I have pledged, but I'm not very confident we'll ever see a good game emerge. And maybe no game at all. I got worried when I saw them keep adding incredibly ambitious goals.
(Think about SWTOR and how much it cost vs the final product. Now thing about all the stuff SC has promised.)
There is a major difference between SC and SWTOR. At least 3/4 of the overall budget for SWTOR went into Marketing and Publishing costs. These are two things SC doesn't have. When you take all of this out SWTOR probably only put about 50 million into the actual development of the game. About the same as what SC has.
When you read these 100s of millions dollar budgets for AAA Publisher games you have to figure that at least 50%-75% of that money went into other costs like Marketing and Publishing. Less than half was spent on actually developing the game.
Bren
So they are not going to E3 to market the game? They are not marketing it at all?
They are not self publishing, aka. selling the game through thier own shop?
If you can answer yes to that, then yeah, then 50M is going into game development.
But truely, all it means is that those 50%-75% is money they are not paying out of the company, not that they are not used for the exact same thing.
That aside I am pretty sure your numbers are way off....
I am a big fan of the Ultima Series and of Richard Garriot as a developer. So I bought the 45$ pack for his upcoming game Shroud of the Avatar and I regret every cent I spent.
Maybe I should have read more about it and waited a little bit longer for more informations but as it turns out SotA will be a huge money cow for Mr.Garriot and nothing more.
Same happened to me when I bought the lifetime sub for Hellgate:London (what a rip off) or the lifetime sub for LOTRO (atleast this game is still running).
I was a big fan of the Wing Commander games but I wont give Mr. Roberts any money before the game has been released.
I will preorder games if I have to chance to test it (demo or open beta).
I feel bad for the people who paid into SotA. Garriot literally sold off his Ultima IP to EA to make a quick buck, then tried a "restart" with Tabula Rasa. I was one of the suckers who fell for it and "followed the prophet into the mountains" so to speak. Tabula Rasa was on a collision coarse with disaster and what did he do? He went into space. Literally. After running that game into the ground he tried making a company called Portalarium to develop..."social games." That's obviously not doing well, so he tries to kickstart his original IP under a new name (because he sold it) and tie this new MMO to his failing Portalarium company. All the while the man has been living in a castle...literally...and people still pay him money because of his success with the Ultima series that he no longer owns. Nostalgia hurts...
You don't have to feel bad for the people who paid into SotA, and you don't have to pledge for SotA. But some people do, and some people might have faith in the Vision of Richard Garriot, or any other Kickstarter they pledged. And whatever you said about Garriot(and some is exaggerated) he did made some good games, and SotA(maybe not for all) might be a good game, when it is finished.
But that does not really matter at all. Garriot made up a Kickstarter to make a game he envisioned... some people believed in the vision and the reputation of Garriot and pledged.. now the game is in development and will be released. Win/Win for everyone. And if it is any good for you or me, we can buy it when it is released.
And in all honestly.. for those who pledged, and regret it afterwards i don't have any pity, too. They should have better read what he does want, and thought about it a little more.. because he did not promise anything else, as what he is doing at the moment.
If it wasn't for people like us, this wouldn't have been possible.
Of course it would have been possible.
EvE didn't need crowd funding to get made.
Its the easiest, cheapest way possible for Roberts though. I hope the game is everything space sim fans want and then some, but this notion that innovation wont happen without crowd funding is just ridiculous.
How long has it been since EvE came out? 11 years?
Why haven't we seen anything truly amazing in the space genre since then, if innovation is so easy?
I guess if it wasn't for the recent crowd funding events (SC, Elite) this genre would have remained dead for another decade at least.
Alright maybe this is just stupid, I was speaking with a friend about Start Citizen the other day. Neither of us have pledged.
We cannot bring ourselves to even believe that a game will come out of the studio, I mean maybe once again we both have a skewed view of what it takes to develop a game but as of today 18/6/2014 they claim to have received approximately 46.5 million dollars in funding. WoW 46.5 million in funding. This company could easily bring an amount of money like that to an investment firm and conservatively make 10% in a year.
What is stopping these people from banking that money off shore and doing exactly that for the next five years. I would think that 46.5 million is enough money to literally produce the game that they want in less than 18 months and if I remember correctly, RSI/ star citizen started almost 2 to 2.5 years ago.(significantly less budget then) If any of these kickstarter/crowd funded projects had any sense they would invest that money and produce games off of the gains alone.(lets not turn this into an investment/spending BS argument please)
We have seen indie developers produce great games with over 90% less budget in 90% less time. What is actually happening here?
Maybe I'm just not seeing it from the right point of view or something or maybe it takes 300 million dollars to build a MMO and my numbers are off. I don't know, I'm not trying to say they are robbing people but it certainly looks like a possibility.
I want to pledge this game and I literally want it to be everything that they say, but I cannot bring myself to do it for the reason I mentioned, It feels to big and too good to be true so maybe someone else can steer me the right direction or "splain it to me good"
You seem to be making the same fundamental mistake that is made by non-IT people on almost every other IT project I've ever worked on: there's no direct correlation between budget and delivery speed. Just because it takes 1 programmer 30 days to build an app, it's not going to take 30 programmers ONE day to build the same app.
It takes a fully-funded team 4-5 years to build a AAA MMO. And then it's often still buggy as hell at release, with half the players insisting it was "released too early". Considering when (and how) SC started, it's amazing that they've done so much already. Normal MMO's hardly even have scripted game play demo videos at this point in their dev cycle.
This is why I do not support ANYTHING from kickstarter. I could put up a fake game and get "donations", cuz thats basically what it is, and rob everybody.
They could literally take that 46.whatever million dollars and split. All the while were getting upset cuz we volunteered our hard earned money with no back up plan. Too risky. Too many people lost so much by putting faith into something. I mean it's not like your technically even investing it. your just "Donating" it.
As far as Star Citizen....this game should have been done a while ago. I've seen mmo's come out and are profitable and only started with a million dollars. Pre kickstarter days mind you. They have well over enough money to get the ball running. Hell, we could have this game early next year if they got off their asses and stop putting out crap and calling it a "taste".
I am one of the idiots who, "donated", 325$ to the development of the game over 2 years ago.........still have nothing to show for it.
Can I complain? No. I "donated" my money and signed nothing. No legal documents. No shared investment folder. Nothing.
Just be careful people.
This game has till mid 2015 to produce something worth the 325$ I "donated" to the cause, or I give up and take a 325$ loss.
Originally posted by SpottyGekko Originally posted by driver4hireAlright maybe this is just stupid, I was speaking with a friend about Start Citizen the other day. Neither of us have pledged. We cannot bring ourselves to even believe that a game will come out of the studio, I mean maybe once again we both have a skewed view of what it takes to develop a game but as of today 18/6/2014 they claim to have received approximately 46.5 million dollars in funding. WoW 46.5 million in funding. This company could easily bring an amount of money like that to an investment firm and conservatively make 10% in a year.What is stopping these people from banking that money off shore and doing exactly that for the next five years. I would think that 46.5 million is enough money to literally produce the game that they want in less than 18 months and if I remember correctly, RSI/ star citizen started almost 2 to 2.5 years ago.(significantly less budget then) If any of these kickstarter/crowd funded projects had any sense they would invest that money and produce games off of the gains alone.(lets not turn this into an investment/spending BS argument please)We have seen indie developers produce great games with over 90% less budget in 90% less time. What is actually happening here?Maybe I'm just not seeing it from the right point of view or something or maybe it takes 300 million dollars to build a MMO and my numbers are off. I don't know, I'm not trying to say they are robbing people but it certainly looks like a possibility.I want to pledge this game and I literally want it to be everything that they say, but I cannot bring myself to do it for the reason I mentioned, It feels to big and too good to be true so maybe someone else can steer me the right direction or "splain it to me good"
You seem to be making the same fundamental mistake that is made by non-IT people on almost every other IT project I've ever worked on: there's no direct correlation between budget and delivery speed. Just because it takes 1 programmer 30 days to build an app, it's not going to take 30 programmers ONE day to build the same app.
It takes a fully-funded team 4-5 years to build a AAA MMO. And then it's often still buggy as hell at release, with half the players insisting it was "released too early". Considering when (and how) SC started, it's amazing that they've done so much already. Normal MMO's hardly even have scripted game play demo videos at this point in their dev cycle.
Weather you want to call it or not, DCUO, Neverwinter, etc are "AAA" games and they took less than 3 years to make and only half the money Star Citizen has. And those games, again weather you want to believe or not, facts are facts, are very successful and popular games.
Originally posted by driver4hireAlright maybe this is just stupid, I was speaking with a friend about Start Citizen the other day. Neither of us have pledged. We cannot bring ourselves to even believe that a game will come out of the studio, I mean maybe once again we both have a skewed view of what it takes to develop a game but as of today 18/6/2014 they claim to have received approximately 46.5 million dollars in funding. WoW 46.5 million in funding. This company could easily bring an amount of money like that to an investment firm and conservatively make 10% in a year.What is stopping these people from banking that money off shore and doing exactly that for the next five years. I would think that 46.5 million is enough money to literally produce the game that they want in less than 18 months and if I remember correctly, RSI/ star citizen started almost 2 to 2.5 years ago.(significantly less budget then) If any of these kickstarter/crowd funded projects had any sense they would invest that money and produce games off of the gains alone.(lets not turn this into an investment/spending BS argument please)We have seen indie developers produce great games with over 90% less budget in 90% less time. What is actually happening here?Maybe I'm just not seeing it from the right point of view or something or maybe it takes 300 million dollars to build a MMO and my numbers are off. I don't know, I'm not trying to say they are robbing people but it certainly looks like a possibility.I want to pledge this game and I literally want it to be everything that they say, but I cannot bring myself to do it for the reason I mentioned, It feels to big and too good to be true so maybe someone else can steer me the right direction or "splain it to me good"
You seem to be making the same fundamental mistake that is made by non-IT people on almost every other IT project I've ever worked on: there's no direct correlation between budget and delivery speed. Just because it takes 1 programmer 30 days to build an app, it's not going to take 30 programmers ONE day to build the same app.
It takes a fully-funded team 4-5 years to build a AAA MMO. And then it's often still buggy as hell at release, with half the players insisting it was "released too early". Considering when (and how) SC started, it's amazing that they've done so much already. Normal MMO's hardly even have scripted game play demo videos at this point in their dev cycle.
Weather you want to call it or not, DCUO, Neverwinter, etc are "AAA" games and they took less than 3 years to make and only half the money Star Citizen has. And those games, again weather you want to believe or not, facts are facts, are very successful and popular games.
Those games you mentioned also mostly has only a single focus, and that is combat - fair enough they got crafting systems, where neverwinter has their foundry - but take into consideration the amount of features which also has been announced, that is both space combat, and first person shooter mechanics, salvaging which apparently is going to be getting a very indepth gameplay mechanic fuction, you got trading, modular ship parts, as well as destructible pieces on this ships, and quite a lot more to it than I really can remember - not to mention that there might be other complications in tech that has to be developed, which takes time.
There's quite a lot more features and things to do than what you'd otherwise find in a game such as DCUO or NWN.
Plus I'm certain that setting up a proper work infrastructure is also something that takes time and is constantly iterated upon, where a game developer company such as SOE has been in "the game" for quite a lot of years compared.
If the game releases in 2016 officially it will probably still be missing a lot of features that were promised . The scope and ambition of this game is huge and games take a long long time to make and polish.
Pledge if you like the game and think you'll still be alive to play it when it shines. If not just wait without thinking about it, it will come out eventually. The game is pre-alpha now, it still has a looooooooooooooooooong way to go. For those who can't wait go play something else and don't think about it anymore.
You seem to be making the same fundamental mistake that is made by non-IT people on almost every other IT project I've ever worked on: there's no direct correlation between budget and delivery speed. Just because it takes 1 programmer 30 days to build an app, it's not going to take 30 programmers ONE day to build the same app.
It takes a fully-funded team 4-5 years to build a AAA MMO. And then it's often still buggy as hell at release, with half the players insisting it was "released too early". Considering when (and how) SC started, it's amazing that they've done so much already. Normal MMO's hardly even have scripted game play demo videos at this point in their dev cycle.
Weather you want to call it or not, DCUO, Neverwinter, etc are "AAA" games and they took less than 3 years to make and only half the money Star Citizen has. And those games, again weather you want to believe or not, facts are facts, are very successful and popular games.
Afaik, Neverwinter was built using the tried-and-tested engine from STO. Cryptic had previously announced their intention of churning-out MMO's with 2-3 year dev cycles by re-using their core engine. Much like SOE is doing now with ForgeLight (Planetside 2, H1Z1, EQN:Landmark, EQN). Personally, I consider Neverwinter and DCUO as "B"-movies compared to Hollywood blockbusters (AAA MMOs). They are playable, but simply don't have the depth, feature lists and production values of the "big boys".
A huge budget doesn't equate to a short delivery time. In fact, I'd be inclined to think that in the case of CS, it would actually delay the delivery, if anything !
The more money they get, the more stretch goals they have to deliver. Each additional stretch goal adds an exponential increase in complexity and testing time. Testing if feature A works with feature B may take a week. But after adding feature C, you now need 2 weeks to test, because A+C and B+C have to be tested PLUS A+B+C, and so on...
This is why I do not support ANYTHING from kickstarter. I could put up a fake game and get "donations", cuz thats basically what it is, and rob everybody.
They could literally take that 46.whatever million dollars and split. All the while were getting upset cuz we volunteered our hard earned money with no back up plan. Too risky. Too many people lost so much by putting faith into something. I mean it's not like your technically even investing it. your just "Donating" it.
As far as Star Citizen....this game should have been done a while ago. I've seen mmo's come out and are profitable and only started with a million dollars. Pre kickstarter days mind you. They have well over enough money to get the ball running. Hell, we could have this game early next year if they got off their asses and stop putting out crap and calling it a "taste".
I am one of the idiots who, "donated", 325$ to the development of the game over 2 years ago.........still have nothing to show for it.
Can I complain? No. I "donated" my money and signed nothing. No legal documents. No shared investment folder. Nothing.
Just be careful people.
This game has till mid 2015 to produce something worth the 325$ I "donated" to the cause, or I give up and take a 325$ loss.
Omfg.. one post full of bullshit.
Comments to texted marked in color:
What MMO was done with only one million, and within 18 month? None.. because there is non.. maybe ATITD.. but even that is in development for years and hardly to call a MMO or a game at all. Hell complete indy games like Mortal Online or Darkfall or EvE were even in the beginning a lot more expensive as just one million.. and every single one of them(or any other MMO for that matter) took a lot longer usually 5 years and more. Wildstar 7 years. Darkfall over 10 years. WoW 5+ years. In all honestly you either just talk bullshit for talking bullshit, or you are the most clueless person ever.
Yeah.. right over 2 years ago. The kickstarter for Star Citizen started Oct. 2012, and was funded(30 days) in 19. Nov 2012. That are at max 20 month.. over 2 years ago noone knew shit about it.. Therefore i somehow doubt that you pledged even shit for it.. but independet thereof everyone is responsible how many he will pledge to a game, or at all.
And if you would have pledged as much as 30$(as i pledged for SC) you would have already get something for your money, and with more coming over the next few years during the development cycle.
So.. i call you out. You are just a troll badmouthing for whatever reason a game you know obv. shit about. But go one.. troll as much as you want.. seriously noone with even half a brain can take someone like you with your bullshit seriously.
Edit: But general speaking.. everyone pledging more than 40$(basic package) and not really interested to specifically donate more to the project to give them more development money, is just stupid. For beeing interested in the game and to want to play it as fast as possible. and to get it started, that basic package is absolutely enough.. and enough for every kickstarter.. everything above is just for people which don't know where they could throw their money.. Those ships, or everything you get is just a gift as recognition for donation. Everyone how believes that those ships give you an advantage or that those not getting them have to grind month for it are completely off base.. furthermore it is Wing Commander like.. the size of the ship is not the ultimate win button.
For a 3 year old project that is Star Citizen, without a publisher and kicking every Dev / Pub combo in the rear, they are doing amazingly great. Now either the OP is trolling or I don't know what's going on, SW : TOR was a half billion project that didn't end up too well. ArcheAge has been in the works for about 7 years now and is still in beta. In that same time period DayZ has been redone 5 times and is still useless to this day. I can keep going for almost every single MMO listed on this site.
So yeah, in conclusion, Star Citizen is doing great. End of story.
For a 3 year old project that is Star Citizen, without a publisher and kicking every Dev / Pub combo in the rear, they are doing amazingly great.
You forgot to mention that they have a ready engine and will soon be in the top 30 most expensive games ever produced.
Now either the OP is trolling or I don't know what's going on, SW : TOR was a half billion project that didn't end up too well.
500million? Dude, do you even math? SWTOR cost around 200mil.
In that same time period DayZ has been redone 5 times and is still useless to this day.
DayZ is quite unique and made quite a name for itself. It was also initially being developed by ONE GUY.
I can keep going for almost every single MMO listed on this site.
You can keep going with your misinformation.
So yeah, in conclusion, Star Citizen is doing great. End of story.
3 years later, million and millions of dev dollars, ready engine(yeah modified but still saved YEARS of development time), 220+ developers spread out in 3-4 studios (?), outsourced development modules to several other studios and all we have is a watered down version of the DogFight Module with limited multiplayer support which probably makes up something like 5% of all the features they have promised.
I am sceptical about kickstarter but anyway, I must point out one thing. The amount of cash you have is not inversely proportional to the development time.
"I would think that 46.5 million is enough money to literally produce the game that they want in less than 18 months"
This statement from the OP doesn't make much sense - it's not like 1000 developers can create a game 5x faster than 200 developers. If you want a quality game, you must spend time to create it. The more cash you have, the more time you can spend to polish the game and ensure a successful launch.
It's projects that don't have enough funding that are made quickly - devs are people too and need to push the game out of the door so that they can pay their bills.
Originally posted by nethaniah
Seriously Farmville? Yeah I think it's great. In a World where half our population is dying of hunger the more fortunate half is spending their time harvesting food that doesn't exist.
Seeing as SC now has 250+ people working on it, it can be classed as a BIG PROJECT. These big projects often take on a life of their own (SWTOR ?) and if the management is not tight, all kinds of unforeseen outcomes are possible.
The most benign dangers in Big Projects are "scope creep" and/or delays (the two usually go hand-in-hand). I have absolutely no doubt that SC will suffer many delays, and I'm betting they'll release "stripped-down" chunks of game content in an attempt to keep players happy as a result.
However, at this point there's no indication that the game will be a "failure" or fail to deliver. It's much too early for that, give it at least another year.
Alright maybe this is just stupid, I was speaking with a friend about Start Citizen the other day. Neither of us have pledged.
We cannot bring ourselves to even believe that a game will come out of the studio, I mean maybe once again we both have a skewed view of what it takes to develop a game but as of today 18/6/2014 they claim to have received approximately 46.5 million dollars in funding. WoW 46.5 million in funding. This company could easily bring an amount of money like that to an investment firm and conservatively make 10% in a year.
What is stopping these people from banking that money off shore and doing exactly that for the next five years. I would think that 46.5 million is enough money to literally produce the game that they want in less than 18 months and if I remember correctly, RSI/ star citizen started almost 2 to 2.5 years ago.(significantly less budget then) If any of these kickstarter/crowd funded projects had any sense they would invest that money and produce games off of the gains alone.(lets not turn this into an investment/spending BS argument please)
We have seen indie developers produce great games with over 90% less budget in 90% less time. What is actually happening here?
Maybe I'm just not seeing it from the right point of view or something or maybe it takes 300 million dollars to build a MMO and my numbers are off. I don't know, I'm not trying to say they are robbing people but it certainly looks like a possibility.
I want to pledge this game and I literally want it to be everything that they say, but I cannot bring myself to do it for the reason I mentioned, It feels to big and too good to be true so maybe someone else can steer me the right direction or "splain it to me good"
The costs for a game to develop vary. While the costs for Indie titles scale between ten and hundred thousands, the costs for AAA-MMO titles easily hit the hundred millions mark. Example: GTA V $ 265 Million (Source).
Currently, the expected to be the most expensive game ever is Destiny, the MMO developed by Bungie Soft (Publisher ActiVision). It is estimated to cost more than $ 500 Million.
A huge part of the development costs are used for marketing and promotion. Usually, this matter of cost ranges between 30-70% of the total development costs (GTA V: ~50% // Call of Duty Modern Warfare: ~70%).
And to answer your question: I think Chris Roberts would never gamble with his good name.
This is why I do not support ANYTHING from kickstarter. I could put up a fake game and get "donations", cuz thats basically what it is, and rob everybody.
They could literally take that 46.whatever million dollars and split. All the while were getting upset cuz we volunteered our hard earned money with no back up plan. Too risky. Too many people lost so much by putting faith into something. I mean it's not like your technically even investing it. your just "Donating" it.
As far as Star Citizen....this game should have been done a while ago. I've seen mmo's come out and are profitable and only started with a million dollars. Pre kickstarter days mind you. They have well over enough money to get the ball running. Hell, we could have this game early next year if they got off their asses and stop putting out crap and calling it a "taste".
I am one of the idiots who, "donated", 325$ to the development of the game over 2 years ago.........still have nothing to show for it.
Can I complain? No. I "donated" my money and signed nothing. No legal documents. No shared investment folder. Nothing.
Just be careful people.
This game has till mid 2015 to produce something worth the 325$ I "donated" to the cause, or I give up and take a 325$ loss.
Yeah.. right over 2 years ago. The kickstarter for Star Citizen started Oct. 2012, and was funded(30 days) in 19. Nov 2012. That are at max 20 month.. over 2 years ago noone knew shit about it.. Therefore i somehow doubt that you pledged even shit for it.. but independet thereof everyone is responsible how many he will pledge to a game, or at all.
And if you would have pledged as much as 30$(as i pledged for SC) you would have already get something for your money, and with more coming over the next few years during the development cycle.
So.. i call you out. You are just a troll badmouthing for whatever reason a game you know obv. shit about. But go one.. troll as much as you want.. seriously noone with even half a brain can take someone like you with your bullshit seriously.
Wait....I'm not defending anybody here but I round out numbers too. I say FF XIV ARR is a year old. It's 9 months old.
Seems the only one trolling and starting fights is you. The guy spent his money and wants something in return. So much to ask for? No.
Also I'm sure he was talking about more than just alpha dog fights and ships. I think he meant an actual game. Not ships and stuff. Or what he refers to as a "taste". Which is exactly what they are giving us lmao.
Stop trolling dude. Stop picking fights with people here.
For a 3 year old project that is Star Citizen, without a publisher and kicking every Dev / Pub combo in the rear, they are doing amazingly great. Now either the OP is trolling or I don't know what's going on, SW : TOR was a half billion project that didn't end up too well. ArcheAge has been in the works for about 7 years now and is still in beta. In that same time period DayZ has been redone 5 times and is still useless to this day. I can keep going for almost every single MMO listed on this site.
So yeah, in conclusion, Star Citizen is doing great. End of story.
OMG don't say 3 years, user Apraxis will call you out and troll you to death. Be careful. He said it was 20 months and his word is law.
Originally posted by Hariken Over 40 million dollars and only a dogfight sim. And how long have they been working on this? Sorry i will never trust this crowdfunding crap for mmo to be developed. And if this game does come out, you better have a supercomputer to even run it. This whole crowdfunding/kickstarter crap is getting way out of hand and i hope the feds.get involved soon. If they have collected that much money they should be investigated and soon.
Games take time to develop the only reason we have a dogfighting sim at the moment is because of the extra cash they made.
Also you do not need a super computer to run this, you will be able to scale the grapihcs to suit the computer you have. The dogfihting module runs fine for me maxed out.
Sure its up to you if you trust crowd funding or not, myself I am ok with putting a bit of cash into a game that I really want to play.. Have done a few now that have released and I am really enjoying them, but i never put to much in usually at the most I will put in the equivelent of a full price game and that is for ones I really want to see get made. I can not see how it is getting out of hand at all its a perfect way for small game dev studios to fund a game that would otherwise not get made because investors only like to back games that will 100% make them cash.. usually wow clones when its coems to mmorpgs, cod clones when it comes to fps games and skyrim clones when it comes to rpgs and so on.. hell the last 10 years of mmorpgs has been terrible because of that we have been basically playing the same game just re-skinned and called something else.
Anyway of course its up to you at the end of the day and yes maybe there does need to be a bit more regulation around al lthis crowd funding but its one of the best things to happen in the industry for a very long time.
For a 3 year old project that is Star Citizen, without a publisher and kicking every Dev / Pub combo in the rear, they are doing amazingly great. Now either the OP is trolling or I don't know what's going on, SW : TOR was a half billion project that didn't end up too well. ArcheAge has been in the works for about 7 years now and is still in beta. In that same time period DayZ has been redone 5 times and is still useless to this day. I can keep going for almost every single MMO listed on this site.
So yeah, in conclusion, Star Citizen is doing great. End of story.
OMG don't say 3 years, user Apraxis will call you out and troll you to death. Be careful. He said it was 20 months and his word is law.
Maybe you should take your own advise from your post just above ?
For a 3 year old project that is Star Citizen, without a publisher and kicking every Dev / Pub combo in the rear, they are doing amazingly great. Now either the OP is trolling or I don't know what's going on, SW : TOR was a half billion project that didn't end up too well. ArcheAge has been in the works for about 7 years now and is still in beta. In that same time period DayZ has been redone 5 times and is still useless to this day. I can keep going for almost every single MMO listed on this site.
So yeah, in conclusion, Star Citizen is doing great. End of story.
OMG don't say 3 years, user Apraxis will call you out and troll you to death. Be careful. He said it was 20 months and his word is law.
Maybe you should take your own advise from your post just above ?
I did that's why i'm warning people. Don't round your numbers near this guy. He'll have a s%@# fit !
For a 3 year old project that is Star Citizen, without a publisher and kicking every Dev / Pub combo in the rear, they are doing amazingly great. Now either the OP is trolling or I don't know what's going on, SW : TOR was a half billion project that didn't end up too well. ArcheAge has been in the works for about 7 years now and is still in beta. In that same time period DayZ has been redone 5 times and is still useless to this day. I can keep going for almost every single MMO listed on this site.
So yeah, in conclusion, Star Citizen is doing great. End of story.
OMG don't say 3 years, user Apraxis will call you out and troll you to death. Be careful. He said it was 20 months and his word is law.
Maybe you should take your own advise from your post just above ?
I did that's why i'm warning people. Don't round your numbers near this guy. He'll have a s%@# fit !
After all.. at least something to grin.
And my word is law Or at least i provided facts with sources.
And i just pointed it out, because he want to make a point with it, how long it is in development without making any advancement, although it isn't very long in development and made soem advancement during that time.. and over 2 years is not around 2 years.. and that is not exactly rounding.
So yes.. be careful with spreading misinformation or i call you out.
Comments
So they are not going to E3 to market the game? They are not marketing it at all?
They are not self publishing, aka. selling the game through thier own shop?
If you can answer yes to that, then yeah, then 50M is going into game development.
But truely, all it means is that those 50%-75% is money they are not paying out of the company, not that they are not used for the exact same thing.
That aside I am pretty sure your numbers are way off....
You don't have to feel bad for the people who paid into SotA, and you don't have to pledge for SotA. But some people do, and some people might have faith in the Vision of Richard Garriot, or any other Kickstarter they pledged. And whatever you said about Garriot(and some is exaggerated) he did made some good games, and SotA(maybe not for all) might be a good game, when it is finished.
But that does not really matter at all. Garriot made up a Kickstarter to make a game he envisioned... some people believed in the vision and the reputation of Garriot and pledged.. now the game is in development and will be released. Win/Win for everyone. And if it is any good for you or me, we can buy it when it is released.
And in all honestly.. for those who pledged, and regret it afterwards i don't have any pity, too. They should have better read what he does want, and thought about it a little more.. because he did not promise anything else, as what he is doing at the moment.
How long has it been since EvE came out? 11 years?
Why haven't we seen anything truly amazing in the space genre since then, if innovation is so easy?
I guess if it wasn't for the recent crowd funding events (SC, Elite) this genre would have remained dead for another decade at least.
with the budget quickly approaching 50 million they can make their universe truly spectacular and a living place.
this will be filled to the brim with immersive stories and missions in old Bioware quality, plus the cinematic experience
of Wing Commander in an MMO. The lore I've read so far is the most awesome one created in this decade.
I bet this game is going to be bigger in size than SWTOR or LOTRO
lol
..Cake..
You seem to be making the same fundamental mistake that is made by non-IT people on almost every other IT project I've ever worked on: there's no direct correlation between budget and delivery speed. Just because it takes 1 programmer 30 days to build an app, it's not going to take 30 programmers ONE day to build the same app.
It takes a fully-funded team 4-5 years to build a AAA MMO. And then it's often still buggy as hell at release, with half the players insisting it was "released too early". Considering when (and how) SC started, it's amazing that they've done so much already. Normal MMO's hardly even have scripted game play demo videos at this point in their dev cycle.
This is why I do not support ANYTHING from kickstarter. I could put up a fake game and get "donations", cuz thats basically what it is, and rob everybody.
They could literally take that 46.whatever million dollars and split. All the while were getting upset cuz we volunteered our hard earned money with no back up plan. Too risky. Too many people lost so much by putting faith into something. I mean it's not like your technically even investing it. your just "Donating" it.
As far as Star Citizen....this game should have been done a while ago. I've seen mmo's come out and are profitable and only started with a million dollars. Pre kickstarter days mind you. They have well over enough money to get the ball running. Hell, we could have this game early next year if they got off their asses and stop putting out crap and calling it a "taste".
I am one of the idiots who, "donated", 325$ to the development of the game over 2 years ago.........still have nothing to show for it.
Can I complain? No. I "donated" my money and signed nothing. No legal documents. No shared investment folder. Nothing.
Just be careful people.
This game has till mid 2015 to produce something worth the 325$ I "donated" to the cause, or I give up and take a 325$ loss.
It takes a fully-funded team 4-5 years to build a AAA MMO. And then it's often still buggy as hell at release, with half the players insisting it was "released too early". Considering when (and how) SC started, it's amazing that they've done so much already. Normal MMO's hardly even have scripted game play demo videos at this point in their dev cycle.
Weather you want to call it or not, DCUO, Neverwinter, etc are "AAA" games and they took less than 3 years to make and only half the money Star Citizen has. And those games, again weather you want to believe or not, facts are facts, are very successful and popular games.
Those games you mentioned also mostly has only a single focus, and that is combat - fair enough they got crafting systems, where neverwinter has their foundry - but take into consideration the amount of features which also has been announced, that is both space combat, and first person shooter mechanics, salvaging which apparently is going to be getting a very indepth gameplay mechanic fuction, you got trading, modular ship parts, as well as destructible pieces on this ships, and quite a lot more to it than I really can remember - not to mention that there might be other complications in tech that has to be developed, which takes time.
There's quite a lot more features and things to do than what you'd otherwise find in a game such as DCUO or NWN.
Plus I'm certain that setting up a proper work infrastructure is also something that takes time and is constantly iterated upon, where a game developer company such as SOE has been in "the game" for quite a lot of years compared.
just saying, with 45 millions you can hide pretty good :P
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
If the game releases in 2016 officially it will probably still be missing a lot of features that were promised . The scope and ambition of this game is huge and games take a long long time to make and polish.
Pledge if you like the game and think you'll still be alive to play it when it shines. If not just wait without thinking about it, it will come out eventually. The game is pre-alpha now, it still has a looooooooooooooooooong way to go. For those who can't wait go play something else and don't think about it anymore.
Afaik, Neverwinter was built using the tried-and-tested engine from STO. Cryptic had previously announced their intention of churning-out MMO's with 2-3 year dev cycles by re-using their core engine. Much like SOE is doing now with ForgeLight (Planetside 2, H1Z1, EQN:Landmark, EQN). Personally, I consider Neverwinter and DCUO as "B"-movies compared to Hollywood blockbusters (AAA MMOs). They are playable, but simply don't have the depth, feature lists and production values of the "big boys".
A huge budget doesn't equate to a short delivery time. In fact, I'd be inclined to think that in the case of CS, it would actually delay the delivery, if anything !
The more money they get, the more stretch goals they have to deliver. Each additional stretch goal adds an exponential increase in complexity and testing time. Testing if feature A works with feature B may take a week. But after adding feature C, you now need 2 weeks to test, because A+C and B+C have to be tested PLUS A+B+C, and so on...
Omfg.. one post full of bullshit.
Comments to texted marked in color:
What MMO was done with only one million, and within 18 month? None.. because there is non.. maybe ATITD.. but even that is in development for years and hardly to call a MMO or a game at all. Hell complete indy games like Mortal Online or Darkfall or EvE were even in the beginning a lot more expensive as just one million.. and every single one of them(or any other MMO for that matter) took a lot longer usually 5 years and more. Wildstar 7 years. Darkfall over 10 years. WoW 5+ years. In all honestly you either just talk bullshit for talking bullshit, or you are the most clueless person ever.
Yeah.. right over 2 years ago. The kickstarter for Star Citizen started Oct. 2012, and was funded(30 days) in 19. Nov 2012. That are at max 20 month.. over 2 years ago noone knew shit about it.. Therefore i somehow doubt that you pledged even shit for it.. but independet thereof everyone is responsible how many he will pledge to a game, or at all.
And if you would have pledged as much as 30$(as i pledged for SC) you would have already get something for your money, and with more coming over the next few years during the development cycle.
So.. i call you out. You are just a troll badmouthing for whatever reason a game you know obv. shit about. But go one.. troll as much as you want.. seriously noone with even half a brain can take someone like you with your bullshit seriously.
Edit: But general speaking.. everyone pledging more than 40$(basic package) and not really interested to specifically donate more to the project to give them more development money, is just stupid. For beeing interested in the game and to want to play it as fast as possible. and to get it started, that basic package is absolutely enough.. and enough for every kickstarter.. everything above is just for people which don't know where they could throw their money.. Those ships, or everything you get is just a gift as recognition for donation. Everyone how believes that those ships give you an advantage or that those not getting them have to grind month for it are completely off base.. furthermore it is Wing Commander like.. the size of the ship is not the ultimate win button.
Edit2: A link for some development costs(with source and for what it was spend) for games: http://kotaku.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-game-1501413649
For a 3 year old project that is Star Citizen, without a publisher and kicking every Dev / Pub combo in the rear, they are doing amazingly great. Now either the OP is trolling or I don't know what's going on, SW : TOR was a half billion project that didn't end up too well. ArcheAge has been in the works for about 7 years now and is still in beta. In that same time period DayZ has been redone 5 times and is still useless to this day. I can keep going for almost every single MMO listed on this site.
So yeah, in conclusion, Star Citizen is doing great. End of story.
You forgot to mention that they have a ready engine and will soon be in the top 30 most expensive games ever produced.
500million? Dude, do you even math? SWTOR cost around 200mil.
DayZ is quite unique and made quite a name for itself. It was also initially being developed by ONE GUY.
You can keep going with your misinformation.
3 years later, million and millions of dev dollars, ready engine(yeah modified but still saved YEARS of development time), 220+ developers spread out in 3-4 studios (?), outsourced development modules to several other studios and all we have is a watered down version of the DogFight Module with limited multiplayer support which probably makes up something like 5% of all the features they have promised.
"doing great" indeed.
..Cake..
I am sceptical about kickstarter but anyway, I must point out one thing. The amount of cash you have is not inversely proportional to the development time.
"I would think that 46.5 million is enough money to literally produce the game that they want in less than 18 months"
This statement from the OP doesn't make much sense - it's not like 1000 developers can create a game 5x faster than 200 developers. If you want a quality game, you must spend time to create it. The more cash you have, the more time you can spend to polish the game and ensure a successful launch.
It's projects that don't have enough funding that are made quickly - devs are people too and need to push the game out of the door so that they can pay their bills.
Seeing as SC now has 250+ people working on it, it can be classed as a BIG PROJECT. These big projects often take on a life of their own (SWTOR ?) and if the management is not tight, all kinds of unforeseen outcomes are possible.
The most benign dangers in Big Projects are "scope creep" and/or delays (the two usually go hand-in-hand). I have absolutely no doubt that SC will suffer many delays, and I'm betting they'll release "stripped-down" chunks of game content in an attempt to keep players happy as a result.
However, at this point there's no indication that the game will be a "failure" or fail to deliver. It's much too early for that, give it at least another year.
The costs for a game to develop vary. While the costs for Indie titles scale between ten and hundred thousands, the costs for AAA-MMO titles easily hit the hundred millions mark. Example: GTA V $ 265 Million (Source).
Currently, the expected to be the most expensive game ever is Destiny, the MMO developed by Bungie Soft (Publisher ActiVision). It is estimated to cost more than $ 500 Million.
A huge part of the development costs are used for marketing and promotion. Usually, this matter of cost ranges between 30-70% of the total development costs (GTA V: ~50% // Call of Duty Modern Warfare: ~70%).
And to answer your question: I think Chris Roberts would never gamble with his good name.
Wait....I'm not defending anybody here but I round out numbers too. I say FF XIV ARR is a year old. It's 9 months old.
Seems the only one trolling and starting fights is you. The guy spent his money and wants something in return. So much to ask for? No.
Also I'm sure he was talking about more than just alpha dog fights and ships. I think he meant an actual game. Not ships and stuff. Or what he refers to as a "taste". Which is exactly what they are giving us lmao.
Stop trolling dude. Stop picking fights with people here.
OMG don't say 3 years, user Apraxis will call you out and troll you to death. Be careful. He said it was 20 months and his word is law.
Games take time to develop the only reason we have a dogfighting sim at the moment is because of the extra cash they made.
Also you do not need a super computer to run this, you will be able to scale the grapihcs to suit the computer you have. The dogfihting module runs fine for me maxed out.
Sure its up to you if you trust crowd funding or not, myself I am ok with putting a bit of cash into a game that I really want to play.. Have done a few now that have released and I am really enjoying them, but i never put to much in usually at the most I will put in the equivelent of a full price game and that is for ones I really want to see get made. I can not see how it is getting out of hand at all its a perfect way for small game dev studios to fund a game that would otherwise not get made because investors only like to back games that will 100% make them cash.. usually wow clones when its coems to mmorpgs, cod clones when it comes to fps games and skyrim clones when it comes to rpgs and so on.. hell the last 10 years of mmorpgs has been terrible because of that we have been basically playing the same game just re-skinned and called something else.
Anyway of course its up to you at the end of the day and yes maybe there does need to be a bit more regulation around al lthis crowd funding but its one of the best things to happen in the industry for a very long time.
Maybe you should take your own advise from your post just above ?
Please no
"I don't give a sh*t what other people say. I play what I like and I'll pay to do it too!" - SerialMMOist
I did that's why i'm warning people. Don't round your numbers near this guy. He'll have a s%@# fit !
After all.. at least something to grin.
And my word is law
Or at least i provided facts with sources.
And i just pointed it out, because he want to make a point with it, how long it is in development without making any advancement, although it isn't very long in development and made soem advancement during that time.. and over 2 years is not around 2 years.. and that is not exactly rounding.
So yes.. be careful with spreading misinformation or i call you out.