Chris Roberts new project... Star Citizen

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muppetts
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Post by muppetts » Mon, 8. Jan 18, 18:02

Jesus now they are selling Tanks for 100 Euro, WTF has Tanks got to do with a Space Sim, at this point I can't see how anyone who originally backed (pre hype, back with Wingman's Nutz) could still be expecting anything like we originally thought, i.e Modern Wingcommander/Freelancer type game.

At what point do you not just finish the core game, why on earth are they spending money and assigning staff to develop bloody Tanks rather than the core experience.
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Post by Morkonan » Mon, 8. Jan 18, 18:50

muppetts wrote:Jesus now they are selling Tanks for 100 Euro,...
I just had to look that one up.

Yep, here it is, $95.99 USD - https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pled ... -Nova-Tank

Friggin' stupid.

This isn't a game. It's a dream seller. "Give us money and you can imagine yourself having this cool tank while playing a game where it does stuff and things."

They call these "Pledges" right? But, you actually don't "pledge" to give something - You hand over cold, hard, cash, right?

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Post by Chips » Mon, 8. Jan 18, 19:26

Erm, wut? :lol:

As usual, will just keep waiting... developing ground doesn't mean the space part won't be super awesome - but i'd imagine most would sacrifice ground for actually getting to play the space part?

Meh, just waiting and waiting and waiting :D

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Post by Observe » Mon, 8. Jan 18, 20:19

I'm figuring this won't be ready in my lifetime. Or, if it is ready, I'll have lost interest in gaming by then. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the parade of new features and items and would be happy enough if that's all it ever amounts to.

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Post by Morkonan » Tue, 9. Jan 18, 08:36

Observe wrote:I'm figuring this won't be ready in my lifetime. Or, if it is ready, I'll have lost interest in gaming by then. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the parade of new features and items and would be happy enough if that's all it ever amounts to.
When it does finally come out, you'll be able to play it on your own space-station. In space. With space stuffs. It'll be an whole new retro era for gaming!

"Lookit! They did it in "3D" using "graphics!" Lolz. What'ya think of that $@GWWRKLIOngbrug%?"

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Post by muppetts » Tue, 9. Jan 18, 09:21

Star Cit has $175 million, I think (top off my head) GTA V was 150 with marketing and a 1000 person team (SC has about 400 I think), plus GTA took 5 years and had motion capture as well.

I get you cannot compare like for like but GTA V was a AAA release with 1000 crew on it + marketing and was/is huge, plus was released on multiple platforms.

Even as a rough example the question needs to be asked, what the hell is all the money being used on because with more than half the staff of GTA it's not people!
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Post by segmentationfault » Tue, 9. Jan 18, 12:04

muppetts wrote:Even as a rough example the question needs to be asked, what the hell is all the money being used on because with more than half the staff of GTA it's not people!
But do we know how much money CIG has spent so far..?

Thinking how much money and time was spent to make GTA V is more surprising to me. GTA V feels just a further iteration from GTA IV. They already had a development company and staff available so no money or time had to spend establish/find those either.

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Post by muppetts » Tue, 9. Jan 18, 13:07

No the main dev team was 200, the other 800 + was 3rd party developers they employed into the team but anyway, for sure the comparison is not like for like but there is enough to look at, especially as GTA budget included multi platform, marketing and 60% more staff.

+ No your right we do not know how much they have spent as they will not say....however the entire GTA project was completed in 5 years, scope and size of assets is considerable and they finished. SC is still pushing very very hard to raise funds and not in a subtle way, wanna buy a tank? They have more than the GTA team had in resources and they have no multi platform or mass AAA marketing, so the question is, why are they so far out (lets be honest here they are not finishing in 2018, they won't even BETA in 2018, maybe Christmas 2019 for release).

The answer of course is massive feature creep, totally out of control feature avalanche! For every new feature, you increase dev time and you increase blockers and bugs.

If you are still 2 years away from releasing a game you published (not us Chris R) would be done in 2014/15, why are you making Tanks, why are you trying to shoehorn players land buys, why are you not saying 'Right finish space section with stations, launch, polish bug crush, then work on additional features such as FPS, Tanks, land grabs, face scanning/lip syncing (FFS), more sectors, more planets etc.

I was huge supporter and I gave allot of slack but this development is in full tail spin and even the most generous would have to be skeptical, I certainly am not too proud to say I got allot wrong but I can see now!
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Post by segmentationfault » Tue, 9. Jan 18, 13:37

It is also good to remember that not all the years are equal - Star Citizen at TwitchCon 2017
muppetts wrote:The answer of course is massive feature creep, totally out of control feature avalanche! For every new feature, you increase dev time and you increase blockers and bugs.
Well, some people would prefer them making much more simpler game but I, for one, am more than happy they are working on something enormous and ambitious.

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Post by Chips » Tue, 9. Jan 18, 19:15

It's also fair to point out that GTA probably had infrastructure to start with, whereas Chris Robert's team will have needed to obtain buildings, computers and so on. True, GTA will have ongoing costs of updating and maintaining (renting) various places, but things like desks, chairs, monitors, and blah blah are unlikely to cost as much per year as for a company having to obtain all that first time.

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Post by raess2013 » Tue, 16. Jan 18, 21:32

Chips wrote:It's also fair to point out that GTA probably had infrastructure to start with, whereas Chris Robert's team will have needed to obtain buildings, computers and so on. True, GTA will have ongoing costs of updating and maintaining (renting) various places, but things like desks, chairs, monitors, and blah blah are unlikely to cost as much per year as for a company having to obtain all that first time.
although you normally don't buy these things, you lease/take a loan for it. This highly depends on what is better for you regarding tax and stuff, but normally you not investing millions in office furniture and stuff without knowing if you going to need them half a year down the road.

I think they are financially safe, they just made 35 millions last year, 36 millions the year before.

if you take into account, that the European wages are roughly the half of those paid in the US (according to a survey from 2014 on Gamasutra and the financial report from foundry 42 Manchester) they have quite a bit in the war chest.
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Post by Morkonan » Wed, 17. Jan 18, 21:46

raess2013 wrote:...I think they are financially safe, they just made 35 millions last year, 36 millions the year before.

if you take into account, that the European wages are roughly the half of those paid in the US (according to a survey from 2014 on Gamasutra and the financial report from foundry 42 Manchester) they have quite a bit in the war chest.
Chips is right in that they had up-front costs. But, compared to their ongoing dev costs, those aren't too significant. I imagine they "eased into" them, leasing/renting until they established exactly what it was that they needed.

But, I don't imagine they went to auctions buying large lots of used office furniture... Not with capital like that, they didn't.

I've always wondered how devs that are in a situation like this actually manage to stay in business. They have no saleable product and no income stream. Well, unless they're RSI and can sell "promises" instead of "products."

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Post by pjknibbs » Wed, 17. Jan 18, 22:28

Morkonan wrote: I've always wondered how devs that are in a situation like this actually manage to stay in business.
They generally don't--once they've burned through the capital they go bust, so it's just a matter of how much they're spending versus how much money they have. See also: Ion Storm.

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Post by Redvers Ganderpoke » Thu, 18. Jan 18, 18:22

muppetts wrote:Star Cit has $175 million,!
Where is this info from? As far as I can see they don't publish the accounts of the US Holding co. (They don't have to if it's a US private co.) The UK ones you can see for 2016 but they don't show anything too interesting.
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Post by X2-Illuminatus » Thu, 18. Jan 18, 18:27

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals
STAR CITIZEN LIVE STATS wrote:FUNDS RAISED
$ 176,968,436

STAR CITIZENS
1,971,962
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Post by Redvers Ganderpoke » Thu, 18. Jan 18, 18:45

X2-Illuminatus wrote:https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals
STAR CITIZEN LIVE STATS wrote:FUNDS RAISED
$ 176,968,436

STAR CITIZENS
1,971,962
It was the "has" bit that fooled me. It should be they "had" $176m - I assume they have spent some of it since it was raised. :roll:
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Post by Golden_Gonads » Thu, 18. Jan 18, 19:28

Redvers Ganderpoke wrote:It was the "has" bit that fooled me. It should be they "had" $176m - I assume they have spent some of it since it was raised. :roll:
Ahhh, but they've taken on loans and almost certainly taken on private funding as well.

I'll take the opportunity now to repeat what I've said before - I would have jumped at the chance to have invested in this game, but to buy cheats (which is all the ships/tanks/land/whatever they sell are) is utterly daft. Yes yes, they want to stay free of a publisher who would have held them to some kind of schedule and may have actually kept Roberts on track, but... GYAHHH!!! Some companies NEED the structure a publisher brings. They can't be trusted out in the wild on their own.

I backed pre-kickstarter for the minimum amount and I don't exactly regret it, I believe I'll get a game (Or games) at some point. Not the game I backed (I backed a solo Wing Commander type game along with a multiplayer Privateer/Freelancer space combat/trade sim, not a life experience do everything game), but a game nonetheless. Obviously, neither am I happy. The cash grabbing, the delays, the feature creep, all have killed interest in the game for me.

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Post by raess2013 » Tue, 13. Mar 18, 05:56

Golden_Gonads wrote:
Redvers Ganderpoke wrote:It was the "has" bit that fooled me. It should be they "had" $176m - I assume they have spent some of it since it was raised. :roll:
Ahhh, but they've taken on loans and almost certainly taken on private funding as well.

I'll take the opportunity now to repeat what I've said before - I would have jumped at the chance to have invested in this game, but to buy cheats (which is all the ships/tanks/land/whatever they sell are) is utterly daft. Yes yes, they want to stay free of a publisher who would have held them to some kind of schedule and may have actually kept Roberts on track, but... GYAHHH!!! Some companies NEED the structure a publisher brings. They can't be trusted out in the wild on their own.

I backed pre-kickstarter for the minimum amount and I don't exactly regret it, I believe I'll get a game (Or games) at some point. Not the game I backed (I backed a solo Wing Commander type game along with a multiplayer Privateer/Freelancer space combat/trade sim, not a life experience do everything game), but a game nonetheless. Obviously, neither am I happy. The cash grabbing, the delays, the feature creep, all have killed interest in the game for me.
It hasn't just killed the interest in the game for you, it made you sour. I can't understand why people are always so emotional about it. It is just a game in development.

The only reason they are making so much money is because of their scope. They try to do something special and let us take part in it.

If you think that the development of SC is troubled you should read blood sweat and pixels from Jason Schreier. It puts everything into perspective.
It's just game development on a large scale and no publisher would have been able to change that without outright killing the project.
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Post by muppetts » Tue, 13. Mar 18, 08:49

So I thought I would look at 3.0, DL'd, went to landing pad, tried to get onto ship, it turned to wireframe and I fell through the dock floor into eternity, loaded up again, went to ship, got on board, got stuck on ladder, reload, got on ship, fell through ship, reload, walked to ship, got stuck on door to pad, reload, got to ship, go on ship......and turned to wireframe and Then I fell through the floor, went AHHHHHH and removed.
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Post by Tycow » Tue, 13. Mar 18, 18:36

raess2013 wrote: I can't understand why people are always so emotional about it. It is just a game in development.
I'd flip that statement... I can't understand why people rabidly defend this project...

Don't get me wrong - I like the idea and scope of SC, however the implementation so far leaves something to be desired (and that's an understatement).

Gotta sell those ship jpegs somehow I guess...

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