There is this tiny company called Nihon Falcom. They make this game series called Trails that I adore. they have like three programmers work on each entry.

In the time since Star Citizen was announced they have released:

• The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails 2012
• Ys: Memories of Celceta 2012
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 2013
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II 2014
• Tokyo Xanadu 2015
• Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana 2016
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV
• Ys IX: Monstrum Nox 2019
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II
• Ys X: Nordics

as well as a bunch of ports of older games to modern platforms and localizing them to the west. All of these are worth playing and some of these were GOTY material for me.

Its good to quantify how much time has passed, and how much you can get done with a smaller budget and focused scope.

Do you play indie games? They seem to be exactly what you're describing.

that's a fucking thing?!

don't judge until you've seen the dynamic cloth physics! that is what everyone wants, right?

I’ve been part of some amateur game dev projects and SC has the vibe of an amateur project where the devs are constantly focusing on whatever catches their fancy at the moment, going back and tinkering with things they’ve already made, and sort of aimlessly scope creeping. There’s nobody to strongarm them into writing, much less following a game design document.

All of that is intuitive to me to understand.

Then there is “the dream” that is being sold to people who want this type of game. That level of very specific fandom is also easy to understand, at least from a distance. People get super into all kinds of games and spend outsized amounts of money and time.

Star Citizen is like the perfect storm of these elements.

I have a friend who is obsessed with it. I asked him if it was a money laundering scheme. He agreed its the most likely situation.

It'll release ANY DAY NOW. -The idiots that keep giving RSI money

I think it has turned into a sunk cost fallacy for so many now. They put so much money into it they can't afford for it to fail/not continue.

I once saw a comment on a SC update video from a guy who claimed to have backed up SC as a teenager, went to college, entered the industry, was part of a team from start to shipping a video game. twice, and still SC is in pre-alpha. He said that now as a veteran of the industry he realizes that SC is a scam. Like, 99% of the stuff they hyped as their envelope breaking new tech for video games, has already been done by dozens of games at a fraction of the cost.

Get ‘em, boys.

Writers, no matter how good, are just regular people. I have much higher expectations and not as much patience towards a game studio with infinite money and no released games whatsoever in over a decade.

Star Citizen is only available on a single platform too. At least Cyberpunk was multiplatform.

The people who are playing Star Citizen are not the same people who are voting for Trump...weird comparison to attempt.

No, you're cosplaying a patron to leonardo davinci working on his magnum opus. To be unveiled any day now.

I'm not confused at all, timelines are forever moving goalposts, and each major "milestone" is really just a tech demo addition with no cohesive product. You can walk around spaceships, get auto generated quests, or get in some pvp where the person who bought the best ship wins.

The underlying promises have been continually missed with constant deflection that amounts to "hey look at this shiny thing we just did".

I'm sure it is, but they lost me almost a decade ago when I paid for "alpha access" made dozens of bug reports, put a hundred hours into a broken game, signed up at least ten other people, and then lost alpha access because I wasn't enough of an influencer.

All I wanted to do was play a buggy fucking game and give them free (professional) QA and they instead decided to restrict access to a bunch of extra exclusive PTU alpha influencers. That's the second I decided to not give them any more money or free labor.

It’s still alpha. 11 years after I threw $100 their way.

Some people may be happy to play buggy alpha builds as they trickle out, I want to see a finished game without the perpetual feature creep.

We haven’t even seen Squadron 42 which was supposed to be out in 2014.

With the amount some folk have spent on Star Citizen I think they actually could afford to explore space in real life