Notes from Star Citizen, the MMO You May Have Forgotten About It While It Became a Thriving Galaxy

If I'm being honest, the last time I paid any special attention to Star Citizen was when it was garnering breathless coverage by major outlets like Wired five years ago -- and when it was also more or less dismissed with snarky headlines like, "Fans Have Dropped $77M on This Guy's Buggy, Half-Built Game".

But a funny thing apparently happened while the world looked away: Star Citizen kept on growing, evolving, and expanding. It now counts over 2.6 million registered users (i.e. "Star Citizens who have joined the universe"), while its homepage garners about as many monthly visits. Based on both figures, it's a safe bet Star Citizen has active players in the low-to-mid six figures, possibly more.

My colleague Joshua May, an indie game developer for Second Life and other worlds, has been avidly playing since 2016.

"It was playable, but sparse. A few space stations, planets that you couldn't land on, a couple missions," he says of it back then.

"Now it's missions all over the place, a ton of planets and moons and stations everywhere, so many ships."

The missions aren't always typical to what you'd expect in a persistent space sim. For instance: “They just added prisons recently, to help discourage people being dicks. But the prisons themselves have their own gameplay loops.

"It gets a little better every quarter," May adds, "they do a big patch every quarter. Basically think of it as an Early Access game at this point. A lot of game systems are in, but there's a lot of bugs, and some systems are missing or unfinished, or a first pass implementation that will get more complex later."

As it happens, Star Citizen is launching a free-to-play event starting May 22, so if you're intrigued, read my chat with Mr. May (along with copious images he's taken during his adventures) -- effectively, his notes from a new, new world:

Pictured: Joshua's Star Citizen avatar which comes with face over-IP, "where your real emotions are projected onto your avatar."

So there’s actual gameplay like ship-to-ship fighting and quests and stuff?

Yep. Fully explorable planets. The planets are incredible.

About 90 or so playable ships at the moment, although some are missing gameplay elements.

It's amazing to take off from a space station, fly to a distant planet, fly down to the surface, land, get out and walk around the trees, all seamlessly, no loading screens. 

They're on version 4 of their planet tech now, it's pretty amazing. 

And more updates to come. 

You can trade cargo, do delivery missions, get into fights, blow up pirates (or other players), mine ore with a ship or with a hand tool, there's some incredible caves you can go down into on the planets too, random missions and quests like find missing people lost in the caves, investigate stuff, wipe out drug dens, etc. 

There's both ship combat and FPS combat.

You wake up, go request your ship from the hangar, run out to the pad, open the hatch, climb in, walk around inside your ship, power it up, take off.

Everything from tiny fighters to 210 meter long mega space yachts at the moment. Bigger ships coming, full fledged capital ships, destroyers and stuff.

All with completely 1:1 fully realized interiors.

People can man your turrets or fly their own ships.

Some ships have like medical bays on them, armories, brigs, vehicle bays, hangar bays for shuttles, living quarters, etc.

One of Mr. May's personal ships -- 125 meters long with four decks

I think a lot of people assumed it was all vaporware.

Yeah, a lot of people still do.

But [players are]  still here, and they just had their best funding year ever. Like $48 million more in backer funds coming in last year.

It's getting real enough now that people claiming it is vaporware are starting to have serious credibility issues.

They're knocking down hurdle after hurdle for the tech.

And every 3 months we get more features.

The main thing to keep in mind is:

7-10 years is a normal development cycle for a game this size, you just typically never hear about games until they're in the last year or two.

And of course, at the moment it is early access, bugs should be expected.

Also this isn't coming from an established studio, they had to start from scratch and build up a 600 employee studio from nothing. There's a lot of overhead involved with just doing that alone, in terms of time, especially a studio that has like 4 locations around the world.

And also, the project 'began' in 2013, after the kickstarter ended December 2012. 

But the project also had a dramatic shift in 2013/2014 because they ended up with SO MUCH money coming in (they didn't expect it to be ongoing after the Kickstarter) that they took the whole thing back to the drawing board and re-concepted the game with a new MUCH larger scope and goals. They asked the backers at the time, 'Do we keep making the simple game, or do we make the game we can actually make with this much money' and overwhelmingly got 'Make the bigger one.' "

Since then, it seems like, the "bigger one" has become quite large, while somehow still being a behemoth beneath the surface of our every attention. Most of us, anyway. But don't be surprised if your sense of Star Citizen suddenly changes.

All pics here courtesy Joshua May.

Comments

[Brubble]

What a joke.

[Stimpire]

One of Mr. May's personal ships
Cost $450 USD

[My name]

lol scam citizen. How much Chris paid you to publish this bullshit?

[lol]

"MMO" with max 50 players per server.

[nighttrain123]

Sadly, the project has no end in sight and a bottomless need for more cash. In 9 years they haven't been able to achieve a step-change in player count so this 'MMO' remains an instanced game with no persistence.

Also, that point about 'asking the backers' about the scope expansion is wilful misinformation. There was an obscure poll available for a short time only which many backers didn't even know about so didn't vote on.

[The Essex Knight]

why not try / visit or revisit Entropia universe by minark been going years

[Hope you got paid enough]

haha the 50 player mmo with 1 solar system, where you can glitch out of your ship in flight. Where NPC T-shape all over the place and well, do nothing really. you also might want to try it with your $45 starter ship, see how much fun there is left. You cant do most of the missions if any.

Scam Citizen the list of excuses why they keep missing their own deadlines continues. But fortunately the Roberts Family and his friends are now millionaires for selling you your own dreams and changing it last minute.

Also nice to show a $450 ship, announced in 2013 and where its selling point, exploration, is still missing from the game.

[Concerned Stimpire Citizen]

Please play the game I spent at least $450 so it validates my (terrible) investment.
It'll be amazing in 15 years when it's in beta!

[With your time and $60]

You’ve got no reason to believe it I suppose but I would encourage anyone with $60 and a weekend to kill to give it a try. I have a base package and I log in every few months to check things out. I don’t feel like I’ve been cheated out of that money in any way. It’s not a typical gaming experience but I swear it’s worth the money. The environments and ships are phenomenal and will keep you entertained with just exploration for a time. Each station, city and POI is fully realized and highly detailed. I still get a kick riding all the trains and trams (each one is different) in the major cities. The business model is controversial but the game is very real and enjoyable at a lot of different price points. It’s not perfect. There are bugs. It can be frustrating. I recommend it anyway. $60 is an evening out- 4 or 5 hours of entertainment. You’ll definitely get that and more with the current state of the game.

[Gordon]

Interesting. Eight comments from eight different names but seems like all from the same person. Typical Anti-Star-Citizen agenda troll. :)

[Vertisce]

If you like Star Citizen, you should check out Chronicles Of Elyria too, I think you'll love it!

[Captain Reynolds]

While there has been some progression it is still very much an alpha. It's good that they seem to have made Chris take a back seat and stop making crazy promises but they have barely begun to tackle the numerous initial pledge goals.

I personally don't think its worth paying anything for yet as it is many many years away from being playable (you can't get more than an hour or two of play-time before a crash) and a lot of the activities have game breaking bugs but it seems like they're actually trying now.

In conclusion, have a free fly by all means but this article is painting a really unrealistic state of the game.

[LOLOLOL]

Well I never heard of this blog until now, and based on this article I can see the blog is shit.

Chris Roberts still scamming people out of millions of dollars. Amazing.

[Arjen]

I have very much enjoyed by 45 euros paid back in... 2016, was it? Even if only for the insight into the game developing, all the behind the scenes and tech demo things. It's great to see the devs try things out. Like those gifs of the ' grabby hands ' system, demoing the tech to make the player models have their hands attached to objects in the game and sort of 'physically' carry them, with physics and all. The system to place it back, and the dynamic animations associated with it all... I haven't seen something like that in any game yet - it's a small thing in terms of in-game features and I could probably do without, however seeing it being developed has been a ton of fun and infotainment for me.
Now there's a MYRIAD of these subsystems to Star Citizen that I have IMMENSELY enjoyed technosexually drooling over, grabby hands only being one small part. A list off the top of my head: Object Container Streaming (more of a behind-the-scenes thing), Planetary scale procedural generation, cityscape procgen, signed distance fields (& shield shader), atmospheric entry effects, lighting states of ships, the mining mechanics, render-to-texture, modular procgen of stations, Mobiglass, Quanta, etc etc
And then there's Star Marine / Arena Commander / the PU that are fun to play, although often buggy or a little janky at least. All in due time.
I'd be fine never playing and just enjoying the process from afar. 'development as a service' if you will. ;)

[Actually paid $50 for that ship.]

What amuses me about the troll comments here is that they claim to know so much about Star Citizen with such certainty, but can't even get the price of the ship correct.

That and they conveniently ignore the fact that you only need to spend $45 to play the game as much as you like, with no subscription required. Yes, some people have spent more, but most of the backers have a basic game package and are playing the game, earning in-game money, buying ships and upgrades with in-game money, not real money.

Yes, Star Citizen is an alpha product still, that's what Early Access is. The article specifically says many systems are missing or incomplete, and it is buggy. That's expected and normal for a product at this stage of development.

And no, that kind of game experience is not for everyone. Many people are better off waiting for Beta or later and jumping into a more complete game experience, not everyone likes to watch the sausage being made, or is capable of understanding what they're watching. But for those in the industry, this is a fascinating sausage to see made, and it is getting made.

Yes, the project has had setbacks, troll lawsuits, shifting priorities, missed deadlines, communication problems, etc... welcome to software development, or really any large project. The best laid plans are subject to change over time, especially on a decade-spanning scale.

I'm sorry that some people are emotionally invested in the project failing, seems like an unhappy way to live and you could find other things to invest your emotional energy into, but it's not a unique situation to Star Citizen. It's human nature that people don't like to find out they're wrong, especially that they've been wrong for years, loudly and publicly.

The project is growing and improving and maturing still, regardless of people who aren't happy about that. Some patches are amazing, some patches aren't, but that's looking at the project through a pinhole camera. The large picture is continuing improvement and an increasing feature set. Progress is being made, whether some people want to accept that or not.

[Agony Aunt (confirmed skeptic)]

> It now counts over 2.6 million registered users (i.e. "Star Citizens who have joined the universe")

Registered users does not equal number of people who have given CIG money. I for one am a registered user and not given CIG money. There are also people with multiple accounts.

> Based on both figures, it's a safe bet Star Citizen has active players in the low-to-mid six figures, possibly more.

That's quite a stretch since the servers tend to melt when they hit the cap. How many instances are likely running at any given time? Based off reports, its highly unlikely there are more than a few thousand active players.

> "Now it's missions all over the place, a ton of planets and moons and stations everywhere, so many ships."

I think your friend is playing a different game. 1 system, a few planets, a few moons, and a few stations.

Perhaps improve your reporting skills?

[DownWithThis Scam]

I wonder how much Crobblers paid for this disinformation.
For anyone thinking about giving Roberts Family any money, dont.
This business is a typical confidence scam, promising everything and giving pretty much nothing else than a broken tech demo,a model viewer in the best case (when it works) and also tons of jpegs of ships for hundreds dollars apiece.
It will never be released, because if it ever is, the money stream from fleeced rubes would suddenly end and the game would be publicly reviewed as a finished product, which is something the Crobblers will never allow.

[BafAsh]

wow the DS bootlicker brigade is out in force today with the targeted trolling. No matter how much you shout and moan it's increasingly falling on deaf ears because more and more people are finding the game and seeing what it is with their own eyes.

[Wagner James Au]

"Registered users does not equal number of people who have given CIG money. I for one am a registered user and not given CIG money. There are also people with multiple accounts"

Yes, that's why I also referenced the monthly pageviews to the Star Citizen homepage:

https://www.similarweb.com/website/robertsspaceindustries.com#overview

Last month there were 2.6 million visits. For a rough estimate for unique users, a good rule of thumb is to divide by 4 to 10, which translates to 260,000 to 650,000 uniques, most of whom are active users. Probably a safe bet that Star Citizen is showing activity comparable to Eve Online.

[JoshuaQ]

I love star citizen. I give them money every chance I get, lol. Great alpha game and cannot wait for it to be finished. Amazing game and visuals, etc.

[you're wrong]

"I think your friend is playing a different game. 1 system, a few planets, a few moons, and a few stations." 4(3 you can currently land on) planets, 12 moons, and over 19 stations you can land on, dozens more you can interact with. So yeah, not "a ton" but not few either. Get your facts straight before you try to correct others.

[Random marketer]

Star Citizen may be widely accepted in the industry as a joke, although it's also a case study in effective marketing and how to build a cult-like community of evangelists that defend your every misstep and keep giving you money

[SCitizenOwnsYouTrollsHAHA]

Some of you supposedly smart people on here writing 50,000 word essays on how much they hate SC. lmao!! To me it just sounds like you're one of the more dedicated followers, more precisely like rapey stalkers. SC got your money that's obviously why your tears are extra salty. it will be okay. For you "smart" people clearly comprehension is in awfully low supply. Sorry you cannot grasp the concept of what an alpha build of a game is. Nor can you comprehend the amount of time a games development takes in the best of scenarios. CIG has been running clean up on the original dev teams screw ups since they got handed the project a couple of years ago. They're making terrific strides. I feel if you're going to write up an essay perhaps you should know WTF you're talking about.

[Rp22]

Damn so much hate. I started playing awhile ago, payed $65, and have earned many large ships without paying more. It’s a great WIP and does get updated with new shit very often. Extremely fun w friends.

[SemiDesperado]

Wow! The anti-CIG trolls really pounced on your blog. As a gamer and long-time Star Citizen follower, I apologize. It comes with the territory -- if you're going to post about this game you have to expect the minority of people who still think it's a scam to be extremely vocal and mobilize like this.

Here's the reality. Star Citizen is coming, slowly but surely. The Persistent Universe (the MMO side of things) is really shaping up. Yes: at the moment servers are limited to 50 people. The devs and community are not idiots and know this does not make an MMO. That said, CIG has shown an incredible ability time and time again to prove even doubters like myself that they have the team in place to break down barriers that were previously assumed impossible. Look at their planet tech: that wasn't even a feature originally promised when Star Citizen was launched. But here we are with mind-bendingly huge, detailed environments that now have dynamic weather and cave systems.In short, Star Citizen is a project you follow for the long-haul -- treat it like an insanely ambitious Early Access game.

One other extremely important detail that people (including commenters here)forget to mention is that CIG is working on TWO games simultaneously. Their MMO isn't even receiving the majority of their attention and resources right now. Squadron 42, the game that was the beginning of Star Citizen as a Kickstarter project, is receiving most of their focus -- but they're keeping a tight lid on it because it's a SP game. Most studios wouldn't remotely attempt making an absurd game like Star Citizen -- let alone do it at the same time that they're making a AAA-quality singleplayer title with a cast including Mark Hamill and all the others.

Star Citizen is not a scam, it's a Chris Roberts game. The standards are high (possibly too high) but it's coming. If you want to be part of that you can join for just $45 (that's what I did). If not, don't. It's that simple!

[Connor]

Not sure why people have such a visceral hate for this game. You'd think the developers had physically attacked some of the people commenting here.

Star Citizen has become one of my most played games over the past couple of years.

To anyone who bashes this game without actually giving it a proper look, there's a freefly event in a day or two. Come walk on/in the four planets, dozen moons, half dozen space stations, and starships the size of a whole map in another game of this "scam".

[Vertisce]

"Last month there were 2.6 million visits. For a rough estimate for unique users, a good rule of thumb is to divide by 4 to 10, which translates to 260,000 to 650,000 uniques, most of whom are active users. Probably a safe bet that Star Citizen is showing activity comparable to Eve Online."

We don't need to guess. CIG gave us statistics on Star Citizen's players

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/nbzagc5ap3l39r/source/Star-Citizen-Infographic-V10.jpg
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/lnrtk3d8up648r/source/February-Infographic.jpg
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/lnrtk3d8up648r/source/February-Infographic.jpg

10k unique players completing missions each day.
Around 1400 concurrent players per hour.
Around 40 players mining per hour.

https://eve-offline.net
EVE Online has 28000 players per hour, or 20x the activity of Star Citizen.

[Vertisce]

This is the missions statistics
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/fwkmk9f8vzi0cr/source/Graphic.jpg

[Jason Frost]

It's not "basically" an early access game. IT LITERALLY IS. My god, this is what people refuse to acknowledge. IT. IS. NOT. DONE. CIG makes no secret of this. It's clearly stated in like multiple places that it's not a finished product. It's in the middle of development. This isn't hard to understand.

Yea, you can peak in and "play" it right now, because the developers are letting backers check things out. But again: IT. IS. NOT. DONE.

Don't log in or even pay the minimum $45 backing price yet if you can't understand that simple elementary-level concept.

Come back in a year or two, or just log in once a month to see what's new. OR DON'T AT ALL. No one is making you do anything.

Blows my mind how people aggressively refuse to acknowledge that a game is in an early access (blame Steam for this) or alpha build, and continue to complain about things like bugs or optimization or missing features. *gasp* that's because IT'S NOT DONE.

If you hate the type of game, don't play it. If you don't like the bugs but like the game, come back later (literally no one is making you play or spend more money). If you think it's "taking too long," don't play it. Not that hard.

[Wagner James Au]

"We don't need to guess. CIG gave us statistics on Star Citizen's players"

Unless I'm missing it, none of the links in that comment show anything specific about CCUs and MAUs. Though I should have said "Probably a safe bet that Star Citizen is showing activity comparable to Eve Online *at the same stage of development*". Since as many have pointed out, SC is not yet a completed game.

[Mjnairborne]

"They're knocking down hurdle after hurdle for the tech," might be the most salient observation in this piece, considering a hurdle is meant to be leapt over, not knocked down. Please don't change it.

As to "They asked the backers at the time, 'Do we keep making the simple game, or do we make the game we can actually make with this much money' and overwhelmingly got 'Make the bigger one.'" Those two polls were as follows:

17th Sep 2013
Q: What should we do with the crowdfunding counter after we reach our goal? (Total Votes: 21076 - 8% of Citizens, 12% of alpha backers)

5% - Take the funds raised counter down after $23 million (mission achieved!)

7% - Have the funding counter display the amount towards the current stretch goal / feature, not the total amount once we reach $23M.

88% - Keep it up through development and continue to offer stretch goal rewards in addition to extra features and development milestones.

12th Jun 2014
Q: Should we continue to offer stretch goals? (Total Votes: 34590 - 7% of Citizens, ~14% of alpha backers)
55% - Yes

26% - No

20% - No preference

Note that there hasn't been a "Stretch Goal" since $65 million. Your quote does not appear in any of the relevant material. I understand if you're attempting to paraphrase, but even the paraphrasing is just as vague as Roberts' explanation that these results are justification for unchecked, un-ear-marked, feature expansion beyond what was promised "on paper".

[DeGuzzie]

I put up for the starter package in 2017. Probably played the game twice. Mostly just peek in with streamers, youtubers, and artickes such as these to see what's new.

I am not a big fan of playing games in early access. I contributed to this project because I want to see something new and revolutionary come out of gaming. Hopefully this is it. Maybe not. We shall see.

At this point I am really excited for Squadron 42. At the very least CIG should be able to finish their songle player campaign game.

[Pie]

Lmao, star citizen is fine but it's not a playable game. It's still in alpha, exploring planets is hard with 12 FPS on a 2080 Ti with a threadripper.

[PK]

Half these comments are personally written by Derek Smart. Of that I have no doubt at all.

[Joe Blobers]

Typical trolls spitting prophecy of doom. 90days tops! Yet funding and backer numbers continue to grow. CIG have 500 employees and release major patch every quarter!

I start out with only $45 basic package but built my fleet over 5 year to support CR because he is doing something that's never been done before.

Trolls can go play Call or Duty or other same game different year. CIG is putting out two AAAA games and Squadron 42 enters beta this year.

[mysubwaycard]

Typical trolls spitting prophecy of doom. 90days tops! Yet funding and backer numbers continue to grow. CIG have 500 employees and release major patch every quarter!