gx-x:

Something that should be tested and ran internally in the company and not sold? If you need more people to test it, you pay people to do it? For decades, that's what alpha was. Do you know what alpha is?

I do. An alpha version doesn't mean it's internal. In fact, alpha versions are usually the first ones tested by people outside the development team. Now that could be people inside the company or outsiders. Alpha versions are usually very early test versions that aren't feature complete and are often riddled by bugs. Of course, the traditional way to handle this is to invite experienced/qualified testers to a closed alpha test. However, it didn't always mean they'd be paid. That said, I don't like these modern practices of "pay to test" at all, it's a practice I do not like. Having unqualified people test software, especially in early stages may do more harm than good. It's an ethical dilemma, however, and has nothing to do with the state of an alpha version and people miraculously expecting it to be feature complete and/or bug free in an alpha state, which is why I asked the poster that repeatedly complained about bugs if he understood what an alpha version is.

We do agree to a point. I will however have to insist that SELLING an alpha version should be out of the question. With that said, it's a different matter when people are like "take my money!!!!". Doesn't make it right, but it does make it somewhat justifiable from the company standpoint. But when the company thinks that they can just continue to milk these gullible people because if they release the game the funding is over, then it begs the question: how much is too much and when does it become illegal? Why would they ever release the game (that would mean no more hiding behind the "alpha" ) if they can keep the netcode as it is (barley working), engine as it is, and really just delay all the hard work on engine indefinitely (while still charging people for new "modules")???

Having unqualified people test software, especially in early stages

sometime just having a certain combination of hardware is qualification enough. No one can expect a company to have 1000000 hardware combinations to test on... PS. People complain about bugs that have been in game for 3 years...Is it really unreasonable to complain about them while watching modules added, plans changed etc? Or, let's put it the other way around - is it reasonable for a company to not fix some of the earliest bugs (~3 years old) but put out 4 new modules (claiming it took xyz thousands of hours and whole NASA to make) and take money for those? But like I said (and so did you) - it's Alpha, so...company doesn't really have to fix that NOW, as long as the money is coming in - its all fine 😀 (yea, I am one of those that leans toward the "it's never going to be released" side)

Cave Waverider:

Do you even know what an alpha version is?

Do you even know what sarcasm is Chris?

[youtube=uJ2OuEzfAE4] "...that's, where I find out where all the bugs are..." Says it all...minus the massive, colourful, vibrating throne they all sit on...I partially expected an entire floor filled to the brim, with people designing the internal furniture of the office, that will also be in the final game. See? This would be allowed under federal law as they are using the game to justify resigning their own offices! Never have I seen something so utterly transparent and self-indulgent. Money won, is twice as sweet as money earnt yet, free money is bitter, making self-indulgence in bitter-sweet pursuits, with no cherries waiting; the result...

konta:

exactly, why ever produce something that needs to compete in the market and be open to critique when you can sell a fairytale, religion is doing it for millennia and its a very successful business model... also lets look at their studios from 2013 and 2016 comparison, just a quick google search [youtube=SgPXgTWh2ec] - 2013 [youtube=uJ2OuEzfAE4] - 2016 see the 2013 version looks like a decent startup, a bit of jury-rigged equipment here and there but overall a spacious office totally ok for an IT startup bunch, theres even a bit of splash with that bar and arcade machine, theres prolly a bit more than we can see... its what you would expect for such a project, starting on kickstarter, doing community funding, etc then you have the extravaganza of 2016, with murals across whole compound, space doors, tv on every wall/corner, totally lavish equipment, a break room that is now a full fledged bistro with a bartender... thats nice, its hardly optimal or cost effective, but it is nice... and i dont have anything against success, sure, do something thats successful and reap the fruit of your labor, thats fair... so far only successful thing they did is MONEY RAISING... the game has no scope of reality, its being diluted beyond reason, theres no end to it, as someone said all the initial promises could have been fulfilled with the original backing and then they could do expansions, DLC's, while having a working product on the market and starting to finance themselves but no, its just promises to eternity and "we need more money" signs...

The problem is most AAA studios have all that stuff - just search "EA Offices" or "Ubisoft Offices" and it's like a giant playground or even smaller studios like dontnod entertainment. So if you want to attract that level of developer/artist/etc you need to have all that shit as well, or they'll just go someplace else. The entire game development industry is like that - there are relatively few people that actually have good experience/knowledge and they like to be pampered with bullshit and if not you just have to pay them significantly more to get them to stay. I also still think it's too early to call it. I know people love to say it's been in development forever, but it really hasn't. It's about 5 years, 6 if you include like CR messing around in an editor. StarCraft 2 took 7 years and is a relatively simple RTS game. Team Fortress 2 took 9 years, same thing, simple game - Diablo 3 took 11 years. People will look at those games and say "well those games restarted development and shifted in scope" but that's exactly what's happening with Star Citizen - the game started out with like a 5 million dollar budget and now its' at $160+M - obviously the scope is going to shift. Plus they had to build out multiple studios, create a workflow between the studios and contend with shipping modular updates to appease backers. None of those other games had to do that. And like, I get it - it's 100% possible that a "polished" version of SQ42/Star Citizen will never ship and the company will fold - but I think it's pretty apparent now that they are working on something. Like loobyluggs sat here two years ago and said the entire game is a scam and CR is pocketing all the money and we will never see x, y or z feature and now x, y are in the game, z is on the horizon and the SQ42 mission they showed off is kind of cool looking, packed with a bunch of detail and while unpolished is definitely further along than a lot of people here said they would ever get. And it's like, I don't know how much money they spent - how do I know they don't have $60-70M in the bank still and can fund development for another 2-3 years and get it where it needs to be? There isn't exactly a playbook for building a crowd sourced AAA title - the company is clearly winging it to some degree and I think in that position you have to. Their deadlines are garbage, I'll agree with that and I do think feature creep is becoming more of a problem then I'd like to - but again, I don't know how much money they have or how they are allocating those resources. Like GX-X says they should be fixing these 3 year old bugs instead of shipping new modules, but most of those bugs are in code that's being completely gutted and replaced in the next couple major revisions anyway. Why would you allocate resources on fixing network code issues when the entire network stack is being replaced in 3.1? With stuff like that it's not like you can throw more people at it to make the problem go away faster. I think the network team is like 3 people? And in that video he specifically said having more people just slows them down because you have to spend like 3-6 months training each person, which is why they are building an internal API for it. The planetary system is another perfect example, it took them like 8 months IIRC to build the first star system, it took them like 2 years to finish the "star system tool" or whatever they call it and now they can build new systems in like 10 minutes. That's typically how game development works, the bulk of the development time is just getting the engine components and systems online, then you scale it out and polish it. I don't know if they will ever finish it - but I'd like to see where it goes because right now, watching that SQ42 video, it looks way cooler than any other game currently in development. And if it takes another 2-3 years to get there in a polished state, I'm ok with that and I think it would be more than worth the journey. That being said I haven't spent any money on the game so lol

Denial:

The problem is most AAA studios have all that stuff - just search "EA Offices" or "Ubisoft Offices" and it's like a giant playground or even smaller studios like dontnod entertainment. So if you want to attract that level of developer/artist/etc you need to have all that crap as well, or they'll just go someplace else. The entire game development industry is like that - there are relatively few people that actually have good experience/knowledge and they like to be pampered with bullshit and if not you just have to pay them significantly more to get them to stay.

Most AAA studios have released games... Losing self-indulgent, materialistic staff would be the least of my concerns, the HR department has probably got a stack of CV's higher than mons olympus on their desks. Who works for who?

Denial:

I also still think it's too early to call it. I know people love to say it's been in development forever, but it really hasn't. It's about 5 years, 6 if you include like CR messing around in an editor. StarCraft 2 took 7 years and is a relatively simple RTS game. Team Fortress 2 took 9 years, same thing, simple game - Diablo 3 took 11 years. People will look at those games and say "well those games restarted development and shifted in scope" but that's exactly what's happening with Star Citizen - the game started out with like a 5 million dollar budget and now its' at $160+M - obviously the scope is going to shift. Plus they had to build out multiple studios, create a workflow between the studios and contend with shipping modular updates to appease backers. None of those other games had to do that. And like, I get it - it's 100% possible that a "polished" version of SQ42/Star Citizen will never ship and the company will fold - but I think it's pretty apparent now that they are working on something. Like loobyluggs sat here two years ago and said the entire game is a scam and CR is pocketing all the money and we will never see x, y or z feature and now x, y are in the game, z is on the horizon and the SQ42 mission they showed off is kind of cool looking, packed with a bunch of detail and while unpolished is definitely further along than a lot of people here said they would ever get. And it's like, I don't know how much money they spent - how do I know they don't have $60-70M in the bank still and can fund development for another 2-3 years and get it where it needs to be?

It went wrong when they didn't release what was promised for the initial CF and just kept expanding instead. This, has led us to here today and, is the fundamental reason for the unscrupulous, highly-critical and microscoping of those who decide to grandstand this personal project and herald it to assumed championship success in the future. At some point. When it's ready... It's not how long it takes to reach the destination, it's the choices they have made on the journey. Who is the more foolish...? I do thank you for the snippet - but I think I was answering someone regarding minimal viable product development for SC and that it hasn't happened and has never existed. I believe, but would be happily corrected if I were to say they simply needed an MVP on the market to meet the brief in the proposal, not to dither onward.

Denial:

There isn't exactly a playbook for building a crowd sourced AAA title - the company is clearly winging it to some degree and I think in that position you have to. Their deadlines are garbage, I'll agree with that and I do think feature creep is becoming more of a problem then I'd like to - but again, I don't know how much money they have or how they are allocating those resources. Like GX-X says they should be fixing these 3 year old bugs instead of shipping new modules, but most of those bugs are in code that's being completely gutted and replaced in the next couple major revisions anyway. Why would you allocate resources on fixing network code issues when the entire network stack is being replaced in 3.1? With stuff like that it's not like you can throw more people at it to make the problem go away faster. I think the network team is like 3 people? And in that video he specifically said having more people just slows them down because you have to spend like 3-6 months training each person, which is why they are building an internal API for it. The planetary system is another perfect example, it took them like 8 months IIRC to build the first star system, it took them like 2 years to finish the "star system tool" or whatever they call it and now they can build new systems in like 10 minutes. That's typically how game development works, the bulk of the development time is just getting the engine components and systems online, then you scale it out and polish it.

All true, but none of that is important to the MVP, continuing. That can (mostly) be dropped into DLC's and other such areas for future deployment. The MVP didn't need it. Expanding the brief whilst development is ongoing is a college drop-out error.

Denial:

I don't know if they will ever finish it - but I'd like to see where it goes because right now, watching that SQ42 video, it looks way cooler than any other game currently in development. And if it takes another 2-3 years to get there in a polished state, I'm ok with that and I think it would be more than worth the journey.

Not sure if that is what you think or believe. Probably believe more than think, as we only know they tell us. We do not know when they are going to release, because they do not know what the final product will look like or consist of...and I suspect they never have. If I were wrong, they would have produced what was in the initial brief at roughly the same time Elite came out.

Denial:

That being said I haven't spent any money on the game so lol

Me neither. I tend to steer well-clear of paywalls for games in Alpha, but mainly because space games are kinda behind me...there are dozens on steam already I haven't touched. Been playing Bejeweled quite a lot lately...

The problem is most AAA studios have all that stuff - just search "EA Offices" or "Ubisoft Offices" and it's like a giant playground or even smaller studios like dontnod entertainment. So if you want to attract that level of developer/artist/etc you need to have all that crap as well.

but on the flipside EA and Ubisoft earned the right to makes their offices and work locations extravagant by, and here's the funny thing, RELEASING FULL AND COMPLETE GAMES, games that worked and were good enough that people not only bought them once but continued to buy from they they built themselves up by proving their worth, which CIG simply have not done they have gotten there based on a promise and the belief of a lot of backers that they can deliver on that promise. Sure EA and Ubi are scumbag developers now but at some point in the past they developed and released full games, without asking for a huge amount of cash upfront. End of the day the only people who can give a valid feeling on what CIG is doing with their cash are the folks that have invested in the game. Having invested in other games in Early Access, I believe that as long as the money is being used to provide the developers with a living wage, the tools and facilities to do their job comfortably and this results in a game that appears to be developing and heading towards a set goal, then I am happy.

I don t see the reason people still talk about a game that will probably never be released....we ve had years with this game s news yet it will never come to light and fully release...

ramthegamer:

I don t see the reason people still talk about a game that will probably never be released....we ve had years with this game s news yet it will never come to light and fully release...

Never played it myself but, isn't the game out and playable? It just may never get out of early access.

TheDeeGee:

Never played it myself but, isn't the game out and playable? It just may never get out of early access.

Yeah and they add major content patches quarterly.

ramthegamer:

I don t see the reason people still talk about a game that will probably never be released....we ve had years with this game s news yet it will never come to light and fully release...

You bumped a game thread that no one has replied in for 3 years to ask the reason why people still talk about the game. You did the same thing in the gaming thread... Almost like you had a timer set or something. Kind of delusional man.

Denial:

Yeah and they add major content patches quarterly. You bumped a game thread that no one has replied in for 3 years to ask the reason why people still talk about the game. You did the same thing in the gaming thread... Almost like you had a timer set or something. Kind of delusional man.

It's like that movie - Back to the Future.

Ghosty:

It's like that movie - Back to the Future.

In that their original choice of using a game engine (Eric Stoltz) was replaced for another game engine (Micheal J Fox), and they had to rework critical areas all over again?

StarPunk2077

Alpha 3.0. I can see it going to 6.0-9.0 , then it will be beta for another couple years.