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Space sim Squadron 42 is "feature-complete" and gunning for Starfield's lunch with massive new video
(www.rockpapershotgun.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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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.
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.
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.
A lot of people tend to forget, comparing SC's timeline of development to other AAA games doesn't work when those games are pushed out early, rushed to the finish line by publishers who don't care about polish, only sales numbers, and are fine with compromise at every level.
Chris Roberts doesn't do compromise. Every system in SC is created for hyper realism, down to working hydraulics and gears for the moving parts of ships. He wants everything to be perfect, and he'll call it done when he's happy with it.
And like you said, it's technically playable right now. I've never before been part of an alpha development, able to make posts about bugs that actually get read, commented on, and fixed by the dev team. Most game "betas" are just a 3 day early-access where nothing will actually change.
The game is hyped up so much because we see the potential, enjoy playing what we can, and love having a say in it's development.