quick update, I also think people miss that a lot of the money was spent on squadron 42, not star citizen, which we still haven't seen much of. That needs to be 11/10 GOTY material otherwise I think even the most diehard fans will question wtf they did with the money.
@@MoosePlus No game imaginable (within realistic expectations) could justify the funding the game has lol. The longer it takes to release, the less sense it begins to make when the finished product will not reflect what over $1 billion dollars can do (by that point in time) with 20+ years of development. Spending $50,000 on a grilled cheese sandwich that will be prepared and made over the next 20 years may get you a really good meal, but your end result was still a grilled cheese sandwich. A video game in modern tech is still a video game in modern tech. It could be the best game ever created, but there is a reasonable cost and time expectation for what the end result literally is.
@@foomp I would say that firstly, there are 2 games, Star Citizen and Squadron 42, so it would be more like $500M each. Secondly, in the way the funding has worked, a fair comparison would be to compare what a game like Starfield made to what Star Citizen's $500M each. Both games are essentially being prepaid for, whereas a game like Starfield didn't make a dime until the day it was released. If you heard that Starfield made $500M, after development costs, would you be surprised? I'm not sure I would be. It seems like the transparent model the Star Citizen is using, sort of skews people's perception, when it comes to the money and development time.
@@foompit's strange because how do you quantify a games worth? Some will love this no matter what, some will hate it just because of what it is. When I look at SC compared to something like Spiderman 2, a great game in its own right, and I look at 300m cost Vs 700m (of which waaaay less than half has been put into SC as a guesstimate), I'd take SC any day of the week, even in its technical state, because it's doing something unique and ambitious that's never been done. I can see the arguments for scam, I really can, but if you're invested in the project, and see the potential, and especially if you've been around a while and played the actual progress, the whole thing reads like really REALLY bad project mismanagement rather than a scam. I will never defend the pricing of the ships and the FOMO stuff they do on the store though. Even if the project collapsed tomorrow, I've had my money out of it with no regrets.
45:44 "Still we have a gluttony of choices out there". We really don't. Not in this genre. There's a reason why every failed release of Starfield, No Man's Sky, funnels new players into SC after their expectations aren't met. I put quite a bit of funding into the project precisely because I know no other publisher would fund this game and a game like this could only ever be made from the backing of die hard fans. I support this funding model over the traditional publisher method and the predatory gacha models. It looks a lot worse for the average gamer who knows nothing about game development, but it takes money to make any project. It takes even more money to create an R&D company to develop new tech to work at this level. I say this as someone that has stopped backing the project for years and wishes funding dried up a bit to push them to the finish line faster.
Let's start from the assumption it's not a scam. Sure, they've raised so many dollars and used so much time to release zero games so far but that doesn't make them scammers. Even blowing past the stated delivery dates itself doesn't make it a scam as that just happens sometimes. Doing it four or five times doesn't even mean they are scammers, they could just be really bad at project management and forecasting, and that label does seem to fit based on how often it happens. What's more worrying is how often they advertise the game as having or featuring something, work on it for several years and then just sort of unilaterally decide that they don't feel like following through on that anymore. Example 1: Remember when this thing was supposed to be a premium VR experience? Yeah they pitched that and even let it influence the UI to give us these translucent screenspace renders everywhere, but they stopped working on VR support in 2018 and seem to not want to talk about resuming work on it. Example 2: Remember when the single player campaign was supposed to be drop-in drop-out coop? That's since been downgraded to maybe having some co-op missions or modes but not the full co-op campaign to look forward to. Example 3: Remember when there were supposed to be dedicated servers and mod support? Well they sold that digital mod manual until October 2023 so they were quite OK to take money to deliver that feature for 11 years, but now the store link to the manual has gone 404 and they don't seem to want to deliver on this part of the pitch anymore. Example 4: I think it was 2014 on wingmans hangar when they were still describing the ability to send your NPCs off on missions in your extra ships which incentivized a lot of people to splash out on extras. They reversed course on that pretty early on, but it's still an example of something they used to entice sales and then decided they didn't feel like following through on. There are other examples, but these ones come to mind first and all respresent bait and switch behavior which is far more of a red flag for scamming than things like Chris getting on stage and saying 'Pyro next year guys' for now four or five years running. If we're charitable we can explain Chris having zero handle on the situation as him being clueless rather than malicious, but selling features then unilaterally deciding that you don't feel like delivering them anymore is true scam behavior and unless CIG corrects course they are acting like scammers.
From the outside looking in, I have zero inclination or desire to play/buy anything from this game. I know there are diehards that would say give it a chance, but it’s got the same problems as many other AAA and Early Access games. Sure you can play it but the feature creep, monetization, bugginess, and delays are exactly what we get upset about with other games/companies. Don’t see how it’s any different. Maybe once it actually launches I’ll try in 2035 but till then I’m good. Side note: Funny thing is No Man’s Sky was announced, released, ripped apart, worked on to a very solid state, and is now celebrated as a comeback story between the time of Star Citizen being announced and now.
Do yourself a favour and don't try to play the first couple hours by yourself. Request a volunteer player guide. There's a button right there bottom right in the menu. They'll help you get past the steeeep learning curve. You can't learn that stuff from youtube videos etc because the things that work/don't work change every patch.
"Is Star Citizen a scam?" Is this a serious question in 2024? Seems to me it's a slow-rolling money laundering operation. How many high-end cars does the CEO own now?
I don't know. I am sure the owners aren't going broke, but 10+ years of 20 - 2500 developers making probably $150k a year on average, does drain the bank account a bit.
Been a backer of SC for many a year now... and SQ42 is hugely contentious for me. Not because I don't want to play it, or wouldn't want to see it released, BUT, because for over a year, they turned the SC development teams into a skeleton crew and moved everyone over to SQ42 to get it "finished". And not only that, but after they had to remove the option to buy SQ42 from their site, SC funding has also been used to fund SQ42 development... and THAT is a huge problem for me, and I think should have been for more backers. I wouldn't have even blinked an eye if they "crowd funded" for SQ42 separately. But I purchased SQ42... and then chose to fund SC. Those two should have remained separate. The fact they used SC development money, time and resources to further SQ42, is the most reprehensible thing they could have done in my opinion. I haven't funded this game with any new money since they did that... and refuse to give them any more until SC is released. BTW... great vid guys! I'll tune in for more!
"It's broken, but I'm having fun," is pretty much it, yeah. As someone that's been dropping into the 'Verse at least a few times a week since 2015 or so, it IS getting better, but it's incremental. For the community itself, we/they tend to be a real defensive lot thanks to the early assaults on the project (Derek Smart, the whole Crytek thing, etc), and even constructive criticism is taken as a full attack. Still? Yeah, I'm having fun, and I don't think Sq42 is a scam...well, I hope not, anyways, because I see the single player games in this 'verse being the new cash cow for CIG that'll keep the PU going
It's nice seeing a calm discussion of this. I really really enjoy Star Citizen. It's such a chill game to go into and just explore space , salvage ships, and do cargo runs unless you want to get crazy and do some bounty hunting
I love this conversation because it's such a sore eyesight for anyone in gaming to see Star Citizen has this much crowdfunding has this many people have brought in and have so many promises more than any AAA dev has ever made about their live service games since its inception and it's like the door is closed for like the average gamer. It feels like everyone knows about Star Citizen, but everybody who isn't in doesn't know how it plays or what Star Citizen even is, and for that, I'm glad Bruce and Lawrence had this conversation. I'm glad that Bruce and Lawrence took the time to involve themselves in this topic and inform themselves on how this goes for the average person who wouldn't know anything going in but sees Star Citizen all the time.
one thing people do not take into account, especially when it comes to valuing modern gaming, is the theory crafting and the content around the game. im a baby whale in my group, ive spent 5k into star cit. i try to judge game per hour i get out of it. I've spent well over 5k hours theory crafting with my friends... going over spreadsheets and watching videos like this one. Star cit will never live upto the expectations of each individual's imagination. but, that will be something in the future. for now, I continue to be engaged in the contact releases and the content around the game.
I don't think its a scam. I paid total £150 or something about 9 years ago. I've played well over 150hours so in my own little world its been worth it and paid for itself in that enjoyment I've had. However, I don't play it often these days and certainly that goes against it with it being so immersive and lets face it, a very complex complicated game to play. When the rest of it drops, is finished, comes out, whatever, I'll be there for it but I'm not immersed fully as some other players are and its very much one of these things that isn't very opening to new players or those returning that have been killed several times by something breaking which isn't that much fun. Its a thing thats there and more power to them for making it bigger and bigger and maybe a little better each time. Its something that is completely different from any other game in how its being produced and that is that we get to see it day by day be produced. I enjoy those videos they post of the creation of the game on RUclips and on the odd occasion I'll dabble back into it with a friend to enjoy the sites and sounds. Lets be honest its a fantastic looking game and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. That's Star Citizen to me, if it shut down tomorrow without a trace, I got my moneys worth of enjoyment out of it. But, no one would ever hear me say that over the sound of everyone enjoy shouting "I told you so" because that's all anyone enjoys anymore is being right and rubbing someone's face in it. The fact you can buy £48ks worth of ships in one transaction is a bit grotesque in my opinion but people have bought more expensive useless things in this world so what's one more to add to the pile lol.
This is a pretty balanced conversation which doesn't happen often with SC but one thing I think has been missed in this conversation about scam or no scam is not who is buying into the game now with the knowledge they have, but the people who bought the game based on the original crowdfunding promises. From that perspective, it changes how you could look at the game. For what it's worth, I don't think it's a scam, just a horrifically managed project that's spiralled out of control.
SC is passing large hurdles ATM and since 3.18. I guess they could build a shit game on old tech and just release it. Streamers should know this moment in time isn't the best time to stream meaning 3.23 is new and the biggest changes to the game since 3.18. If they got past 3.18 which was rough to say the least they can get the 3.23 patch cycle and subsequent builds straightened out as well. I paid for Starfield and played that for 2 weeks while 3.18 was screwed but I was happy to get back to SC and haven't played Starfield again.
I love it that you guys have played the alpha and had some fun and seem open to it even thought it not stable. You guys should do this again and discuss Squadron 42 and Star Citizen and invite an Old Backer and RUclips Content Creator. Someone who really follow and understand the project someone like "Space Tomato" or "TheAstroPub" better yet invite them both. They are both very good in explaining in a rational and calm way certain aspects and questions and certain impressions you guys and people who are new to the project might have. There is a lot of details and knowledge you just missed out on. - Why this financial model who came up with the idea and why. - Who are those older Backers that invest so much into the development. - Why is it an Open Development. - Why did Chris Roberts choose this Engine to develop the game. - Why is taking the Development so long. - Why did they Restart the development and changed the direction 2 times. - Why is there a Single Player Campaign. - Why do we have an Open Alpha doesn't it cost a lot of money to run the servers. - What is the Difference between Single player and Multiplayer with this Engine. - Why took it so long to get the Engine to work right. - Why do we have Persistence. - What is Server Meshing. - What is Quantum. - What do they want to achieve in the future with the franchise and this Engine and Tech. - What we see now in Alpha certain Ships, Menu's, gameplay sequence is this something we get when it comes out or will it change.
Star Citizen has been adding unique and impressive features no other game has for years. . But at the same time, all the basic features like maps and inventories took a back seat. No one is impressed by maps in SC. . they are just finally happy to see those features in and working. To me it's pretty undeniable why SC has so many backers. The downplaying of what it is in terms of tech always seems so unreasonable. Like "So it's cool and all you can land on planets with 50 people on one ship, but. . " . . That part took years to make and get working somewhat consistently. :D . . It's not just some cool thing . . it's the core game. Maps and UI updates coming in is a sign that the hard part is almost over. Edit: How is showing Squadron 42 gameplay, assets and features and saying it's feature complete, damage control? Also, a lot of those 2023 CitCon features are now in the PU.
For the love of everything good in the world: there is plenty of things to criticize this game/CIG for but folks need to find a different word other than "scam".
Fallout 4 and Skyrim made over 4 billions by this point, Starfield started development 3 years after SC and SQ42, what did Bethesda do with all that money? Certainly didn't spend it on making better games...
I supported Star Citizen. Star Citizen was supposed to come out when my son was in middle school. He has since gone to high school, and four years of college. After graduating, he moved to Seattle for a year, then moved back near me and has been at the same job here for two years.... and still the game is not out.
No, its not. Dollar per hour entertainment value, ive got more fun from playing Star Citizen in alpha than I have with any other entertainment expenditure over the last decade.
To answer your question...yes. I have fallen for it at the beginning..still no meaningful gameplay..just an inventory management system, tedious beyond measure.
SC: "Don't boot it up alone, you have no direction and don't know where to go." "It's so open-ended it's daunting" 9/10
ED: "Elite just didn't give me any direction." 4/10
SC: "The player base is just so starved for content they'll do anything, even play a shooter that's full of lag." 8/10 (really solid)
ED: "A mile wide and an inch deep." 2/10
SC: "You don't even know what to do, cause the keyboard icons all look the same." "The UI just got really improved (it was garbage before)" 7/10
ED: "The controls just aren't really intuitive. It's hard to learn." 3/10
SC: "Literally anytime we try to do a quest of any sorts the game glitches out and we randomly blow up and have to do it all over again." 7.5/10
The longer this game goes on, the more its fans demonstrate to the American Psychological Association the effects of long term stockholm syndrome and the human potential for gaslighting yourself.
"i wont be bias"
also bro:
I think the scammiest thing about Star Citizen outside Squadron 42 is the whole "we're not even worried about 1.0" shit. Because by doing that, they've effectively immunized themselves to criticism of their broken game forever. Any issues that players have with bugs, missing features, or sparse content can be handwaved away by reminding you that it's not "done" yet. It really rubs me the wrong way that they have any kind of cash flow with a development philosophy like that. For pretty much every other "early access" game, the only money they can depend on is the initial purchase everyone makes to support the game. If they ever want to monetize it further, they have to actually finish the damn thing and then sell DLC or whatever. I remember when ARK got a ton of shit for trying to do this out of order, selling an expansion while the main game was still in early access. Star Citizen has basically been doing that for over a decade.
I agree with you guys that this isn't really a problem today as everyone knows or should know Star Citizen's deal. If you give them any money at this point, that's on you. You know what the game is (or isn't), so it's hard to call it intentionally deceptive or scammy. But I still can't help but think of all the people that backed SC when it was more or less getting pitched as a normal video game that would function properly. I don't think anyone thought they were signing up for a barely playable, life-sim adjacent sandbox back in 2012, especially when Roberts was still pushing Squadron 42 so hard.
And to your guys' point about the whales, I do think a lot of them have spent the kind of money they have because they're hoping and praying for that 1.0 that fixes everything. I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation that a game that's raised 700 million dollars would be past the Alpha stage after 12 years of development.
I was thinking that myself. The whole watch a VOD thing wasn’t relevant before there was even a functioning game, when having a hanger was the only thing that existed.
They are not informed, actually. SQ42 is feature complete and in beta. SC 1.0 is now being planned. 4.0 is coming out this summer and is a large portion of the way towards 1.0.
This is misinformed. They are pushing hard for a 1.0 release and they have been clearly communicating this intention. There is one major update left targeting a release later this year. After that they are pushing for a 1.0 release. A lot of the content they have been working on for Squadron 42 is now making it into the persistent universe (MMO) They planned from the start to make a lot of the technology they have been working on in the single player game also be usable in the MMO and since the Single player game is now in the polishing phase they have been pushing updates to port that content over.
@@HoboInASuit4TuneThis summer you say?
1.0 isn't the point, doing what's not been done before is, that's the point and whilst it might not make sense to everyone logically, it's certainly ironic that the people whining are the same people that keep also whining about modern gaming being trash at every opportunity, the money doesn't matter, you can't take it with you when you're dead, it's taken 12 years for multiple reasons first was the 3 year screw up with a subcontractor building assets at different scale to the main studio, second is no engine does what was needed, so you have to heavily mod/customise an existing one and the third reason is that they are developing 2 games in parallel, one with most of the functionality whilst simultaneously supporting a separate online platform, that slows development down because it eats into resources, so it's a trade off in it's own right, which comes with the added benefit of being able to demonstrate features and functionality as proof of concepts to generate additional funding in order to continue funding the project.
I used to work for a game company on a popular mobile game, the highest spending player has spent 2mil
Holy crap! I'm sure you can't say what game, but I'm assuming it is one that is still going and/or popular? Is it at least a game that has some sort of mechanics or gameplay? Just curious.
did they do anything special for them?
the only thing differnt about SC is that its public with how much whales are able to spend.
Reminds me of a player in China who spent the equivalent of one mil USD on a character in Justice Online, only for his friend to accidentally sell it for the equivalent of about 400 dollars.
@@gamer7916 I guessing it came to light during a murder investigation?
I think the issue with Star Citizen is they kept expanding the scope without finishing the base game. Elite Dangerous has for sure gotten a lot bigger than it's original plan, but they released a full product to start then expanded
Elite did not get bigger, it didn't even deliver what they promised in the Kickstarter. Ship interiors, anyone? CIG promised way more than they should have, but to their credit they hunkered down and are trying to deliver everything they initially promised. There's a reason why Elite has had such a major drop-off in recent years and why most of the people who used to play Elite are now backing Star Citizen, and it's precisely because the Eagle Engine just could not scale to include some of the things that Braben and crew initially promised, and so instead of refactoring the engine like CIG did (which has been refactored so much they just call it the StarEngine), Frontier just culled content and put out a game and added modest updates since. It's the exact sort of thing that dampens people's perspective of crowdfunding projects because they feel they don't deliver on what they promise (and in Elite's case, it did not).
But what if the base game was Squadron 42? People crowdfunded Squadron 42, Star Citizen is technically the early access demo for it.
Except Elite Dangerous' base game isn't even comparable to what Star Citizen was/has been promising.
I like Elite Dangerous, but it's "base game" is a less interesting Euro Truck Simulator. Star Citizen wants to create a persistent first person universe. That's been the goal since like, 2014. The scope hasn't really expanded since then, it's just taken a long time because it's an unprecedented amount of game and they've spent a long time developing the tools to actually realise that vision. Take some time to watch the dev logs about their planetary tech and server meshing. It's the kind of technology that's not been seen in games before. As a programmer myself I find the technical aspects of Star Citizen really interesting and can tell just how much work they've had to put into it.
@@Empty12345 it was feature complete (VFX, logic, etc.) at CitCon 2023 and since then has been content complete (music, narration, assets, cutscenes, etc.) few months ago. Now it's polishing and debugging phase, before preparing for the commercial release a little after. Late 2024 or 2025 my guess
That’s the scam?
About 10 years ago there was an article about whales in mobile games where the reporter dug pretty deep and supposedly had interviewed anonymous developers. Maybe you guys missed it, but I am sure you can find it if you are actually that interested. It was called something like "The truth about whales" or "The dark truth about whales". Obviously mobile games are different to PC/console games, but it's probably comparable.
Long story short, in Mobile games they collected ALL THE DATA they could, and once you are identified as potential whale, they will use that data to create in-game items specifically tailored for you, both thematically and pricewize
I'm sure CIG does something similar, monitoring concepts that had/have a lot of traction and developing something along those lines with a wicked price tag attached.
Some people have immense amounts of money. If spending 1000 bucks on something that will give them a bit of joy is an option, someone will pay 1000 dollars.. If you have a package in your store that's like a "get everything, 2500 dollars" the whales will INSTANTLY BUY IT the exact same way that I pay .99 for an ad remover in a mobile game. Not having a 2500 dollar bundle means you're just missing out on whale-dough.
Most of the people with immense amounts of money spend their days doing next to nothing. You don't get rich from work, you get rich from other people working for you OR stock your daddy left you/trust funds etc. There are tons of people like this, and their kids are the same, just spend hella money on whatever.
Those same whales exist in other games as well, and I have no doubt that there are people out there who have spent probably tens and tens of thousands of dollars on this, and it has had zero impact on their finances. Rich people lose more than that on one night of gambling.
Gotta milk those whales.
@@JimmyNuisance I remember the article specifically focusing on poor whales. People that don't have a lot of money, but spend it all on shiny items in games because developers are looking for ways to get them hooked... One lady in particular won an all expense visit to the developers studio but she couldn't afford to get a taxi to the airport to catch her free plane and all.
Star Citizen is the cautionary tale of the lack of a producer who puts feasible goals in a realistic timeline, and the folks running show don't care about time or a finished game.
Or maybe it will be the game that benefited from not having a producer constrain what is possible if you shoot for the stars. One will never know, until it is delivered or shutdown. A producer may have led them to have already released the game by now, but would it have been good? Would it have been a Starfield or a Cyberpunk 2077 or would it have been a Buldars(sp) Gate?
@@sevilnatas When a game has been worked on for 10+ years and hasn't got a release date, is not good.
@@TheSpectator64 Which one of the games are you talking about?
@@sevilnatas I'm referring to Star Citizen, a game that hasn't gotten a 1.0 release yet. Because the current version available to the public is way too rough to call a proper game.
@@TheSpectator64when a game has been worked on for 10 years doesn't mean it's "not good". Many AAA games coming out lately have been in the works for average 10 years regardless, it's becoming the new standard norm.
Many gamers have zero clue how long and complicated game dev actually is. All you see is the trailer a year prior to release and assume that they've been working on it for 2 years.
I remember watching Bruce and Lawrence reporting on the single player for Star Citizen when I was a freshman in high school.
I am about to graduate from college and it is STILL not out.
True, but neither is GTA 6.
lmao, i donated to this game when I was 14, I'm now 24
I bought an AMD R9 280 graphics card that came with a free ship promotion for Star Citizen. It's got amd branding all over it and all.
That GPU is 11 generations old.
@@SeismicRy rejoice, some pledged retired and deceased since then. Will be out before you reach your thirties
@@patton3338 Take that to the next CitizenCon and sell it as a collectors item. Could probably make your money back and then some.
8:33 (pushes up glasses) that would be the Sunk Cost fallacy, SirLarr.
Sunk Cost. Star Citizen. Same acronym. Illiminati confirmed....I'll see myself out.
@@ndh06😮 wow, good point😂
Bruce, Lawrence; you guys should really go speak with Space Tomato. He is a Star Citizen content creator & covers the game in a similar calm, rational perspective that you two do with other games. He is always reaching out to other creators to try and give them a really deep inside perspective on the game.
Massively this.
I would absolutely watch that. SaltEmike is another very informed and realistic perspective
Talking to Space Tomato always (!) results in a good, informative and entertaining video. Go for it.
Yup 💯
People should watch streams and videos prior to jumping in. I knew what I was getting myself into, so I capped myself at $70. I certainly got my money’s worth, but it can be a very frustrating experience.
yep know what your getting into.
I watched videos for a year before I made the plunge. I ran the game using a shadow account for two years and learned a lot. Then I upgraded to a PC that could run it. Five years into this and I'm still enjoying playing. Frustrating at times for sure! Seeing progress first hand makes a huge difference.
I think it's fine people can enjoy this, but I also think the more time that passes from a Kickstarter the less angry people will be about the thing that was promised vs what was delivered. Time has won the argument for the crowd of people who constantly disagreed with others complaining and defended the game saying "But it'll be there later." Even if they never get things they were promised (which, the outcome of a Kickstarter's quality is up to discretion, sure), people just get less angry about some things with time.
It's the difference between something that looks like a map vs something that is a map. It's so systemic that it might be unreasonable.
Lawrence,
X4 Foundation is probably the closest you'll get to capital ship vs capital ship / fleet vs fleet combat where you can pilot all of those ships in your command and "walk around" in your cockpit.
It's a way bigger game because its more about building an empire and economy, but it shows what could be if star citizen succeeds, but in a multiplayer setting but with the added value of FPS combat, interactions, higher level of detail etc.
Got this game with the DLC on sale and it really feels like what I imagine going into Star Citizen blind feels like
I've been a backer for almost 3 years now and will continue to support the game development, not because I'm expecting a finished product in the coming decades, but because the dollar per smiles ratio is way up there. I can't count the times where I log in to do some menial tasks and end up being in a crew of 6 in a gunship, firing on NPC warships. Those who claim that there is no game, I'd suggest playing it first.
Right? At $45 for this experience with a 30 day full refund no questions asked... You can't go wrong.
I have to say, I log in at least one a day, and even if it’s to leave my hab and fly out of my home station and just fly around for a min and come back… it’s why I back the game. I’ve responded to people who need help and have ended up in a 3 hour experience unlike any other.
Yeah a lot of times when I play there is something crazy that happens sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes great and its something you just never see elsewhere.
I don't know where Bruce is getting the 22 million players, but the star citizen website has a live tracker of the amount of people who have joined the universe at around 5.2 million. Making the average cost per player around $135. I love the game though and really hope squadron 42 isn't a scam.
22 million players is through free fly. The 5 million is the number of people who bought the game.
@astronotics531 OK that number makes sense now.
5 million accounts, a lot of players have multiple accounts.
@@astronotics531I think you still need to register an account for free-fly? Or the 5mil is just the people who have paid money?
@@Raums What's the point of having multiple accounts with no ships tied to them?
Top Grossing Video Games:
Fortnite: $9B+ in first 2 years.
Call of Duty Series: $30B+ total.
League of Legends: $8B+.
Candy Crush Saga: $4.9B.
Pokémon Go: $6B+.
GTA V: $6B+.
FIFA Series: $20B+.
Diablo IV: $600M+ at launch.
Yes, good point. Not to mention, Star Citizen is really 2 games for that $700M and also, the $700M is both development cost and profit. For every game package and ship they sell today, those are dollars that won't be collected once the game goes live. Those people have spent those dollars and that money has been spent on development. A true apples to apples comparison would be to take Diablo IV and Diablo III revenue, then subtract development costs and also the development time and compare it to SC's total revenue and development time. Then you would have a good sense in how it stacks up to other games.
Yes you might notice that those games are released and playable
@@frankiecedeno3724 So is SC. It's not complete, but it is definitely playable. That's why the more playable it gets, the more money players send them has grown each year.
Now check the development costs and time.
@43:54 This should be the mentality when buying any early access game. If you are buying it for what it could be... but not what it is... PUT YOUR WALLET AWAY!
I would tweek your comment, just a bit: If you are buying it for what it could be... but not what it is... DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, IT'S YOUR MONEY AND WHO AM I TO TELL YOU HOW TO SPEND IT!!...there, fixed, your welcome.
@@sevilnatas I 100%, unequivocally, agree with you. It also doesn't hinder my statement pushing for people to be more informed consumers. Crazy how that works. Cheers lmao
At least Steam tried to put some limits on EA games. Star Citizen is completly unhinged in that regard.
@@nonyabisness6306 True, Valve is smart enough to know they will catch strays if thing go down on their platform even if they weren't involved. Cloud Imperium Games has no such limitation, and as long as most of the buying don't get off the ride they don't have to stop.
@@nonyabisness6306 True, Valve does generally a good job at policing their platform. They’re incentivized to do that but it doesn’t mean they don’t deserve credit. But I gotta give a little credit to Cloud Imperium Games for somehow keeping the Star Citizen hype train going for a decade.
Generating $700 million over 14 years is modest compared to franchises like GTA and Red Dead, which each earned a billion dollars in just one weekend.
Those are complete games. 700 million is basically star citizens budget and the game is not even released. That is the issue.
To compare it to revenue from finished products and microtransaction revenues is dishonest.
@@takayama8060 Revenue significantly impacts the budget. For instance, GTA VI is estimated to cost over $2 billion, even though Star Citizen's scope is much broader. Additionally, how much does GTA V earn from microtransactions? I imagine that’s where a substantial portion of their revenue comes from.
@@Dodo-hk2ue
That is not how it works. EA, blizzard, and zenimax does the same thing. When a company aims to dedicate extra funds to a project that is to maintain the game for its future life cycle if it works out. It is not the actual development budget for the game.
The GTA developed are not crowd funding their games. Again that is dishonest.
@@takayama8060 You forget that SC is not beholden to shareholders or a publisher. They can take as long as they want and I applaud them for that. Too many games get rushed and for better or worse, I want to see Chris Robert's vision be realized. I'd rather that than a half-baked game.
@@a1pha_star Heard that line countless times. "Selling a vision" , a.k.a selling a pre alpha perpetually.
Bruh i just wanna hide somewhere on random planet so no one can find me and still be scared that someone may actually find me.
Well Pyro is not going to have those pesky comm sats telling everyone where youre at...
Sounds like my current life.
There's plenty of space, moons and planet surfaces to hide. You can get lost in a cave while mining for gems, just don't fall or jump into a hole or you'll die. Some people do not understand that you do not have to use the missions. You can go almost anywhere. Some areas are private property. You can cross the lines and get shot from turrets. Criminal NPCs can sometimes find you. There are risks.
@@ferdinandcrespo6012copium
your bad st the game. so your voice shouldnt mean nothing as that would harm the game. stop even saying anything you bob.
I'd like Bruce and Lawrence to interact with some of the bigger SC content creators. The people who have way too much time to delve into the actual development of the game. Also the SC RUclips channel is also a place with a lot information. QnAs and devlog type videos.
@@JUNGLEJUICEJONES or the starter for $45
Sq 42 not being at thing or not existing? have they not seen the Squadron 42 In game trailer from just a few months ago that was all over the internet?????
As a game programmer i may have some unique insight on s24 and star citizen. First of all it would be crazy to have these games finished by now, i know that sounds crazy but lets break it down. 2 AAA games one of these aiming to be an MMO, Built a studio from the ground up, building a game engine with tones of unique and untested tech, keeping star citizen "playable" at every stage of development.
Normally with game dev the game is often much more broken and unstable then this up to the final weeks of development when it all comes together. Key feature can be missing until much later in development if they are dependent on tech that is not ready. Star Citizen doesnt have that luxury they had have spent so much time implementing feature to make the current version playable that have/will be rebuilt or replaced as new tech and development progresses. That essentially double there workload on much of the game.
As for squadron 42 they are sharing a development team with star citizen from what i can see. This means that whilst on the outside we see 10 years of development internally thats only like 5-7 years worth of resources. You also have to keep in mind often when we see games announced they have had 5 years of development prior to showing a very very narrow slice of the game that they pushed specifically to showcase.
So in terms of development they are actually still in a reasonable state. Its where i would expect a AAA game of this scale and team given the constraints and time taken.
As for things like marketing, pricing and commination i feel then yes they can be criticized a lot.
All considered id say this is very very far from being a scam.
You are a programmer just like I am an astronaut. You are just doing copy&paste of propaganda material, riddled with technobabble that actual programmers can easily see thru.
All these nonsense you throw as an excuse: dude, we have already seen plenty of SC code. It is *well* below junior-level, and in fact, juniors I trained wouldn't write something so bad. And no, it is a complete write-off. There is no fixing that mess, no matter what marketing tells you to parrot.
@@vcc_pdr no need to be so hostile. Doesn't matter to be If you believe me. I also avoid anything technical in my post so no idea where your seeing technobable
@@dragonCASTjosh Technobabble is defending their "technologies" which are just things that already exist, but with a new name. Like persistence which is just a DB+API+glue code, and even beginner developer can do that. And any other nonsense, too many to list them.
"Build a studio from ground up" - that is just a Bingo card item. You should have added "they walked 3 miles in show, both ways".
@@Shawnsrumi Show me their github profiles. I don't want to look at videos using technobabble to defend technobabble, we have CiG already.
I mean; it would be impossible for a company lying for 12 years to pay someone and pretend to be an expert, right? 😉
@@vcc_pdr it's not as simple as using a normal database in this case due to performance requirements and scale. Persistence was also not a huge hurdle for them. The bigger issue is dynamic server messing on a multi-solar system scale. I can't think of a another game that does Persistent single shard simulation on the scale they are trying. It's not that technologies don't exist its that current solution don't have the scale and performance for there goals. Networking is not my field but I know there are not many devs with mmo experience. I also know cryengine 3 that they are based on really struggle past 32 players due to how it handles its replication. My experiences are in graphics and gameplay so I can speak in detail on the rendering challenges of planetary and solar system rendering in addition to how many of the gameplay systems currently in the game will not scale to an mmo but an mmo implementation would not work in the current limited player counts.
I dont know if it was said anywhere in the comments yet but as of around a year and a half ago you cant buy Squadron 42 as an addon or standalone anymore. the only way to obtain it is through Packs like the UEE explorer pack for $1100 and the more expensive packs that exist for high tier backers. The reasoning behind the options being removed are murky with official statements only saying that the options would return at a later date with a price increase, some people believe its removal was because of EU laws saying you cant presell a game without an announced release date.
We get a squadron 42 monthly report every month that details what’s work has been done. We’ve been getting it it as long as I was backer and that was fall 2022z. It was announced that the last citizen con that is now feature complete and that they’re only working on buck fixes and polishing. That was November 2023 space. A release date has been teased to be announced this October with “internal leaks” being set for spring 2025. That last part is to be seen though.
Yeah I gotta say, Bruce calling Squadron 42 a scam saying there's been nothing about it in years is just blind ignorance. Citizencon 2023 had a huge focus on S42 and the monthly reports have a wealth of knowledge. Just because they don't produce video content for it any more (many reasons including spoilers) doesn't mean it's not coming.
Always two years away...
2019 backer, saw that announcement in person last year and there isn't a chance that leak is accurate, but the October release date teaser might be. I'll be at that one too, so I'm hoping we'll hear something concrete about the release date, and even then I highly doubt they're gonna stick to it.
"A release date has been teased to be announced this October" This is so funny.
Don't take this as an attack, I hope those reports are accurate and you get what you want you this game.
It's just a bit funny from the outside looking in.
SQ42 has been "just around the corner" for, what?, 10 years now?
I just think it's wild the pricing on some of the higher-end packages for the game. And that if you're a "big spender" you unlock additional options in the store that, iirc, go up to something like $42,000 it just "feels" predatory.
To be fair, those packs are usually cheaper than buying the items standalone, and are more for convenience than anything else in my eyes.
One thing is for sure. Star Citizen is way better than Starfield
while i dont care if ppl still support this game because they are excited for it, im kinda p.o.ed because 14 yrs ago i put quite a bit of money into it and expected to be able to have a cool game in a couple of years. if they would have stated "this is an investment for a lifetime and it will never be complete" then i would have saved my money. i feel dirty now.
5:30. The term you’re thinking of is “sunken cost fallacy” and it’s when you put so much money into something that you can’t bear mentally to accept that the money you spent was wasted on something that will never happen or function.
As a 12 year backer I will always have a love, hate relationship with this game but when your lucky enough to get some, more or less, bug free playing in there is absolutely nothing like it in my opinion. I think part of the bug problem is there are far to many sycophant gamers in SC that just cheer everything on and don't put the pressure on CGI to get there sht together more on what they have created before they move on. There commodity trading system is basically Brexit in Space and totally broken. It relies on being randomly punitive ilo of a simple price fluctuations scale to simulate demand for example so it's been essentially a waist of time for me to try and sell salvage or refined ore be cause every damn time I try and sell there is "No Demand" or "Cannot Sell" as long as those two options are there it will always be broken. Then other players say just try it again in 20 minutes, I have been there done that so many times with no luck it's a joke and the last thing I want to do is hang out in a city or space station hoping a can sell. They designed an entire line of ships for along with a cool game play mechanic yet I constantly get stuck with everything I mine or salvage unless I turn selling it into a full time job seeing if what I have is finally in demand again. Now all Chris wants to talk about is Death of a Spaceman, I'm like try playing the game you fool that's is essentially what SC should be called right now. Death of a Spacemen is the most common and consistent game play there is??? Snap out of it and fix the sht that matters so we can actually play the game before you ramble on about making it worse.
You can't show me futurama as a small lad and not expect me to want to deliver boxes in space. That being said man they got me with 42 lmfao
Or, and I'm just spitballing here, you could go look at all the official reports about progress on Squadron 42, we get regular updates. While you're at it go look up the cast..
Lotta people have issues with this game that I've never seen, and for a while I was like "what are ya doing to cause that". I really needed to step outside myself and realize that I built my system to run SC because it will run everything else if it runs sc stable.
It shouldn't be that way.
Imagine how much money some people pay for battle passes to get skins on fortnite. Skins that do absolutely NOTHING. Ships on Star Citizen at least have different functionality to one another.
I’ve spent a couple thousand over the last few years on my son’s Fortnite skins/ battlepass cost… I feel pretty darn good for backing this game with a fraction of that lol 😂
Fortnite actually works... 99.9 % of the time. Star Citizen? Not so much.
I can remember when I started hearing about star citizen back in 2012 and from the beginning it sounded like a MLM scheme.
TBF the fact there is a game that can be played now is kind of surprising.
Star Citizen is an ongoing project that will never be finished. If the money doesn't stop, the developers will never stop.
Thank God
@@ParagonFangXen you might see it as a good thing. i'm not so sure about that
@@BoostlessJoe as long as development continues to hit significant tech progress markers or improve/add gameplay, i am happy. They operate on a technically undersized budget compared to even just individual AAA games, let alone MMO/Single Player paired. Comparing them to the more that 1 Billion dollar and budget if the last Grand Theft Auto before release, and taking into consideration the formation and construction of a company, multiple studios, and the massive tallent pulled for the campaign, i am more than happy with their budget managment so far given their independance from shareholder or publisher limitations and virtually transparrent development process.
@@ParagonFangXen you can have that opinion, but i don't agree with it. Everything must work to reach a goal. Let's say that when they started, the original goal was "goal 1". as of today, they have not delivered on "goal 1" but constantly say they are working for "goal 2", "goal 3" etc. After all this time, it would be fine if they had finished goal 1 and kept developing other things, but that is not what is going on. Working on other goals keeps goal 1 from being concluded. And so, the danger is that they might not ever finish goal 1 because they say they will work towards "goal X". In practice, they will develop a bit here and there for other cosmetic things, maybe add some new areas, but the main goal is never finished. I don't know if i was able to get my point across, regardless, have a good day
@@BoostlessJoe you got your point across. I disagree with parts of it. Goals are not all "end goals" for example. A single step in the right direction is a goal. I can make and achieve new and lesser goals at any time even if they are encapsulated in a larger and older goal, or even a seperate goal in a different direction. Im always glad to have a civil back and forth, its annoyingly rare on the internet, so thanks for your replies. Even if we disagree, i think it was a productive exchange of ideas :)
o7
I don't think it's a scam, but it does hurt real bad sometimes...
I literally never fall through the ground or elevators but I also delete the shader folder on almost every login.... like the patch notes ask us to at least for patches or anytime you start seeing graphical anomalies. SC badly needs a proper shader compiler since players will never do it themselves [nor should they have to]
They have added shader compiler ypu just need to enable it in graphics settings by setting it to vulkan
@@TheEPICskwock That's just for Vulkan which CIG not have implemented multi-threading for SC yet and is still very buggy for some people. SC still needs a proper compiler. We will have one eventually.
@@Podokodo23 well it is true shader pre caching. You you log in woth vulkan it says shader pre compiler at the menu please wait lol. Yes vulkan is buggy but it is the only way to get shader pre caching. Directx 11 doesnt support shader pre compiling its impossible. Only vulkan and directx 11 support it, so vulkan api is star citizens only hope for that and they just need to optimize it
Vulkan saved my life but I have a full AMD build so it was a no brainer
Elevator woes are almost always caused by server issues, not USER or shader folder issues.
You guys should really look into the higher tiers of buy ins, it’s in the 10k, 20k and above ranges, you get every ship with them. But you’re only allowed to see those ones you go for the highest value available. So you buy in at the highest level, a new tier opens up in the shop only those who bought in can see. And it keeps going up and up in price. That’s very scammy from my pov
Its not scammy at all. In Fact its the Opposite of Scammy as they aren't pitching new Players $10,000 packages from Day One. Basically they used to have the entire store available to everyone but the Players TOLD them to NOT do that as it was scaring away the new players so they put it behind a Paywall only people who are willing to pay $1,000 are even shown the giant Whale packages.
How? As some one who played for years and never spent more than the cheapest package, its never a problem for me. The fact that it wasn't there for those who might not even bother, doesn't scream scam to me. And owning those big ships is nothing if you don't have the player to run in with, and at that point, a 3k ship that had to be run by minimum of 50-100 players, that is no longer a 3k ships.
How about then focusing, that you only need yourself as a player, 45 bucks (maybe less on an event), grind for a week. And you can own them big ships by buying it in game. For that whole week you have played many gameplay loop, enjoyed your time, and then you reward yourself with an Anvil Carrack and take it for a spin with your friends.
$1100 isn't the most expensive purchase. There are hidden shops that become available after you spend pre-determined milestones of real cash.
The purpose of those packages is consolidation of your fleet once you've reached a certain point. The packages are usually purchased with store credit gained by "melting" your various stand-alone ships. The package comes with a deep discount vs the sum of stand-alone ships in the pack, so you end up freeing store credits for other purchases.
The most expensive single ship pledge is the Javelin ($3000), a capital ship intended for orgs, in concept, requiring a crew of 12-80 players.
It's in the super-position of scam//not-scam until it's finished, and it'll never be finished.
Perpetual scam lol.
Schrödinger's scam.
The comparison with Oblivion really does frame the discussion perfectly in my opinion. Situations like Bruce suddenly suffocating in his bunk bed are the exact kinds of funky experiences that really make games fun to me especially if they are going for grand visions.
It wasn’t a massive hit but Star Wars Squadrons is a modern game that scratches that Wing Commander, space dogfighting single player narrative itch.
Underrated game
The majority of Star Citizen ship owners take their 40-dollar package and upgrade to the next level. So over 10 to 12 years of doing this every year comes out to thousands of dollars. So the real problem is what is the point of the game? They need crafting, shops, base building, a true player economy! Right now you can steal ships and can't sell the.... you can chop shop them down now... so an improvement but still it needs a lot more.
As for SQ42 they announced it's in polishing and is fully feature complete. So... this year an announcement? Release date? They did remove SQ42 from the site for price change according to reports.
Loved the video this was a very grounded discussion of SC.
YES! I'm so glad you guys are finally talking about this a little more. I fell in love with the game in 2018 and since then it's only gotten better. Haven't spent more than $60 bucks.
Skull and Bones took Ubisoft 11 Years to make. One of the biggest studios in the world. And was largely funded by Singaporean government grants. Games take time nowadays. Doesn't mean it will be good of course.
No because they ARE delivering a product...it's buggy as hell...but it's getting there...
Ships are already sellable to other people on the grey marker
Dreadnought was a fantastic game of 6 ships v 6 ships space combat and it was great too look at, and great to play. It just couldn't continue due to several shortcomings of new games, as well as environmental changes, snd the shifts in the markets. 47:46
"Caveat emptor." I honestly see Star Citizen as *less* of a scam in 2024 than I did in 2014. I think everyone playing knows exactly what they're getting. I think Candy Crush is more harmful than some closed-circuit space role playing game. Would love to hear some counterpoints.
Is it a scam? - probably
Is it a game? - probably not
Does it use dark patterns to sell useless digital items to people who think the game will one day be completed? - definitely
They literally warn you it's in alpha before you pledge into it, so it couldn't possibly be a scam.
@@Empty12345 that is a very terrible argument, you can't hide behind the term alpha for over a decade. I backed when the only playable part was the hangar module, there was zero warning or indication that it'd take anywhere near this long. How many people do you think would've backed if they'd included the warning that it might take 15 years to get to a barely functional game with not much content? They've missed so many release dates that they stopped giving them.
...but if it never gets out of Alpha, that's just a scammy way of selling you somethng thats broken with the promise one day it will be fixed
If you believe it will be fixed - you probably dont think its a scam. But that's a faith based decision as the evidence isn't strong.
@@KrikZ32 And why would you pledge into an unknown project and after act surprised when they didn't even set a date for it? What are you an idiot?
That's literally how you invest into anything, it's a gamble.
If you think any other studio could make a game like star citizen with the same scale, why aren't there any similar games?
You're complaining the game being still in Alpha over a decade when the game development started exactly then.
@@KrikZ32 Why would you pledge into an unknown project without any date when it's going to finish and then act surprised? What are you an idiot?
That's literally how investing works, it's a gamble. Do you know how life works?
"Alpha over a decade" You'r saying it could've been done sooner?
If it's possible to do 2 games, Squadron 42 and Star Citizen under 10 years with the same scale and detail, why hasn't any other studio made a similar game?
For a comparison, GTA6 has been in development since 2014, let that sink in.
Talk about a terrible argument.
Idk, the shit has something to offer me most things still can't even if it's jank house central.
Would probably feel different if it made this much money and was nothing but trailers, but I can interact with this thing. Sometimes it's fun and seeing it become something (stable) that everyone would at least want to try would be cool.
Yeah it's a place to play with your 3 grand virpil setup without needing a PHD to play it like DCS world.
It's been in development for 12 years at this point and everything people said could not be done is included in the unreleased alpha build currently and people are still using clickbait titles talking about this being a scam. It's not a scam, it's a game in open development and people just need to be less ignorant regarding what that means.
If you pay for something, and keep paying for it, and keep waiting (14 years) for the finished product to be delivered, it's a scam. If you don't think it is, I would like money for my game, Scam Citizen 2. I plan to release it eventually...
You don't have to keep paying for it?
I paid $35 for Star Citizen in 2014. I haven't spent another cent on the game since then. I still have full access to the game.
I can understand criticising the game for how long it's been in development, even if I think that's not fair due to how much time they've spent developing the underlying technology for the game like server meshing and their planetary tech, but calling it a scam doesn't make sense to me. They publish weekly dev logs showing progress, CIG has over 800 people on payroll working on various aspects of Star Citizen and Squadron 42, there is a playable product available that is consistently updated. If it's a scam, it must be one of the worst scams in history.
@@Kyle-yn5hy I'm glad you didn't keep spending money only beyond your initial investment. The amount of money they have raised, and how people describe it as being broken after 14 years, doesn't change that I consider it a scam. If anything, they learned how to do the bare minimum to keep people interested in paying more.
My question is this, how long can they continue to scam people by having an unfinished game and still make money on it? I'm sure EA is watching.
@@thebigunodos3559 But it's not even a scam by definition. Also, if they were doing the bare minimum, they wouldn't be paying software engineers a high salary to work on really groundbreaking technologies like server meshing. As a programmer myself, I know how much they're likely paying their engineers at Foundry 42 and I know just how complicated and difficult it must have been to make something like the replication layer for servers work at scale.
That's not the kind of thing a scam produces, even by accident.
@@redslate I don't think scammers would express their true intent. Unfortunately, I can only look at what they have done...and haven't.
The way I look at it is 1. it is 2 games. Star Citizen and Squadron 42, so to be fair, they have taken 10+ years to deliver 2 games, that isn't actually to bad, compared to other large games. 2. they have taken in $700M, for 2 games. That is $350M each. A good chunk of that money is money they won't get after they release the 2 games, because people have already bought in. If you compare that with other large games, I would be surprised if a Starfield made $350M, only difference is that they didn't collect the money at the start of development but they also gave no one outside of Bathesda access to what was going on, up until it was getting close to deliver the game. We get true early access, go ahead and try it, the game exists, and we have gotten a somewhat transparent view into their development progress, from the very beginning. I'll take the Star Citizen Model over the Starfield model, any day.
Finally, I will second the person that mentioned that the tech that Star Citizen is delivering, is far more ambitious than any other game out there. I think it willl all be worth the wait.
The story about the guy that hauls rocks cracks me up. During my sadly short time with EVE, I was in a mining guild. Couple times a week we'd all group up and head into risky areas to clean out asteroids while cussing about our jobs on TeamSpeak for a few hours, and just hang out watching the numbers go up. Honestly miss it. Wonder what those dudes are up to 15 years later...
Star Citizen is not a game in it's current state. It's a theme park, similar to Harry Potter world, where you can pretend to be a wizard and explore Hogwarts. In SC you can pretend to be a space man and explore one star system, planets, cities, or even pretend to have a job. But with bugs.
Well its still feels like kind od scam or money laundering to me not in strict sense of word or i hope not intentional but the thing bloated so much it never be done. They delivered something but its ten years and still going on. That thing burned thru the budget of small nation. Also it can easily grow too big an complex to be good. PoE is great game but is also hell and intimidating and overwhelming for casuals.
@@Pedgo1986 I can understand that. And I think Star Citizen will never be a casual friendly game. Similar to X series. They just throw you in the open space without introduction, guides, or tutorials. You just have to find fun on your own. And it's only possible if you are a true fan of space.
But Squadron 42 should be a different story. A linear, story driven action packed adventure in space that serves as an introduction to the world. And if you liked it, you probably will like SC (or at least get a motivation to explore it on your own and dig through the difficulties). But currently it's too many IFs and WHENs (or even IFATALLs), and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone (even though I enjoy playing it very much, I wouldn't take that risk)
How did I miss this???? A regular podcast again!?! Amazing.
12:00 ohhh, I get it Star Citizen is just Minecraft in Space but… broken and messy? And less stuff to do?
As someone who has played a lot of less-popular games through out the years, such as Operation Flashpoint and ArmA 1 2 3 and Planetside and stuff like that - the jank that comes with enormous scale is just a guarantee.. If hugeness is the point of the game, you just have to accept flaws in abundance. With hugeness comes jank, it's always been like this, we've just grown so used to being funneled down a straight path in modern games, we have grown unaccustomed to jank again. We lose it if there's any kind of bugs... Which is partly why games are MOSTLY menus and cutscenes now, not a whole lot of gameplay. Hard to make janky menus, and janky cutscenes are beloved by all.
We need to accept that stuff will be a bit janky if we're ever going to see large games again. WoW was janky as hell, laggy, there were performance issues.. It was also one of the most awesome games of all time in spite of all that crap.
These days we get hyper focused tiny games, or what I'd call polished turds. Devs don't make big games anymore, not the same kind of big games they did in the 2000s. I can not express strongly enough how awesome Planetside was back in the day, I can also not describe the amount of jank and performance issues it had because it was UNBELIEVABLE. 100++ players in one server on a massive map in the early 2000s was always doomed to be bad tech-wise, but the good parts were SO GOOD! Planetside 2 as well, janky, but there's nothing else remotely as big and awesome as Planetside 1 and 2. Almost everything else is puny.
And that's where Star Citizen comes in.. It is freaking ginormous. It will have bugs. If you want to play games like this, you must accept bugginess as a reality, it will ALWAYS be like this. You can't have enormous AND polished. That's just not doable, proven by every "large" open world game ever. And those large open world games are ACTUALLY kinda tiny. Altis in ArmA 3 (which is just one of the maps) is about 4x the size of gta5. There WILL be bugs.. Cause those games are made by a team 1/20th the size of the gta5 team.
Embrace the bugs. It is what it is. We're already playing games with a typewriter and a mouse, let's not pretend we're doing things in the most optimal way and can't accept sub-optimal shit if the game is engaging. Get used to bugs, get bigger games. That's how it is. No one dares make huge games anymore because it's going to be compared to the super simplistic relatively bug free shit that we churn through on autopilot and instantly forget.
Short answer. No. I can play the game. See improvement in each patch and I feel like I get my moneys worth
Joining SC at 3.23.1. This vid explains exactly how i feel about the game. GTA5 like Roleplaying. No direction. Working around bugs. It's definitely better playing with friends. It's niche, but after playing so much of elite dangerous, eve and X4. There's still an itch that only star citizen can scratch.
They would make so much more money if they actually made the game and not two games. Also if they complete the backlog and deliver on promises. Time will tell.
10:40 average star citizen player bought 45$ starter, whales just pull the numbers way up
You mean "median". When whales "pull the numbers way up the "number" that is raising is the "average". The median player does likely only spend 45 dollars, or is a free-flight only plsyer (if we count those)
Anyone just watching the video in the bottom right? I'm at 18 minutes and have watched him take off with the back hatch open and just now eject himself while looking at the buttons on his dash. 😅 I remember doing all this! Also I started about 4 years ago when every ladder and ramp was a death sentence, with no knowledge or person to play with. I had to look up a guide to figure out I had to request to leave the hanger. I blew up in the hanger twice before I knew I had to understand the game better.
When he said 10 NPC's piled on a bench, i was triggered lol. If you play star citizen, you totally got the joke and the diss..
I'm a long term backer and I've spent a lot of money on the game but I've probably spent the same amount on games that I either stopped playing or just havent touched in years. The game is definitely a big mess but its still one of my favorite experiences I've had in a space game. I've played a lot of space games but I keep coming back to SC because there's just no other game that's doing what its doing currently. If there was a game that did what SC does but better, I would play that lol.
I definitely think that there has been a TON of miss-steps on how they have focused their development and overall direction but it seems to be moving a long a lot faster (comparatively of course) to previous years. We just have to wait and see what happens.
Is it a scam? Idk, it doesn't feel like it as a space game enjoyer but I'm probably biased. I've gotten my monies worth and I didn't have to have an outrageous buy in to start playing. If you've got the money and want to try it out, go for it! You've got 30 days for a full refund if its not your jam, which I feel is more than fair.
I loved the video, great conversation
Just started the video. Why do they consider SQ42 a scam?
@@ShawnsrumiI feel like cig addressed all these concerns in November with the sq42 update video, and they stopped selling it till they have a release date.
Because people complained that they were selling it, so they stopped selling it until it's done, then the same people started complaining that they were no longer selling it.
Lol all that cool tech but a simple box mission only works 1 out of 15 times ,A BOX MISSION!
TBF regarding Elite’s controls, it *is* designed to be played with a controller. Which, for the space stuff, works pretty well
You mean HOTAS right? Because it is most definitely not designed to be played with a controller.
And even with mouse and keyboard it makes sense. You are flying a complex space ship, and for that the keyboard controls are very manageable, once you get used to it.
Ummmmm. You guys know that you can grind out in game money and buy the carrack right? I only spent 70 on the game and i own a carrack and 890j. You can buy ships at stores in the game. They are also creating a game engine.
We are reaching 10 years past the initial release window
Just to clarify, you say it's not an MMO because it doesn't have levels. You're talking about a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game). Those have levels and all that RPG stuff. MMO has been used for a while to refer to generic big multiplayer games, not necessarily RPGs (hence why the letters RPG aren't included). Of course, it's missing a noun, so I guess MMOG would be more appropriate. But it's being used more like a prefix: MMOFPS, MMO-blank, etc.
I bought in during the original kickstarter and we did it by buying one of the group/guild packages. I think my total cost was around 10 to 15 dollars. I have barely touched it since then, I do think it is getting near a time that i will actually try it out. I certainly do not care much about how much I put into it compared to some games I wish I could refund. At the same time I know a couple people who have passed the five digit mark on Star Citizen.
As someone who's been playing star citizen for 3 years on and off now, and spent 150USD for probably 1200 hours of gameplay, no I don't think it's a scam.
I can see how it is seen as one. The marketing practices are appalling, the technical state of it is pretty shocking at times, and I don't think it will ever be what was promised. I think we will see a cut down release candidate in around 2 years from now.
However, it has given me some truly amazing moments that no other game has. Flying my hoverbike into my buddies cargo hold mid fight after boarding a ship, or massive dogfights over jumptown.
But these moments don't happen instantly and take a lot of prep, and one dodgy server can ruin it instantly. Some days the servers just tell you to go touch grass, you're not doing ANYTHING today.
It's also trying to do something no other game is, and is improving massively especially within the last 18 months, but is still not in a state where I can say "it's good you should buy it".
I can however guarantee if you have a little patience you'll get your 50 bucks out of this.
I cannot in good faith spend more money until it works day in, day out, without fail though.
Still glad I spent money on this rather than some skins in some F2P game with no ambition.
As a quick update, I also think people miss that a lot of the money was spent on squadron 42, not star citizen, which we still haven't seen much of.
That needs to be 11/10 GOTY material otherwise I think even the most diehard fans will question wtf they did with the money.
@@MoosePlus No game imaginable (within realistic expectations) could justify the funding the game has lol. The longer it takes to release, the less sense it begins to make when the finished product will not reflect what over $1 billion dollars can do (by that point in time) with 20+ years of development. Spending $50,000 on a grilled cheese sandwich that will be prepared and made over the next 20 years may get you a really good meal, but your end result was still a grilled cheese sandwich. A video game in modern tech is still a video game in modern tech. It could be the best game ever created, but there is a reasonable cost and time expectation for what the end result literally is.
How does everyone know how many hours they have into a game. Is that something you can see in game or is it just an estimate? Serious question...
@@foomp I would say that firstly, there are 2 games, Star Citizen and Squadron 42, so it would be more like $500M each. Secondly, in the way the funding has worked, a fair comparison would be to compare what a game like Starfield made to what Star Citizen's $500M each. Both games are essentially being prepaid for, whereas a game like Starfield didn't make a dime until the day it was released. If you heard that Starfield made $500M, after development costs, would you be surprised? I'm not sure I would be. It seems like the transparent model the Star Citizen is using, sort of skews people's perception, when it comes to the money and development time.
@@foompit's strange because how do you quantify a games worth? Some will love this no matter what, some will hate it just because of what it is.
When I look at SC compared to something like Spiderman 2, a great game in its own right, and I look at 300m cost Vs 700m (of which waaaay less than half has been put into SC as a guesstimate), I'd take SC any day of the week, even in its technical state, because it's doing something unique and ambitious that's never been done.
I can see the arguments for scam, I really can, but if you're invested in the project, and see the potential, and especially if you've been around a while and played the actual progress, the whole thing reads like really REALLY bad project mismanagement rather than a scam.
I will never defend the pricing of the ships and the FOMO stuff they do on the store though.
Even if the project collapsed tomorrow, I've had my money out of it with no regrets.
0.o
Freespace 1 and Freespace 2. Capital ship battles and beam lasers
NVm.....he just saidi Freespace
45:44 "Still we have a gluttony of choices out there". We really don't. Not in this genre. There's a reason why every failed release of Starfield, No Man's Sky, funnels new players into SC after their expectations aren't met. I put quite a bit of funding into the project precisely because I know no other publisher would fund this game and a game like this could only ever be made from the backing of die hard fans. I support this funding model over the traditional publisher method and the predatory gacha models. It looks a lot worse for the average gamer who knows nothing about game development, but it takes money to make any project. It takes even more money to create an R&D company to develop new tech to work at this level.
I say this as someone that has stopped backing the project for years and wishes funding dried up a bit to push them to the finish line faster.
Let's start from the assumption it's not a scam. Sure, they've raised so many dollars and used so much time to release zero games so far but that doesn't make them scammers. Even blowing past the stated delivery dates itself doesn't make it a scam as that just happens sometimes. Doing it four or five times doesn't even mean they are scammers, they could just be really bad at project management and forecasting, and that label does seem to fit based on how often it happens. What's more worrying is how often they advertise the game as having or featuring something, work on it for several years and then just sort of unilaterally decide that they don't feel like following through on that anymore. Example 1: Remember when this thing was supposed to be a premium VR experience? Yeah they pitched that and even let it influence the UI to give us these translucent screenspace renders everywhere, but they stopped working on VR support in 2018 and seem to not want to talk about resuming work on it. Example 2: Remember when the single player campaign was supposed to be drop-in drop-out coop? That's since been downgraded to maybe having some co-op missions or modes but not the full co-op campaign to look forward to. Example 3: Remember when there were supposed to be dedicated servers and mod support? Well they sold that digital mod manual until October 2023 so they were quite OK to take money to deliver that feature for 11 years, but now the store link to the manual has gone 404 and they don't seem to want to deliver on this part of the pitch anymore. Example 4: I think it was 2014 on wingmans hangar when they were still describing the ability to send your NPCs off on missions in your extra ships which incentivized a lot of people to splash out on extras. They reversed course on that pretty early on, but it's still an example of something they used to entice sales and then decided they didn't feel like following through on. There are other examples, but these ones come to mind first and all respresent bait and switch behavior which is far more of a red flag for scamming than things like Chris getting on stage and saying 'Pyro next year guys' for now four or five years running. If we're charitable we can explain Chris having zero handle on the situation as him being clueless rather than malicious, but selling features then unilaterally deciding that you don't feel like delivering them anymore is true scam behavior and unless CIG corrects course they are acting like scammers.
From the outside looking in, I have zero inclination or desire to play/buy anything from this game. I know there are diehards that would say give it a chance, but it’s got the same problems as many other AAA and Early Access games. Sure you can play it but the feature creep, monetization, bugginess, and delays are exactly what we get upset about with other games/companies. Don’t see how it’s any different. Maybe once it actually launches I’ll try in 2035 but till then I’m good.
Side note: Funny thing is No Man’s Sky was announced, released, ripped apart, worked on to a very solid state, and is now celebrated as a comeback story between the time of Star Citizen being announced and now.
I just bought this game, going to go in blind, I'm up for the gamer challenge
Do yourself a favour and don't try to play the first couple hours by yourself. Request a volunteer player guide. There's a button right there bottom right in the menu. They'll help you get past the steeeep learning curve. You can't learn that stuff from youtube videos etc because the things that work/don't work change every patch.
"Is Star Citizen a scam?"
Is this a serious question in 2024?
Seems to me it's a slow-rolling money laundering operation. How many high-end cars does the CEO own now?
I don't know. I am sure the owners aren't going broke, but 10+ years of 20 - 2500 developers making probably $150k a year on average, does drain the bank account a bit.
Been a backer of SC for many a year now... and SQ42 is hugely contentious for me. Not because I don't want to play it, or wouldn't want to see it released, BUT, because for over a year, they turned the SC development teams into a skeleton crew and moved everyone over to SQ42 to get it "finished". And not only that, but after they had to remove the option to buy SQ42 from their site, SC funding has also been used to fund SQ42 development... and THAT is a huge problem for me, and I think should have been for more backers. I wouldn't have even blinked an eye if they "crowd funded" for SQ42 separately. But I purchased SQ42... and then chose to fund SC. Those two should have remained separate. The fact they used SC development money, time and resources to further SQ42, is the most reprehensible thing they could have done in my opinion. I haven't funded this game with any new money since they did that... and refuse to give them any more until SC is released. BTW... great vid guys! I'll tune in for more!
you can trade ships
"It's broken, but I'm having fun," is pretty much it, yeah. As someone that's been dropping into the 'Verse at least a few times a week since 2015 or so, it IS getting better, but it's incremental. For the community itself, we/they tend to be a real defensive lot thanks to the early assaults on the project (Derek Smart, the whole Crytek thing, etc), and even constructive criticism is taken as a full attack. Still? Yeah, I'm having fun, and I don't think Sq42 is a scam...well, I hope not, anyways, because I see the single player games in this 'verse being the new cash cow for CIG that'll keep the PU going
It's nice seeing a calm discussion of this. I really really enjoy Star Citizen. It's such a chill game to go into and just explore space , salvage ships, and do cargo runs unless you want to get crazy and do some bounty hunting
I love this conversation because it's such a sore eyesight for anyone in gaming to see Star Citizen has this much crowdfunding has this many people have brought in and have so many promises more than any AAA dev has ever made about their live service games since its inception and it's like the door is closed for like the average gamer. It feels like everyone knows about Star Citizen, but everybody who isn't in doesn't know how it plays or what Star Citizen even is, and for that, I'm glad Bruce and Lawrence had this conversation. I'm glad that Bruce and Lawrence took the time to involve themselves in this topic and inform themselves on how this goes for the average person who wouldn't know anything going in but sees Star Citizen all the time.
one thing people do not take into account, especially when it comes to valuing modern gaming, is the theory crafting and the content around the game. im a baby whale in my group, ive spent 5k into star cit. i try to judge game per hour i get out of it. I've spent well over 5k hours theory crafting with my friends... going over spreadsheets and watching videos like this one. Star cit will never live upto the expectations of each individual's imagination. but, that will be something in the future. for now, I continue to be engaged in the contact releases and the content around the game.
I don't think its a scam. I paid total £150 or something about 9 years ago. I've played well over 150hours so in my own little world its been worth it and paid for itself in that enjoyment I've had. However, I don't play it often these days and certainly that goes against it with it being so immersive and lets face it, a very complex complicated game to play. When the rest of it drops, is finished, comes out, whatever, I'll be there for it but I'm not immersed fully as some other players are and its very much one of these things that isn't very opening to new players or those returning that have been killed several times by something breaking which isn't that much fun.
Its a thing thats there and more power to them for making it bigger and bigger and maybe a little better each time. Its something that is completely different from any other game in how its being produced and that is that we get to see it day by day be produced. I enjoy those videos they post of the creation of the game on RUclips and on the odd occasion I'll dabble back into it with a friend to enjoy the sites and sounds. Lets be honest its a fantastic looking game and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. That's Star Citizen to me, if it shut down tomorrow without a trace, I got my moneys worth of enjoyment out of it. But, no one would ever hear me say that over the sound of everyone enjoy shouting "I told you so" because that's all anyone enjoys anymore is being right and rubbing someone's face in it.
The fact you can buy £48ks worth of ships in one transaction is a bit grotesque in my opinion but people have bought more expensive useless things in this world so what's one more to add to the pile lol.
LOL. Sure pal.
@@TheNotSure something you don't agree with? Want to talk it out?
This is a pretty balanced conversation which doesn't happen often with SC but one thing I think has been missed in this conversation about scam or no scam is not who is buying into the game now with the knowledge they have, but the people who bought the game based on the original crowdfunding promises. From that perspective, it changes how you could look at the game. For what it's worth, I don't think it's a scam, just a horrifically managed project that's spiralled out of control.
Ah, this was the podcast you guys were referring too. Love the format of the Gamescast.
SC is passing large hurdles ATM and since 3.18. I guess they could build a shit game on old tech and just release it. Streamers should know this moment in time isn't the best time to stream meaning 3.23 is new and the biggest changes to the game since 3.18. If they got past 3.18 which was rough to say the least they can get the 3.23 patch cycle and subsequent builds straightened out as well. I paid for Starfield and played that for 2 weeks while 3.18 was screwed but I was happy to get back to SC and haven't played Starfield again.
I love it that you guys have played the alpha and had some fun and seem open to it even thought it not stable.
You guys should do this again and discuss Squadron 42 and Star Citizen and invite an Old Backer and RUclips Content Creator.
Someone who really follow and understand the project someone like "Space Tomato" or "TheAstroPub" better yet invite them both.
They are both very good in explaining in a rational and calm way certain aspects and questions and certain impressions you guys and people who are new to the project might have.
There is a lot of details and knowledge you just missed out on.
- Why this financial model who came up with the idea and why.
- Who are those older Backers that invest so much into the development.
- Why is it an Open Development.
- Why did Chris Roberts choose this Engine to develop the game.
- Why is taking the Development so long.
- Why did they Restart the development and changed the direction 2 times.
- Why is there a Single Player Campaign.
- Why do we have an Open Alpha doesn't it cost a lot of money to run the servers.
- What is the Difference between Single player and Multiplayer with this Engine.
- Why took it so long to get the Engine to work right.
- Why do we have Persistence.
- What is Server Meshing.
- What is Quantum.
- What do they want to achieve in the future with the franchise and this Engine and Tech.
- What we see now in Alpha certain Ships, Menu's, gameplay sequence is this something we get when it comes out or will it change.
Star Citizen has been adding unique and impressive features no other game has for years. . But at the same time, all the basic features like maps and inventories took a back seat. No one is impressed by maps in SC. . they are just finally happy to see those features in and working.
To me it's pretty undeniable why SC has so many backers. The downplaying of what it is in terms of tech always seems so unreasonable. Like "So it's cool and all you can land on planets with 50 people on one ship, but. . " . . That part took years to make and get working somewhat consistently. :D . . It's not just some cool thing . . it's the core game.
Maps and UI updates coming in is a sign that the hard part is almost over.
Edit: How is showing Squadron 42 gameplay, assets and features and saying it's feature complete, damage control?
Also, a lot of those 2023 CitCon features are now in the PU.
For the love of everything good in the world: there is plenty of things to criticize this game/CIG for but folks need to find a different word other than "scam".
Fallout 4 and Skyrim made over 4 billions by this point, Starfield started development 3 years after SC and SQ42, what did Bethesda do with all that money? Certainly didn't spend it on making better games...
I supported Star Citizen. Star Citizen was supposed to come out when my son was in middle school. He has since gone to high school, and four years of college. After graduating, he moved to Seattle for a year, then moved back near me and has been at the same job here for two years.... and still the game is not out.
No, its not. Dollar per hour entertainment value, ive got more fun from playing Star Citizen in alpha than I have with any other entertainment expenditure over the last decade.
To answer your question...yes. I have fallen for it at the beginning..still no meaningful gameplay..just an inventory management system, tedious beyond measure.
That guy who posted on the Star Citizen subreddit, and got screamed at, about NMS being a much better game had it spot on
I bought an expensive HOTAS just to play SC. I have an easier time napping the controls on Free Space 2. Thank the Gods for Free Space Open.
Love the title and the first ad from youtube is star citizen.
The guy who has been happily hauling rocks for 10 years speaks volumes. Bro found a thing he’s passionate about. What a legend.
That map may not have been revolutionary, but MAN was it a QoL improvement lmao