Squadron 42 Delayed Indefinitely, Kotaku's Star Citizen Series

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READ THIS FIRST
Before all you shitters get triggered. I in no way want SC to fail. Simply reporting on this. ALSO the main point of this post was to discuss some in depth investigative journalism done by Kotaku UK about SC. It is a series of articles. Yes they are long. You may have to pay attention for more than 5 minutes. Maybe do that before posting something moronic and purely based on emotion.....
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/tag/inside-star-citizen/

As I'm sure many who are following this game have heard, or at least expected, Squadron 42, the single player campaign component of Star Citizen has been delayed infidelity. Expected some time this year, the title has been delayed until some time in the future with no date given.

Reasoning behind this is simple. It isn't finished. In fact, according to some slides leaked from Kotaku, it isn't anywhere close to being finished. Base technology is complete however, AI, path finding, animation, and a number of other elements are not finished yet.

At this point it is even a bit grey if there will be a campaign at all. RSI seems to be, again sourced form Kotaku, only working on a single chapter of the game and taking that to final shipping quality. It is assumed they will use it for testing and also release in in some attempt to get even more money to fuel this increasingly unwieldy game's development.

Now I hear some of the critics in the comments screaming already "But I want them to delay! It makes the game better! I'd rather wait then have a broken game!" That is all very well and good and I'd agree with you. However, is in a position now where it can't be making mistakes and continuously breaking promises all while still farming more money. (Remind anyone of anything? Cough TS cough) Plus, this component was something that was hinted at for this year and was a major component that many people gave money specifically to have and that this, the spiritual successor to Wing Commander, was originally designed to be the primary focus of SC.

Now, I am sharing this because I do take an almost sexual joy in ruining people's fun and keeping them realistic about SC. The fanboyism and hype is insane not to mention the amount of cash people are dropping on something that really doesn't exist yet and perhaps may never exist. However, don't take that as I want SC to fail. In fact it is exactly the opposite. I think SC has amazing potential and could be one of the coolest, if not one of the best, video games in history. I'm very much looking forward to playing it upon release however we still need to be realistic here and manage our expectations.

Lastly, I'd like to share a series produced by Kotaku UK called Inside Star Citizen.This is a series of extremely well researched, well written and extremely long (some are over 25,000 words) articles concerning the history, development and future of SC as well as its backers and community. The articles are filled with first hand interviews and well done research about the game. Very interesting read that paints both a positive and grim picture of SC and the people who make it. Shows you what is really going on at CIG and the success and struggles they are having. I recommend anyone who is interested check it out.

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/tag/inside-star-citizen/

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doesn't surprise me one tiny bit.

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lol

I just want the game to come out at some point xD
Tbh I would be happy if the multiplayer part of the game (even in its current status) WOULD RUN AT ANY DECENT FPS
otherwise i'm more than patient...

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Yup sounds about right. I do expect this to come out but not near what they promised feature wise and about 15 years from now. SC had been continual delays and needing more money all the while not full filling any promises.

Yup absolutely with you there. I was and am quite interested in SC but by the time I saw the kickstarter it was all ready beyond reasonable to deliver what they were saying and it was only... only at 20 million, once it hit 40 it just became a nice fantasy pitch, nothing more.

I hope I am wrong but this does not every seem to be turning out well in any reports other then from CIG reports themselves.

The other thing is a lot of people backed this and if it does come out will not be able to play it from CIG's own estimates, it is aimed at super highend PCs, like take the highest you can think of (6950x and Titan XP possibly sli) and imagine what that level of high end will entail by the time this may be ready to come out. For the money paied in to get to play it you are going to need a $1500+ minimum build to be able to appreciate the details they are spending so much time and money on.

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I too, didn't expect Squadron 42 this year. Even though I have pledged - I like the idea behind it - I also do not want them to rush it and in my opinion, the can take es much time as needed. Due to the fact that features are constantly added, I'm quite aware that this could take a while.

But then again, everybody has his kinks :D

Edit 1: When I last tried it, I had a decent performance (40-60fps-ish) on my rig (2500k @4,3GHz, radeon 390)

Edit 2: The guy in your post looks like Davos Seaworth, same actor?

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love ya mate, but this is pretty clearly just another wack at the dead horse.

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The amount of parallels between Star Citizen and certain other groups is astounding, yet the responses are entirely different. For one it's okay to delay, for the other(s) delays equate to razing everything to the ground.

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That was a joke in case you didn't realize.
I was just reporting what just happened and was sharing some interesting articles.

Make of it what you will. I explained I hold no bias against SC and I want to see it succeed. However I feel this topic is worth discussing as well as the Kotaku articles I posted which are quite interesting to anyone who cares about SC no matter what side you're on.

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fair enough. i've gotten tired of the dogpiling that tends to happen when this game is mentioned, but i've also realised it's pretty retarded to think i have to keep defending it. it's admittedly a massive punching bag at the moment, so i'm not surprised people are all over it every time Roberts farts out of tune.

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While that can be fun sometimes, I do enjoy it from time to time, this is more than that for me really.

While this is particular is focused on Star Citizen it points to many more issues in the gaming industry and particularly the pre-order, early access, kickstarter stuff that is getting worse since it came about.

There have been a few kickstarters that have over promised what was possible and people bought in fully throwing cash at them and then coming up with their own ideas of what the game should be and even would be making assumptions that were vastly inflated over the all ready wild claims the developers were making. This of course leads to much salt and anger over the outcome, No Mans Sky is a good example of this kind of over estimation though not a kickstarter specifically. There is a air of recklessness about marketing in general and while extra regulation sucks it is very much starting to look like something that is seriously needed to deal with this. To bring it back around SC is a lightening rod for this kind of accusation and while it does come off as always beating on SC you have to replace in you head SC with pre-order, early access, kicksterter when reading things like this.

Then you have the money issue. We know this problem well now, zero accountability. These kicksterter (not so much pre-order, early access) type things are almost always completely devoid of any accountability on the developers behalf. As above regulation is not a nice thing to introduce but too many times now things have been paid for and promised and then plain never happen because somehow they ran out of money. Something to hold these campaigns to some sort of monetary accountability is quickly becoming something that is desperately needed. To bring it back round as I will be trying to do a lot here, yet another delay verging on cancellation for SC on yet another of its modules lead to the fairly easy question, where did the money go?

After that there are timeline issues that are becoming more and more common. Release dates missed, delays and out right cancellations are something you seriously have to think about now before getting into one of these types of pre-order, early access, kicksterters. Once again sounding like a broken record there is nothing to hold companies to these to these times without any sort of recourse for those that paid in. The guise of "We are adding new features " is just not going to cut it any more, especially as they usually renege on these features by the time release comes. It not even becoming an issue, this is an issue that a vast amount of pre-order, early access, kicksterters abuse. Here it comes again, SC is a heavy abuser of this now.

All of this is getting to the point that no one wants to hear. Kickstarter and self publishing is just not working in the wide scope, yes quite a few games are well done, but too many of them are not. You cannot tell people not to spend money, and the same people are not likely to be rational when the above issues raise their ugly heads and peopl are not going to continue to put up with it. So by the actions of an unscrupulous few the larger indie world might have to suffer and the ultimate (hopefully we never hey here) solution is just to exclusively have a massive publisher - smaller developer model where ideas are stifled, releases are sped up, quality suffers and we all complain.

Yes people are beating on SC, but it is analogous to the vast majority of problems in the indie game world today.

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I learned my lesson a long time ago.... don't pre-order anything and don't throw money into kickstarters.

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I still do occasionally, never pre-order anything any more that is bullshit, but I do back the occasional kickstarter but only after considerable research and certain requirement, none recently. But yes over all I am very much against it.

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"early release" trend is wrecking the industry.

Buying early release titles is just enabling bad developer habits.

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That was expected.

I was never really interested in the game as the last "space sandbox whatever game" I paied money for is currently tumbling towards not working at all...

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LOL! Star Citizen ... the game as they intend it to be .... never coming out.

U guys remember No Man's Buy?

Hahahahaha! : P

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Alright @DerKrieger full disclosure time

084c86a73cd9d4d1e01063196d2c5143aa216450.jpg829x847 115 KB

Thats my Star Citizen account

I'm sure you're a bit awestruck right now, whatever. I've been rather silent about my support for the game compared to others but, there, there it is. That's how deep I'm into this

I spent 10 times the amount it takes to enter the game

For me it's not about the ships, the bling, etc. It's about the support. I wanted this to be a thing more than you could have ever imagined.

I'm not going to take this article fully to heart, because if I did I'd cry at work and that would be awkward.

Have a nice day
Feel free to masturbate to my tears

@Calvus @Cavemanthe0ne

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I'm sorry for your loss.

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hmm...Pretty much expected for at least a couple of months now...At least they are being honest about it as opposed to most.Does not really matter much at this point...

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Ah, nothing like a sensationalist headline to lighten the mood.

SC seems to suffer from a large chunky problem of scope creep, It will be interesting to see if there just simply offering to much.

Saying that, SC is far ahead of others like it. The latest information reminds me so much of Infinity, except SC seems to have some actual basis for content.

Thats the key I think here. They seem to be at the point of content creation, and if there at that point, they might just pull it off.

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You are comparing 3 very different things though. Pre-order has nothing to do with crowd-funding and early access has nothing to do with kickastarters.

Pre-orders are just marketing ploys to sell more copies before the word of mouth kicks in.
Early access is about funding the last part of a game´s developement. Which is done the worst way by Steam and the best way possible by GOG.com
Kickstarting and the like is about supporting an idea that would not be realized through normal funding. It is a donation (or an investment in places like Fig). You are not buying a product. And none is making a promise about it. If you give money to kickstarter and expect a guaranteed product you are doing it wrong and that is strictly on you.

It is amazingly false to judge these 3 things as similar.

That is not true. Actually crowd-funding holds developers much more accountable for missed promises than typical business models. If a developer fails to deliver and loses trust of the crowd he will never again manage to use the paradigm. None will ever trust him again. Unless he goes to work for someone else his career is basically over. Audience trust is very difficult to gain, amazingly easy to lose. And can be a death sentence when the people that provide you with capital are also your audience. There is not such accountability for missed promised for traditional publishers either. How many AAA games missed they mark in date, delays and missed promises and lack of features or unfinished games that barely work. I do not see Ubisoft be held accountable for anything of that stuff. Or the No Man´s lie guys that outright mislead people. An indie developer using crowd-funding would be dead in the water if he presented similar quality and false promises.

These are common in development in general. the difference with crowdfunding is that they are publicly shown as the audience is also the investor. Just because you to do hear that often about the development hell AAA games go through it does not mean it does not happen.

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