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As Scam Citizen turns eight years old, the single-player campaign still sounds a long way off

Look into Roberts. He's absolutely psychotic, a control freak and a narcissist of the highest order. On top of that, he has a history of stealing money and hampering the progress of his games. Should be no shock to anyone why development has stagnated for so long. The game will more than likely never be completed as advertised, but he will still be a rich man and not give two fucks about anything else. That is until the time comes for a new grift.
 
Meanwhile, I’ve been playing and loving Elite Dangerous for the past 6 years.
What I wanted to write.

If I were Chris Roberts and seeing that monthly income in the millions rolling in, I'd stall that shit as much as I can as well.

(add/edit: Dude is living off the dreams of now wealthy forty somethings, who played and loved his games when they were teens. What better source of income can you have..

Big respect for David Braben not going this way with Elite Dangerous.
)
 
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martino

Member
What I wanted to write.

If I were Chris Roberts and seeing that monthly income in the millions rolling in, I'd stall that shit as much as I can as well.

(add/edit: Dude is living off the dreams of now wealthy forty somethings, who played and loved his games when they were teens. What better source of income can you have..

Big respect for David Braben not going this way with Elite Dangerous.
)

look at that
i see no reason for him to stop
 

KungFucius

King Snowflake
Crazy that I bought a pc years ago with a shiny new 1080 thinking, "this'll future proof me enough for Star Citizen," and it still doesn't have a release date.
Me to, along with other games. Sold the 1080 on ebay last week because it wouldn't fit in my secondary ITX build when I replaced it with a 3080. I tend to keep cards 2 GPU generations at least. So maybe this card will be used for the game. Or maybe it will be a 5080 super or 8080. Maybe I'll be 80 when it releases.
 

Larxia

Member
These people should be in jail.
Oh so you think it should actually be forbidden to do an ambitious project outside of the usual scopes we see in the industry? That's really sad.
I don't get a lot of the complaints, I think people who trash this project this easily don't really realize how impressive / ambitious some of the stuff in the game is.
We see all the time much more simple games taking 4 years of developement, and star citizen is really on another scale, being basically multiple AAA together.
I'm not saying that the game will succeed, but I'm personally really interested because there's just nothing else like it.
 
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Guilty_AI

Member
I can't help but wonder, when this game comes out - if it does at all - won't we already have something on the same level? Some titles are already coming close to it in terms of what they're trying to achieve





 

Bartski

Gold Member
Man, does anyone have any recent photos of Roberts? Curious as to what he looks like after close to a decade of heavy coke use.

LMAO must be those eye drops :messenger_tears_of_joy:




IufQjpU.jpg
 

Thanati

Member
What I wanted to write.

If I were Chris Roberts and seeing that monthly income in the millions rolling in, I'd stall that shit as much as I can as well.

(add/edit: Dude is living off the dreams of now wealthy forty somethings, who played and loved his games when they were teens. What better source of income can you have..

Big respect for David Braben not going this way with Elite Dangerous.
)
I agree with everything you said, 100%
I’m still loving Elite Dangerous and the new updates are phenomenal.
 

EDMIX

Member
Either that or it's going to be the most epic game ever with unheard of production values.

Maybe. The amount of time its taking for them to even put this out is making some of those features they even started with be outdated.

The idea of being able to have some space game where in 3D in real time you go from the planet to space was a pretty unique feature.

So when No Man Sky gets announced years after this game was revealed, released years ago by now and has multiple updates adding even more to their title, it starts to deeply question whats going on with this title as many of those features are not becoming staple concepts else where. It starts to loose a lot of that wow factor. I'm still hype for the game and will still get it at release, simply that we are seeing that feature creep really beat the shit out of theses guys.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
I can't help but wonder, when this game comes out - if it does at all - won't we already have something on the same level? Some titles are already coming close to it in terms of what they're trying to achieve

That's ultimately what doomed Duke Nukem Forever. They would spend a year making mind-blowing shit, then George Broussard would play some other game with new shit in it and he would demand they top that. I remember reading PCMR shit back in the day, in the early days of this, about how they just weren't even going to bother porting Star Citizen to console because it was too much... fair enough.. but what about now lol. The new consoles are better than the hardware a lot of people are running whatever they are calling a game on I bet.

But games were more expensive to make back then

I didn't say that to imply they should have made 8 different games in that time... but this wait is obscene. It's not acceptable. There's no reason they couldn't make an excellent single player space sim with a good story in 8 years. I feel like Star Wars Squadrons gets most of the way there and it was made on the cheap as an offshoot of the Battlefront 2 studio in, at most, 2-3 years.
 
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gpiuamoLdcddJNgpRAkxGJ.jpg


Star Citizen's single-player campaign, Squadron 42 is still in development, Cloud Imperium Games has insisted, but don't hold your breath on it coming out any time soon.

"We still have a ways to go before we are in beta, but everyone on Squadron 42 is working very hard to deliver something great," CIG boss Chris Roberts said in an AMA on the Roberts Space Industries website to coincide with Star Citizen's eight birthday (Star Citizen was unveiled on 10th October 2012).

The AMA was meant to celebrate Star Citizen's milestone, but among posts about upcoming features for the main game were questions from clearly disgruntled fans who complained about the radio silence around Squadron 42, which is currently six years behind its original delivery target.

Squadron 42 is meant to be a cinematic, star-studded story-based single-player adventure akin to the Wing Commander games Roberts made his name with in the '90s. CIG has released flashy trailers for the game, starring virtual recreations of Hollywood actors such as Mark Hamill, Gillian Anderson, Gary Oldman and Mark Strong, but it has yet to become playable for backers in any form.

Squadron 42 was originally announced for release in 2014 during the Star Citizen Kickstarter campaign, but was delayed multiple times. In mid-2019 CIG said a beta release was planned before the end of Q2 2020, then an estimated Q3 2020 on a now abandoned roadmap. But that date has passed and there has been no meaningful communication from the studio on the status of Squadron 42's release.

"As it stands the community has completely divided opinions on the expected release date of SQ42 with opinions varying from that SQ42 is in beta currently to it being 5+ years away," said a user called Bobblenator in an AMA question.

"You stated in the pledge (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/the-pledge): 'We, the Developer, intend to treat you with the same respect we would give a publisher. You will receive regular updates about the progress of the game.'

"Given the massive uncertainty on the progress of SQ42 within the community, do you feel as though you have been meeting this objective?"

Roberts stepped in to address this question, announcing the imminent release of a show focused just on Squadron 42 called The Briefing Room. New episodes are planned every three months until the game comes out.

Roberts admitted however that the studio hasn't done a good job of showing progress on Squadron 42.

"Squadron 42 is a tricky project to communicate on as we really don't want to give the experience and story away which can make updating on certain content or features challenging," he said.

Roberts stressed the pledge Bobblenator referred to in their question related to Star Citizen, as opposed to Squadron 42 (each has its own development roadmap), and insisted "we also communicate way more than any other developer or publisher than I am aware of in terms of work and progress".

He then went on to suggest different people want different types of communication, ranging from deep dives to release date announcements.

"It's impossible to please all the people all the time, and with a project as complicated as Star Citizen or even Squadron 42 it's impossible to have iron clad dates due to the huge amount of ongoing R&D.

"So yes, I do feel like we have been meeting 'The Pledge'."

Roberts, in a separate post, then addressed concern about the status of Squadron 42 specifically. And unfortunately it sounds like fans will have to wait a while longer.

"You're not really asking about what is being worked on Squadron 42, you really just want to know when it will be done," Roberts said.

"The best answer for your question is Squadron 42 will be done when it is done, and will not be released just to make a date but instead once all the tech and content is finished, polished and it plays great. I am not willing to compromise making a game I believe in with all my heart and soul, and even though everyone (including me) wants Squadron 42 sooner than later, it would be doing a huge disservice to everyone working really hard on the project and all of you that are looking forward to it to deliver something that isn't great.

"The new roadmap will show how we are doing towards that goal and as we get closer to the end it will be more accurate but it will never be a perfect crystal ball of the future as there is always a certain amount of unpredictability in game development, especially when the game is hugely ambitious and has a very high quality bar; Red Dead Redemption 2, Last of Us 2 and now Cyberpunk have all taken a lot longer than originally communicated and those projects didn't even announce a release date until very deep into their production, when most of their tech had been resolved.

"We still have a ways to go before we are in beta, but everyone on Squadron 42 is working very hard to deliver something great."

As you'd expect, Roberts' comments have sparked a vociferous response among the game's community, with some players complaining about the long development time of Squadron 42, and others saying they are happy to wait.

"See the issue I have is that we're not treated with the same respect as a publisher," wrote redditor danivus on the Star Citizen sub.

"A publisher is told how far along things are. A publisher is told when something is taking longer than expected, where challenges have been encountered and content cut.

We're treated like players, only given the good news and shown shiny things in the hopes we'll buy more jpegs."

Danivus' "jpegs" line is in reference to the sale of virtual spaceships you can't actually fly in-game. Star Citizen has raised an astonishing $314m from nearly three million people since launching as a crowdfunded project in 2012, and the money continues to roll in: according to the official website, Star Citizen generated over $3m in September. Drilling down further, $236,775 was made just yesterday, 9th October.

Star Citizen and Chris Roberts have come under fire for years now for failing to release the game, or provide a target release date. Yesterday, the developers launched the Star Citizen - Alpha 3.11: High Impact update, and kicked off a Halloween-themed event as well as an in-game election. Fans will watch the new Squadron 42 show due out today with great interest.


How much research and development do you need to do before you can lock down a release year? This is crazy.
Does all this sound normal to anyone ?!

This is going on 10 years (8 since the kickstarter), a ballooning 265 million dollar budget with no single player campaign in sight and with a 400 strong development team behind it. For those funding it, at what point do you start questioning this game's development?

Rockstar, pretty much the best creators of open world games spent 265 million dollars and developed GTAV over the course of 3 years with a 1000 strong development team.
 

Dr. Claus

Vincit qui se vincit
Sunk cost fallacy. That is the only reason why I can see people defend this excuse of a "game" (read: scam).

We are nearing a decade and this still isn't a finished product, a game that people have sunk hundreds into and still don't have anything worth really showing. Elite Dangerous has come and gone and has done more with its minuscule budget (by comparison).

What a farce.
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
That's ultimately what doomed Duke Nukem Forever. They would spend a year making mind-blowing shit, then George Broussard would play some other game with new shit in it and he would demand they top that. I remember reading PCMR shit back in the day, in the early days of this, about how they just weren't even going to bother porting Star Citizen to console because it was too much... fair enough.. but what about now lol. The new consoles are better than the hardware a lot of people are running whatever they are calling a game on I bet.



I didn't say that to imply they should have made 8 different games in that time... but this wait is obscene. It's not acceptable. There's no reason they couldn't make an excellent single player space sim with a good story in 8 years. I feel like Star Wars Squadrons gets most of the way there and it was made on the cheap as an offshoot of the Battlefront 2 studio in, at most, 2-3 years.

All fair, but the last comment is not IMHO. You said it yourself, it is based on an existing engine the team had experience with and an existing game and then expanded upon in a few years. CIG started from scratch.

Still, all the other points stand.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
gpiuamoLdcddJNgpRAkxGJ.jpg


Star Citizen's single-player campaign, Squadron 42 is still in development, Cloud Imperium Games has insisted, but don't hold your breath on it coming out any time soon.

"We still have a ways to go before we are in beta, but everyone on Squadron 42 is working very hard to deliver something great," CIG boss Chris Roberts said in an AMA on the Roberts Space Industries website to coincide with Star Citizen's eight birthday (Star Citizen was unveiled on 10th October 2012).

The AMA was meant to celebrate Star Citizen's milestone, but among posts about upcoming features for the main game were questions from clearly disgruntled fans who complained about the radio silence around Squadron 42, which is currently six years behind its original delivery target.

Squadron 42 is meant to be a cinematic, star-studded story-based single-player adventure akin to the Wing Commander games Roberts made his name with in the '90s. CIG has released flashy trailers for the game, starring virtual recreations of Hollywood actors such as Mark Hamill, Gillian Anderson, Gary Oldman and Mark Strong, but it has yet to become playable for backers in any form.

Squadron 42 was originally announced for release in 2014 during the Star Citizen Kickstarter campaign, but was delayed multiple times. In mid-2019 CIG said a beta release was planned before the end of Q2 2020, then an estimated Q3 2020 on a now abandoned roadmap. But that date has passed and there has been no meaningful communication from the studio on the status of Squadron 42's release.

"As it stands the community has completely divided opinions on the expected release date of SQ42 with opinions varying from that SQ42 is in beta currently to it being 5+ years away," said a user called Bobblenator in an AMA question.

"You stated in the pledge (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/the-pledge): 'We, the Developer, intend to treat you with the same respect we would give a publisher. You will receive regular updates about the progress of the game.'

"Given the massive uncertainty on the progress of SQ42 within the community, do you feel as though you have been meeting this objective?"

Roberts stepped in to address this question, announcing the imminent release of a show focused just on Squadron 42 called The Briefing Room. New episodes are planned every three months until the game comes out.

Roberts admitted however that the studio hasn't done a good job of showing progress on Squadron 42.

"Squadron 42 is a tricky project to communicate on as we really don't want to give the experience and story away which can make updating on certain content or features challenging," he said.

Roberts stressed the pledge Bobblenator referred to in their question related to Star Citizen, as opposed to Squadron 42 (each has its own development roadmap), and insisted "we also communicate way more than any other developer or publisher than I am aware of in terms of work and progress".

He then went on to suggest different people want different types of communication, ranging from deep dives to release date announcements.

"It's impossible to please all the people all the time, and with a project as complicated as Star Citizen or even Squadron 42 it's impossible to have iron clad dates due to the huge amount of ongoing R&D.

"So yes, I do feel like we have been meeting 'The Pledge'."

Roberts, in a separate post, then addressed concern about the status of Squadron 42 specifically. And unfortunately it sounds like fans will have to wait a while longer.

"You're not really asking about what is being worked on Squadron 42, you really just want to know when it will be done," Roberts said.

"The best answer for your question is Squadron 42 will be done when it is done, and will not be released just to make a date but instead once all the tech and content is finished, polished and it plays great. I am not willing to compromise making a game I believe in with all my heart and soul, and even though everyone (including me) wants Squadron 42 sooner than later, it would be doing a huge disservice to everyone working really hard on the project and all of you that are looking forward to it to deliver something that isn't great.

"The new roadmap will show how we are doing towards that goal and as we get closer to the end it will be more accurate but it will never be a perfect crystal ball of the future as there is always a certain amount of unpredictability in game development, especially when the game is hugely ambitious and has a very high quality bar; Red Dead Redemption 2, Last of Us 2 and now Cyberpunk have all taken a lot longer than originally communicated and those projects didn't even announce a release date until very deep into their production, when most of their tech had been resolved.

"We still have a ways to go before we are in beta, but everyone on Squadron 42 is working very hard to deliver something great."

As you'd expect, Roberts' comments have sparked a vociferous response among the game's community, with some players complaining about the long development time of Squadron 42, and others saying they are happy to wait.

"See the issue I have is that we're not treated with the same respect as a publisher," wrote redditor danivus on the Star Citizen sub.

"A publisher is told how far along things are. A publisher is told when something is taking longer than expected, where challenges have been encountered and content cut.

We're treated like players, only given the good news and shown shiny things in the hopes we'll buy more jpegs."

Danivus' "jpegs" line is in reference to the sale of virtual spaceships you can't actually fly in-game. Star Citizen has raised an astonishing $314m from nearly three million people since launching as a crowdfunded project in 2012, and the money continues to roll in: according to the official website, Star Citizen generated over $3m in September. Drilling down further, $236,775 was made just yesterday, 9th October.

Star Citizen and Chris Roberts have come under fire for years now for failing to release the game, or provide a target release date. Yesterday, the developers launched the Star Citizen - Alpha 3.11: High Impact update, and kicked off a Halloween-themed event as well as an in-game election. Fans will watch the new Squadron 42 show due out today with great interest.


What the hell is this huge amount of ongoing R&D? This is crazy.

Well they could be giving backers the same respect they would give a publisher... in fact no publishers signed them up/would sign them up.

This always happens as people generally are optimistic/positive: they say “we will treat you with the same respect we would offer to a publisher” and we think about a developer working really tightly with the publisher and the publisher always in the known and enjoying at least great transparency... while evidently that was not the way they meant “respect” and the kind of publisher they meant is the one that demands little, let the devs alone/let them dictate the transparency they want to offer, and pays the bills.
 

DJT123

Member
SC is an utter, quarter of a billion dollars & 10+ years in the making with Dev team still not knowing Shit from Shinola, embarrassment. Anyway, it's defo coming to next-gen consoles so this freewheeling mess should never strictly be associated with the PC platform.:messenger_grinning_sweat:



 
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masterkajo

Member
The entire game sounds a long way off.

People that bought ships truly are naive.
If people would not have bought ships, this game would not exist even in the form it is in now. For me, the $30 investment in the beginning are perfectly justified. I invested in a dream and I understand that it takes time. I admire that Chris is not willing to compromise. If the fails, well, I paid $30 for the ride.
 

GymWolf

Member
This dude’s videos are great (hilarious) for a myriad of open world type games, and this video makes Star Citizen seem very deep and actually pretty cool... I guess as long as the players and community are supporting it, they’re content with its model.


Maybe because i don't give a damn about space simulators but i fail to see anything mindblowing (or even fun) in that video even with all the crazy editing to make the game looking far better than it really is.
 
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RJMacready73

Simps for Amouranth
I'm not invested in this game but have been following it from the very start purely cause the stated goals sound incredible, i drop in and read the occasional article and it really does seem like one of those lights at the end of tunnel just keeps getting further and further away, sure you can see the light but the more you move towards it the further it moves away from you. Now the hate this man and the devs get is hilarious to me but then again certain gamers are a bunch of whiney entitled cunts and if you where stupid enough to drops hundreds of dollars on this game then more fool you but as for the whole its a scam shite you keep reading about... c'mon ffs, the man/game employs hundreds of people.. thats hundreds of families with a home over their heads, food on the table from the executives right down to the receptionists are all pulling a wage outa this game, its not like the cunt is sailing around the med on his super yacth now is he, no hes plowing that money back into the company and back in the game and therefore back into the pockets of all his employees who are all working towards a goal so fucking outlandishly ambitious that we dont know if they'll get there but by fuck im glad hes at least trying, like i said i put fuck all in and therefore expect fuck all out but man if he pulls it off.....
 

nemiroff

Gold Member
Never mind the release date, I just want that Mark Hamill douchebag gone from the game.
 
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Exede

Member
A scam? Hm i don't think so. They have a vision for the game and following it. Slow but steady. Is the stuff we've seen of them worth 300 million? No, not at all. Hope a big junk of it is reserves to finish the game but i kinda doubt it. Had really fun in it so far, the community is great. Was it worth the money i spent? Oh of course it was. Have payed more for way less in gaming a dozen times.
 
c'mon ffs, the man/game employs hundreds of people.. thats hundreds of families with a home over their heads, food on the table from the executives right down to the receptionists are all pulling a wage outa this game
Ah, good that you said that.
I am glad my money is funding the wage for that receptionist.
 

Kev Kev

Member
why is this industry giving a pass to this kind of bull shit? why are consumers okay with this?

bloated dev cycles, broken/unfinished games, early adopters never being made whole... why is every dev/publisher so fucking anti-consumer? stop trying to make the next mutli-quadrillion dollar AAAA title and jsut make a good, solid game that doesnt take 15 years to develop. no one wants to wait that long and they always turn out looking and playing like shit when you do that anyway. people want to complain about streaming services but if the alternative is shit like this then fuck it, bring on the netflix of gaming. at least then we'll have quantity, bc as it is now we dont have quantity OR quality.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Maybe because i don't give a damn about space simulators but i fail to see anything mindblowing (or even fun) in that video even with all the crazy editing to make the game looking far better than it really is.

I think you answered your own reason. Why does anything have to be "mindblowing?" Why can't people just like something for what it is and the enjoyment it provides them?
 

GymWolf

Member
I think you answered your own reason. Why does anything have to be "mindblowing?" Why can't people just like something for what it is and the enjoyment it provides them?
Because people always exagerate when they talk about this game, so i expect to be mindblowed in a way.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
All fair, but the last comment is not IMHO. You said it yourself, it is based on an existing engine the team had experience with and an existing game and then expanded upon in a few years. CIG started from scratch.

Still, all the other points stand.
OK, so does that explain the gap from 2 years to 8+, not really.

Bottom line, Squadron 42 not existing in any form in 2020 is a massive failure. When a small indie team can put out a good one like Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, or Everspace 2, there's no excuse with the resources CIG have.

Keep working on your stupid bloated MMO all you want, keep selling virtual JPEGs to boomers blowing their kids' inheritance, but a lot of people funded the game for a spiritual successor to WC, you owe it to those people to deliver a game.
 
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