FunkyMike Posted October 3, 2016 Share Posted October 3, 2016 Quote For the past seven months, I’ve been talking to the people who have been making Star Citizen. This includes its directors, a number of anonymous sources who’ve worked on it, and the man who drives the whole project: Chris Roberts. From the outside, Star Citizen appears to have been wildly successful; to date, it has raised more than $124 million from passionate fans. The money has allowed its developer, Cloud Imperium Games, to open studios around the world and employ more than 325 talented developers. Behind the closed doors of CIG’s studios, however, it’s been far from an easy ride, according to staff. They have all faced a unique challenge: how to nail down the scope of a game whose budget and ambition is always growing. Star Citizen has now been in development for five years, and over that time it has suffered through significant changes and unrest among its staff, huge delays and, 18 months ago, a radical restructuring of all its studios. CIG has released several discrete demos over this time, but there is still not even a date for the final game, which was originally planned for 2014. Star Citizen’s development has been high-profile enough, expensive enough and, yes, troubled enough to spawn a whole ecosystem of theories as to what’s going on at Cloud Imperium Games, from theorising about the project’s technical challenges to wild accusations about what’s happening to the money. Various community scandals have added yet more fuel to the fire, turning Star Citizen into a lightning rod for controversy. The questions I wanted answers to were: what exactly has been happening over the past five years? What are the reasons behind Star Citizen’s various delays, and what specific development problems has it encountered? Have things been mismanaged? And, as many Star Citizen backers are now beginning to wonder, can it ever actually be finished? ... ... ... http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/09/23/inside-the-troubled-development-of-star-citizen What to Make of Star Citizen Quote .... It takes a lot of time and money to properly research, edit and fact-check something of this scale: in our case, seven months, with eight different people involved at various stages. In the current media market, where team sizes are shrinking, ad revenue is falling and content is free and plentiful, it does not often make sense to invest heavily in this kind of journalism. People still do it, because it’s what journalists love to do – and now and again you come across an irresistible story. If the press doesn’t cover something like this, it’s not because journalists are lazy, or in the pockets of developers or publishers, or part of some conspiracy. It’s because this kind of work takes research and time, and we are all working with ever-more-limited resources. Star Citizen has become a lightning-rod for controversy, with several entire forums’ worth of people dedicated to forensically dissecting every tiny detail, rumour or allegation surrounding the project. Star Citizen’s most vociferous detractors claim that it’s all one huge scam; its most vociferous defenders maintain that everything is totally fine, and that it’s still going to be The Best Damn Space Game Ever. The truth, as is so often the case, is not so simple. .... http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/09/30/what-to-make-of-star-citizen Good journalism from Kotaku. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theyarecomingforyou Posted October 7, 2016 Share Posted October 7, 2016 There's a lot of good journalism that's gone into the recent series of articles they've done on Star Citizen. In fact the game's community has been very receptive of the work they've done. However, I think the framing of the development as 'troubled' is unhelpful. What sets the game apart from traditional games is the nature of its funding - crowdfunding. The Kickstarter originally aimed to raise $500,000 but ended up drawing in over $2m, continuing on the CIG website to the current amount today: $125m. That's 250 times the amount they were initially looking to raise, which resulted in the scope of the game expanding. When you look at the state of the game at the moment compared to what was initially promised it's incredible to see where the development is right now. However, one of the consequences of that is that CIG had to build a large team around the game - the team originally had five members and from what I last heard has over 350 members across four studios. It also meant that CIG hasn't been in a hurry to rush out features it didn't consider ready. The development has certainly had its issues, largely stemming from a lack of communication with the community over delays (particularly Star Marine), but the game is so much more ambitious than originally planned it was always going to happen given its success. As someone who backed the game during the original Kickstarter in 2012 I'm extremely happy with the progress of the game, even if it is taking a lot longer than was initially expected. On Sunday we're going to see footage from CitizenCon which will give us a better insight into the development of the game, with the first proper look at footage from the singleplayer campaign, Squadron 42. Original pitch: Current development: Coming soon: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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