Star Citizen has now raised over $800m, with still no release in sight

10 years ago I wrote a report on scope creep and used Star Citizen as the subject. I'm glad I never gave this project even a penny.
- That's amazing that 10 years ago it was obvious... and here we are...
  
  Anyone who knew Chris Roberts previous projects knew it was going to go this way. That man doesn't know the meaning of scope.
- Amazing things happen when you get 100x more funding than expected
  
  Yeah, he realized that the hook was worth more than the actual game. Why finish a game that could tank, when you could promote hopes and dreams forever?

Humanity will have warp-capable spacecraft before Star Citizen gets a release candidate.
- Still may be released before gta6
  
  Hmm, but I think Half-life 3 may come out first.

Can we get elon to fund this? Might distract him from politics for a while and stop him breaking something else
- Honestly not a bad idea. He could slap SpaceX on half the ships, and the timelines of star citizen releasing are about the same as SpaceX getting to Mars

This has to be some psychology loophole they stumbled upon. It's like religion or something.
- It's like religion or something.
  Well yeah, people putting money to buy several ships (instead of only 45$ for the basic game package) are buying into a dream. The dream of the perfect space sim, a sim where you can be anything you want. That dream has been growing since Elite in 84 and the X-wing games in the 90. So yeah, kinda religion for the space sim nerds.
  Im certain they will deliver, no idea when, but they will achieve it so that’s cool for future gamers. If earth still exists that will be awesome as I will probably be near retirement and will have a shit ton of time to play.
  PS: I only own a medium ship that I bought from the kickstarter funding back in 2010-ish ? I wanted it to be my flying space home.
- It's often middle aged men with lots of money planning to run fleets of tens or hundreds of future players that will never arrive in the number they plan for. The few who do drop by won't accept their terms, so the middle aged man with lots of money will have to either play alone or play nice to get enough people to fully crew his second most expensive capital ship. He won't be able to crew his most expensive one because he can't convince the crew to fill the roles of 3 necessary "engineers" who run around the ship during combat starting on top of changing blown fuses and maybe a shield generator if it blows.
  Sometimes it's not middle aged men, sometimes they don't have lots of money, there are definitely a lot of backers who are financially exploited and respond to a lot of the bullshit SC's marketing regularly does.
  I've played SC a lot. It's got some cool shit but it's absolutely unstable and fundamentally broken in a hundred ways, and the design is kinda stupid and incredibly naive in terms of attracting and retaining players.
  I liked piracy and PvP dogfighting. I also liked having a medium large gunship with a little Fury in it. (TIE fighter) I used to stuff the gunship full of drugs (cargorunning but supposedly cool) and jump in the Fury I'd hidden (powered off) if a ship arrived, and chase them off or kill them. I got really used to that little shit, it was incredibly satisfying to barely keep my shields up while G forces were almost blacking my guy out, and whittling down larger ships. I fucking miss that patch. 3.21 was kinda sweet, despite it's Star Citizen-ness. Tbh in some circumstances it plays a bit like an even slower Tarkov.
  Don't play Star Citizen, unless some time down the line there's a Free Fly where you see reports of good stability. I think that's very unlikely, but I'd like to see it.
  I'm personally $90 in. For a long time I stuck to the $45 starter. You shouldn't buy either of them.
  Maybe wait and see if the single player spinoff "Squadron 42" comes out and is well reviewed.
- It's coming soon! You'll see! It will come riding on the clouds with fire. And the backers will meet it in the air, and it will take them to be with it in the stars forever.
- Why do people freak out so much about this 800million game when there are more than one 200 or 300million dollar games out there that are literally assets flim scams for crypto bros?
  
  I think this just had a larger community and more of a "Play the alpha! It's awesome!" userbase that's persisted in defiance of any kind of common sense. Like, there's something resembling a game in there, it's just a buggy piece of shit.
  The pump-and-dump crypto scams don't tend to last ten months much less ten years. They're vaporware from day one, so there's no mediocre sandbox of broken hopes and dreams to play around in.
- It's an experiment for the Duncan Princicle!

$800 million doesn't even seem that high at this stage (I had assumed they broke a billion by now).
Whatever this ends up being when it's all said and done is never going to justify the production costs. If you developed a helmet that could trigger the hardest orgasm your body can muster at the push of a button, it would not justify $800 million.
- Idk I imagine that machine could bring in way more than 800M
  
  I've got a helmet like that, only works on women though...
- That’s your example for 800mil…?
  
  Their username is calculator boobs, what did you expect?

We might get gta 6 before star citizen.
- I'm sure we will
- Elder scrolls 6 even
  
  Half-Life 3, maybe?

All that being said, it's a pretty fun game, kinda cool that it's always evolving, and I'm not upset that I paid $45 to enjoy the gameplay I've had. The people who regularly play it seem a little skeezy, though, so that part kinda sucks...
- Box missions still bugged? Flying out the aircraft? Not completing? Dying while running?
  I played a few years ago and refunded because even basic gameplay loops were bugged to non functional. It didn't feel pretty fun. Ended up playing No Man's Sky which was functional and fun.
  
  In the limited time I've played, I noticed no bugs. I'm the kind of "player" who tries to break the game or at least the experience. The last time I hopped on was about a year ago, I played for about 2 hours, and everything was flawless.
  What I didn't love is how. much. fucking. time. is. wasted. sitting. on. a. ship. Soooooooooo sloooooooooowwwwwwwww.
  If more of the ship mechanics they've proposed (sabotage, engineering, repairs) make it into the game, I'll likely sing a different tune.
  For the most part, the game feels like a very very interactive waiting room before the actual gameplay loads.
  Personal note: I'm annoyed to no end that you can drink soda cans, crush them, and throw them, but no one ever reacts when you hit them with one and no one trips on them. My priorities are peculiar but consistent.
  
  Man, what a comeback story, No Man's Sky!
  I'm psyched for Light No Fire.
- They should just call it live service instead of early access.
  
  The problem is that a live service game has to be a "complete" game, even at launch; ie. playing any one "season" on its own should be a satisfactory experience for a player. Star Citizen is nowhere near being a completed product.
  
  That's a very fair point!
- That's my takeaway of the game. I kickstarted like 80 dollars almost a decade ago, still to this day the only thing ever. I got a ship and access to a pretty mind blowing tech demo. So far i probably played like 60hours per year, and it's time to download it again. I just think it's very fun and one of a kind. It can be super janky, and i don't think people should spend as much money as they do on this "game" that may or may not ever see the light of the day. people spend hundrets of dollars on call of duty skins and they then take them away with the new game that is always around the corner. There are nft games that cost 300million dollars too, and they are not games at all, just asset flips and blatent scams.
- It's not really even a game yet. It's a bunch of disconnected half broken gameplay prototypes that happen to exist within the same environment.
  
  You've described every great physics sim
- Some mates and I backed way back in the day and only really started putting some decent play time into it recently. While it’s definitely still in-progress we were all surprised at what they’ve done and what’s been accomplished.
  It’s an absolute shame about the amount of feature creep the game has experienced but even the experience available now is decent.
- What do you mean about the regulars? What sort of crowd is it?
  
  Depends. I played with super whales, enthusiastic people, people who do nothing but complain. Overall, the player base is pretty nice and helpful imo. Most of the fun i had in the game is doing seemingly easy stuff with randoms. Like how many small ships fit in a big ship before it blows up and stuff like that. It's really an elaborate tech demo where you have to find yoyr own fun.
  If someone asks me why i like SC, i tell them this story: one day i was stranded on a planet, because my shhip blew up. It was just me and my mining car. The reasonable thing would be to just respawn, but the fun thing would be to pay someone to pick me and my mining car up. So i asked around in chat. Someone said he'd pick me up. So i waited, i strated to strarve. I asked him if he had any food. He said no but he'll pick some up. I asked for a double dog, because i'm a dick. The whole chat started arguing about what the best course of action is and what's better, a burrito, hot dog or double dog. A competition started, because everyone was the best and fastest pilot in the system. So i posted a new bounty and the price would go down every 10 min i had to wait. At least 6 people wanted to claim the bounty. I saw the first ship, but it got shot out of the sky, by another guy. Suddenly a small war broke out and i saw the whole thing unfold. It was amazing to see, and one of my best moments in video games. The whole thing was a 2+ hour ordeal of just me sitting on a planet. The game gives you such a sense of scale and helpless and lonelyness that you don't find in any other game i think.
  I wouldn't advice anyone to buy it, honestly. But if you like that kind of simulation, immersive space adventures, where you spend a lot of time for pretty "boring" stuff and have a beefy pc to enjoy the beaty of the game. This might be for you
  
  Some of them give me some real "bring your nephew next time" kinda vibes. I'm not necessarily accusing anyone of anything, they seem like grown men with too many young friends.

man im in the wrong business.
guys, i'm making a new game with samurais, lasers, pizza, and master chief might be in it who knows. i just need 500 million dollars and you can play it probably.
- Bro stop teasing and just tell me where to send my savings
- Best I can do is three fiddy.

The Duke Nukem 4ever of the new generation
- But Duke Nukem Forever was released. Star Citizen is more like Beyond Good & Evil 2.
  
  DN4 was a joke until it got released, is my point.
  
  DNF was only released after the original studio went bankrupt, has it's IP and assets bought up, and the new owners spent 6 months cobbling together whatever was there to just push out the door to recoup some of the cost.

Roberts probably hasn't finished taking a shit in his life. I just know he holds in a turd for later.
- He lets it poke out to give bystanders a whiff if they pester him about release dates and bug fixing and stability, then he promptly sucks it back in.

It'll release same day as gta6 and no one will notice, it'll miss its marketing cycle and they'll need another 500M to make up for bad timing

Wow graphic look sick. Is that luke skywalker?

The scope of the game is a $3b project, i'll be seriously impressed if they get it half done for 800m.

I think $800m may be enough to place it as the biggest scam in gaming industry history.
- India launched a lunar probe for a lot less.

I've never put any money in this game. I remember I feel like a decade+ ago they had that ship hanger demo that was the only thing available at the time. I think I installed that. Whatever. If people fund this game and it ends up solid someday I'll enjoy it

most expensive-to-develop video game?
(provided it all actually goes towards that)
- This money is technically funding the development of 2 games. And the construction of multiple studio sites
- I wouldn't say game. Games are fun. Tech demo or simulation maybe.

No release in sight? Squadron 42 is preparing for publishing and in polish stage, as mentioned in article
- Oh for the 5th year in a row? Alright, I'll believe that when I see it.
  
  I better be able to see my past reflected in that shine!
  
  Was only recently announced but sure
- You cannot be serious right now.
- I backed the original Kickstarter in 2014. SQ42 has been "nearly ready" for years now. I'm not at all surprised SQ42 and Star Citizen are covered in suspicion and doubt, given how much time Roberts is willing to waste making sure people have to eat and drink and reworking ships and game mechanics, while getting sucked out of your ship when you warp and being unable to refuel/rearm remained problems for years. Hell I bet they still are.
  The game was supposed to be something we could play on our own terms, not a wide open griefer fest like it is now.
  I dunno I stopped waiting, I don't care anymore.
  
  Lower development costs and faster to develop than GTA 6 so far, with more to show for it. Don't give up hope
- Sure Jan
- That's a small fraction of the promised final game.
- They said about 2016, too.
- Yea, don't worry. Lemmy is just as infected with those who have shallow opinions based on no relevant insight into the topic at hand as reddit is.
  I mean look at the comments. They likely don't even know that it's two seperate games not just one that's being built.
  Once SQ42 is out we will see how it good or bad it turns out and can then judge if the money was worth it.
  
  It's okay GTA 6 has been in development longer, at higher expense and has less to show for it