Think part of it is that Chris Robert’s comes from a time when games couldn’t be patched.
Comment on Star Citizen Just Had its Biggest Crowdfunding Day Ever With $3.5 Million in 24 Hours
setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 10 months agoI’ve been part of some amateur game dev projects and SC has the vibe of an amateur project where the devs are constantly focusing on whatever catches their fancy at the moment, going back and tinkering with things they’ve already made, and sort of aimlessly scope creeping. There’s nobody to strongarm them into writing, much less following a game design document.
All of that is initiative to me to understand.
Then there is “the dream” that is being sold to people who want this type of game. That level of very specific fandom is also easy to understand, at least from a distance. People get super into all kinds of games and spend outsized amounts of money and time.
Star Citizen is like the perfect storm of these elements.
sebinspace@lemmy.world 10 months ago
setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 10 months ago
No, there’s really no excusing this game’s development. If anything, Robert’s should have learned from Freelancer to have a tight core product that’s actually shippable.
At this point Internet nerds are locked into throwing money at Star Citizen’s development, making it the closest thing humanity has achieved to a perpetual motion machine.
Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz 10 months ago
Freelancer was fantastic. It’s what convinced me to back Star Citizen back in 2012.
setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I suppose I should have elaborated.
Chris Roberts begin developing Freelancer with the same amount of total simulation that Star Citizen promises.
Freelancer repeatedly overshot development timelines and Roberts was running out of money. He had to go to Microsoft for cash. Microsoft gave money to develop Freelancer in exchange for Roberts being essentially demoted to a consultant, and Microsoft taking charge. Microsoft immediately began cutting features and mechanics to turn Freelancer from an amorphous project into a shippable game.
If you know that, then seeing Roberts in charge of a new game, with no oversight and essentially infinite development time, the resulting quantum superposition state of Star Citizen’s release should not be surprising.
dustyData@lemmy.world 10 months ago
If you don’t know what you want except a nebulous dream, you can’t tell that you’re dissatisfied with what you actually have, and don’t realize that what you’re doing isn’t actually getting you anything. This applies to both the devs and the fans.