Star Citizen: Beyond the Time Horizon
Disclaimer: This is an article about a video game in ongoing development. This article was written based on current available gameplay. The complete release date of this game, at the time this article was written, is unknown.
Disclaimer (Continuation): The objective of this article is to perform a thorough analysis on the available features of Star Citizen, the planned features of Star Citizen, and its trajectory in the video games industry.
Disclaimer (Continuation): This article is not a promise of features. This article is not a promise of release. This article is an analysis on the current state of affairs of the proejct as well as an analysis on the history of the project.
Disclaimer (Continuation): I have often seen people complaining after purchasing video games in Early Access, and my overall recommendation is: acquire a game only if you want to play it in its current state.
Star Citizen is a multiplayer space simulation video game. Drawing inspiration from classic space simulation (space sim) video games, such as Elite (1984), Wing Commander (1990), X: Beyond the Frontier (1999) and Freelancer (2000), Star Citizen focuses on simulating many aspects of life in space, including space travelling, space combat and space economy.
What Is Star Citizen Like?
Due to being set in space and in alien planets, as well as featuring space travelling and other elements common to the genre, Star Citizen could be described as a space sim video game. However, considering that Star Citizen includes different aspects in its simulation of life in space, instead of being described only as a space simulation video game, I think it could be more accurate to describe it as first-person simulation space sim video game, or an immersive simulation game set in space. Describing Star Citizen as a space sim game, and comparing it to Elite (1984) or to X: Beyond the Frontier (1999), could make sense regarding the aspect that those games contain classic elements of the space sim genre, but does not make sense considering that this comparison ignores the immersive simulation elements of Star Citizen. In my own terms, I describe Star Citizen as an immersive sandbox simulation, which is the term I choose to use for sandbox simulation games that feature various immersive elements.
Star Citizen features elements of immersion in its gameplay, an aspect which is clearly seen by its minimalistic HUD (heads-up didsplay). In general, games with a minimalistic HUD are games that focus on immersion, and this is also seen in games such as Metro 2033 (2010), Alien: Isolation (2014), theHunter: Call of the Wild (2017), The Long Dark (2017), among others. The minimalistic HUD is an indication that the video game focuses on immersion, rather than constantly displaying more information. This aspect of Star Citizen is one of the reasons why it could be considered a life simulation game, set in space.
Star Citizen also features adventuring in the surface of planets, a feature that was not traditionally seen in most of the classic space sim games, and began to appear more frequently in space sim games of the late 2010s, such as No Man's Sky (2016) and Elite: Dangerous (2014) with its Odyssey expansion (2020). It is important to mention that I do not consider No Man's Sky to be a space sim game in the traditional sense, even though it contains most, if not all, of the elements of classic space sim games. I consider No Man's Sky to be an open world survival craft video game with space sim elements, because its definition is wider than "space sim" in the traditional sense.
Perhaps one of its most defining characteristics, Star Citizen aims to give players the freedom in how to play and in how to approach different situations. In this sense, Star Citizen shares similarities with the gameplay of some sandbox space sim video games such as Elite (1984), X: Beyond the Frontier (1999) and its sequels, and Eve Online (2003), as well as with classic sandbox multiplayer games such as RuneScape (2001) and Wurm Online (2006).
Star Citizen also features action combat gameplay sections, similar to the combat gameplay seen in Starfield (2023), with FPS (first-person shooter) gameplay elements. For this reason, it could be said that Star Citizen features action elements in its gameplay. Despite other space sim video games featuring action elements such as starship combat, in general, classic space sim games do not feature first-person, on-foot combat.
Criticism Regarding Star Citizen
Star Citizen was critisized for multiple reasons. One of the reasons is that the game was originally planned to be released in 2014, and its release date was changed multiple times. The game was also critisized for its long development period (over 10 years). For example, a part of Star Citizen, then re-assigned to be standalone, Squadron 42, was originally planned to be released in 2014, and was not yet released by 2021. Star Citizen was critisized for being one of the most expensive video games to be developed of all time. Star Citizen was also critisized for not delivering promised features in scheduled dates and for not always having a clear communication regarding delays. Star Citizen development was also critisized regarding "feature creep", which is the inclusion of multiple secondary features instead of prioritizng the completion of primary features.
The original announced release date of Star Citizen was 2014. However, the game was instead released through multiple parts, called "modules", which were released at separate moments. The release of these modules was also, sometimes, delayed.
Development of Star Citizen was critized for its period of time, which passed the mark of 10 years. Skeptics of the project argue that the game underwent "development hell". The way I view it, there are evidences that development of Star Citizen has progressed over the years, and these evidences are the multiple features, new elements and new gameplay content that can be found in the game over time and that were not available previously. Considering multiple delays on the project, it may be reasonable to suppose that perhaps, due to the ambitious nature of Star Citizen, the work necessary for some features could have been underestimated and this resulted in delays. There is another video game with similar ambitions, No Man's Sky (2016), which also received much criticism in its early years for delays, unclear communication and lack of features at scheduled dates. No Man's Sky (2016) is a game that also is very ambitious for its time, in the sense that it features an almost endless amount of planets, and its post-launch development was also controversial. Indeed, it seems to me that any independent, ambitious video game is at risk of not being able to meet scheduled dates for promised features, since independent developers usually lack the support of major video game development companies and publishers. In these major companies, when very ambitious projects do not meet deadlines, these projects are often cancelled, and these projects often never reach public knowledge. Most often than not, projects that pass the first or second year marks without nearing conclusion are often cancelled in major game development companies and publishers. Independent developers, who often completely rely on their only project, are more likely to remain in their project until they see it to conclusion, unlike a major company that must take financial health and financial growth into consideration. These differences in view in video game development often become apparent when developers and publishers take different paths regarding creative visions, as developers often desire to create their own visions for video games, while major companies will often prioritize "safe" projects with a higher estimated chance of commercial success.
The development of Star Citizen was sometimes critisized of being "feature creep", which is a game development definition regarding the inclusion of multiple secondary features instead of completing a project or moving on to a different project. While the "feature creep" aspect must be considered by major game development companies, which must maintain financial health, and which also keep financial growth in mind, the "feature creep" definition is not always compatible with the creative vision of a game developer, as the game developer strives to realize their vision for the game they are creating. For this reason, game developers are often compared to artists, in the sense that, in their eyes, their work is never done. This line of thought becomes evident by the fact that many game developers continue to work on their game after launch, even in the cases in which the game already is mostly bug-free or "feature-complete" (perhaps, in the eyes of a developer, a video game will never be "feature-complete"). For these reasons, I believe that describing Star Citizen as "feature creep" ignores the fact that the project is lead by a video game developer, who has a creative vision for the game. I have also seen this "feature creep" observation regarding other Early Access video games. In these cases, it is important to take into consideration that the developers who work in these games for multiple years, must also see progress in their own terms, and not only in the terms of players, in the sense that the project still makes sense to them, otherwise it could be very easy for a project to become stale in the eyes of a developer. At the same time, consumers must be very aware of the current state of the game they acquire, be it an Early Access or a "finished" game, in order to set the right expectations for the available features and what exactly is being acquired.
A Look Beyond
At the end of the day, Star Citizen is an ambitious video game project, attracting sci-fi and space sim video game fans who dream of a next-gen video game, as well as customers who purchased a video game project years ago and in some cases are not satisfied with the product they received.
Beyond the legions of people Star Citizen attracts with its ambitious scope, it is an ongoing project in development by creative professionals who desire to create their vision of a video game, a situation which was also seen in the post-launch development of No Man's Sky (2016) which lasted for many years despite criticism and skepticism.
It is not possible for me to know for sure the future of Star Citizen. My goal with this article was to shed light into the various aspects of this ambitious project, such as the reasons of its fans, the reasons of its customers, and the reasons of its developers. While I do not have the answers for the future of Star Citizen, by continuing the development of Star Citizen, the developers are honouring their customers and supporters, while at the same time unpleased customers should be treated with respect and consideration, as they also have given their money to the project.
It seems to me that Star Citizen is a product born out of creativity, and not out of financial gain, and this is made clear by the fact that the majority of the money pledged to Star Citizen was spent in development, which shows that there is a clear objective of developing the project further. Ambitious projects are important in any industry, as these ambitions push the frontiers, standards and known limits and create new milestones, and in these projects, technological advances are often made, even if often at significant financial cost.
In this article, my goal was not to defend developers or to defend customers. My goal was to present both views, and to present the facts. I have often seen people complaining after purchasing video games in Early Access, and my overall recommendation is: acquire a game only if you want to play it in its current state. At the end of the day, Star Citizen is an ongoing ambitious project, and each person, gamer and player should consider the risk of acquiring a video game in its current development state.
Sources of Research: