
Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns - theandrewbailey
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/technology/personaltech/video-game-raised-148-million-from-fans-now-its-raising-issues.html
======
thesuitonym
This will probably not be a well-liked response but I'm going to post it
anyway.

I preordered Star Citizen back in 2012 or 2013. Whenever the original
Kickstarter was. I've kind of forgotten about it. I've never preordered
another game--or anything really. And I don't think this was a bad experience.

I haven't received a game yet, but I have played some demos that were really
fun. I've seen hours of content (Sure, that content is freely available, but
so is NPR), read some great stories, and had some great conversations about
the game.

In 2013 I paid $60 for a game I have not yet played. That year I also went to
a casino one night with $80 in my pocket. Both times I came away with nothing
but a fun experience and some stories. In both cases I feel like I paid for
some entertainment and received it.

This isn't a post to excuse vaporware titles on Steam Greenlight or
preordering broken-on-launch games. Quite the contrary. I won't buy EA games
until at least a year after they come out. I will NEVER buy a pre-release game
on Steam. But I bought Star Citizen. I took a gamble, and I had some fun. I
wouldn't have done that if I didn't think there would be some fun along the
way.

Star Citizen could never come out, and I wouldn't really feel cheated, because
I still got something out of it.

~~~
Lev1a
About the only game in Steams Early Access program I would recommend to buy is
Factorio[0]. It is essentially a factory building/automation game that's
constantly getting updated, with one big patch about a week ago and several
bugfix versions since. They are also open about their development process,
i.e. some devs playing the game live with streamers and answering questions
from the streamers and the chat to the best of their ability. In one such
instant IIRC they even said they're planning for the 1.0 release towards the
end of this year.

All in all, this game is definitely worth your time and money if you're into
this game genre. There's even a demo version if you're not sure.

[0]:
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/427520/Factorio/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/427520/Factorio/)

~~~
glenneroo
I have purchased/followed a number of Steam Early Access titles and very
rarely have I been disappointed. I think the trick is, to wait a bit to see
how often the devs update. There are some outliers such as RimWorld or
Subnautica where updates happen only a couple times per year, but each update
is game-changing and adds tons new content, features and bug-fixes.

Other titles which are still in EA but are releasing constant stream of
information plus software updates:

    
    
      - Space Engineers/Medieval Engineers (weekly YT blog)
      - Rust (weekly blog)
      - Rogalia (daily to weekly Steam blog)
      - Project Zomboid (weekly blog)
      - Kenshi (between weekly and monthly changelist)
      - Factorio (weekly blog)
      - Don't Starve Together (multiplayer addition to Don't Starve)
      - DayZ (I only play maybe once per year but the blog updates seem quite frequent)
    

Titles which had a long EA period but ended up releasing IMHO amazingly
polished products:

    
    
      - Terraria 
      - Kerbal Space Program
      - Prison Architect

~~~
Groxx
Subnautica is a fairly unique project in a number of ways. One of my favorites
is their public task boards and bug tracker:
[http://subnautica.unknownworlds.com/](http://subnautica.unknownworlds.com/)

------
wavefunction
Funny, people expressing their "concerns" became a bit of a meme on the Start
Citizen forums in the early days.

As far as the meat of the article, I've been following Star Citizen as a
backer since the Kickstarter days. My take on the history of the game's
development is that Cloud Imperium Games was kind of unfocused and spinning
some wheels for a while at the start as they attempted to build a AAA studio
from scratch by partnering with smaller outsourcing firms for animation and
modeling work. I think they misfired on some of their choices of early
partners but that seems to have ended and they seem to be focused and moving
forward.

The thing a lot of people forget is that the game was initially going to be:
"you log in, you spawn in your ship/you are your ship/and...dogfight". As
well, many of the ambitious features that they've been successfully
implementing like seamless travel across millions of kms of volumetric space
were player requests. I know I requested the ability to fly from space to
planet surfaces and also expressed that I would be content to wait longer for
the game's release if that was possible.

I don't really have sympathy for the folks who feel cheated or abused because
from my experience, CIG has bent over backwards many times.

Anyways, I'll get off the soapbox. I'm optimistic and the game is already fun,
with only a limited amount of the full content to come (especially in June
when they launch an expanded PU).

~~~
ehnto
I agree, it has definitely been a community driven scope creep as far as I am
concered. We are getting what we asked for. Some of the communication has been
disappointing but everyone is learning here, this is a big and new undertaking
and there is no protocol.

I also don't understand how anyone could possibly want a worse game sooner
outside of plain impatience. If you wait longer and the game is delivered near
spec, it will be a better experience than if we get it earlier and sacrifice
some features. To have both is ridiculous, it's not like they are twiddling
their thumbs over there. They are progressing as fast as they can.

------
gavanwoolery
The original Wing Commander: Privateer had about 20 core team members and cost
(guesstimating) around $3 million to make, inflation adjusted.

To put that in perspective, Fallout 4 cost around $150m to make (IIRC), and
that was an amazingly frugal budget for such a large game (Several AAA titles
have budgets twice that large).

To be honest, I would have been happy with something along the budget of the
original Privateer. And that would have probably left him lots of wiggle room
to experiment and engage in research-esque goals.

I cant be too angry at him for being ambitious, or even changing his goals,
but the #1 thing Roberts did wrong IMO was accelerating to AAA-style
development and growing the team to 400 large before even really knowing what
he wanted to develop. Spending a $100k+ on mocap and acting as early as he did
is like producing a movie and then writing the script for it after the fact.

~~~
acemarke
I would say that Chris Roberts has always had a very good idea of the game he
_wanted_ to build, but but the original plan was to only build part of what he
really wanted. When the crowdfunding kept coming in, it enabled him to go
straight for building the game as he envisioned it, rather than iterating
after release.

It's also worth noting that CIG only hit 400 employees fairly recently. I know
some of their major presentations have included employee counts over time, so
you could dig up the exact numbers if you wanted to. I _think_ they had
roughly 50 at the end of 2013, and maybe 150-ish at the end of 2014?

~~~
gavanwoolery
good points :)

------
arikr
Oh dear.

Reminds me of:
[https://twitter.com/mcgd/status/850347746452099072](https://twitter.com/mcgd/status/850347746452099072)

"When the kleenex box is full, you take two. When it's almost empty, you might
use one twice. That's why oversized financings are bad."

It seems like the better route would be for them to make the $10 million game,
and then to ramp up from there.

~~~
schmich
I've found this to be true not just of financing and money but of scheduling
and time as well [1]. I wouldn't be surprised if this applies to many other
resources, like employees in a company.

For example, given the task of building a complex system under a time
constraint, it's easy to exhaust the time granted, be it a week, a month, or a
year. A complex system can always be more perfect, so you can always spend
more time on making it better. A limited resource (e.g. a week) can force you
to focus on the essential solution whereas an abundance (e.g. a month) can
lead to frivolous design and overengineering.

The antidote seems to be organizational restraint, concrete milestones, and
constant readjustment to keep in line with greater goals. Scope creep,
perfect-as-enemy-of-good, and bike shedding are all aspects of this behavior.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law)

------
mabbo
I feel like crowdfunding sites ought to force each campaign to have a 'maximum
funding' value they have to choose. That would both force the people building
whatever it is they want to build to consider just how much money is too much,
and also signal to those funding the project the kind of ambition the builder
has.

~~~
pinum
A sibling comment pointed out that they did their own fundraising, but this is
still a good point. The limit could be set to the highest defined stretch goal
+ n% to compensate for non-payers.

~~~
ehnto
Considering the crowdfunding platform makes its money from these kinds of
runaway successes in funding, I don't suspect they have much incentive to
offer such a feature.

------
xxr
Am I correct in my understanding that every dollar pledged essentially pushes
the release further into the future since the developer is on the hook to add
something extra with that dollar? Not that each dollar comes with a signed and
sworn commitment, but more that the $500,000 game probably would have been out
and actively enjoyed already.

~~~
giobox
I may be misunderstanding too, but every time I read another story on Star
Citizen's development, it certainly seems that way, and Robert's own comments
suggest he will keep spending every dollar to make "the best possible" game.
It certainly suggests that even if he isn't legally on hook to spend it all,
he will try.

He's arguably painted himself into an unfortunate corner by not imposing a
fund raising cap - morally/ethically you could argue he has no choice but to
try to spend all the dollars - to simply pocket 'the extra' cash would leave a
bad taste in backers mouths I imagine, especially when they are effectively
donations.

I can't help but feel that when he reached 9 figures Roberts maybe should have
considered closing the donations for a while...

~~~
djsumdog
But couldn't he have done iterative releases instead? Give all the backers
more that just a little demo, but a real mini-game that demos the tech and can
keep gamers occupied for a few days. Slowly add more onto it?

Or maybe release the game in 3 different parts?

I haven't played any of the demos but it does look like a really impressive
game. I probably won't play it as I don't like MMORPGs, but I did really enjoy
his earlier work in the Wing Commander series.

~~~
acemarke
That's pretty much what the current Persistent Universe Alpha is. An actual
playable version of the Star Citizen MMO half, with the currently built
technology.

~~~
xxr
Ah, it wasn't super clear how much of anything is available to play. Is it
like Minecraft where it receives rapid improvements?

~~~
acemarke
Heh. I don't think "rapid" is the right word. Last year they had said they
were hoping for monthly-ish patches, but that went by the wayside pretty fast
around Alpha 2.3 or so, when they began integrating the backend persistence
systems.

The Persistent Universe Alpha is currently at 2.6.x. It currently includes one
"limited" area of space around a gas giant in one specific solar system. (Note
that "limited" here means that it's only a fraction of the planned final solar
system, but thanks to CIG's 64-bit map size technology, it's legitimately
several hundred million KM^3.) There's a few space stations, several quests,
and some limited economy. All fully playable, but gameplay-wise, it's still
mostly at the "tech demo" level in a lot of ways.

The "holy grail" version that we fans have been waiting for since last fall is
Alpha 3.0. The /r/starcitizen subreddit has a ton more info on what it's
supposed to include, but off the top of my head: a larger chunk of the Stanton
solar system; several moons or planets that will be 100% "see it -> fly there
-> land there"; the first iterations of several professions; and a whole lot
more.

The current production schedule for Alpha 3.0 is at
[https://robertsspaceindustries.com/schedule-
report](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/schedule-report) . They originally
projected it would come out around June 29, but just pushed it back a couple
weeks. Realistically, I would expect them to bump it back into August. Once
that's out, they'll probably get out another couple good-sized updates later
in the year.

So, definitely not "rapid", but given the scope of what they're doing, not
surprising. (Besides, my laptop actually can't even handle playing the game
right now, so I've just been watching the development progress. I'll probably
upgrade later this year sometime after Alpha 3.0 comes out.)

------
raesene9
IIRC Star citizen got started in funding around the same time as
Elite:Dangerous.

It seems that the E:D approach has worked out rather better, in that they
delivered an initial playable game that was rather lacking in some areas , and
have been incrementally adding to that game over time in terms of both
features and platforms supported.

~~~
fapjacks
As someone that bought heavily into both games, I have to be honest here when
I say that E:D was a great short-term game, like many of those single-player
games we're all used to. I quickly hit the grind part of E:D and stopped
playing it. I should mention here that I'm an "explorer" subtype of game
player, so the grind doesn't do it for me.

On the other hand, I am a very early backer of Star Citizen, and I regularly
(about once a week, which is a lot for me) play the alpha and because I'm also
an Imperator subscriber, I get rental credits for new ships and weapons and
stuff, so there's always something new for me to try. Then there's also the
knowledge that the full persistent universe ("game") is yet to come. I've got
a lot of ships to fly, and an organization/clan with lots of RL friends to fly
missions with. I'm stoked for all the accompanying lore being built into Star
Citizen. This universe already feels lived in and detail-oriented. I am
confident that I could play for a long time and still not hit the end of the
road to satisfy my inner "explorer" player subtype.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
I bought into SC when they promised Linux support. All this cool stuff that
people are getting to play with early is Windows-only. I have significantly
less patience with Star Citizen because so far as I'm concerned they've broken
their promise.

~~~
Neeek
I feel you.

It's not a reason I originally backed for but I've been increasingly more
linux focused so it's something I'd love to see. PCI passthrough with KVM
looks to be the solution for now, but it does mean having a chunk of machine
resources reserved for windows :(

~~~
danblick
Worse, it would mean violating my Microsoft boycott. ;)

~~~
Neeek
The horror!

------
jhanschoo
I'm not a backer, but it seems to me that Star Citizen is progressing well.
There's still active development and progress to the actual game, there's been
several demos released, there's been constant communication.

As long as they continually scheduling and releasing new Alpha builds
incorporating their growing world as they flesh it out, I don't see cause for
concern.

------
paulcole
Amazing delusional quote, "But imagine — the game I can build with $140
million is going to be very different to the one I could build with $10
million."

Yes, it sounds like the $140 million game is not going to get made at all.

~~~
pzh
This is where the value of frugality really shines. The more money you have,
the more bogged down in extra features and additional complexity you can get
because of excess ambition or feeling of duty to your supporters.

It seems that because of overfunding, these guys are already suffering from
the second-system effect even without having built a first system to begin
with.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-
system_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect)

------
bsder
Programming is hard. Who could have known that?

AAA studios don't act the way they do just for the sake of being an asshole.

~~~
ehnto
Not to mention it took two years to build the AAA team to begin with.

Also, immense scope creep. The game to be delivered is nothing like the game
people backed originally, and hopefully that's a good thing.

~~~
yellow_postit
Until a game is delivered isn't it premature to label it a AAA team?

~~~
screecwe
AAA refers to production quality of a game. The quality of what we're seeing
is already AAA.

------
apozem
Far from it for me to take anything away from Star Citizen hopefuls - I hope
the game comes out and is good and fans have fun with it.

But when I look at the mind-numbing scope and ambition of the project... It
will be very impressive if they can deliver everything promised, as good as
promised.

~~~
ehnto
That's why I am glad I backed though. We don't need another safe bet AAA war
game. There is truly new ground being broken in the technology side of the
project and that will filter out into the rest of the gaming industry, filling
the metaphorical toolbelt with new tools.

The engineering is the biggest time sink so far and it's not surprising it's
creeped and taken longer than expected. They have invented novel approaches to
new problems and that is worth every dollar I backed to see happen.

~~~
yellow_postit
I've played a lot of Elite: Dangerous it is unclear how much new ground is
actually being broken here. I'm looking forward to and hoping SC succeeds, but
let's not ignore the competitors that have already delivered.

~~~
ehnto
I would recommend looking at some of the more recent tech focussed ATV
episodes. There is a lot more to SC than there is in Elite, which is not to
detract from Elite at all. It is a different game and excels where it aims to.

The underlying theme though is that SC is built of very finite systems that
all interact with eachother. When Chris Roberts talks about fidelity it is
often misconstrued to be about graphical fidelity. But it is equally
applicable to the systems fidelity. In theory, after you have placed a cargo
crate of goods in the cargohold of your ship and taken off, a pirate could
shoot out your generator, hop out of their seat and pick up a gun off their
gun rack, EVA to your ship, enter through a hole blasted into your hull and
grab the individual crates to move to their ship. Later the pirate will store
the crates in their homestead on a planet nearby, or pawn the goods at a
market. Meanwhile you are left to fix your generator and ponder deep space.

But the fact that you could steal the crate from a disabled ship isn't because
they put in a crate stealing game mechanic . It's simply intrinsic in the way
they are developing the item interaction system and physics systems in the
game. That wasn't a great example but hopefully it conveys what I am trying to
convey.

This comment is also an example of how No Mans Sky disappointed everyone.
Community based hyperbole. But I used only current features or 3.0 features to
make it up so here is hoping.

In the 2.5 Alpha you can already disable a generator, you can already EVA and
board a ship. In 3.0 there will be planets, planet outposts and markets, cargo
to steal and nefarious people to steal it.

------
aeturnum
The Star Citizen tech is really impressive looking. I love watching their demo
videos because they just look amazing.

Their development process seems inefficient from afar. They've switched
engines at least once, maybe twice? They've announced titles that then kind of
fade into the background. They build really detailed systems for simulating
light / gravity / thrust in ways that seem impressive & unrelated to gameplay.

It kind of reminds me of Overgrowth, though with a whole lot more money (and
charging users a whole lot more as well). I'd be interested to see, in 5 years
or so, what the final-ish product looks like (I don't mean they're 5 years
from release, I mean in 5 years they'll be past release).

~~~
acemarke
They never actually "switched engines".

They've been on CryEngine since the beginning. They've heavily customized
large portions of it, to the point that I think one of the devs estimated it
was only 50% original code left. They also actually bought a full license to
the CryEngine source, and stopped taking any real updates from new versions of
CryEngine as the codebases diverged.

They did recently announce that they were "switching" to Amazon's Lumberyard
engine, but Lumberyard is itself a particular fork of CryEngine. The switch
was primarily about branding and sponsorship. CryTek has been having serious
financial issues, while Amazon is busy putting resources into Lumberyard. CIG
also just switched all their backend cloud computing from GCE to AWS, and I'm
sure they're getting a deal on AWS costs as part of the switch from
"CryEngine" to "Lumberyard".

If by "titles that fade into the background" you mean the Squadron 42 single-
player campaign... yes and no. Yes, they've been deliberately very quiet about
that, because as a single-player game they'd like it to actually be
meaningfully new and interesting on release. Also yes, backers are getting a
bit antsy wondering where SQ42 progress actually stands at this point.
However, it's not like they've abandoned development on SQ42.

------
fapjacks
I'm a High Admiral backer from November of 2012, and I feel like I've got my
money's worth, and I'm not really concerned about the opinions of people that
haven't put skin in the game. "This game is taking _forever_ to be developed!"
I suppose if your frame of reference is every blockbuster made by every
enormous shitty studio conglomerate, sure. But saddle up or shut up as far as
I'm concerned. Play what's available, read the development timeline so you
actually know what's going on with development and what's happened so far, and
then I'll take any of these criticisms seriously. It's pretty stupid the
number of people saying things like "I paid my thirty dollars a couple of
years ago and I still can't play!" Well that's _your_ fault for not looking
before you leap. You have known two things if you've read the packaging before
you bought the beans: 1) Development is ongoing and the final game is not
released, 2) Development timeline is not rigid and inflexible like it is for
giant studios cranking out titles. This is Chris Roberts being given ample
time and money to create a magnum opus. That is what it's been the whole time,
and what it's been advertised as since the beginning. Outsider opinion is
worth nothing.

~~~
kelvin0
As a High Admiral backer, you could also be a in High Commitment Bias? Not
trying to be offensive.

[https://www.aqr.org.uk/glossary/commitment-
bias](https://www.aqr.org.uk/glossary/commitment-bias)

~~~
fapjacks
I thought about preempting your post specifically, because every time I
mention that I've put investment into the game, someone mentions it. I think
if you dig into my post history, you will find about six posts _exactly_ like
yours, link to more information included. Let me put it this way: I don't
gamble with the rent money. That money is gone, and I'm not counting on a
return. This is the way I think when it comes to this kind of thing, because
any gains I see are a wonderful surprise. I started changing my psychology
when I started going to war in my twenties: As I went out expecting to get
hit, it was always a wonderful surprise when we didn't. It's pretty cool how
that works for funding Kickstarter projects!

------
1_2__3
With apologies to Mister Sinclair: It is very difficult to make a developer
finish a game when his salary depends on not finishing it.

------
tracker1
I'm not sure why they didn't just "Build the $10m game" and release that, then
spend the rest on expansions to that game. Would have been a much more
predictable approach (assuming the original game is setup to be appropriately
expandable.

~~~
ryandrake
Or build the $10M game and return the remaining $130M to the backers,
proportionally?

My question is: What would he do if he got an extra $300M? Increase the scope
even more? At what point do you stop increasing scope and concentrate on
shipping a product?

~~~
giobox
How big a 'cut' does Roberts himself take as well? Given this endeavor is
built entirely on the charity of the backers, I would really hope he isn't
taking a percentage, but sadly wouldn't be surprised either if he is.

~~~
fgonzag
Why wouldn't he? All you are doing is buying something unreleased for a
discount because of the built in risk. He gets to do whatever he wants with
the money left over as long as he meets the stated goals.

~~~
giobox
I think many people would argue that ethically/morally it's somewhat
questionable - he's taken donations, not investment, and as such lacks any of
the oversight/due diligence external investment usually attracts. Similarly, I
doubt even a majority of backers actually understand the business/charity
model they are putting money into - that we are now at 9 figures certainly
suggests these are not "sophisticated investors".

Was keeping a large amount of the cash for himself a stated goal? probably
not, hence my curiosity. His business occupies a grey area between business
endeavor and charity. Me in his shoes, I'd sure as hell feel bad taking a
chunk of the donations. I'd have no issue with him pocketing the profits of
traditional sales, should he ever reach that point - no one who donated was
under the illusion a return would occur, but they should perhaps quite rightly
expect that their donation at least pay for development, not lining Robert's
pockets.

I think it's also debatable the extent to which backers have "bought"
anything, let alone received a discount.

------
sbov
It seems like a safer use of extra funding is for free expansions. It may seem
unfair to take $140 million and build a $10 million game, but people funded
you with your $10 million game, deadlines included, in mind.

~~~
manarth

      It may seem unfair to take $140 million and build a $10 million game
    

If a film spent $10M, and turned $140M at the box office, it would be seen as
a success, rather than a con. Should a game be any different?

~~~
wang_li
It shouldn't be any different, however, this situation is:

    
    
        If a film spent $140M and turned $10M at the box office, it would be seen as an utter failure. Should a game be any different?

~~~
csbrooks
I don't think that's totally accurate. That $140M could be considered
preorders, basically.

------
dntbgoat
How have people not yet realized that supporting a video game hype train will
end in disappointment

~~~
canada_dry
It reminds me of the people who put significantly larger amounts of money into
the "Aido" home robot - a heap of unrealistic promises in an unrealistic
timeframe for an unrealistic price - it's way behind schedule but has yet to
pull the rug out.

(More on Aido here: [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aido-next-gen-home-
robot-...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aido-next-gen-home-robot--
2#/comments))

~~~
sjg007
Someone should start a kickstarter to investigate scams on kickstarter..

------
acemarke
Just for point of reference, here's today's episode of the weekly "Around the
Verse" video update series, showing what the UK studio has been working on:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADB-
wpvTD0k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADB-wpvTD0k) . Just watching the
initial UK update segment, looks like we've got examples of lighting effects,
ship design and implementation, object interaction, and a lot more.

I have no problems with people questioning CIG's ability to hit deadlines, or
wondering what exactly the status of Squadron 42 is. Those are totally fair
critiques. But, as long as they keep showing progress updates like this, I'm
perfectly content to sit back and let them make the game we want them to make
:)

------
Taylor_OD
I ended up with a free copy of Star Citizen when I bought a graphic card. At
the point when I got it there wasnt much to do. I somehow still get weekly
email updates from them but I've been expecting them to stop over the last 9
months or so because it seems the full game will never be finished.

~~~
BEEdwards
GTA 5 took 5 years to developed, they've proposed a much more ambitious game.

I'm not saying they're going to accomplish they're goal, but their dev time
isn't even approaching unimaginable yet.

~~~
ehnto
They also didn't have a team sitting and waiting. They have had to build a 300
head team so they weren't at full productivity until year two or three.

------
bitmapbrother
It seems to me that Star Citizen is more about the journey than the actual
game. I'm sure it'll be released at some point, but the fact that people are
able to justify their purchase says a lot about the game and the community.

------
botskonet
I hadn't heard about this game until right after No Man's Sky, which ruined my
eagerness to back/pre-order things. Except for Everspace I have no backed or
pre-ordered anything else, forcing myself to wait.

As a developer working on a Steam game, I've decided not to let myself down
this path. Kickstarter is tempting, but I'd rather release something when it's
ready and build from there - if someone pays me, I want it to be for a product
they can have now.

------
sergiotapia
Star Citizen will probably release when Overgrowth and Day Z come out of Early
Access alpha.

~~~
djsumdog
Duke Nukem Forever did eventually come out.

~~~
sjg007
Too early in my opinion.. they should've waited for kickstarter.

------
mwfj
My guess: Star Citizen will eventually raise 500M USD. No full game resembling
the original promises will ever be delivered.

The "investors" will keep saying that with just a little more time, things
will be perfect

------
faragon
I wish Star Citizen to success. At least, the idea of a massive multi-player
in the space, with economics, politics, roles, etc. it is very interesting, in
my opinion.

~~~
sjg007
Umm.. have you not seen Eve Online?

~~~
faragon
Wow, no, thank you! :-)

~~~
scott_s
Eve is a game I have never played, but enjoy reading about. It may be the
largest, longest running economic simulation out there. Two good stories:
[https://www.polygon.com/features/2014/2/24/5419788/eve-
onlin...](https://www.polygon.com/features/2014/2/24/5419788/eve-online-
thrilling-boring) and [https://www.polygon.com/2016/3/31/11334014/eve-online-
war](https://www.polygon.com/2016/3/31/11334014/eve-online-war)

------
bobbles
They have been upfront about plans and missed targets for the entire duration
- communication is why people are still happy

------
arca_vorago
I haven't bought into SC yet, but I do support them and have confidence they
will deliver something worthwhile _eventually_.

Right now my main reason for support is that they are planning to go Vulkan
only, and Vulkan is what is going to allow gnu+linux to become a real
competitor in the pc gaming market.

------
ungzd
"Space exploration" games have strange tendency for hyper-hype and scams, for
example recently released No Man's Sky.

~~~
jontro
I have friends who enjoy No Man's Sky very much.

Don't buy into the "mass rage" that spreads from some small number of people
crying out loud.

~~~
coralreef
Mostly negative across 73k reviews. I'll grant there is a lot of bandwagon
hating, and that art is subjective. But this is the best data we have to use
as a proxy for quality.

[http://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/#app_re...](http://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/#app_reviews_hash)

~~~
abritinthebay
Steam reviews? Yeah, there's _never_ any good reviews for a backlashed Steam
game.

Steam as a platform is great, but as a community it's a bigger dumpster fire
than 4chan.

~~~
chc
You're not wrong that it could reflect an angry minority, but it's far more
reliable than "I know a couple of people who liked that," which is the
competing metric in this case.

~~~
abritinthebay
Not really. That's actually a _better_ metric in most cases if you a) trust
the person saying it and b) trust their ability to review friends choices.

Quite frankly I find Steam reviews to be one of the _worst possible_ metrics
and would trust the octopus that picked world cup winners more than Steam
reviews.

~~~
chc
> _That 's actually a better metric in most cases if you a) trust the person
> saying it and b) trust their ability to review friends choices._

How so? Whether or not I trust someone has no obvious bearing on whether their
opinion closely matches the general consensus.

For example, I know someone who likes the 1990 version of Night of the Living
Dead better than the original. I absolutely believe her on this point. But it
would be ludicrous for me to say, based on her preferences, that the 1990
version is widely considered the definitive Night of the Living Dead.

~~~
jontro
Feels like the conversation got pretty off topic. If a game is entertaining is
a matter of personal preference of course.

It's another thing entirely to call a game a scam.

Looking at the subreddit
[https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/](https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/)
it looks like there is a healthy community playing a lot and game updates are
released regularly.

My initial point was to give a different view and to try to stop the negative
feedback loop this game always gets.

~~~
chc
It's sometimes called a scam because the lead designer was making false claims
about the game all the way up to its release, not because it's bad. That's a
totally different question.

Anyway, it sounded to me like your initial point was that the game is
generally well liked and the people who are disappointed should be dismissed
as "a small number of people crying," which is both rude to those people and
seems to be the opposite of reality. That's why I was like, "Whoa there."

------
tyingq
If most of that $148M came in via KickStarter, their cut is 5%, so almost $7.5
million, on a single project.

Really good ROI for a low-to-medium complexity website, and a company of 129
employees.

~~~
wavefunction
CIG raised about $6,000,000 on KickStarter if I recall correctly. Almost all
of the crowdfunds came after they moved off KickStarter to their website:
robertsspaceindustries.com

~~~
acemarke
Off the top of my head, the initial month of crowdfunding raised approximately
$6.5M, with roughly $2.5M via Kickstarter and $4M via the RSI website.

~~~
wavefunction
There you go, I was thinking of that first month.

Thanks!

------
brilliantcode
My theory is scope creep. These guys have done a good job of convincing people
that they can live the ultimate space exploration fantasy that's been talked
about since the 80s.

It's the ultimate simulation. We know very little about space and even fiction
(ex. star wars) seems to generate even more demand.

As people got excited and started throwing money at them, so did the scope
obviously. I love Star Citizen's attention to detail but it's suffice to say
that they've hit people's patience.

~~~
jlarocco
No theory required:

> “I’m already building the best game I can,” said Mr. Roberts, who
> acknowledged the bumps. “But imagine — the game I can build with $140
> million is going to be very different to the one I could build with $10
> million. If I can build a bigger and more robust experience, I will.”

My guess is they keep going until donations taper off and they're about to run
out of money, then rush out a massively buggy release that disappoints
everybody.

~~~
brilliantcode
So basically, a crowd funded No Man's Sky

