Twelve years ago I was in a totally different life. I had just finished all of my training and was just settling into my new career and I had a long way to go before I could spend hours on a video game. I knew I had a child on the way and I wasn’t going to be putting any money into a Kickstarter (and this was long before we’d have a series of failures in crowdfunded massive games). That doesn’t mean I wasn’t excited for Star Citizen. As an Eve Online player, when Star Citizen was presented to me by fellow Eve Players as the “next Eve Online” I was excited. Looking at the Star Citizen kickstarter it was a game that could take everything we loved about Eve and make it better.
Now, 12 years later, we look back at Star Citizen and we wonder how were we ever taken in so completely. RSI and CIG have made a literal fortune on crowdfunding a game that always seems to be almost ready, but can never quite reach the finish line. At over $671,000,000 raised from over 5.1M backers, there doesn’t seem to be any financial rush to button up either Squadron 42 or Star Citizen and bring it to launch.
Now yes, last October CIG announced that Squadron 42 was “feature complete” and entering the “polish phase” however that didn’t bring with it anything that looked like a release date. Squadron 42 was supposed to launch in 2015, and in 2016 a production schedule was made public, and now 7 years later the game is almost ready. Meanwhile the main game Star Citizen continues to suffer from sprawl (aka scope creep) and the focus now is to bring it to a 1.0 Release Product including difficult decisions on the part of new Senior Game Director Rich Tyrer deciding “all the features and content we need, and just as crucially, the ones that will come post release.” From that, it sounds like the 1.0 feature complete product will be a core viable product, but will not have all the bells and whistles that have been delaying the game for 9 years past its originally intended delivery date.
The question would be why should CIG and RSI worry about shipping a product when they have raised $671,000,000 and they often raise on average more than one million dollars a day. While not trying to be an alarmist some of the things that are said from RSI are worrisome. They lost a key staff member Todd Papy the former live game director, because he did not want to relocate from California to Texas or England. Papy was not the only individual to leave, they also lost a Lead Producer, An Assistant Design Director, A Lead Designer, a QA lead, a Senior AQ analysis, and another producer.
Also worrisome is the fact RSI/CIG seems to believe they are on the cutting edge of technology with their celebrating bringing 350 players into one shard, and having a seamless universe, when CCP and Eve Online have been able to handle 1k plus players in a system for 22 years. Yes, I know that the more people in a system in Eve, when you start to exceed the 2k threshold Time Dilation (Ti-Di) kicks in but still, it seems Star Citizen is celebrating 350 in one shard and they find this noteworthy enough to mention, but Lower Decks in Limsa Lominsa FFXIV will have more than 350 people on a busy weekend.
So the question is with the viewer, do you believe RSI/CIG will be able to bring Star Citizen to a 1.0 release build? Or do you believe they will just keep crowdfunding as long as money rolls in. Let me know.