Lorrent wrote:
Misery wrote:
Not a game I'd ever touch, and I say that as a PC gamer that definitely enjoys space-themed games. That is one *nasty* developer/publisher. Wouldnt trust them with... anything. Anything at all.
How come?
This is a developer with even deeper greed, and even shadier practices, than EA.
It's a kickstarted game, right? That's fine. In a kickstarter, you ask up front for the money necessary to complete the project. They not only reached their goal, but went WAY past it. The kickstarter did VERY well.
That was years ago. Since then, MOST of what Star Citizen is, is not a game... it's a way to give the devs even more money. Ever notice the EXTREME focus on ships you can buy? Even worse, ever notice the utterly ridiculous prices on them? Ridiculous prices on what are, I remind you, ships in a video game, and one that isnt even remotely close to being finished yet. EA and Activision are the absolute greediest of the big companies, and even those guys wouldnt even CONSIDER trying those money-grubbing tactics. Have you SEEN the prices on those ships, and how many there are?
And here's the thing: The usual arguement from fans is "well they need that money to support development" and I can tell you right now: No, they dont. This isnt how development works. They hit their kickstarter goal so hard that they completely shattered it... they got what they wanted and then some. They had all the support they needed. So that means that one out of three things is happening:
1. They mismanaged the money so badly that they ran out, and got increasingly desperate
2. They COMPLETELY missed the mark on their initial estimate of how much they needed. In fact, they missed it so badly that it says they barely even UNDERSTAND what is needed to create this product.
3. They didnt run out, and it wasnt about missing the mark... they simply wanted more, and saw a way to goad players into giving them lots more
There is no fourth option here. Those are the only three possibilities for the cost and sheer number of those ships.
It's been YEARS, and Star Citizen the game remains a glorified tech demo at best (and apparently, one that doesnt run very well). Seriously. They've.... had.... YEARS to do this. Yet they've managed so little progress that it reminds me of Duke Nukem Forever. This just isnt how development is meant to work, even on kickstarted projects (it isnt how it's supposed to work on ANY project).
And all of this while muuuuuuuuch smaller devs are already doing similarly expansive games. Look up a game called Empyrion, for instance. Another space game with massive scale, but a different gameplay style (much more focus on being on the planets themselves, and also a focus on building). It's huuuuuuge. I've been following the development of that one for a long time... they update FREQUENTLY (like, every couple of weeks) and updates are typically bloody massive. There's no microtransactions, no need to pay them a bloody thing beyond the initial purchase (which is only $20 normally.... just 20!), yet there's a super-long feature list. The game's one problem is it has a mean learning curve (seriously, it's one complicated game), but that's okay by me... any truly expansive game usually has a learning curve from hell. It's a game with endless possibilities and no need to constantly pay ridiculous sums to get those possibilities. There are various other similar examples out there, too.... this is hardly the only one (just the one I'm most familiar with). Plenty of excellent space games to be found, some expansive like that, some much more focused or even combined with other genres.
Yet SC is the one that continues to flounder and ask for more and more money to support a project that absolutely has not been proven, yet HAS ground nearly to a halt in terms of true progress. They're supposed to be professionals, too... they should be pulling this off faster, better, and more efficiently than any indie dev could, but they arent.
I mean, honestly. The whole situation is ridiculous. If you actually show SC's store pages to anyone that ISNT already obsessed with the game, they tend to just laugh at it. I remember explaining the whole thing to a few friends... they utterly refused to believe me at first. They were sure a game developer not only wouldnt get away with that, but that they'd never even TRY it. When they saw SC and it's store were real, they were utterly baffled. They then wondered why ANYONE would trust or buy from that developer. And that's the *usual* reaction, not an uncommon one. Actual developers that I know found the whole thing to be just disgusting, when asked for their opinion on it. One in particular called it "Scam Citizen", and.... yeah, I have a hard time going against that one. Because it genuinely might be true, we cant be sure.
So... yeah, that. Honestly I could go on for awhile longer (because the list of problems is MUCH longer than what I've brought up), but... yeah.
As long as gamers keep doing braindead things like pre-ordering, and buying ridiculous DLCs, these sort of practices will continue. But none of them are doing it in as nasty a way as the SC devs. Again, even EA and Activision wouldnt dream of doing this. And when even the devil himself wont copy you... you know you've gone too far.
And yeah, I know I didnt mention Squadron 42 too much in here... there's a whole other section to this messed up story, and that's a bit much for me to want to type about here. One way or another, I think I've made my point.
24 Jun 2018, 3:44 pm
