Since I haven’t seen anyone post this, I thought I’d share the new Star Engine demo video from Cloud Imperium Games.
It’s objectively a good target for ridicule that the game has raised enough money to make the next Grand Theft Auto off of a strange and exploitative business model, been in development for over a decade, and still has no release date. At the same time, there’s more game in that public alpha than a handful of fully released products, so calling it a scam never made sense.
It is not normal, under any circumstances, to take 10+ years to make a game. The rest of the industry is encroaching on it, and it’s ridiculous there too. Right now we’re looking at a AAA industry that’s taking about 5-6 years to make a game, and everyone knows that has to come back down somehow; the ones that go longer than that are Prey (2006), Duke Nukem Forever, Beyond Good & Evil 2, etc. Not a great track record.
the business model was no more “exploitative” than something like Apex or PubG that make literal billions yearly off cosmetics
Those are bad too. In different and sometimes arguably worse ways. But at least you get the product at the point of sale and not an IOU. That, of course, makes Star Citizen an easy target once again.
People have their ego wrapped up in the criticisms about the game, they don’t like the idea that they got duped into hating on something by people who profited off their rage. People need to stop trying to save face; they were wrong about Star Citizen and SQ42.
I saw a trailer for this game with Gary Oldman in it 8 years ago. 8 years. They cast a lot of fan favorite actors that were already, let’s say, of an advanced age, and I’m betting one of them dies by the time Squadron 42 comes out. I’m looking forward to playing Squadron 42, but if it takes you 8 years from the time you had something to show for your work for that single player mode to come out (which can and should be smaller in scope than an MMO and have none of the CI/CD restrictions that a live service game has), then you can bet your ass there’s something to criticize there. At the very least, project management. And it’s totally fair to criticize someone for choosing to make the wrong game (overscoped) when your massive AAA company doesn’t exist yet and scaling up to meet that need apparently takes over a decade.
