Chris Roberts (Wing Commander, FreeLancer) kickstarter

[antsbull]

Just letting people know that Chris Roberts has made a stunning return to the games industry, with a Kickstarter for an ambitious Space Sim project. So far he has raised $2.7 million (including a personal website and Kickstarter) , and after private investment is hoping for $20 million.

The game itself is stunning (in game footage available already) - but the catch is, it isn't going to be released until Nov 2014 - and current PC hardware is reportedly not enough to run the game!

I'm still sitting on the fence on backing this project - if it turns out it it will be pretty fine!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig ... n?ref=live

[Antiriad2097]

current PC hardware is reportedly not enough to run the game!

That's the killer blow for me. I'm not buying a new PC to play a game that is unproven. I understand wanting to aim slightly ahead of the tech curve, but the current cutting edge will be what everyone's playing with in a couple of years so to aim beyond that is a bit silly imo, it just drastically cuts the market for the game. Shame since I like my space sims.

[edit]
...except the above isnt true having read the website. What it actually says is:

Next generation, TODAY
Built on top of Crytek’s award winning CryEngine3 technology, Star Citizen’s engine is built to scale for the PC’s of today and tomorrow.

I'm not that impressed with the visuals though. Maybe Particle Systems spoiled me with their game engine?

$30 isn't too bad at all for the game. The more I look at this the more I'm tempted...

A bit close to Christmas, not sure I want to blow money on future games right now.

[Freestyler]

Ooooooooh...... Two minds about this one.

1. I want a decent next-gen PC-based Freelancer! God, how I want one!

2. Crytek engines are designed to kill your computer. No matter how powerful it is.

I'll keep my eye on this one. If it looks like it's going to be great I'll definitely be interested. Maybe even enough to break my "Don't fund a Kickstarter" rule.

[antsbull]

In one of the interviews with Chris Roberts (maybe on IGN?) he stated that they are designing the game so that it will make use of hardware power not currently available. So, yes it does run Cry Engine 3 and can run on current hardware, but to get the full experience of the game you will need a pretty specced up PC in 2014. Personally, I think to enjoy this kind of game, you need it to be running pretty fast and pretty smoothly.

This project is ridiculously ambitious - recently David Crane and Tom Hall/Brenda Braithwaite have seen their retro Kickstarter's go up in flames - so trying to make a $20 million game with partial Kickstarter funding will take some serious effort.

I like that he is not being optimistic on the delivery date - some of the projects I have backed, seem overly optimistic with both the cost of the project and when they will be able to ship it by.

Also, the good thing about this project is that he has a separate site for funding in addition to the Kickstarter, that already has raised $2 million in funding - it means people can hold off until next year (or maybe 2014?) until actually backing the project - once it is more developed.

[thebear]

so he wants my money AND wants nme to fork out for a new pc?

[Sureshot]

So I backed this a while ago and haven't really been keeping up with its progress for maybe a year or so, but I just saw their Gamescom demo and I must say this is shaping up to be something fantastic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GucYhhLwIxg

[outdated_gamer]

From what I've played of SC, it felt like "Wing Commander meets Doom 3" to me. Which is not a bad thing per-se because I like Doom 3 and space stuff. The project is deff. very ambitious, but it also takes quite a while to make. If they manage to successfully realize the given goals in due time (let's say in 1-2 years from now, else people will be losing interest), we could be looking at the next stage of "space game" evolution. I much prefer the realistic tone of SC over the overtly vibrant, almost cartoony feel of NMS and it also seems we will be getting a much more "in-depth" game here (probably not EvE Online depth, but "accessible depth" which will be fine for majority of players).

[The Beans]

- but the catch is, it isn't going to be released until Nov 2014

Really amusing reading that in the OP.
Good old Star Citizen, the game that's never quite finished enough to actually release. It's going to blow us all away for sure. Just not today. Maybe next year, eh? But probably not.
I think they should rename it Psyclapse or Bandersnatch.

[Matt_B]

I'm guessing that there'll be renewed interest in it now that No Mans Sky is out and the hype train of unrealistic expectations will have to move on to something else.

[outdated_gamer]

Well, without the massive crowd funding success of SC, there wouldn't be the "space sim" explosion we are seeing in recent times. It might be ironic that SC could be the last to actually get released, but look at it this way, the game is already funded, they're simply adding more stuff to it now. This approach may not appeal to all, but there is no fixed release date with deadlines, this is a completely fan-funded title. And from the looks of it, the fanbase doesn't mind their approach, they keep throwing cash at them and believing in the vision. It doesn't matter how many naysayers there are, they keep on doing their own thing with a "when it's done" kinda philosophy. But of course too long development times can turn some people off and we have also seen some projects collapse under their own weight (e.g. Duke Nukem Forever).

As for the NMS comparison, yeah, apples and oranges, two totally different games so I have no idea why people compare them. I guess because it's "hip" to compare different things that may have a common theme, i.e. space in this case...

[Matt_B]

Three major games, and a few very small scale indie efforts, in the space of four years is hardly what I'd call an "explosion" especially when not one of the ones that's made it to market so far has entirely managed to live up to its hype. People are bound to make comparisons in such a sparsely populated genre and even if the gameplay differs, the marketing around them has been depressingly similar; lots of vague claims about what you can do, talk of the size of them as if it wasn't figured out over thirty years ago how to make a huge algorithmically-generated universe, and a worrying lack of information about the core gameplay assuming there's going to be any.

Realistically I'm not holding up that much hope for, Star Citizen. Roberts seems to have got it into his head that setting his game in a vast algorithmically generated universe and allowing the player to get up out of the cockpit, wander around and flush the loo is going to make it better, when the reality is that it's likely to have the opposite effect. Basically, he's trying to make a game that does it all rather than focussing on what he's good at, and what was great about his early game was that they were tightly scripted action-packed affairs that you could get a couple of plays through the different branches of with scarcely a dull moment. It all started to go wrong when he began to pad them out with CGI-ridden b-movies, and here he is trying to build something that makes Freelancer look like Space Invaders when you compare the scope.

I'd think that, if he'd been making the game that Star Citizen ought to be, it'd probably be finished now, and we'd all be playing it, having a whale of a time and saying how dull NMS and E:D are in comparison. So what if there was nothing to the game universe beyond what was required for the campaign; if people want to go larking about on randomly generated planets, there's Kerbal Space Program for that. However, I think he's promised to deliver too much and, regardless of how much time it takes and how much money he gets, it's hard to see how the resulting game could be anything other than a disappointment.

[Antiriad2097]

On the other hand, this could turn out to be the 'GTA in Space' I'm looking for.

[Matt_B]

On the other hand, this could turn out to be the 'GTA in Space' I'm looking for.

Perhaps, but don't let Chris Roberts pull any Jedi mind tricks on you.

[outdated_gamer]

Atleast individuals like Roberts are still pushing the computer game medium forward in things other than just prettier facade and cinematics...

[Matt_B]

Atleast individuals like Roberts are still pushing the computer game medium forward in things other than just prettier facade and cinematics...

Given that Roberts probably did more than anyone to push cinematics - or at least b-movie grade cut scenes - that's a somewhat ironic claim.

Anyway, I'll hope for the best with Star Citizen. I just refuse to get caught up in the hype around it and think that, at best, it's going to be a series of Wing Commander style missions with a spurious half-arsed universe simulator tacked onto it.