There's no way that CIG has spent $105 million on marketing costs...
The Star Citizen Thread v5
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There's no way that CIG has spent $105 million on marketing costs...
With all the open development and financial accountability they promised us - it should be easy to tell
With all the open development and financial accountability they promised us - it should be easy to tell
Well, I'm looking at their year-end financial statement for Dec 2015. There's no way they're spending an average of $20 Million/year on marketing.
I'm off to see if I can find that video where they have that big lulz about "No budget for marketing! Every penny goes to development!"
I may not survive the ordeal <whimper> but it's been a pleasure Thorn <sniffles>
I may not survive the ordeal <whimper> but it's been a pleasure Thorn <sniffles>
Mea culpa, it has been decades since I've read that book.
Half of that, half of Brave New World...
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The drama never stops flowing https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/5n8xh5/the_saga_that_was_my_customer_support_ticket/
Why?Is it because they have the best head of marketing since she was a little child?
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Because their financials don't support that level of expenditure.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
I don't think the financials support any kind of conclusion with regards to expenditure on marketing. Including yours.
As a start there is a chance that most of the marketing supported by all demos every year and including all ship ads etc has been part of normal worker payroll / salary budgets and not explicitely marked as "marketing" anywhere that we can see. All that was done through regular man hours.
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Ahh I see,now you involving logical thinking.....hmmm...well I tend to agree with you but when it comes to the CIG and their decisions making over this years....well... I just can´t anymore......isn't be way simpler if they announce their financial status?After all they are the Company that brags about open development?
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CIG certainly has considerable marketing costs. Barrage of obviously paid stuff on Internet about how awesome SC is indicates they pay two or three companies a lump sum and bonuses for getting new backers in.
Are they 60 - 100M ballpark? Nope. But they are 20 - 25M for all years I expect.
Are they 60 - 100M ballpark? Nope. But they are 20 - 25M for all years I expect.
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That's... wow
I feel like I'm watching a customer service version of Jacob's Ladder.
But with a more depressing ending.
I think, in some cases is very hard to determine what is done for marketing and what is done for the game, for example that sandworm in the demo..will it even make to the game?!
And since looks like they do not have good planing at all - almost everything is refactored at some point, I guess in lot of cases initial version is for marketing and second iteration is for the game or for next refactoring...
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Journal Entry: Day 4
Today marks my final day of Star Citizen. I’ve finished my journey - I’m glad I could be a part of yours.
I started with Star Marine. I didn't like the gunplay - it's uninspired at best. The weapons are unbalanced - for example the electro shotgun appears useless, and everyone just uses the assault rifle.
The character animations are jerky and crappy, meaning hitting a target is luck at best, and it just doesn't look good.
It just wasn't that interesting. It wants to be a fast paced CoD style shooter, while lacking the fluidity and speed of that type of game. The arena is made up of narrow rooms and corridors, but is a surprisingly large map - I spent a round only once seeing an enemy.
As a game - the only new thing it brings to the table that I could see is the zero g area - though I wouldn't be surprised to find out games like Halo and CoD Iwar have also done it already. It was relatively pointless in Star Marine, however it's an interesting mechanic for the Universe - one could imagine boarding actions for example starting from space. As it stands, Star Marine is just not that good.
Arccorp hasn't really changed. There's a few shops open, a few npcs standing behind counters... but that's about it. The most fun I had was clipping through a random door to the launch pads and falling to my death. It still lacks life. One would think with all the mocaping, surely some random NPCs could be added purely to have some people walking around. The place is empty. There is no reason to go to Arccorp.
We Don't Go To ArcCorp
My first attempt to re enter Port Olister - ended with a crash to desktop.
My second worked, and I decide to start a mission - 'ICC Scan Probe' seemed like a good choice. I summoned my Avenger, and warped to the 'probe' location. A nice Irish lady asks me to check out something her sensors have picked up at a different location.
I warped to the location, and found the wreckage of a ship, with something beeping and flashing within the wreckage. I EVA'd out of my ship, over to the beeping object, and discovered it's the blackbox audiolog of the doomed ship - A generic log is played 'I've finished my journey - I'm glad I can be a part of yours.'
Not the most interesting of discoveries perhaps, but I was actually excited. This is actually compelling gameplay! Not massively deep or an original story perhaps, but the combination of flight, and EVA is well done and speaks well for future missions. What else could I discover out here? Perhaps I would have a mission to retrieve something off a doomed ship. Perhaps a station infested with xenomorphs that need to be slaughtered?
It's on my way back to my Avenger when it all goes wrong. Trying to reenter my ship sends me flying out, and the Avenger into a spin. And although I attempted a Gravity-esque maneuver, it failed, leaving me floating helplessly as my ship spun off into the distance.
At this point, I shut the game down. I have no more energy, no more effort I can put into playing this game. I am turning back while I still can.
To sum up my experience:
The animations are completely horrible. Both your character model, which causes nausea - and that of other characters which lurch around looking ridiculous. The other characters are probably due to the bad fps/ping/tick rate/latency/whatever, but the player character animations have got to go.
The flight model is not great. If the focus of the game becomes more towards first person, with the ships simply a means to get from a to b - this perhaps isn’t a big deal, although those who wanted the game for the ship combat will not be happy. There’s supposed to be a big change coming however, so guess we’ll see.
I only tried the one mission, and didn't touch on the 'Pirate' side of things - but from what I saw, they are probably the best aspect of Star Citizen right now.
The missions appear to be interesting mechanically, if buggy and storywise uninspired. The combination of flight to get places, zero g movement, and various areas of interest has huge potential. The bugginess of it however breaks this part of the game as it stands - but if those are fixed, this aspect of Star Citizen could potentially carry the game to something worth playing.
What happened to the music? It’s not something I mentioned in my logs, but I remember an impressive orchestral score - now it’s more of a droning wannabe industrial cyberpunk.
The graphics are as pretty as ever. Crusader the system is actually quite nice, I like that the various places of interest are all in orbit around the gas giant - it gives a great sense of scale.
The FPS is below average. Even had it not been laggy, it still wouldn’t have any compelling reason to play this rather that rival FPS games.
And... that's it. I'm done. I feel no need to touch this game again until there's a significant update. Over the 10 or so hours I've spent on the game over these entries, there was nothing that really compelled me to keep playing.
I'm trying to think of what was fun and... yeah. Well. Some of the bugs were funny, and the locals were nice enough, the mission was good right until it bugged out and forced me to quit... well, I'll leave you with this - this is what happens when you go from prone to standing while moving your mouse left or right.
Today marks my final day of Star Citizen. I’ve finished my journey - I’m glad I could be a part of yours.
I started with Star Marine. I didn't like the gunplay - it's uninspired at best. The weapons are unbalanced - for example the electro shotgun appears useless, and everyone just uses the assault rifle.
The character animations are jerky and crappy, meaning hitting a target is luck at best, and it just doesn't look good.
It just wasn't that interesting. It wants to be a fast paced CoD style shooter, while lacking the fluidity and speed of that type of game. The arena is made up of narrow rooms and corridors, but is a surprisingly large map - I spent a round only once seeing an enemy.
As a game - the only new thing it brings to the table that I could see is the zero g area - though I wouldn't be surprised to find out games like Halo and CoD Iwar have also done it already. It was relatively pointless in Star Marine, however it's an interesting mechanic for the Universe - one could imagine boarding actions for example starting from space. As it stands, Star Marine is just not that good.
Arccorp hasn't really changed. There's a few shops open, a few npcs standing behind counters... but that's about it. The most fun I had was clipping through a random door to the launch pads and falling to my death. It still lacks life. One would think with all the mocaping, surely some random NPCs could be added purely to have some people walking around. The place is empty. There is no reason to go to Arccorp.
We Don't Go To ArcCorp
My first attempt to re enter Port Olister - ended with a crash to desktop.
My second worked, and I decide to start a mission - 'ICC Scan Probe' seemed like a good choice. I summoned my Avenger, and warped to the 'probe' location. A nice Irish lady asks me to check out something her sensors have picked up at a different location.
I warped to the location, and found the wreckage of a ship, with something beeping and flashing within the wreckage. I EVA'd out of my ship, over to the beeping object, and discovered it's the blackbox audiolog of the doomed ship - A generic log is played 'I've finished my journey - I'm glad I can be a part of yours.'
Not the most interesting of discoveries perhaps, but I was actually excited. This is actually compelling gameplay! Not massively deep or an original story perhaps, but the combination of flight, and EVA is well done and speaks well for future missions. What else could I discover out here? Perhaps I would have a mission to retrieve something off a doomed ship. Perhaps a station infested with xenomorphs that need to be slaughtered?
It's on my way back to my Avenger when it all goes wrong. Trying to reenter my ship sends me flying out, and the Avenger into a spin. And although I attempted a Gravity-esque maneuver, it failed, leaving me floating helplessly as my ship spun off into the distance.
To sum up my experience:
The animations are completely horrible. Both your character model, which causes nausea - and that of other characters which lurch around looking ridiculous. The other characters are probably due to the bad fps/ping/tick rate/latency/whatever, but the player character animations have got to go.
The flight model is not great. If the focus of the game becomes more towards first person, with the ships simply a means to get from a to b - this perhaps isn’t a big deal, although those who wanted the game for the ship combat will not be happy. There’s supposed to be a big change coming however, so guess we’ll see.
I only tried the one mission, and didn't touch on the 'Pirate' side of things - but from what I saw, they are probably the best aspect of Star Citizen right now.
The missions appear to be interesting mechanically, if buggy and storywise uninspired. The combination of flight to get places, zero g movement, and various areas of interest has huge potential. The bugginess of it however breaks this part of the game as it stands - but if those are fixed, this aspect of Star Citizen could potentially carry the game to something worth playing.
What happened to the music? It’s not something I mentioned in my logs, but I remember an impressive orchestral score - now it’s more of a droning wannabe industrial cyberpunk.
The graphics are as pretty as ever. Crusader the system is actually quite nice, I like that the various places of interest are all in orbit around the gas giant - it gives a great sense of scale.
The FPS is below average. Even had it not been laggy, it still wouldn’t have any compelling reason to play this rather that rival FPS games.
And... that's it. I'm done. I feel no need to touch this game again until there's a significant update. Over the 10 or so hours I've spent on the game over these entries, there was nothing that really compelled me to keep playing.
I'm trying to think of what was fun and... yeah. Well. Some of the bugs were funny, and the locals were nice enough, the mission was good right until it bugged out and forced me to quit... well, I'll leave you with this - this is what happens when you go from prone to standing while moving your mouse left or right.
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Virtual rep only I'm afraid. But, all of it. [up]
Guess we'll we'll see what 3.0 brings... [ugh]
(clap) Rilzi, this is impressive. Best series of SC diaries so far. This might even inspire me do something similar for let's say 2.3 launch for ED.
edit: oops sorry, got your nick wrong :/
edit: oops sorry, got your nick wrong :/
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Great review, about SM i can also add that there is almost no recoil to guns, so basically you need to go full auto and hope that you hit enemy with a lot of bullets due high time to kill, bad hit detection and of course high ping...
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Good read and left me full on my "drama meter" for today. Sure, its only his side of the story and people trying to present themselves in the best possible light but as we are dealing with CiG here I m tending to take his word for it. Its kinda sad that CiG refers to the "if you dont want to play with us you cant even SIT in our sand box anymore" tactic basically acting like an immature lil kid especially regarding the amounts of money involved. As I dont believe that SC is racking in new backers and if then only at a base level of funding I d try to avoid hardship as this one because "advertising by mouth" is something they rely on and now they got another naysayer. If anything they should ve tried to leave this backer on a rather neutral status but appearantly there is no grey with CiG. You are either with them (good lil cultist) or against them (DS drone)....nothing in between.
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