Description

In 2012, Chris Roberts went to Kickstarter to pitch his space simulation game "Star Citizen" with a Wing Commander style single player mode entitled "Squadron 42". Much has been promised to backers over the course of the last 6 years. Expectations for the titles are stratospheric, bordering on outlandish; with Chris himself setting the tone. Star Citizen Tracker is a good faith attempt to catalog public claims and commitments made by Cloud Imperium Games Corporation. It is a crowdsourced endeavor intended to be useful and constructive for both fans and developers. It exists in the absence of similar resources because the need is indeed great.

History and Information

Origin

StarCitizen Tracker was forked from TrumpTracker due to it's useful sorting mechanism and flexible ability to scale a wide assortment of reference links into a condensed list. The code was retrofit to accept input from a Google spreadsheet allowing for collaborative editing from multiple authors.

Inspiration

The tracker is inspired by a list that went by the name 'Where's the No Man's Sky we were sold on?' which listed a shocking number of absent features players were expecting. The large scope and long development time of Star Citizen make conducting an audit post release difficult to impossible; thus compiling prior to commercial release makes sense. Doing so also puts valuable information into backers hands today, who are currently the major stakeholders of the project.

Editors

This project would not be possible without a few dedicated Editors. They review crowdsourced feedback and scour the web for expectations set by Cloud Imperium Games concerning "Star Citizen" and it's accompanying single player mode "Squadron 42". Although this tracker is attributed to Goons of the SomethingAwful forums, most Goons are very lazy and volunteer Editors were recruited from other gaming forums. Editors are expected to leave their bias over the controversial development at the door and only organize factual information.

Core Tenets

Completeness, Clarity, and Accuracy.

Numbers

As of April 2018, the tracker lists 558 expectations and features 836 source links alongside 254 direct quotes. In March of that year, the page was served 2,573 times to approximately 1,500 users according to analytics.

Anonymity

The original author of 'Where's the No Man's Sky we were sold on?' was intimidated and tormented by vindictive players. Cloud Imperium Games Corporation has encouranged supporters to "silience critics" and used other measures to cultivate a mentality that is not tolerant to all viewpoints. Perhaps because of the large investments some crowdfunding backers have made, a sizeable portion continue to take anything said about their favorite game very seriously and persecute those who do not embrace it with the same level of enthusiasm. Anyone contributing to StarCitizen Tracker is encouraged to use an alias when speaking about their contributions on the tracker or editing the Google spreadsheet. We request that any and all personal details of contributors are not publicized.

Motivations

Some on the team hope this list encourages the developers to complete each feature and worry less about reworking every asset to perfection. Cloud Imperium Games Corporation has publicly stated "Star Citizen is a collaborative effort" and we believe strongly that StarCitizen Tracker is useful and beneficial.

Select Quotes

  • StarCitizenTracker presents an unvarnished look at the state of the project, and it's one of the only places I can think of that does so. This in and of itself is praiseworthy, but the lengths the researchers seem willing to go to in order to get an accurate picture goes above and beyond. If this isn't your first stop when checking in on Star Citizen, you're wasting time!
    Beet, BeetReviews.com
  • Massive thanks to the SC community's efforts here. Along with scqa.info, the site is invaluable for sourcing Official CIG development details, enabling the prompt sharing of knowledge to interested Citizens.
    StuartGT, Reddit Moderator
  • Fantastic no-nonsense way to see how the Best Damn Space Sim Ever is shaping up
    Capt. Boba Reynolds-Picard
  • Star Citizen is the largest crowdfunding project in history. Its $180 million (and counting) game development budget dwarfs nearly every other on record. Yet a game originally promised to deliver in 2014 remains in pre-alpha in year 6, its history a nearly uninterrupted string of bold claims followed by missed release dates and downsized deliverables with nary an apology. With few exceptions, the gaming press has ignored the warning signs and alarm bells of what is likely to become the largest development debacle in both gaming and crowdfunding history. In the absence of external oversight, of genuine accountability, of truly open development, the burden has fallen on researchers and citizen journalists to raise alarms, counter propaganda, and protect history from its perpetual revision by the demonstrably dishonest and unapologetic, unaccountable leadership of Cloud Imperium Games. This project tracker is an invaluable resource to that noble end. It is the living history of a catastrophically mismanaged and dishonestly marketed project. It is a standing indictment of the gaming press that has largely ignored the growing concerns. And it is a rebuke of a studio head who resists accountability and transparency at every turn, despite having pledged to offer it, even as he instead serves up revisionism and propaganda as dismal substitutes for both. There will one day come a time when that which is largely unspeakable becomes widely obvious; when present heresies become future orthodoxies. The documented history contained herein shows exactly why the present unthinkable is the future inevitable.
    G0RF
  • This is the greatest compilation of information on this subject bar none! A total dissemination masterpiece of EPIC PROPORTION! Thank you for putting this together.
    Dapper Don
  • THANK YOU for this massive collection of information. And absolutely, this is great evidence that projects can evolve.
  • it's amazing that you're so knowledgeable on the development of this game that you were able to track down the exact episode where this was explained.