Star Citizen's original actual promised game where Star Citizen was supposed to be a multiplayer spinoff, Squadron 42, coming out 2026. For real. Lucy will keep the football there unlike 2014, 2016...
Why do people even talk about that game? It's like a pyramid scheme. Do they get paid to advertise it or do they feel internally pressured to justify their investment because it's not paying off?
Okay, SC is for better or worse is supposed to be what Chris Robert wanted Freelancer to be. And about Freelancer itself, it is part of the space sim lite milsim type of games like X-Wing, TIE Fighter, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Wing Commander were back in the day. Now there is another game series that sorta shares the same lite milsim type gameplay loop, just with this thing called a Battlemech, and yes it's Mechwarrior.
Since we covered the basics of what SC is intended to be, let's go back to the context of the original kickstarter, 2012-13. Nearly every single developer was going very far out of their way to strip down games in a way that made them feel very disposable, and nobody (except for a canadian studio by the name Pirhana Games with Mechwarrior Online) had any interest in making any sort of game in the vein of the lite milsims of the 90s and early 2000s. And imho judging by the stuff made in the recent years in the space these developers also bent over backwards for mass appeal that was honestly never going to happen. So of course Star Citizen took off like it did and never looked back.
Honestly I want to say that on some level people knew Chris Roberts was on some level going to be a problem for the development of the game, but the idea of having a new space lite milsim that out right said "learn to play or don't play at all" makes that issue a lot easier to ignore in a way. Not gonna lie, I want a lite milsim game that makes zero accommodations for new/casual players, but that doesn't make any money for the most part.
I really want a game like Star Citizen that isn't trying to physics simulate butt sweat or whatever. Just a milsim lite ship combat + FPS multiplayer game, but it has actual content like different combat missions and scenarios and multicrew ships with engineering and so on. And isn't a buggy piece of shit. I feel like Star Citizen took the energy out of its own niche
Because "Best Bideo Bame EVAR!" is a big draw for a lot of people, and some people (techbros especially) tend to judge things based on their "potential" rather than what they actually currently can do.