Star Citizen crowdfunding passes $750M
robertsspaceindustries.com
robertsspaceindustries.com
The game design is a bit grindy, whatever, lets grind away then, however any time I start to make any progress the game crashes. After two or three of these I loose interest. Only to try again in 6 months to much the same results.
They appear to be following a long term slow burn development plan, nothing wrong with this many of my favorite games follow this same pattern, factorio, valheim, however these games follow the cardinal rule of public development which is "keep it stable" it has been 10 years and star citizen still is a crashy mess.
They have a lot of neat tech in their engine, seamless space to surface to inside to instance is not trivial. But I wish they would just sit down for a quarter and stabilize the thing. I like to joke that the elevators in the game are probably some of their most advanced tech, the punchline is that if you have played the game you know that most of the crashes and other weirdness involve elevators. but I am only half-joking. because the elevators really are connecting zones and instances in a cool seamless way.
Every so often, when a new update comes out, I check out some let's player who will, in a span of an hour, will run into some incredibly basic and fundamental bug, like clipping through an elevator and getting ejected into space, or being unable to get through a door that's supposed to open.
Honestly the whole game feels years away from release.
But Star Citizen has all the hallmarks of too much ambitions, too many people, and poor management. They have over a thousand people working on it and have for a long time now. And that scale isn't the problem - Rockstar did the same with RDR 2 and will likely exceed it with GTA VI - but while the main guy has some games under his belt, they too had problems with development and actually finishing.
The main problem in this case was SC's game director. He was around for nine years and set the scope/goals/roadmap for the game before being abruptly fired 9 months ago and replaced. Through the grape vine I've heard he never provided a long-term vision for the project internally whilst constantly promising new things to the community (ie scope creep).
The new game director, Rich, is well liked within the development team and much of the recent CitizenCon event was spent cutting back scope and providing an actual goal for SC 1.0 to release as.
And at some scale, it's difficult to determine if you are actually making slow progress or deluding yourself and rebuilding the same system for the third time.
Similarly, infinite runway means you can infinitely postpone worrying about stability. "We're still working on features" etc.
On the one hand I am fine with this. on the other I vaguely expect DCS levels of systems simulation from the ships and I don't see that ever happening.
like one of the top level comments observes - the sold product is hope that it gets done, not the deliverable.
The team seems genuine, and donations aren't slowing down, so it seems likely that the game will materialize in some complete form eventually
'Content' meaning 'stuff', or 'content' meaning 'happy? Or both?
But you don't want decent or even good from a project that's spent over 12 years in development with over $700 million of development costs. You want a genre defining masterpiece that puts pretty much everything else in the genre (or even industry) to shame.
I'm not sure it'll be possible to deliver that, at least to the degree you'd expect from a game this expensive. At a certain level of development time/costs, expectations become so high that it's almost impossible not to disappoint everyone with the finished product. And I think Star Citizen passed that point a long time ago.
I mean Cyberpunk's launch was terrible as well because it too didn't get the basics right - crashes, poorly/slowly loading textures, etc.
https://insider-gaming.com/cloud-imperium-games-layoffs-repo...
They don't have much in the bank. They burn over 100 mil a year on headcount.
"Finally I can be at the forefront of a gaming community just how I dreamt of when I was a kid. And in this particular gaming community, I don't even have to waste a minute playing!" It's suspension of disbelief pushed ahead one more level, a simulation of a space ship sim game. Think virtual virtual skeeball in Futurama s01e02. Just how kids who dream of risking their lives in a space-Spitfire don't really want to risk their lives in a space-Spitfire, grown ups who dream of sinking countless hours in a game of space-Spitfires don't really want to sink countless hours in a game of space-Spitfires. Both just don't quite know it yet, and profoundly enjoy that.
It's a released game that is constantly evolving and getting money from in-game purchases, like Fortnite.
Play this game: http://passage.toolness.org/
It's 5 minutes long.
Read the creator's discussion on it: https://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/statement.html
Hardly seems consumeristic. And there's a huge pile of games like this out there.
I share your appreciation of Passage, it is a poem by another shape and a truly _different_ thing. Thank you for even mentioning it, it made my day.
Sure. None of those are necessary.
If I sing a song to myself, is that consumerism?
If someone else hears my singing and enjoys it, with no discussion of payment or exchange from either side, is that consumerism?
Either way, real question; are nft's still being traded?
The community I grew up in could not accurately be described as poor, but money was tighter than in a lot of places. So people in this community prize getting good value for money, and not being tricked into wasting money.
I don't care if that Funko Pop plastic figurine or that Magic The Gathering card is actually an investment that will go up in value, I ain't collecting shit.
In my mind, the collectables market is only for a small fraction of the population - fools, and people with more money than sense.
Still, even with all of the money sunk into Cyberpunk 2077, its ~$450 million budget pales in comparison to Star Citizen.
They still have people problem as pay in CDPR is pathetic compared to other studios and not much top talent want to work there.
Cyberpunk 2077 budget was overblown thanks to that + ~50% of that was spend on marketing I would assume there were also a lot of IP "costs" so overall "production" cost was probably about ~30-40% of the budget.
$750m is the right order of magnitude for this game. That's "only" ~400 employees for ~10 years. Games are hugely labour intensive, and in mainstream cases also hugely advertising intensive. The company currently have ~60 open roles. Your average Call of Duty game is $100-200m, and they come out with one every year or two, spending at a similar rate. The budget for GTA V was $265m, but has now made $8bn.
I don't think we can even say that it's "bad" or "unfinished" and therefore shouldn't cost this much... the game is finished in the truest of senses – it's available to buy and brings in revenue. Whether they are continuing development, whether it currently sucks, etc, are all somewhat irrelevant.
I think we can judge it for being a bad game, I think we can judge it for not being cash-flow positive like we would with any other startup, but the amount of money involved is seemingly in the right ballpark for the market.
So at least the EU and UK believe these transactions to be sales.
I'm very impressed they managed to raise this kind of money with a site like this.
It looks like a game in alpha, very very buggy, very little content. I am amazed at the time it takes them to add stuff, with a budget of 65 million things should have been going steadily but every time there is an update they promise not much to start with and even then always cancel things.
Personally I am absolutely convinced it’s a scam, they have to improve the game for legal reason but do the bare minimum and focus more on adding new ship they can sell than actual gameplay feature.
The ships by themselves are works of art. And their main funding apparatus, so of course the put an inordinate amount of effort towards this.
The bugs are definitely a problem, though they are migrating the entire infrastructure at the moment into a highly available cluster that is intended to keep all players on a single persistent universe like Eve online.
The combat is pretty good, but much of the game breaks down because of poorly performing code/servers.
I think their current clusters accumulate a lot leaks that eventually degrade the experience.
I'd honestly be very curious what their internal architecture looks like in more detail.
That's twice or perhaps triple the amount of money and time spent on Grand Theft Auto V. A great game that consistently scores 9 or 10 out of 10 on every single list you find it.
I found it easier to believe that is a scam that to believe they will put out a game twice as good than GTA V.
They keep reworking everything over and over and over again.
And at this point why wouldn't they? Their customers have pretty much shown they'll continue to pay for all of that rework in perpetuity.
- In a broad sense GTA V has fewer gameplay features and smaller constructed playable areas: Star Citizen is a bigger game, it is natural that it is more expensive. Your comment doesn’t really refute the point that SC spends its money on mechanics and infrastructure (though it seems to me that they spend a stupid amount of money on cosmetics).
- Star Citizen has fancier graphics and more detailed assets - RDR2 is a more relevant comparison here and that game was $500m.
- The GTA V figure is for a single-player game and (on release) a fairly middling and empty online mode. It does not include ongoing development costs for GTA Online, which has grown substantially over the years. GTA V + Online would be a more appropriate comparison: the $750m for Star Citizen includes ships added in 2023, but the GTA figure doesn’t include cars in 2023.
I would add that the $2bn estimate for GTA VI is credible based on Take-Two’s financial reports.
I feel that comparison is flawed, seeing as most of that was for advertising.
If we go purely by development funds, one would have to combine GTA V [0], RDR2 [1] and Cyberpunk 2077's [2] budget.
That would still be $100 million short of the $750 million that RSI has as yet received purely for development. Add to that, you are comparing finished (albeit in the case of CP77 at launch at most feature complete, which is why I also included Phantom Liberty) titles to something that only approaches pre alpha state, considering it only has a limited number of core features implemented. How everything they intend to offer will interact with eachother can't even be tested and I have my personal reservations that once we get to that alpha stage, it will be smooth sailing.
I also feel that while one can argue that GTA V by itself may not have had the same amount of features and scope that have been promised with Star Citizen, I feel one equally can argue that the latter definitely will have less scope than the three named games combined, should there ever be a full release.
> the $750m for Star Citizen includes ships added in 2023, but the GTA figure doesn’t include cars in 2023
Yeah, but RSI intends to sell ships and expand the game beyond the initial full release, so I don't see how that changes things.
Fully admitting that I personally inherently dislike this approach to development. I feel that not having a somewhat fixed budget, no matter whether from the community, an investor, or (in the case of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night) a mix of both, creates the inherent incentive to sell your most faithful supporters on an ever expanding vision, to the detriment of them, your development team, and your long-term reputation. I feel history has shown with cases such as Minecraft that a one-time sale during early development is far better at both keeping development focused and raining in overambition, as you are more interested in selling to new rather than existing customers, thus being incentivized to improve the experience for everyone by creating a finished, polished product.
I know that the community was asked each time about expansions and additional features, but emotional investment and the sunk cost fallacy always made that an unfair argument, in my opinion. Despite my misgivings, I also would not consider it a scam, at least not more so than any other (gacha or micro/macro transaction-laden) game that benefits from selling digital goods to players that dehumanizingly are called "whales". I do, however, consider this a reincarnation of DNF, the engine changes and consistent attempt to hit rapidly moving targets feels stricking, though mercifully, at least that didn't have seemingly infinite funding.
[0] estimated at $130 million to $150 million
[1] estimated at $170 million to $240 million
[2] estimated at $120 million to $140 million with an additional 275 million PLN (about $65 million) for Phantom Liberty and bug fixes
And in the end, there was no game.
The community overwhelmingly voted for the scope screep. Myself included.
They could freeze the features now, fix the bugs, and finish the content and it'd be the best space game ever.
But the vision is bigger than that for better or for worse.
I really do have a lot of fun with it right now when it's not bugging out. Which changes like the seasons.
In 10 years with that amount of money surely they could hire very talented people to manage development of server backend. The state in which the game is currently is a disgrace. It should be done or close to the end, not still at the beginning where you’re trying to make everything persistent. The infrastructure is what takes the most time and what you build first, like a house foundation. Instead they made the roof and the wall, sold them with lots of promise and now are working on foundations. I sure wouldn’t trust or buy from a such a contractor.
A lot of us did.
He's not a scammer, we know who he is, flaws and all.
The project might fail, though I don't think it will, but it really doesn't make sense that he would be running a scam.
He wants this game as much as anyone.
Technical mistakes and all that kind of stuff make sense and aligns much more with what I have seen over the course of my career.
I do agree that they could move faster on the backend infrastructure if they had the right talent, but they started off really small over 10 years ago. They basically bootstrapped all their knowledge and talent.
In 2015.
Though the incentive to release is definitely weaker due to them making so much money prior to official release.
I'm watching from a distance.
Supposedly, the single player Squadron 42 part of Star Citizen is feature complete, and if they can get that out of the door will be telling on what the MMO release would be like. Personally, I'm expecting Squadron 42 to be comparable to other releases that year, but better voice acting, more jank, PC only, and poor controller support. And given the focus on 'players making their own story', I'm expecting the MMO to suffer the same reception as Elite Dangerous with a shiny engine trying to hide tedious and repetitive game play (but many people like that, and it might remain a profitable niche game).
So, perhaps you (for example) will never, ever be interested in playing the game for anywhere near the amount of time that would justify the cost of entry, but for the specific space exploration / worldbuilding experience that Star Citizen provides, and for the people that want exactly that, it was and is a fantastic game.
I'm probably missing your point, but it sounds like you've answered your own question.
In another 10 years I'll add "of old age" to the wonder
I can no longer remember a time where the internet wasn't waiting for Star Citizen haha
Why’d you jump into these SC threads? There’s an interest, clearly.
instead of just getting the promised game out the door, and then creating some large free content updates as time progresses.
its getting a bit redicilous
i mean, they have motion capture and voice acting from mark hamill and Gary oldman (and probably more) and they're gonna die before the game is released
Another POV is that it would be much simpler to have waited 10 years and developed NFTs in 2021 instead.
If you have the skills to hype an aesthetic experience for a broad audience; and you’re so cynical as to not really do anything; just make a shitcoin. Make an NFT. Doing all this other work is a huge waste of time.
It needs BEEF to run and macs are not capable of that much cow.
Golden the Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh!
Although, $75 million is still impressive.
Edit: I stand corrected. I simply looked at the website which listed the stretch goals to $65 million and missed the $750 million total. Cowabunga.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-funded_crowd...
They also claim around 5 million backers which puts the average donation at around 150 dollars. That seems really high.
From the wikipedia article, the next highest game is Prison Architect at a comparatively paltry 20 million.
It's still possible. On the other hand, it could all be completely PR bull crap since there's no way to audit them.
+ the $750m only includes ship sales. If you include other revenue (subscriptions) and investors, they are likely at $900m+ now.
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
EDIT: From Companies House Next accounts made up to 31 December 2023 due by 31 December 2024.
So I guess we'll find out in roughly a month.
Check out the store, its absurd what they are able to charge for completely digital assets that don't even exist in game yet
10 years of development, 750 millions budget and people are still not convinced it’s a scam ? They want it so much, damn.
Chris Roberts might be a huge con artist, but there's no doubt he's mastered the art of milking gullible whales for all of their cash.
Also, I always laugh when I see people talking about buying copies of Star Citizen for their kids so they can play together when the kid grows up. Seems pretty unlikely that the game will be out by then, given they've spent 10+ years with no meaningful progress.
On the other hand we have the Asmodee Digital business model: release an (initially) broken game somewhat on schedule with tons of bugs (Terraforming Mars) and only start fixing a few of the bugs if you sell enough copies [0]. But don't fix enough of them to the level where the digital version is as playable as the physical version, not for 5 years at least... in all sincerity I don't know why it's not acceptable to call something a beta release, price it and set expectations accordingly - but with a defined timeline (or revenue goal) to when it should become fully playable.
I'm also reminded of the failed Mycroft AI voice assistant [1].
[0]: https://videogamegeek.com/thread/2206151/cthulhu-reviews-ter... [1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=mycroft+ai
if the people involved in the management were half decent at their jobs they would have stopped expanding the scope and shipped the originally promised game 5 years ago, and then carried on releasing expansions like elite does.
I'm really surprised that they are still raising money this fast. I would have thought people lost interest. Most of the discussions online are negative. There was fans buying ships, but I can't see that generating that much money.