"Star Citizen’s $27,000 bundle raises eyebrows"

[kane_magus]

The fuck?

You know, despite backing it once, decadesyears ago, I had honestly, legitimately forgotten that Star Citizen was even a thing that existed. I mean... does it, technically, exist yet, given that it is still apparently in alpha after all these centuriesyears?

Comments

[owsf2000]

Star Citizen (And a couple other games I can easily think of) are examples of why I've grown to utterly despise "Early Access" games.

About the only game to do Early Access right, was one of the first big ones to do it at all - Minecraft. Mind you I'm talking about games that got global attention. I'm sure some Dave guy in the back alleys of Europe did an early access game before them, but neither you nor I know about Dave and his shitty game. So he doesn't count.

Anyway, Early Acess started to become a Big Thing after Minecraft started raking in the millions. But virtually every one of them did it completely backwards, and in most causes they wonder why they didn't become the next global sensation. (Beyond having a shitty game.)

That is to say, Minecraft's early access under Notch started as a free to play game. This was when it was in the demo stages, or reaaaal early builds. Then when they got developed enough to consider themselves "alpha" level development, they started selling it for 9.99. Then when they got to beta level, they went to 19.99. Then finally when they released it was 29.99 - iirc. Probably still there today, but I can't say I've checked prices regularly given I have an alpha account.

In short, Mojang started off cheap and increased the price as the value increased. Every other Early Access game is charging prime rates+ for players to have the honor of dealing with featureless, bug filled games. There's rarely any sales on these things after all "They're not even released yet", which helps developers to foster a desire to STAY in early access no matter how much content they put out. And some stay there indefinitely with apparently no intention of leaving.

Star Citizen really feels like that kinda thing and at this point, when I see players tricking themselves into thinking that $13,000 dollar bundle of virtual items is a GOOD thing, I can see why the devs will never ever want to leave Early Access. As there's no way they're going to be selling those kinds of packages after the game is "finished".

[kane_magus]

Yeah, I've more or less decided at this point that "Early Access" is pretty much a scam, except in retrospect in a rare few cases, because you can never really know going in if it's going to be a scam or not, so I say now to err on the side of it being a scam. At most, these days, I might "wishlist" an Early Access game that looks interesting, because that's free to do, and then wait for the "was released" announcement email from Steam before giving a further shit about it. Far too many abandoned "Early Access" games litter Steam, for instance, and people stupidly defend the practice as "well, you knew what you were getting into when you paid for an Early Access game, so you're not allowed to complain now that the developer has taken your money and run." Bull fucking shit to that. I feel pretty much the same way about Kickstarter and Indiegogo and such these days, as well.

The rest of this comment is kind of a side issue, but one of the things that bugs me about Minecraft, and so many other games, is that if they're still adding features to the game, even now, then the game never really left "alpha" stage. "Beta" stage is supposed to be the stage where the game is "feature complete," i.e. no new features added, but is still undergoing bug-testing. The terms "alpha" and "beta" and such, which used to have very specific meanings, are basically worthless now, because developers and publishers misuse them them all the time, mostly for marketing buzzword purposes. But then, I've ranted about that elsewhere, already.

(RIP John Bain, aka TotalBiscuit, by the way. I may not have agreed with him on a lot of the issues he talked about, but cancer is total horseshit, no matter who you are. I'm not sure I would wish cancer on even Donald Trump, regardless of how much I may hate that stupid asshat's fucking guts.)