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

[Blaine]

I continue to brand you as helplessly biased despite your posting evidence to the contrary in months past (e.g. tearing into fanboys on the official forums, posting your own reservations and criticisms), but how dare you do the same to me!

Simmer down, Grunker.

 

[Blaine]

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

I doubt they could print money that fast.

 

[Overboard]

I doubt they could print money that fast.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

This isn't printed, it's minted. Know your money-making techniques, pleb!

 

[Gurkog]

Soon Star Citizen will be another 'too big to fail' AAAAAA blockbuster that everyone will praise at launch, then mourn its failing to meet the hype 6 months later. The circle of life game development rotates onward.

 

[Garm]

Soon Star Citizen will be another 'too big to fail' AAAAAA blockbuster that everyone will praise at launch, then mourn its failing to meet the hype 6 months later. The circle of life game development rotates onward.

It's been that way for awhile. It'll be funny to see this game utterly fail to deliver on even 1/3 of its promises. I hope it won't, but it most likely will.

 

[Haba]

Where the hell does all this money come from? Is it some kind of an elaborate money laundering scheme?

 

[Grunker]

Where the hell does all this money come from? Is it some kind of an elaborate money laundering scheme?

Just guesswork, but it seems gamers got old, and the people who watched Trek and played WC are adults with well-paying jobs. Add to this a fucking glorious campaign and an almost zealous dedication to promising everything (including that this will be the messiah of space sims).

In comparison, the cRPG crowd are still in their twenties and are looking for work or just got hired.

 

[mikaelis]

Yeah, it is pretty much like Kickstarter campaign repeated all and all over again. I bet they have a full-blown team purely dedicated to that (updates, press packages, promotions, etc.). As much as Fargo is a clever bastard when it comes to PR and promoting, Roberts beats him hands and pants down.

1) Have an idea about porn-graphics game with the strong franchise/famous developer in hand

2) Build a very modern and slick site with the option for donating

3) Go for kickstarter to gain awareness

4) Continue with your site and donating scheme beyond kickstarter, while keeping the quality of updates, promotions, new stuff and press releases

5) ....

6) Profit?

 

[Crooked Bee]

I'm pretty sure the money they've got is mostly due to MMO addicts being used to spending an inordinate amount of bucks on having exclusive in-game items and whatnot, which this game seems to offer in spades in order to lure them in.

Not that I blame Chris Roberts for that -- milking retards is what we all do in real-life too!

I just hope the single player campaign is fun enough for me to enjoy it.

 

[mikaelis]

Where the hell does all this money come from? Is it some kind of an elaborate money laundering scheme?

Adding to my post above. They have 280k backers now. That's like 4 x more than Numenera or Eternity and mainly due to prolonged campaign and high quality updates/constant fuss. I guess, that's how you build the strength of your franchise based on your previous achievemets (even prior to release).
Transparency also plays a role, I guess. There is no game I can think of that is still in production and gathering money (so, all Steam early access for example) which is showing all the details about how much they got. And they can fend off some doubters, now claiming, that they are still in vaporware stage, by showing them Hangar Module .

It is also the first project that is so shamelessly tying the future content to the amount of money they will gather (though, I must say that from my POV, the amount of content they are promising is too huge to be true and great).

However, in the essence it is just a prolonged Kickstarter-like campaign. Or well orchiestrated pre-order campaign.

 

[mikaelis]

I'm pretty sure the money they've got is mostly due to MMO addicts being used to spending an inordinate amount of bucks on having exclusive in-game items and whatnot, which this game seems to offer in spades in order to lure them in.

Probably, but then again, how many successful crowd funded MMO projects have we had till now? They may be more responsive towards incentives and round-worded promises, but you need to give a credit where it is due.

 

[Haba]

Basically Roberts has been pitching a $100M game the whole time. But with those numbers, it may well be that he can make a $100M game in the end (with external funding).

Now, why those numbers baffle me...

Despite all the glowing reviews, FreeSpace 2 sold poorly. The April 2000 issue of PC Gamer stated only 26,983 copies had been sold in the first six months of its release. These figures were acknowledged as disappointing, and described as awful by Kulas. He, however, stated that as the team had stayed within budget by sticking to schedule, Volition should at least be breaking even with the estimated final sales of the game.

This is a sick, sad world.

 

[mikaelis]

Freespace may not be a good indicator. It is more like Torment, I suppose. Or Thief games (from LGS), or Bloodlines. These didn't sell well in the first year or two, but the community long lasting support, among other things made them classics and a lot of people discovered them later and still playing them or remember them fondly. If Volition with most of the key developers suddenly announced Freespace 3 on Kickstarter, I am pretty sure they would get a million or two for a nice SP campaign (if the pitch is good).

 

[Haba]

Well, in comparison, even the worst Wing Commander game sold like 700,000 copies.

There is an error in this world.

 

[Heresiarch]

Shall I pay $40 for the alpha privilege? Normally I won't hesitate supporting a good kickstarter project but for this one I've a weird feeling that it'll turn out to be a massive disappointment.

 

[RK47]

Depends on what kind of person you are, you might think this is too big to fail or too big of a risk to succeed.
Why the hell would anyone even pay to Alpha a game is beyond me when people get burned for buying game without at least doing some research.
If anything they should be paying you to fucking test their games.

 

[Blaine]

I'm pretty sure the money they've got is mostly due to MMO addicts being used to spending an inordinate amount of bucks on having exclusive in-game items and whatnot, which this game seems to offer in spades in order to lure them in.

Not that I blame Chris Roberts for that -- milking retards is what we all do in real-life too!

I just hope the single player campaign is fun enough for me to enjoy it.

You know, the Goons have the most expensive Star Citizen fleet roster proportionate to their size. Then again, they all paid $10 to join the worst old forum on the Internet.

 

[Blaine]

The Retaliator long-range bomber, which is similar to the Constellation in silhouette because the forward fuselage flares out to port and starboard on both ships. The farther ship is presenting its dorsal side, while the closer ship is presenting its ventral side.

I hear rumors that the Gladiator has also been revealed, but I was eating dinner during the anniversary livestream, so I need to hunt it down.

Edit: This is the largest one I can find for now, I'm sure there's a larger one somewhere though.

 

[kazgar]

YES!

Less bickering over goals and intents and delivery targets.

MOAR SPACESHIP PORN.

 

[Blaine]

The Retaliator and Gladiator also went back on sale temporarily, which may explain why the pledge counter jumped $200,000 in the space of a few hours.

 

[Blaine]

Enormous alien ship sighted, perhaps this will satisfy people whining that the UEE ships are too utilitarian and boring:

More alien ship concepts:

Additional Gladiator shots from the livestream:

Aaaaand a monorail car to rush your shekels directly back to Chris Roberts.

The man himself, with his nose grown three sizes since they hit $21m (Grunker and co. might enjoy this):

 

[Heresiarch]

Depends on what kind of person you are, you might think this is too big to fail or too big of a risk to succeed.
Why the hell would anyone even pay to Alpha a game is beyond me when people get burned for buying game without at least doing some research.
If anything they should be paying you to fucking test their games.

I think it's the scope of the money involved making me hesitate. I think for game development, after a certain amount of money, further investment will have only diminishing returns unless you're one of the rarity of "strong yet not corrupted company" like CD Projekt, or Diablo 2/Starcraft 1 era Blizzard. I don't know if Chris Roberts' team have sufficient management strength to handle all this amount of cash while without getting corrupted by the ego.

The game's ambition is amazing and good...perhaps too good to believe. You know how much Freelancer and other games promised and how they turned out. With a small team, even with that colossal amount of money it can't get you to reach such a scope of potential without a very long time. I have a feeling the game won't reach its full ambition before 2017.

Perhaps counterintuitive, but the excellently made website of them makes me feel...weird. It's like they've put so much effort in their marketing that makes me get a strange (hopefully wrong) feeling that they're ultimately they'll go for the $$$ direction. I hope these are just wrong stupid feelings.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

Those designs are pretty neat. Honest question though: Why would there be a weight capacity on a bomber? Surely by that point all forms of "bombs" would be energy-based instead of physical devices?