Star Citizen Thread v6

[Snarfbuckle]

To be fair, your second point is standard and good practice in business. If there are any tax breaks/incentives to be had, you take them.

Borrowing money is potentially a red flag. We know what they gave as a reason, but without insider knowledge, we don't know if this was indeed a clever business move or a payday loan.

First point though.... ugh.

Actually borrowing money is also good business practice since as long as you have an asset you can borrow money with you get more liquid cash to invest.

- Invest in office with money
- Mortgage the office to regain some of the money
- Invest money from mortgage to increase your amount of money

 

[Snarfbuckle]

Well, since we can't believe anything they say, lets examine what they do.

Desperate fund raising with ship sales and marketing gimmicks. Check.
Scrabbling for tax incentive. Check.
Borrowing money with a large chunk of their IP. Check.

Standard practice for a game that was fully funded at $60M I guess.

- The "desperate" fund raising has been since day 1 of kickstarter and the customers are buying so hardly desperate because they are not begging people to buy.
- Anyone with business sense would use any tax incentive they could
- Borrowing money with their IP is the equivalent of mortgage on assets to gain liquid cash for more investment.

Neither is surprising business practice.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

There's a MASSIVE difference though between having money .. and having income.

Although self publishing gives creative freedom, the drawback to that is having no other titles providing company income, to subsidise titles in production. Without income, you can burn through very large amounts of cash in a big hurry. After a few rough calculations above, my guess is CIG has the money for 5/6 years development and that has been, more or less what it's been so far.

I'm not a great expert in knowing how much CIG earn but a telling comparison if someone knows it I suggest, would be sales attributed to Gamescom after the 2016 presentation LAST year (for which I don't have figure) and those attributed to THIS year. Again I'm quoting someone else but suggestion is this year, after first weekend, approx $1m. More than in 2016? $1m might be enough to keep CIG going for 2 weeks but there are 52 weeks in a year and surely it's a diminishing return ..

Seems unlikely much of this $1m is new money, for largest part probably coming from existing backers who can only dwindle in number and are now reaching levels of 'investment' where any refund is a much more massive hit, than payback of one game license, (if you bought ships and want that money back too?) Because it's not an investment, nobody gets shares in CIG for this donation, so even if CIG does have money, it can't be called secured if the product doesn't arrive in a timely way.

Oh im not disputing that.

Having the money to cover the production and development is one thing but AFTER that they would need a cash buffer to cover costs until new sales come in after game reviews and release.
Sure, they can scale back a bit on employees but they are also making two more SQ42 parts since it's supposed to be a triology. That means they still need people on the payroll.

And sure, they can use the purchase in-game money for cash but I bet few people will use that in the beginning while learning the ropes of the persistent universe or simply only playing SQ42 for a month straight.

 

[n4p0l3on]

let's speculate another mystery point, shall we?

what do you guys think about squadron 42? what do you assume and speculate about it?

1. why is it missing? if I have to speculate it is because of 3 things : missing/incomplete core gameplay mechanics, missing/incomplete AI, difficult integration between the first 2 reasons and the mocap data.

2. even then it can't explain the complete lack of marketing from CIG, it's as if they are trying to erase the existence of sqd42 from the public instead of even just using it to raise more hype and money, and if you compare this with the sc side, you would easily notice the very odd stark contrast between two. Odd because there are obviously ways to generate money from sqd42 that can and will prolong their life so to speak.

3. this point is related to the above, why the lack of effort from CIG to do even just something like salvaging sqd42? because there is no reason for them to not able to do so! it's just supposed to be a modern wing commander game, they could easily cut many corners to deliver a cinematic single player game akin to wing commander, especially with cryengine, they could easily said screw these PU circle of hell, just make a beautiful single player game with all that cinematic eye candy... the only reason I can assume is because croberts refuse to do so... but it just such an absurd stance to take when 'their life' depending on those money they could've gained.

why, what really happened with sqd42?

*addition* think about this, IMO it could have been easy for CIG to make sqd42 to become the next crysis, with some clever marketing every pc gamers would want to buy it just to run it as a benchmarking tool, as crysis was, and sold in millions of copies. 'easy' money!

 

[Snarfbuckle]

But whatever you call it IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO FINISH GAME IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM.

Based on what?

- They have the equivalent budget of other large gaming companies
- They DO have talented staff among the 400 employees (Whatever you might think of some individuals)
- Erin Roberts heading SQ42 production DO have a solid rep of managing to get games released

Whatever happens with the PU and possible MMO shenanigans and hype they WILL cut that down and consolidate to get SQ42 out the door.
That said, yes, there is cause for concern and im greatly annoyed over the lack of simple screenshots, white/greybox or short video snippets about SQ42.

But saying it CANT be done IS hyperbole.

 

[Zetta]

With regards to the backers number counter, considering 900,000 as impressive as 1,800,000 is literally wrong. Although the main point here is not really the opinion differences in terms of "impressiveness" of the figure. What is impressive is the fact CIG has made zero effort over 5 years to clarify that the figure does not show actual backer numbers and has allowed the erroneous reading to be stated by publications and fans everywhere. The cynic in me thinks that the lie is a very convenient one for CIG and hence their lack of motivation to addess it.

Sadly it's all too common in the industry but I guess because of the things CIG have said, the way they claim to operate we expect better. They like the anti-publisher rhetoric, they claim that it's all about the fans and community but in my opnion they are worse than many, many publishers and they only interact with the community because they are being paid additional money for doing so.

 

[Zyll Goliat]

let's speculate another mystery point, shall we?

what do you guys think about squadron 42? what do you assume and speculate about it?

1. why is it missing? if I have to speculate it is because of 3 things : missing/incomplete core gameplay mechanics, missing/incomplete AI, difficult integration between the first 2 reasons and the mocap data.

2. even then it can't explain the complete lack of marketing from CIG, it's as if they are trying to erase the existence of sqd42 from the public instead of even just using it to raise more hype and money, and if you compare this with the sc side, you would easily notice the very odd stark contrast between two. Odd because there are obviously ways to generate money from sqd42 that can and will prolong their life so to speak.

3. this point is related to the above, why the lack of effort from CIG to do even just something like salvaging sqd42? because there is no reason for them to not able to do so! it's just supposed to be a modern wing commander game, they could easily cut many corners to deliver a cinematic single player game akin to wing commander, especially with cryengine, they could easily said screw these PU circle of hell, just make a beautiful single player game with all that cinematic eye candy... the only reason I can assume is because croberts refuse to do so... but it just such an absurd stance to take when 'their life' depending on those money they could've gained.

why, what really happened with sqd42?

*addition* think about this, IMO it could have been easy for CIG to make sqd42 to become the next crysis, with some clever marketing every pc gamers would want to buy it just to run it as a benchmarking tool, as crysis was, and sold in millions of copies. 'easy' money!

I believe that SQ42 as a single player(linear)story driven campaign is way easier to been made than SC/PU and in my opinion CIG is probably"near"to complete that game(at least first part).....Now the reason why is so much secrecy about it in my opinion is because the moment SQ42 land on our PC is the moment where dream ends and reality start to kicks in...hype will be over when SQ42 is out and from that point on CIG most likely can not count anymore on massive cash flow as they have for the past 5+ years......So I believe that CIG will do ANYTHING to PROLONG the secrecy and the development of the SQ42.........

 

[Cobra1984]

Squadron 42 doesn't exist. You've all already seen everything they've built.

There was a 20 min playthrough of prelude last year that was so unstable it took days to make a video out of it - and CR skipped that video at last year's show. Still no sign of it.

AI and problems with mocap are supposedly to blame. Chris Roberts says it just needs more polish. According to dev re sq42 "there is no game".

 

[zynaps]

let's speculate another mystery point, shall we?

what do you guys think about squadron 42? what do you assume and speculate about it?

1. why is it missing?

They want to merge mocap data with scripted actions so they can create interactive cut-scenes similar to those in HL2, where the player can move around during the scene and the NPC's will still interact with both player and environment as they complete the script (turn their heads, turn to face the player, eye tracking, walk around the player), but they haven't figured out how to do it. Turns out when you have entire scenes that are motion captured, blending them with scripted and interactive tasks is not straight forward without venturing into the uncanny valley (fluid natural motions that are suddenly blended with scripted animations, or other mocap data in ways that will look unnatural)

Basically all full body mocap involving a person walking a path are completely useless once you allow the player into the mix, because you then have to deal with the player getting in the captured path. So if they have capped entire scenes with several people in them, and these people have been walking around during the scene, they are pretty much all junk and close to unusable.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

I believe that SQ42 as a single player(linear)story driven campaign is way easier to been made than SC/PU and in my opinion CIG is probably"near"to complete that game(at least first part).....Now the reason why is so much secrecy about it in my opinion is because the moment SQ42 land on our PC is the moment where dream ends and reality start to kicks in...hype will be over when SQ42 is out and from that point on CIG most likely can not count anymore on massive cash flow as they have for the past 5+ years......So I believe that CIG will do ANYTHING to PROLONG the secrecy and the development of the SQ42.........

If i remember correctly they have a LOT of performance capture to polish and integrate into the game which takes a lot of time.

So while they have a storyline, missions, ships, and other aspects ready to go they still need to make the 3d animations look GOOD or we end up with another Mass Effect Andromeda debacle.

 

[Memnoch]

So while they have a storyline, missions, ships, and other aspects ready to go they still need to make the 3d animations look GOOD or we end up with another Mass Effect Andromeda debacle.

It may not be unfair to say that CIG could only hope to have a Mass Effect: Andromeda debacle. At least that game is functional and actually released.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

they still need to make the 3d animations look GOOD or we end up with another Mass Effect Andromeda debacle.

They have been working on the animations for 5+ years already. How much longer do they need?

If you say "as long as it takes" i'm going to stab myself in the leg with a fork!

 

[Cobra1984]

I'm past caring about posting some stuff I was holding back on because I don't see anyone talking after gamescon, it was that big of a disaster.

Mocap for squadron was rumoured at "$13 million and counting"

None of it worked in their pre-made scenes, and because the character models in the engine are all the same height it looked weird and caused clipping problems when they pulled in mocap from actors of varying heights. Yeah.

The devs on squadron just rolled with it and used tweening and oldschool techniques to get something up and running for last year. Then it was pulled and that's the last time anyone worked on it.

SQ42 is a storyboard and millions of dollars of performance capture. There is no game, it does not exist.

Sorry if that unsettles anyone.

 

[Zyll Goliat]

If i remember correctly they have a LOT of performance capture to polish and integrate into the game which takes a lot of time.

So while they have a storyline, missions, ships, and other aspects ready to go they still need to make the 3d animations look GOOD or we end up with another Mass Effect Andromeda debacle.

Just wait......Mass Effect Andromeda debacle will be NOTHING compared to the SC debacle.....and that if we assume that game ever come´s out....and I still believe it will but from what I been seeing for all those years this game is going to be one of the biggest FLOP in the gaming industry so far.......

 

[killminster]

They have been working on the animations for 5+ years already. How much longer do they need?

If you say "as long as it takes" i'm going to stab myself in the leg with a fork!

Would "when it's ready" be an acceptable non self-harm inducing alternative?

 

[Snarfbuckle]

Just wait......Mass Effect Andromeda debacle will be NOTHING compared to the SC debacle.....and that if we assume that game ever come´s out....and I still believe it will but from what I been seeing for all those years this game is going to be one of the biggest FLOP in the gaming industry so far.......

Well, even if it is awesome it will never survive the amount of HYPE buildup.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Sadly it's all too common in the industry but I guess because of the things CIG have said, the way they claim to operate we expect better.

I think that is why CIG have caught a lot of flack and have their detractors. Their bragging and boasts (specifically CR's boasts) about how they can do everything better, and how they are doing so much that has never been done before (yeah, right), has left them open to ridicule should they get the smallest thing wrong.

Compare CR with DB and you get two very different types of salesmen, and to be honest, i don't think David Braben could sell me a glass of water if i was dying of thirst in a desert, but i'd never complain about his misleading me because he's trying to tell me that the water he is offering is the best water ever. CR on the other hand would not only tell me that his water is the best water in the world ever, but that every molecule was handcrafted with fidelity and how he created it for 1/5th of the price he could have if he had been held back by an evil water supplier, of course, while not actually being able to provide me with water, but in the interim, he would offer me a picture of a glass of water for a few hundred dollars, with the promise to deliver the actual water soon, its coming, just around the corner, but not yet, they are still refactoring the water molecules for increased transparency....

Erm.. ok, lost it a little bit there.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Would "when it's ready" be an acceptable non self-harm inducing alternative?

Wanders off to the kitchen to fetch a fork...

 

[Cobra1984]

Well, even if it is awesome it will never survive the amount of HYPE buildup.

Dude, there is no hype for it.

Media coverage is less than one tenth of what it was in 2015 for the project.

More people have now bought Elite Dangerous than joined the CIG forums - by almost double, over a shorter period of time.

Star Citizen fans are marketing the project to each other, CIG are just refreshing it once a year.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

They have been working on the animations for 5+ years already. How much longer do they need?

If you say "as long as it takes" i'm going to stab myself in the leg with a fork!

They did not have full performance capture material until the latter half of 2015 for SQ42 and definitely not the STAFF in 2013 right after the kickstarter.

So at most 2016-2017 so far.

And considering 20 actors with 100 hours recorded hours AND additional motion capture for smaller actions for NPC's DO give a lot of material to handle.

Dude, there is no hype for it.

Media coverage is less than one tenth of what it was in 2015 for the project.

More people have now bought Elite Dangerous than joined the CIG forums - by almost double, over a shorter period of time.

Star Citizen fans are marketing the project to each other, CIG are just refreshing it once a year.

The hype from backers is enough.

- If backers are unhappy at release they will not buy anything or put more money into the game. That's a lot of customers lost.

Add just a few bad reviews and they loose external revenue stream as well.