Make of it what you will, over a decade late (and now promised 2 years from now, again) and roughly 700 million dollars over the original minimum proposed budget (much of that went into Star Citizen, which was supposed to be the online and multiplayer spinoff “bonus” game that sort of became the main thing).

Keep in mind that the big spending true believers expected this game to be everything, so open ended that they thought they could wander off between cutscenes and the game would somehow put up set pieces ahead of wherever they went and make it feel seamless instead of just an awkward jump off the rails.

Not every big spending fan was having it. Here’s a response from one of the biggest spenders on the official forums, tens of thousands of dollars in:

So Mr Tyrer, let me understand this. Your ‘plan’ for 1.0 is to have 3 star systems that have been worked on already for the last 3 - 8 years at least, plus two more in a timescale CIG won’t even commit to?

The main proposal of a ‘living breathing universe’ to have NPC crew hires and our alternate game package characters could switch into those NPC crew (ask Chris about ‘Agent Smithing’) have just been dropped?

You’re launching a 1.0 game about a United Earth Empire - with no Earth? No seat of government? How immersive.

Version 1.0 ‘plan’ showed nothing about deep space exploration, nothing about science scanning except that a ‘better gun’ could be made. Where’s the archaeological gameplay mystery quest on Hades Chris was so excited about? We have an artifact. What were all those alien languages developed for? An award winning star map of fictional non-existent places.

What’s the point in filling a Galactapedia with all that lore for places we’re not likely to experience in even a reasonable time frame? We can trade all that scanning data to and from the ARK Repository, but we can’t visit it?

With all due respect, you say you have been a backer yourself from the very beginning, yet it seems to me you think of Star Citizen as a game of game loops and time sinks alone. Every feature you showed at this last CitizenCon was designed to keep us in one local place to grind, there was even a reference to a Carrack - which if memory serves was designed as a deep space explorer and new star system finder. You seem not to have really understood what the dream was all about. I have the strong impression now that we have been funding a tech company of game developers who wanted to play a game of tech development, and would say anything to get that while hiding behind the caveat that CIG alone get to choose which features you will decide to get to and when. Convinced we were a partnership were we, Chris even remarked on it.

I’ve been supporting this project for over 10 years and have always been impressed with the technical wizardry always convinced that all that technical hoop jumping was so that we could achieve the dream of a game universe environment like no other, have experiences like no other, but it seems your version 1.0 is to be a game just like any other despite the long wait and indulgence of paying to ‘push the boundaries’.

The big question I have to ask… and many others I suspect is… if this is your ‘plan’ then what was it all for? I can build my own bases in plenty of games. I can grind for an org in even more. It is my opinion your ‘plan’ is for a game of grind, acquisition and area domination, it is not about making your own story in a varied universe full of characters. You say ‘post 1.0’… again no stated plan for post 1.0 continuing development, no timeline because the people who paid for it all aren’t allowed to ask ‘when’.

I have never felt so let down and disheartened about this project, every main feature I was hoping for has been dropped in favour of crowd pleasing mechanics and game loops and I suspect rushing to lose the alpha tag before the glare of the gaming media spotlight turns on the Squadron 42 release, all those hopes and dreams curtailed because CIG don’t want to be labelled as always in ‘perpetual alpha’ when the media blitz starts? If you and Chris have some plan for post 1.0, I would consider it a courtesy to share at least the aims of that plan and more importantly how you intend to achieve it… but please… I will be 65 years old when Squadron 42 releases, if it is on time, so hopefully I will still be active and able enough to see some fruit of what we’ve spent the last 12 years investing our money, time and energy in.

Well played, you had us convinced that after all these years of development research you’d knuckle down and grind out with those amazing tools what was breathlessly described to us for years, but it’s now clear the only people you expect to endlessly grind is us.

I have no doubt that all the technical marvels and time sink game play loops will go down well with those whose main aim is to occupy themselves with streaming the game on social media platforms, and even making a living from it in some cases, but I didn’t support this project simply for the joy of watching it on Youtube. There was supposed to be deep immersion, there was supposed to be characters with persistent and meaningful interaction we could build relationships with over time with ‘snow globes’ to collect as a reminder of all the wondrous places we would get to explore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BBg3BTbcLo

Your ship and crew wandering the universe were supposed to be the dream, not some static base of organisational politics.

You can perhaps pass along to Chris for me… after all these years I never expected the project to cheap out on the core dream. No-one wanted another mile wide and inch deep game, but neither did we want a mile deep and an inch wide game either, which community of dreamers with ‘wanderers legs’ desperate to explore the vastness of space would? Weren’t we all dreaming of exploring the stars rather than a first person detailed flight simulator? At least my Genesis Starliner won’t get worn out flying between a few bus stops eh? Wasn’t all this money… and especially time to avoid that choice? Was there no-one considering a balanced approach to scale and depth? I defy you, or anyone, to find any interview previously given by Chris regarding the ‘plan’ for this project where all he talked about was game grind and base building in an award garnering screenshot generator. I don’t remember the pitch at launch where he said he wanted to take over a decade and hundreds of millions building the most technically advanced game engine for game developers to marvel at only to produce and settle for a cut down miniaturised version of the dream.

Squadron 42 was his dream and he got it courtesy of an endlessly loyal community, this slightly bigger fishbowl MMO-nly grind-fest ‘for the orgs prestige’ is our reward? You’ve all had 10 years of your fun, where’s ours? It’s time to start talking in more detail about what all this fantastic technical capability CIG has been indulging in for the last decade is going to achieve, Genesis sounds great, can’t wait, it’s taken long enough, but all that for two more star systems ‘Soon’? If there ever was a time that CIG’s senior management needed a swift kick in the rear to remind them that ‘us old folks’ are still here, this may well be it. I have a Chairmans Club Handbook, presumably we have to consign it to the dustbin of marketing hyperbole, have you ever read it Mr Tyrer?