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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

#81

Post by GVIrish »

s_kilk wrote: post #52
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…

> 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.

Certainly, and perhaps I'm being a little unfair to the average consumer who got caught in the hype. As a programmer I looked at what they were saying they could deliver and figured that it was a bit too ambitious for the resources they were working with. Average people might reasonably expect that a video game developer would only show major features in demos that would make it to the final game.

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

#82

Post by GVIrish »

paulcole wrote: post #5

Amazing delusional quote, "But imagine — the game I can build with $140 million is going to be very different to the one I could build with $10 million." Yes, it sounds like the $140 million game is not going to get made at all.

Yeah I think we're far past the gold-plating stage and into platinum-plating territory. At least they've delivered playable content to backers but expanding the scope so dramatically also dramatically increases the chances of never delivering.

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

#83

Post by fapjacks »

Ralfp wrote: post #35
theandrewbailey wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any other examples? On the contrary, Elite Dangerous was received quite well. There is hype and scams all around in crowdfunded games, not just space ones, like Yogscast and Godus.

Before Star Citizen, Chris Roberts was working on Space Exploration/Trade/Combat game for Digital Anvil and Microsoft Game Studios - the Freelancer. He was ambitious, the features planned for game involved: - dynamic economy based by station/planetary production of goods, demand and supply (influenced by distances and space piracy) - known actors lending their voices to characters - hundreds of items and ships - mass…

Imagine what CR could do with ample time and money... Aaaand that's Star Citizen! It's been very exciting watching CR work, and playing the stuff he's built and released already for Star Citizen. Absolutely incredible opportunity to be a part of. I'm very happy.

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

#84

Post by chc »

abritinthebay wrote: post #77
chc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong that it could reflect an angry minority, but it's far more reliable than "I know a couple of people who liked that," which is the competing metric in this case.

Not really. That's actually a better metric in most cases if you a) trust the person saying it and b) trust their ability to review friends choices. Quite frankly I find Steam reviews to be one of the worst possible metrics and would trust the octopus that picked world cup winners more than Steam reviews.

> That's actually a better metric in most cases if you a) trust the person saying it and b) trust their ability to review friends choices.

How so? Whether or not I trust someone has no obvious bearing on whether their opinion closely matches the general consensus.

For example, I know someone who likes the 1990 version of Night of the Living Dead better than the original. I absolutely believe her on this point. But it would be ludicrous for me to say, based on her preferences, that the 1990 version is widely considered the definitive Night of the Living Dead.

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

#85

Post by kbenson »

ryandrake wrote: post #55
trimbo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> and would benefit from being on Kickstarter.

There are different funding sites with different rules and different popularity due to those rules and the vagaries of advertising and attention. Kickstarter doesn't need to cater to every type of project or business.

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

#86

Post by kelvin0 »

fapjacks wrote: post #69

I'm a High Admiral backer from November of 2012, and I feel like I've got my money's worth, and I'm not really concerned about the opinions of people that haven't put skin in the game. "This game is taking forever to be developed!" I suppose if your frame of reference is every blockbuster made by every enormous shitty studio conglomerate, sure. But saddle up or shut up as far as I'm concerned. Play what's available,…

As a High Admiral backer, you could also be a in High Commitment Bias? Not trying to be offensive.

https://www.aqr.org.uk/glossary/commitment-bias

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

#87

Post by kelvin0 »

brilliantcode wrote: post #53

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 atte…

I used to work in a small indie game studio (in the PS2 days) and the games we made had tight deadline (less than 12 months usually from start to finish). And even with such time and money constraints Scope creep would always rear it's ugly head.

I can only image what goes on when the devs are let loose in the SC candy store with so much money and wanting to live up to the hype(so to speak).

Scopeageddon, for sure.

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

#88

Post by Nomentatus »

ungzd wrote: post #2

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

I adore No Man's Sky, which accomplished something magical, and keeps expanding. I'd put games and DLC that are cheap imitations of what came before in the scam category; and there's probably less of that in SF games.

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

#89

Post by fapjacks »

raesene9 wrote: post #40

IIRC Star citizen got started in funding around the same time as Elite:Dangerous. It seems that the E:D approach has worked out rather better, in that they delivered an initial playable game that was rather lacking in some areas , and have been incrementally adding to that game over time in terms of both features and platforms supported.

As someone that bought heavily into both games, I have to be honest here when I say that E:D was a great short-term game, like many of those single-player games we're all used to. I quickly hit the grind part of E:D and stopped playing it. I should mention here that I'm an "explorer" subtype of game player, so the grind doesn't do it for me.

On the other hand, I am a very early backer of Star Citizen, and I regularly (about once a week, which is a lot for me) play the alpha and because I'm also an Imperator subscriber, I get rental credits for new ships and weapons and stuff, so there's always something new for me to try. Then there's also the knowledge that the full persistent universe ("game") is yet to come. I've got a lot of ships to fly, and an organization/clan with lots of RL friends to fly missions with. I'm stoked for all the accompanying lore being built into Star Citizen. This universe already feels lived in and detail-oriented. I am confident that I could play for a long time and still not hit the end of the road to satisfy my inner "explorer" player subtype.

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

#90

Post by gavanwoolery »

The original Wing Commander: Privateer had about 20 core team members and cost (guesstimating) around $3 million to make, inflation adjusted.

To put that in perspective, Fallout 4 cost around $150m to make (IIRC), and that was an amazingly frugal budget for such a large game (Several AAA titles have budgets twice that large).

To be honest, I would have been happy with something along the budget of the original Privateer. And that would have probably left him lots of wiggle room to experiment and engage in research-esque goals.

I cant be too angry at him for being ambitious, or even changing his goals, but the #1 thing Roberts did wrong IMO was accelerating to AAA-style development and growing the team to 400 large before even really knowing what he wanted to develop. Spending a $100k+ on mocap and acting as early as he did is like producing a movie and then writing the script for it after the fact.

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