Chris Roberts and Richard Garriott

[Birko]

Chris Roberts and Richard Garriott are having fun......

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm ... al-Systems

If "those two" are battling it out, then the gaming world is good

[NME]

I'm still very skeptical of crowd sourcing. This game seems too good to be true. Has it gone through name changes, was this not called squadron 32 before?

[tiggerjlk]

This sounds a lot like the game Tabla Rasa that Garriott was a part of in 2007. I had high hopes for it, but it just didn't have that spark.

Garriott was awarded 28 million dollars in a lawsuit against NCsoft over the game.

I played the game for a few weeks, but it was so linear, that it mad W.O.W look like a sandbox game

[Birko]

You're missing the point ! They are taking the piss out of the evolution of the Ultima series, the Wing Commander series Origin Systems and the Electronic Arts buy out. Chris and Richard worked together at Origin and are simultaneously developing new games. They tease each other.

[Pariah]

Yes, but new games that will likely never see the light of day (really a $40 mil funding goal for Star Citizen?), or we get a version that is nothing like what is promised. I think there is much deserved skepticism here. I would love it if these two could come up with a new concept that revolutionizes the industry and makes PC games fun and relevant again. However, it seems the trend in this crowdsourced former glory group is to over-promise and under-deliver. They all go for bleeding edge graphics and "millions of players," persistent this and that, but I feel that if they focused half as much on making an enjoyable experience, it would have a better shot at reality. I'm in Product Management at a company I won't name, but there just seems to be a commonality of feature bloat and people unwilling to compromise on "their vision" which is what sinks an ambitious project more often than not. We've played Wing Commander. My thought when I saw the video was "Oh, you took GTA and put it in space." It's essentially a borrowing and updating of a bunch of existing concepts and trying to mish mash them into one game. I would really rather see true innovation. End rant.

Also, I appreciated the nods and gentle ribbing. That was humorous. Good share.

[Theros]

I duno if a " a $40 mil funding goal for Star Citizen" is really so unrealistic since they have currently raised $43,986,302 as of this posting. The original funding goal was only half a million, but when they started to receive tens of millions they said that if they hit something like 32 mil they could forget about pitching to investors and publishers and crowdfund the whole thing. However, personally i think the people who are donating hundreds or thousands of dollars are nuts, it was hard for me to part with $25 for something sight unseen, even when its being made by people with a solid track record.

[Unbeliever]

I agree with most of what Pariah said. Companies don't want to be groundbreaking or revolutionary, they want to make metric tons of cash. That really is what business is about. So they follow the models for success and we get the same garbage MMOs that we've been seeing, just with new skins. As long as large numbers of people keep making successes out of lousy games, we're stuck.

[spook4324]

Squadron 42, its a single player campaign. and star citizen is the persistent universe mmo part.
I want to say the initial goal to complete both was 23 mil, and everything else is allowing more content and more detail.
I wouldn't be surprised is it brings in much more after the release of the Arena Commander (dog fighting module).
They do have weekly videos keeping fans up to date on development and answer questions. Guess you could say I'm a fan lol

[Birko]

Please folks, my original post was not about discussing the merits of other games, but about the humor and sarcasm of the linked article.
What we are playing here with Excelsior is a part of the Ultima history, and I thought the article may have been of interest.

And for the record, I support Excelsior, Shroud of the Avatar as well as Star Citizen.