Wing Commander Creator Raises $6 Million For Star Citizen

[Doogan]

I was definitely interested in this a lot, but ultimately decided not pledge because of the blatant Pay2Win system that wasn?t properly detailed.
Despite them stating that it is ?not Pay2Win?, among the Info on their page it was detailed that you can buy ?Galactic Credits? for real money and he then later stated separately that you can buy ships for Galactic Credits, and even a hypothetic exchange rate of 1000 Credits = $1

Chris Roberts is not saying you will be able to buy Credits for Cash, He is simply trying to show us what the ships would BE worth in real life cash.

I hope this clears up your confusion.

 

[RicoADF]

I was really pessimistic about this, and up until last week I didn't even think they'd reach 5 million. Guess who's happy to be proven wrong. And then guess who's going to be sad if the game doesn't deliver.

What really amazes me is that this project broker Project Eternity's record. I didn't think that there would be such a demand for this kind of game, for space sims. I'm glad to be proven wrong.

I'm amazed that everyone seems to be so amazed about this. Space sims were hugely popular, and then suddenly everyone stopped making them for no apparent reason. Maybe they weren't as profitable as some genres, but there weren't really any high-profile flops that put developers off and suggested the market had gone, they just stopped. So it's hardly surprising that a lot of people actually want one when someone decides they're going to make one.

What I do find quite odd is why they seem to be thought of as a PC exclusive genre. Console controls suck horribly for FPS, yet they've become the big player in consoles and much less of a player on PCs. Space sims and flying games are best with a joystick-type controller, and consoles usually already have two sticks on a controller, while PCs often won't have one at all unless it's a leftover from old games. So you have a very popular genre (see Star Wars, Star Trek, BSG, etc.) perfectly set up to be played on the most popular gaming systems, yet everyone completely ignores them and just makes the occasional PC exclusive every decade or so.

I can think of several reasons.

Creating games for the PC is a much easier affair than it is for consoles.

Space sims can get very resource intensive. I doubt something as, by now, old as X3 would be possible to run (and when I say run, I mean run at a respectable pace and quality) on a console without cutbacks, same with EVE. Once you get a couple of capital ships in there, squadrons of fighters, missiles and all, it's bye-bye console hardware. And with what Chris is talking about doing with the game? Forget about it. Consoles wouldn't be able to run a quarter of it.

I think it's also a matter of demographics. I seriously don't think the audience by and large is interested in an actual space sim as opposed to the thoughtless and shallow instant-gratification games they're used to. And before anyone gets offended, no, I'm not talking about you. I'm also not saying it's wrong to enjoy shallow games. But you can't sit up there denying that that's who a lot of the most profitable console games get made for and how they end up.

Actually I would say that space sims would require less than most FPS's do for system resources. Space is just a backdrop with items placed within it, no ground to render or control. Space stations and capital ships are like buildings and trees in a FPS. So at the most it'd be on par. It's not being done on console because the funding style that Star Citizen went for isn't compatible for console (due to MS and Sony rules), not because the hardware can't handle it.

 

[TheComfyChair]

I was really pessimistic about this, and up until last week I didn't even think they'd reach 5 million. Guess who's happy to be proven wrong. And then guess who's going to be sad if the game doesn't deliver.

What really amazes me is that this project broker Project Eternity's record. I didn't think that there would be such a demand for this kind of game, for space sims. I'm glad to be proven wrong.

I'm amazed that everyone seems to be so amazed about this. Space sims were hugely popular, and then suddenly everyone stopped making them for no apparent reason. Maybe they weren't as profitable as some genres, but there weren't really any high-profile flops that put developers off and suggested the market had gone, they just stopped. So it's hardly surprising that a lot of people actually want one when someone decides they're going to make one.

What I do find quite odd is why they seem to be thought of as a PC exclusive genre. Console controls suck horribly for FPS, yet they've become the big player in consoles and much less of a player on PCs. Space sims and flying games are best with a joystick-type controller, and consoles usually already have two sticks on a controller, while PCs often won't have one at all unless it's a leftover from old games. So you have a very popular genre (see Star Wars, Star Trek, BSG, etc.) perfectly set up to be played on the most popular gaming systems, yet everyone completely ignores them and just makes the occasional PC exclusive every decade or so.

I can think of several reasons.

Creating games for the PC is a much easier affair than it is for consoles.

Space sims can get very resource intensive. I doubt something as, by now, old as X3 would be possible to run (and when I say run, I mean run at a respectable pace and quality) on a console without cutbacks, same with EVE. Once you get a couple of capital ships in there, squadrons of fighters, missiles and all, it's bye-bye console hardware. And with what Chris is talking about doing with the game? Forget about it. Consoles wouldn't be able to run a quarter of it.

I think it's also a matter of demographics. I seriously don't think the audience by and large is interested in an actual space sim as opposed to the thoughtless and shallow instant-gratification games they're used to. And before anyone gets offended, no, I'm not talking about you. I'm also not saying it's wrong to enjoy shallow games. But you can't sit up there denying that that's who a lot of the most profitable console games get made for and how they end up.

Actually I would say that space sims would require less than most FPS's do for system resources. Space is just a backdrop with items placed within it, no ground to render or control. Space stations and capital ships are like buildings and trees in a FPS. So at the most it'd be on par. It's not being done on console because the funding style that Star Citizen went for isn't compatible for console (due to MS and Sony rules), not because the hardware can't handle it.

They wouldn't able to handle the scale he's going for. One capital ship up close, in it's current 'seamless within the world' form wouldn't fit in the console's memory for example, this team isn't willing to compromise their vision just to fit the game onto the kind hardware that really shouldn't be around any more for AAA gaming. That should be applauded. No-one needs to be playing the same kind of games for decades because some people are attached to a blinking box of 2004 technology. We deserve more, every gamer. Especially those that don't realise it, they're the ones that need it the most to show them how naive they were being!

If it's any consolation, by the time this comes out, the 360 and PS3 should be replaced by their successors anyway so you may see some innovation their with developers being able to push a bit further. Maybe. A tentetive maybe, because they'll still be lumbered with IBM or low end AMD CPU's (due to the cost a good x86 CPU), thus taking a massive smack to the shins in terms of how much extra they can do in terms of interaction ect.

 

[Kahani]

Creating games for the PC is a much easier affair than it is for consoles.

And yet many developers produce games exclusively for consoles, with the ease of making console games often being one of the main reasons cited - a single (or at most two or three), unchanging platform with well defined capabilities and limits can be much easier to work with than the almost infinite combinations of hardware and software that PCs can have.

Space sims can get very resource intensive. I doubt something as, by now, old as X3 would be possible to run (and when I say run, I mean run at a respectable pace and quality) on a console without cutbacks, same with EVE. Once you get a couple of capital ships in there, squadrons of fighters, missiles and all, it's bye-bye console hardware. And with what Chris is talking about doing with the game? Forget about it. Consoles wouldn't be able to run a quarter of it.

There's no doubt that consoles would be unable to run the game Roberts' plans on making, but that's very different from claiming that space sims in general are necessarily resource intensive. In fact, given that most of the world is made up of empty space, it's entirely possible that space sims could be expected to have significantly fewer objects to render than a game constantly showing an animated 3D world as background. And there's no reason for a spaceship fight to have any more actors in it than fantasy one.

On top of all that, just look at the actual games. Not counting the X series, the last real space sim was probably Freelancer. Compare how that looks with how something like Halo, released two years earlier, looks. You're not going to be able to make cutting edge games like Star Citizen or Crysis for console (see the recent article about the problems Crysis 3 has, for example), but making space sims on a par with most games would certainly have been possible over the last decade or two.

I think it's also a matter of demographics. I seriously don't think the audience by and large is interested in an actual space sim as opposed to the thoughtless and shallow instant-gratification games they're used to. And before anyone gets offended, no, I'm not talking about you. I'm also not saying it's wrong to enjoy shallow games. But you can't sit up there denying that that's who a lot of the most profitable console games get made for and how they end up.

As I already said, they may well be less profitable than some other genres. So what? Paradox seem to do just fine releasing far slower and more complex games than space sims. Civilisation hasn't exactly done badly recently. XCOM. Journey. Amnesia. Dear Esther. There are plenty of very successful games, across all platforms, that are not simply shallow and thoughtless. Just because the most profitable ones, as is always the case, appeal to the lowest common denominator, that does not mean that is all anyone should ever do. Importantly, it clearly isn't what they actually do. Which is exactly why I find it odd that this one specific genre was essentially abandoned. It may not be able to challenge the latest Call of Battlefield games for customer numbers, but the audience never went anywhere.