Yep. Pretty much my point, in a nutshell. And yeah, this is going to be a thing to behold when the denouement arrives.
They didn’t really get $175 million in revenue before they delivered a product, did they?
This flips the risk model of game development, or any business venture for that matter. Typically you invest capital as an expense while convincing an investor you will give them a return. Everything is driven from this model, it’s about delivering, about figuring out scope and work, managing time on a deadline, managing resources, all the things that being a good company is known for.
If you get the revenue first and it makes you profitable immediately this model flips. You already have the money and therefore have no investment, and no reason to deliver on anything. All the lessons we learned from hundreds of years of business and labor management go out the window. There is no reason to innovate, deliver, scope, manage, or anything else.
No wonder this is such a mess. No wonder it will never get delivered. These guys pulled a scam and are laughing all the way to the bank.
The only way I see this is as a cautionary tale. There needs to be a huge class action lawsuit to get all this money back from the “developer” to the backers. What a scam.
Absolutely agreed. And that’s what some of us have been saying for years. And the worst thing they could possible do right now, is actually ship a game - of any kind.
Gameplay in a nutshell.
Something still looks seriously wrong with their flight model. Maybe I’m misjudging from the video, but it still looks like things lack inertia and mass like I’d expect. I don’t get the feel he’s flying a ship; when he launches VTOL style, it looks like he’s moving up with a debug camera or something, not a heavy ship building up speed under lift.
All the Star Citizen videos I’ve seen have seemed that way, but early on I just thought it was because it was…well, early. Maybe I’m totally wrong, though, because I haven’t actually tried it myself.
I don’t know about that. There are plenty of people that would buy a good game if they make it.
The worst thing they could do is use up all of the money and ship nothing, at least if they ship something they can get some money.
I was excited for this project, but I don’t like kickstarter outside of small things (and that MST3K thing) so I didn’t back this.
The “best” thing they could do?
Coming in Beta, Star Citizen: Battle Royale
True, but that game costs significantly less than a single JPEG. Why sell a $60 game that disappoints/people get bored with when you can sell a screenshot for a future game for $200 or even $2000?
Someone explain this whole jpeg thing. Why the heck would someone buy a jpeg? Certainly it’s a placeholder for future content, right? And $2000? Give me the hurr durr explanation.
I think @KevinC means a pic of a promised ship. If the game never comes out than all you ever got was a jpg of a ship.
But $2000 for a ship model? That can’t be right. Is it completely customized to your specs and scratch built in a 3D modeler or something? It’s insane. $2.99 is a good price for a new ship.
$2000 for an in-game ship that’s yet to be implemented, not a physical model.
It’s pretty much the height of wit in this thread. Ship / vehicle concepts available for purchase are called jpegs. Many have been implemented into flyable ships by now. But I certainly agree that buying ships that aren’t even in game yet can raise eyebrows. It’s how SC generates quite a bit of revenue.
This is in addition to the Kickstarter money? Wow. There must be a dire need for some people to play space games.
Are there no other competing projects? Daaaaamn.
For some odd definition of “flyable”, looking at videos.
Care you cite your sources? Because according to our metrics, not even 25% of the ships have made it into the game. Not to mention that, like with this new ship which they pulled out of their arse, they keep increasing the game’s scope as well as the engineering debt because that’s the only way to raise money now. Nobody is dumb enough to pay $45 for the game now. So it’s the whales stuck in Sunk Cost Fallacy who are the ones buying JPEGs.
There are: Dual Universe, Infinity Battlescape, and of course my own on-going Universal Combat series which i am currently updating via DLA. But none of those have the sort of backers that SC has attracted. Then again, we don’t resort to scam tactics to fund our games.
I didn’t mention the upcoming X4 because it’s a different kind of game that’s not out yet. And Elite Dangerous is already out, but caters to completely different type of audience.
Chris Roberts promised them every single dream they could possibly come up with. $185M and 7 yrs later, he has yet to deliver on even 15% of that. And they still only have a glorified tech demo.
I wonder how it would have done on a platform like Fig.
Ok, serious question. Not including voice acting and initial art style/concept art fees, how much would a game like Freelancer cost to develop? Including art asset creation as a separate line item. What I’m getting at is what’s the percentage balance between development and design(the development bstuff) and image/texture creation (the art stuff) and as far as budget? This is kinda becoming a big question, perhaps I need to research myself, but have no starting point.
Or, has anyone thought to license the infinite worlds engine/code from the guys who did the big starship game that everyone threw a tizzy over? That game also probably hurt the genre.
Elite has cosmetic skins and detail packs for its ships:
But you can’t buy the actual ships outside of the game, they’re all included in the purchase price. ;)