The team routinely releases updates through their website charting progress as well as a series they call ‘burn down’ that goes through the ups and downs of their development progress. You can even see on the chart that they even keep track of ‘created issues’ – bugs that have arisen as they fix other issues. Without a doubt, this is the most transparent, insider perspective of an industry that has been less than open about what happens behind closed doors.

Valve – famous for exemplary and completely polished games – are notorious about saying absolutely nothing regarding game development, release, or growth. Back when they did discuss releases – and back when they made games – they were quick to point out how the negative feedback from the process affected them.

Cloud Imperium Games has not shied away from these dangers but instead determined to embrace them. They even seem to embrace criticism (something other devs have punished with limited access to early releases or insider information). On their official Reddit, they respond to troll statements of “Nice $400 .jpg. Enjoy your scam.”

To be fair, Star Citizen is now nearly five years in the making, not an unheard of timeframe for a video game, but certainly stretching the limits. Though the game has aspired to be an experience that is beyond comparison, the transparency of their process has also shown the flaws that come with such a goal. Ideas change, concepts for ships have to be scrapped and started over. Introductions of one element break another. The list goes on.

If nothing else, Star Citizen is going to serve as a benchmark in the industry of what could be, but we’ll have to wait until release (the date has now been pushed back to some unforeseen time in 2018 – another constant problem) to see if their grand experiment has worked.

Once Star Citizen finally does launch, we’ll see if it’s just a long-winded No Man’s Sky, or the beginning of a new trend in developer transparency. We’ll be watching close to see the outcome.