Before we get further into this piece, let’s have it in on record that I’m a Star Citizen backer and have thoroughly enjoyed previous titles created by Chris and Erin Roberts over the years. StarLancer is probably one of my favourite space sims and Freelancer wasn’t bad either.
Over the past few months there’s been much discussion about the future of Star Citizen and whether the game as envisioned by Chris Roberts can actually be made, even with the $85 million that’s been raised from the community so far.
The biggest complaint has been the time it’s taking for the development team to release new content and fix the aspects that are already available. There’s no doubt that progress with Arena Commander has been slow. Meanwhile, the Star Marine FPS module and the ‘social’ module are still to arrive.
We were told to watch out for great things at Gamescom this year, but I still have this niggling feeling that what was shown at the special Gamescom Star Citizen event didn’t really tell us too much about the game’s progress.
Chris Roberts put on an excellent “show” as always, with a carefully choreographed multi-crew ship demonstration; even if he had to continually shout amusing commands at “Jared” and “Andrew” to get them moving into the correct positions.
The most disappointing aspect of the whole presentation was Star Marine, a part of the game I’m still convinced should be shelved. Watching the demo didn’t make me want to play it or care about it one bit. It looked like typical shooter fare, and not a great one at that. I also still want to see the Hologram ability, so maybe if Andrew or Jared can find the ‘G’ key or whatever it was, I’ll see that one day.
Citizencon is in early October. Not long to get all of this done.
Star Marine is now no longer in development at Illfonic and it was understood that the FPS module was somewhat nearing completion. The official line from Cloud Imperium was:
“As Cloud Imperium Games and Foundry 42 in Europe have continued to grow, we’ve begun pulling in some of those external projects to reside with our internal teams”.
This would make sense if the FPS module looked anywhere near complete. Are CI now trying to scale back on costs? Who knows but it looks that way. All I know is this part of the game is looking pretty ropey.
Despite Cloud Imperium’s best efforts to show that Star Citizen was coming along we still don’t really know where we are with it. It’s been a hot topic since June but I think many PC gamers forget how much has been shared since the Kickstarter campaign closed out and the real money started rolling in.
Cloud Imperium have always stressed that this was open development and they have divulged an awful lot of information with the community over the past couple of years. Sure, not all of it has been of major substance, but they have tried to impart information on a regular basis.
When it became apparent that some backers were unhappy with the speed of updates, here at PC Invasion we decided to look back at everything of importance that has happened since the Kickstarter closed out, whether it be an announcement, ship funding, or an update to a module such as Arena Commander.
To demonstrate exactly how much has been shared, we put together a timeline of events (see below) which hopefully illustrates how long it’s taking to release new content, share new information, and also some of the changes in direction we’ve seen in the past couple of years.
He looks fairly confident.
Am I convinced that Star Citizen will be the ultimate space game experience? Not entirely. Are features likely to be dropped or changed? Probably.
The real question is should backers be really worried about the state of the game? That’s really up to the individual and their expectations, but I know from where I’m sitting I’m not too concerned about it yet. The only concern I have is feature-creep which thankfully looks to have slowed in the past six months.
I’m one of the backers who chipped in very early and I’ve not spent an extra space bean on any new ships or whatever else Cloud Imperium are selling for an unfinished game. If Cloud Imperium manage to make the game they pitched I’ll be happy, and maybe even a little surprised. In fact, if I have as much fun with Squadron 42 as I had with Starlancer then the smallish amount of cash I’ve thrown at the game would be money well spent.
The $85 million raised through crowdfunding is a lot of cash (and doesn’t even account for additional, external investment secured by Cloud Imperium). Looking at what’s been completed in the past couple of years is the reason why there’s been dissension in the backers’ camp and a call for refunds.
The refund situation is hit and miss depending on when gamers backed the project and how quickly they claimed their refund. That said, CIG have been dishing out refunds for the past couple of months to those they think qualify. It’s not an open refund process which some backers would like to see but CIG are being careful not to open those floodgates. If money drains out of the project then it would suffer further.
Let’s now take a look back at all the key updates to illustrate what exactly has been happening with the game’s development. Seeing it listed like this may alleviate or raise concerns, depending on your point of view. The timeline runs in descending order, from recent events to the initial pitch back in October 2012.
