I’m having a bit of a loyalty crisis over here at Scopique HQ.

On paper — and only on paper — Star Citizen should be a slam-dunk. It’s a continuous simulation from the time I log in to the time I log out; there’s no hiding major functionality behind billboard menus and everything is “real time” which provides the levels of immersion that I’ve always wanted in a sci-fi game. The reality, of course, is that Star Citizen is the Springfield Tire Fire of the video game industry. Patch 4.1 has been released to the public universe and while it has fixed a lot of bugs, it’s been crashing the servers on the regular which to me and many others is orders of magnitude worse than taking a chance that I won’t get killed by getting into an elevator. CIG seems unable to get out of its own way over a decade on in the game’s development. Add to that the incessant drumbeat of Roberts “risk versus reward” fetish that prevents the company from considering any in-game activity that doesn’t somehow involve PvP, and I’m just…tired. I spent some time on Spectrum yesterday and it seems I am not alone. A lot of other players are also tired: tired of the bugs, tired of one step forward and three steps back with every patch, tired of the game marginalizing a massive portion of the community who just wants to play on their own terms and not become other player’s content.

So, I have picked up Elite Dangerous again mostly thanks to the streams from Wolfy and his friend through MassivelyOP. I’ve had Elite since launch, and played for quite some time early on, but it’s a game that requires a lot of intestinal fortitude for boredom and an end-game that was originally and practically non-existent. The only goal used to be to earn money to buy bigger and better ships which only allowed me to earn more money to buy bigger and bet…. Without some kind of Camelot on the horizon to set my compass to, the game was merely a treadmill punctuated by long stretches of tedious travel culminating in… menu interactions at stations. But things have gotten better over time. Planetary landings which I could never and can never get right. Powerplay, which provides perks and politically motivated missions. Carriers, which I only land on but will never hope to own. Then came Odyssey and we were able to get out of our ships. This started to put Elite on par with what Star Citizen wants to do, although Elite’s scale means it can never do it as well as Star Citizen could if only it could get it’s shit together. Now Elite has revamped Powerplay and has added the ability for players to create their own colonies in otherwise empty star systems, once again beating CIG at its own marketing bullet-points. If Elite ever allows individuals to create their own homes in orbit or on planets, then I can’t see why I’d want to consider every playing Star Citizen again.

I was once told not to buy into the “sunk cost fallacy” when it comes to Star Citizen, and I hate that the Internet puts buzzwords in people’s mouths like that. I never stuck with Star Citizen because of my investment, financial or temporal. For the longest time I was a Believer because I have wanted a game like Star Citizen since I was a fetus, and continued to support it because I subscribe to the ethos that anything can turn the corner for the better at any time. But then again, I also know that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity. While I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to those people and projects that I really want to succeed, even I have limits, and I think I’ve finally reached mine with Star Citizen.

I’m going to hold on to my Star Citizen accounts, though, because I would rather err on the side of hope than give into despair. I still want the project to succeed. I’ll keep abreast of the news and watch the videos and dip my toes into Spectrum to see if the sentiment ever turns, but I don’t think I’ll be writing about it any longer, and I don’t think I’ll be logging in often any longer. I won’t say “I won’t be logging in period” because it’s probably the only game I occasionally get to play with friends. Mentally, though, I need to say things like this out loud because I have to get myself to not think about it, to not theory-craft about it, to not buy into the enthusiasm that emanates from CitizenCon or other avenues that are still drinking that Kool-Aid. Repeatedly telling myself to step away and CTFD is the only way that I know I can wean myself off of this project and get to feeling about it the way I feel about other games that I might like but don’t live for.

To help, I’ll be hopefully spending more time with Elite. I’ve had a hard time going back over the years because it’s always been after a major update or expansion, and I had always found myself increasingly lost in a game that was never any good at explaining what it offered in the first place. Recently I’ve been making some good headway, settling into a “home system”, joining with a Powerplay faction, and making an effort to navigate the maze of engagement that spans a supposed 400 billion star systems. It’s slow going as I have to rely on wikis and other OOG sources to understand what to do and why I’d want to do it. The tedium of travel is still there; I spent about 4 hours two weeks ago traveling 40 jumps — I’m not sure how many light-years that was — and I was on the verge of just uninstalling again because it gave me an actual headache, but in the same way I have to constantly remind myself that Star Citizen just isn’t going to happen, I have to bite the bullet and become inured to the reality that if I want a sci-fi spaceflight simulation, then Elite Dangerous is already doing it.