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Star Citizen collecting huge amounts of money from fans. Time for CU to do the same.
HealthyGamer
Member Posts: 25
So far Star Citizen has collected in excess of $30 Million dollars in backing from its fans due to a really wonderful marketing campaign. This has blown away the original funds it collected during kickstarter. It's releasing modules to its fans piecemeal so they can play certain pieces of the game as they're completed.
I hope CU does something similar soon. I would like to see Paypal donations open with a similar structure. For instance, one of the modules CU could release early could be the housing module. Backers at advanced levels could be eligible for augmented building materials or a larger land area to work with for various levels of donations.
Once a basic combat system is in a rudimentary battle grounds could be released. DaOC players remember Thidranki and Molvik. Depending on the donation level, backers could have access to battlegrounds with various levels of capability.
These are just a couple of ideas of course but I would like to see CU generate greater amounts of starting capital. Right now players are shelling out hundreds and thousands of dollars just to see some static spaceships in a hanger. I'm sure fans of CU would be willing to do the same.
Comments
Is there going to be some meaningful vertical progression and some actual PvE challenge in this game?
I'm tired of gear getting handed out left and right and facerolling every mob cause I'm over leveled and over geared through the whole damn game.
Is it fans Star Citizen is raising money from or speculators who are buying ships then reselling them for a profit?
CU already has a well rounded feature set that can be met with its current funding. Aside from earning the small amount more needed for the The Depths goal, I'm not sure that a large amount of additional funding would be benefit the game.
Entry into various testing phases is part of the CU KS rewards so players will indeed get to play parts of the game well before release.
There is no PvE in CU in the standard MMO sense of you do a bunch of quests, earn some gear rewards, and advance in levels.
DAOC Live (inactive): R11 Cleric R11 Druid R11 Minstrel R9 Eldritch R6 Sorc R6 Scout R6 Healer
You're looking at an anomaly. I'm truely amazed and dumbfounded with the amount of funding they have received, only WoW's success even closely resembles to the abnormality of Star Citizen's success in funding.
CU narrowly made their quota by 16%, do you really think there will be a lot more investment into the game? Granted any money is good money but without anything to show I highly doubt they are going to get much money. Focus on the project, show some substantial results then open up a paypal donation thing or packs.
Not sure why people are confused here.
EVE is the only major space MMO. There's a few small ones out there, but EVE is it if you want space sci-fi.
The Fantasy genre is brimming with MMO's. UO has a lot more competition and players have a lot more options to choose from. Star Citizen will succeed unless they make a huge mess, there's just no competition. It might even bring EVE to it's knees (and no, it's not growing, CCP is not a thriving company if you look at their financial reports).
People are ready for another major sci-fi space mmo, it's an underserved market.
Sadly the difference between wow's success and SC so far is one is an actual game people were attracted to and could actually play, not just an idea where they filled in the blanks themselves.
I don't think CU would do well having so many people expecting so much from it. It's not trying to be the last best hope for everyone on the internet. It's just trying to be a small part of a great game from the past that's missing from the games people have now.
SWTOR is also sci-fi if were talking genre so was Anarchy Online. There have been a number of sci-fi genre games. EVE is just... EVE. Open world PvP sandbox that has no opposition in their game design which people generalize as spreadsheet in space.
Space Space Space
There are many reasons for Star Citizen's funding success that go beyond there being an audience for a persistent world space sim. Chris Roberts being famed for Wing Commander, Freelancer, etc. is one of those.
Very importantly for me, someone who never played his older games, is the presentation of Star Citizen via a beautiful website with cool and growing community features. There's also the fact that people are funding the game in the form of purchasing ships they will be able to fly in the game, and that they already delivered a pre-pre-alpha hanger module, which lets you boot up the game into your hanger, check out your ships, climb in and out of them, etc.
Sometime very soon, we are getting a dog fighting module with an arena type setup for learning how to use our ships. Months after that, we will get a spaceport module that will allow us to all get together and socialize. All of this is happening while the larger game is being built, and we are all testing it along the way.
Not only is their website full of information about lore and game development, but they have a kick ass weekly (Fridays) video podcast called Wingman's Hanger that I watch without fail, either live, or on you YouTube after.
ALL of these things and more are the reason this game is funding so well, so it's not matter of just asking people for money. It's providing something in return, including bringing the community into the development process, and keeping them informed. Following Star Citizen almost feels like getting attached to a TV show. Game companies should be paying close attention to the formula CIG is using here.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I have not and probably won't ever give money to kickstarter campaigns which don't produce a working, playable demo before asking for money. The way I see it, transferring the risk to gamers can easily result in getting burned or feeling cheated. A game in development could end up not turning into something I will enjoy. Worse, it could easily go over-budget and have to release unfinished or underdeveloped. Even worse, there is a chance for the game to fail before launching due to financial problems, development team drama, or any number of things which can cause games to fail to launch.
I don't think kickstarter is the way to make good games. I think a better result can be achieved through significant private funding first, then asking for kickstarter money. A good balance would be 50/50, with the first half being obtained through loans, private investors, or a publishing company.
I am surprised by how much funding Star Citizen has acquired. The $29M is enough to keep their 25 employees working for 10 years at $75K per year and still have $9M left over to pay for computers, their facility, and other bills.
sorry but CU is going in wrong way..
- artist style
- Mark Jakobs old scholl vision of class system.. dosnt work in WAR everyone knows it
- nobody knows more
and why we dont see any miracle engine from another developer to make MASSIVE pvp? 
You're entitled to your own opinion, and certainly you can decide for yourself if you aren't interested. The old school vision is what attracts me to this game. It's targeting a niche audience, not trying to be the next huge MMO. I'm so unbelievably sick of all these new MMOs that are supposed to be so good and then they just flop. I'm tired of "Go here, collect/kill this, come back and repeat." ESO is an example where they claimed this wouldn't be the case, but it most certainly is. CU is trying to be a strictly RvR game with no need to do all these pointless quests that are in mainstream MMOs to level up. All I have to do is RvR and related tasks, and the gear is crafted by players not obtained from being a no-life raider. It's definitely not the game for everyone, but for me and a lot of other people it's exactly what we want.. RvR/PvP without all the boring PvE nonsense.
I support the idea!
CU should take an example from Star Citizen and his development. The modular release, the crowdfunding, the community building... it's all great.
And btw Star Citizen raised 2.1 M dollars in Kickstarter ... Camelot Unchained did 2.2 M dollars. So while it's not assured that CU will reach the (as of now) 32 M $ of SC you can't just rule out the possibility.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13861848/camelot-unchained
So open the paypal donations! Open the forums to more peoples and ideas. More money is always good.
And release the game in a modules. The dogfight module of SC? CU should release a small arena module. It would be great for testing and debugging.