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‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

• zinckiwi 8y ago
  I pledged a fraction of this fellow's total in Star Citizen, probably the lowest tier that would result in a digital copy of the game once complete. I was after a modern Privateer reboot, essentially, and figured it was worth the gamble. I haven't followed the development with anything more than a casual, occasional glance and accompanying eye-roll. I doubt I'll ever see anything come of it. A shame, not necessarily a surprise. I'm fully aware and prepared that kickstarting a game confers no guarantee, but the feature creep in this case is staggering. I suspect that if this case were to succeed they'd suddenly find themselves underwater with all the pledges clawed back once the precedent was set.
  • _Codemonkeyism 8y ago
    I think they came to a point when they thought "This could be huge and mind blowing, and can't be done for a long time if we don't do it" and kept going. I myself went from a critic to someone shouting "Go ahead!"
    • beaconstudios 8y ago
      However, in the process they seem to have fully embraced the waterfall method which seems to me to be the root cause of the problem. They could have delivered the original concept as an MVP and continued to build towards their long-term vision through patches and incremental updates, much like rockstar did with GTA V online. Instead they're working slowly towards shipping a gigantic monolith where all that's playable in the meantime are very small vertical slices that don't really represent a game in their own right.
      • WorkLifeBalance 8y ago
        Compare the process for "Star Citizen" to "Rimworld", another kickstarted project which is nearing a 1.0 release after years of development. Rimworld had a public beta and has been iterating and incorporating feedback and while the end-result might not be as ambitious as someone with $200m might care to dream up (rimworld raised ~$250k) but it's a very fun game which most importantly actually exists. In fact existing in some form allowed the community to write mods and extensions many of which have ended up patched into the game itself as it nears release.
        • shusson 8y ago
          I think a closer comparison is Elite Dangerous.
          • _Codemonkeyism 8y ago
            I regret backing Elite Dangerous, it's underwhelming.
            • deadbunny 8y ago
              The irony being that it's basically what SC promised in their KS.
              • sgift 8y ago
                If E:D is what SC has promised in their KS they are finished. Fly around for half an hour in the SC dogfighting mode, fly a bit more in the open world, maybe do a mission. Done. You have now fully experienced E:D. And that's with the current state of the Alpha.
            • fcarraldo 8y ago
              And this is the unfortunate problem with the agile “release an MVP and iterate” approach when talking about a game. Unlike a SaaS product that might initially solve a problem, a game needs to be compelling, make a good first impression, and be fun, all out of the gate, to retain player interest. The Early Access model has continued to fail because people try the early version, dislike it (because it isn’t finished), then leave bad reviews and never return to see the game’s progress. Elite continues to get better all the time and will likely eventually be a pretty good game, but it’ll never have the audience it would have if they had the budget to release a full and finished product on day 1.
      • pavel_lishin 8y ago
        Is GTA V Online a good example? Most of the delivered updates have just been additional vehicles and a few more game modes. I don't mean to sound like I'm shitting on the hard work they do, but GTA V Online wasn't really an "MVP".
        • beaconstudios 8y ago
          I was thinking specifically of how they originally shipped when the game first came out. I don't really play it much but my understanding is that the initial version didn't contain heists, corporations, warehouses, half the mission types, half the vehicles, and so on. It may not have evolved much recently and the initial scope may have been over 50% of the current feature set, but they're the best example I can think of for an MMO MVP. For singleplayer games, minecraft would be an obvious choice but it was also the progenitor of early access so that's more of a hit-and-miss.
      • EamonnMR 8y ago
        Part of the problem is that they're hacking MP into an engine that hasn't really been proven out for MP so until they get that sorted MP is gonna be rough.
        • skohan 8y ago
          Yeah but it seems like a huge problem that this issue hasn't been sorted out years into development. The whole premise of the game is based around playing in a shared persistent world: they should have gotten the multiplayer experience working perfectly in a proof-of-concept stage, with characters running around blank environments full of grey boxes before anything else. At the moment it seems like they are a content production company for a game that doesn't exist.
          • EamonnMR 8y ago
            That certainly would've been my first step.
      • deadbunny 8y ago
        I'll preface with the fact I've not kept up with SC development at all. But haven't they released multiple "modules" as they've been going?
        • beaconstudios 8y ago
          yes, but they're not building those atop a functioning game platform. They're completely separate, like individual prototypes. If they were integrated into a whole that'd be a totally different story.
          • plttn 8y ago
            They are though. You can go from flying a spaceship, land, get out, shoot some friends, get back in a spaceship and fly away. The module concept hasn't really been a thing for a while.
            • sullyj3 8y ago
              This is true, but I was under the impression that they were using separate mechanics for star Marine vs shooting in the persistent universe, which they're still in the process of merging together
              • the4ner 8y ago
                no longer true
      • the4ner 8y ago
        This changed starting at the end of last year. They are on a quarterly release cycle now, and they've hit the last 2 quarterly deadlines.
    • Zooper 8y ago
      Investors need to re-imagine epic games as platforms, a movie that plays for twenty-plus years, iteratively developed. This also tends to collapse genres (markets): the World-of-Warcraft effect, wherein all other games of the genre bleed-out to the big platform. Good if you're the Star Citizen in the room and succeed.
  • raesene9 8y ago
    For me, Elite:Dangerous had a better model (although still not without it's troubles). They delivered the base game in reasonable order and have been iterating and adding content since then. Whilst the early game was pretty sparse in terms of content, at least it was delivered and reasonably complete.
    • djsumdog 8y ago
      That does seem like a better model. I might have to check that game out. Games should produce the base game they promised, and then just add expansion packs or additional levels (free to initial backers) to try and get everything else in until the money runs out. Maybe even the old shareware style route of releasing Episode 1, 2 and 3 (although in the shareware days, Ep1 was free and 2/3 were commercial .. like 1 was a really long game demo).
      • zchrykng 8y ago
        Elite:Dangerous is definitely worth a look. Gave money to both of these projects and don't want anything more to do with anything Chris Roberts touches.
      • pearle 8y ago
        Elite is also one of the better VR games available.
      • notjustanymike 8y ago
        I love Elite, just be prepared it's very much a make-your-own-adventure game.
    • skohan 8y ago
      I'm a huge fan in general of starting a project from a complete, well-polished core and growing outward gradually while maintaining quality. Once things get messy it's almost impossible to get back to that same level of refinement as if it was kept clean the whole time.
      • 8y ago
  • m0llusk 8y ago
    The game he always wanted to make, he said. How can you creep from there?
  • everyone 8y ago
    Its not feature creep that killed SC. I'm a game dev and I followed its development just out of sheer morbid curiosity.. Pretty much their entire process was fucked from the beginning, and they never corrected it. Its a huge case of 'Escalation of commitment' rather than feature creep, being the root cause. At the very beginning Chris Roberts hired some artists to make a visual demo in Cryengine, to raise money. It worked, great! .. This is when they should have scrapped the demo, and hired a really great lead dev to plan out the full game. But, no, they kept building on this amateur Cryengine demo in a disorganized fashion and have been ever since.
    • benjaminsuch 8y ago
      Uhm sorry but what you just wrote are pure assumptions. And the fact that you are "a game developer" doesn't make your claims more true. If you really followed the development process and watched their "Around the Verse" video series you cannot, by any means, call it a "Cryengine demo". In late 2013 the scope of the game got totally changed. It turned from a small multiplayer space flight game to an MMORPG. So they literally had to start from zero and nobody has any insights about the game development and organization except the CIG developers themself. A very weird post from you as "game developer".
      • Laforet 8y ago
        He's not entirely wrong though, CryEngine was and arguably still is wholly unsuited for anything that borders on MMO. Instead of realigning your plan around the changed scope, Chris Roberts decided to keep the glitter of CryEngine visuals and he is paying the price for this decision. Netcode is still affecting performance to this day and I doubt if it will ever be solvable. We are long past the time when Iwata managed to single handedly refactor Earthbound in a few months with minimum external help. Complex projects carry so much inertia that makes it very hard to correct course once you have momentum in one (wrong) direction.
        • benjaminsuch 8y ago
          They switched 2 years ago from CryEngine to Lumberyard from Amazon which have an integrated feature for using AWS. They also stated that they completely rewrote the network part and still working on it to date. They call it Object Container Streaming and Network Bind Culling (I'm not a network developer, so I have no idea about the technical side of it). I don't know how far along they are (they postponed the feature to the 3.3 update) but I'm confident in their abilites.
  • wlesieutre 8y ago
    The thing I'm most skeptical of is them being able to balance the economy in a way that makes it a fun MMO. The technology parts of it seem more achievable. If you backed in the first few years you'll have access to both the Star Citizen MMO universe and the Squadron 42 single player game. Both keep getting delayed, but the scope of Squadron 42 isn't as huge so I'm crossing my fingers that it'll be a 2019 release. The Star Citizen alpha 3.3 release (end of Q3) will be a make or break point for the project's current schedule. That's when the "container streaming" system that lets them seamlessly load parts of the universe in and out is supposed to happen, along with Hurston, the second planet (and Loreville, the first planetside city area). If you have a beefy enough computer that's when I'd recommend coming back and giving it a play.
• empath75 8y ago
  Wrapping every purchase in a binding arbitration agreement is absurd. It completely defangs consumer protection laws.
  • cwmma 8y ago
    This is the idea...
  • alanfalcon 8y ago
    And how does a judge seriously decide to retroactively apply an arbitrarion agreement when none existed at the time of the transaction? Is the argument that the new ToS were accepted when Lord participated in the bug test? The article seems to be missing that detail if there even is some logic that was used in the ruling (as I assume there was, beyond not wanting to have two rulings).
    • mickronome 8y ago
      It seems the argument could be that since he didn't object to the new ToS when they were changed, and kept using parts of their service, the clause forbidding arbitration towards RSI is/was still binding. One oddity, except the usual insanity that click-through agreements should be valid for anything above, lets say $100, is that it appears the newer ToS explicitly states it doesn't apply retroactively. However, since the arbitration would always occur in the future from the later ToS, it might be a moot point. If all of this is true, and the law correctly applied. Doesn't it create a situation where any ToS for a service - at least those you actually depend upon - are essentially worthless? Seems like if a change the ToS to include an arbitration clause is applied this way, your only option would be immediately stop using the service, or the provider would be able to do whatever they wanted hereonafter, even completely ignore the rest of the contract/ToS?
      • djsumdog 8y ago
        > usual insanity that click-through agreements should be valid for anything above, lets say $100 No body reads these. We're talking about the literal <1%, and in most of those are probably lawyers who either write them or the law firms involved in cases like this. I'm surprised there isn't more backlash against click-through EULAs.
• dreen 8y ago
  Meanwhile, No Mans Sky, the underdog-turn-most-hated-turn-underdog-again game is releasing full multiplayer free upgrade next week. They engineered a PR disaster for themselves but have been adding great features at a slow steady pace, which is exactly how it should be done.
  • alexgmcm 8y ago
    How does it compare to Elite Dangerous?
    • Operyl 8y ago
      It definitely feels like it caters to the casual player more than Elite Dangerous, but it’s still a pretty good game all things considered. They just fell into the hype hole.
    • pjc50 8y ago
      They're actually very different games. NMS is a "Roger Dean artwork generator" with a small survival game embedded in it, while ED is an inheritor of Elite for people who prefer a much more sparsely populated universe than Eve Online. And who like orange.
      • mereel 8y ago
        So. Much. Orange.
    • FLUX-YOU 8y ago
      Elite has deeper combat and PvP. NMS has base building and much better world exploration. Both games are a grind until you come across a strategy that gives you a bunch of currency and then it's just a sandbox because you can buy everything (NMS less so because you sometimes have to find the thing to buy).
  • bluetidepro 8y ago
    Yeah, that should have been an "Early Access" game from the start. What they are releasing next week is more so what they ORIGINALLY advertised, which always rubbed me the wrong way. Took them almost 2 years to get it right, after that PR nightmare of theirs. Sadly, this only hurts the player base most, because most players already wrote this game off when they got burned by it 2 years ago. It's really sad to see a game with a lot of potential get ruined by their own hubris from the get go.
• crististm 8y ago
  I've read somewhere that you should not lend to those more powerful than you. :)
  • netule 8y ago
    Though, it's not a loan since you don't get your money back.
• Operyl 8y ago
  I guess my biggest issue with this all is that it’s called a “pledge.” I pledge money on the condition that I get a game. In this case they’re just taking my money with a huge chance that I’ll never see anything remotely close to what I pledged for. My end was fulfilled, their end not so much.
  • StavrosK 8y ago
    No, you pledge money on the condition that a critical mass of people also pledges.
  • michaelt 8y ago
    I pledge money on the condition that I get a game. See, what I do is I don't pay for a game until it's released and some reviews start coming in. That way you know what you're getting.
  • pc86 8y ago
    A belief that Kickstarter or similar services are anything other than a donation to a hope that something happens is willfully ignoring reality.
    • Operyl 8y ago
      I was coming at it from the viewpoint of a regular consumer that gets wrangled into these "schemes." I understand the risks, the regular consumer sure as hell does not.
• lykr0n 8y ago
  I've dumped about a grand into Star Citizen over the course of 4 years. I've followed updates and developments with mild interest, and ever once and a while I jump back into it to see what's changed. It's always amazing to see the progress they have made, wither it be the engine tech or just the game play. Do I think it will come out in the next year or two? No, but I think it will. Development is on going and active. Progress is transparent (which is why I don't pay attention- I like the surprise). Milestones have been reached, and expectations have been met. Do I think I've gotten $1k of enjoyment from the game back when I was playing it? Yes. =
  • raesene9 8y ago
    When you say "expectations have been met", did you expect the game to take this long to develop? Looking at the original kickstarter from 2012 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=star%20citizen https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen?ref=na... it looks like the original ship date was Nov 2014, so it seems that at least some people's expectations aren't likely to have been met.
    • mrlala 8y ago
      That's not too bad, it's only like 0.25 Valves late, could be worse!
    • yifanl 8y ago
      My understanding is that Star Citizen ran into an insane amount of both feature and scope creep. Of course, at its core, it's a game about space exploration, so I can understand just how vast that would be at an abstract level, but trying to implement a 1-to-1 of that is just absurd to me.
    • lykr0n 8y ago
      I knew when I got involved I was putting money into a black box. I was (and still am) enthralled with the idea Chris Roberts has presented. When I was able to jump into a ship and play Area Commander with other People, I felt like what I signed up for was delivered. But, I'm excited with what else is coming. And honestly, I'm glad. If they had just stuck to the initial scope, it would be less exciting. I'd rather dream big and be let down versus not have the chance to dream in the first place. I've backed some kickstarter projects that did what I signed up for, and awesome. I've also backed some projects that got widely popular and the people decided to increase the scope of what they were trying to do. Some of them worked, some of them didn't, and some looks like they are going to. I'm not sure which is better, but for me I lean towards "let's try to do awesome." EDIT. A point I wanted to share is that you also need to quantify enjoyment and wow factor. I've seen things come out of Star Citizen that make me feel like a kid again. They have done some awesome stuff in terms of visuals and engineering. I would still love to have a finished project, but from what I've played and seen already, I would not be overly disappointed if the game disappeared tomorrow. I've enjoyed the journey, and will continue to enjoy it. That has to count for something. I'm not saying I don't expect a full game to come, I do.
• xoa 8y ago
  Crowdfunding can clearly serve a useful role as part of the modern mix of societal funding sources, but it's definitely still more wild west when it comes to uniformity of terms and regulations. It's not "investing" in the classic sense but it's also certainly not "donating" either, nor is it a preorder. "Backing" involves its own set of concerns and scale and rules should reflect that, and by design it primarily involves members of the general public who are not financially sophisticated. That should have implications vs how traditional investing is managed. I actually think that the single biggest missing piece right now is the lack of a more standardized, orderly and general public friendly equivalent to the bankruptcy process and laws. There should be minimal uniform legal standards for determining when a project has "failed", both in terms of simply running out of money but also in terms of passing deadlines. For example, project proposers could be required to declare a hard final deadline (they could have other earlier soft deadline projections that'd be separate) in the initial campaign. If they reached that without completion, backers could then be required to vote on whether to accept an extension. If not, the project would go to the "failed" process. If a majority approved it'd receive another year or two, at which point another vote would be required (I'd make a super majority be required after the first one but that's an implementation detail that could be debated). The idea would be to price in some level of planning and certainty and also to help ensure, just like the full bankruptcy system, that there are no "zombie corps" hanging around tying up economic assets and that instead things get wrapped up promptly so whatever is left can be redeployed. And project corps should be taking deadline projections seriously, and should need to make a case for significant alteration. Given how passionate and understanding (arguably too much) most backers seem to be about things they believe in I don't think that's a huge stretch either, but it should still need to happen. If a project ended up in "failed" status (be it fund exhaustion, the creators declaring a failure, or a final deadline extension denial) then backers would automatically be treated as senior creditors with the possibility of non-financial renumeration. Money should be proportionally returned of course, but additionally backers should receive something along the lines of a non-exclusive, perpetual global license to any original IP assets the project generated. Even merely some models or the like could then at least be recycled by backers into something else of some value. When dealing directly with the non-financially sophisticated public being presented with take-it-or-leave-it terms it is not unreasonable to expect higher requirements for ensuring information symmetry and that proposers have performed proper diligence first. Failures are entirely inevitable, but the results don't have to linger nor value be quite as tied up as the current state of things. Yes, these requirements might mean that some developers don't seek out crowd funding or face increased upfront work, but I think that would be acceptable. ---- With regards to this case specifically and legally the details are curious, and I wonder if anyone who knows the system well could find the exact ruling on PACER (if small claims proceedings even end up on PACER)? I don't think infinite return of backed should be a general requirement, but after reading this and other coverage the specific grounds of the decision are confusing. Retroactive arbitrary application of a TOS change is odd. Like, if the lawyers had said that the TOS changed before (or during) his playing the beta and taking other active involvement, and that he had specifically agreed to an updated TOS at that point in time, I could see the moral argument but that at least would kind of make sense as something that might be straightforward. Updating TOS and requiring agreement for continued use or else refusal and then an argument under the old ones is hardly uncommon either. But the article frames it as a "beta is equivalent to delivery" argument, which more sounds like trying to bamboozle the judge. On the other hand, it's clearly though understandably slanted from the perspective of the plaintiff, and while small claims court is explicitly intended to be friendly to the general public with no need for a lawyer it's still possible he made some basic but significant blunder due to self-representing. This specific case seems like it touches on a number of broader concerns like the spread of binding arbitration and TOS shenanigans but since it's a specific case the specific details matter. I'm not sure what it broadly means for crowdfunding if anything precisely because crowdfunding is currently such a hodgepodge. And that goes both ways too, I've seen a scary number of project proposers who have no so much as established an LLC to do it through and thus face personal liability issues. That's not even counting any amateur projects who did so but then have not done basic accounting and stayed respectful of the corporate veil. A sensible framework could make crowdfunding a lot more sustainable, fair, less prone to abuse, and in turn more efficient for all parties involved.
• ramblerman 8y ago
  I was 25 when I backed this game. Not only am I hugely disappointed in the waterfall approach, and feature creep that pushed this over the edge. But I am 33 today! My desire to play MMOs has also slowly evaporated.
  • michaelcampbell 8y ago
    Wait, that's 8 years. Article says they didn't start the kickstarter till 2012; 6 years ago.
    • izuchukwu 8y ago
      If they began backing before their birthday in 2012, today’s birthday would make an 8 year age difference. Happy birthday gp!
      • ikeboy 8y ago
        No it wouldn't. If they were 25 on some date in 2012, then they'd be 31 on the same date in 2018 and the oldest they could be at any point in 2018 would be 32
        • izuchukwu 8y ago
          Whoops, I misremembered my age in 2012 when calculating that. Their birthday yesterday would, in fact, make at most a 7 year age difference. Maybe gp simply misremembered too ;)
    • matte_black 8y ago
      Memory also evaporates. :(
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  • onion2k 8y ago
    But I am 33 today! Happy birthday.
• wiz21c 8y ago
  if I was RSI with that much money, I'd say : "let's never finish the game, we got plenty of money to live on for years, making cool tech demo's"...
  • eximius 8y ago
    Then you'd be an asshole.
    • wiz21c 8y ago
      when one comes to money I'm afraid some can come to super complex justifications for pretending they're not an AH when they clearly are.
  • yborg 8y ago
    At this point what they're selling is the story of the making of an MMO space opera game, and there are clearly many people that enjoy this tale enough to keep paying for installments of it. Indeed, like Lord, they are actually participating in the drama, so it's even interactive. It would be a lot more straightforward for RSI to have made a mobile pay-to-win game like Clash, etc. that make even more money than Star Citizen has pulled in in a lot less time. I think they meant well in the beginning, but at this point there's pretty much zero need for them to ever ship a finished game.
• sandworm101 8y ago
  It isnt freature creep. Being crowd-funded is their business model. New features, new hype, means new money. They cannot ever finish because then it all stops. The game will only be released once the cowdfumding well runs dry. Therefore, the best way to get the eventual game is to stop supporting it with money. They lost me when they hired gillian anderson. I want to believe, but that was jumping a shark too far.
  • deadbunny 8y ago
    I'll be honest in that I've not followed development at all but hearing they have hired an actress just leads me to assume she is voicing/mocaping a character in the SP portion of the game. How is that any different from CoD hiring Kevin Spacey or Mark Hamil in Wing Commander? Let alone jumping the shark.
    • sandworm101 8y ago
      Because crowdfunded developers running on tight budgets generally don't throw money at stars. It might be a good business investment for a movie or television show, but most early supporters would rather the game be out sooner with B or C-list talent. Star power is icing a cake that isn't yet baked. Particular to Star Citizen, fans remember well the use of Mark Hamill in one of the Wing Commander games, the one that came spread across six cd-roms. It was an interesting cross-media experiment but the industry took from that incident that gamers want a game, not cutscenes. There is also great danger in hiring a star for something that will not come out until many years later. She may not be as famous in 2-5 (10?) years when the game actually arrives. She could be involved in a scandal. She could star in a series of flops. She could simply retire. Then the extra money spent on her will have been wasted. It is very odd decision to pay a premium for her over literally hundreds of equally capable but less-famous actors.
    • beepboopah 8y ago
      In Metal Gear Solid V a wopping amount of the budget went to voice actors, namely the voice actor for big boss costed a boatload and had a lot of his lines cut after they had been recorded so that money went to waste effectively If the game is crowd sourced its as if the crowd is the producer/financier so its pretty reasonable that people would be upset at the possibility of their money going to waste
• aiyodev 8y ago
  There’s a crowdsourced tracker of all of the promises made to backers of Star Citizen over the years thoroughly documented with links to the proof. https://starcitizentracker.github.io/ https://starcitizentracker.github.io/ Since posting this always gets a lot of hatred from the koolaid drinkers, I’m going to pre-emptively suggest that, if you have a problem with something on the tracker, you should submit a correction. You should not attack me or the people who contributed to it.
  • CedarMadness 8y ago
    I feel like this is generally fair, but things that get pushed back from one patch to the next shouldn't count as broken promises. It seems disingenuous to count "3.2 didn't have mining, it's been pushed to 3.3" on the same level as "we said you'd be able to run your own server with mods, but now you can't". Maybe you need another category for Delayed
    • deadbunny 8y ago
      Yeah, I had a bit of a look and a good number of the "not implemented/ignored/delayed" is hardly surprising. The game is still in development and the stuff in "broken promises" is basically slipped ship dates, hardly a massive shock. Given that they seem to be tracking basically everything, even down to the level of "mentioned once in an interview that this might sometime be possible", I would be super interested to see this after an official 1.0 release and for the years of patches after. I really hope they have history tracking for the entries, so you can see how they have been categorized over time and when they went from one status to another. I'd be way more interested in those stats, seeing what they have delivered over time. However I'm sure this will stop being updated once CIG start releasing stuff as it appears the only thing keeping it going is anger.
• Kagerjay 8y ago
  Its been so many years and this game still is no where near completion. A great example of feature creep and why waterfall approaches are sometimes not the best.
• yAnonymous 8y ago
  In my opinion the game looks great so far and I hope they take their time to finish it. Should they manage to match their own high expectations, the game will be played for years to come, like WoW, and it'd better have a good base then.
• serg_chernata 8y ago
  I'm a backer and I have no problem with this. Many AAA titles take a decade or more from start to finish. For example, between Diablo 2 and 3. I want the best space sim and I like what RSI is doing. I'm not holding my breath, just living my life and when the game is finished I will be happy to play it. Although, I also did not drop 5 grand on this game.
  • shusson 8y ago
    | Many AAA titles take a decade or more from start to finish. Yes but no AAA title has been crowed-funded to the tune of 200m before.
    • wavefunction 8y ago
      That seems like a non-sequitur. How does the crowdfunding aspect change how long an AAA title takes to develop?
  • macspoofing 8y ago
    > Many AAA titles take a decade or more from start to finish. AAA titles that take a decade or more to develop are usually stuck in some sort of development hell. >I want the best space sim and I like what RSI is doing. You like that instead of making the best space sim, they are adding focusing on adding an first person combat? It's clear as day that Roberts and Co. lack any sort of discipline. It's a perfect example why sometimes constraints on creative freedom (usually forced by eviiiil publishers) are a good thing.
    • serg_chernata 8y ago
      Unfortunately, I do like it. To each his own.
      • macspoofing 8y ago
        To each his own indeed, but I think it would be a good idea for them to release a kick-ass space sim, and then refine and expand gameplay in Star Citizen 2.
• pageald 8y ago
  Has there ever been a high profile early access game that crossed the finish line? It seems like studios usually take the money and run, like Bohemia Interactive with DayZ. Five years and tens/hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and the game is abandonware. I guess Minecraft is one notable exception.
  • zchrykng 8y ago
    Warframe would be another, imo.
    • ChrisAntaki 8y ago
      Rust left early access this January, after 4 years. https://rust.facepunch.com/blog/leaving-early-access/ https://rust.facepunch.com/blog/leaving-early-access/
  • mrep 8y ago
    Not exactly high profile but subnautica was an early access game that turned out awesome. Granted, I only bought and played it after it was fully finished but early access started 3 years before the final release. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subnautica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subnautica
  • ryneandal 8y ago
    Pillars of Eternity was very successful.
• the_snooze 8y ago
  That sucks, but it seems almost inevitable with these new funding/purchasing models: the risk necessarily shifts from the developer and onto the consumer. This is a big reason why I'm a "patient gamer:" why should I be the one exposed to uncertainty when there are plenty of other complete and patched games out there vying for my attention?
  • deadbunny 8y ago
    > why should I be the one exposed to uncertainty when there are plenty of other complete and patched games out there vying for my attention? Because sometimes if you don't fund an idea that idea doesn't happen. Of course I'm not suggesting you jizz $4500 into a promise of a game like the guy in the article but throwing ten or twenty bucks behind an idea you wan't to see happen isn't always a bad idea. If it happens and it's bad? nevermind it was only 10 bucks, nice to see the idea attempted though. If it happens and it's good? awesome. If it implodes and I get nothing? meh, never mind it was 10 bucks.
    • the_snooze 8y ago
      $10 won't make or break a game's development. It'll happen (or not) with or without my tiny advance payment. I'd rather hold on to that $10 and buy an actual game now instead of gambling on the promise of one in the future. As consumers, it's not our responsibility to support other people's open-ended projects. Let developers (and their actual publishers and investors) take on the risks themselves. It's better that way: with their skin in the game, they'll know when to say "no" to dumb features and actually get to a viable product.
      • Retric 8y ago
        You can say the same thing about elections. However, because each choice is independent you end up collaborating with like minded people. Thus your 10$ ends up as 10,000$ from people like you. Game theory has a lot of interesting incite into these sorts of decisions.
        • 8y ago
• Tepix 8y ago
  I'm also a golden ticket holder and my patience is evaporating. I can't believe the single player campaign has not been released yet! Also the published roadmap doesn't seem to end anywhere that is satisfactory. They need to kick out a whole bunch of features (perhaps temporarily) to get the game in a state that it's somewhat complete and playable.
  • 4restm 8y ago
    Golden ticket holder here as well, personally I don't mind, I check back into the game every 3 or so months, enjoy whats new, read the monthly pdf's and thats that. I understand that the game will take time, and am satisfied with my investment in the development
• cornholio 8y ago
  He lost because of a forced arbitration clause. This massive privatization of justice where any boilerplate service or product now comes with forced arbitration is making my blood boil. The justice system should always be an option when arbitration fails, and arbitration should take no more than a reasonable time to fail (say, two weeks for this $5000 amount). The whole point of a small claims court is to handle such cases, not offload them to a dodgy corporate lawyer masquerading as a judge. If the public service of justice is slow and expensive, we need to fix the public service, not replace it with a free market simulacrum. That's always the case with non marketable but essential public goods.
  • TimTheTinker 8y ago
    > If the public service of justice is slow and expensive, we need to fix the public service, not replace it with a free market simulacrum. Completely agreed. Prisons are another example of an essential public service that should never be privatized or outsourced.
    • inetknght 8y ago
      Healthcare, too
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      • DaiPlusPlus 8y ago
        That’s a blanket statement that leaves too much wiggle-room. The UK’s NHS, for example, is partly private insofar as GPs and many other doctors work for themselves and contract themselves out to the NHS instead of being NHS employees. Correct me if I’m wrong, but a group of doctors could form an organization that forces its patients into binding arbitration for disputes while still being contracted to the NHS. It would result in a backlash of public opinion - but still possible. The NHS also has other private components: it used to run its own logistics division which was scrapped in recent years and replaced with services provided by couriers like DHL.
• brookhaven_dude 8y ago
  It is now incumbent upon Kickstarter to ban such private arbitration clauses on its site.
• cousin_it 8y ago
  As a total newbie (well almost newbie, I've released one tiny game) I just want to ask: why not gray-box the whole damn game first, then paint rough 90s looking graphics on top, then gradually paint the whole game over with modern graphics? While tuning the gameplay the whole time? That just seems like the only sane way to build something huge, but instead all the big developers like CIG seem to start with ultra-detailed vertical slices for some reason.
  • Retric 8y ago
    Because art is your largest single cost and you end up developing a lot of art that's not used in the final product driving up costs. Really all it takes to get slices is coordination among different teams so everything for each slice finishes at the same time.
  • beerlord 8y ago
    Because Star Citizen is not really a game at this point, more a funding vehicle to get more money out of kickstarters - many of whom are suffering from the 'sunk cost' fallacy. Grey boxing is a step towards a complete game, but it doesn't allow you to collect money the way that a glorious, fully modelled giant spaceship (that people can buy for $250 - years before there is even a game to play it in) does.
    • mawburn 8y ago
      Star Citizen has pretty much given up all hope of trying to give people realistic expectations of a game. At this point, it's just everything anyone has ever wanted in a space MMO, no matter how grandiose or pointless a complicated feature would be to the overall gameplay. It amazes me that people are still being duped by it.
      • sombremesa 8y ago
        Ha. Makes me think of the way Trump makes promises. Seems like a great way to get a crowd riled up.
  • 8y ago
• wongarsu 8y ago
  >one of the worst cases of feature creep in history crowdfunding campaign that exceed expectations put the developer in a really tough spot. Star Citizen asked for $2 million but got 6. If they had said they keep everything the same, the schedule would stay sane but everyone would call it a money grab because they take $6 million to develop a $2 million game. The other option is to make use of the additional $4 million, but in almost all cases that will destroy the schedule. Now if you are like Star Citizen and keep raising money (and get another $180 million) that same principle quickly pushes you deeper and deeper into feature creep. It's a systematic problem every crowd funding project has to solve. Star Citizen seems to have stabilized their predictions of total money raised to get a fixed feature set, but I can't blame them for not predicting that they would raise over $200 million until release and planning for that.
  • cornholio 8y ago
    I had to double check this story to believe it: it's almost better than ICOs. They started with a $500.000 goal then stretched it to $2 million. For the last 6 years, they have been living off the nearly 400x more money that continued to come in, exceeding all expectations or previous games. All while delivering essentially only nice art and, we now learn, slimy legal tricks against the fans no longer willing to bankroll then. Unbelievable.
    • andypants 8y ago
      You can check their funding amounts here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals They're still making 40k-70k per day
      • Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
        ....they've raised $190m from 2m people. That means the average donation was about $95. That's just insane.
  • kikki 8y ago
    > Star Citizen asked for $2 million but got 6. If they had said they keep everything the same, the schedule would stay sane but everyone would call it a money grab because they take $6 million to develop a $2 million game. What? That's not how crowdfunding works. If you crowdfund a bag for $200k and you get $1 mil, you don't turn that into a jetpack - you just ship the bag that you promised.
• nottorp 8y ago
  While i regularly throw $20-$50 into game kickstarters, I stayed away from both Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous when I saw how hyped they were. Nothing good was going to come out of that. Personal statistics: 19 kickstarters backed, got a finished product on 9 of them so far, 2 more have builds that show everything is on track. Everything I got was acceptable, with at least 7 being good or above. Also, ALL of them were late delivering. Not bad, will crowdfund again. Never $4500 though.
  • vorpalhex 8y ago
    Elite Dangerous did turn out a very successful game though.
    • Cthulhu_ 8y ago
      Not only successful but also great in terms of quality and polish - iirc they got awards for their great sound design. I've also tried it in VR and it's a killer app for that platform, especially with a joystick setup.
      • gmueckl 8y ago
        The sound design in Elite: Dangerous is just fantastic. In my book it's among the best games ever in this category. It takes skill to take a simulation to a level where you can literally fly the ship by ear because every nuance of your ship's quite complex status is reflected in audio somehow.
        • Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
          I think I need better speakers, or maybe I should be wearing headphones, because I didn't feel this at all.
  • dejawu 8y ago
    Your skepticism is well-founded, but I'd like to put in a good word for Elite Dangerous. I bought it for $15 on sale long after the Kickstarter had ended and it constantly impresses me with its sense of scale and level of polish. Sometimes I'm amazed that game exists at all, let alone that it successfully came out of a Kickstarter. It's not for everyone but if the idea of "Euro Truck Simulator in space" appeals to you, you'll probably enjoy it.
• djsumdog 8y ago
  So what other good single player space sims are out there today? I'm not an MMO person. The last good one I played was Strike Suit Zero/Infinity. Back in the day I played Wing Command I, II, III, IV and Prophecy (still have many of them on CD). I was also a big fan of TIE Fighter/X-Wing. It seems like this genre has stagnated quite a bite in the past few years, or has gone entirely MMO. Is anything doing anything new and good in this genre?
  • wlesieutre 8y ago
    It's more of an arcadey space shooter than a sim, but Everspace was pretty fun.
  • dejawu 8y ago
    I really like Elite: Dangerous and commented about it elsewhere in this thread[0]. You can play it solo if you want and never have to worry about encountering other players. Combat is real-time and you even have to dock the ship yourself. Like I mention in the other comment, I'm constantly impressed by the scale and polish of the game. I'll watch some reviews of the new No Man's Sky update and if it looks decent I'll probably get it on sale. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17559080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17559080
  • Blaiz0r 8y ago
    Take a look at Everspace
  • Crespyl 8y ago
    It's a bit older, but FreeSpace I/II were open sourced and the engine has had major updates and improvements over the years. The games can be had from GoG very cheaply, and hold up quite well, especially with the updated engine and graphics.
  • xioxox 8y ago
    I like the X3 series (though I haven't tried the controversial rebirth). It has an interesting mixture of building empires, dog fighting and doing missions. They learning curve is a bit steep, but there are lots of enthusiasts modding it. Edit: I just looked up when X3: Terran Conflict was released, which was 2008, so it's not exactly new!
• batmanthehorse 8y ago
  I love reading about game dev/watching videos and I've watched a few Star Citizen developer updates. Seems like they were wasting a tremendous amount of time refining small details like adjusting the vents and decals and landing gear on ships that could already be considered complete. It struck me as absolutely awful time management.
  • ryandrake 8y ago
    It sounds like they might simply need a good (and empowered) project manager to crack the whip on schedule and say no to scope creep. I’d love to see what their internal estimates and work breakdown looks like! When they miss a milestone, what corrective action do they take? Do they give themselves any real deadlines? So many games would make such interesting project management case studies.
    • socceroos 8y ago
      Head over to their website and take a look. They have some of the most seasoned game project managers on their books.
  • socceroos 8y ago
    There's over 500 of then working on the project. It feels like you're seeing the props department and talking like it's the whole team grinding to a halt.
• yosefzeev 8y ago
  Cases like these are the reasons why common law grand juries should be utilized. Done correctly, they can serve as a check and balance against institutionalized judicial corruption that operates federally divorced from the people it is supposed to serve.
• vesak 8y ago
  Why don't people understand that crowdfunding is not indie shopping? It's a high risk investment. You support projects you believe in (in the religious sense of the word) and if you're lucky, you might get something.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Why don't people understand that crowdfunding is not indie shopping? It's a high risk investment. Because what is being offered is neither a debt or equity instrument but a defined good or service, just as with other shopping vebues, and because the kind of detailed financial and other information that would be made available to investors for due diligence with normal high-risk investments is not offered or available for most crowdfunded projects.
  • beerlord 8y ago
    Because compared to drugs, nymphomania, travel, cars, skiing, movies, gaming is incredibly cheap on a $ per hours basis, and people are willing to throw a few bucks to support a game concept that they find new and exciting.
• laythea 8y ago
  I will never know how so many people get sucked in and used like this. Surely at least some of the "blame" for this situation lies in the individual that got used.
  • kowdermeister 8y ago
    You can know it: STAR CITIZENS: 2,058,546 https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals
• lloydde 8y ago
  I choked on my coffee when I read "Lord is a data scientist who works on developing AI for SAP—a data-processing company in Colorado." SAP as in the 90k employee German-based European multinational software corporation?!
  • georgeecollins 8y ago
    That bugged me too. It makes me wonder about the quality of the journalism in other places.
  • shiburizu 8y ago
    SAP really doesn't exist in the public eye outside of the enterprise world. It's interesting how few people would actually know they exist next to other mainstream names.
• s73v3r_ 8y ago
  Mandatory arbitration clauses need to be eliminated. There is absolutely no valid use of them anywhere.
• SpecialistEMT 8y ago
  Star Citizen is the Elon Musk of video games
• chx 8y ago
  > “Like they were some sort of charity, or like I just gave them $4,500 because I like them,” he said. “I gave them $4,500 because I wanted them to give me a video game.” So I am not sure what's the state of affairs today but certainly in the early days it was pretty well understood that Kickstarter is not a store and every dollar you put in there might just disappear and you are relying on the good faith of the campaign runner.
• georgeecollins 8y ago
  I'm actually confident that Star Citizen will eventually come out. While $200m sounds like a lot of money, a popular online game can make much more than that. The pre-sales have proven that there is a fanatic audience. If the project is horribly managed now, expert developers and investors can be brought in to achieve the goal. The passion and awareness is golden.
• gwbas1c 8y ago
  > But games change during development and, according to Lord, Star Citizen changed a lot. According to the game’s original pitch on Kickstarter, it would be a space sim with a co-op multiplayer game, an offline single-player experience, and a persistent universe. It’s since become a massively multiplayer online game and a separate single-player game with first-person shooter elements called Squadron 42, which RSI originally pitched as “A Wing Commander style single player mode, playable OFFLINE if you want.” > Along with the game—which originally had a targeted release date of 2014—Lord was supposed to have received numerous bits of physical swag. “So aside from [the game], I'm supposed to get a spaceship USB drive, silver collector’s box, CDs, DVDs, spaceship blueprints, models of the spaceship, a hardback book,” he said. “That's the making of Star Citizen, which—if they end up making this game—might turn into an encyclopedia set.” This is a clear breach of contract. He should work with a real lawyer and seek punitive damages. Changing what the product is shouldn't be allowed. Hopefully the lawyer includes Kickstarter in the suit, because they also should be able to step in when a product changes fundamentally from what its funders paid for.
  • sullyj3 8y ago
    What's the difference between a persistent universe and an MMO?
    • Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
      Persistence universe just means the game world and any changes done in it still exist (and possibly continue to be simulated) even when you log off. There's no true end to the game. MMO means massively multiplayer online. Hundreds, thousands, or more in a single world. While the two are often hand-in-hand, they don't have to be. A persistent universe that is only open to you and 4 friends wouldn't be an MMO. SimCity 2013 is often described as an MMO, but I would argue it really isn't, since each region you play has a maximum of 1 player per city in the region (though 1 player can play multiple cities), which each region having only a few cities, and each region is completely independent of other regions. Effectively, each region is its own universe instance played by 1-16 players. Players can make their regions public, allowing cities to be claimed by any other player in the world, but claims are permanent until the player chooses to release their claim.
• arcaster 8y ago
  Vice reveals the messy reality of running both an accurate, non-biased and "edgy" "news" outlet.
• im3w1l 8y ago
  I had an opposite experience of crowdfunding just yesterday. I had played the f2p clicker heroes (with iap, but it was easy to hack your save to get them for free, but i didn't) and liked it a lot. Never having supported them in any way, I thought that them asking for $20 to make a sequel was a perfect opportunity to give back even if I got no game for it. And yesterday, half a year after they asked for money the beta is out! Anyway I feel asking for your money back sounds like it would ruin crowd funding. How can the developers spend the money on development if there is a risk they need to refund people en masse? And if they can't spend it, what's even the point? I mean yeah I guess if all the money's gone to luxury resorts and bunga bunga parties then that's not acceptable but if they spent it trying and failing that's just tough shit.
  • nebulous1 8y ago
    Well, the guy's point is that they changed what they were making after they took his money. This isn't something that's outside of their control, and it's not unreasonable to suggest they shouldn't do that unless they're willing to refund.
• kemonocode 8y ago
  > It's also worth noting that we're in a cultural moment in which the relationship between fans and creators is becoming more toxic. Star Wars fans who don't like The Last Jedi are demanding to remake the movie to fit their expectations. Trolls think the new She-Ra cartoon doesn't fit their highly specific conception of what is "feminine." Creators, of course, should be free to create what they want without fearing a mob. That's how we got the things that people are fans of in the first place, and RSI should be free to make Star Citizen what it wants. That being said, it's no wonder that Star Citizen fans feel like they have some degree of ownership over what it should be, seeing as how so many of them invested thousands of dollars in funding its development. Kindly fuck off, Motherboard. This modern trend of forced arbitration clauses and IP owners, not just creators, getting their panties in a bunch because turns out they're not perfect and their fans can be very opinionated has to end. It's not "toxic," it's people who don't want to see their memories being violated to make a quick buck, or promises being blatantly broken over and over again.
• shiburizu 8y ago
  Two things you can get a lot of money from for putting on a good show: Early access games and ICOs.