@kyelo: If you think about it, you can understand where the conspiracy theorists are coming from. CIG has broken multiple promises, and it's quite obvious feature creep has been a major problem despite the assurance of Chris Roberts to the contrary. They also keep introducing concept sales to rake in more money.
While I don't believe it to be a scam, I think it's foolish to deny several of their mistakes make them look bad.
I'm still excited for the game, but I definitely lack the certainty of the blind faithful that it'll come to fruition. They face a lot of headwinds, and there's a long road to travel yet. Will we even see the complete game this decade? I'm not sure.
I don't know about gamingdevil, but I've seen red flags on this project since its inception. Which doesn't mean I haven't backed it. I've put up $130 so far, but I doubt I'll put anymore into it until it delivers.
Red flags off the top of my head with regards to the presentation:
1) The whole walkthrough (barring some mistakes) was scripted, meaning they specifically designed that entire thing. Who knows how long it took them to prepare that single mission.
2) Still many technical challenges to overcome. You can see the "spacebike" disappear upon entering the Freelancer, due to the technical challenges of having it exit an interior environment, then re-enter a separate interior environment.
3) Plenty of other glitches still present.
4) I find it odd that they flew through that ring before traveling down to the surface of the planet "seamlessly". Maybe I'm just cynical though, and maybe you can approach the planet from anywhere. It just rubbed me as suspicious.
5) As impressive as their planetary tech is, the majority of the planet isn't even close to the fidelity of the hand-engineered stuff.
With regards to the game as a whole:
1) Its continued develop relies on a constant influx of money. One of the ways they generate that is to introduce concept sales. More concept sales = more ships to develop. More development time = more money needed. It seems to be a constant loop they can't escape from.
2) Feature creep. It happened. Regardless of what Chris says.
3) They're trying to be the ultimate game. Flight simulator, FPS, trade simulator, MMO, etc. This is the reason why I backed, but it could also be their downfall.
4) Even with a massive workforce, it is taking them a long time. And by the time they get done, will all the tech and art they developed be obsolete? They may be trying for the impossible.
5) They haven't solved the biggest challenges yet. They need to develop a massive, interconnected economy. They also need to develop the most complex AI ever. They need to develop a spontaneous mission system.
What they've done so far is impressive. But to achieve their goals, they'll still need to be miracle workers.
@TaylorAP13: I could never understand the hype around No Man's Sky. Sure, the tech they were building for procedural planets was somewhat impressive for its trailblazing.
But, there is a rule in video gaming creation: the wider you go, the shallower you get. It's the reason the huge push over the last few years for open world games has worried me. We're starting to see the fatigue set in now.
You can't go much wider than quintillions of star systems. You can only mitigate the rule so much with new dev tools.
Star Citizen is attempting to go both wide and deep. Yet, even though they are restricting their goal to 100 star systems, look at how many people, how much time, and how many new tools it is taking to achieve that goal. They have four main studios, with a combined workforce of over 300 people. Even so, they outsource a lot of work (mostly art). They have been pioneering several pieces of tech to try to speed things up. And they're already 2 years past their original release date with no full release in sight. They should have one full star system by the end of this year, and even that won't be fully populated.
Anyone with common sense could have told you the pitfalls of No Man's Sky and why it was predestined to be a failure. Hell, I've invested $130 in Star Citizen and I half expect never to see the finished game. I fully accept that I may lose that investment. Which is why it scares me that many people have thrown thousands, or even tens of thousands at the game, blindly.
Moral of the story: blind faith doesn't work well in any area of life, video gaming included.
I don't really trust any Japanese publishers anymore, whether it be Capcom, Konami, Sega, Square Enix, or Nintendo. They've lost their way, either releasing sub-par games or riddling them with exploitative microtransactions or DLC. They don't seem to be fan-oriented at the moment.
Actually, the only Japanese-based publisher who appears to be fan-oriented is Sony.
BigDegs' comments