Let the “Scam Citizen” jokes commence. Star Citizen staff held an AMA this Friday to celebrate the Space Sim MMO’s eighth anniversary (yes, the “game” was revealed nearly a decade ago), and Cloud Imperium Games boss Chris Roberts had plenty to say about his long-gestating project, which was born out of a successful crowd-funding effort in 2012 and continues to rake in the cash via exotic (i.e., expensive) starship DLC and microtransactions.
Something that many backers have been wondering is when Star Citizen’s epic, celebrity-studded campaign mode – Squadron 42 – would be released. In response to one user, Roberts admitted that the game was nowhere near complete. In fact, he has no idea when it’ll be finished (if ever).
“You’re not really asking about what is being worked on Squadron 42, you really just want to know when it will be done,” Roberts said. “The best answer for your question is Squadron 42 will be done when it is done, and will not be released just to make a date but instead once all the tech and content is finished, polished and it plays great.”
Roberts continues with the usual spiel, explaining that a great game takes time – and in Squadron 42’s case, a lot of it. While nobody is happy about the extensive development time, the Wing Commander architect warned that rushing the game out would lead to a “compromised” title.
“I am not willing to compromise making a game I believe in with all my heart and soul, and even though everyone (including me) wants Squadron 42 sooner than later, it would be doing a huge disservice to everyone working really hard on the project and all of you that are looking forward to it to deliver something that isn’t great.”
Oddly, Roberts goes on to name other big games (e.g., Red Dead Redemption 2, Cyberpunk 2077) that have gone through long development cycles in order to justify Star Citizen and Squadron 42’s drawn-out journey. His analogies don’t work that well, though, being that those titles actually came out (or are releasing soon, in the case of CD PROJEKT RED’s heavily hyped RPG).
“The new roadmap will show how we are doing towards that goal and as we get closer to the end it will be more accurate but it will never be a perfect crystal ball of the future as there is always a certain amount of unpredictability in game development, especially when the game is hugely ambitious and has a very high quality bar; Red Dead Redemption 2, Last of US 2 and now Cyberpunk have all taken a lot longer than originally communicated and those projects didn’t even announce a release date until very deep into their production, when most of their tech had been resolved.”
One user on r/pcgaming pointed out something hilarious regarding Mark Hamill, who stars as Lt. Cdr. Steve “Old Man” Colton in Squadron 42. Apparently, there’s a video of him doing motion capture for the game somewhere, in which he talks about how he hasn’t been confirmed to appear in Star Wars: The Force Awakens yet.
Yes, an entire, new trilogy of Star Wars films has gone by, and Star Citizen is still in development.