Star Citizen Woes

[Slashman]

Honestly, space flight sims were always really the extent of my VR interest.

Any hard numbers on how well this new trend is actually taking off?

[Azrael Ultima]

Actually I thought this was kinda gutsy to write...

http://motherboard.vice.com/en_au/read/ ... on-e3-2016

Kinda makes me wonder why nobody thought about simply putting a thumbstick or something on one of the controllers for movement... Sure, not entirely realistic, but it definitely beats being glued to the ground.

Hell, Nintendo was intelligent enough to do that with their Virtual Boy, even if it flopped in every conceivable way.

[Ludovsky]

Sincerely, I'm kind of glad I'm not the only one who is more than a little skeptical about VR. I'm always a bit uneasy about the whole charge about putting VR stuff in my face just when opening steam for one :/
And that's to mention just them.

Interestingly, I see that there are some european developers who seem to be among the people most hyped for VR in terms of planning for it....

But as just written, it's their specific take on "planning on how to tackle VR development" that also lead them to be ironically among the most critical of the rush to try and seemingly turn VR into such a "must have" for hardcore game that we're seeing here in america in particular.

Because though they are VERY interested in the tech, though they're making a lot of plans for it already... they just don't see hardcore gaming as the market for it. Or gaming at all, for that matter as they just believe this "video gaming" focus for VR tech is just a bubble about to most nastily burst when all the people wasting money on the tech suddenly see it flop because the hardcore gaming market would have never been large enough to support it.

So, like said they ARE interested in the tech and planning ways to develop for it.... for commercial and industrial platform and other such professional uses and trainers, rather than purely hobby fields like video games. Because they can see a -lot- of potential for it in professional trainers and all.... just not so much for gaming, or at least nowhere near the intensity developers and others are pushing to get the tech popularized in gaming.

[Mecron]

Game first, gimmick second

[zanzibar196]

Who doesn't love VR? Come on...who?

I for one don't. The virtual boy wasn't the only flop in vr history. Every time a vr product comes out for gamers, it ultimately fails. I don't see any difference this time around.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Defenestar]

For my part, I think that VR could be great, but there's a lot of issues that might stand in the way. Issues like 'You want me to spend how much for a gaming peripheral?', and 'I need to design my living room around this, don't I?'.

Also I'd be worried about tripping over things, because being up and moving around to control the game sounds like trying to be aware of two separate, overlapping spaces around myself, only one of which I'd be able to actually see.

[Delta_V]

VR: The PowerGlove of the 2010's.

[PocketNerd]

When it comes to VR the HTC Vive looks the most promising, but yeah right now it's hard to see a super useful application for it due to the hardware requirements. Hopefully the new GPUs from ATI/AMD will change that.

[Mecron]

that would be cool but it addressed non of the concerns of the past bunch of posts.

[Mister_Pibbles]

Another big concern with VR development for Star Citizen is how the heck they're going to make it comfortable for folks.

Sitting in a cockpit is one thing, and works fantastically for VR. Vehicle based games have transitioned to VR remarkably well, especially when using a HOTAS or steering wheel setup.
Walking around (with a controller?) is a bit riskier, but people can learn to handle it. Teleportation is a no go unless they want to have very different experiences for VR v Desktop play.
FPS? In VR? TERRIBLY uncomfortable. Nauseating. Especially in Zero-G. ADR1FT has caused more people to recant their immunity to VR sickness than any other VR feature game

Pivoting to VR when your already scarce featureset doesn't seem to support it is a folly and smacks of an "us too" move. Unless they plan for people to take off their HMDs whenever they leave the pilot's char

[Cpt. Awesome]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/07/14/star-citizen-refund/

Looks like a backer went to the FTC for a refund. Glad I never backed it even more so after the fact. I know Elite:Dangerous is far from perfect, but I really did appreciate the level of reason and integrity they brought to the development process, such a contrast to SC in hindsight.

I couldn't imagine putting more than $200+ let alone thousands into StarCitizen and then seeing something sloppy like this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWq8ynUq7wM

Oh well, looks like we got the crowd funding ecosystem that we deserved afterall.

[Erinys]

Oh well, looks like we got the crowd funding ecosystem that we deserved afterall.

I guess? There are times when I really think that people need to take it upon themselves to do more than exactly what they're paid for.

Game journalists are meant to serve the gaming public. But every major news outlet in the industry except Ben Kuchera bent themselves into a pretzel to kiss this guy's ass and hype his vision, rather than offer people a sobering reflection upon his history as both a huckster and a developer.

I can't say that I have all the answers. But I do think that we have to start talking seriously about the difference between the natural ups and down and variable outcomes of sincere, purposeful creative work--which can always end in failure, especially if you're taking any real creative risks...

...and campaigns that really do look like active, malicious, highly skillful acts of evangelical fraud.

--Arinn

[Cpt. Awesome]

I couldn't agree more Erinys and I don't mean to sound like Star Citizen is a failure just because one guy got his refund.

I believe in crowdfunding and the value it provides and also I understand it will inevitably result in some failures. Unfortunately I just feel like for every person who "graduates" into a sophisticated backer or game journalist, there are still hoardes of people just not engaged at that level.

[Slashman]

I also agree with Ms. Dembo (congrats on the anthology btw.).

I believe the pattern that has established itself in gaming journalism is now one of:

"Hype it til launch (don't ask too many deep questions).

If it's good, hype it more in your reviews and post mortems.

If it is bad, write scathing articles where you do the appropriate amount of finger wagging, snubbing and pretending to be some sort of journalistic hard-ass."

No one has brought up Roberts' dubious history in any kind of meaningful way since this all began. But you can bet your posterior that if/when it goes belly up, all of a sudden you're going to get the 'pathological liar' type of interview that was viewed as some sort of journalistic revolution when it was done to Mr. Molyneux.

[Mecron]

Has there been a mighty number whatever article in the press yet about what the burn rate of that "dream team" was and how it doomed the project from the start?