Star Citizen

[OverdriveActive]

I'm on the sceptical side of this now. Mostly because of a few things:

1. I have no idea how they're going to pay for the ongoing running costs. Like, it feels like the donations and prepurchased ship money is just being spent on making the game. So they'll end up in debt when the game starts and then they're running effectively a full MMO infrastructure. There's plenty of companies that had better outlooks that died just because of the running costs of a venture like that.

2. The feature creep has been significant. I'm not even that invested and even I can see that the team over there seems to want to do "everything" in terms of simulation. I don't think it'll appeal to a whole lot of people. The people it will appeal to will not have deep enough pockets to keep it going.

3. I've watched quite a few hours of streams on Twitch trying to understand what it is people are doing in SC. There's definitely a group of dedicated people playing all the time. When I watch them I'm struck by now the gameplay isn't revolutionary. It doesn't feel like what it's bringing to the table can't already be found elsewhere. Let me qualify that a bit more by saying this:

- If you come to SC for the shooting aspect I don't think you give a heck about the flying simulation part
- If you come to SC for the flying simulation then you're unlikely to care about the shooter part
- If you come to SC for the space exploration then the above two might put you off
- If you come to SC for the realistic MMO parts, you may find yourself stifled by the intricacies of the game
- If you're somehow into all of these things and you like the nexus of them all in one then you're a bit of a rare breed

I feel like they're targeting a subsection of a subsection of a subsection of players at this point with the gameplay targets they have. It makes me very sceptical that on release it'll have what it needs to keep afloat and then beyond that, to keep it developed with new content and costs paid for.

I love the look of what they've created so far. I think they've achieved an amazing amount of graphical fidelity and their scaling systems are amazing. On a tech level, yes, this stuff is great. From a game perspective? I just can't see it being playable any time soon as it's not near tight enough gameplay wise to attract a significant audience. The other concerns just make me even more worried.

EDIT: As far as the funding thing goes, I don't even know what to think about that any more. I've heard so many different takes over the years and so many rumours that it's hard to have any feelings on it. If I was interested I'd play the game the way that people on Twitch do already. Since I'm not the game pretty much doesn't exist to me outside of the periodic scandal or post about how CIG / RSI is running out of money.

[Chairman Meow]

I can't believe that people still give money to support this. I guess it's the sunk cost fallacy at work.

[Alexander6377]

I mean I try not to be that invested in the game (even though I put a lot of money into it, from the start of its creation) as not to be disappointed. But personally, I think it looks very promising even though it's taking a lot of time to make which I think is quite understandable when thinking about the size of the game. I do think it will pick up a lot of steam when the singleplayer is released.