Imagine a game that took more than seven years to make and cost more than a quarter billion dollars. It's a sprawling spacefaring multiplayer epic with beautiful graphics combining multiple genres, with a story featuring famous actors. That game exists, kind of, but unless you're really into following industry drama, you've probably never heard of it.

Star Citizen began as a wildly successful crowdfunding project on Kickstarter. Developer Cloud Imperium promised the most immersive space simulation ever, but over seven years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, the game is still only accessible in alpha form, for backers, with no release date in sight. How did we get here? Well, entire books could be written about the weirdness and controversy this game has generated, but we're going to try to just quickly hit the highlights for you.