That reason is I've watched roughly and near-exactly this trailer five fucking years ago. You can still find it on Youtube if you bother to look. Fuck it, I'll do it myself. LOOK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMSGlZSL0DE

And that isn't the only time, or even the first. I'm genuinely amazed that this grift is so perfect that the same vaporware can get polished up again and again, spinning its wheels in place, and people on the official forum and in Youtube comments say they're in tears about this.

I won't say I respect the hustle because I don't lick boots, but I am truly impressed with how powerful this grift is that it's self-perpetuating with that little to show for it over half a billion dollars and over a decade later.

  • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
    ·
    11 months ago

    I will respect them being honest by putting the CON in capital letters.

    When the Kickstarter was launched, I thought about pledging because I like space. Even if I would've only given whatever the minimum amount was to play the game, so glad I didn't give these guys a cent. Instead I pledged to Elite Dangerous' Kickstarter, and while that and its subsequent development had issues, at least it was a game that was playable and I had some fun with it.

    Elite Dangerous was definitely lib-brained, though: just look at the in-game descriptions of the communist faction.

    • comrade_pibb [comrade/them]
      ·
      11 months ago

      E:D was an incredibly competent space sim plagued by terrible leadership

      I had so much fun taking my phantom out into the deepest edges of the Milky Way, but frontier essentially abandoned the game in favor of some crappy FPS that no one wanted

      • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
        ·
        11 months ago

        That's what I meant by subsequent development, did they think the terrible FPS addon would bring in Cawadoody players or something

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          edit-2
          11 months ago

          "Simulationist" brainworms spread from Chris Roberts to the entire project and from there to its remaining fandom. Thus why there's ever-decreasing stat bars for everything juggle, from food and water to breathing gas to fucking argon levels for some reason to hygiene now. It's exciting for a specific kind of tedious gamedad that doesn't actually enjoy shooting spaceships in spaceships as much as the idea of forcing people to mop floors while hungering for their next mall vendor snack while basking in the awe of their thousands-of-dollars nerd chariots dabbing above them.

          Keep in mind all that pretense of realism is in a spaceship game where society society centuries in the future uses push carts, hand-delivers cargo boxes, and does ww2 dogfighting in space at visual range with manned turrets.

          • UlyssesT [he/him]
            hexagon
            ·
            11 months ago

            how to completely alienate your entire player base

            It kept around the big spending aging gamedads that often have very reactionary political views and go full frothingfash every time Pride month comes around because of brief and insincere perfomative rainbow decals or whatever.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      11 months ago

      I once considered putting money into Star Citizen very early on.

      I was initially glad I didn't when I found out what an euphoric fusion of Redditor liberal and 4chan fascist wet dreams the setting was, with an (elected!) space emperor of humanity that is effectively pulled around by corporate puppet strings and the fantastical far future of almost a thousand years from now is a bunch of bleak 90s shopping malls with hot dog stands and the aesthetics are a blend of Silicon Valley "minimalism" and Chris Roberts directly lifting imagery from movies and shows he consumed and demanding a sellable ripoff of it season after season.

      Speaking of Chris Roberts, he put himself into the game's lore as my-hero but somehow more euphoric.

      https://starcitizen.tools/Chris_Roberts_(lore)

      Oh yeah and that super heroic megacorporation had a few atrocities it was very very sorry about but in a very cool heroic way that involved auditing itself and declaring the atrocity issues were handled.

      https://starcitizen.tools/Roberts_Space_Industries

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      11 months ago

      just look at the in-game descriptions of the communist faction

      "The space commies hate freedom and individual expression and stifle creativity and innovation" I assume?

      • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
        ·
        11 months ago

        One of the possible descriptions when a stations is controlled by the communist faction is something like smuglord ”Communism is a movement that wants to make everyone equal, although some are clearly more equal than others”.

        They're also one of the ”bad guy” factions along with anarchists and space pirates very-intelligent

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          11 months ago

          I take it your choices of "good guys" are space royalists or space corpo-liberals?