Perhaps the biggest red flag in the history of game…
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Perhaps the biggest red flag in the history of game development .
Is the fact that CIG still claims that its developing core, critical, foundational technology for the game 14 years out.
People talk about how the game has been in development for 14 years. People talk about how its cost a billion dollars, but that leaves out something really important, which is exactly how far along they are.
And they are still - by their own admission - working on core, foundational tech for the game.
# At 14 years and a billion dollars out, CIG is still working on foundational tech for their game
I remember Duke Nukem Forever.
Duke Nukem Forever, nowadays, is known as gaming's biggest flop. It was a game that should have been amazing. The studio developing it "3D Realms" used to show it to gaming journalists, and they were all extremely impressed. I remember reading previews of it. The game genuinely seemed revolutionary.
And in retrospect, I could see how that worked. The company invited journalists to test drive the game, and they got to see the "Whiteboard"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLhIed6C\_cI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLhIed6C_cI
And at that point, no game had ever invested time ensuring that something like that worked. The Whiteboard was a promise to gamers. It promised that everything in the game would have that kind of attention to detail. Everything would be fully simulated. Everything in the game would be a whiteboard.
And of course, 3D Realms intended that. The game contains pinball machines and pool tables and basketball hoops - all of which were functional. 3D Realms really spent the time and effort necessary to fully simulate all this in their game... which is why the project eventually failed.
"Whiteboards" killed Duke Nukem Forever. The insistence on fully simulating every little thing, wasting time on shit that wasn't core to the game experience, eventually killed that project.
# Star Citizen is all Whiteboard
First, Star Citizen literally has analogues to the Whiteboard. The 890 Jump has a pool that's supposed to function. Billiards tables are in the game. Chess is in the game. Minigames can be played on arcade machines.
These are very direct analogues to Duke Nukem's Whiteboards.
But in addition to that, Star Citizen has massive mega-tech projects - the foundational tech - which are a secondary kind of "Whiteboard" built into the game.
Dynamic Server meshing, where the servers in real time self optimize by handing off players to each other as the game runs in real time. StarSim, a simulation of a hundred thousand NPCs per system. These mega tech projects in the game, which underly the game's inner workings and cause parts of the game to continually be re-written - leading to massive bugs - are a Whiteboard in themselves. They're tech which isn't strictly necessary for the game experience, but which the development staff is hell bent on chasing anyway.
# Star Citizen is an impressive demo of its own tech
Like Duke Nukem before it, Star Citizen is an impressive demo for the game. One can imagine journalists getting a glimpse of Star Citizen - if the game wasn't already public - lavishing praise on project just as they did for 3D Realms failure. One could imagine reading previews about how server meshing would be revolutionary, or how a game built out of a simulation might deliver value, or about ships with their own little mini-games built into them.
Journalists might see that, and like with Duke Nukem Forever - not see that the game is not far enough along, that core features are missing, that there is no concrete focus on actually launching.
In another reality, one could imagine Star Citizen perfectly paralleling Duke Nukem Forever's hype...
# Its hard to be a fan of a project that you think is failing
No one knows, not me, not CIG, no one knows whether Star Citizen is failing. To me, it looks like its failing. The engine gets older every year, every year the guys over at Unreal add more features that will never ever make it into CIG's StarEngine. Every year, tech that CIG pioneered like 64 bit positioning gets added to other game engines, eroding the technical edge that CIG has poured so much effort into building.
While that happens, the game continues to slowly progress, enough progress to keep you interested, but not nearly enough to make you think that project completion is on the horizon.
Perhaps CIG will somehow escape Duke Nukem Forever's fate. Perhaps they'll somehow avoid being overtaken by the rapid progress that naturally occurs within the industry... but I doubt it.
At 14 years in and a billion dollars in, Star Citizen still does not seem close to completing their foundational tech.
Defenders of the project will often point out that 14 years and a billion dollars isn't that unusual in gaming, and they're kind of right about that. Games like GTA6 had even more resources poured into them, and about the same amount of time. But that's Rockstar. That's fucking ROCKSTAR.
CIG is not Rockstar.
That's Rockstar, and GTA6 is about to actually release, and Star Citizen's release isn't even on the horizon. There is no date for it. Foundational tech still isn't in the game. They aren't even close.
Which is why comparisons to studios like Bethesda and Rockstar don't make sense for Star Citizen, and why comparisons to 3D Realms do.
Without a major pivot, Star Citizen will be this generation's Duke Nukem Forever.
#games
Is the fact that CIG still claims that its developing core, critical, foundational technology for the game 14 years out.
People talk about how the game has been in development for 14 years. People talk about how its cost a billion dollars, but that leaves out something really important, which is exactly how far along they are.
And they are still - by their own admission - working on core, foundational tech for the game.
# At 14 years and a billion dollars out, CIG is still working on foundational tech for their game
I remember Duke Nukem Forever.
Duke Nukem Forever, nowadays, is known as gaming's biggest flop. It was a game that should have been amazing. The studio developing it "3D Realms" used to show it to gaming journalists, and they were all extremely impressed. I remember reading previews of it. The game genuinely seemed revolutionary.
And in retrospect, I could see how that worked. The company invited journalists to test drive the game, and they got to see the "Whiteboard"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLhIed6C\_cI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLhIed6C_cI
And at that point, no game had ever invested time ensuring that something like that worked. The Whiteboard was a promise to gamers. It promised that everything in the game would have that kind of attention to detail. Everything would be fully simulated. Everything in the game would be a whiteboard.
And of course, 3D Realms intended that. The game contains pinball machines and pool tables and basketball hoops - all of which were functional. 3D Realms really spent the time and effort necessary to fully simulate all this in their game... which is why the project eventually failed.
"Whiteboards" killed Duke Nukem Forever. The insistence on fully simulating every little thing, wasting time on shit that wasn't core to the game experience, eventually killed that project.
# Star Citizen is all Whiteboard
First, Star Citizen literally has analogues to the Whiteboard. The 890 Jump has a pool that's supposed to function. Billiards tables are in the game. Chess is in the game. Minigames can be played on arcade machines.
These are very direct analogues to Duke Nukem's Whiteboards.
But in addition to that, Star Citizen has massive mega-tech projects - the foundational tech - which are a secondary kind of "Whiteboard" built into the game.
Dynamic Server meshing, where the servers in real time self optimize by handing off players to each other as the game runs in real time. StarSim, a simulation of a hundred thousand NPCs per system. These mega tech projects in the game, which underly the game's inner workings and cause parts of the game to continually be re-written - leading to massive bugs - are a Whiteboard in themselves. They're tech which isn't strictly necessary for the game experience, but which the development staff is hell bent on chasing anyway.
# Star Citizen is an impressive demo of its own tech
Like Duke Nukem before it, Star Citizen is an impressive demo for the game. One can imagine journalists getting a glimpse of Star Citizen - if the game wasn't already public - lavishing praise on project just as they did for 3D Realms failure. One could imagine reading previews about how server meshing would be revolutionary, or how a game built out of a simulation might deliver value, or about ships with their own little mini-games built into them.
Journalists might see that, and like with Duke Nukem Forever - not see that the game is not far enough along, that core features are missing, that there is no concrete focus on actually launching.
In another reality, one could imagine Star Citizen perfectly paralleling Duke Nukem Forever's hype...
# Its hard to be a fan of a project that you think is failing
No one knows, not me, not CIG, no one knows whether Star Citizen is failing. To me, it looks like its failing. The engine gets older every year, every year the guys over at Unreal add more features that will never ever make it into CIG's StarEngine. Every year, tech that CIG pioneered like 64 bit positioning gets added to other game engines, eroding the technical edge that CIG has poured so much effort into building.
While that happens, the game continues to slowly progress, enough progress to keep you interested, but not nearly enough to make you think that project completion is on the horizon.
Perhaps CIG will somehow escape Duke Nukem Forever's fate. Perhaps they'll somehow avoid being overtaken by the rapid progress that naturally occurs within the industry... but I doubt it.
At 14 years in and a billion dollars in, Star Citizen still does not seem close to completing their foundational tech.
Defenders of the project will often point out that 14 years and a billion dollars isn't that unusual in gaming, and they're kind of right about that. Games like GTA6 had even more resources poured into them, and about the same amount of time. But that's Rockstar. That's fucking ROCKSTAR.
CIG is not Rockstar.
That's Rockstar, and GTA6 is about to actually release, and Star Citizen's release isn't even on the horizon. There is no date for it. Foundational tech still isn't in the game. They aren't even close.
Which is why comparisons to studios like Bethesda and Rockstar don't make sense for Star Citizen, and why comparisons to 3D Realms do.
Without a major pivot, Star Citizen will be this generation's Duke Nukem Forever.
#games
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