Chris Roberts Back in your wallet - STAR CITIZEN

[Pennilenko]

*shrug*

If by alienating people like me they make more money from the ones who are left, then more power to them. But I'm not going to pretend I like this trend of crowd sourcing/exploitation.

I don't see how they are alienating you.  Their monetization plan looks good to me. I don't see any problems with it, and many other box purchase no sub games games appear to have a much higher barrier to entry and are still popular.

From my perspective the only people that are mad about this are people who were planning to game the system for their own benefit or possibly screw over other players. You can't dual box Guild Wars 2 without buying another box, You cant dual box Eve without buying another client (plus you have to pay a second sub). Sure there are games out there that are totally free to play that will let you play two accounts at the same time without paying a dime, unless you know you actually want to play the game, then those games charge you out the ass for every tiny little thing you want from the game.

I'm not trying to go all rabid, because I am not all rabid, however their pay announcements aren't upsetting me because they aren't any different than what I expected. What did you think they were going to do to continue earning money to keep producing the game?

[Pezzle]

Maybe people are bothered that the only functional part of this game is a cash shop.  We might want this to be the next coming of Wing Commander or Freelancer, and it may work out that way eventually.  Right now you have cash shop merchandise you cannot even play with.  People have every right to be wary.   

[Mrbloodworth]

Then don't pledge? If you are in the camp of "There is no game yet" then do not pledge.

Seriously, I'm not sure what has upset some of you. Likely, none of that last announcement effects you, or would effect you. The coolest part of that article is the system that allows your friends, regardless of where they are, hop into one of your NPC crew to help out and play with you. That's kinda awesome. Everything else is just about pledge's who bought more than one package and want to consolidate.

When you create your original character, you make an alt. AFAIK, this has not changed.

When you’re happy with how you look, you will exit and return to the UEE recruitment office and officer. You’ll fill in your name on the MobiGlas form and also specify your beneficiary in case of death: this could be a family member, son, daughter, uncle, aunt or someone entirely new (although not another player character).
........
...
When a character finally does shuffle off the mortal coil, the player hasn’t lost what he has really put in the game time to build up – his ship(s), equipment and other assets. These pass to the next of kin / beneficiary. And there is a successor to carry on the family legacy or to avenge the deceased character. (“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!”)  This will hopefully create a competition between players to see how much they can achieve in the life span of their current characters. The ones that achieve greatness via killing a Star Citizen unique NPC or taking part in a unique event, like discovering a new jump point or system, are recorded in the Galactapedia and become part of the universe lore and history.

[Pezzle]

Then don't pledge? If you are in the camp of "There is no game yet" then do not pledge.

 

[Mrbloodworth]

Then don't pledge? If you are in the camp of "There is no game yet" then do not pledge.

 

I'm sorry. People seem to forget, the cash shop is ONLY for the Persistent universe. The Cash shop is NOT the pledge packages. That's it. Star citizen will be 60$ at launch, include a single player campaign, the ability to host your own servers, and fully mod-able. If you really want a buggy, then mod it in on your own server.

[ajax34i]

Seriously, I'm not sure what has upset some of you.

Personally I come upset from other gaming forums, where SC fans insist on comparing SC with whatever game the forum is dedicated to, ad nauseam.  Apologies if that anger has leaked here, in my posts.  In any case, yeah I'm not pledging and I'm waiting to see if there's a game.

[Mrbloodworth]

Seriously, I'm not sure what has upset some of you.

Personally I come upset from other gaming forums, where SC fans insist on comparing SC with whatever game the forum is dedicated to, ad nauseam.  Apologies if that anger has leaked here, in my posts.  In any case, yeah I'm not pledging and I'm waiting to see if there's a game.

I Can't address that, but I can address this:

You don't understand:  without alts, you cannot transfer your shit over, TO KEEP IT, when you decide to recycle your character and start a new one from scratch cause you don't like your face or you don't like the last choice you made in your career or whatever.

Also, I thought the quote said $60 from EA for the box (single player game), so the $30 for "two games" would be on top of that, no?

Also to be clear when a Character Slot NPC dies, you get to create another one to take his place, much like you would create a successor in the Death of a Spaceman mechanic. If you've designated a Character Slot NPC as your Character's successor, then the Character Slot NPC becomes your player character and you can chose to have your deceased player character slot either go back into your Character Slot pool or turn him / her into a Character Slot NPC (think of it as recruiting a new team member after the death of another)

In many ways, it reads as the system that was in The guild 2.

[Samprimary]

One of the things I'm trying to understand as this all goes on is that I don't have a sense of what this game's budget is relative to other big budget games made under the typical non-crowdfunded format.

When you come up with a dollar figure for the cost of a game like Halo 3, I'm pretty sure a large percentage of that money didn't represent what the studio itself actually got to use to make the game, and a lot of it represented things eaten by the studio or advertising, and as a result I don't know what total number of millions of dollars was used to make it, or much of any AAA game, really.

I may have heard a figure around somewhere or even here, but I don't recall. And now I get to compare that versus 20 million bucks or so, and I want to get a good sense of if this is a huge budget for a game or not when you aren't dealing with publishers or advertising, and if it gives me a better sense of what amount of their scope creep is sane or feasible, at least according to their pocketbook.

[jakonovski]

I think Witcher 2 was around the 20 million level.

[Lucas]

Interesting four page interview over at Gamasutra, where Chris Roberts talks about crowdfunding and what it meant for the planning stages of SC and onward. He also reflects about his past experiences at Origin (and with EA)

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/200998/chris_roberts_on_star_citizen_.php

[Margalis]

I'm not trying to go all rabid, because I am not all rabid, however their pay announcements aren't upsetting me because they aren't any different than what I expected. What did you think they were going to do to continue earning money to keep producing the game?

They already collected far more money than they said they needed to make the game. Why do they need to continue "earning" (lol) money? The game isn't even released and it's completely paid for. The way most games work is that you spend money to make the game then you recoup that money in sales - they've recouped all the money they plan to spend already!

As far as expectations - you expected an in-game poster to cost like $5? Literally a single 2D texture? And I thought packs of character skins for $5 was bad. Makes horse armor look like a great bargain.

[Margalis]

One of the things I'm trying to understand as this all goes on is that I don't have a sense of what this game's budget is relative to other big budget games made under the typical non-crowdfunded format.
....
I may have heard a figure around somewhere or even here, but I don't recall. And now I get to compare that versus 20 million bucks or so, and I want to get a good sense of if this is a huge budget for a game or not when you aren't dealing with publishers or advertising, and if it gives me a better sense of what amount of their scope creep is sane or feasible, at least according to their pocketbook.

Development money on a AAA title can run from 20-100 million, with sometimes that same amount or more for marketing.

It depends a lot on the game and the studio. Gears of War is made for relatively cheap, but Epic doesn't factor in the cost of Unreal Engine development into that.

I think $20 million is enough to make a AAA space game - making space look good is a lot easier than making almost anything else look good, given that space is empty and you can lean heavily on textures, lighting and particles without having to model much. I suspect the FPS portions will be lousy as they seem to believe they get a good FPS out of the box with CryEngine. They acknowledge that the FPS needs content but they appear to be underestimating the amount of non-content-modelling work needed to make a good FPS like AI and overall design - you can't just slap new models into CryEngine and call it a day.

Ubisoft spends a lot of money on Assassin's Creed but the last one was still a mess - money doesn't make project management easier or make expanding scope simple to deal with. (GTA Online is falling over right now I believe) Trying to create a AAA single-player Space game and a AAA persistent server-hosted space game and FPS and all that stuff is going to be hard to wrangle, regardless of budget.

[lamaros]

As for the 'just dont pledge then' comments: just because I've not gotten ripped off personally doesn't mean I'm a heartless dick who likes watching others get ripped off.

[Mrbloodworth]

They already collected far more money than they said they needed to make the game.

This is incorrect.

Some Citizens have asked if $21 million will mark the end of the funding campaign and the stretch goal unlocks. The answer is no: For a couple of key reasons –

The first is that the goal of achieving $20M in development funding will actually be reached approximately at $23 million in funds raised. This is because we display the gross amount of funds received, but out of this we had to pay Kickstarter (approx. 10% of funds raised), Paypal/Credit card providers (approx. 4-5%), we have to reserve the fulfilment costs of the physical goods you have pledged for (over $1M right now) and finally the costs of building and maintaining the RSI site (which is a significant but very worthwhile investment, more so as some of the planned features like “organizations” rolls out).

There are also additional running costs beyond the development to be contemplated – customer support for the growing community, the cost of delivering terabytes of data and longer term hosting servers for the dogfighting and then later the persistent universe itself.

[Dark_MadMax]

Shocking twist: The game is monetized as aggressively as possible.

which is good thing.... - means they have people with actual brains thinking about business side ahead of time. Seriously everything in this project looks peachy - they got a lot of free $$$ from kickstarter, what they showed so far is quite impressive (for tech demo stage). All that is left is slap together an actual game and a few centrally hosted multiplayer lobbies.... TADA. come one people 3d space sims aint  that hard to make - they been doing them  on 1/100 of SC's budget.  world of tanks I hear making lots of dough and they didnt have free 20 mills 3 years before release

[Samprimary]

yeah AFAIK they're very upfront about how they have created a game from and for the crowdfunding.

[Malakili]

All that is left is slap together an actual game and a few centrally hosted multiplayer lobbies.... TADA.

 

[ajax34i]

All that's left is Step 3 in:

1.  Advertise plans for game.
2.  Get funding.
3.  ? ? ?
4.  Profit!

[Venkman]

A. come one people 3d space sims aint  that hard to make - they been doing them  on 1/100 of SC's budget.  world of tanks I hear making lots of dough and they didnt have free 20 mills 3 years before release

How many of those space sims have the size of the playerbase Roberts' is looking for? And how many other World of Tanks are as successful? Neither is a valid frame of reference. Heck, most of the allure of this project is precisely because it has no good frame of reference in the modern era.

[Margalis]

They already collected far more money than they said they needed to make the game.

This is incorrect.

No, it's quite correct. The original highest stretch goal was 6 million dollars. For 6 million dollars they should have been able to deliver everything promised in the original KS - that's how KS operates.

Saying that you need more because of Kickstarter's cut and fulfillment costs is not how Kickstarter works, those are known costs that are supposed to be factored into goals in the first place - the stretch goal is a gross goal, not a net one. The whole point of a stretch goal is "if we reach this much in pledges we deliver this" not "if we reach this much in pledges we fall 10% short because of the KS cut." So I'm supposed to believe that every KS that comes in exactly on-goal actually falls short?

The fact is they got 3 times the money they asked for.

So let me ask you Bloodworth - when they hit 21 million, which is actually 23-24 million, which I'm sure is somehow actually 25-26 million ("we didn't factor taxes and renting office space into the goals!"), THEN are they going to be done? Or will he write another letter about hidden costs they didn't factor in?

Let's get real, they are going to keep discovering costs and features they didn't plan for into infinity, because it's free money and they aren't going to turn down free money. But that doesn't change the fact that they've far surpassed the amount of money they said they required to make the game.

which is good thing.... - means they have people with actual brains thinking about business side ahead of time. Seriously everything in this project looks peachy - they got a lot of free $$$ from kickstarter, what they showed so far is quite impressive (for tech demo stage). All that is left is slap together an actual game and a few centrally hosted multiplayer lobbies.... TADA.

They hit their funding goal about a year ago now (mid-November) and they have made about 5% of the progress required to deliver the full game. They have a cash shop (something with no mechanics) and a basically static room made in CryEngine, along with some bad animations. The business side is not the concern here, no.

[Mrbloodworth]

His plans started before Double Fine's Broken Age -- then known as Double Fine Adventure -- set a record on Kickstarter. "I'd seen what Minecraft did, and I said, 'It'd be interesting. I could probably get something out for $10 million. It's not the full game I want. And then alpha, sell it at a discount, get people in, and then finish the game off,' which was the big, full $20 million thing I'm talking about."

It was to that end Roberts began to seek investors. But when Double Fine hit it big in 2012, he shifted gears. But his original goal with crowdfunding was not to make money; it was to prove to his investors that his game would appeal to a contemporary audience.

"I was never making a two or three or four million dollar game. I was always making  $15 million game, minimum," Roberts says. "I'd lined up investors, and the crowdfunding was to validate that people still cared about space sims, or even about me, because I'd been gone for 10 years."

As it turns out that, thanks to crowdfunding, he no longer needs investors at all.

"The crowdfunding took off, and I could basically have more features than I wanted in the initial game, so the scope grew to what I'd always wanted it to be if I had an unlimited budget. And that was it."

Source

Oh noz!

As far as continuing to seek funding from players. Who cares, if the game is fun, I hope its funded and expanded for a long time. I do not understand your trying to paint this as a bad thing. They have been very open about all of this, Including what the hanger is, you are not uncovering some grand conspiracy.



As for the "No game play footage". I don't know what you people are talking about.

Star Citizen - Gameplay (GDC 2012)

Star Citizen Galaxy Map WiP

Star Citizen - Early work in progress - AI Combat

Star Citizen Gameplay Video: Pilot AI: Formations WIP

[Malakili]

It isn't that there is "no" gameplay footage, it is that there is VERY LITTLE gameplay footage.  Even in the videos you linked there is barely any actual gameplay.  There was a bit of flying around and shooting, that's good - we need to see more of that stuff.  The map looked interesting but there isn't really enough context.  The AI stuff is nice, but isn't gameplay.

[Falconeer]

I think there is nothing that could upset Bloodworth or make him suspicious about the direction the game is going. It is awesome because it makes you feel good, it gives you something to look forward to. At the same time it tends to fog your vision.

What's the point to reply to Margalis with some recent statements from Roberts himself? He can say whatever he wants at this point to corroborate his campagin and make things look the way he wants them to look, can't he?

Anyway, you can keep posting all the old-scripted video you want, but it is still a fact that there is nothing that proves this game will be good or simply not plagued by many unfun things. Now, we are all cheering for this to be a blast (seriously, some of us NEED a new Elite/Wing Commander/Freelancer), but there really is not enough authentic evidence as of yet that tells us if this is going to deliver. So at least you could stop trying to convince others that there this is a safe bet, because it isn't. Let us worry and complain, let us question the process and the intentions. Don't try at all costs to convert us to see that Chris Roberts is so virtuous he's unable to lie or immune to greed. Let us be f13, right? You might laugh last, and we'll laugh with you if that is the case.

And just to clarify, of course, do whatever you want. I am just a bit confused by your hardcore white knighting _at this early stage of development_. Game isn't even out, or even remotely close to being out, or close to be in beta, or close to be in alpha... how can it be defended yet?

[Mrbloodworth]

I think there is nothing that could upset Bloodworth or make him suspicious about the direction the game is going. Anyway, you can keep posting all the old-scripted video you want, but it is still a fact that there is nothing that proves this game will be good or simply not plagued by many unfun things. Now, we are all cheering for this to be a blast (seriously, some of us NEED a new Elite/Wing Commander/Freelancer), but there really is not enough authentic evidence as of yet that tells us if this is going to deliver.

That's not true. I have expressed my concerns already, im inline with most people really. Game could be great or shit when it hits the road, I'm out a small acceptable cost.  I just don't understand the hyperbole. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything, said that before. But I will correct misinformation. There is enough Evidence, released daily, that this is not a scam as some imply. Weather the game will live up to people expectations is not what some of proposing here. That jury's out. If you feel it will be unfun or not be good, do not pledge. Thats the advice I give everyone. Those of us who wish to fund the chance of a great sandbox game created by someone who practically invited the genre, have pledged. I don't think anyone who has pledged is under the impression this will be robot Jesus to all people. Its a niche title. Even Chris Roberts has said so.

Anyway, you can keep posting all the old-scripted video you want

None of that was scripted.

[Malakili]

To be fair, I don't see people saying this is an out and out scam.  People are saying he is taking advantage of the system by aggressively monetizing absolutely everything at this point.  That seems true to me.  I personally don't fault him for that though, if people WANT to pay him that much by all means let them.

More common still is the criticism that all in all there isn't a lot known about what it's going to be like to play this game and that pretty much all sandboxes have been let downs.  If someone wants to risk 50 bucks or 100 bucks or whatever on that, it's ultimately up to them.  But you can hardly fault people for saying that spending a lot on this project seems a little crazier even than is normal with alpha funding campaigns.

[Mrbloodworth]

I don't disagree with any of that. Personal choices. But no, some have been trying to posit that, I guess, he should have stopped at 2 million? Because, like, its fair or something? I don't know. A game like this is never done, nor should be. Its a crowded funded game, when the crowded no longer wants it, it will stop being funded.

[Margalis]

As far as continuing to seek funding from players. Who cares, if the game is fun, I hope its funded and expanded for a long time.

The game is not fun, nor does it even exist at all.

I have no problem with people paying for something fun. That's not what is happening here. I'm generally opposed to "founders packs", pricey pre-order packages, lifetime subscriptions and other things designed to extract large amounts of money from people before they can evaluate the quality of the product, because frankly it's a shitty practice and is bad for the industry in the long term.

Whether or not these sorts of schemes are "scams" they are schemes designed to maximize risk and potential massive disappointment for consumers by taking advantage of the fertile imaginations of those consumers, while ensuring that companies that make big promises are well-rewarded even if they create lousy games. The final quality of the product becomes almost irrelevant compared to the quality of the pitch.

I mean, you could put like a $200 starter pack for the shitty Marvel Diablo game - a game that should cost maybe $20. You could buy a lifetime sub for a variety of shitty MMOs. These sorts of moves are often a hedge against internally-projected mediocrity. Charging someone $200 for Smurfberries in a shitty iPhone game or $200 for a spaceship in what turns out to be a mediocre space game is a good way to slowly drive away an audience.

Call me old-fashioned but making a good game then having people who want to play it pay for it is a pretty cool system with a lot of positive attributes like encouraging good work and discouraging bad work.

Star Citizen - Gameplay (GDC 2012)

This is not gameplay. There is no game and no play. If you brought this to a pitch meeting as a prototype you would be told to get real.

That said, maybe it will be awesome, who knows? It's certainly possible. But asking for vast amounts of money up front for promises is not a good practice IMO. And this has gone far beyond the typical kickstarter - I mean they have a cash shop where you can pay real money for a single texture but your ship can't even leave the ground.

Let me put this another way - if Dead or Alive 6 came out as a cash shop where you could buy swimsuits and put them on mannequins but there was no fighting engine we'd probably all have a good laugh. Because that would be ridiculous.

[Mrbloodworth]

What are you talking about? The controller was in his hand, he was moving the character, climbing into ships, flying the ships shooting the guns. That's not core game play of a space sim?  You are right though, the project is still in its funding phase. To me, you are not "buying" ships, you are funding the game. I know the practices you are talking about, like when never winter online sold Drow. And in that regard I am right there with you, but I think its a personal valuation. I had no intrust, or faith to spend that kind of money. I have said before my reasons for personally backing this project, he has a track record of making some of my most beloved games, and has basically made this title before. Its up to the individual to make the call. If anyone is on the fence, you should likely just wait till launch. It will be 60$. I personally would rather talk about news and info coming out of the development than this, over and over again.

[Margalis]

What are you talking about? The controller was in his hand, he was moving the character, climbing into ships, flying the ships shooting the guns. That's not core game play of a space sim?

His ship sat there in space and rotated occasionally. It's "gameplay" in the same way that a animated gif of Ryu's idling animation is "gameplay."

No game was being played. There was no objective, there was no enemy - there was no game.

The core game play of a space sim is not staying still and rotating, then showing guns firing at nothing from a third-person camera. (Although to be honest that's pretty close to how Wing Commander played)

The last 2 minutes or so was the only part that had anything approaching game play and it looked very rudimentary and/or not operational. It looked like he was flying though a set-piece with little to no meaningful interaction with it.

I personally would rather talk about news and info coming out of the development than this, over and over again.

Most of the news coming out is about new stretch goals, new funding milestones, the cash shop, changes to the cash shop, damage control on pricing, etc. And the cash shop is development - it's the most functional part of the game right now.

I get what you're saying but they have put the monetization front and center by choice. When I go to rsi.com the first thing I see is another KS project! (The fuck?) The "comm" page is a Kickstarter project, lore shit, multiple packages explanation, more lore shit, funding goals, meet a team member...not much of the communication is about the core game.

[Pezzle]

Even worse, we have no mannequins!

I just want a quality spaceship game like Freelancer that I can put on a private server for friends.  Not interested in insurance fraud stuff.  Not interested in the $200 persistent universe cash shop stuff.  Not interested in the FPS.  Not interested in the functional toilets.  

Unfortunately, it is the things I do not want that are getting coverage.

[Mrbloodworth]

Here, I'm just going to pass along some tools to keep track of development.

This, is a Dev tracker that pulls from the Forums. The developers post daily and discuss things with players constantly.

http://partedveil.com/

If you want things more compartmentalized, go here to this section:  Ask a Developer! The schedule is posted at the top of the page. They are all on there daily as well.

There is also the twitter, if that's your thing: https://twitter.com/RobertsSpaceInd

Engineering is the section you want for technical aspects. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering

Also remember, every Friday is wing mans hanger, where they answer questions directly from users, and have a guest developer every week.

I get what you're saying but they have put the monetization front and center by choice. When I go to rsi.com the first thing I see is another KS project! (The fuck?) The "comm" page is a Kickstarter project, lore shit, multiple packages explanation, more lore shit, funding goals, meet a team member...not much of the communication is about the core game.

See above. More info than i have ever seen about a games development is posted by the developers themselves. The stuff on the front page is just that, front page stuff.

[Margalis]

I get what you're saying but they have put the monetization front and center by choice. When I go to rsi.com the first thing I see is another KS project! (The fuck?) The "comm" page is a Kickstarter project, lore shit, multiple packages explanation, more lore shit, funding goals, meet a team member...not much of the communication is about the core game.

Nope. This is incorrect again.

I have the page open in another tab.

The top item is KICKSTARTER: GOLEM ARCANA.

Maybe I'm lying and it's actually "A detailed breakdown of space combat encounter design." If only it were possible for any person to go to the web page and check for themselves!

The stuff on the front page is just that, front page stuff.

I was under the mistaken impression that things go on the front page because they're considered important and represent things they want players to be aware of and discussing.

[Margalis]

This, is a Dev tracker that pulls from the Forums. The developers post daily and discuss things with players constantly.

http://partedveil.com/

From your handy link:

When we started our characters we were only around 7 or 8 million in funding. So we started building with that in mind. Now that we have far passed anything that we have expected and we are at over 20 million in funding we are revamping our character design and face system.

But Bloodworth, I thought the plan all along was to make a $20 million game? And that even if they didn't raise 20 million through crowdfunding they would raise the rest through investment? So why did they target their character pipeline for a $7 million budget then revamp it when they hit the goal they were planning for from the start?

[Mrbloodworth]

I provided you tools to follow along. Enjoy.

[Margalis]

I provided you tools to follow along. Enjoy.

I asked you a straightforward question.

Is there a handy tool I can use to get you to answer?

The original plan was to raise 2 million using crowd funding, and use the number of people pledged, and money to secure funding to 23 million. Using a publisher, or investors.
...
However, in both cases, and from day one, the "design doc" has not changed or added anything.

When we started our characters we were only around 7 or 8 million in funding. So we started building with that in mind. Now that we have far passed anything that we have expected and we are at over 20 million in funding we are revamping our character design and face system.

Hmm...so nothing changed, and they were planning on 23 million all along, and the pipeline changed, because they raised more than they expected, even though it's still less than what they were originally planning on...