Yeah, right now we’re in a holding pattern of sorts. Indies are taking up the torch, but because of Star Citizen’s…colorful journey, it’s unlikely AAA studios will invest in space games. If it crashes, which it likely will, they can say they were right not to make Call of Duty Infinite Whatever 3.
If SC is, by some miracle, a success, then maybe, MAYBE we’ll see some AAA investment in space games, but I feel that sort of thing died with the 90s.
Yup! Time to read again. ;)
What would “success” even look like for star citizen now? I feel like they’ve made 90% of the money they’ll ever make, even if they do release a 1.0 product one day. I very much doubt they’ll acquire new customers at this point, anybody who might be interested already has an opinion and is in or is out.
Basically, they’ve already hit their long-tail $1 humble bundle sale point for the average user. All that’s left is milking whales, and it’s not like that’s an unproven concept.
There are still lot of PC gamers who are waiting and did not give them a dime - me, for example - and there are always console gamers. Not this gen (PC gamers would crucify them if there was PS4 release I think) but for PS5 and XTwo, why not. If the game actually gets finished and is good, it can still sell millions more copies.
That’s the theory, I guess…but I’m skeptical. I don’t know ow what the typical pre-post funding revenue breakdown is for crowdfunded title in general, although I don’t know that it would apply to star citizen.
That being said, it isn’t ever going to release a 1.0, so its mostly an academic question.
geewhiz
6141
I am assuming you mean the original Star Citizen/Squadron 42 design - not what it bloated into.
Why? A commonly given piece of advice is: if you haven’t bought into it and don’t absolutely want to support development, wait for the finished game. See what it’s like. It’s been given here and elsewhere many times and not all gamers are that keen to spend money on a project with an uncertain outcome and release date.
As for Derek, it’s fine to have legitimate concerns and air them, but, by his own admission, it is a full blown obsession these days and he spends his free time alternating between writing about why the game is doomed and actually trolling the devs, the backers, calling Chris a scammer, the backers fools, …
It goes well beyond airing concerns and it’s no wonder his relationship with the star citizen universe is purely antagonistic. There is nothing really constructive in his contribution nowadays, unless you count shouting “The sky is about to fall any second now!” For the 20th time in as many months (made up number warning) as constructive or interesting. And you wonder why so many people tune him out by now.
When it comes to the very obvious fraud that is being perpetrated by Chris Roberts and his company, I’ll take Derek’s vehement waving off of future potential suckers over those who enable the fraud to continue to perpetuate itself any day of the week.
All good. Though I hope 3.0 and coming quarterly releases will also lead to more posts like Timex’s. It’s good to have the game itself, such as it is right now, discussed from time to time, rather than a thread made of constant venom.
Brooski
6146
I’m not sure I understand why AAA publishers would take an ultimate failure of Star Citizen to be indicative of the lack of a market for space sims - if the game got more support than any crowdfunded game ever, and then didn’t fulfill that demand, wouldn’t that be evidence both for continued demand and opportunity?
It’s both evidence of demand and a parable on the inherent dangers of crowdfunding.
It also speaks somewhat to the cult of personality surrounding Roberts.
I…guess…Squadron 42 being fully released and actually good?
Skipper
6149
I appreciate your comments because I KNOW you’ve seen the flip side of all of this. I agree with your assessment 100%, by the way. This game, as promised, will never be made. What we might get is a small piece of it, but even then, I’m not sure I want to support anything like that.
I read posts like Timex’s and they give me hope, but the older I get, the more jaded I am about controversial game projects like this. Fool me once, and all that.
Post crowdfunding revenue normally is several times the crowdfunding amount. Basically, regular crowdfunding values projects at about 1/3 to 1/2 of their budget, so if this wasn’t the case successfully crowdfunding projects would be considered bombs.
That said, this is less common the higher the crowdfunding, but it’s still a hood rule of.thumb even into the $1 million projects. Star Citizen is different and I really doubt the pattern would hold, unless the end product is truly spectacular.
There’s also the potential issue that you get with any long-delayed, long-gestation project, and that is a sort of senescence due to technology moving on faster than game development can keep up. In other words, the slow pace of development means that at some point you lock into tech that by the time you release is out of date. Dunno if that will be the case here but any time a project is this delayed–regardless of the other drama–I get a bit antsy anyhow.
JeffL
6152
Yeah, if I’m a suit at a AAA company, I’m looking at SC and thinking, hey, there are a LOT of people willing to pay a LOT of money for a game like this. And there are a LOT of people who would pay big bucks for add-ons. I’d be waiting for SC to collapse and try to be ready to move in and grab those who were sending their money to CR and company.
At the least, I’d be having people write up what a development plan would look like.
That’s certainly possible, but I think a lot of evidence points to the guys with the money – publishers – being very risk averse when it comes to committing 9-figure budgets and 3-5 year dev cycles to game creation. If/when Star Citizen’s house of cards comes crashing down, there are going to be lawsuits, settlements, and PR disasters all over the place.
If you’re controlling the purse strings of a major publisher and someone says “AAA Space game”, you consider the hypothetical Star Citizen crashdown, and then you’re considering No Man’s Sky and the negative publicity that engendered…and then you’re probably thinking “Fuck that. Make me another Far Cry/Elder Scrolls/Fallout/Assassin’s Creed/Call of Duty/Battlefield instead.”
Do you think there’s an exception to be made for a game like xwing/tie fighter? Still a “space game”, but tied into a strong license, and without all that open world walking simulator stuff others have going on. Or does the new battlefront II game sort of cover that niche?
It’s a bit off topic, but the main thing I took away from watching a Let’s Play of Battlefront 2 to see if the game might be good enough to purchase for half off despite the loot box debacle, was that I really wish they would just go all in on an all space battle version and leave out the loot boxes next time.
