<story><title>Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/technology/personaltech/video-game-raised-148-million-from-fans-now-its-raising-issues.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thesuitonym</author><text>This will probably not be a well-liked response but I&amp;#x27;m going to post it anyway.&lt;p&gt;I preordered Star Citizen back in 2012 or 2013. Whenever the original Kickstarter was. I&amp;#x27;ve kind of forgotten about it. I&amp;#x27;ve never preordered another game--or anything really. And I don&amp;#x27;t think this was a bad experience.&lt;p&gt;I haven&amp;#x27;t received a game yet, but I have played some demos that were really fun. I&amp;#x27;ve seen hours of content (Sure, that content is freely available, but so is NPR), read some great stories, and had some great conversations about the game.&lt;p&gt;In 2013 I paid $60 for a game I have not yet played. That year I also went to a casino one night with $80 in my pocket. Both times I came away with nothing but a fun experience and some stories. In both cases I feel like I paid for some entertainment and received it.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t a post to excuse vaporware titles on Steam Greenlight or preordering broken-on-launch games. Quite the contrary. I won&amp;#x27;t buy EA games until at least a year after they come out. I will NEVER buy a pre-release game on Steam. But I bought Star Citizen. I took a gamble, and I had some fun. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t have done that if I didn&amp;#x27;t think there would be some fun along the way.&lt;p&gt;Star Citizen could never come out, and I wouldn&amp;#x27;t really feel cheated, because I still got something out of it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Lev1a</author><text>About the only game in Steams Early Access program I would recommend to buy is Factorio[0]. It is essentially a factory building&amp;#x2F;automation game that&amp;#x27;s constantly getting updated, with one big patch about a week ago and several bugfix versions since. They are also open about their development process, i.e. some devs playing the game live with streamers and answering questions from the streamers and the chat to the best of their ability. In one such instant IIRC they even said they&amp;#x27;re planning for the 1.0 release towards the end of this year.&lt;p&gt;All in all, this game is definitely worth your time and money if you&amp;#x27;re into this game genre.
There&amp;#x27;s even a demo version if you&amp;#x27;re not sure.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;store.steampowered.com&amp;#x2F;app&amp;#x2F;427520&amp;#x2F;Factorio&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;store.steampowered.com&amp;#x2F;app&amp;#x2F;427520&amp;#x2F;Factorio&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/technology/personaltech/video-game-raised-148-million-from-fans-now-its-raising-issues.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thesuitonym</author><text>This will probably not be a well-liked response but I&amp;#x27;m going to post it anyway.&lt;p&gt;I preordered Star Citizen back in 2012 or 2013. Whenever the original Kickstarter was. I&amp;#x27;ve kind of forgotten about it. I&amp;#x27;ve never preordered another game--or anything really. And I don&amp;#x27;t think this was a bad experience.&lt;p&gt;I haven&amp;#x27;t received a game yet, but I have played some demos that were really fun. I&amp;#x27;ve seen hours of content (Sure, that content is freely available, but so is NPR), read some great stories, and had some great conversations about the game.&lt;p&gt;In 2013 I paid $60 for a game I have not yet played. That year I also went to a casino one night with $80 in my pocket. Both times I came away with nothing but a fun experience and some stories. In both cases I feel like I paid for some entertainment and received it.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t a post to excuse vaporware titles on Steam Greenlight or preordering broken-on-launch games. Quite the contrary. I won&amp;#x27;t buy EA games until at least a year after they come out. I will NEVER buy a pre-release game on Steam. But I bought Star Citizen. I took a gamble, and I had some fun. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t have done that if I didn&amp;#x27;t think there would be some fun along the way.&lt;p&gt;Star Citizen could never come out, and I wouldn&amp;#x27;t really feel cheated, because I still got something out of it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wlesieutre</author><text>They&amp;#x27;ve fairly recently published a schedule for the alpha 3.0 release (first public access to the procedural planet tech, among other things), along with a video about estimating timelines for the project. The folks who develop software for a living might not find it as interesting as I did, but it&amp;#x27;s a decent look at where the project is: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=qOjXfNnhxf0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=qOjXfNnhxf0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve gotten some fun out of the alpha game itself, but also quite a lot of value out of these videos and other info they put out. It&amp;#x27;s a fascinating look into game development, which is something I&amp;#x27;m interested in but not looking to pursue a career for myself.&lt;p&gt;Thursday is &amp;quot;Around the Verse&amp;quot; day, so they should be releasing one of their status update videos tonight. These are rotating through the four studios and covering what a particular studio has been working on over the last month, followed by a deeper dive into some particular subject.&lt;p&gt;Last week was the Austin studio update and touched on growing the studio&amp;#x27;s build systems. Previously they&amp;#x27;ve covered subjects like QA testing, ship designs, procedural planets, procedural space stations, and a lot more. It&amp;#x27;s usually really interesting to watch.&lt;p&gt;I think this week is the UK studio. They&amp;#x27;re the ones working on a lot of the bigger ships, so I&amp;#x27;ve got my fingers crossed for a look at the Aegis Reclaimer. But they were late in getting the video up last month, so we might be waiting until tomorrow. It&amp;#x27;s already 11 PM over there.</text></comment>