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.
Usually my heart bleeds as much as the next man's, but there's so much wrong with the piece's sentiments -- and by proxy the concern that some in the Star Citizen community are making Cloud Imperium devs miserable -- that it's hard to know where to start. I think I'll lead off with the disconnect that the author and many game developers seem to have with certain genre fans.
See, gaming fans, particularly those who have been gaming for a while (let's call them hardcore, for lack of a better term), know what they like. They've played a lot of games, they generally play games for long periods of time and as their primary means of recreation, and they don't take kindly to things they love being co-opted to service less invested fans.
This is of course directly at odds with the big business that gaming has become, where for-profit entities are falling all over one another to find new ways to monetize existing customers while simultaneously making a "gamer" out of every muggle with an internet connection.
The point is, disgruntled hardcore types and their mislabeled "dev abuse" aren't a new phenomenon and they also aren't going anywhere. And they shouldn't, unless we're no longer interested in living in a free society or rewarding excellence in game development as opposed to existence in game development. Aside from the obvious need for anyone in a public-facing profession to develop thick skin, the feeling I'm left with after reading the Polygon piece is, "What did you expect?"
It's kind of a "duh" moment. I mean, really, should fans who are being marginalized by the industry's mass-market leanings simply smile and take the erosion of their pastime lying down?
More importantly, Hepler's statement is patently false -- or at least myopic -- as Star Citizen is showing us. Maybe BioWare's games "cost much too much money to focus on a niche market," and maybe that's because BioWare is doing it wrong and is a prime example of the sort of over-staffed and over-produced game development that needs to go away.
Why was BioWare, for example, unable to deliver an MMO with half of Star Citizen's feature set on nearly four times its budget? Now, you're right in thinking that Star Wars: The Old Republic and SC are vastly different MMOs. And that's my point. Star Citizen is going to have a fully voiced, story-driven campaign (Squadron 42), but it's also going to have sprawling, free-form sandbox play and all of the associated virtual world sticky stuff that SWTOR lacks. And oh yeah, actual space combat, too!
Maybe it's not so impossible to make a triple-A game with a relatively small budget? We'll find out when SC releases.
Gaming in general and MMO gaming in particular is more bloated now than it has ever been. While some may see this as a watershed era filled with "choice" -- even though said choice is usually 37 flavors of themepark vanilla -- the reality is that few of these games are going to generate a buck over the long-term. That's why free-to-play is a thing. Companies are so desperate to keep up with their own mismanaged budgets that they're willfully engaging in a race to the bottom and allowing monetization to dictate game design.
That brings me back to Star Citizen and its over-the-top fanbase. As distasteful as their behavior may occasionally be, Star Citizen and its 200-odd developer jobs literally wouldn't exist without these people. Chris Roberts tried to secure traditional funding for the game prior to Kickstarter and was dissatisfied with the results, which ultimately left the fate of the space sim sandbox in the hands and wallets of hardcore gamers who subsequently made it the most successful crowdfunding project in history. These are the kinds of gamers who get crazily invested, who get drunk at cons and confrontational on the internet, and who are constantly dismissed by devs, executives, and fashionable blogerati.
If name-brand studios truly can't make big games on reasonable budgets anymore, then Star Citizen, crowdfunding, and these sorts of supporters are the future of triple-A games. Or maybe there's some sort of modern day video game crash on the horizon as the industry swells with would-be devs. I can't predict the future with any certainty, but one thing I do know is that making triple-A games is a privilege. Not everyone gets to do it, and if a title such as Star Citizen comes along and manages to be triple-A on a fraction of a triple-A budget, well, that just calls into question the competence of everyone else.