Yes, the Derek Smart who spent the 90s promising the moon before discovering that game designs should be small enough that they’re achievable. Anyway, he’s learned a lot on the way, and that’s helped him forge some opinions on the current state of Star Citizen in the face that a planned FPS module of the game might not make it in, despite being originally promised. And, for what it’s worth, I think he may have a point, and that point comes down to what it means for Kickstarter and games in the future. But first, the basic conversation starter from Derek:
“This game, as has been pitched, will never get made. Ever. There isn’t a single publisher or developer on this planet, who could build this game as pitched, let alone for anything less than $150m.
Smart posted a longer update detailing his logic behind this, and to his credit, cites his own experience making the ultimate space game as a good start.
The Holy Grail of immersion for me has always been for the player to be able to exist in first person (aka infantry) mode throughout the entire game world. You’d be able to walk around inside your ship. You’d be able to dock that ship with a station, exit, walk around inside that station. You’d be able to fly your ship directly into a planet, land, exit that ship, enter a building, do stuff etc.
…..[I]t still continues to be a technical challenge of seemingly insurmountable proportions, over twenty-five years later since I first had an idea for the game that was to become Battlecruiser 3000AD.
And the only way that anyone is ever going to be able to make that game is if they built technologies specifically designed for it, and they have the deep financial pockets to do it with. And after that, it has to be compelling enough for gamers to want to upgrade their rig in order to play it. Unless you’re releasing the next Elder Scrolls, Call Of Duty, Battlefield, GTA or similar, good luck with getting modern-day gamers to bother upgrading to play your game without sufficient evidence of what makes your game so special.
He then turns to Star Citizen.
The entire bulk of the crowdfunding, after sailing past that initial $2.1 million Kickstarter funding, was in selling futures. No, seriously, hear me out. Someone figured out that the hype around this game was so huge that they may as well start selling ice to Eskimos. And they did just that….
So they are making concept art for ships, some were actual models, and then selling them at a premium. People keep buying them. This, despite the fact that there is still no “game” to play them with. In short, the result is that you have ships you’ve bought, with no game to play them with.
Basically, they went from a baseline space combat with trading game with these bullet points:
- A rich universe focused on epic space adventure, trading and dogfighting in first person.
- Single-player: offline or online (drop in/drop out co-op play)
- Persistent Universe (hosted by US)
- Modable multiplayer (hosted by YOU
To the behemoth they’ve now promised which includes the following (an incomplete list, by the way) features, all of which make up the development phases:
- Rich, persistent universe with 100 (!) populated star systems
- Dynamic economy with millions (!) of entities
- Newtonian physics
- Space combat
- Trading
- Exploration
- Ship upgrades (engines, weapons, etc.) and customization
- Multi-crew ships (your friends can exist in your ship)
- Activities including mining, harvesting raw materials, factories, and so on
- First person inside ships with combat
- First person inside stations with combat
- First person on level-based planetary hubs with combat
- Career based progression with stats
- Single player and co-op mode (Squadron 42)
- Multiplayer (Star Citizen)
The whole thing is a pretty good read, and I’d encourage people to do so, if for nothing else the insights of how ballsy and ambitious the problem is, once you break it down and try to do it. But why is this relevant to those of us who don’t want the Ultimate Space Shooter? Actually, Derek has a really good reason for it. And that is that a failure of this project could have a Hindenberg-like effect on others crowdsourcing their games.
A couple of weeks ago last month, when there was news about the FTC going after failed promises made by someone who crowdfunded a game, there were various discussions about the terrible precedent which would be set if this game failed to deliver and if a bunch of people reported it. And that’s no joke. We’re talking $85 million. That’s a lot of cash. Other people’s money.
He foresees a 38 Studios style disaster, and then begs people to be more frugal with their money.
To the rest of you, I only have this to say: stop buying virtual items for a goddamn game you don’t have. What in the holy phuck is the matter with you?!? You know how many indie games you could’ve bought and supported and been PLAYING by now?!?
Smart would later append his observations with a legal disclaimer post. That being said, the discussion here is about the interesting problem, which is what should someone do if they have a kickstarter and blow past their expectations by an order of magnitude or more? If you’re the Oatmeal guy, you just count your money. If you’re Anita, you expand your mission and clearly explain to your users how that extra money will result in slower, but much more substantial results. If you’re Star Citizen, you go out and ask for even MORE money.
Most of my comrades who look at Kickstarter look at Star Citizen as an inspiration, as a guiding light for those tired of dealing with publishers and VCs. And there is no doubt a lot of naked envy for their crowdfunding success, which is now above 75M total. However, if Smart proves correct and this proves to result in an FTC case like The Doom that Came To Atlantic City, it could be a staggering cautionary tale – one that effectively cripples Kickstarter as an effective way for smaller companies to get their games off the ground.
Worse, this is a game by someone with a proven track record, who only got sidetracked into film production instead of, say, losing all credibility within the game developing profession (John Romero, probably the closest equivalent to Michael Cimino in filmmaking) or earning a reputation as a has-been (Garriott). Let’s face it: the crowdfunder of a no-name designer wouldn’t have made it into the five figures. If this one fails, it will be the last needed confirmation that even a recognizable name is no guarantee.
Already I was wary of how Star Citizen was encouraging people to buy ships to play in what was going to be a persistent world, of how it could turn into a new form of Pay to Win even before the game launched.
Maybe Sci-fi MMOs should get Derek Smart to write a disclaimer that you need to read before you get to post on the forums 😉
It seems many players are happily oblivious to many of the technical limitations of having a game world that allows seamless transitions (no loading screens) between different environments and gameplay styles all the time pushing out top end graphics… on any machine they’ve decided to cobble together and abuse.
They are… oh so much. Just look at all the Derek Smart threads in the official SC forums.
“The Holy Grail of immersion for me has always been for the player to be able to exist in first person (aka infantry) mode throughout the entire game world. You’d be able to walk around inside your ship. You’d be able to dock that ship with a station, exit, walk around inside that station. You’d be able to fly your ship directly into a planet, land, exit that ship, enter a building, do stuff etc.”
I’ve never understood why some designers are so enamored with this “simulate everything” notion. The least fun I’ve ever had on a sandbox game is wandering around vast swaths of space where there is nothing meaningful to do. Good example: Jump off the Hoover Dam in Fallout: New Vegas. You’ll survive, but it’ll take you 15 minutes of boring swimming to find a way to get back on land.
While I can understand the appeal of a completely integrated game world, I can’t help but wonder if the better solution is just to share art assets and have separate game modes in distinct game zones.
“You’d be able to walk around inside your ship. You’d be able to dock that ship with a station, exit, walk around inside that station. ”
When EVE Online tried that, it failed miserably. A costly distraction from what the game was not only doing, but was doing well.
“The least fun I’ve ever had on a sandbox game is wandering around vast swaths of space where there is nothing meaningful to do. ”
Actually, this can be quite fun. Just create a world fascinating enough to interact with. I remember it was a major complaint about Oblivion/Skyrim in comparison to Morrowind, probably one of the best examples for a single-player game. For an MMORPG, Wurm Online would be a fine example, were it not for the grind involved. And though I was probably the only person to think that way, sailing around in EVE also had its moments.
Just design your game in a way that indicates there’s something to be discovered by venturing out into the unknown.
I never really understood people who think Morrowind had more “points of interest” than Skyrim. Every location in Skyrim had some partially revealed or even implied narrative if there wasn’t outright a quest associated with it, while half the time in Morrowind a village or a small dungeon-cave-ruined-fort-thingy had nothing in terms of story. Yes, there was a lot of interesting loot placed in odd, out-of-reach places for no discernable reason in Morrowind, but I don’t really consider that to be really interesting, just game-time-padding.
Oh, I didn’t mean to suggest there wasn’t room for Fucking Around, because Fucking Around has potential meaning for me as a player even if it doesn’t matter much for the game world. But there has to be lots of interesting things to do, which means being able to interact with the environment or things within the environment in interesting ways. Just Cause 2 is the gold standard for that, and JC3 will most likely continue the formula.
Part of the problem is that Kickstarter (and crowd funding in general) is not enough to fund a modern AAA level electronic game. It is seed money.
It *is* enough to completely fund analog games. So, yeah, the Kickstarter backer may run off with the cash, or flake hard, or just hit Life Happens issues, but there is less risk of “well, we didn’t get the rest of the funding” happening.
Derek Smart is pretty much a known troll on the Internet. I don’t know why people give him attention!
He is responsible for huge flame wars on several games, and Star Citizen isn’t the first target of his rage, remember when he said Eve Online was going to be a major failure? Yeah.
The feeling of what he says is “If i couldn’t do it, so can’t you”, because he also is developing a Space MMO that currently is a disaster, one of the worse reviewed games of whole Steam Early Access program. Go check his game, and you’ll understand why he targets Star Citizen, he should focus more on his own MMO problems instead.