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Stick and Rudder: This is not an Elite: Dangerous review
One of these days I'll get back to writing Star Citizen-flavored words in this space. Right now, though, Elite: Dangerous is a thing that I've been playing, and please ya'll, put down your pitchforks. It is possible -- and even healthy -- to like and support both of these titles. This is not space Capulets vs. space Montagues but rather the beginnings of a new sci-fi sandbox age. Elite's not quite where I would like it to be at this early hour, but it's still a fine piece of work that's salvaged a thoroughly regrettable MMO year.
Stick and Rudder: Oh yeah, Star Citizen is a game I'm following!
I actually said the title of this piece out loud the other day. I was compelled to do so primarily because of a certain sandpark's launch as well as the fact that it's been dominating my game time for a solid month now. And yeah, I left off the Stick and Rudder part when I said the title out loud because "Stick and Rudder: Oh yeah Star Citizen is a game I'm following!" would've sounded even stranger than "Oh yeah, Star Citizen is a game I'm following!"
Stick and Rudder: Even more sims to fill the Star Citizen void
I was hoping to use this week's column to talk in glowing terms about Star Citizen's newly released racing mechanics. The only problem with that plan is that Arena Commander 0.9 hasn't launched just yet, purportedly on account of a few pesky bugs that Cloud Imperium is still in the process of squashing. Sooo, I thought I'd dust off an old Stick and Rudder standard wherein we talk about which genre games are worth playing while we're waiting on the "best damn space sim ever."
Stick and Rudder: Star Citizen is standing on the shoulders of genre giants
It's confession time, folks. My Star Citizen fandom has been on the fritz. It's not that I'm less enamored with Cloud Imperium's sci-fi sandbox opus; it's just that the interminable waiting coupled with a pretty severe case of themepark MMO burnout (help me, ArcheAge, you're my only hope) has conspired to foul my gaming mood of late. Fortunately, CIG read my mind and pulled me back in with its gangbusters Gamescom reveals.
Stick and Rudder: Should you be scared off by Star Citizen's community?
Massively's Justin Olivetti and I were talking MMO communities recently. Star Citizen came up, and my esteemed colleague mentioned that the constant hubbub surrounding the crowdsourced space sim sandbox has made him a bit wary of getting invested in the title for the time being. From the inside looking out, I can see how the game's community sometimes seems like a roiling mass of internet rage and entitlement, but I think it's worth mentioning that -- like the game itself -- it's also what you make of it.
Stick and Rudder: How complex is too complex for Star Citizen?
I've taken a little while to let Chris Roberts' recent flight model manifesto marinate. In that time, my opinion has run the gamut from "funk yeah, simulation!" to "hmm, I hope I'm able to enjoy this title" and back again. I waffled because as much as I'm salivating over Star Citizen and everything it represents, it's still one game out of dozens that I'm following. And as much as I'd like to, I can't realistically devote all of my free time to a single title!
Stick and Rudder: How Star Citizen is turning the game industry on its ear
When this column began, the first thing I talked about was Star Citizen's then-unique development model and how important it was both for fans and the game industry as a whole. Over a year later, the jury's still out on whether or not Cloud Imperium's opus will bring balance to the Force and give starving hardcores a home of their own. It's already safe to say that Star Citizen has turned the industry on its ear, though.
Stick and Rudder: On crowdfunding and 'dev abuse'
The DFM PAX reveal came and went, and it was exactly what I expected: full of bugs befitting an alpha state and still absolutely stunning in terms of its potential. And that's all that really needs to be said about that, at least until we get our hands on it in the comfort of our own homes! I'm more interested in riffing off some of the trollish behavior from the pre-PAX backer-only gala. If you watched the full presentation, you probably know what I'm talking about. If you didn't, well, it was basically drunks being drunk, but it leads into something I've wanted to talk about for a while, which is mass appeal, niches, and the gaming industry viewed through the prism of Star Citizen.
Stick and Rudder: Five more space sims to fill the Star Citizen void
A few months back I put together a list of my favorite space sims in an effort to pass the time remaining until Star Citizen's release. Well, that release is still a ways off, even though we are scheduled to get our grubby little space mitts on the dogfighting module next month. I'm in the mood to pew pew right now, though, and if you are too, here are a few more classic games to help fill the void.
Stick and Rudder: Getting perspective on Star Citizen's development
I recently spent a week enjoying the hell out of Elite: Dangerous. CCP's Valkyrie project -- a virtual reality EVE Online riff powered by Oculus -- is apparently far enough along to merit public demos and a slow-burning hype train. And Star Citizen? Well, I can still solo around in my hangar, fitting ship guns and firing them at cardboard targets. I bring all this up not to pile on Cloud Imperium. On the contrary, I'm OK with SC's development pace, and if you're on the world side of the world-vs.-game debate, you should be OK with it too.
Stick and Rudder: Star Citizen's backlash effect
Can someone help me understand the Star Citizen backlash effect? I mean, seriously. If Chris Roberts and his Cloud Imperium developers announced that the game's next stretch goal was a cure for cancer, the first comment on the resulting news article would be some variation on "bullsh#@!" Followed closely by "that's not possible" and "feature creep!" My question, though, is why?
Stick and Rudder: OK, so Star Citizen might be a PvP game
A few weeks ago I outlined why I think Star Citizen is more a PvE title than a PvP title. I'm sure most of you disagreed, so this week I'd like to examine the other side of the debate. Sorta. See, I still think SC is mostly for PvE types, given Chris Roberts' design sensibilities, but I also went back and studied the Roberts PvP quote highlighted in the previous piece as well as the full wall o' text that surrounded it. Roberts, according to that interview, believes that SC will be both a PvE and a PvP game. Fair enough. We often hear devs speaking grandly in the pre-alpha stages of a project and swearing up and down that it's going to make everyone happy. Can it really, though?
Stick and Rudder: It's the Massively Star Citizen guild
I love me some guild management tools, which is strange since I don't manage guilds all that often. It's a bit of work, see, as one look through the titles and topics in our Guild Counsel category will make clear. At any rate, I can't stop playing around with Star Citizen's recently launched Organization stuff.
Stick and Rudder: Five reasons Star Citizen isn't a dedicated PvP game
Is it just me, or does a new PvP-vs.-PvE fight break out on the Star Citizen forums every five minutes? In fairness to everyone involved, the jousting we've seen over the past few months is pretty typical of every early adopter MMO community. There's plenty of preening, pseudo-intellectualism, and outright trolling on both sides of the aisle as two player groups make their preferences known early and often in a blatant attempt at influencing game developers to develop something more to their liking. With Star Citizen, though, and with the all-PvP-all-the-time crowd in particular, I'm constantly left wondering whether these people have bothered to research the game they're backing.
Stick and Rudder: 2013's essential Star Citizen stories
What say we recap 2013 from a Star Citizen-focused perspective? It was a huge year for Cloud Imperium's space sim sandbox, and no, I'm not just talking about the ever-increasing crowdfund windfall.
Stick and Rudder: Star Citizen and The Phantom Menace
It's May 1999 and nearing midnight. My best friend and I are standing in a swollen, sweat-soaked line of humanity that snakes through a movie theater lobby, out into the overstuffed parking lot, and around back of the palatial building. Imperial stormtroopers mill through the crowd. Kids armed with plastic lightsabers duel their friends, their parents, and armies of imaginary opponents. Nerds share pizza deliveries with strangers, and the whole enterprise is steeped in an air of electric expectation more akin to a championship football game than an evening at the cinema. And then my buddy turns to me and says, "What if it sucks?"
Stick and Rudder: The best bits of Star Citizen's Thanksgiving livestream
Cloud Imperium hosted another lengthy Star Citizen livestream this week, and if you missed it, well, so did nearly everyone else who has a nine-to-five job. This particular shindig was some 20 hours shorter than the last one, but there were nonetheless plenty of interesting details to digest. If you want a blow-by-blow summary -- and you don't share my aversion to Reddit -- here you go. If you want my personal highlights, click past the cut.
Stick and Rudder: How to be an informed Star Citizen
Massively's podcast fielded a listener question about Star Citizen and various other Kickstarters a couple weeks back, and while I answered it on our weekly show, I'd like to expand on it in more detail here. Call it a public service for people who are mildly interested in Cloud Imperium's space sim but not interested enough to scarf up the considerable amount of news flowing out of the studio these days. The question, in a nutshell, was how can a 30-person dev team make a triple-A title. There was more to it, including the usual concerns about crowdfunding, trust, and bits about investing vs. donating, but the dev team portion is the portion that I want to highlight.
Stick and Rudder: What if Star Citizen fails?
As Star Citizen's crowdfunding totals spiral ever higher, so too do the cries of the naysayers, negative nancies, and the ne'er-do-wells who seemingly exist to rain on the space sim sandbox's parade. Some of this hand-wringing is probably justified since with each new stretch goal, fan expectations for SC increase exponentially. Regardless, what the game has already accomplished is worth celebrating, and two of the most common reasons I've seen cited for remaining skeptical simply don't make sense.
Stick and Rudder: Ten space sims to fill your Star Citizen void
This week I'd like to throw around a few ideas for enjoying yourself in Star Citizen's absence. Yeah, there's the hangar module, and it's pretty spectacular for what it is. But after dorking around in cockpits and doing a few I'll-be-in-my-bunk Jayne Cobb impersonations as I wedge my avatar into my Aurora's sleeping compartment, I ache to spool up those engines and go somewhere. Fortunately there are a ton of worthy space sims that we can use to while away the next couple of years. Or the next couple of months, because dogfighting alpha!
