What do you mean better, as you say its subjective and there are lots of aspects to consider in that question. If I didnt know anything about the project and just watched that prologue I would come away thinking it was kind of cool but nothing I would be super hyped up on. Thats the issue, this is a game thats taken over a decade so far and cost more than any other game ever made so far, I should be coming away from it thinking that looks amazing not oh its a bit bland and that gameplay looks basic and janky. From a technical perspective of the physics and simulation stuff I have no doubt nothing will come close to it but its sorely lacking from a visual design and gameplay perspective based on that prologue. Ill keep an eye out on more content as it wasnt much gameplay shown but only time will tell.
"It is going to be rough, its not a finished product." I was under the impression it was feature complete and just undergoing final polish and bug fixing so the product we saw is what would be delivered from a design gameplay perspective. Its not any rough edges or technical issues that concerned me.
Star Citizen / Squadron 42 do top the chart for most expensive game, or plural if you think of the single player campaign as a separate game to the MMO, $732m so far. But i am going to list some other examples to give you an idea of just how much games actually cost to make because i get the sense that too many people think it shouldn't cost more than a fiver.
Star Citizen shares its top slot with Genshin Impact at $751m
Monopoly Go!: $500m
Cyberpunk: $498m
Spiderman 3: $385m
CoD MW 2: $355m
Now i'm going to list the development time of some other games.
Metroid Dread: 16 years
Duke Nukem Forever: 15 years
Mother III: 12 years
Diablo III: 11 years
Prey: 11 years
Final Fantasy XV: 10 years
Team Fortress Two: 9 years
Spore: 8 years
As a bonus.... Starfield, 8 years, $400m
Usually when you get to hear about a game that's coming out in a couple of years that game has already been in development for a number of years.
Star Citizen is unique, the company, CIG did not exist in Q3 2012, they had to create a company, they started in a residential house, the game is financed almost entirely by public crowed funding, there is no $50 Billion publisher financing this, no publisher would even consider this, far too difficult, far too expensive, far too much risk.
So we will, in return for that we get to play the work that they are doing as they do it, this is the only reason we even know it exists, every other game is at this stage very behind closed doors.
Making what you're doing playable as you're doing it creates its own problems, it makes it more expensive and it makes it take longer because you have to get every bit of it somewhat working, normally that comes in one go at the end, not every 3 months.
There is no other way to get something like this done, EA, Bethesda.... they will not do this, to get it done we have to do it ourselves.
