Yeah right its a scam. Can we please stop "when does it release" crap? You can play it right now already.
it's the fyre festival of games. chris roberts even looks a little like the perpetrator of that fiasco.
in the fyre documentary, they also keep upselling people to generate more needed money.
the only difference is that festival had a fixed date so they couldn't keep the incompetence grift going. Chris roberts has no such issue. it's a legendary scam. Not on purpose, more of a "i'm incompetent and like to roll in money and have no shame whatsoever" scam.
$300 million dollars wasted. They should've given it to Kojima.
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Setting aside all judgments about the company or backers, what seems indisputable is that there is a huge demand for whatever this game is promising. Though other games have made forays into the market (Eve, Elite Dangerous, No Man's Sky), whatever lightning in a bottle that is being promised by this project seems to have immense appeal to a large market segment.
Perhaps it's all a phantasm, and at the end of the day nothing will be produced. It's worth noting, however, that a great deal is already produced and by all appearances, and setting aside whatever waste critics may attribute to the company, CIG does appear to be working consistently on the project and attempting to improve it. Whether it goes anywhere or sputters to an end at some point remains to be seen, but at the very least I think all parties can admit that the effort is being put in, even if differing opinions exist about whether it will cross the finish line.
That, however, ought to make critics at the very least ask why no one else hasn't stepped up to the plate and taken their swing. With 250,000,000 dollars (and possibly more) up for grabs, why hasn't a more reputable, more established, and (at least in the eyes of the gaming press) more productive company made a pitch to draw off Star Citizen's backers?
Other than tossing insults at the backers (It's a cult!) the real answer seems to be more in line with one of the following:
1) It's not cost effective. The rate of return of using an established engine to make a Call of Duty clone or a minor incremental improvement on an existing property is vastly higher than creating a new code base for something of this scale. "We don't think it's worth it"
2) It's not feasible. The technology does not currently exist or have a reasonable likelihood of being developed in the foreseeable future. "We don't think it's possible".
Both reasons feel like justifications to support (or at the very least be indifferent to) the Star Citizen project. After all, if companies aren't investing in whatever it is that Star Citizen is promising because of the first reason, then the more money that the community puts in the more likely other companies are to see viability of their own investments in the future- after all, if someone (just not CIG) can achieve all of this, isn't it better that they demonstrate the market viability of the project to others?
If it's the second reason, then applaud Star Citizen for attempting to scale the mountain previously thought unscalable- even if they fail it's a noteworthy effort. Whether they are misspending money and would be better managed by a different captain at the helm, they are still making the effort.
I guess what I don't understand (and may never understand) is why this game has such a weird set of devotees and detractors in ways that other entertainment media doesn't. No one sits around attacking Universal Pictures for burning through 175 million dollars of backers cash on Mortal Engines, or Disney for green-lighting John Carter to the tune of negative 200 million dollars (to name two of many, many box-office bombs). Entertainment money is wasted all the time because creating financially viable art is an uncertain endeavor. The Star Citizen guys have apparently put the stakes of their artistic effort (in the form of backers dollars) up front and center, and in the end they will either produce the Mona Lisa or a cross in a jar of urine (though likely something in between). Yet in the end if it bombs it will bomb in much the same way as hundreds of artistic efforts have bombed before it, for about the same price tag. I don't get the emotional investment."
This summarizes everything i agree with
