Star Citizen Online - The search for more money

Eidal

Eidal

Molten Core Raider
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Variise is silly if he thinks skill points is a real hurdle holding back badass Eve players from competing "with the big dogs." On Star Citizen, I can't fault him for hoping: that's what most of us here do. But keep in mind that he's in to the tune of $7k+ on this game, to say that he may be biased is an understatement.

When I read Chris' writeups on how awesome all of his systems will be, I just roll my eyes. He isn't the first dev to make lofty claims, and he won't be the last. I think it's shady as fuck that he's making these claims of how amazing everything will be while also collecting money, but whatever, shady men are as just as inevitable as people willing to buy 7k worth of hopium.
 
Variise

Variise

N00b
497
17
Eidal_sl said:
Variise is silly if he thinks skill points is a real hurdle holding back badass Eve players from competing "with the big dogs." On Star Citizen, I can't fault him for hoping: that's what most of us here do. But keep in mind that he's in to the tune of $7k+ on this game, to say that he may be biased is an understatement.

When I read Chris' writeups on how awesome all of his systems will be, I just roll my eyes. He isn't the first dev to make lofty claims, and he won't be the last. I think it's shady as fuck that he's making these claims of how amazing everything will be while also collecting money, but whatever, shady men are as just as inevitable as people willing to buy 7k worth of hopium.
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Lol at badass EVE players. You forget I played against some of these people. Once you know the basic game mechanics the skill of playing is literally down to timing. After that first engagement you can afk and fuck off and it probably won't matter. So many people do that.

As for the rest well that's your opinion and you have a right to it. But you don't have the right to your own facts.

At the very start the naysayers said Chris can and will just run with the money or the poor suds that pledged were suckers that at best will get some sub par game from a publisher. The Hangar is released and the game became self funded.
The same people then said the Hangar was just a tech demo and the delays proved Chris is running a scam and the self funding will lead to disaster outside of the publisher model because this can't be done. Arena Commander is released and eventually almost fully integrated with the Hangar.
Now some of those same people are still calling the whole thing vaporware and the current status of the game somehow reinforces this due to lack of updates etc. Surely Chris is about to jump into his Ferrari with bags of cash any minute now. Surely this time it will happen. Surely...

The only thing missing at this point is a picture of a voodoo doll with pins in it and each pin having the words (scam, vaporware, etc) written down the side of each as they pierce the body of a Star Citizen Vanduul plushy. If I had any Photoshop skills I would get right on that shit but alas my description will have to do.

So with that I'm going to take a break and play the shit out of some games and we can continue this when Star Marine and AC 2.0 (Multicrew) hits in the next 3-10 weeks so I can add to the above list and I can listen to the next iteration of vaporware claims.

Lets keep it going. Clearly there is a strong constitution to continue this way right up until release day so why not. Not like anyone can talk about publisher games in development since they practically release zero information except for sanitized PR material right up to release where so many willingly buy them blindly on day 1 or worse pre-order them without ever having seen what's inside. Anyone of the publishers/devs looking at threads like this will just be reinforced that the publisher model is the safest and it's better to continue to ignore the gaming community, let alone the general public, as asking for input is just asking for trouble. To them this a scary place.

I'll see you lot soon.
smile.png


P.S. I'm more like 3k in instead of 10k and almost all of it has since paid for itself as a result. My anime collection also thanks SC ships.
smile.png
 
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a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
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LOL you spent $3k on this dumpster fire?

You don't get it at all and are blinded by the lack of money in your checking account. We don't think this is just a trick. Chris has every intention of making a game. Curt had every intention of making a game. They definitely hired friends and family and didn't skimp on expenses though. They both had a huge amount of feature creep. Curt already crashed and burned before anything came out usable since his game wasn't modular. Chris has that going for him that they can trickle little parts of a game out and people will stay interested. He is doing an amazing job at keeping the gamers invested into the progress and the game in general. I applaud that.

The game that is being talked about at this moment probably can't be called vaporware. It is like Duke Nukem Forever, it will come out in some form. Whether it's what you thought it was or whether you will actually like it is a different story.

Put down the credit card, relax, and watch the haters (us) whine then be happy when we are wrong and you are right. You come across a raving fanboy though.
 
Blackwulf

Blackwulf

N00b
999
18
Why do you keep comparing Chris to Curt?

1. Chris is a famous game developer and successful movie producer -> Curt is a baseball player

2. Chris raised his money with zero debt and has ongoing income averaging 2+ million per month -> Curt borrowed his money and couldn't handle the payments

3. Chris is making smart hires (Crytek) and subcontracting work that doesn't require a full time employee. The "nepotism" he's shown is to hire people like his brother, Erin, who has a proven track record in the industry. Sandi Grardner who is in charge of marketing - all I can say is that the crowd funding is going well, so I assume she deserves her position? Lesnik, his friend, who is in charge of community relations; whether you like him or not, he puts in a shit load of hours. Most of the other "nepotism" hires (Wingman, et al) are gone - they couldn't handle the transition from a 10 man operation to 500. -> Curt hired a lot of people close to him, and it didn't work out, maybe because he wasn't willing to make the tough call and cut the chaff when they couldn't handle it.

4. SC has open development with lengthy monthly reports on each department's progress -> Copernicus, you didn't see anything until bankruptcy, and then what you saw was a fly through of a zone. No game play. Maybe I'm forgetting something?

5. SC is trying to move the genre forward -> Copernicus was trying to recreate the fun things from past games, most of the people who weren't big WOW raid fans, didn't really give a shit about Copernicus, whereas SC is interesting to a huge audience and there is very little competition for it on the market.

I could go on, but really, the two projects are not comparable. The only thing you can compare, I guess, is that if SC fails, you'll have another big studio out of work.
 
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a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
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1. Money is money, doesn't matter who raised it.

2. Doesn't matter how you raised it, matters how you spend it.

3. Smart hires I agree. Curt made some smart hires also. They actually put out a game and it sold. I think Chris made smarter hires. The nepotism bothers me as a fresh entrepreneur myself but I can see them being okay hires.

4. Very different games, yes it's a point in Chris's favor that he is open and it's also a negative because nobody ruins a game more than it's fans.

They are comparable. They aren't directly identical and Chris is infinitely better than Curt in this situation but business is business. When was the last date for a Chris Roberts game? You are acting like he put one out last year. A lot has changed.
 
Mr Creed

Mr Creed

Too old for this shit
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a_skeleton_03_sl said:
Yet.
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Blackwulf is right about that, you know. Arguing that they might have Copernicus-like problems in the future is thin ice. You're much better off betting on Chris taking the emergency stash to buy an island instead of finishing the game. And it's not like being a publisher game or crowdfunded game gives better chances of success one way or another - plenty of fails on either side of the fence.
 
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a_skeleton_03

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Oh he is right about why they are doing better NOW. He has no idea (nor do I) what is going to happen when they do need to start taking loans, and they will need to.
 
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a_skeleton_03

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Draegan_sl said:
What a dumb statement.
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What a dumb reply. Why don't you go into some kind of detail?

Curt was just a money raiser. He wasn't designing, he had a CEO running the show and a lead designer. He was just raising money. The money man is just the money man and doesn't matter who raised it. You could have a homeless man raise you money and it's the same money. What you do with that money is an entirely different story. What you had to give up to get that money is an entirely different story. Blackwulf made a good point about the debt maintenance a post later. That is actual real information and a good thing to debate. Chris cannot finish this game on crowdfunding alone though. He will need to take on debt and it might be sooner rather than later.
 
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Carl_sl

shitlord
634
0
Probably didn't go into detail because this isn't reddit where you can't expect even the slightest amount of intelligence. Money is not money when one pool of money is owed and the other is not. The fact that you could sit on your money forever in one case and you're existence as a company is on a timer in the other is enough to disallow your belief that "money is money". When SC is complete they won't have to hope for enough sales to recoup anything either, every dollar they make from the day it's released simply goes in to further development or servers. It's not even remotely similar.
 
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a_skeleton_03

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Carl_sl said:
Probably didn't go into detail because this isn't reddit where you can't expect even the slightest amount of intelligence. Money is not money when one pool of money is owed and the other is not. The fact that you could sit on your money forever in one case and you're existence as a company is on a timer in the other is enough to disallow your belief that "money is money".
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Which I said is a good point, and that got brought up later.

That being said the discussion that keeps being brought up and that I responded to was the difference between a developer raising money and a baseball player raising money. Curt didn't fail because he was a baseball player. He failed because he didn't pay attention to his debt and because him and his people overspent on fringe benefits that didn't go into the development.

If you would have reversed the money situation Chris would have released a game by now with the original feature scope and nowhere near the size that this is now, and Curt would still be developing something that may or may not see the light of day. Okay who are we kidding Curt probably would have screwed up with crowdfunding also.

Debt money puts a clock on development that you don't have with "free" crowdfunded money.
 
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Draegan_sl

2 Minutes Hate
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I dunno, I thought it was obvious that "money is money doesn't matter where it comes from" is a derp statement. Why does that need to be explained?
 
Mr Creed

Mr Creed

Too old for this shit
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I wouldn't even go so far as to say he cant finish this game on crowdfunding alone. I mean, how much do you estimate it'll cost for a reasonable release? And by reasonable I mean without many of the pie-in-the-sky features creeps he brings up in interviews, but also with enough meat to be considered a decent release. Imo, tension might be high now but they can buy themselves like a year of goodwill with multi-crew and a shooty map. Neither of which should be that challenging to churn out as a standalone if they feel the urge to do so, considering their underlying engine. Instead they're rewriting shit they rewrote twice already in order to future-proof their programming for issues that might come up in 2018... doesn't seem like they are worried about the well drying up.
 
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a_skeleton_03

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Mr Creed_sl said:
I wouldn't even go so far as to say he cant finish this game on crowdfunding alone. I mean, how much do you estimate it'll cost for a reasonable release? And by reasonable I mean without many of the pie-in-the-sky features creeps he brings up in interviews, but also with enough meat to be considered a decent release. Imo, tension might be high now but they can buy themselves like a year of goodwill with multi-crew and a shooty map. Neither of which should be that challenging to churn out as a standalone if they feel the urge to do so, considering their underlying engine. Instead they're rewriting shit they rewrote twice already in order to future-proof their programming for issues that might come up in 2018... doesn't seem like they are worried about the well drying up.
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The problem, and you can see this in all the updates, is that all that pie in the sky stuff requires a lot of underlying framework built in from day one. They have to put an immense amount of resources into just making the 'system' work and integrate all their modules in properly. You bring it up in your post. He is going to burn through his money just making a system capable of running all the things that the game has in it now.

If they had gone with the initial game scope it would have been out already.
 
zzeris

zzeris

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Roberts is amazing at making money but I wonder if some people have donated extra in the hopes that an even larger amount of money guarantees success. That his previous experience guarantees something as long as you help meet the costs. Possible solid belief but still so risky. I'll stick with my Soybuck donation for now.
 
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