Rank: SpecialistClan Memberfifteen years. at this point squadron 42 is less a game and more an institution. i backed star citizen back when i believed in the dream, and honestly i still kind of do. but the patience is wearing thin.
every delay is framed as quality assurance, and maybe it is. but fifteen years of development stops being polish somewhere around year four. the saddest part is that when it finally ships, it can never live up to the version in backers' heads.
the structural problem is that crowd funding removed the discipline a publisher would impose. no one can cancel squadron 42 or force a ship date, so it just keeps absorbing money and time. interesting experiment in game development, terrible way to actually release a game.
as someone who plays games with long grinds, i get the appeal of a big vision. but there's a difference between a long development cycle and one that outlives entire console generations. at some point the story of making the game becomes more famous than the game itself.
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