Ah... Star Citizen. The massively multiplayer space SIM game from industry legend, Chris Roberts, that launches a crowdfunding
campaign way back in 2012, nearly 9 years and $350 million later, Star Citizen still has not been released. Sure, There's a playable alpha
that now has over a hundred beautifully detailed ships, a solar system with massive
fully explorable planets and moons, and Sci-Fi Cities, with
top tier public transit. Whoa! (laughter) But it's still an alpha! Largely unpolished where
you're just as likely to successfully land on a planet, as you are to clip right through
it, and predicting when or if the full game will
ever launch is impossible. Because Cloud Imperium Games, the company developing Star Citizen, seems to have announced
and missed more release dates than Techlinked
has had cringey intros. Which is not much of an
accomplishment because, all of our intros are good. They're all, they're all pretty good. But here's the thing I've
discovered about Star Citizen after months of research. The question of when the game will release might be the least
interesting one you could ask. Because as hilariously
disappointing as it is, that CIG thought they
could have the game out by November, 2014. If things keep on rolling
like they have been recently, when star citizen
actually does come out... It might be, The best game ever! (catchy music) - Even when we hit a full release, we're going to keep improving
things, keep adding things. - It's all been built on
such a foundation of lies, that why would I, why would I believe The
New Roadmap or whatever? Right? You know what I mean? - Welcome to a new series on TechLinked. We're calling TechLonger
where we take a deep dive into the tech and gaming
stories that get us thinking, and loving, and hating. Because if you've heard
of Star Citizen before, you're probably one of 3 types of people: You're either 1, A Star Citizen Hater, someone who not only thinks
the game is going to fail, but that it deserves to
fail, if there's any justice in this cruel, cruel world! (typing) You might be a Star Citizen lover, like yeah, CIG has made mistakes, but if they succeed, well, we got the best
game ever on our hands, And surely that's worth
a few thousand dollars, and potentially decades of patience! Or 3, you might be, like me, someone who remembers Star Citizen as, oh that was a Kickstarter
that sold video game ships for hundreds of dollars, right? Did that ever come out? I heard it was a scam. Ma, Are you buying a ship? Ma No! Ma don't buy a ship! Come on! Now if you're none of those
three things, that's fine. I'm not trying to put you in a box, I only ask that you don't try to put this game in a box, either. You see the one thing that the haters, and super fans can agree on is that there is no other
game like Star Citizen. And that's true, Not only because of its uniquely convoluted
and controversial history, but also because of the
sheer scale of its ambition! Chris Robert's vision for
Star Citizen was initially to build the best damn space SIM ever. But as he told Gamers Nexus back in 2016, as fans continued to back the project, and CIG grew, Robert's vision expanded. Instead of using the existing tech, CIG would build new fundamental
systems from scratch, Planets, Ships, and other objects would
be made of components that interact with each other, and the game world, in a
physically consistent way, creating a super high fidelity simulation of reality itself! Star Citizen wouldn't just
be the best space SIM, it would be the best everything SIM. Okay, Chris, you're telling me you're
trying to build The Matrix. Yes. I asked CIG's Director of
Community, Tyler Witkin, to define this game, as CIG Season. The official answer I got back was, Okay. So, 2 things, People are going to find a
way to go to the bathroom without leaving their gaming chair. And I'm not sure that's healthy. 2, A Universe Simulator
certainly does sound ambitious. It also sounds awesome! At this point I had no choice, to even attempt to grasp
the scale of this project, I had to dive head first into
the waters of the buggy alpha, and experience it for myself. I had to get my star citizenship. Or at least a Travel Visa, CIG regularly holds what
they call "Free Fly Events" where Star Foreigners get
to try out a few ships in the game world, which is known as the Persistent Universe. So, I made an account installed the game, created my character, and entered The Matrix. Over the course of the next hour, I left my character's apartment, found a train to the spaceport, found out the spaceport
hadn't rendered in properly, restarted the game, made it to The Spaceport. Passed through a Security Checkpoint that will in the future send you to prison for carrying contraband. Spawned my fighter, almost crashed into some buildings, then, left the planet's atmosphere, shot down some pirates -
attacking a space yacht, boarded the space yacht, and got one shotted by an NPC. However, I wasn't even mad enough
to blame it on the lag, because the scale and
complexity on display here really hit me. The City that I had just left, had felt massive! But it was only one tiny
section of an entire planet, about half the size of
Earth's real life moon. And I hadn't even jumped to
one of the 3 other planets in the alpha, or their multiple moons, and dozens of space stations
throughout the system, all fully explorable on foot. But wait a second! There's another space
game with massive scale, and realistic immersive gameplay, Elite Dangerous! Made by Frontier. It's like the dark mirror
image of Star Citizen. It also had a Kickstarter
campaign in 2012, with a full release in 2014, the same year Star Citizen
was supposed to launch. Oh, and it also contains a
one-to-one scale simulation of the entire Milky Way Galaxy based on real scientific
principles and data! That's 400 billion Star Systems! Star Citizen has over
120 planned Star Systems, but the alpha currently has, one. Frontier accomplished this by
using the opposite strategy as CIG. Release a playable, somewhat polished Space Flight SIM, with pretty basic procedurally
generated planets, and then add Planetary Landings, Rovers, and more complex gameplay. Frontier's latest expansion Odyssey, finally lets players head out on foot, outside of a ship or Rover, but wait a second, that erases one of the main
advantages that Star Citizen had over Elite Dangerous! ...Sort of. Remember, CIG isn't trying
to create a fun space SIM, they're building The Matrix. Ships and Star Citizen are
built from the ground up, with functional interiors,
complete with ship component, access panels, cargo bays, airlocks, elevators, turret gunner seats, and control stations. If your ship has the space, you can personally place cargo, weapons, land vehicles, even other
space ships inside it, and have a judo fight in the med bay about who gets to keep it all. Sure, Elite Dangerous may
be a fully released game, but even in Odyssey, there aren't two ship interiors at all. To board your ship, you walk onto a blue marker, pass out, and wake up in the pilot seat. - What? That's lame! - Yeah, I know! Now, according to CIG, the reason all of that stuff
is possible in Star Citizen, and a big reason development
is taking so long, is because of all the proprietary
technology they've built from scratch! The game is built on a
version of CryEngine, but it's been modified so
heavily if it was a person, it would be Nebula from the Marvel movies. (fake audience laughter) - Chris Roberts thought
he could accomplish a very narrow goal. But once the stretch goals are met, they very quickly realized
that the stuff that they, wanted to do, actually required technology
that didn't exist, and would require incredible
time and investment to get done. - There are some really good
coverage from gamers, nexus and digital Foundry that
gets super technical on this, but here's just some of
the custom tech CIG told me that they're working on, moving from a 32 bit to
64 bit coordinate system to allow solar system level scale combined with micro details at ground level. Planet building, that combines procedural
generation with manual artistry, and custom particle based weather, dynamic persistence. So any changes to the
world will persist between game sessions, meaning
you could hide a gun under a rock, quantum jump to another planet, log out, and the gun would still be
there if you came back to get it later. They even built a face over IP system, that lets you use a webcam
to control your players' facial expressions. - Did I tell you to get out!? - And an entirely new first
person shooter system, which was definitely necessary even though CryEngine was built specifically for FBS games. You need that! And that's like maybe a
quarter of the custom features that CIG even told me about. The way they tell it, all of this work is
necessary to create the ultimate best damn space metaverse thing, ever! But why are they even trying to do that? And more importantly, why are they doing it this way? Selling thousand dollar
virtual ships to fly in an alpha that will crash if
you look at it the wrong way, instead of shipping something basic, but polished, and adding to it later? Everyone I asked this question had slightly different answers, but to me, it seems like it all comes
back to Chris Roberts. I didn't want to focus
on Roberts in this video. And I still don't, but I can't avoid bringing him up now because so much of what
makes Star Citizen, whatever Star Citizen is, comes from him. But there's already been so
much published about the man. He's the visionary behind Wing Commanders, Starlancer, and Freelancer. He's the game studio
executive running the most crowdfunded project of all time. He's the filmmaker, who produced a few, okay movies with money from an investment fund that exploited the German tax loophole before the government closed it in 2006. Roberts may not be a Hollywood prodigy, but he is a visionary. He can make you believe
in his ambitious ideas, and he'll fight to see
them through, a skill that helped him lead developers
to create new game engines for multiple titles in order to make the
experience Roberts wanted. And the subject of his vision has for most of his career
centered around a single type of game, space-based, flight combat SIMS. He made a bunch, and they
were all pretty great. Clearly crafted by a
man who loves the idea of pilots crossing the galaxy, fighting alien empires and, hauling cargo, but Robert's vision was
limited by two things: The graphics power of
hardware in the nineties, and studio investors, making
unreasonable demands like "stick to a budget" and "release
the game at some point." Unbelievable, well, graphics and technology advanced, and crowdfunding got popular, enabling Roberts to
leave the film industry, and raise over $6 million
from the initial Kickstarter campaign for Star Citizen. And its single player
story mode Squadron 42, but turns out to everyone's surprise, good vibes alone won't
build a universe simulator. Star Citizen missed virtually
every launch date CIG set. While the studio continued to crowdfund, designing and selling new
virtual ships for tens, and hundreds, and thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, it was expanding, hiring hundreds of developers, opening new studios and
paying A-list celebrities to do full motion capture for
the Squadron 42 campaign. CIG did release the PVP arena commander and star Marine modules,
as well as slowly build out the PU alpha over the next few years. Backers were finally
getting a little taste of the game they had supported, but it was all happening
at a snail's pace compared to the original timeline CIG had set. And as it tends to do,
cynicism started to set in around 2015, when gaming sites like Kotaku, Polygon, and The Escapist wrote hit pieces. Roberts weathered attacks over his dictatorial leadership style, his inefficient use of funds, and even nepotism concerning
his wife's position as VPS marketing, from a growing faction of heretics who didn't just want their money refunded, they wanted Star Citizen to fall. Like the Vanduul seek the
destruction of the empire, they're the - they're the alien, they're aliens in the game. Bad guys. See, some of Robert's greatest
successes in game development had come from projects where he pushed gaming technology forward. Now, Gaming PCs had the horsepower to enable a realistic high
fidelity space SIM. So, with a massive vision
and no external pressures from parent companies or publishers, why wouldn't you shoot for the moon? Pun intended. Even if it takes you a little longer? One Star skeptic I talked to, a YouTuber who goes by Binky ATX, AKA, Bootcher. Says that in 2015 he pulled,
the more than $10,000 that he had invested in the game. He'd had relationships with Roberts, and CIG staff in the early days. And he didn't like the
direction things were heading, in his mind, and the minds of many others. Star Citizen was becoming
less of a game in development, and more of a "money raising machine", perpetuated by faith in Chris Roberts, and a fan base that didn't
want to give up on something into which they had
already poured so much time and money. Sunk cost fallacy? More like Sunk Cost Galaxy! (laughter) That's the title of the
YouTube series Bootcher made about Star Citizen. I used it here for a cheap laugh, I'm sorry. Now to their credit, CIG has released company financials which show that in 2017
annual income dropped for the first time. But in 2018, the launch
of alpha version 3.0, brought a ton of new features, and secured more backer support. CIG also sold a 10% stake in the company to billionaire Clive Calder for 46 million keeping the
development car running. And despite the scathing
assaults on Star Citizen over the past few years, a sizeable portion of the fandom held on, and actually grew. That is one of the most confusing aspects about this whole thing, especially to me, someone
who doesn't play MMOs, and has never backed
a crowdfunding project in my life. CIG missed deadline after deadline, but even among those critical of the game, I detected at times, a faint sense of hope that despite it's drawn
out over complicated development, Star Citizen will be released. - [Bootcha] Star Citizen
is literally unique, it was built to be a human being, We have never seen
anything like this before. - Perhaps describing the inhabitants of Star Citizens world as, either lovers or haters is too simplistic. If my Twitter poll is any indication, there may be a good amount
of people who either think that CIG sucks, but the game is good. Or that CIG is okay, but the game sucks. Though, some people
also apparently thought the game is great, and at
times CIG can be bad, at times. It wasn't a very good poll. But for some, the whole thing isn't that complicated. Many have held onto
their hope since day one, that this game would be
the best thing to happen since the discovery of fire! Which is kind of wild
because fire was pretty sick. - [Luke] I think this could
be the greatest video game ever made, Not necessarily the most fun, but in terms of greatness, like how expansive it is, how many systems there are, how deep it goes, how rich it
is, all that kind of stuff. It might just, by incredible amounts, trump
everything that came before it. - To understand this hopeful perspective, I talked to Morphologis, a YouTuber who covers Star Citizen, and some other space SIM games. - [Morphologis] play with friends, because there are so many,
it's kind of a sandbox in some ways where you can create so many scenarios independently, that CIG just isn't giving you yet. You can make it really, really fun. - Like any MMO, the true
value of Star Citizen, is in its community. I'd seen videos of players, manning turrets with their friends, to defend their larger ship
against multiple fighters, I'd seen the Daymar Rally, an entirely player driven
multistage day long race, over a planetoid where
drivers have to navigate desert terrain while avoiding
ambushed by rogue ships. And I'd watched Bed
Bananas' amazing video, where he hatches a daring prison escape, by hijacking a Rover, and
being dramatically saved by his friend under heavy fire. I needed the group experience. So Luke, Linus and I, hopped aboard Morphs multi cruise ship, and prepared to have our eyes open. - I have a cyclone. - I am glitched in a chair. - Oh my God! I am glitched
into the ship right now. - We're about to die. - Why? - Because I got caught in the doors. - Oh my God, I'm glitched
in this chair again. (gun shots) - I can't kill him. - My eyes were opened alright, to the fact that this
game truly is an alpha. After trying to meet up in
game for more than an hour, a feat that was made even more difficult by Linus, repeatedly,
killing himself for giggles. I made the mistake of
logging out in the bed of my ship. That apparently triggers
a bug that prevents you from logging back in until
you've reset your character, which involves making a
request to CIG, and then waiting at least 15 minutes. 2 hours into the stream, I
was able to join the squad. Let's go do some star wars, baby! - On second thought, bringing Linus along was a mistake. I thought he would have some interest in earnestly checking out the game, since he and Luke actually had started a Linus techtips
organization in Star Citizen, and had promised to pledge $1 per member, which was 3061 at the time of writing. But Linus, is more troll now than man. But despite Linus' best efforts, we got to experience some epic moments that could only happen at
this level of immersion, in Star Citizen. Driving a Rover into the cargo bay of morph ships, and taking
an elevator up to the bridge. Leaving a space station to
discover we were being attacked by an interest class
frigate with other players in the server, coming to our aid. Being forced to shoot Linus
when he got ahold of a gun, having impressed charges
against me for his murder. Thus giving me Criminal Status. And then dying and waking up in prison. Just like how that happens in real life. (laughter) Oh my gosh. While I was doing time in the
slammer, I got to thinking about everything I had learned about Star Citizen, and
what a video game even is. - [Bootcha] Star Citizen,
it is game development as a service. The software, is in very early alpha, but the product itself, is a full release. It's not so much about the game, as it is about being a
part of something great. - For hardcore Star Citizen
fans, the game isn't the literal software you run on your PC. It's the meta-game of being
involved in development. Because Star Citizen isn't
technically "released." The games true fans think
of themselves as being apart of the development process, not consumers of a product. There are YouTube channels
with hundreds of thousands of subscribers who make
weekly update videos about nerfs, buffs, game
mechanics, and features, who talk excitedly about
underlying server technology. For their part, CIG makes a lot of this information available
through super in-depth developer interviews on
their own YouTube channel. And there's a progress tracker, charting what's being
worked on at any one time. As long as they continue
with that transparency, the true believers could keep
on believing indefinitely, but will the rest of us? Should we believe this game will come out? Because that's really what it
comes down to at this point, belief. I mean Squadron 42's latest
window to release the beta was Q3 2020. And when that came and went,
Chris Roberts released a statement saying the game
will be done when it's done, and will not be released
by a certain date just to make you happy, James! James isn't here, Andy! This attitude can be seen as
an uncompromising commitment to one's vision, and it is that. But it can also be seen as
disdained for deadlines, and honestly, a sort of disrespect for the people who backed this project, thinking they would have
something more than an alpha, 9 years in! - [Bootcha] CIG still needs, After 8, nearly 9 years, of development, it still needs it's
backers, is that right? - And it brings up the question, how long can a crowdfunded project ride on its backers Goodwill? We don't know. We're seeing that experiment
play out right here in real time. Star Citizen is still raising funds. 2020 was their highest
funded year, somehow. In early 2021, they passed
$350 million in funding. Now, a cynical person
would see that and say, look! They just want the money! But a hopeful person, sees that as dedicated fans, with a lot of expendable income, continuing to support a project
that they really believe in. And the thing is no one
can really say whether their faith is misplaced. CIG has developed some
groundbreaking technology. So who's to say that they
couldn't continue doing that? The only people who could say, are the people making the game. But what about the people who've
been burned along the way? - Their current monetization
is incredibly predatory. And that to me immediately
sets off alarm bells. When you can buy $25,000
packages, that you can only see if you've already spent
a thousand dollars. That to me immediately screams
these people are not unwell. - Some people call Star Citizen a scam, and I don't think that's accurate. Even Bootcha said it's not a scam. But the fact is people
have been scammed, by it. The way that Star Citizen was
originally presented was not as a perpetual alpha project
with a far off release date, more than a decade away. If there's one thing that I
do blame Robertson CIG for, it's giving the impression in the past, that the full game was
going to be released in the next couple of years. It's always the next couple of years. Although now people are
talking about 5 to 10 years, It just - what's going on? I mean, Hey, I get it. I started working on this
video at the start of February. The way that Star Citizen is presented, now, makes it pretty
clear that it's a game in active development,
and there is a 30 day refund window so, I don't think many people
who choose to buy a game package today, are being
misled into thinking they'll definitely get to
be Mark Hamill's wing man next year. By Christmas Mark Hamill, he'll be your fri- he'll be your buddy. You can be friends with, you
could fly with Mark Hamill. Wow. Although, blessed you do
think that being attacked by frigates is a super common occurrence. - The interest that they
spawned when you were on stream, has no interior. Yeah, no, they, they spawn, they spawn that in for you. - When we were on a stream, the address - (laughter) - And then there's the fact
that this week CIG released a video called what is Star Citizen? That definitely makes the
game look more polished than it is. And, and Hey, Hey, that's
exactly what I'm talking about, CIG. Stop that! Now, if you, the viewer are thinking about buying into Star Citizen, first off, maybe just wait until
the first Free Fly Event, because they have them pretty regularly. But if you know what you're getting into, and you know that it's quite possible this janky alpha experience
might be all you ever get out of this project, 45 bucks for a starter ship, isn't a horrible price, for
a pretty cool early access game that could turn
into something amazing, but could also, not. At the end of the day, for a backer, every crowdfunding
project is built on hope. If it wasn't, people would wait until
the game is finished, and released, and critics give it a score out of 10. And the customer decides to buy the game for a reasonable price. Star Citizen is not that. It might be the longest con in the history of the gaming industry. Or it might be, the greatest game ever. And the greatest compact
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job and fix your stuff today by checking out, iFixit.com/techlinked. Guys, this was a crazy video
to make, whose idea was this? But it was super fun, and I learned a lot, so big thanks to all the
people who I talked to, and were able to give me a big window into this crazy, crazy world. If you want to see more
Techlongers like this on this channel, leave a comment below. And if you thought it was
dumb and you never want to see anything like this ever again, also leave a comment. I love you. And all of your thoughts.
I mean he covered almost every aspect of the game, its development, detractors, history and the future of the game in a very balanced and informative way. That must have been one hell of a research. This is a very rare scene in the gaming journalism world. Well done to him, Linus and the rest of Techlinked.
What is this? Actual proper journalism?!
This is going to be my default reply when the next hit piece gets listed on r/pcgaming. Excellent video.
This is probably the most balanced piece done on SC to date. Really surprised that they got both sides of aisle on this one. Although, I think they kind of downplayed the tech they've been building over the years for it, but that wasn't the focus of the video, so much as it was showing the whole of SC.
This video isn't necessarily for us but for those that don't know what the game is and may have heard either overly positive or overly negative opinions, this video tries to make sense of that and leaves the final decision with the viewer.
The thing I like about it the most though is when he said "until he played it" he perhaps had a particular opinion of it and encouraged others really to give it a try before making their own opinion..
To me he nailed it when he said "the game isn't the software [..] it's the meta game of being involved in development". That's really not what I was hoping to hear but he's right... You're not paying for the promise of a game anymore, you're paying for the promise of continued development.
Personally I want a game, so I really hope we haven't all accepted that that's what SC is now, some indefinite development "experience".
Great video honestly. Covering the good and the bad in a pretty balanced way, I would've loved a bit more coverage on the tech stuff to emphasize what is being done to solve a lot of the issues players face currently. And I agree that the trailers showing SC as a more "finished" product do need to be toned down a little, at least until performance is more stable. Other than that, I think the point about everyone agreeing that the ambition of the project certainly is "one of a kind" is pretty accurate.
Great commentary on ED. 76% negative reviews on steam for a reason.
Great video though. SC regularly blows my mind.
A pretty good and honest video. I personally tell people I'm investing in my dream game that I never thought I'd see. They could have built a normal game we'd play for a few months and then disappear into our uninstalled games they could have done it. But if they do this right it could be a game we play for years. And in some ways it's already a game I've been playing for years and more and more it's playable and less buggy all the time. I'm happy with the direction it's moving.