With a long development cycle, high development costs, and a lot of manpower investment, it is difficult not to be concerned by the outside world when a game meets these three elements. The game we're going to talk about today is such an outlier. Since its inception in 2012, it has crowdfunded $455 million (about 3 billion yuan) for production and development, but the finished product has not been delivered.
During these 10 years, some considered it a "Ponzi scheme"; Others think it's an unprecedented blockbuster. And this game is the space simulation game "Star Citizen" developed by Cloud Imperium Games.
In this long development cycle of 10 years, Star Citizen has experienced various troubles such as producers running away and being sued, but players still do not give up. By opening up free trials from time to time, many people are convinced of the success of the game after its release. However, the recent star citizen single-player campaign version of Star Citizen: Squadron 42 has caused controversy because of the content in the development log.
The incident was caused by a reference in the development log: "In order to improve the realism of the game, research and development is underway for the problem of deforming sheets." And the players who captured this message immediately exploded.
Because a few months ago, Star Citizen: Squadron 42 announced the postponement of the game, and it will take at least 1-2 years to develop. But then everyone found that the development progress was only affected by the "NPC sheet deformation" and other trivial problems. To this end, they violently complained about the development team.
"What the hell was this game like a few years ago, they were implementing TM's sheet morphing?? I'm crazy haha!"
"Is this a joke? No wonder they can't finish it. Meaningless functionality spreads to the extreme. ”
"How about taking out the damn game before worrying that a damn sheet will deform?"
"I think it's ridiculous that R stars shrink a horse's testicles, but it's another new useless feature."
In most game developments, the pursuit of details is not a bad thing. But the reason why players have such a big reaction to Star Citizen: 42 Squadron is mainly dissatisfied with the too long development cycle. As we mentioned earlier, the development of this game took too long, and there is a high probability that it will not be online until 2024.
On the one hand, the increasing amount of crowdfunding, on the other hand, there is the constant introduction of new ships for players to buy; But when players wanted to learn more about the game, Star Citizen was silent.
Some netizens' comments are very true: "I bought a boat when I was in high school, and now I have graduated from college and the game has not yet come out." "This kind of game development model is unprecedented.
At this time, many people may ask, why would anyone want to believe this game and have been crowdfunding for it? It's all thanks to Cloud Imperium Games owner Chris Roberts.
Years ago, Chris Roberts led the development of two classic games, Free Lancer and The Flying Star. As the best space-themed games, these two works have won the trust of countless players for Chris Roberts. So much so that with crowdfunding alone, Star Citizen has raised $455 million in crowdfunding in 10 years.
Halfway through, the single-player campaign mode was split into what star citizen: Squadron 42 is now, but that didn't affect players' expectations of it. Even if it was ridiculed for tangling with the "sheet deformation", the player only wanted to urge the development team not to waste time in meaningless places, and did not question the problem of the project itself.
Today, the number of registered users of the game has exceeded 3.7 million, but no one can say exactly how long Star Citizen will be developed and how much more crowdfunding will be needed? Regardless of success or failure, this particular piece is destined to go down in the history of gaming.