4 ms·

The designer (Chris Roberts) landed way too much money, and used it to justify a seemingly unbounded project scope. As one might imagine, an unbounded project

• abledon 6y ago
  > The designer (Chris Roberts) landed way too much money https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals Currently at ~300 MILLION dollars? imagine if this game broke the 1 Billion $ barrier in funding.... that would be insane! At this point its almost a "meme" to donate to this project. Like rich crazies on wsb's throwing money around, this projects donation button, probably hits the dopamine receptors too
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • nix23 6y ago
    >Currently at ~300 MILLION dollars? But that's not so much for such a game, for comparison: "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" - $200 million "Grand Theft Auto V" - $137.5 million to $265 million "Destiny" - $500 million https://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-expensive-video-games-ever-made-2014-7?r=US&IR=T#destiny-500-million-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-expensive-video-gam...
    • SahAssar 6y ago
      Most of those include marketing too. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_g... Star Citizen has the highest development cost.
      • nix23 6y ago
        Star Wars: The Old Republic 200 Star Citizen 215+ But again if you compare SC to SW.....
        • SahAssar 6y ago
          > But again if you compare SC to SW..... They are both pretty much failures? Expect only one of them took money from customers before having anything to show for it.
          • nix23 6y ago
            >They are both pretty much failures If something is not finished you cannot tell :-) But one of them are a failure.
            • SahAssar 6y ago
              I think being 400% over schedule can be considered a kind of failure.
      • ehnto 6y ago
        It is also two games, not one. Squadron 42 is being developed separately and will release separately to Star Citizen. They also had a failed attempt at Squadron42 developed by a partner agency that was thrown away.
        • SahAssar 6y ago
          I would imagine that any multi-hundred-million project has had unproductive branches, pivots and starts. Star Citizens has been been more public, so it's harder to compare, but I don't think many of the others on the list had a straight path to what was released.
  • viraptor 6y ago
    > rich crazies on wsb's Could someone explain this, please? Is that wall street bets or something different?
    • abledon 6y ago
      https://youtu.be/5sPlNsESRs0?t=202 https://youtu.be/5sPlNsESRs0?t=202
• Akronymus 6y ago
  The DID stop adding stretch goals/scope creep. But it already went way too far in scope before they stopped scope creeping. Not a scam, just bad planning IMO.
  • tobi1449 6y ago
    > The DID stop adding stretch goals/scope creep. Probably because it drew major criticism and they simply found out people would throw even more money at them if they simply kept "releasing" new ships (or rather their concept art).
    • Akronymus 6y ago
      The new ships/concept art I can kinda understand as the artists basically need to wait for the engine most of the time. Kinda extreme but still not a scam IMO.
      • ethbro 6y ago
        It still feels fairly pyramid-schemey. "Purchase now, with expectation of return if others purchase in the future"
        • Akronymus 6y ago
          AFAIK they actually stated that they could complete it without any more funding.
        • ehnto 6y ago
          I think it's an unfair comparison only because they make it clear that a "pledge" is to support development of the game. Like getting a keychain from a patreon artist. But it's ultimately unprecedented, and we are all learning as we go. I doubt there will be a crowd funded game like this again for a while.
  • ethbro 6y ago
    I only tangentially follow the news (original backer for the $35-whatever-tier), but last I checked, there was a reality check ~1 year ago. They actually hired and empowered a PM to ride herd over the project (including Chris Roberts), and that's helped with forward progress. Previously, it seemed there was a lot of unnecessary technical churn for artistic reasons. E.g. the "We can make this thing 5% better, but it will take a 50% increase in time because we'll have to rewrite a lot of code" request.