I'm not a fan of this argument. On one side you have those ignorant to the game's pros and on the other you have those ignorant to the game's cons. It's clear how much effort and work is going into the game. There are shitloads of weekdaily videos on youtube as well as several playable demos. I have no doubt that they are spending the money on making the game. They have 300-odd employees over four studios and shitloads of backer money to spend, so their team is hardly small and they certainly have a lot of ambition.
The problem is whether the game they make is going to be a good one. My biggest worry is the size of the team. People are putting out Ubisoft as an example of multi-studio productions but that's not a good thing. Assassin's Creed is a poster child of feature creep ruining a series, and that's most likely down to the too many cooks spoiling the stew. The series started out as a stealth-action game in a historical setting but over the series they've added in city-tycoons, shop renovating, assassin training, city liberating, sending assassins on time-based missions, bomb-making, tower defense, hunting, crafting, naval missions, trading and a second crafting minigame that half the people I've talked to didn't know existed... separate whale-hunting, underwater treasure hunting, plantation stealing, fleet management, co-op multiplayer... The only good thing that came out of this was the naval stuff, and that would have been better off as a new IP so it wouldn't be weighed down by the assassin bullshit.
And I want to preface this by saying that I don't think Star Citizen could ever creep as badly as Assassin's Creed has, but that doesn't mean ambition won't hurt it anyway. The fact that Star Citizen is like four different games is the first sign. So it's an MMO, and a story-based SP campaign, and a dogfighting sim with co-op and PvP and PvE and an FPS which even then has multiple types of gravity... People with bigger budgets have failed at just one of those things. And people say that Chris Roberts is a veteran who can pull this off, but he's really only famous for making cinematic-based singleplayer flight sims in Wing Commander. The only thing close to Star Citizen in scope is his last game, Freelancer, which...
Originally, Roberts promised features such as automated flight maneuvers, dynamic economies, and a multiplayer mode that could host thousands of players, but diminished versions of these features were implemented in the final release. The game's initial technical demos impressed reviewers, but after the Microsoft buyout and Roberts' departure from Digital Anvil, critics had doubts about the game. Reviewers judged the final product technically good but failing to fulfill their initial expectations.
Oh well, the game was still good and the problems were mostly Microsoft's fault anyway but the game was still good in the end despite failing to meet expectations. Except, when your fans have spent $77 million on those expectations, you'd better not mess up. $77 million that the fans won't get back from end game sales, like a publisher would. Really, all I'm saying is I'm not spending a penny until the game is properly released or at least worth the price of admission. And I'm sorry, but the dogfighting module isn't exactly setting the world on fire just yet.
