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Star Citizen Awarded by Massively: Most likely to flop in the next years
limiluma
Member Posts: 7
After Tenton Hammer, hammered Star Citizen in 2 articles, in a good (but probably not effective) try to make both, the CIG developers and their most excited fans putting their feet on the ground:
http://www.tentonhammer.com/columns/respawn/star-citizens-2500-ship-dreams
http://www.tentonhammer.com/editorial/stop-funding-star-citizen
It was time of one of the MMO blogs who most supported Star Citizen along these years to raise some huge RED flag to the SC project and its future.
The Staff voted and elected Star Citizen as the game most likely to flop by 2015 and in the next years:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/12/16/massivelys-best-of-2014-awards-most-likely-to-flop/
Comments
I heard about the game early...Signed up and got golden ticket...bought one ship package for $70...and now I wait. Even I don't understand the price tags being spent by some folks...Either you like space sims or you don't...I really do, but not to the point of some of these fanboys...
SC will never live up to the hype...but I know this.
I would say that Archeage already has flopped (twice) so it can't really flop in 2015.
I agree, there is no way that SC can live up to the hype that CIG have created for that game, throw in the massive amounts people have invested into that game, before there is even a game, and have the perfect storm.
*Shrugs*
The Massively writers put it there. Not me. But seeing as how it's there, nothing is more likely to flop (again in its case) than it is.
Best MMO Studio of the year. SOE... can stop right about there as far as anything serious from this place i would say.
And i am not a SOE hater...just the thought of saying any studio is "the best" that has launched nothing....
From their list I had to vote AA.
But yeah, there's no way this game will justify the amount of money spent on it. But when you spend that much maybe you stick with it for the long haul.
Well, while i do not class SOE as being that great, i think they make more mistakes than they do successes, they did create Planetside 2, which is a game that scored higher than Archeage on this site in a recent poll. Whether SC will flop or not really depends on whether they manage to actually create the game, something that seems to be getting further away than closer, and with Elite Dangerous now being in a released state, you kind of have to wonder, will SC ever do the same, because we don't seem to be any closer to that than we were this time last year, just more new shiny ships to buy, something that might help explain why Massively gave them that particular award, hopefully its not entirely prophetic.
Studio of the year...unless i am mis-remembering..planetside 2 was released in 2012-13 ? So i do not know of anything that was released this year to earn best of the year?
In that i totally agree
Kinda wish they would take the 70 million buy a russian ICBM refit it with a passenger pod. Hell I'd strap in for a one way ride to space.
Reading the staff comments it basically comes down to:
SC will be a great game, maybe even an excellent game .... but that won't be enough. Because people will always expect more. And if they dont get that UBER-super-hyper-more, they come screaming with pitchforks and torches.
--> e.g. "I'm sure it will be good. In fact, it's probably going to be excellent. But I can't imagine anything short of an actual spaceship satisfying the baying wolves of Star Citizen's $70 million fanbase."
If THAT is the definition of a flop, i wonder how they define a winner ?!
Have fun
Pre-Alpha testing with "Arena Commander" dogfight and ship racing module has been going on for months already.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/community/arena-commander
PvP, PvE, co-op PvE, ship racing .... even with leaderboards.
Did you know that ? I often read on the forums that SC is just ship-jpgs and scams ... and then find out that people know next to nothing about the game they bash, about the ongoing testing and the dev-player communication.
Some links to start:
http://starcitizen.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://starcitizen.wikia.com/wiki/Anticipated_Release_Schedule
http://starcitizen.mojoworld.com/StarMap/
Have fun
Haha, that was an amusing read, the comments are hilarious.
I agree with the premise that SC will not be able to live up to its self-generated hype. I can picture Squadron 42 being a good game but the PU will seem like a convoluted mess (atleast at first). Hopefully I'm wrong.
Thanks Mr. One post.
But sites like Massively and MMORPG.com lost their MMO credibility a long long time ago. What with all the 9s and 10s they gave SWTOR, and every big budget AAA game, praising it as the next greatest thing ever, only to turn on it 7 months later when they couldn't get any more money from the publishers.
Hype can be a very dangerous thing.
Your expectations reach higher and higher untill realit kicks in and its ot what you hoped it to be.
While i realy hope SC is going to show us wrong, a little voice keep telling me to keep my feet on the ground.
For the people acting like this is a second comming be warned it will take many many many years to see this game completed and many many many millions more.
At one point funds dry up and all the visions C.R. is working on cannot be completed.
He is wanting way to much things at a time and hould instead focus on completing stuff.
At this rate it might take 4 more years to complete this game.
Not exactly...
e.g. "Though I'm still not really sure whether to call it an MMO at this point, I predict that Star Citizen will crash and burn horribly in the coming years. The insane amount of money that players have invested in the game means that no matter how good it is, it'll never be worth the price tag of $66,000,000 and growing. There are people spending more cash each month on virtual space ships than I pay in rent, and at some point they're going to realise it was a waste. If Star Citizen releases without a hitch, becomes the biggest online game in the world and everyone is happy with their pledges, I'll eat my hat. I don't own a hat. I'll eat somebody's hat."
e.g: "Star Citizen. Yes, I said it. At the price tag this game has racked up, both as a whole and from individual players willing to drop $350 on a ship, there's a whole lot of anticipation built up for what the title will finally be once it launches. Whether or not it's good or bad whenever that finally happens isn't really the point, although I suspect it's going to be average leaning toward good; the problem is that it has so many things tied up in its development that there's no way whatsoever that it can successfully meet all of the player expectations. Right now, it's more idea than actual game. Once reality hits, I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed."
Just one person mentioned that will be excellent, but more like an irony... in the context that even something excellent, hardly will be able to live to his hype, that it's not just hype, but hype + a quantity of money that people in general do not spend in any other games, mainly when they are far to exist in a more feature-complete way, or even advancing to the final target with more perception that the things are going ok behind the doors, which is far to be the case on this development.
So according to these hacks, SC is the most likely to "flop in 2015 and beyond" ?
Long list of likely candidates too...
Lol, I guess they had to write something...
SC will not flop, but it will most certainly not be the game that every one of its 700K backers thinks it will be, that much is guaranteed. But that will simply mean that SC will have the same reception as games like ESO, which means there's no problem in the long term.
I can't wait for Massively's "Most likely to succeed in 2015 and beyond" feature ! That should really get the pitchforks and torches going...
Let's make not bones about it, SC is not what I might consider to be a "mainstream" game. What's unfortunate is that much of the generation who are playing games heavily now have probably never even played a Chris Roberts game, let alone heard of him. Most of the people being Negative Nancy's were probably in diapers when the Space Flight Sim genre was booming. Most of the contributors to the article probably don't even know what freelancer is, nevermind following the game during it's development.
Fact is that this game caters to a gaming crowd that is slightly older. It's people who have money to burn, which is one reason it's done so well. Also, it's a niche that's been severely under-serviced since the 90s. Additionally, it's a niche of Chris Roberts fans who are driving the game heavily. I actually question the relevance of the staff, only because I feel like they're, probably, not a part of the crowd that this game targets and, unless they go upstairs and ask their mom and dad to regale them with stories about Chris Roberts and his brilliance, they will simply never have a clue.
There's a reason this game has seen the funding it has and that's because it's essentially a crowd full of whales. It's full of people who want to see his vision realized (since Freelancer funding was cut back in the day and never realized the original vision). Fact is that he has the funding to make the game he's envisioned for 20 years now and it's highly unlikely that he fall short with the support he's had. Expectations are high, but if you look back to games like Privateer, this isn't his first rodeo.
Crazkanuk
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You DO know that there never was a gaming company more open than CIG with its status of development and progress reports, do you ?
They regularily post extremely detailed status updates every month - but it is apparent that this is ignored by so many people.
They also quite openly communicate delays. There is a metric ton of dev feedback and answers on the forums up to and including the CEO.
That being said, i am always amazed by the amount of people calling this project not making progress, being just ship-jpgs, tech-demos and whalecatching only etc. ...... which shows an incredible amount of IGNORANCE and LAZINESS (when it comes to reading all the progress reports and articles in the gaming media available).
If I DO want to BASH a game, the LEAST i can do is get my facts straight. Preferably someone at least tries to participate the in early testing, forming a personal opinion, before (s)he condems it to the Seven Hells.
Have fun
I am actually suspecting that the Tenton Hammer, in a way or another, influenced CIG to stop with the stretch goals. The timing of those articles and the announcement of CR just a few days later was too coincidence.
I wonder if this award, coming from one of the MMO game blogs that actually spent 2 years talking about Star Citizen, and usually in a positive/hoping/hyping way, could also cause some reaction from the CIG team... who knows... maybe stopping to sell ships or something, just selling packages with basic ships... or adding as soon as possible the ability of people to earn ships by gameplay, etc.
I think that this award will increase on people, an additional bad feeling in case of CIG delaying SC 1.0, scheduled to the end of this year, to the next year, and again, letting them know in the "last minute" (even that not exactly fair to say that it was in the last minute, in the past year, we can consider that in practice was, because that's how the majority of people usually thinks). More important than "what is fair" and "what is not fair" is how the market and public behave in general, with or without ignorance... still is the how the game industry and its market work and the company should adapt to that, instead hoping that could "change the world", because the only people that they are able to do that is those who stay listening to them.... and they are just very few.
Meanwhile Elite: Dangerous is there, released and it's going to continue to evolve. The market is tiny for Space Sims, EvE also won't let his fidelity to be lost so easily and is advancing to improve his game now, and adding their VR module...
In a scenario with this strong competition, all them targeted to a tiny public, effectiveness to add meaningful stuff, more related to gameplay then shinny, and most importantly, in a timely/regular manner, can be the difference on keeping the fidelity of people in the medium/long term.
While SC is over-hyped to help to bring people earlier and buying all those expensive ships, or adding stretch goals (which apparently stopped now), E:D follows a smarter path of making people surprised when they are not waiting for too much... and that's why Massively give them the reward of "most underrated", just 10 days before electing Star Citizen as the most likely to flop in the next years.
It's not just me who think that "space is not so big" for all these MMO's:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30447248
with the conclusion: "Suddenly, space does not look that big after all."
I think that the CR ideas would work fine in a world without competition. But with a competition of the same genre and even other big ones to come in the "Space" theme from the hands of big publishers, by his design choices, it lead will lead him to always be the less effective. While tiny little shiny things are cool, it hardly the reason to keep people in the medium/long term, and I see a difficult scenario for CIG in the medium/long term, with the advance of these other games, that because seem to have more careful with the balance Features x Graphics, to do not make one to jeopardize too much the other and the velocity of the developments/updates.
That's why I totally agree with the award that CIG received for Star Citizen. I also think that this game is likely to flop. That's the trend in my opinion, not just due the level of hype and investiment that people are doing, but due the design decisions of CR, that while are cool, in terms of shinny stuff, I see they spending too much effort on things that in the medium/long term won't hold people, and at the same time, due this tiny little shinny stuff, the rest of the advance of the game is sacrificed, while the competitors adds things that SC will take much longer to add and possibly, some of those things/features, never.
Besides that, their "transparency" more like help competitors than hold people. Last that I heard a very few people really cares to be near of the CIG team, despite how their numbers grow in public. That means that they are not been so effective on keeping people to listen to then, to be evangelized and accept their excuses. That means that while its cool and all, it has more the potential to make harm to their business, by giving more munition to the competitors. Despite the fact that as more people is becoming near of them and more they focus on building a cult involving themselves more than even the game, with their shows to show how 'cool' they are and those romantic letters of CR, more cultish - in the negative side - those people become, to the point of their forums and environment becoming less customer friendly, making people prefer to stay more away than near of them.
In summary, I think that all CIG problems are more related to Marketing. Their message (unnecessary challenges to the game industry as a whole, BDSSE and stuff like that, "evil greedy publishers", because they probably would get support without needing to force that on people anyway, and that only adds more pressure and people feeling attacked and looking with bad eyes to this "Messiah" of the game industry), their communication (lack is bad, but excess is bad too and lead them to many situations of contradictions, and they usually are bad in the 'communication that matters more') and their sales strategy (the most dangerous for the image of the company and the game in the medium/long term and worst that they continue with that indefinitely and also with the mention that 'they are funding', when long ago they told that had enough - that does not help to people to consider them trustworthy).
Their current strategy obviously is a good way to make quick money, but the side effects can lead them to have all the reasons to do not put the saved money in the game after release. That's why I think that the most excited backers, spending thousands of dollars and the others presuming that "its ok" are actually leading the company to a hole, but obviously, the guilty is going to end in the shoulders of the company, because they encouraged that strongly, even that indirectly and trying always to play the card of "good guys, not greedy and only needing help" and claiming about "optional", while taking longer and longer to advance with the release and with their earlier modules, basically encouraging those people to pay more real dollars, otherwise they will have to wait for too many years to fly with those pretty shinny ships or visiting them in their hangars, or presuming that can be already overlords in the day one, with all the skill acquired earlier with their exclusive access to the ships, and the own ships available (and the ability to transform them in credits) to them already.
So yes... if SC succeeds in the difficult scenario that has been created both by themselves and competition... Godus, from Molineux, will be the next big thing. And for that, Molineux gave an impressive feedback about what lead him to flop:
http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/molyneux-kickstarter-is-a-destructive-force-that-damaged-godus-1275205
One that Roberts should listen, if its not too late yet.