Squadron 42 is the single player campaign of Star Citizen, that is supposed to launch as a separate game. It’s basically a small portion of Star Citizen, but with a story and ending. I’m still not confident; waited too long for that.
Ah, the annual whale fracking operation is in full effect.
The what now? 😆
I’m not a native speaker so some jokes / analogies just totally fly over my head
Star Citizen is a game that’s been in development forever, all while attracting money in forms of donations and sales of in-game ships. A single-player game by the same devs, Squadron 42, is a somewhat similar story, except that people can’t even play it yet (as far as I remember).
A whale is a tern that often means someone/something that brings you the substantial part of your revenue, so in case of the games above, whales would be the players that spend most money on the in-game ships or donations to support development.
The “whale fracking operation” in this context probably means that the entire trailer is a yet another bait for the community to go crazy and bring in the money so that the devs don’t starve and finally deliver finished products.
The punchline is, however, that it’s likely not gonna happen anyway lmao
Ahh doi, I understood the terms separately but for some reason “whale fracking” just made my brain go “whaaaaa”. Thanks for the patience 😅
I’d guess that the idea here is that a “whale” is someone who will spend a lot of money on something. Historically, catching an (actual) whale meant that you’d caught something that was very valuable; my guess is that this is where the phrase came from. Whales were valuable because at the time, they were an economically-reasonable place to get oil. Fracking (or hydraulic fracturing) is a way to extract oil from the ground.
It’s a bit of a stretch, but I can see where they’re coming from. A “whale fracking operation” is not a standard term that I’ve ever heard before, though I get what the guy probably meant.
Oh yeah I took it to just be wordplay, interpreting wordplay is still sometimes stupid hard for me, even despite the fact that I speak English at a near-native level and can understand each word individually.
It’s a good question how “whale” ended up having this particular meaning. I was in the games industry for way too long and first saw it used in the context of big spenders in freemium mobile games, but I have a vague memory that it’s used in the same way in the gambling / casino world. Your guess for the history sounds pretty believable, and it seems like the ginormous size of whales could play a part? Big spenders stand out from the “small fish”
Always remember: SQ42 is only 2 Years away (since 2016)
Original release date was actually announced as 2014 originally (during the 2012 Kickstarter), iirc.
Always. Two. Years. :)
Early Access when?
I admit, they fooled me into contributing to the Kickstarter. But at this point, anyone who has anything positive to say about this project is a paid shill (paid for by us!) or heavily in denial thanks to sunk cost fallacy. They say you can “play” it now, but it’s still not a game, it’s a tech demo and sandbox.
I’m perfectly happy to write this off as a failed Kickstarter, it happens from time to time. But when they keep trying to con money out of new suckers, it really pisses me off. Enough is enough. Assholes.
It’s still the best spaceship sim I’ve ever played. It does a ton of things no other space game does. Just because you don’t enjoy it or you completely clueless of the current state of the game doesn’t change the fact a lot of people enjoy the game.
I didn’t pay for a spaceship sim. I paid for the next Wing Commander and Freelancer game. Whether I enjoy it or not, the product they’re making isn’t the product they sold me. Perhaps
wasting your moneybuying the “game” now gives you a better chance of receiving the product you think you’re paying for, but I wouldn’t bet on it. They’ve already proven themselves to anyone paying the slightest attention.If you bought an idea of a game through kickstarter and it missed your expectations that’s totally on you. I waited till there was an actual game, reviewed it, bought it and enjoyed it since it was what I expected. Just sounds like you had a normal kickstarter experience.
I was expecting 25 minutes of gameplay. I skimmed the video, but it looks like around 5-8 minutes of cut-up gameplay, maybe another 8-10 minutes of cutscenes, and the rest looks like the “making of”. I did not see any evidence of a product that is anywhere near completion.
It’s more gameplay than they’ve shown in the past decade, they’ve been very tight lipped with anything to date
10 years of development for this part of SC, correct? If so, that’s very little to show for it.
No, 10 years since the announcement of their intent to build the game. Then they had to build the company, the engine, and they are building 2 games at once (SQ42 and StarCitizen).
Developing a AAA single player game + an MMO at the same time, with the components working across the 2, and now being at the point where they are feature complete on SQ42, is pretty impressive.
It’s going to get ugly when the chickens come home to roost on this one. They are slowly marching towards $1 billion. They are over $600mill already. And people still donate. It’s baffling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop
Currently Star Citizen is at the #1 spot for the most money spent on a video game’s development on this list. And that’s including adjustment for inflation.
I can’t believe Shadow of the Tomb Raider was that expensive, it’s such a forgettable game.
It’s even worse if you look further down on the other unofficial figures list at Marvel’s Avengers. It nearly costed as much as Red Dead Redemption 2 (also unofficial numbers). My assumption is, that the license is in these costs included and why it balooned it.
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I still kind of doubt it’s going anywhere fast. Because a game with this scope has already signed up for some pretty massive post-launch support. Let’s be generous and say it takes them another 2-3 years to develop this single player and another 5-6 to finish star citizen. That’s very generous.
They started pre-production in 2010. So it’s already been 13 years of development with near unlimited money on SC. So again, add 5 years till a mainstream launch and another 3-5 years of active support and you’ll be well over two decades deep in a single games development. That’s half of someone’s career to develop one game. Now we add another game on top of this.
The other game is admittedly much easier to develop but still it will take massive amounts of support. If Bethesda can’t do it well, why does anyone think this dev can and in such good time? I have my doubts.
They didn’t start pre-production in 2010, that’s when they started building the Kickstarter video, unless you’re counting the broad story strokes in CR’s head as “pre-production”, in which case Starfield was in pre-production for 25+ years. :P
Development on SQ42 started in 2013, and 10 years to not only build a game, but the engine tech and the studios as well, is not at all crazy given the game. Major games like RDR2 and GTAV take 8+ years, and they are working with already-established teams, and not doing anything crazy tech-wise.
And yes, MMOs have extremely long lives, both pre- and post-release. Eve is over 20 now. WoW is who knows how old. Maple Story devs have literally had kids and watched them go off to college.
I won’t tell people what to do with their money, but it’s clear people have bought in to both of these games existing. And if it were my money, I’d want to believe in these devs. But for the rest of us, these games need to materialize as functional and fully featured releases for us to care.
And I don’t think the timeline is crazy so far with their development. What’s wild to me is thinking that a newly founded studio, even a well funded one, can knock out a competent single player and MMO with these scopes. It’s slim chances from an outsiders perspective.
Take a look at what mature and well funded studios are putting out in 2023. The likes of Starfield are actually some of the better cases. I know the incentives are different, but still. So I’m expecting a lot of tooling to need to be done for both these games to exist and exist at an enjoyable playability by the end of the 20s.
Anyways, im not trying to kill enthusiasm for people who enjoy interest in the project but to everyone outside of that, this isn’t reassuring. All large scope games should be considered to be nonexistent until they hit reviewers hands at this point.
You are basically throwing out the existence of bad AAA games to discredit the idea that people can pull off AAA games. Here’s a secret; in software development, money and experience cannot overcome bad management. Lots of publisher-driven games release as crap because the publishers have them pegged to a certain financial quarter they want to show a revenue pull in, irregardless of where the game is at.
But for the rest of us, these games need to materialize as functional and fully featured releases for us to care.
I think it’s fair to hold early access games with skepticism, but plenty of people do play early access games (and SC).
But also, CitCon is first and foremost an event for current players, not a marketing one for new players. It’s a bunch of dev panels on nitty-gritty details of things like UI design, flight model physics changes, npc AI design, backend economy simulations, sound and lighting, etc. The SQ42 video was them throwing current players a live-view bone about the state of SQ42 development, rather than just the usual Jira-derived sprint status reports and development milestone updates that we get every 2 weeks.
All large scope games should be considered to be nonexistent until they hit reviewers hands at this point.
This is just cynicism about publisher-driven game-dev. It may be justified for those, but SC is not one of those, it’s quite literally an “indie” (publisher-independent) game. Plenty of independent game developers create “large-scope” games (Grim Dawn, Kenshi, Rimworld, Project Zomboid, etc) that have scope and depth (e.g. in number and complexity of mechanics) comparable to what AAA games do.
If people had not been actually playing SC (since what, 2016 for PU release iirc?) then I’d understand the idea of its potential “non-existence”, but it’s hard for me to take that stance seriously when it’s sitting on my harddrive right now.
Last night I did 2 ‘bunker missions’ (infiltrate facility, kill bad guys, loot), and salvaged 3 derelict ships. Night before that I was doing bounties on NPCs and running bomber support for some guys who had gotten pinned down by another group of players at a planet-side wreck site (Ghost Hollow). I don’t do mining, or cargo hauling, or drug running, or ship or ground pvp, or player-rescue medical missions, or racing, or investigations, but those are also in there.
I swear sometimes it’s like the people who talk about SC ‘not releasing’ seem to have no clue about what has literally already been released.
The tech debt they have and will incur alone will be a huge mountain to climb. You can’t develop a game for that long without having to go back and completely rebuild things with newer tools.
Even their rewards show their age now. CD and DVD collections and such. What’s going to happen when it comes time to fulfill all those merch order for backers in 2028 or whenever? What happens when virtually no one uses disc media anymore and they are struggling to even burn all this stuff?
This is my main concern about the game. With tech that moves this quickly, you have to understand that game companies who are established are living on the very edge of that debt.
Like starfield for example. Who knows how old it’s code is from the start of its development. It’s why Bethesda games break frequently and crash often. When you develop games on a 8-10 year cycle, think of how many hardware generations that is. 3 to 4 right? So when you’re talking about building an engine, then running it and building a game, then supporting it, all over the coarse of 15-20 years of coding? It’s a giant mess to program and there’s no way in hell it can be optimized properly.
Not to mention the massive task of upgrading the game as new hardware and new engine features arrive.
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Because a game with this scope has already signed up for some pretty massive post-launch support.
googles
Five years ago, this guy tried suing to get his money back when the thing was a third the size it currently is.
Ken Lord was one of those fans, and an early backer of Star Citizen. He’s got a Golden Ticket, a mark on his account that singles him out as an early member of the community. Between April 2013 and April 2018, Ken pledged $4,495 to the project. The game still isn’t out, and Lord wants his money back. RSI wouldn’t refund it, so Lord took the developer to small-claims court in California.
According to the game’s original pitch on Kickstarter, it would be a space sim with a co-op multiplayer game, an offline single-player experience, and a persistent universe. It’s since become a massively multiplayer online game and a separate single-player game with first-person shooter elements called Squadron 42, which RSI originally pitched as “A Wing Commander style single player mode, playable OFFLINE if you want.”
Along with the game—which originally had a targeted release date of 2014—Lord was supposed to have received numerous bits of physical swag. “So aside from [the game], I’m supposed to get a spaceship USB drive, silver collector’s box, CDs, DVDs, spaceship blueprints, models of the spaceship, a hardback book,” he said. “That’s the making of Star Citizen, which—if they end up making this game—might turn into an encyclopedia set.”
So if they still are on the hook to provide all that stuff and many people are in a similar situation to this guy, that’s a lot of merch that they gotta produce after they have done the game.
According to the game’s original pitch on Kickstarter, it would be a space sim with a co-op multiplayer game, an offline single-player experience, and a persistent universe. It’s since become a massively multiplayer online game and a separate single-player game with first-person shooter elements called Squadron 42, which RSI originally pitched as “A Wing Commander style single player mode, playable OFFLINE if you want.”
This is what bugs me the most about this whole fiasco. I paid into the original Kickstarter because Wing Commander through Freelancer were my favorite games and I wanted more of that.
The current project, even if we were to VERY charitably call it a game and call it playable, is nothing like Wing Commander or Freelancer.
If they were still making an actual Wing Commander type game after all this time, my copium might still be in full effect. But this current… THING… isn’t even the game they promised in the first place. It’s so disappointing.
I didn’t quote that bit, but that’s actually what he was upset about too.
For Lord, it’s no longer the game he thought he was getting. The first person mode is an especially hard sell. “I have [multiple sclerosis],” he told me. “My hands shake badly. I have tremors…They just recently confirmed that you have to do the first-person shooter thing to get through Squadron 42. I can’t do that, I just can’t do that. So my money’s stuck in a game I can’t possibly play.”
I didn’t really enjoy it, but did you play Elite: Dangerous?
And I guess that there’s the X series, X4 now, though the focus isn’t really dogfighting.
Everspace 2? I disliked one of those, can’t remember if that was it, but it is fighter-ish space combat.
There are also atmospheric fighter combat games.
That’s easy when you consider that there hasn’t been basically any sort information about S42 for a long time now. Still doesn’t really prove anything about a potentially finished product.
Was there really any gameplay footage released? Looked like the same cinematics they always released.
I was skimming it, but there did appear to be a couple of E3-type gameplay footage clips. I can’t say if they are new or not because I haven’t been following SC closely.
Wouldn’t it just be perfect irony if they run completely out of money before managing to release something/anything? Though with how many people put in money over and over even though progress over the years has been slow to say the least I guess the more likely outcome is nuclear holocaust putting a damper on the release schedule.
I still remember being in college and hearing people in the lab next to me excitedly proclaim that they were able to pay $100 for a rare ship that has X Y Z features including handling, top speed, and fashionable interiors.
They weren’t able to use the ship yet, but oh man was it a great investment for when they’d one day be able to ride them.
So fucking bizarre. But, if you have people out there thinking like my then peers, you’re guaranteed to have a long term stream of income based on loose promises alone.
They lost me like exactly after I put in money and started the insurance idea. I regret heavily putting money directly to the main site instead of kickstarter, at least I might have chance to get a refund or something since the pitch content changed.
Haven’t they made close to a billion dollars when counting the Kickstarter, starter packs sold via the website, and the “microtransactions” for things like ships (which are more macro than micro with the prices often being way over 100€)? I doubt they’ll run out of money any time soon, although hookers and blow definitely aren’t free
Scientology has been running strong from their grift for decades.
They are going to eventually run dry when they’ve burned through every ounce of their reputation. But it’s a long, long path of riches and broken dreams in the meantime. By the time it’s finally done, Chris and the other COs will have retired with their hundreds of millions, and they won’t care.
I watched the whole video trying to keep an open mind, but what they showed off just looks so generic. Quick time events, very basic looking fps mechanics, flight looks like War Thunder arcade battles. At least the gfx and animations looked pretty cool, although imo this is the least important factor of a good video game. Will probably be a skip for me, if it ever releases that is.
Honestly even if SQ42 ends up being a great game, it can never live up to the anticipation they’ve built around it at this point. People are expecting something so completely revolutionary that it will be unlike any other game they have played, but the reality is that it won’t be that. Which isn’t to say it can’t be a good or even amazing game, it just won’t be anything different or revolutionary gameplay wise.
I’ve got very minimal interest/expectations for SQ42 and I’m far more interested in Star Citizen which is still a pipe dream (although pretty fun to play in it’s current state too, bugs willing) but has much more potential to offer something different than other games in the genera are doing.
Is the RPS writer a Star Citizen whale? Only Star Citizen victims fall for this shit.
I mean, most of the article is them clowning on how it will never be released.
Ha ha ha!
I will believe it when I see it…
I mean, if they pull it off it will be great, but until it’s in our hands, there are no expectations.
I watched the video and what they showed certainly looks impressive. The level of detail in actions, variety of gameplay, immersive first person perspective, and visual details all look good. I hope the game looks and plays as good as what’s shown and actually releases sometime soon, but I’m not holding my breath. Even if you ignore all the baggage the game has, gameplay trailers to games still in development are lies more often than not. I stopped following the development like 8 years ago, now it’s off my radar until it actually releases.
I wouldn’t put too much stock in pre-release gameplay videos. Remember what the pre-release hype videos for Cyberpunk or No Man’s Sky looked like, and what the end results actually looked like?
Check out Watch_Dogs for some pre release insanity
In case anyone forgot: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=4KxRp8jeliQ (I know they fixed it, but that video will never fail to make me laugh)
I’m expecting another 1.5-2 years on the release for this. They’ve announced it’s feature complete and moving to the polish stage. That where they will fix bugs and ensure gameplay functionally feels correct.
Considering the number of chapters they had announced in the roadmap I imagine they have a lot of have to cover.
Backed the game, excited to see it when it comes out!
When it comes out.
Until then, zero expectations of quality, or timelieness.
Backed the kickstarter, still excited. Even in its current state it’s one of the more interesting games I’ve ever played. There’s probably a reason no one else has tried to make star citizen before. If SQ42 ever launches, hopefully in a decent state, assets will start getting moved to the multiplayer side of things.
What exactly is Star Citizen? And how does it differ from everything else?
It’s a space MMO sandbox game that’s been in development for like 11 years now I think? It’s still in the alpha stage. I think at one point it was the highest backed Kickstarter in history. Some people think it’s fraud and they’ll never deliver, others think they’re working on it just slowly. I think at this point universally though, people are just starting to give up hope. The game is available and in a playable state, it’s just nowhere near the promised state.
It also doesn’t help that a lot of ships in star Citizen can be bought with real life cash for pretty exorbitant amounts. A cursory Google search (haven’t played the game) tells me that the “600i Executive Edition” is the most expensive ship in the game, available for $25,000 real life USD.
I’ve heard the best comparison for the game is the presently finished game Elite: Dangerous. Star Citizen is basically saying they’re E:D but better.
The Javelin is the most expensive ship you can actually buy, at $3,000. It’s still a crazy amount of money though! But if people want to pay it, more power to them. It allows me to enjoy the game with my $70 starter pack!
While you technically have to spend $25,000 to get the 600i Executive Edition, is actually a perk you get once you’ve spent that much on the game itself.
Right after headlines of SC losing the faith of the community. lol
Also, Starfield has already launched. Not that I would even compare the two titles but Squadron 42 has still to prove its actual existence.Thats part of it because everyone interested already doesn’t like them and is getting this game for free. If it doesn’t have legs outside of everyone who has effectively ore-ordered, its going to be a real issue for CIG
I essentially got Starfield for free (bought a laptop and it came with a code). For $0 it was worth every dollar spent, but I do feel bad for the people who pre-ordered.
I can’t imagine why someone would pre-order a game like this one though, these devs don’t exactly have a great track history. At least for the people who pre-ordered Starfield, we know Bethesda will at minimum deliver a game lol.
bought a laptop and it came with a code
Wouldn’t have happened to be the new Framework, was it? :D
Wouldn’t be any other laptop :P
I mean yeah. Idk why people pre-ordered it, but they did, that’s their whole funding. Now they owe a copy to all their “backers”, and it’s hard to see how releasing this game will bring in revenue. They are in a very big hole.
It’s been 11 long years since the unveiling of Squadron 42, Star Citizen’s singleplayer campaign
It’s basically a small portion of Star Citizen
"As we move into the polishing phase…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_Forever
On May 24, 2011, Gearbox announced that Duke Nukem Forever had “gone gold” after 15 years.[16] It holds the Guinness world record for the longest development for a video game, at 14 years and 44 days,[17] though this period was exceeded in 2022 by Beyond Good and Evil 2.[18]
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-protracted-game-development/
I assume that the reason that the Guiness Book of World Records doesn’t accept Beyond Good and Evil 2 is that they probably require an actual release.
Duke Nukem Forever was released on June 14, 2011, and received mostly unfavorable reviews, with criticism for its graphics, dated humor and story, simplistic mechanics, and unpolished performance and design. It did not meet sales expectations but was deemed profitable by Take-Two Interactive, the owner of 2K Games.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Good_and_Evil_2
Beyond Good and Evil 2 has been referred to as vaporware by industry figures such as Jason Schreier due to its lengthy development and lack of a release date.[3] In 2022, Beyond Good and Evil 2 broke the record held by Duke Nukem Forever (2011) for the longest development of a AAA video game, at more than 15 years. In 2023, the creative director, Emile Morel, died suddenly at age 40.
But there is a big difference to all those games: Star Citizen (and therefore Squadron 42) is backed and payed by customers already.
And in SC’s case, in their hands.
I’ve been playing it with my wife for years, so it rankles me when people show up with the “will it ever release!?” takes. Go play it and see for yourself; they have free-fly events every quarter, so you don’t even have to buy anything.
“Will Eve Online ever release? They haven’t shown us any progress on Walk In Stations in years!” /s
Eve is a feature-rich and (most importantly) complete game they add things to. It’s not the same thing.
It wasn’t in 2003, when it released. Very few MMOs are.
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Yet I suspect that if SC released now as a 1.0, and then continued to add stuff for 20 more years in order to reach a comparable number of game systems as Eve has now, you’d be critical of it.
I doubt you played Eve back then (if at all), but it had fewer game systems than SC has now.
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Has there even been video or screenshots of BG&E2 to prove it has even been in development at all? I thought it was simply a joke or a rumor since I haven’t seen anything even being shown off.
Ubisoft has a promo video on their website. No gameplay, but I assume that they aren’t gonna pay what it’d take to make that as a joke.
https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/beyond-good-and-evil-2
https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/16/23557146/beyond-good-and-evil-2-not-canceled-development-hell
The good news is that work on the game is still under way. The bad news is that its actual release date is just as unclear as ever.
For those keeping track, that means it’s been almost fifteen years since Ubisoft released its first trailer for the game, which is longer than it took to get gaming’s other development-hell classic Duke Nukem Forever out the door.
The company made a big splash when it released a new trailer for the game at E3 2017, but at the time director Michel Ancel cautioned that the team was still at “day zero” of development. Following his departure from the company in 2020, reports emerged that Ancel was under investigation for his allegedly toxic management style.
It sounds a lot less like a joke and more like enormous project management problems.
So far I believe there have only been 3 or 4 pieces of media related to it. The 2008 car breakdown teaser, the gameplay teaser shortly after where she’s running along the rooftops, then the 2018 trailer with the monkeys or whatever and like a gameplay overview or something around that time. There hasn’t been anything of note since 2018 (i think) and I believe the creative director actually died this year.
It’s basically the most cursed project in gaming at this point. Very disappointing too. BG&E was an absolute masterpiece.
The Guinness Reason is actually because Beyond Good & Evil 2 was teased in 2008 as a prequel to a game from 2003, while Star Citizen was known in 2012. Both haven’t released.
