Star Citizen is one of the most ambitious gaming projects of all time. It is not only the second-highest crowdfunded project of all time, but it also holds the distinction of being the single most expensive video game ever developed. Though part of the reason for its costly development is the sheer amount of features that Star Citizen promises to implement, a more important reason is that the project has been in development for more than a decade.

As Star Citizen enters another year of development in 2022, it is settling into the esteemed company of games like Diablo 3 and Duke Nukem Forever atop the longest development times in gaming history. The important difference between Star Citizen and its peers is the aforementioned fact that Star Citizen is buoyed by a huge crowdfunding effort meaning that fans of the project are literally the ones footing the bill. For this reason alone, it's important to take Star Citizen to task and put its lengthy development timeline into perspective.

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Putting Star Citizen into Perspective Using the Metal Gear Solid Franchise

metal-gear-solid-11-years

Star Citizen began development back in 2011—disregarding pre-development in 2010—which means that 2022 marks 11 total years in development. If hypothetically, Star Citizen had started development back in 1998 on the same day that the first Metal Gear Solid game was released, fans would still be waiting for the project to finish well after Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots had been released. In fact, the period between these titles is only 9 years and 9 months, meaning that Star Citizen is already a year beyond this comparison.

While exact figures for all the titles in the Metal Gear Solid series are difficult to ascertain, the most expensive development was Metal Gear Solid 5, which the highest estimates have put at a cost of around $80 million. Even using this possibly inflated figure, it's still a certainty that Star Citizen, at nearly $350 million, has cost more than every single title in the Metal Gear Solid franchise combined.

Putting Star Citizen into Perspective with Pokemon

Pokemon Change 11 Years

Using that 11-year figure, if Star Citizen had begun development just as Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue were hitting North American shores, and the trading card game was just beginning to blow up, its development would take fans all the way from that point, past Pokemon Platinum, to the introduction of Pokemon Trainer in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. During this same period, Pokemon fans would see the roster of their favorite Pokemon title grow from the original 151 up to nearly 500.

This would also mean that Pokemon fans would begin the first day of the 11-year period likely playing on a Game Boy Color or an old Game Boy Classic, and would end the period just as the Nintendo 3DS was about to release. In the interim, of course, the Nintendo Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 would have already been released.

Putting Star Citizen into Perspective Using Souls Games

Dark Souls Elden Ring 11 Years

While the previous examples were structured around hypothetical time periods, Dark Souls was actually released the same year that Star Citizen officially went into development. Since then, fans of the "Souls" games have seen the release of Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, and Sekiro. Perhaps even more importantly, Dark Souls has aged to the point where it has affirmed its place in gaming history and was able to nab the distinction of "Ultimate Game of All Time" at the Golden Joysticks Awards.

To make matters worse, unless Star Citizen releases sometime in the next couple of weeks, the development period will also include the release of Elden Ring, the latest Souls game that is also a collaboration of George R. R. Martin and FromSoftware. Oddly enough, Star Citizen's development also began the same year as the first season of Game of Thrones and easily outlasted the TV series as well.

Star Citizen is in development for PC.

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