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What's with all the money?
rpmcmurphy
Member EpicPosts: 3,502
When Roberts was cheerleading his fantasy to the media he claimed that crowdfunded dollars were worth 4-5x the amount that traditional funding was worth, ie 10 million crowdfunded was worth 40-50 million traditional.
Star Citizen is currently sitting at $49 million so $196-245 million equivalent, yet in his latest newsletter he says "To sustain this level of development, we need to keep bringing in additional funds. Star Citizen is still much less than the other published backed AAA games that have similar levels of ambition (some would even say a little less :-) ) like GTA V, Watch Dogs or Destiny."
What gives? Was his original pitch just a load of BS or is he still trying to play the little guy card despite having almost $50 million in the pot?
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My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
The reason the kickstarter goal was much lower was because he had lined up funding outside of the kickstarter. But he decided to drop that funding to stay independent when he saw how much was raised. He's got a huge team working on this, making both a single player campaign as well as the persistent universe multiplayer, so it's a big project when everything must be meticulously handcrafted, even if most of the gameplay is in space.
If worst comes to worst and the player funding ceases, I'm sure there will be investors interested. But as long as they can keep selling virtual content, they can hopefully keep going by themselves.
SC pretty much started from scratch. Brand new company. Bleeding edge equipment, software, and engine.
The current scope of SC is 10x what was initially planned for the kickstarter. Every aspect of SC is far beyond the initial plans. It should come as no surprise that the funding required increased drastically as well.
FFS I can land my ship on an asteroid and mine with my own gargantuan mining rig.
You can throw that 4-5x equivalent funding out the window. While the dollar for dollar funding value is undoubtably higher for SC vs the AAA studios the expanded scope of the project brings it back down quite a bit.
what the hell are you talking about, game is supposed to run 10 years or longer, how should the initial budget last forever?
SWTOR cost around 250 $ million and guess what they still need money to pay their employees they have working on the title.
every MMO needs fresh money as long as it runs, or development stops
basics
50 million is not actually that much for triple A, sure they can make more with it than within a publisher money but if the money
flow would stop right now, they could only push SC 1.0 release out the door and right afterwards, fire everyone and close the office
I think SC has turned into a spectacular example of the "scope-creep" expression. That's what happens when you start out with the intention of paving the footpath to the corner store and end-up building an 8-lane highway across town.
So for instance, each additional $5M will add another subsystem to the game, but to then make each additional subsystem "the best it can be" requires an additional $20M in development funding...
I just hope the project doesn't become so big that it collapses under its own weight...
but the feature creep is just a false rumor.
Everyone who actually is informed about the project knows they only REVEALED features with the stretch goals.
The only "additional" features were only made possible between the 2 millions and the 6 million stretch goal mark, they had needed additional funds from investors (around 20 million) from investors, but then the crowdfunding was able to pay for the whole project.
Only more ships were added, and the procedural research team is "new", and they said this is all after-release content, if there is any outcome.
Many things they say they will look into it, but only for post-release content.
It has been clear VERY long time ago, what will be in the release version, I know what I am talking about I am a first week backer with golden ticket and I have been following the developemnt for a long time now. Feature creep NEVER occured, it is just a BS rumor.
List one feature you would consider as feature creep, just one?
If you read Roberts' quote again you should note he says "To sustain this level of development...."
There is no reference to post launch running costs.
I'd imagine most of the money will be going towards the persistent universe, the $10 million was probably just for Squadron 42. This game is also being outsourced heavily, I bet that's eating up alot of money as well.
Well I would say that he has seen how much cash has come in so far and has decided to do a hell of a lot more with SC than they origionally planned.
So I think the origional pitch was not BS but now they want to expand the game a lot more than origionally planned plus the expectation of the backers and potential customers is now a hell of a lot more before.. People are expecting the best and I am sure thats what the dev team are trying to do and that could be why costs are going up a bit.
Saying that they could be spending the cash on the wrong things. I also have access to Elite Dangerous and they have done a shit ton more with a lot less cash.. I am very impressed with that yet I was not as impressed with the Arena commander thing for SC.
Only tiem will tell I guess.
Elite was primarily funded with investor cash. They don't have less money, they just made less crowd-funded money. And they also had 5-6 years of development on a custom engine built specifically for Elite and games like it.
A couple of figures for everyone here to put the money raised into perspective. At their current count of 230 employees lets say average $60K salary a year that's $13.8 million a year in employee salaries alone.
That $50 in crowdfunding doesn't seem that much when you consider that the average development timeframe for an MMO is around 4 years. Now given that the team did not start this large nor will it stay this large for the full cycle that figure wont be completely accurate. I still think it puts things into perspective a bit.
GREED perhaps?
#1. Star Citizen grew to a project of truly epic proportions, perhaps he got a little too ambicious.
#2. At 50 Mil this budget is still peanuts considering the quality of what we allready received + the scope of the project.
Sinister Savant MMORPG Community
I think you missed the point here... though from the rest of your posts it sounds like you just want it to be good so badly you are unwilling to see others perspectives.
People are saying the cash flow needs to stop because CIG said that was enough money to develop the game, and their extra features. No one thinks the cash flow post release needs to stop, in fact that's where they should get a huge influx from selling either the game or items in the game.
People are likely saying feature creep because they are asking for more money to accomplish more features. People must be of the mindset that they don't want those extra features, therefore they don't want them to continue to ask for money for them. While people may not be right about whats best for the game, it's certainly a valid opinion that they are trying to add too much and that people would prefer a finished game with fewer features.
That again shows why people could want them to stop bringing in cash. If CIG was correct in what they said, they have - by meeting stretch goals - enough money to accomplish those stretch goals. If they do not, and need additional funding, they made a mistake. I understand people complaining that the developers made a mistake and now require more funds than they had said they needed to accomplish what they set out to. The only solution to that would be remove features that you promised or gather more cash. Either solution will make people upset and shows that CIG failed to plan properly.
Lastly, there could be the concern that they are collecting all this money from designing more ships. If they are spending a fair amount on the team that builds these ships, people could be upset that a large chunk of cash and time is being sunk into the dev team that is building these ships. Of course there is the argument that the ships have to be built sometime, but perhaps people would like a completed game with fewer ships available.
There are a few valid concerns that people could have, it all depends on what you want from the game whether you feel like CIG is on the right track or completely missing the point. I personally was extremely interested and excited for this title. I'm still interested, but CIG's business practices are not what I would like to see from them. I feel like they are letting their crowdfunding success go to their heads a bit and I don't trust that they will be able to accomplish their original goals. That's just my opinion of course, I certainly hope I'm wrong as I'd like to see this game be what it originally sounded like - amazing.
Elite: Dangerous looks, sounds and plays a lot better for a lot less and it will most likely be released this year. Star Citizen is not even in the same league.
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Now explain to me again how Star citizen still needs more money if their "dogfight module" already is way below AAA quality.
What have they done with the $50 million so far? Produced fancy teasers and trailers to sell more spaceships, that is where all the money is going, it's smells like a ponzi scheme.
Im sorry, I had a long night and had to wake up early so I'm not in the best of moods, But this is just plain stupid. So the cashflow should stop...right...how are you going to do that? Are you going to ask a for profit company to stop making profit? Are you going to ask the consumer to stop...consuming? This to me is like those crazy hobos on the streets with a big "The end is near" sign. Futile...and stupid...
It just ocurred to me that those crying about SC succes didnt even pledge at all, As an investor point of view you would like to see the company you invested (pledged) to is growing and growing. But that's not the case here.
Just plain stupid I say....
Nobody wants them to stop but the whole point is about concentrating on the actual game instead of gimmicks like the Trailers, teasers and then the new racing shit and even new ships when there is not even a decent playable version of the game (no, a small buggy module containing 2 maps and 2 modes does not count as one). Before someone comes running over with the argument about different teams doing different stuff, think about something called diverting resources. But they aren't doing that, they continue to put out money making stuff even more than before while the main game keeps on getting delayed.
And here's my proof about being a backer and that i have the game installed and been playing it.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/citizens/AGG
http://imgur.com/mtFcnkQ
And i am still gonna say that what they are doing is not what i expected from them as i explained in my previous post.
Maybe for an inexperienced developer,he is experienced and i am sure would tell you he has a very good team as well.
What bothers me is a high number of gamer's seem to think they are going to get fair value for all the money they are sending his way.There is no way this is on the up n up and i'll tell you why.
When you design a game,it has to be done BEFORE you start and if you are going to feed a hook line n sinker to your potential audience you also need to have the game design SET,otherwise you would be lying to them about your intentions on design.
I also agree that others as well have made claims that crowd funding is worth far more because you eliminate so much overhead.I would say 10x seems far fetched but depends on your staying power.Example a FF game would have a little more control of the contract than an upstart developer.Point being a newb might only get 10-20% but a veteran developer would push for better numbers.So taking it on it's lowest value,yes 10x is possible.
None the less if we take it even at 3x,he would have 150 million.Does ANYONE either supporting or on these forums expect to see a game worth 150 million?Not i actually expect a very weak game not worth my time but of course i have different tastes and higher expectations than others.
Bottom line is any true gamer wants to see every game come out as amazing,it gives us a lot of choice to play games,i just don't see it from this guy,not a chance in hell.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
GW2 would lay claim to that being totally false.
It ALWAYS depends on the quality of the game and quality of future content.If you deliver a game full of instances and low graphics it will cost pennies to run.Then if your future content is also low budget,it again takes little money to survive from xpac to xpac.
Yes of course you always need money to survive as a business but if your game only costs 10-20 million under normal standards and yo uhave 50 million in over than above normal you have a TON of money to last until xpac sales.
I don't think anyone really knows but my feeling is this is a VERY small team,the SLOW lack of content done so far is proof of that,either that or they have a very weak team working on the game.
I don't think we can compare SWTOR to any game because imo that was a lot of wasted money,the game does not look to be a 250 mil game,not every developer is as efficient or competent as the next.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
no. just no. this is the type of thing that makes people completely dismiss any argument that supports what you're arguing for because its so idiotic. If you want to think that way, you should never buy anything ever besides the most bare necessities because someone somewhere is worse off than you.
Blood on his hands.... yikes. I agree their funds are going to the wrong places and at this point the game just feels like pretty ships and a massive waste of money. But again, inflammatory nonsense doesn't help your cause, in fact it hurts it.
I thought last year he said that because of the large support for crowd funding that they decided to go 100% crowd funding. I am pretty sure I saw the video of him saying that on youtube.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
While at the same time banking on the depth I his supporters pockets. I just hope his call was not wrong. We all know what can happen when one man is left making all the decisions.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
I watched the progress of Star Citizen for a few weeks and in that short time here is what I learned.
1. He originally planned on part crowd funding and part traditional. However, once the huge positive response in dollars happened he decided to make the project completely crowdfunded.
2. Elder Scrolls Online cost 200 million dollars to make, anyone who thinks this project will be even half that much is not thinking clearly....including Mr. Roberts. However my question to the fans is this, what is his projected budget for the game?
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me