There is this tiny company called Nihon Falcom. They make this game series called Trails that I adore. they have like three programmers work on each entry.

In the time since Star Citizen was announced they have released:

• The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails 2012
• Ys: Memories of Celceta 2012
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 2013
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II 2014
• Tokyo Xanadu 2015
• Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana 2016
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV
• Ys IX: Monstrum Nox 2019
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II
• Ys X: Nordics

as well as a bunch of ports of older games to modern platforms and localizing them to the west. All of these are worth playing and some of these were GOTY material for me.

Its good to quantify how much time has passed, and how much you can get done with a smaller budget and focused scope.

Do you play indie games? They seem to be exactly what you're describing.

that's a fucking thing?!

don't judge until you've seen the dynamic cloth physics! that is what everyone wants, right?

I’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 intuitive 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.

I once saw a comment on a SC update video from a guy who claimed to have backed up SC as a teenager, went to college, entered the industry, was part of a team from start to shipping a video game. twice, and still SC is in pre-alpha. He said that now as a veteran of the industry he realizes that SC is a scam. Like, 99% of the stuff they hyped as their envelope breaking new tech for video games, has already been done by dozens of games at a fraction of the cost.

That's not entirely true, if they ever went full release there's still a fuck ton they can charge players for and milk. It's just their Kickstarter that won't make money anymore.

That being said you're correct, they've essentially pioneered the concept of "Game Development as a Service" in the same way live service and early access games are doing now regularly.

Personally even if SQ42 launches I don't think they'll get the persistent universe up to their original vision for another ten years. They absolutely aren't going to hit their 100 solar system metric from the 2011/12 era. I'd be surprised if there ends up being more than ten at launch, but it would surprise me even more if the game ever has an official launch at all.

What's most likely is that this game will remain in early access Alpha forever, allowing it to shield itself from criticism while taking it's sweet time constructing the game they said would release back in 2016 originally. That will allow them to justify keeping the Kickstarter open forever while also spending most of their time creating and selling new ships in a game that doesn't even have gameplay loops for most of them. Then they'll occasionally drop a new star system or loop to keep the hopes of players up.

This new dynamic server meshing technology they just showcased (at the tech demo level of complexity) is their only hope for making the game playable. The performance of the game isn't due to stress on your rig as much as networking latency because their servers are overloaded. If they can scale it to the planetary, and eventually multi system level, then they might have something worth picking up. I'm not going to pay for it until that game exists, though. Which it probably never will.

It'll release ANY DAY NOW. -The idiots that keep giving RSI money

I think it has turned into a sunk cost fallacy for so many now. They put so much money into it they can't afford for it to fail/not continue.

Get ‘em, boys.

Star Citizen is only available on a single platform too. At least Cyberpunk was multiplatform.

Writers, no matter how good, are just regular people. I have much higher expectations and not as much patience towards a game studio with infinite money and no released games whatsoever in over a decade.

You don’t understand they released a cinematic trailer of slow moving scenery only shots that makes it game of the year.

Everything.