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‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

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Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#101

Post by jellicle »

cornholio wrote: post #66

He lost because of a forced arbitration clause. This massive privatization of justice where any boilerplate service or product now comes with forced arbitration is making my blood boil. The justice system should always be an option when arbitration fails, and arbitration should take no more than a reasonable time to fail (say, two weeks for this $5000 amount). The whole point of a small claims court is to handle such…

> If the public service of justice is slow and expensive

Is small claims court slow and expensive? Not to my knowledge.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#102

Post by [deleted] »

inetknght wrote: post #81
TimTheTinker wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the public service of justice is slow and expensive, we need to fix the public service, not replace it with a free market simulacrum. Completely agreed. Prisons are another example of an essential public service that should never be privatized or outsourced.

Healthcare, too

[deleted]

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#103

Post by wavefunction »

raesene9 wrote: post #17
lykr0n wrote: post #11

I've dumped about a grand into Star Citizen over the course of 4 years. I've followed updates and developments with mild interest, and ever once and a while I jump back into it to see what's changed. It's always amazing to see the progress they have made, wither it be the engine tech or just the game play. Do I think it will come out in the next year or two? No, but I think it will. Development is on going and active…

When you say "expectations have been met", did you expect the game to take this long to develop? Looking at the original kickstarter from 2012 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen?ref=na... it looks like the original ship date was Nov 2014, so it seems that at least some people's expectations aren't likely to have been met.

The original kickstarter scope was: you are your space ship and you will be able to fight and do some trading of resources.

The scope has increased a great deal since then but I feel like the time it's taken to develop is reasonable.

I will say they wasted a year or two at the beginning trying to set up an AAA studio from scratch and mis-partenering with the wrong sub-contractors. And maybe the scope could have been limited with some of the functionality to come later.

Right now backers are testing out space mining mechanics and the game is already pretty fun imo.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#104

Post by the_snooze »

deadbunny wrote: post #65
the_snooze wrote: post #54

That sucks, but it seems almost inevitable with these new funding/purchasing models: the risk necessarily shifts from the developer and onto the consumer. This is a big reason why I'm a "patient gamer:" why should I be the one exposed to uncertainty when there are plenty of other complete and patched games out there vying for my attention?

> why should I be the one exposed to uncertainty when there are plenty of other complete and patched games out there vying for my attention? Because sometimes if you don't fund an idea that idea doesn't happen. Of course I'm not suggesting you jizz $4500 into a promise of a game like the guy in the article but throwing ten or twenty bucks behind an idea you wan't to see happen isn't always a bad idea. If it happens a…

$10 won't make or break a game's development. It'll happen (or not) with or without my tiny advance payment. I'd rather hold on to that $10 and buy an actual game now instead of gambling on the promise of one in the future.

As consumers, it's not our responsibility to support other people's open-ended projects. Let developers (and their actual publishers and investors) take on the risks themselves. It's better that way: with their skin in the game, they'll know when to say "no" to dumb features and actually get to a viable product.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#105

Post by duhi88 »

serg_chernata wrote: post #38

I'm a backer and I have no problem with this. Many AAA titles take a decade or more from start to finish. For example, between Diablo 2 and 3. I want the best space sim and I like what RSI is doing. I'm not holding my breath, just living my life and when the game is finished I will be happy to play it. Although, I also did not drop 5 grand on this game.

I'm not a backer, but your sentiment seems right. It always seemed like a game that wanted to be "the best space sim", and that is going to take a while. All the demos have looked incredible, a the features are extremely ambitious, but cool.

I think that all backers should just feel lucky the project hasn't burned through all their cash and shut down yet.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#106

Post by Retric »

cousin_it wrote: post #76

As a total newbie (well almost newbie, I've released one tiny game) I just want to ask: why not gray-box the whole damn game first, then paint rough 90s looking graphics on top, then gradually paint the whole game over with modern graphics? While tuning the gameplay the whole time? That just seems like the only sane way to build something huge, but instead all the big developers like CIG seem to start with ultra-deta…

Because art is your largest single cost and you end up developing a lot of art that's not used in the final product driving up costs.

Really all it takes to get slices is coordination among different teams so everything for each slice finishes at the same time.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#107

Post by [deleted] »

lykr0n wrote: post #88
JTbane wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do I think I've gotten $1k of enjoyment from the game back when I was playing it? Yes. Not trying to be negative, but this sounds like rationalization. There are better games for much less money.

I got a HTC Vive when it came out. I spent close to a grand for it. When I set it up, got it working, and was able to play a game I thought "I'm happy I spent this money" after a couple of minutes. It's the same with Star Citizen. I've gotten enjoyment for my money. > There are better games for much less money. Yeah. And there are better cars out there than a Lamborghini. But I still want a Lamborghini because it's a…

[deleted]

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#108

Post by skohan »

raesene9 wrote: post #47
zinckiwi wrote: post #2

I pledged a fraction of this fellow's total in Star Citizen, probably the lowest tier that would result in a digital copy of the game once complete. I was after a modern Privateer reboot, essentially, and figured it was worth the gamble. I haven't followed the development with anything more than a casual, occasional glance and accompanying eye-roll. I doubt I'll ever see anything come of it. A shame, not necessarily…

For me, Elite:Dangerous had a better model (although still not without it's troubles). They delivered the base game in reasonable order and have been iterating and adding content since then. Whilst the early game was pretty sparse in terms of content, at least it was delivered and reasonably complete.

I'm a huge fan in general of starting a project from a complete, well-polished core and growing outward gradually while maintaining quality. Once things get messy it's almost impossible to get back to that same level of refinement as if it was kept clean the whole time.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#109

Post by wavefunction »

shusson wrote: post #51
serg_chernata wrote: post #38

I'm a backer and I have no problem with this. Many AAA titles take a decade or more from start to finish. For example, between Diablo 2 and 3. I want the best space sim and I like what RSI is doing. I'm not holding my breath, just living my life and when the game is finished I will be happy to play it. Although, I also did not drop 5 grand on this game.

| Many AAA titles take a decade or more from start to finish. Yes but no AAA title has been crowed-funded to the tune of 200m before.

That seems like a non-sequitur. How does the crowdfunding aspect change how long an AAA title takes to develop?

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#110

Post by Retric »

the_snooze wrote: post #104
deadbunny wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why should I be the one exposed to uncertainty when there are plenty of other complete and patched games out there vying for my attention? Because sometimes if you don't fund an idea that idea doesn't happen. Of course I'm not suggesting you jizz $4500 into a promise of a game like the guy in the article but throwing ten or twenty bucks behind an idea you wan't to see happen isn't always a bad idea. If it happens a…

$10 won't make or break a game's development. It'll happen (or not) with or without my tiny advance payment. I'd rather hold on to that $10 and buy an actual game now instead of gambling on the promise of one in the future. As consumers, it's not our responsibility to support other people's open-ended projects. Let developers (and their actual publishers and investors) take on the risks themselves. It's better that w…

You can say the same thing about elections. However, because each choice is independent you end up collaborating with like minded people. Thus your 10$ ends up as 10,000$ from people like you.

Game theory has a lot of interesting incite into these sorts of decisions.

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