Vapourware Scam Citizen - Only people with too much money can become StarCitizens! WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?

[Infinitron]

Was there some internal competition going on at Origin as to which celebrity designer could trick EA to spend the bigger budget on their game?

Oh yes, there definitely was. And Chris Roberts always won.

 

[IDtenT]

They probably lost like a million through downtime.

 

[made]

Was there some internal competition going on at Origin as to which celebrity designer could trick EA to spend the bigger budget on their game?

Oh yes, there definitely was. And Chris Roberts always won.

But ultimately, everyone lost.

 

[evdk]

But ultimately, everyone lost.

But some people lost more than others.

 

[made]

But ultimately, everyone lost.

But some people lost more than others.

IDK, that one guy went to SPACE, the other is still fantasizing about it.

I was actually referring to the consumers.

 

[evdk]

IDK, that one guy went to SPACE

And by god he should've stayed there.

I was actually referring to the consumers.

Well at least I didn't have to ask my parents to upgrade my PC so often, so at least something good came out of it.

 

[theSavant]

They probably lost like a million through downtime.

Looks like the same to me. I was completely turned off by the fact that his site was down and the only thing left was: "pledge your money". Made a bad impression on me. He might as well overestimated himself... looking at stretch goals of 5+ million. I mean 1.8 million he will likely receive, but then...?

Also I do not like the optional button 'return money when funding fails?'. The refund should be standard. As if we can throw away money just for the idea ofit... and then what? He can say "oh my, sorry guys it didn't work out, and obviously it's a niche anyways, but thanks for the free money".

Honestly this looks almost worse than the "Shaker" kickstarter. The only think which makes it more credible is the Demo he presented. Talking of the RPG kickstarters: it almost looks like "Project Eternity" has totally sucked in all the money people would like to pledge and now nothing is left. Not for Shaker, and not for Star Citizen. Even for Star Citizen the money trickles in much slower now.

The custom webpage wasn't a good idea either. As if people enjoy having to register on different sites: kickstarter, indiegogo, robertsspaceindustries...

 

[Jaesun]

Did he ever explain why he did not use KS? Because they take a small amount of the total? Is he seriously that greedy?

 

[Keshik]

Mentioned something about it being another step between the players and the developers, not really sure what he means by that though so you may be right in that he doesn't want them getting a cut. How big of a cut do they take anyway?

 

[evdk]

It's 5% for Kickstarter and 5% for Amazon, IIRC.

 

[theSavant]

I'm sure the whole Webpage setup (including the backup pages, domain registration, content art, registration, money tansfer, maintainence costs) has already cost that much percentages of his goal. So I guess he won nothing by it. Even worse: people rather scroll through kickstarter projects and tend to forget specific webpages...

 

[IDtenT]

Basically the guy doesn't understand the internet - and he wants to make an MMO...

 

[Metro]

Wing Commander Online!

 

[Runciter]

There is a FAQ entry at the bottom of the page with an unconvincing explanation regarding Kickstarter:

Why Not Kickstarter?

We love Kickstarter. We've backed projects on their site and believe
everyone in the development community owes a debt to Kickstarter for putting crowd funding on the map, and making it legitimate. But for us the ultimate goal of crowd funding is about connecting the "crowd" directly with the creators with as little friction as possible. By building a crowd funding component directly into our site we can insure everyone who wants to back the game can - we provide multiple payment options to make sure that wherever in the world you are there is an option that can work for you. It means you just have one destination to support the project, read updates, and most importantly participate with other members of the community! All on a site that's designed around the game universe being created, providing the least friction possible. Kickstarter, as great as it is, can't deliver this experience, which is why we've decided to go it alone.

Their website looks like crap from the 90ties and it screams vapourware, but having watched Roberts' talk and demo and read more about him I've gotten really excited. This guy must know what he's doing, he's produced several mainstream hollywood movies and he already has a working prototype, even before he's taken any money from backers.

 

[Stabwound]

As much as the 10% tax sucks, the I think that the kickstarter brand is worth a lot itself at this point, unfortunately, when it comes to campaigns like this. Going completely independent and asking for $2 million with a website straight out of 2001 is a recipe for failure.

 

[Dexter]

As much as the 10% tax sucks, the I think that the kickstarter brand is worth a lot itself at this point, unfortunately, when it comes to campaigns like this. Going completely independent and asking for $2 million with a website straight out of 2001 is a recipe for failure.

KickStarter only takes about 5%, the Payment providers take the rest e.g. somewhere between 3-5%, he STILL has to use Amazon/PayPal etc. so it wasn't even really that much money.

Other than that I can only iterate over what people already said, he completely screwed up utilizing the first-day hype in an amusing display of not being able to keep a Website from being hammered to death when he wants to actually make an "MMO" with the most complex amount of graphics assets and gameplay mechanics ever conceived. Having a "demo" of a single cruiser and a few ships run is one thing, an MMO is quite another. Him having planned this out properly like he tried to tell some of the people at the GDC Q&A suddenly doesn't sound like such a safe proposition. A lot of the things he said about micro-updates and constant content etc. also seemed rather far-fetched.

I actually thought about backing right away, but his website went down, now I've got all these questions in my head like:

1) Who are those investors he has lined up, and what exactly is their interest in this?
2) What exactly are the details behind the game concept he is planning, his game is at a concept stage and he's already trying to "sell" people ships and "credits". Is it going to be Pay2Win? What are the details behind the monetization model he is planning to use?
3) I heard the prototype was produced in Germany, more exactly that CryTek helped making it, who exactly is going to work on the game and where is it going to be made, something more than "Chris Roberts" would be nice.
4) What exactly do all these pledge details mean? There was a thread with a lot of very valid questions on his forum: http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/forums/topic/explanation-needed-pledge-packages-details/

etc.

 

[Jarpie]

As much as the 10% tax sucks, the I think that the kickstarter brand is worth a lot itself at this point, unfortunately, when it comes to campaigns like this. Going completely independent and asking for $2 million with a website straight out of 2001 is a recipe for failure.

KickStarter only takes about 5%, the Payment providers take the rest e.g. somewhere between 3-5%, he STILL has to use Amazon/PayPal etc. so it wasn't even really that much money.

Other than that I can only iterate over what people already said, he completely screwed up utilizing the first-day hype in an amusing display of not being able to keep a Website from being hammered to death when he wants to actually make an "MMO" with the most complex amount of graphics assets and gameplay mechanics ever conceived. Having a "demo" of a single cruiser and a few ships run is one thing, an MMO is quite another. Him having planned this out properly like he tried to tell some of the people at the GDC Q&A suddenly doesn't sound like such a safe proposition. A lot of the things he said about micro-updates and constant content etc. also seemed rather far-fetched.

I actually thought about backing right away, but his website went down, now I've got all these questions in my head like:

1) Who are those investors he has lined up, and what exactly is their interest in this?
2) What exactly are the details behind the game concept he is planning, his game is at a concept stage and he's already trying to "sell" people ships and "credits". Is it going to be Pay2Win? What are the details behind the monetization model he is planning to use?
3) I heard the prototype was produced in Germany, more exactly that CryTek helped making it, who exactly is going to work on the game and where is it going to be made, something more than "Chris Roberts" would be nice.
4) What exactly do all these pledge details mean? There was a thread with a lot of very valid questions on his forum: http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/forums/topic/explanation-needed-pledge-packages-details/

etc.

Those are very good questions, but I doubt he will disclose who are his "private investors" but I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of them would be other producers, studio executives etc. from Hollywood. Especially your second question is damn important.

Did they actually get answers to the questions in that topic?

 

[IDtenT]

I'd also like to note that the Freelancer type game MMO is actually only realised by the $5 Million tier. Other than that it's only the wing commander single player story and wing commander multi player instances.

Edit: Fuck his website design. He's now officially pissed me off.

 

[Jarpie]

I'd also like to note that the Freelancer type game MMO is actually only realised by the $5 Million tier. Other than that it's only the wing commander single player story and wing commander multi player instances.

Edit: Fuck his website design. He's now officially pissed me off.

Nice catch with the 5+ million, but I'd be happy just with the Wing Commander-style singleplayer spacesim too, MMO would be nice bonus. You also noticed that MMO has 30 months ETA and SP has 18 months?

 

[taxalot]

"Why not using Kickstarter ?" everyone is asking.

Because not every game have to be kickstarted. It's a bit sad, really, that we have come to assume this in this day and age.

 

[theSavant]

The more of you it pisses off, the more it pisses me off too, although I am already pissed off.

Now really... - as someone said - obviously it's true he has no idea of the internet and then wants to make a MMO. Is this a joke or what? And then he thinks he can produce a MMO with just a couple of people "only hiring as they need them, that's why it not cost that much" says the webpage... lol. It took him 1 year to produce a short demo, and within 1,5 years he thinks he can produce a full-fletched epic singleplayer campaign and 1 year later, the MMO is finished. Yea... sure. That's like the naive thought of a 12 year old, when he first jumps into a game engine forum.

"cobbler, stick to your shoes"... it would probably be better if he just sticked to the SP part of the game... at least it'd be more reliable.

 

[Runciter]

The more of you it pisses off, the more it pisses me off too, although I am already pissed off.

Now really... - as someone said - obviously it's true he has no idea of the internet and then wants to make a MMO. Is this a joke or what? And then he thinks he can produce a MMO with just a couple of people "only hiring as they need them, that's why it not cost that much" says the webpage... lol. It took him 1 year to produce a short demo, and within 1,5 years he thinks he can produce a full-fletched epic singleplayer campaign and 1 year later, the MMO is finished. Yea... sure. That's like the naive thought of a 12 year old, when he first jumps into a game engine forum.

"cobbler, stick to your shoes"... it would probably be better if he just sticked to the SP part of the game... at least it'd be more reliable.

Not that I trust Roberts that much, but I would still defend him on these points. It seems clear to me that he's not oblivious to technical issues related to the Internet. When he was challenged about bandwidth use due to the complexity of large spacecraft with moving parts he explained it and justified the explanation well. Not as well as if he had been one of the programmers, but well enough to suggest that he understands the technical issues.

I don't know how you can dismiss his point about hiring; obviously he had done a lot of that when he was producing movies and it's reasonable that he may want to carry some of that experience over to game making, which he is no stranger to either. If nothing else, the demo strongly suggests that these are not just empty words; even if it seems simple on the surface, it has several things that hadn't been done before, like seamlessly moving from the interior of the ship to a cockpit of a smaller ship and to space, which probably means that the engine can load and unload sections of ships on demand according to visibility and LOD; to my knowledge the level of detail in simulating the thrusters is matched only by the likes of X-Plane or Orbiter. The presentation made clear to me that he is competent in technical aspects of the game and knows how to get things done.

There are many unanswered questions, with some important examples raised by previous posts; if you should you be pissed off about something I'd pick the fact that they are still unanswered. But I don't think attacking what is probably his strongest side is the way to go here.

 

[Metro]

He won't get $5 million.

 

[HardDeck]

He won't even get 2.5 million. IMO they will barely reach 2 mil.

 

[Hellraiser]

3 million is a strong possibility assuming his site doesn't fuck itself over again and he does something to draw in more attention. At the moment it appears to be working and they have 815k.