SC cloning Elite..

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

In a way I'm angry at Star Citizen for gobbling up 40 mil and in effect taking that money away from the development for Elite 4. I don't know who first had the idea to start a crowd funding campaign, or if it's fair to blame Chris Roberts for his success in spreading the hype for SC, but I don't really care. First publishers are too stupid to finance Elite Dangerous, now SC comes along and without offering anything really innovative reduces the market for Elite 4. SC might have an entertaining single player campaign, but it will NEVER be a good space sim game for me because you fly around in walled of aquariums connected by tubes. If you see gameplay of computer games as art, SC will be a somewhat redundant piece. I know that's not totally reasonable, but for me it's about the resurgence of an idea of technical excellence and a feature I really really want. The utter lack of good space sim games is a sore point for me.

Of course I blame Frontier equally for their lackluster marketing. Because whatever people say, the vast majority of gamers don't have space for two space sims in their wallet or their free time budget. Every dollar spend on SC is 50 cent less for ED. So I begrudge any success SC will have, because it will influence how good the expansions will be and how great ED will become in the long term. Competition in it's nature isn't friendly.

This is elephant in the room I kinda usually don't want to talk about. Because I fighting depression on my daily life, and of course while I don't whish anything ill or bad for SC or CIG or Chris, I think it is unfair how much ED has to fight for attention online, while SC is like "yeah, I just discovered two weeks ago and now I have two ships for 100 USD, lol". However, those are mine subjective feelings, and not very helpful if you want to do something useful about it.

Now, about FD marketing. In overall, FD went trough big structural changes last year, they are moving from "go to shop" for various franchises to their own IP, offering their engine for crossplatform game development, and marketing ED by their own. They hired new Marketing lead just last December, and also new Community Manager, with Ashley moving on support. As I see how Michael struggled with all his tasks during last six months it kinda gives away why there has been no more marketing or at least FD induced community hype around ED. Said that, I don't blame them for everything, but there have been several mistakes. However it all does make ED look like underdog and sleeper hit, and if properly exploited, it can bring benefits for marketing purposes.

And there we come down to strategy. At this point, FD seems slowly start to push some marketing messages there, which will grow louder with beta arrival. Said that, online is very rapidly changing place, and it won't mean a thing if we those with knowledge and will to help won't help FD with advise and message. As I understand, FD will make their marketing and PR message around anniversary of original Elite. If EDGE article is evidence, that will cover some ground of age from 30 to up (it is superb coverage, lot of stuff I didn't know even digging all ED resources for last year). However, we can help FD to spread message between those in teens and twenties.

How? It's good question. We have created ED FAQ on ED Wikia, and it has helped a lot to dispel myths and disinformation about what ED will actually be. But that's not to stop there. Spread videos and well written commentaries. Engage in discussions about space games in general.

 

[SAB380]

To be clear:
Star Citizen definitely launched its crowd funding and kickstarter campaign first.

And Elite definitely jumped on that bandwagon.

 

[Jezzah]

Ahhhh but ED ...

WILL release first and SC will need to jump very quickly indeed to get on that most important of bandwagons

 

[Beachlight7]

The budget for expansion packs for Elite could be bigger than SC budget.
I feel Elite will catch up in terms of investment in this manner. That's if Elite comes out soon and on release has million/s of people enjoying it.
It has taken SC over a year to get $40m. Elite could get $400m in just a few days after release. And still have a year of income before SC even gets released. By the time SC comes out major expansions will be in Elite.
If there is a war, it hasn't started yet. So far it's just shouting from either side of the field.

 

[Iskariot]

In a way that is a reason for justified criticism against Star Citizen. As a computer programmer, I know it's a bit harder to develop a true scale and realistic universe, but far from impossible. Yet NONE of the space sims following had this feature. Why? Where their programmers not good enough? Or is it simply a feature that the general audience doesn't care about, and if so, is it because they didn't know this was possible and how great it is?

In a way I'm angry at Star Citizen for gobbling up 40 mil and in effect taking that money away from the development for Elite 4. I don't know who first had the idea to start a crowd funding campaign, or if it's fair to blame Chris Roberts for his success in spreading the hype for SC, but I don't really care. First publishers are too stupid to finance Elite Dangerous, now SC comes along and without offering anything really innovative reduces the market for Elite 4. SC might have an entertaining single player campaign, but it will NEVER be a good space sim game for me because you fly around in walled of aquariums connected by tubes. If you see gameplay of computer games as art, SC will be a somewhat redundant piece. I know that's not totally reasonable, but for me it's about the resurgence of an idea of technical excellence and a feature I really really want. The utter lack of good space sim games is a sore point for me.

Of course I blame Frontier equally for their lackluster marketing. Because whatever people say, the vast majority of gamers don't have space for two space sims in their wallet or their free time budget. Every dollar spend on SC is 50 cent less for ED. So I begrudge any success SC will have, because it will influence how good the expansions will be and how great ED will become in the long term. Competition in it's nature isn't friendly.

I could not agree more. I fully agree with every single word.
I really do not begrudge the financial success of SC, but just like you I deplore it at the same time because I feel ED is by far the more interesting approach for a space sim. For me at least there is a huge psychological difference between flying from box to box or flying around in a true open simulation of 'our' star system. I hope Braben and co will create something truly revolutionary again. I wish I was a billionaire. I would dump millions of dollars in Braben's lap. They should contact Bill Gates. I bet he has played Elite when he was young.

Executives probably wouldn't understand what you mean lol, they have no understanding of gaming. They would probably say "We did plenty of games based on Star Wars! What could you possibly want more?!"

Indeed they have already proven that they do not get it at all.
They did not even try to create a modern version of the great X-wing or Tie-fighter games, let alone the Elite version of a Star Wars game, instead we got a truckload of kiddie rubbish. They never realized that a huge part of the fans are not little kids, but older guys like me.

 

[Viking]

So they're starting to incorporate Planetside 2 now, as well ?

No, they're not, but I know what you mean. It was announced as the $20m stretch goal, back in ultimo September, so it's nothing new.

 

[Slawkenbergius]

To be clear:
Star Citizen definitely launched its crowd funding and kickstarter campaign first.

And Elite definitely jumped on that bandwagon.

It was Tim Schafer and Double Fine that started the bandwagon rolling for crowd-funded games. Braben and Roberts both jumped on it... Let's not start rewriting history here

 

[Tinman]

The budget for expansion packs for Elite could be bigger than SC budget.
I feel Elite will catch up in terms of investment in this manner. That's if Elite comes out soon and on release has million/s of people enjoying it.
It has taken SC over a year to get $40m. Elite could get $400m in just a few days after release. And still have a year of income before SC even gets released. By the time SC comes out major expansions will be in Elite.
If there is a war, it hasn't started yet. So far it's just shouting from either side of the field.

$400 Million!!

That means they are going to sell 6.5 million copies for $60 each in a couple of days. Yeah...that's not going to happen.

To put this in perspective:

Bioshock Infinite = 2.89 million units sold
Tomb Raider = 3.18 million units sold
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag = 4.11 million units sold

Now, I love ED, but thinking that they will outsell these heavily promoted crossplatform games (in the short term) is quite a bit of wishful thinking. Especially since they are self publishing the game.

 

[Moriarte]

This is elephant in the room I kinda usually don't want to talk about. Because I fighting depression on my daily life, and of course while I don't whish anything ill or bad for SC or CIG or Chris, I think it is unfair how much ED has to fight for attention online, while SC is like "yeah, I just discovered two weeks ago and now I have two ships for 100 USD, lol". However, those are mine subjective feelings, and not very helpful if you want to do something useful about it.

I'm quite astonished you have such feelings. E will become a great game regardless of any further investment or attention. Think about size of the investment behind original Elite or ancient OS, like MS DOS, Windows and many others. If the idea is great, it will work out, and, it will self - spread like wildfire. How it works since.. ever. I truly don't understand the contemporary desire to create "hype city" where fanboys dwell and money fall from the sky. I really appreciate the fact that David chosen the conservative path. To me it says he is true professional, who doesn't bother with creating hype, focusing mainly on his goal. When he makes it right, he won't need marketing.

The video is kind of rough on the edges, but the story behind it is true. I know. I played battlefield. Oh, and if you decide to watch, make sure you're not at work and no women and children are around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqukTh4qql0

 

[StarTux]

I am seriously not worried, for one thing subscriptions in Eve Online have reached a 10 year high of 500K paying subscribers. X-Rebirth also topped the Steam sales list for a day or two, and I suspect this is in at least partly due to SC's ad campaign with people desperately looking for something space related to play now.

 

[SAB380]

It was Tim Schafer and Double Fine that started the bandwagon rolling for crowd-funded games. Braben and Roberts both jumped on it... Let's not start rewriting history here

My comment was in response to someone asking which one of these two space games being discussed had the idea to use crowd funding first.

Unless Tim Schafer and Double Fine Games are responsible for Star Citizen then the answer is Chris Roberts.

 

[Dejay]

I'm quite astonished you have such feelings. E will become a great game regardless of any further investment or attention. Think about size of the investment behind original Elite or ancient OS, like MS DOS, Windows and many others. If the idea is great, it will work out, and, it will self - spread like wildfire. How it works since.. ever. I truly don't understand the contemporary desire to create "hype city" where fanboys dwell and money fall from the sky. I really appreciate the fact that David chosen the conservative path. To me it says he is true professional, who doesn't bother with creating hype, focusing mainly on his goal. When he makes it right, he won't need marketing.

Well funny than you mentioned MSDOS, since that OS and Windows following ONLY where successful because of clever marketing deals. MSDOS was initially developed as QDOS, Quick and Dirty Operating System and plagiarized CP/M. It was successful because it was pre-installed on all IBM computers, followed by vendor-lock in. Ever heard of the superior OSs like OS/2 or NextStep? Because of software compatibility normal end users where forced to use windows until OSX and only IOS and android have the potential to break this lock. MS execs never bothered with software development quality and instead focused on marketing. It's the prime example how marketing can easily trump quality. Don't get me wrong, I hate marketing and advertising, I think it should be banned, but it's a necessary evil.

I don't want to spell doom and gloom here, but in a stunning reversal of this threads topic I think FD should clone some of the marketing ideas from SC.

Now check this out about MS-DOS vs DR-DOS (The successor of CP/M)

Digital Research released the MS-DOS compatible DR DOS 5.0, which included features only available as third-party add-ons for MS-DOS. Unwilling to lose any portion of the market, Microsoft responded by announcing the "pending" release of MS-DOS 5.0 in May 1990. This effectively killed most DR DOS sales until the actual release of MS-DOS 5.0 in June 1991. Digital Research brought out DR DOS 6.0, which sold well until the "pre-announcement" of MS-DOS 6.0 again stifled the sales of DR DOS.
Microsoft had been accused of carefully orchestrating leaks about future versions of MS-DOS in an attempt to create what in the industry is called FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) regarding DR DOS. For example, in October 1990, shortly after the release of DR DOS 5.0, and long before the eventual June 1991 release of MS-DOS 5.0, stories on feature enhancements in MS-DOS started to appear in InfoWorld and PC Week. Brad Silverberg, Vice President of Systems Software at Microsoft and General Manager of its Windows and MS-DOS Business Unit, wrote a forceful letter to PC Week (November 5, 1990), denying that Microsoft was engaged in FUD tactics ("to serve our customers better, we decided to be more forthcoming about version 5.0") and denying that Microsoft copied features from DR DOS:

So what is a compelling selling point about Elite Dangerous? Procedural Generation. What has been just announced for Star Citizen? Procedural Generation (research for a small portion of the game maybe someday). FUD?

Of course FD is doing a great job with ED and will produce a great game, but the first version will be somewhat limited. Some people will be disappointed, many will stop playing after they have enough money to purchase the biggest weapons and biggest ships. It's long term success will depend on how fast and big expansions will be, and that will depend on sales numbers, and those depend on people knowing about the game. And that depends on spreading the word, in other words marketing. I appreciate the British reserved dignity, but for marketing screaming bloody murder is the right way to go. Comms are low atm, when they should be stepped up.

All I'm saying is we fans and backers are stakeholders and we should push FD into investing some money into:

• Website with some bling
• Eye candy screenshots and video's
• Information on ship specs, possibly WebGL 3D viewer with configuration
• Step up progress updates (Possibly find an intelligent women as moderator?)
• A sub title for the game that makes clear what Elite Dangerous is about, like star citizen does (Galactic resident? Starship captain?)
• External camera so journalists can make nice screenshots
• Find a way to sell the awesomeness of procedurally generated missions, the endless content and interesting situations that will arise, and how riveting and emotional the story arcs will be and how your crew companions will interact with your moral decisions to shape the future of whole star systems *planned for future update
• Announce some awesome guild system and social features

I think we Elite fans are all predisposed to be introverted elitists, but isn't it kind of unfair to withhold the greatness that is elite from the masses?

 

[Hellhawk666]

• Website with some bling
• Eye candy screenshots and video's
• Information on ship specs, possibly WebGL 3D viewer with configuration
• Step up progress updates (Possibly find an intelligent women as moderator?)
• A sub title for the game that makes clear what Elite Dangerous is about, like star citizen does (Galactic resident? Starship captain?)
• External camera so journalists can make nice screenshots
• Find a way to sell the awesomeness of procedurally generated missions, the endless content and interesting situations that will arise, and how riveting and emotional the story arcs will be and how your crew companions will interact with your moral decisions to shape the future of whole star systems *planned for future update
• Announce some awesome guild system and social features

I saw what you did there
Seriously, none of the above could be a bad thing, could it?

 

[Maxeren]

announce some awesome guild system and social features

lol!

 

[Tinman]

My comment was in response to someone asking which one of these two space games being discussed had the idea to use crowd funding first.

Unless Tim Schafer and Double Fine Games are responsible for Star Citizen then the answer is Chris Roberts.

I think this is questionable. Looking at this video (4:05 mark) it's pretty clear he was considering it back in the beginning of 2012.

http://youtu.be/aJBwlxHLfLc

I guess a lot of different developers thought about this when Double Fine opened up the door. The difference was that FD is based in UK and they had to wait for KS to launch over there before putting up their project. Something they did pretty much a day or two after that finally happened in the end of 2012. But since SC had launched just a couple of weeks earlier a lot of people assumed they where "jumping on the bandwagon".

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

To be clear:
Star Citizen definitely launched its crowd funding and kickstarter campaign first.

And Elite definitely jumped on that bandwagon.

To be fair kickstarter wasn't available in the UK until October 2012 so it wasn't possible for Frontier to launch their campaign until then.

As Tinman linked above, Braben was actually talking about crowdfudning an Elite IV at the BAFTA Games Question Time two years ago - long before Roberts launched his game via the US kickstarter.

I guess a case could be made for CR seeing his window of opportunity and nipping in there first - knowing FD couldn't utilise kickstarter until late 2012.


But personally I don't think its a case of bandwaggon jumping by either developers - probably more a case of timing and opportunity, with CiG having an already established kickstarter option open to them in the US, something Frontier had to wait for until it came to the UK.

 

[deusx_ophc]

I think this is questionable. Looking at this video (4:05 mark) it's pretty clear he was considering it back in the beginning of 2012.

http://youtu.be/aJBwlxHLfLc

I guess a lot of different developers thought about this when Double Fine opened up the door. The difference was that FD is based in UK and they had to wait for KS to launch over there before putting up their project. Something they did pretty much a day or two after that finally happened in the end of 2012. But since SC had launched just a couple of weeks earlier a lot of people assumed they where "jumping on the bandwagon".

that is a fact and by now should be well known. nice one for digging it out again, eric. and +rep ofc

 

[kilvenny]

Lots of who came first the chicken or the egg entertainment here.

Yes SC have got their millions of dollars of funding and a larger fan base. In contrast FD already have a fog fighting module that largely works over SC's hanger mode.

Where would I prefer to be sitting?

I would rather be in DB's seat than CR's especially when you factor in the knowledge that you are likely to deliver docking/trading and outfitting before CR produces his DFM.

All the time ED stays under the radar an X-Rebirth diaster is being avoided - get it stable and then plug it.

Get your surf board out folks and ride the wave of ED, knowing that SC will follow at some point in the future. Life is good in the space sim world

 

[deusx_ophc]

I think we Elite fans are all predisposed to be introverted elitists, but isn't it kind of unfair to withhold the greatness that is elite from the masses?

greatness ultimately does only come from greatness, not great hype & marketing.

ED will go the low-cost high impact route of mow marketing (word of mouth), in the mold of minecraft, world of tanks etc. already the youtube alpha footage has racked up nice numbers, without FDEV having to divert any rescources. smart in my book!

but sure there will be increased pr around the launch and the 30 year anniversary, but do not expect classic high spending broadsheets.

big budget marketing simply does not fit with the spirit of the game and its makers. FDEV will focus all resources on making the best possible game and the game DB wants to make.

very very few people get the chance to do the same unique thing in their lives, twice. DB has that chance and if we are prepared he will take us with him. (well those of us blessed by the first coming )



ps: ED usp is clear from the old tag line "100 credits, a handout ship, now go make your luck". in a sense (meta) that can be said about the game, too

 

[SAB380]

I think this is questionable. Looking at this video (4:05 mark) it's pretty clear he was considering it back in the beginning of 2012.

http://youtu.be/aJBwlxHLfLc

I guess a lot of different developers thought about this when Double Fine opened up the door. The difference was that FD is based in UK and they had to wait for KS to launch over there before putting up their project. Something they did pretty much a day or two after that finally happened in the end of 2012. But since SC had launched just a couple of weeks earlier a lot of people assumed they where "jumping on the bandwagon".

To be fair kickstarter wasn't available in the UK until October 2012 so it wasn't possible for Frontier to launch their campaign until then.

As Tinman linked above, Braben was actually talking about crowdfudning an Elite IV at the BAFTA Games Question Time two years ago - long before Roberts launched his game via the US kickstarter.

I guess a case could be made for CR seeing his window of opportunity and nipping in there first - knowing FD couldn't utilise kickstarter until late 2012.


But personally I don't think its a case of bandwaggon jumping by either developers - probably more a case of timing and opportunity, with CiG having an already established kickstarter option open to them in the US, something Frontier had to wait for until it came to the UK.

Valid points gents ....I hadn't realized that Braben had been discussing it in public earlier.