Star Citizen Online - The search for more money

Grim1

Grim1

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Mist_sl said:
Derek Smart is literally a crazy person who is well known for ranting about bullshit. Most of that article is him quoting himself.

The fact that Chris Roberts got the money to make Derek Smart's dream game, while the industry has been laughing at Derek Smart for 2-3 decades now, just pushes him over the top.
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All true, but that doesn't make him wrong.

Don't know if SC will fail or not, the economic model they are using is too new to make any concrete predictions. But sometimes it seems like they are just selling pixel ships for a game they never intend to deliver. Just keep adding new "features" and postponing the release date, while they cash in on all the "gotta have the new shiney" idiots. If it weren't for Chris Robert's involvement, I would avoid this game like the plague.

I think the game will eventually arrive, but have no proof of that. My faith is based entirely on Chris Roberts. It has always been my impression that he is truly passionate about creating the type of game SC is trying to be and he has a track record of working towards that goal. The game may eventually implode because of feature creap or what have you, but imo Chris's efforts will have been honest.
 
Palum

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Again they're selling ships for a game they aren't making yet. They are selling thousand dollar multi person ships for SC and using the money to make SQ42.

I wouldn't be as concerned except they have to be running out of steam funding wise trying to build all these modules simultaneously without real income.

Fuck the housing crisis, this is subprime loans on time shares in space lol.
 
Blackwulf

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Palum_sl said:
Again they're selling ships for a game they aren't making yet.They are selling thousand dollar multi person ships for SC and using the money to make SQ42.

I wouldn't be as concerned except they have to be running out of steam funding wise trying to build all these modules simultaneously without real income.

Fuck the housing crisis, this is subprime loans on time shares in space lol.
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Where do you get this? Everything they're working on is for the PU. The only thing from Squadron 42 that isn't applicable to the PU are the motion captures for the cut scenes. There are a 30+ departments reporting in on their latestmonthly reportand only a handful mention working directly on SQ42.
 
Palum

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SQ42 is releasing first and they are spending resources on it instead of the infrastructure on the PU. Besides art assets and some fight physics stuff, there's basically nothing in common with the back end of a single player game vs a complex multiplayer mmoish thing.
 
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Carl_sl

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Palum_sl said:
SQ42 is releasing first and they are spending resources on it instead of the infrastructure on the PU. Besides art assets and some fight physics stuff, there's basically nothing in common with the back end of a single player game vs a complex multiplayer mmoish thing.
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It's true that making squadron 42 definitely doesn't get you far with the PU but I think they have separate teams working on those features and that SQ42 will come out first more because they planned for it to, and it's easier, rather than because they aren't working on the PU.
 
Palum

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The issue isn't that they are doing it but rather that they seem to have peaked on the gravy train and have no real income. It's seeming a little like how 38S went down.
 
Blackwulf

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Palum_sl said:
SQ42 is releasing first and they are spending resources on it instead of the infrastructure on the PU. Besides art assets and some fight physics stuff, there's basically nothing in common with the back end of a single player game vs a complex multiplayer mmoish thing.
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There's actually quite a lot that goes into the SQ42 that you'll see in the PU. It's supposed to be a seamless integration - the SQ42 experience is your introduction to the PU and your life in it. Things like the UI (mobi-glas), conversation trees, AI (wingmen and NPC crew members), character creation, etc., are all things that you'll see in SQ42 that will essentially be the same in the PU. To say nothing of all the environments and ships, large and small, being fleshed out for SQ42 that will also exist in the PU. The FPS engine being developed for Star Marine is the same engine that will be used in SQ42 and the PU. The flight mechanics from Arena Commander are the same that will be used in SQ42 and the PU.

The last several months have seen many teams jumping in to help rewrite the entire matchmaking process (nothing to do with SQ42) and the netcode required for managing clients and servers (nothing to do with a single player game.) To say they are only spending resources on SQ42, you are either just woefully unaware of what CIG claims they are working on, or you just don't believe them. Or you're just trolling us fanboys.

Anyway, detractors could be totally right - maybe they'll fail to put it all together. I don't know.

Palum_sl said:
The issue isn't that they are doing it but rather that they seem to have peaked on the gravy train and have no real income. It's seeming a little like how 38S went down.
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I don't think the gravy train has peaked. I think you'll see a surge of sales when Star Marine actually launches (assuming it ever does.)
 
Mist

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Palum_sl said:
SQ42 is releasing first and they are spending resources on it instead of the infrastructure on the PU. Besides art assets and some fight physics stuff, there's basically nothing in common with the back end of a single player game vs a complex multiplayer mmoish thing.
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This is not completely true. Most single player games are just a server instance that runs locally, and the game is a client that connects to the local server. All Cryengine games are like this.

All the work they've done with enabling solar system sized map sizes through adding the double precision coordinate system to the Cryengine will affect both the single and multiplayer game. All the work they've done adding material based damage states will apply to both. There's a whole lot that applies just as much to SQ42 as it does to the PU.

Obviously tons of network optimizations will have to be done to make instances larger than the 20-24ish players they can smash into a server instance at the moment, but I don't actually think that's a huge deal for the MMO portion of the game. Space is big. Having 200 player fleet battles is actually not something that's necessary for the game to be a success.
 
Palum

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Yea you're right it's just call 10 methods instead of one of you have multiplayer! I kid.

I'm not saying there isn't some overlap but they have done basically offered nothing concrete to convince me that I'll see freelancer 2 as a return for my investment at this stage. I'm just being realistic here, it's been what almost three years... Do they post their expenses since they are basically a public funded company? Maybe if I saw they still had 60M in reserve they were spending wisely.
 
Valderen

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As I said before I have no doubt they have money to get SQ42 out the door, the rest hinge on the success of SQ42 and it's expansion. My guess is that the game will only be available from them as digital devilry where they'll get all the revenue. So 3-4 millions sales(above the free version that backers get) would be 150-200 millions in revenue and easily find the rest of development. SQ42 failing would most likely see the PU will never see the light of day.

It's still raising money, but new ships are not bringing in as much as before...people are mostly just melting ships and switching ships around in their fleet. It's in a lull now for sure with the delay of the FPS, since all it was meant to be the next update to for arena commander also.

What concerns me a bit more, is that a few lead designer, producer have recently left...it's normal to see personal come and go, but people leaving the same time as there are obvious issue with development raise some questions. Just good opportunity or are they worried about the project?
 
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Carl_sl

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80 million dollars to make an "mmo" that consists of a massive amount of empty space and sky box + an ai population that operates almost completely in a non physical form seems like way more than adequate as far as funding goes, and it STILL brought in $50k yesterday and 2.8 million last month. If they can't fund this shit it WILL be the biggest flop in gaming.



Edit: on another note the Alex Mayberry departure is now officially confirmed, unconfirmed rumors that theres a family health issue. Chris Roberts' brother is taking over for Alex which is apparently a good thing as the CIG studio he was at was actually getting good work done.
 
Mist

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If SQ42 flops or never ships, they're done.

I think they might be counting on shipping a single player/maybe co-op Mass Effect clone a little too heavily though. Without all the blue waifus and space magic, it's not going to appeal to the same crowd. They might not sell as many copies as they're expecting.

Then again, it's also kinda Crysis 4: Super Space Crysis at this point, so maybe they'll get that crowd. Sci-fi shooters are big again at the moment.
 
Mist

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Jimbolini_sl said:
article on Mayberry

Star Citizen Executive Producer Quits, As Dev Opens New Office - Yahoo Games
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If I had to venture a wild guess, I'd say the ex-Crytek guys in Frankfurt convinced Chris to stop bleeding resources across the board and focus on getting the assets built so that the single player game can get out the door. People on other teams probably aren't happy about it.

Or maybe he just left for personal reasons like he said. 10 years as a producer in the video game industry is probably long enough to want to kill yourself.
 
Palum

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I mean, he is crazy but on the other hand he's not wrong that financial systems, regulatory bodies and tax systems are woefully unprepared for crowd funding as a legitimate entity. 85M is a lot of change to have phantom investors. No sir, we don't launder money... it's crowd funding!
 
Mist

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He doesn't even have a basic knowledge of what's going on. Before Amazon bailed out Crytek with a huge deal, the rats were fleeing off that sinking shit.

It's not illegal to poach employees for better pay or better job security. In fact, it's actually most likely illegal to make agreements NOT to poach employees.
 
Mist

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The dude is clearly just jealous that Chris Roberts has the money to make the game he always wanted to make and is going to try to use lawyers to exact revenge based jealousy.

Only the original Kickstarter backers would even be considered crowdfunders. The rest of the people have just paid for access to an early access game. Worst case scenario, they would only have to show the books for the original Kickstarter to the tune of 2.1 million dollars.

They make it explicitly clear when you purchase from their website that you are not an investor.
 
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Kickstarter isn't investing either. Doesn't make it not a scheme. I am not saying it is or it isn't but there has to be more to the story IF any of what he is saying is true then there is something definitely shady, illegal we shall see.
 
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