West Coast vs No Coast
Another problem I have with where the game is going is the shift away from Austin. When the game initially funded, I threw myself into it with a great deal of excitement. Not only was it an under-represented genre, but the core cadre behind its development would be in Austin. I’m one of those guys who’ll pay a little more for a head of cabbage or ear of corn if I know it was sourced locally, and games are no different from produce when it comes to supporting the local economy.
Plus, being developed in Austin set Star Citizen apart from most other games, which tend to be developed on the East or West coasts of the US. It meant hiring from the local pool, which promotes the technology field among kids who might not otherwise have considered it as a career, and it also created what I felt to be a unique development atmosphere that would translate to a better eventual game.
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The LA office felt like a satellite office as it opened, but it’s become much more central to the development since.
With the core of the game’s development now being located in LA and pulling on many of the developers who have been involved in several other games, I kind of start to worry that there’s less chance of the cool ideas we might have had otherwise. Do I expect that tenacious adherence to rugged individuality so common to Texans to be replaced in part by a somewhat more Californian desire to make sure no one acts too mean or finds too much success? I’m not exactly worried about folks breaking down in folk song, but yeah a little bit. I kind of am concerned about the cultural shift. It’s not a totally rational fear, but it’s there in the back of my head and I can’t seem to get rid of it.
Of Proportion and Pellucidity
Somewhat related to each other, are the issues of scope and transparency. As Star Citizen has grown steadily more complex, so I think they’ve started to stray away from two of their earlier promises to backers. The first, and I think least likely resolved is the idea that players will be able to host their own servers with modified versions of the code.
The universe has grown massively compared to the hand-full of planets that were initially planned. With the inclusion of a massive economic model supporting that expanded universe and the complexity behind the newly unveiled FPS system, I don’t think there’s much chance of any normal user being able to host out their own shard of the game for their friends. The horse-power required to host something like that puts it too far out of reach, I think.
Additionally, I suspect that there’s a great deal of proprietary code in the outsourced components like Moon Collider’s AI system, and I’m not sure they’d take too kindly to it being turned over to the community for modification. I’ve been told CIG owns the rights to the AI, but I’d be surprised if those rights allow them to make the source code publically available for modders to start carving into.
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The size of the universe in Star Citizen has exploded past the initial planets originally planned for.
I also note that you don’t really hear the team talking about community-driven post-development like you did in the earlier days, and that’s how this relates to the second point of transparency. It’s not a new point for me, as I’ve dinged CIG a number of times for failing to be as open with the community as I feel they should. What you might find interesting about this time, is that I’m about to start defending them for it.
No, I don’t like it, and I’d really like to see it change. I do understand it though, and that’s why this is the point in the article where I start swinging towards defending CIG and what they’re doing with Star Citizen. I think the combination of the game’s expanding scope and expanding audience has required Chris and his team take a different track than they’d intended with the original funding campaign. Not only is the audience larger, but it’s demographically different than what they’d started with.
The current audience is far less prepared to deal with the realities of game development than the one the team originally attracted. It’s not a mark against them though, and really should be considered a plus as a testament to how diverse it’s become. The original fan base, as I said, was far more technical. That had its own appeal, but the current audience has a diversity that’s really more likely to aid in the creation of a richer and more sustainable game.
Defending the Decisions
If you’re one of those rabid fans who can’t stand anyone questioning your team, you’ve probably quit reading by now. On the off chance you’re still around, let me tell you a bit about why I’m not as angry as it may sound. The truth is, while I really am a little upset about some of the directions the game’s development has gone, it’s with the full realization that it’s due to Star Citizen’s dramatic success.
The game is far larger than it was ever intended to be, so the idea of crowdsourcing the later development is no longer needed. It’s really actually better that they don’t, because the more professionally developed software will be far more sustainable in the long run. The higher quality product will also attract a much larger crowd, as they’ve demonstrated, and that translates to a more interesting in-game experience with a better chance to stay current for a longer period of time.
It also means we’ll see more ships, more planets, more of everything, than we would have ever seen before, and it’s really hard to argue with any of that. It’s still a bitter pill to swallow for those who’ve been around from the start, so you’ll just have to be understanding when we holders of the Golden Ticket lament our loss. You see, there was a time when Star Citizen wasn’t Chris’s game, it was our game, but that’s not really true anymore. I, and others, really need to learn to be okay with that.
These days, Star Citizen is bigger and in many ways better, and it’s probably time we stopped holding CIG to a standard they set for a game that no longer really exists. Trying to hold them to a standard that’s no longer tenable isn’t helping the game, and it’s frankly more likely to hurt it. That’s why I’m trying really hard to get past what I expected and appreciate what will be delivered. After all, I’ve heard it said that if you love something, you have to let it go…
Good bye, Wingman.
