No. Not really.
If that’s indeed Derek Smart, this will just turn this thread into the Derek Smart show (he already has a blog for that) and increase the noise to signal ratio by a large number.
Those of us actually interested in the game and the modules coming out have actually had interesting discussions with some of the posters here. Ribbing or not, this was still a SC thread.
I can’t quite think of another thread on Qt3 quite like this one. Fitting, given the questions surrounding SC’s status. But does it need added Derek Smart?
Canuck
1903
I don’t get this phenomenon. Regardless of what the truth ends up being, it’s clear that there are some very disconcerting issues going on at that company. The last thing I would do after reading all the fuss is think to myself, “I’m going to go out and drop $950 (or $60) on this game.”
It all seems fantastical but who would be devious enough to create a sock puppet account in 2002 and then sit on it for 13 years, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to pull it out?
Well, interestingly, through the rabbit hole of DS links I found this fascinating spreadsheet measuring the pledge amounts and backers for the whole campaign.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tMAP0fg-AKScI3S3VjrDW3OaLO4zgBA1RSYoQOQoNSI/htmlview?pli=1#gid=1694467207
I’m very interested in the following graph:
As we can see there was a significant uptick on average pledge towards the end of 2013. they where at $35 million then. Since then the average has been dropping steadily, suggesting the effect of whales, while significant, is not necessarily the only driving force (we are assuming a $50 minimum pledge, that makes $50 the absolute minimum that number could be). As a wild guess at those numbers, and assuming most new pledges will not be at a minimum, it seems we are seeing around 50% of funding driven by new pledges and of 50% of funding driven through whales.
I don’t think Derek joining the conversation necessarily means we’re not going to be able to have interesting discussions. I also don’t think it’s necessarily going to be the Derek Smart show. I trust that you guys – and Derek, of course – are able to keep the discussion from becoming a mass of noise. It’s not like the forum will suddenly fall apart under the weight of Derek’s personality. I hope. :)
Besides, it’s not like there’s much of an actual game for us to discuss yet. How much can the thread be derailed at this point? And like it or not, Derek’s actions on the sidelines is at the very least a footnote to Star Citizen’s development.
-Tom
I’ve been watching the SCvsDS storm and as a fellow game developer, I have an ethics issue.
I have always (I hope) refrained from bashing other developers games. I can share an opinion, but I try to restrict myself to being positive about other people’s games. There’s plenty of people that can criticize games without having “a dog in the fight”.
Now, I’m not sure how to take Mr. Smart’s crusade against Star Citizen? Doesn’t he have a long standing business in the “space game” genre, competing to Star Citizen? Doesn’t he benefit indirectly by a “failing” SC?
I see he addresses this a little bit here: http://www.dereksmart.org/2015/08/lod-v-sc/ but more to the point of “different games” which I’m not sure I agree with.
Your thoughts on that?
I’ve not given money to SC, it looks nice and I’ll probably play it. I did play Wing Commander 1/2 back in the day and enjoyed them very much. Looking from outside, I don’t find the 3 year and counting dev time so long, but then I’ve worked for Ubisoft for a number of years ;) SC is done mostly from scratch, not building on existing projects and trying indeed to do A LOT. What would one expect?
Dan @ KillHouse Games
Interesting. Do they break down the population into $ brackets somewhere on that locked sheet? My phone can’t really keep up to it.
That’s a fairly strong base of continuing new subscribers. The ever increasing price of the ‘first class’ options must primarily function as a way of increasing the perceived value of the base buy in.
I did find the linear funding forecast vaguely amusing. The longer this goes on the faster that line will come crashing down.
Well, I think I made a couple wrong assumptions :P
First, the number of Citizens is not the number of backers. There’s a number of backers that can be obtained, and it is indeed lower than “citizens”. It’s not at 766k backers. there are right now 235k accounts that do not have alpha access.
Second, the graph tracks average pledge per citizen, so it doesn’t take into account the 23% of citizens that do not have a game package (ie, they might have backed, but not enough to qualify to access to the alpha).
This makes it very hard to track average pledge numbers. We know now 76.5% of citizens do have at least a game package ($50 at current prices) and that on February 2015 (I’m choosing this because in March there was a huge influx of non-backing subscribers) that was at 83%. So indeed there has been more non-backing subscribers int he last months (biggest influx was in March 2015 by far). Which probably means the average pledge per alpha-access backer is indeed going up or at the very least stable (hinting at a bigger contribution by whales).
Edit: because this interests me as a case study, I got the average pledge per alpha-access backer.
Pretty flat graph, with upticks (the last couple of days it seems it has been mostly already extant backers raising pledges, but also downticks that point to a pretty even and average distribution of the funding over time. It is obvious the last few days (citizen con) have been driven by whales, since we have the huge uptick there).
Btw, I agree with you with this being unsustainable. There has to be a ceiling of subscribers/backers to this (it is a niche genre after all). All common sense knowledge of what that ceiling is was obliterated a while ago by the campaign, so it’s a wild guess where it would be, but they have to be getting very close.
It is typical F2P business knowledge (this is not exactly the same, but close) that says that once you attain certain popularity, the more installs you have the more expensive/harder it is to get more installs. How many people are there left who don’t know about this yet, but could be convinced to pledge?
$100 million mark may be interesting. Good a time as any to ask for a return on investment.
It’s being discussed openly and broke into press, which is a watershed moment. You can’t go back from that, hence Roberts panicked response.
I’m sure they’ve got all the ~40 year old wing commander fans and are grabbing a few of the more mainstream gamers. Probably more to be had if they can keep massaging the hype.
Timex
1912
Well, they cracked a million citizens.
Hey Dan! I just wanted to pop in and say that I loved Door Kickers!
Thanks :) Always good to hear that.
schurem
1915
And silent hunter, those were great as well. what are you up to now?
Started some indie studio and strategy game with some other Silent Hunter devs, we’re doing great but off course NOT as great as Star Citizen (on topic mention). Specifically this is us: http://inthekillhouse.com/
But we’re definitely off topic here so if you guys want to know more we can talk on PM or something, and leave this thread to its purpose. Its my first day on this forum, dont want it to be my last, lol.
Andanothathing… what’s with this ‘citizen’ thing?
Timex
1918
Dude, don’t even worry about it. I suspect that with what will eventually transpire in this thread, nothing you’re saying about your games is going to be what gets someone banned.
God, yes.
I’m really, really hoping that Derek can stay classy and help us understand what his angle is in all this, but at the same time i sort of know this is perfect Pandora’s Box territory, and even a thread on the most successful non-publisher backed money raising game (Star Citizen), from a bunch of people that have made awesome games like the Wing Commanders, even that might not survive without terrible wounds, maybe fatal ones?
rowe33
1920
Ok now that Derek is back - can we bring back Judge Floro too?
JonRowe
1921
If it turns out all of the Star Citizen backers are Filipino dwarves.
I don’t know what I will do.
