I don't think there are many gamers out there now that haven't heard of Star Citizen. The crowd funded sci-fi space sim of our dreams. I was so incredibly excited at the time that I decided to back it.
To date, Cloud Imperium Games has raised $296,931,936.00. Yeah, I had to read that multiple times and even get my partner to check I was reading it right too.
I was aware of the risks but back in 2013, I made the decision to drop $65 on the Digital Bounty Hunter package. In truth I was only after the Squadron 42 single player campaign - I'm a sucker for story and I wanted to return to that feeling I used to get with Freespace 2 (also a fantastic game at LAN parties - the rocking 90's!).
So what was I supposed to get for my package?
Starting Money: 2,000 UEC
Lifetime Insurance
Digital Game Soundtrack
Digital Star Map
Digital Star Citizen Manual
Legacy Alpha
Squadron 42 Digital Download
Star Citizen Digital Download
AMX-1 Repair Bot
Record Breaker Skin
Squadron 42 Mission Disk
August 2013 rolled around and we got our first look at the Hangar Module which was incredibly buggy but it was great to see some progress just a month after diving in.
I remember being incredibly excited at being able to walk around and interact with my ship that morning. I only had about 15 minutes before I had to be in work so it was only a 6 minute video.
After what seemed like a lifetime of waiting, they released Arena Commander where you could actually fly around and blow shit up, it was fantastic fun. But even that alpha was way past the expected release date of the full game.
Their original estimate for the games release was 2014. I thought this was a little optmistic anyway and expected it to slip. But here we are, half way through 2020 and I'm still waiting for Squadron 42. I'm mid way through my 30's now and I don't expect to see SQ42 released before I'm 40. If you'd have said that to mid 20's me, I'd have laughed at you so much.
My hope was breifly re-awoken when they published their roadmap which estimated a SQ42 Beta this year but they've already scrapped this as they have obviously slipped so far behind, or, most likely were never even close to that estimate.
So where are they these days after just shy of $300 million? The honest answer to that is, fuck knows. The Star Citizen Persistent Universe is currently at Alpha 3.9, as for SQ42... pfft. Granted, it's looking good and they put out great promotional material but the feature creep has been unreal.
Many will argue that there is plenty of playable game there, and in some ways they are right. But it's not the game a lot of people backed and hoped for, not by a long shot.
One day SQ42, one day... Hopefully before I get arthritis and can't play games anymore.