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Oh dear. Reminds me of: https://twitter.com/mcgd/status/850347746452099072 https://twitter.com/mcgd/status/850347746452099072 "When the kleenex box is full, y

by arikr 9y ago

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.

tracker1 9y ago
That was my initial thought as well.. build the $10m game, ensure appropriate hooks for expansion.. then build lots of expansions... open contests to fund developer expansions from other dev groups... There's lots of more effective ways this could be done then to try to release a 9-figure game from the start.
schmich 9y ago
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
SkyMarshal 9y ago
Actually the best route is to simply have a CEO/CFO who recognize this problem and are self-disciplined enough to divide the project into stages, and prioritize/triage what goes into each stage, starting with an MVP that can launch and actually provide revenue to fund subsequent stages. This overspending problem happens a lot in startups too (though VCs sometimes pressure startups to burn fast for various reasons having to do with the next round, which isn't really a factor with Star Citizen and crowdfunded projects). It's crazy there aren't more widely recognized best practices for teaching founders how to handle this issue.

by arikr 9y ago

tracker1 9y ago

That was my initial thought as well.. build the $10m game, ensure appropriate hooks for expansion.. then build lots of expansions... open contests to fund developer expansions from other dev groups... There's lots of more effective ways this could be done then to try to release a 9-figure game from the start.

schmich 9y ago

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

SkyMarshal 9y ago

Actually the best route is to simply have a CEO/CFO who recognize this problem and are self-disciplined enough to divide the project into stages, and prioritize/triage what goes into each stage, starting with an MVP that can launch and actually provide revenue to fund subsequent stages. This overspending problem happens a lot in startups too (though VCs sometimes pressure startups to burn fast for various reasons having to do with the next round, which isn't really a factor with Star Citizen and crowdfunded projects). It's crazy there aren't more widely recognized best practices for teaching founders how to handle this issue.