Can we call it dead yet!!

[dalekphalm]

21 minutes ago, Space Reptile said:

well therre crowdfunding was 137,711,961 (137m) and they raised that in 2012 ,

well the bulk of that , a few million kept creeping in via the subs and ships,

but thats NOT alot of money for a AAA+ nextgen title thats ment to look superband have ALL the features,  

 mean gta5 was 200m in marketing alone , but rockstar is a different caliber of studio 

 

but 137million is a good budget if you are a big studio like ubisoft/ea/stc and have an established team , but RSI is everything but 

and its been over 4 years now that money has to become dire 

$137m IS still a big budget for AAA games. Only a few have gone over the $200m mark.

[Space Reptile]

Just now, dalekphalm said:

$137m IS still a big budget for AAA games. Only a few have gone over the $200m mark.

it is , but keep in mind its been 4 years and not much happend , how much of that is left 

[dalekphalm]

19 minutes ago, Space Reptile said:

it is , but keep in mind its been 4 years and not much happend , how much of that is left 

It's actually been five years, two of which, they were essentially working as a small team with less than a dozen employees.

 

There have been 3 years of real, solid development, using AAA sized teams (and the associated budget).

 

Lot's has happened. There's a working PU - sure it's only one solar system, but I remember when they released the Hanger Module, and that was big fucking news. Constant progress is being made all the time. The problem with AAA development, is that it's a slow process. Not a lot of "big" things happen often.

 

If we had seen the development of, say, Battlefield 1, in the same way we saw SC, it would look very similar (If, arguably, on a smaller scale then SC). The main difference is that something like BF1 has an engine platform already ready to go, with only minor changes to the engine necessary. In fact, EA has engine guys specifically for that for their entire collection of studios.

 

SC, while they had a base engine to work with, had to heavily modify and re-write it to do what they wanted. This would have been necessary regardless of what engine they chose (As some say they should have used UE4 - despite the fact that UE4 was a few years away from being ready to release - so realistically they'd be even farther behind schedule had they chosen UE4).

 

EDIT: I don't know how much money is left. I've heard no issues about CIG/RSI having monetary troubles, so I assume they have plenty of money left. On top of that, SQ42 is supposedly close to being finished, which once released, will be an additional revenue source. There was talk about selling it as a standalone game for cheaper for those who didn't want the full SC PU.

[Space Reptile]

1 minute ago, dalekphalm said:

If we had seen the development of, say, Battlefield 1, in the same way we saw SC, it would look very similar (If, arguably, on a smaller scale then SC). The main difference is that something like BF1 has an engine platform already ready to go, with only minor changes to the engine necessary. In fact, EA has engine guys specifically for that for their entire collection of studios.

that is what i was getting at , ea and many other larger devs have already an engine and a team that knows exactly what to do ,

i dont really think RSI is on that level , they are doing everything from the ground up ,

that is why i was skeptical of the 137 being enough , especcialy after 5 years as you say 

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, Space Reptile said:

that is what i was getting at , ea and many other larger devs have already an engine and a team that knows exactly what to do ,

i dont really think RSI is on that level , they are doing everything from the ground up ,

that is why i was skeptical of the 137 being enough , especcialy after 5 years as you say 

Well, as mentioned, the first 2 years were done with a small indie sized team, so very little money would have gone into those early stages. Most of the money is and was for once the main studios were up and running.

 

On top of that, a significant portion of their team is made up of former CryTech engineers and coders, who know the engine and the code inside and out. Sure, they might not be specifically familiar with making an MMO type persistent space simulator, but no one does. These guys are pioneering new types of programming and gameplay.

 

And remember a large portion of AAA game budgets go to marketing. You said so yourself about GTAV. Star Citizen has no need to market in the traditional ways, which cost lots of money. They spend some marketing money, yes, but mostly just on getting ready for GamesCon and making the weekly updates (Which mostly don't cost hardly anything to make).

 

I'd be surprised if their marketing budget was more then a few million USD total.

[MorganO]

On 14/11/2016 at 0:57 PM, porina said:

I wasn't involved at the start so I might not be fully correct on the following. What was promised to the early adopters has now evolved into something much bigger and more ambitious, and that I think is a major part of the problem. If they focused on the original plan, they could bank that release and follow up on future expansions.

 

Look at the other recent online space game as a parallel. I did buy into Elite: Dangerous at kickstarter time. I knew this was a risk, and I didn't just buy in at basic level, but at lifetime expansion level. For a game that didn't exist and wouldn't for over a year, and I wouldn't know if I like it, let along make use of the expansion. Well, it did happen, although late but that's not unexpected. Was it perfect at launch? No. Is it perfect now? No. But they got a game out, they sold it to others beyond the kickstarters. They have released expansions since then adding more functionality, with ongoing plans to expand ever more. Would it have been better if Star Citizen took a similar roll out path?

 

I'm backing two other games on kickstarter. Neither look likely to happen any time soon and are already over a year late. One I'm writing off as a loss as I don't see it happening. The other I think will happen eventually, but the lead is notorious for being slow at everything he does...

what games out of curiosity 

[Cela1]

11 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

On top of that, a significant portion of their team is made up of former CryTech engineers and coders, who know the engine and the code inside and out. Sure, they might not be specifically familiar with making an MMO type persistent space simulator, but no one does. These guys are pioneering new types of programming and gameplay.

Exactly, this is one thing people don't quite understand when they write Star Citizen off as an over-time and over-budget startup. SC will not we just a vast improvement on a genre, it will pretty much be the first and only game in this genre (and will stay like this for a while). The guys at CIG have to make tools to hand craft an entire galaxy and deliver it for thousands of players to navigate and interact together in real time with maximum immersion, and no matter how much money or resources you have it is still an incredibly hard task.

[dalekphalm]

28 minutes ago, Cela1 said:

Exactly, this is one thing people don't quit understand when they write Star Citizen off as an over-time and over-budget startup. SC will not we just a vast improvement on a genre, it will pretty much be the first and only game in this genre for a while. The guys at CIG have to make tools to hand craft an entire galaxy and deliver it for thousands of players to navigate and interact together in real time with maximum immersion, and no matter how much money or resources you have it is still an incredibly had task.

As far as I'm aware, Elite is the only other game to even come close to this kind of scope, and that game is significantly simpler in many ways.

[Mtom]

12 hours ago, Space Reptile said:

that is what i was getting at , ea and many other larger devs have already an engine and a team that knows exactly what to do ,

i dont really think RSI is on that level , they are doing everything from the ground up ,

that is why i was skeptical of the 137 being enough , especcialy after 5 years as you say 

If i read you right, then it seems you have a serious misunderstanding about CIGs crowdfunding. They didn't raised the money in one go, and then spending it since. They have a steady income around 35 million/year from backers (not counting their investments, and other incomes).

[Mtom]

About development time in general:

WALL OF TEXT INCOMING!

 

I think people needs to get a bit of a perspective on things here.

CIG is making 2 games not one. A single player and an MMO which is vastly more complicated than any other MMO out there.

Having said that they just reached the development time of a bigger single player game at 4 years - and those other games are made with an established budget, team, engine, and most of them is just an improvement on its predecessor.

CIG needed to build the studios, the teams, gather the budget, completely rewrite the engine (as theres no engine out there which can do what they need), and they are shooting for tech that hasn't been tried before.

 

Also we need to admit there was some wasted time in the development, but again if we put it into perspective its understandable: CIG did not know how much funding they have in the first two years so they worked their way towards a smaller scope-smaller team etc.

After a while it seemed clear that as they have a steady income, and much more funding they dreamed of, they can go full out, so they boosted up the team (now ~370 strong), the scope changed (this was the backers choice they voted to continue the funding, and add more features), and ofc this brought changes in the development as well, they needed to change the pipelines, and set up again the development roles, and ofc this took up some time, but as a result they are much more effective now. 

 

As of now what we can see: the engine conversion was done early this year, ship- and assets pipelines are simplified and pushing out stuff faster, planetary tech jumped in from nowhere, Star Marine is coming in.

The teams are now set up for pushing content, they have a clear sight on what to do and how, the foundation of the tech is done. So after 2.6 will come 3.0 in a few months and that will be the first "game like" iteration of SC. After that they will start to add game mechanics (mining, salvaging, etc), and assets (bases, planets, etc).

[rentaspoon]

18 hours ago, Space Reptile said:

well therre crowdfunding was 137,711,961 (137m) and they raised that in 2012 ,

well the bulk of that , a few million kept creeping in via the subs and ships,

but thats NOT alot of money for a AAA+ nextgen title thats ment to look superband have ALL the features,  

 mean gta5 was 200m in marketing alone , but rockstar is a different caliber of studio 

 

but 137million is a good budget if you are a big studio like ubisoft/ea/stc and have an established team , but RSI is everything but 

and its been over 4 years now that money has to become dire 

Just to correct that it is 137million to date, 16th of September 2013 they where aiming for the 19 Mil stretch goal.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130916003901/https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals

 

Edit: just noticed there is a 3rd page

-facepalm-