Purposeless Magic
If you’ve heard of Star Citizen, you probably either hate to love it or love to hate it. Some say it’s a scam, others say it’s the Second Coming in video game form. The marketing team will tell you it’s the most ambitious video game ever created: a fully functioning sci-fi world where you can be a citizen of the stars. I will tell you that, behind the scummy funding scheme, underneath the towering manure pile of bugs, is something really special.
There is something magical about Star Citizen when it works. When it’s good, there is absolutely nothing else like it. Waking up in a habitation tower, riding public transportation to the spaceport1, hopping in your ship, and rocketing off to the stars all without a loading screen is an experience unlike anything else.
Some other experiences you won’t find anywhere else:
- Entering an elevator might cause you to glitch through the floor and end up stuck in emptiness, forcing a respawn.
- Running down some stairs might cause spontaneous death.
- Bumping into an NPC or another player might cause spontaneous death.
- Walking up an entrance ramp to your ship might cause spontaneous death and/or the sudden explosion2 of said ship.
- Landing your ship on uneven ground may cause it to explode3.
Star Citizen is a game with a tremendous amount of friction between the player and what they want to do. Much of that friction is from the endless supply of bugs and server lag, but much of it is imposed intentionally by the design of the game. Something as simple as moving items between space stations is meant to be difficult — so much so that it’s a viable in-game career. The game is intended to be a full simulation, complete with bodily annoyances such as hunger, thirst, and injury.
In chasing that simulation experience, developer Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) has lost (or maybe more accurately, never created) the video game aspect of it all. There simply isn’t much to do in the amazing world they’ve created. The awe of simply existing in that world is never lost on me, but I’d understand how it might be on many others. It isn’t very clear how to do mission or bounties, or even how to make some money to upgrade your ship. And there certainly isn’t a narrative to speak of.
In many ways, the closest comparison is EvE Online, a game with similar sensibilities in the friction it imposes on its players but with some crucial additions. EvE has a robustness in its systems that gives players the tools to create their own content. EvE has a history rich with politics, backstabbing, undercover spies, and battles at unfathomable scale, and all of it is real in a way that few other games can accomplish. None of those events were planned or scripted, but they arose out of genuine conflict between real people.
In a way, I think Star Citizen is meant to be a fuller realization of the dream of EvE, albeit on a far smaller scale, at least, in a physical sense. To take all of what makes EvE special and bring it down to the human scale while also adding in the complexities of being human is an incredibly compelling concept. But it’s also one of, if not the most ambitious video game ever created. The scope of that ambition is its undoing.
After crowdfunding $800 million and spending 13 years in development, Star Citizen is not much closer to release now than it was five years ago. CIG continues to stubbornly focus on adding esoteric item handling and bodily injury mechanics instead of making an actually playable video game. Clearly, people at CIG are getting fabulously wealthy keeping things as they are.
I’ve pledged maybe $120 over the years, starting about a decade ago. When I gave my first dollars, I believed that this might be the greatest video game ever made. Ten years later, I still think that, if it ever exists in a truly playable state, Star Citizen will be a tremendously important game in the history of the medium. But as time goes by, it looks more and more like CIG has become complacent in the face of its steady funding and has little incentive to actually finish this thing. It’s a lot easier to sell the idea of something ambitious than it is to realize that ambition4.
I still check in on the game from time-to-time, and I’m still in awe of its beauty (and its trains). It still feels amazing to walk about on my ship and fly it from place to place, sensing that I might actually be inhabiting this world. But, after a couple hours, my curiosity is satiated and it once again becomes clear that ultimate freedom doesn’t mean much without purpose.
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The first time I realized that you had to wait for the train, then embark and ride it to your destination, my mind was blown. Perhaps my American brain couldn’t comprehend public transportation taking me where I want to go, or maybe it’s the kind of friction video games usually dispense with. Either way, Star Citizen’s trains are a highlight of the experience for me. ↩︎
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Rapid unscheduled disassembly anyone? ↩︎
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Your dreams of piloting a SpaceX rocket, fully realized! ↩︎
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Venture capitalism? Never heard of her! ↩︎