Star Citizen Reaches A Staggering $148 Million in Crowdfunding

Discussion in 'Frontpage news' started by Hilbert Hagedoorn, Apr 29, 2017.

  1. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

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  2. NewTRUMP Order

    NewTRUMP Order Master Guru

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    I said it 2 years ago and I'll say it again...This guy is a crook, living on peoples donations, just like people on the doll, he will never deliver on his promises and just string everyone along. $148 MILLION DOLLARS and all you can do is fly around (barely) do 3 redundant silly money making "missions" and use anemic weapons on pirates that randomly show up. I am sure a freshman college programmer could make this in a semester for 5 grand and get a b-. $148 million dollars really? Shame on you Chris Roberts.
     
  3. ivymike10mt

    ivymike10mt Guest

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    That is :dave: Milking
     
  4. buhehe

    buhehe Master Guru

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    :bang:
     

  5. Demrock

    Demrock Guest

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    Lots of hate but seriously how fast can you make a space game with the feature level of Star Citizen ?

    4 years ? 6 years ?

    This game still has a ton of work ahead of them but you can see 3.0 is realy where the game comes together and finaly starts showing how the game will be.

    Hate or love it but there is no game like star citizen and give them at least some time to produce a game instead of crying SCAM SCAM SCAM in every post.

    I payed 50 euro and wont pay more untill i see bigger improvements and those might come once 3.0 is released to the public.
    I cant wait to fly around and explore and fly to a moon build a base and move to the next one and do some trade.
     
  6. Fender178

    Fender178 Ancient Guru

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    If you think that then you have no idea what you are talking about. A college freshman couldn't program complex games like we have now a days by him/herself. It takes a team of programmers to make a game now a days. Even if they were a genius programmer.

    It depends on how large their team of programmers are. I'm mean look at Persona 5 it took Atlus a good while because of financial issues before Sega helped out. Plus Atlus is a small dev in compared to alot of the AAA devs. Maybe the Star Citizen team is a small team.
     
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2017
  7. terrybogard

    terrybogard Guest

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    Haters are allways going to hate :D When this game gets released, I would love to see all of you anti Star Citizen rednecks in the face :p
     
  8. Kaarme

    Kaarme Ancient Guru

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    I guess I should reinstall this again and have a look around. It has been ages and a different PC when I last did.
     
  9. CDJay

    CDJay Guest

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    You might as well wait for 3.0, at this point, as it's only 2-3 months away.

    CDJay
     
  10. Denial

    Denial Ancient Guru

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    It was relatively small up until recently.

    The problem is people don't know what it takes to build a giant AAA title, in terms of manpower, cost or time. It's always evident in these Star Citizens threads.

    Star Citizen started real development in 2012 but they only built out their first studio mid-2013 - they only had $15M at that point. Building a studio and production pipeline takes time. Bringing people on board takes time. Most games start with an established studio and production procedures, etc already in place. All the procedures, servers, offices, etc are already setup for most companies. CIG had to build and refine all that over the development of the game.

    Then they began their ramp-up and started bringing in outside studios. Those studios need to be brought up to speed on what they are working on. They need to get accustomed to the production pipeline, etc. The other thing is, they need to ship all their systems in semi-working modular states, which most other development studios don't have to do. SC needs to ship periodic working updates to their backers - so they take time to polish/fix bugs in systems that me get completely refactored in a few months. It wastes more time.

    At it's peak now SC has slightly over ~400 people working on the project. By contrast Witcher 3 had ~1500 people working in it's 3rd year. We have no idea how much money CIG has spent getting the game up to it's current level of development. Most people oddly assume the complete $148M is in the game now - not sure why. They have 400 people, if the average salary is 85K a year that's only 34M a year - but they only reached 400 people at the end of 2016. Also that 85K a year is the average salary of a video game developer. The ~400 people CR talks about is total production - including interns, office managers, etc. So my 85K value is definitely high and yet even if they had 400 people @ 85K a year for 4 years they had a studio, they still wouldn't have hit the $148M.

    Then there is the length of development. Like even if you ignore the fact that CIG had to be completely built from the ground up they aren't outside the realms of normal development time of other games.


    • Bioware spent 5 years developing their Starwars MMO and $200M and they were an established studio.

    • Epic's Fortnite has been in development for 6 years and still probably won't be released this year.

    • Blizzard's Starcraft 2 took 6 years to develop, 7 if you include the first year when it was just concept and most of the devs got pulled to work on World of Warcraft.

    • Elder Scrolls Online took 7 years.

    Starcitizen is currently at 4 years, 5 if you include the year where they basically had no studio. CIG is also effectively building two games, although much of the work is shared between the games. CIG was not an established studio, the rest of these games were built by established studios. CIG has to ship semi-polished working modules to appease backers, then refactor the modules later and re-polish. CIG has a moving budget which makes planning far more difficult - you don't know whether you can ramp up to 1500 people like Witcher 3 did, because you have no idea if the money is still going to be flowing in this year vs knowing exactly how much money you have.

    The process is extremely complicated. Just watch this video on just the building a schedule to see how complicated it is to work people across multiple different teams in multiple timezones on the same modules:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOjXfNnhxf0

    There isn't exactly a book or guide on building out a $150M moving budget indie studio. They're going to make mistakes, have delays, all kinds of issues. But nothing they've done so far is outside the realm of any other studio. If they can ship SQ42 by the end of next year it would be 5 years of total studio development for a game with a 20 hour campaign. Bioshock was also in development for 5 years and had a 20 hour campaign. Actually I recently beat the Campaign to GR:Wildlands - same thing, ~25 hours, 5 years development.

    And for all I know the game is completely mismanaged, Chris spent $100M on a life size Space Ship for his house or something and they are about to declare bankrupcy.. But until we have some confirmation of that - timeline/budgeting/development wise they seem to be on track and within the norm of AAA development studios.

    It isn't going to stop loobyluggs from coming in and crying about the definition of profit or needing a bank or whatever his rants are though. People just hate this game for some reason. It's been in the news for too long - while all the other games I just mentioned here usually aren't even made public until a year or so before they release. And that's pretty much the only difference.
     
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2017

  11. Fender178

    Fender178 Ancient Guru

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    Thanks for the information. It was very informal.
     
  12. Arbie

    Arbie Guest

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    The funding is breathtaking, but it's looking like we may finally get a true and worthy successor to the Crysis series. The production values look similar (meaning top-notch). If only the combat will really be as good, and with *optional* quicksave. Otherwise it's back to replaying Crysis 1,2,3.
     
  13. Silva

    Silva Ancient Guru

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    You sound like someone who has some sort of problem(s). Dude, chill!
    Good games take time developing, usually more than 4 years.

    Wait, I just replied to a troll...

    This has nothing to do with Crysis imo.
     
  14. intellimoo

    intellimoo Master Guru

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    And in time we'll all be dead...... lol
     
  15. ddelamare

    ddelamare Guest

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    If you take that 150m, divide it by the amount of staff he has then divide that again say over 5 years, they are pretty much out of money :p
     

  16. tsunami231

    tsunami231 Ancient Guru

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    people still funding this?

    DNF AKA did not finish/Duke Nukem Forever comes to mind times does always me good out comes
     
  17. Godimus

    Godimus Guest

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    LOL I can safely speak for the majority and say you have no clue what you are talking about..
     
  18. Pete J

    Pete J Master Guru

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    Quite happy to wait (backer here) and quite honestly don't expect any kind of full release for at LEAST a couple of years.

    Hell, even in it's current state, I've had the most fun I've ever had in an online game with my org mates.
     
  19. Redemption80

    Redemption80 Guest

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    It seems like most of the backers are happy enough, while it's the ones who haven't are the ones complaining.

    I don't think Witcher 3 is the best comparison when talking about budget though, devs in Poland likely get paid less than in the US and that game still cost alot.
     
  20. Octopuss

    Octopuss Guest

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    I don't understand how are people still SO hopelessly stupid and give this clown of a developer their money.
    For one, you're feeding a vaporware monster.
    For two, the f-ing game was already funded for its lifetime what, two years ago? How can people be this retarded?!

    edit: the amount of blind fanboying here is absolutely breathtaking.
     
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2017

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