Cult Citizen

[icycalm]

New CIG Game at CitizenCon? | SOULSINGER Trademark Application of Cloud Imperium Rights LLC
https://old.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... _trademark

169 comments as of this writing. All sorts of crazy speculation and not one of them suggested it may be the follow-up to Squadron 42, which we know is planned.

It sounds like they’ll give us the SQ42 release date at CitizenCon, and then a teaser for the sequel.

[icycalm]

The Summoning of a Raven | Star Citizen 3.24 PTU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIyFrstzfQQ



Look how cinematic the hangars are now! Wait until the end, when the lights come on!

Nothing like this has been seen in a base-building game before. Imagine how cool the actual bases will be!

It makes Rust look not merely old but ancient!

[icycalm]

CONTENTS
Prologue
The Insomnia Best Game of All Time Award: Star Citizen
Thank you God
"There has never been anything like it"
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Wipe
The Chow Hall Drama
Too Good to be True
The Most Released Game of All Time
The Year of Chris Roberts
The Coolest Thing You'll Ever Own
Star Race, or The Whitest Game Ever
Go On, Play Some More Steam
Citizen Annihilation
The Birth of Quantum Gaming
The Project Game In Your Garage
The Greatest Screenshot Ever


The Greatest Screenshot Ever



When I saw this screenshot, that was used to advertise the 2023 CitizenCon, I knew instantly I was looking at the greatest screenshot ever. I saved it on my hard drive, and made a note to analyze it in depth in an entire chapter dedicated to it.

At first glance, it doesn't look like much more than a good space sim pic. The art direction is better than your average space game's (space games tend to have awful art direction, because people obsessed with space tend to be dumb, since space is boring), but that's about it. However, in every other space game, this pic would have been a bullshot, in the sense that none of its elements would be interactive. In other words, in another game this image would have been an illustration and not a screenshot. It is only in Star Citizen that you know this image comes from real play footage, and is real-time.

Every element in this screen has been chosen with care, and lined up with genius, to deliver the artist's message. And by artist's, I mean the photographer's. It's no accident that no other game has anywhere near as active of a photography scene as Star Citizen, and whoever took this shot is its king (and of course works for CIG).

Starting from the character, we see a detailed FPS armor. RSI's clean lines and high detail are a pleasure to behold, but a subtle pleasure. This doesn't give the visceral joy that e.g. Vanquish's armor gives. It's not that cool, because it's not supposed to be. This is no hero campaign armor, it's just an entry-level armor meant to be worn by thousands. But that's no reason for it to be ugly, as it would be in countless other space games: even the intro stuff looks good in Star Citizen.

But the point here is not the art direction. The point is... that Star Citizen has FPS armor, because it has FPS in it. That's what the photographer wants us to focus on, first of all, which is why the armor takes up almost half the screen.

So okay, the game has FPS. But so do many other games. What's the big deal over it?

Well the big deal is that space sims don't have FPS, or if they have it, it's crap. And that's before you even learn that SC has milsim-level FPS and survival-level mechanics, with fully physicalized item-placement on your armor. That, you don't get from this screenshot. But the detail of the armor hints at it.

Moving on, to the right of the character, there is a seat. This is a spaceship pilot's seat, and it's clear the character and the seat are inside a spaceship. In this game, unlike any other space game ever, the character can walk over, and sit in the seat, because the entire interior of the ship is fully modeled and simulated, and can be traversed as any FPS level. So now we have a milsim/survival game inside a spacesim with fully modeled ship interiors. And that's before you even learn that these ships—and ground vehicles—are the coolest and most detailed vehicles in all of gaming. That, you don't get from this screenshot. But the detail and lighting and mood of the ship interior hint at it.

Most surprising of all though, is the view through the cockpit window. If this were a mere "space game", as midwits are still calling it, all you'd see would have been a generic starfield (see what I did there). Instead there's barely any space visible at all (because space is boring, remember, and the photographer gets that), and the view is dominated by a moon's unusually detailed surface. Thus the photographer tells you that you can land your ship there, then get out of your seat and walk out on the moon's surface, all seamlessly, like the image itself is. And that's before you even learn that the game's Planet Tech V4 (which is about to be upgraded to V5) is the most detailed planet-generation engine in all of gaming. But the detail on the moon hints at it.

Even further away than the moon, perfectly lined up with it and the ship and the seat and the armor, is a planet—a gas giant!—Stanton II, aka Crusader. Being a gas giant, you can't walk on it, but you can walk on all the solid planets in the game, and you can fly through Crusader's clouds and land in its cloud city, Orison, where you can rest in your rented hab, visit shops and ship upgrade vendors, and even go buggy racing with friends for fun. None of this can be got from the screenshot. And I'd like to say that, if you got this far, you might have guessed it, but it would be bullshit, because no one can guess a design as monstrous as this. Even hearing of it invites disbelief; you have to see it with your own eyes to believe it. In short, we aren't talking about a game here, but an entire metaverse. And of course a single screenshot can't depict all of it. But this screenshot gets as close as it is possible to get. And that's why it is the greatest screenshot ever.

There's no way this effect is coincidental. You can't randomly produce such genius. Whoever lined up all the elements here knew exactly what he was going for, what effect he wanted to produce. And Chris Roberts signed off on it to represent CitizenCon 2023, and I wouldn't be surprised if he even ordered the exact scene composition.

The message is unmistakable, the image is clearly saying to us: "Step into this world, where everything is real", or at least works like reality. Look up the remarkable presentation of the planet-city ArcCorp in a past CitCon, where CR—having demonstrated taking off from the city's spaceport and flying to and landing on the space station above it—sums up everything by saying "And it's all real!", then correcting himself, because he's a smart guy and strong writer, not a bullshitter whose brain runs on hyperbole, "I mean not real, but digital, it's all there", meaning it's all modeled and simulated, not just a bunch of distant JPEGs as you'd see in any other game, cordoned off by invisible walls all around meant to funnel you down a couple of corridors at the end of which await a video clip and a game over.

That's what I call "invisible wall gaming", or Potemkin gaming for short. In Potemkin gaming nothing is real, nothing is simulated beyond a corridor or two, because the developers can't be bothered to simulate it, and the players can't be bothered to explore it, all of which is almost an entire other artform from Star Citizen, which is metaverse gaming.

Thus this stunning, genius screenshot draws a clear dividing line between the two artforms and audiences, between us and the Potemkin gamers.

They just want to play a game. We want to step into another world.