How can anyone think you can produce a game for $600,000, especially one of final fantasy tactics quality and have it complete in around a year or even 2. Let be honest this was were just seed funding to get them started. They were always going to have to get more funding from somewhere. That the problem with a lot of these kickstarter in games people are using it more as a ad space and a proving ground to raise funding from corporate investors rather than trying to raise the complete budget their.
An I love the censoring of **** ******* at the end of the video. Even **** ******* Kickstarter started out as a way to test the market for investors. Elite Dangerous was the same except Frontier actually went an floated company and raise about 30 million pounds I believe
I think Frontier were pretty cute on this; Money is never insignificant but I got the impression ED KS was at least as much to decide whether ED would have a market, as a product. At some stage surely any project has to start operating like a business though and wouldn't be surprised if the earned wisdom might be; after KS, start operating like a business, 'as soon as possible'. Crowdfunders might end up being seen as no better bet than going to a bank ie. you still lose everything if the project fails. More certainly if all that KS money just burned massive holes in CIG's pockets.
Maybe no wonder CR is looking a bit nervy these days. If the product doesn't get delivered and the refund train did get going, with no product for income and refunds outstripping what's in the bank, given rent and contracts with dev employees, could he end up as an incarcerated citizen at that point!!!?
Speaking of Kickstarters, if you are ever thinking "Hmmm, I might be a bit too invested and negative towards SC", go take a look at the ED KS comments.
There is still a guy there posting everything negative he can find about ED and proclaiming the game is both rubbish and doomed!
I find it more satisfying to read his posts in the voice of Graham Lister from "Vic Reeves Big Night Out!"
Speaking of Kickstarters, if you are ever thinking "Hmmm, I might be a bit too invested and negative towards SC", go take a look at the ED KS comments.
There is still a guy there posting everything negative he can find about ED and proclaiming the game is both rubbish and doomed!
I find it more satisfying to read his posts in the voice of Graham Lister from "Vic Reeves Big Night Out!"
Speaking of Kickstarters, if you are ever thinking "Hmmm, I might be a bit too invested and negative towards SC", go take a look at the ED KS comments.
There is still a guy there posting everything negative he can find about ED and proclaiming the game is both rubbish and doomed!
I find it more satisfying to read his posts in the voice of Graham Lister from "Vic Reeves Big Night Out!"
The thing is John, most of us here have seen so many eager and sincere evangelists come and go in this thread, but alas mere words can not convince, only deliverables. Deliverables from CiG, and better yet, those delivered to any semblance of a reasonable time-scale. And 'not good' would be a kind summary of their performance to date.
So, whilst I still hope SC arrives sometime and is decent, I'm not optimistic - ymmv.
p.s. ...oh, and what happened to SQ42? I thought 'grabber' had previously said sales of SQ42 would go to fund SC... despite previously saying they were fully funded... so is it SQ42 or SC that CiG are focussing on? Please no-one say it's the 'foundations' or 'tools' or 'building the team'...
My opinions are my own and I'm surely not trying to convince anyone. I don't care if you like or dislike the game, it's development or it's developers. I don't care if you buy 1 ship or if you refund 10 ship's. It's all irrelevant so I'm surely not trying to convince anyone but more pointing out what I think are flaw's in "theories" or simply debunking lies or honest misconceptions that keep surfacing.
A great example of a running misconception is above. Where you "think" that Chris Roberts implied that the sales of SQ42 are to be used to fund Star Citizen when what he said was a direct answer to the hypothetical question: "What IF Star Citizen funding stopped?"
CR answer was:
“First of all, we always have a decent amount of money in reserve, so if all support would collapse, we would not suddenly be incapacitated. We plan the scope of the development based on what arrives monthly by the people to support. I’m not worried, because even if no money came in, we would have sufficient funds to complete Squadron 42. The revenue from this could in-turn be used for the completion of Star Citizen.”
So not only is based on an highly impossible extreme scenario of doom but it's also a completely reasonable and viable option.
Was having a chat on reddit with one of the fans there, and he explained how some of the mechanics are planned to work in relation to buying things.
Now, keep in mind, maybe they misunderstand something, and there is always the possibility (probability) that whatever is produced in the end is nothing like what is planned.
They said sales of SQ42 would fund SC.* Not sure how many people exist who don't already have backed for SQ42, so not sure where these additional funds will come from. But SQ42 needs a lot of the mechnics from SC to be finished. For all we know. Erin's side is already as complete as they can get, but waiting for tech from SC side to continue.
Basically SC has to reach a certain level of completeness before SQ42 can be finished.
*IF funding suddenly stopped for some magical reason, considering they have been making more and more money every each year that's an utterly impossible to situation to happen.
Crowdfunding and Kickstarting is only done by a small minority of gamers compared with it's world wide numbers. The so called "hard-core" gamers who risk into kickstart projects do it more for emotional reasons most of the time. The average gamer is very adverse to risk, and that's not even taking into account the Console gaming market.
Check out how many senior positions are missing...
Check out how many ENGINEERING positions are open in germany.
Now look since WHEN they are searching...
The entire seniorstaff in germany jumped ship, in 21. July
Maybe i just dont know enough about game development but this is for me the aforementioned lack of architects.
61 vacant positions. That's a lot. Either people are leaving or they have recently received a massive investment. It dosen't look like normal staff turnover to me.
Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are huge ambitious games in heavy development, OFC CIG is hiring.
As it's been since it's inception. Remember that they started with 8 employees in 2012 and are now pushing for 450!
As for "The entire seniorstaff in germany jumped ship, in 21. July".
No it really didn't and it's amusing to even consider that would actually happened.
More lies or misconceptions... John Pritchett is indeed still working for CIG as Senior Physics Programmer as shown in is professional and personal e-profiles.
Where do these made up stuff come from one has to ask...
Planetside 1 had multiple viewports. It was using a heavily modified version of Granny3D. And Planetside 1 was a true MMO with up to 900 players in a single island and a single instance.
So what else can you come up with that makes SC "groundbreak" multiple viewports? If you answer that it's the first cryengine game to do this, then you may well be right. Compared to UE and the others out there, that's hardly impressive ground to break though.
But what does it add to gameplay? Is it really needed to make that game? Would those resources maybe have been better spent on, I dunno, gameplay? Like mining, trading, bounty system, etc?
I've never played PS1 or couldn't find an example of gameplay applications of what you are describing but I've reiterated what is special in a Star Citizen mmorpg context: Having the ability to project your character image in real time on to another player's ship MFD or a huge hologram in a capital ship is groundbreaking in a mmorpg context, being it as a immersive communication tool it can interact be used toguether with other several applications in professions or random activities.
When I first heard of SC and their intention to pull it off in CryEngine, I couldn't help but ask myself "but why?". A yet unanswered question that is standing the test of time.
And the fact that they're working with an engine which started development 15 years ago (the engineer in that video even states there are parts of the engine which are very old) - which to put it in perspective pre-dates the release of Freelancer - regardless of whether they have they guy who originally wrote it, is a large part of the problem.
It's arguable whether wrestling CryEngine into supporting SC's features is easier or harder than starting from a clean slate (and if it's harder, that's not a cause for admiration, that just means it was the wrong choice), but ultimately they've so far delivered nothing which makes me believe they are able to pull it off either way.
Any engine would have trouble doing what Star Citizen is attempting, even more with one made from scratch. Just look at Elite Dangerous who run's on what could be considered tailor made for a Space game but even that doesn't prevent Frontier from running into problems when trying to implement features.
No, because the multiplayer aspect has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
This is so wrong, ofc when you had multiplayer to the equation thing's get a lot more complicated, specially when in the mmorpg context, it's just that it opens a can of worms of possible variable situations that you have to accommodate for several possibilities. Same goes for allowing for 1st and 3rd Person view/gameplay for example, it requires way more tech and thought to accommodate both views no only with render-to-texture but animations, streaming new assets seamlessly etc.
Simple answer really, why would you want to leave your house? your car? Being able to leave your vehicle open's up a whole new universe of gameplay options I think that would be obvious by now.
Look at those mobiglass UI, as I said in the above, using them is a PITA in itself with those resolution scaling issue and things like that 'misaligned' angle relative to you own view!
Some of us knew this would happen since that ironman movie UI designer jumped onboard all those years ago.
No he's right there in the video, the one with a mix of asian/south american face, I couldn't be bothered to remember the name...
Oh btw, the hideousness of those holo UI truly come to life whenever you tried to access them while being on foot, the simple fact that the navigation cursor needed to operate those UI is also tied to your avatar movement method highlights the problem, it just not a good game design... But somehow after all these times they don't seem to develop alternate method, like allowing players to access them with keyboards shortcuts.
Mixing up Zane Bien a guy who joined CIG fresh from college with John Liken who works mostly for Hollywood/TV and did some of the first UI concept's for the hornet and such is an incredible feat as their work couldn't be more further apart.
Zane has worked himself up the ladder and is now one of the Global UI Creative Director at Foundry 42 UK (He moved from the states to UK specially for this job)
Ok we are sticking with the figure of speech but comparing crowdfunding with "hiring people to do something" is kinda of a stretch wouldn't you say?
But heck, let's run with it. Let's say they were "hired" to build the best building possible. The increase in funding allowed for a bigger/better building so instead of a House they went for the Skyscraper.
Sure it takes more time, but it also holds more people and more facilities. This allows for better accommodation variety, shopping mall's, gym's, gardens, sport's fields, restaurants & bars, gaming areas and even race tracks bellow the underground parking area.
Sound's a lot better to me than what a simple house could turn out even with all the future upgrades you could add later on.
Gaming world is filled with houses, some cutely made, that make for a nice experience for a while until you get bored and move to another house, sometimes they look good from the outside only to be broken inside so you move to another and so on.
There are very few skyscrapers currently in the gaming scene and none as big or ambitious as SC/SQ42. That's why the community has no problem in waiting for it.
But heck, let's run with it. Let's say they were "hired" to build the best building possible. The increase in funding allowed for a bigger/better building so instead of a House they went for the Skyscraper.
Except here's where you are dead wrong. They weren't "hired" to make the best damned building they were hired to build the house.
The original campaign for Star Citizen laid out exactly what the focus of development would be, what to expect in the game 1.0, and what sort of things we'd see later. They described the house they were building.
Then after collecting money from backers, they shifted the entire focus, threw out the description of the house and said "No no no, really we're focusing on this skyscraper! It's so much bigger, and better!" We didn't back a skyscraper we backed a house, and now that house has been shoved off to the side and delayed so far into the future that we cannot reasonable expect to ever see it so that CIG can use our money to build some skyscraper that we didn't pay them to build.
NO ONE originally backed SC because of procedural planets and landings because they explicitly said it was something they'd maybe consider adding after launch. Now every facet of the entire damn game has been delayed into infinity to shoehorn this tech into the game.
There are very few skyscrapers currently in the gaming scene and none as big or ambitious as SC/SQ42. That's why the community has no problem in waiting for it.
Let's see, ED exists and is quite very good as far as skyscrapers go. NMS just got a huge update that added tons of features that were originally supposed to be in the game while reworking everything from older story threads to art assets to variety and options.. added multiplayer and dynamic economies and rare planets and the kitchen sink.. Space Engine continues to wipe the floor with any procedural generated universe while NMS continues to excel at filling it's spaces with color and life and ED continues to hammer home the simulation and realistic science fiction better than most.
Nothing CIG is doing is revolutionary or great, and before anyone says "oh boy no see it's cause they are combining it all together for the first time"... until it *is* combined there's no reason to even take that statement as anything other than wish fulfillment. It's just a loose collection of badly functioning modules and the only thing outstanding about it is how much money it's collectively cost the world to produce it.
There's nothing big or ambitious about Robert's having his head so far up in the clouds and up his own you know what simultaneously as to continually promise things he can't deliver. No one praises a six year old child for for his ambition or "thinking big" when he says he's going to grow up to be Optimus Prime.
My opinions are my own and I'm surely not trying to convince anyone. I don't care if you like or dislike the game, it's development or it's developers. I don't care if you buy 1 ship or if you refund 10 ship's. It's all irrelevant so I'm surely not trying to convince anyone but more pointing out what I think are flaw's in "theories" or simply debunking lies or honest misconceptions that keep surfacing.
That totally explains the epic effort posting. Trouble is I feel there are some glaring flaws I think need pointing out in it.
What Crobber said about Sq42 funding SC is exactly as people have represented.
Could you explain how exactly supporting 1st and 3rd person views requires magical new asset streaming technology?
Also do you REALLY want to pretend that the community are happy with all this? The change in tone has been remarkable - everyone's seen it, everyone's cottoning on. You must have noticed surely?
Agreed with Azirphaeli, they weren't hired to build the best building/game ever, they were supposed to build a house/a game they have advertised in the Kickstarter. And that's the core of the problem, instead of making a product, they chase an imagined "best ever" descriptor, completely, utterly failing to do what they were supposed to do.
Edit: Because analogies are fun, and quotes even more so, you could say I'm saying "you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off", after walking in and seeing CIG slaving over the high school physics textbook to learn how to build a thermonuclear bomb.
Except here's where you are dead wrong. They weren't "hired" to make the best damned building they were hired to build the house.
The original campaign for Star Citizen laid out exactly what the focus of development would be, what to expect in the game 1.0, and what sort of things we'd see later. They described the house they were building.
Then after collecting money from backers, they shifted the entire focus, threw out the description of the house and said "No no no, really we're focusing on this skyscraper! It's so much bigger, and better!" We didn't back a skyscraper we backed a house, and now that house has been shoved off to the side and delayed so far into the future that we cannot reasonable expect to ever see it so that CIG can use our money to build some skyscraper that we didn't pay them to build.
NO ONE originally backed SC because of procedural planets and landings because they explicitly said it was something they'd maybe consider adding after launch. Now every facet of the entire damn game has been delayed into infinity to shoehorn this tech into the game.
Let's see, ED exists and is quite very good as far as skyscrapers go. NMS just got a huge update that added tons of features that were originally supposed to be in the game while reworking everything from older story threads to art assets to variety and options.. added multiplayer and dynamic economies and rare planets and the kitchen sink.. Space Engine continues to wipe the floor with any procedural generated universe while NMS continues to excel at filling it's spaces with color and life and ED continues to hammer home the simulation and realistic science fiction better than most.
Nothing CIG is doing is revolutionary or great, and before anyone says "oh boy no see it's cause they are combining it all together for the first time" until it *is* combines there's no reason to even take that statement as anything other than wish fulfillment. It's just a loose collection of badly functioning modules and the only thing outstanding about it is how much money it's collectively cost the world to produce it.
There's nothing big or ambitious about Robert's having his head so far up in the clouds and up his own you know what simultaneously as to continually promise things he can't deliver. No one praises a six year old child for for his ambition or "thinking big" when he says he's going to grow up to be Optimus Prime.
CIG only does what the community allow's them to do. Even if you disagree with it that's your own take on the matter, I'm perfectly fine with it, I voted for the increase of scope, on the forum and with my wallet. I have no problem with delays whatsoever, I knew perfectly what I was backing and who I was giving my money to. My desire alone is worth as much has yours. Nothing in the grand scheme of things.
It's impossible to make everyone happy, all CIG is doing is what they promised to do, make the best damn sim ever. That's it, the rest are egoistical singular notions of what is best for "me". Crowdfunding doesn't work that way, there's no me, only the final goal matters.
That totally explains the epic effort posting. Trouble is I feel there are some glaring flaws I think need pointing out in it.
What Crobber said about Sq42 funding SC is exactly as people have represented.
Could you explain how exactly supporting 1st and 3rd person views requires magical new asset streaming technology?
Also do you REALLY want to pretend that the community are happy with all this? The change in tone has been remarkable - everyone's seen it, everyone's cottoning on. You must have noticed surely?
Really is it that epic? And I don't even post that much compared with other users here.
Yeah the community is happy with Star Citizen development that's why it keeps getting money. The vocal minority's are just that, minority's. No one is forced to follow development or buy more ship's, it's entirely on them. If they want to express their frustration on social media so be it as long as Star Citizen keeps being developed and progress shown I have no qualms with it because I knew exactly what I was signing in for.
CIG only does what the community allow's them to do. Even if you disagree with it that's your own take on the matter, I'm perfectly fine with it, I voted for the increase of scope, on the forum and with my wallet. I have no problem with delays whatsoever, I knew perfectly what I was backing and who I was giving my money to. My desire alone is worth as much has yours. Nothing in the grand scheme of things.
It's impossible to make everyone happy, all CIG is doing is what they promised to do, make the best damn sim ever. That's it, the rest are egoistical singular notions of what is best for "me". Crowdfunding doesn't work that way, there's no me, only the final goal matters.
Nonsense, we cannot allow them (or not allow them) to do anything because they have the money and they don't answer to anyone. They could say "we're done, enjoy 2.6 as final" and there is actually nothing that can be done about it at this point.
Nevertheless they did not promise to make the best damn sim ever, they did however launch a crowd funding campaign to make a single player game and a persistent universe which did not include planet landings but did include lots of space sim related activities and 100s of systems.
Right now they are making something so grossly unrelated to that campaign that it ought to be completely renamed.
It's great that you backed star citizen while magically knowing what CIG would one day decide to build instead of SQ42 and SC and thus are perfectly happy with the change in scope, but many of us have been completely scammed out of our money.
That's not an opinion by the way, that's a fact. When you back a project and they decide to take the money and provide something else that's a scam. By your logic, Playdek taking the kickstarter money for Unsung Story and completely ignoring the single player game they were supposed to be building to make some PVP multiplayer thing was totally okay. It was, afterall, them deciding to build the "best damn tactical rpg" that they could with the money the community provided.
CIG only does what the community allow's them to do. Even if you disagree with it that's your own take on the matter, I'm perfectly fine with it, I voted for the increase of scope, on the forum and with my wallet. I have no problem with delays whatsoever, I knew perfectly what I was backing and who I was giving my money to. My desire alone is worth as much has yours. Nothing in the grand scheme of things.
The community has no control over the direction the game is being taken in. At most few tens of thousand of backers with nothing else to spend money on can provide enough funding even if the majority of community stopped paying a dime. And it doesn't change a fact that CIG wastes time on doing something they weren't asked to do.
Yeah the community is happy with Star Citizen development that's why it keeps getting money. The vocal minority's are just that, minority's. No one is forced to follow development or buy more ship's, it's entirely on them. If they want to express their frustration on social media so be it as long as Star Citizen keeps being developed and progress shown I have no qualms with it because I knew exactly what I was signing in for.
It's a vocal minority that are keeping paying and trying to drown out and shut down any discussion to the contrary - these gamers are called whales and it's a very well established thing. The majority are not happy and are not playing as evidenced by countless threads with commandos saying they're not paying anything more and will not be bothered with 3.0 if it doesn't improve framerates and player numbers.
The evidence is overwhelming.
Trouble is if you want to see it finishing being developed you should care, as at this rate it won't.
That's not relevant in any way to the question - as a reminder it was "Could you explain how exactly supporting 1st and 3rd person views requires magical new asset streaming technology?"
Rather than showing me some irrelevant graphical pretty could you explain how exactly supporting 1st and 3rd person views requires magical new asset streaming technology? As a starter you could begin with what is different about how you stream assets between a 1st and 3rd person view
