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Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

nytimes.com

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Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#51

Post by ssully »

abritinthebay wrote: post #44
coralreef wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly negative across 73k reviews. I'll grant there is a lot of bandwagon hating, and that art is subjective. But this is the best data we have to use as a proxy for quality. http://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/#app_re...

Steam reviews? Yeah, there's never any good reviews for a backlashed Steam game. Steam as a platform is great, but as a community it's a bigger dumpster fire than 4chan.

My friend and I periodically just screen cap steam reviews to each other because of how ridiculous they are.

Games are consistently dog piled on by various communities and enraged fans who are upset by a game update.

It's a shame because the review system has a lot of near features, but the community is completely untrustworthy.

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#52

Post by s_kilk »

GVIrish wrote: post #17
ungzd wrote: post #2

"Space exploration" games have strange tendency for hyper-hype and scams, for example recently released No Man's Sky.

I don't think No Man's Sky was scam so much as it was a game where the hype far outran what was realistically possible. I mean, there's only so much a small indie studio can get done in a year or two, so people expecting the moon were just being unreasonable. In the case of Star Citizen we're deep into gold-plating territory, wouldn't be surprised if it became a Duke Nukem Forever. But even then, Chris Roberts is gen…

> so people expecting the moon were just being unreasonable

To be fair, the devs demo'd some supposedly in-game footage which was much better and more compelling than what shipped in the end.

Peoples expectations were set high, because the devs actually promised a lot of cool stuff on record.

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#53

Post by brilliantcode »

My theory is scope creep. These guys have done a good job of convincing people that they can live the ultimate space exploration fantasy that's been talked about since the 80s.

It's the ultimate simulation. We know very little about space and even fiction (ex. star wars) seems to generate even more demand.

As people got excited and started throwing money at them, so did the scope obviously. I love Star Citizen's attention to detail but it's suffice to say that they've hit people's patience.

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#54

Post by aeturnum »

The Star Citizen tech is really impressive looking. I love watching their demo videos because they just look amazing.

Their development process seems inefficient from afar. They've switched engines at least once, maybe twice? They've announced titles that then kind of fade into the background. They build really detailed systems for simulating light / gravity / thrust in ways that seem impressive & unrelated to gameplay.

It kind of reminds me of Overgrowth, though with a whole lot more money (and charging users a whole lot more as well). I'd be interested to see, in 5 years or so, what the final-ish product looks like (I don't mean they're 5 years from release, I mean in 5 years they'll be past release).

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#55

Post by ryandrake »

trimbo wrote: post #48
locust101 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be true for this particular game but the lack of checks and balances on kickstarter is troubling.

> the lack of checks and balances on kickstarter is troubling The check and balance you're looking for is traditional capital investment, I think? Because if all things on Kickstarter clear a bar of "this is a sound business", then those projects probably wouldn't need Kickstarter. edit: for clarity

That sounds like a generalization. There are probably lots of sound businesses that do not have access to traditional capital investment, and would benefit from being on Kickstarter. Additionally, there are businesses that do not clear a bar of "this is a sound business" that have had heaps of traditional capital investment. We are talking about sets with only some overlap.

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#56

Post by AnOscelot »

dkns wrote: post #36
GVIrish wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think No Man's Sky was scam so much as it was a game where the hype far outran what was realistically possible. I mean, there's only so much a small indie studio can get done in a year or two, so people expecting the moon were just being unreasonable. In the case of Star Citizen we're deep into gold-plating territory, wouldn't be surprised if it became a Duke Nukem Forever. But even then, Chris Roberts is gen…

The owner/lead developer (I don't know what position exactly Sean Murray holds) straight up lied about features in NMS (e.g. multiplayer) that weren't there nor will be ever added so I'd say it was a scam.

If it's a scam, he's not scamming very well. A scammer would have taken the big payday and done little else. Whereas Hello Games has released a couple of large updates, and quite a few smaller updates / bugfixes, with more planned.

The evidence largely points to a developer who is good at his core job, but inexperienced at managing hype. And who was overly optimistic about what he and his team can accomplish in X amount of time. Based on how Hello Games is acting & communicating now, I think they've learned their lesson.

And I sympathise a little with them because I was once the overly optimistic team lead in my younger days, and had to get burnt a few times before I learned my lesson.

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#57

Post by [deleted] »

ssully wrote: post #51
abritinthebay wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam reviews? Yeah, there's never any good reviews for a backlashed Steam game. Steam as a platform is great, but as a community it's a bigger dumpster fire than 4chan.

My friend and I periodically just screen cap steam reviews to each other because of how ridiculous they are. Games are consistently dog piled on by various communities and enraged fans who are upset by a game update. It's a shame because the review system has a lot of near features, but the community is completely untrustworthy.

[deleted]

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#58

Post by manarth »

sbov wrote: post #20

It seems like a safer use of extra funding is for free expansions. It may seem unfair to take $140 million and build a $10 million game, but people funded you with your $10 million game, deadlines included, in mind.

  It may seem unfair to take $140 million and build a $10 million game
If a film spent $10M, and turned $140M at the box office, it would be seen as a success, rather than a con. Should a game be any different?

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#59

Post by giobox »

xxr wrote: post #45

Am I correct in my understanding that every dollar pledged essentially pushes the release further into the future since the developer is on the hook to add something extra with that dollar? Not that each dollar comes with a signed and sworn commitment, but more that the $500,000 game probably would have been out and actively enjoyed already.

I may be misunderstanding too, but every time I read another story on Star Citizen's development, it certainly seems that way, and Robert's own comments suggest he will keep spending every dollar to make "the best possible" game. It certainly suggests that even if he isn't legally on hook to spend it all, he will try.

He's arguably painted himself into an unfortunate corner by not imposing a fund raising cap - morally/ethically you could argue he has no choice but to try to spend all the dollars - to simply pocket 'the extra' cash would leave a bad taste in backers mouths I imagine, especially when they are effectively donations.

I can't help but feel that when he reached 9 figures Roberts maybe should have considered closing the donations for a while...

Re: Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

#60

Post by ryandrake »

tracker1 wrote: post #18

I'm not sure why they didn't just "Build the $10m game" and release that, then spend the rest on expansions to that game. Would have been a much more predictable approach (assuming the original game is setup to be appropriately expandable.

Or build the $10M game and return the remaining $130M to the backers, proportionally?

My question is: What would he do if he got an extra $300M? Increase the scope even more? At what point do you stop increasing scope and concentrate on shipping a product?

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