The Star Citizen Thread V10
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So it's unlike pretty much every deal that VCs do when putting cash into a company. They very aggressively defend their investments, and now have 2 board members. Have no doubt that they have a lot of power, however CIG dress it up.
7 months. I don't understand why there wasn't an announcement about this & the extra money back in May if CIG were being transparent.
Argument: new details hidden until legal disclosure forced. Not voluntary transparency, and roadmap is retconning the situation.
The marketing thing confuses me. CIG have spent a huge amount on marketing - video production, Cons, etc - so would be kinda interesting to see what the new $$$ means in terms of percentages on what CIG have spent already. The reserve thing is also confusing: if a company has sales/preorders of $200 million plus, no shipped product but that product requires ongoing servers/maintenance, at least $46m in other financing... where has the rest of the money gone? What is there to show for it?
Remember that 1) the backers are owed a product plus 2) existing unknown investors/loans and 3) the latest investors will want to make a healthy profit of at least $46m + good percentage and, whatever you think, are almost certainly in a situation where they can fold CIG to protect their cash. Plus the ongoing CryTek case which has in no way been completely dismissed.
CIG at some point, relatively soon, are going to need to sell a product (eg SQ42) to a new market. Existing CIG backers already own it, and the remaining PC market is not huge. Consoles? Maybe, but space FPS games haven't done well recently.
I agree. However I think that it's far too late. Chris Roberts got booted out of the last software company he ran so he does have form. Strangely enough, this after outsiders put up cash to get the-project-that-would-never-end to market.
I am not optimistic, and I feel pretty sorry for the backers.
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Viajero
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There is no need to skew anything. Even these latest non audited figures issued by CIG confirm that CR lied multiple times when stating that should backing stop altogether CIG had reserves to finish off the game. With around 7-15 million reserves year on year and dwindling (not even accounting for any debt/loans) it wouldn’t be physically possible to finish even just SQ42 alone, never mind the whole thing.
Should backing stop today 7 MM (not even discounting any outstanding debt) would allow for 2-3 months of operation at best, and we now know that CIG estimates the work just for SQ42 in at least around 18-24 months just for a Beta.
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There was some speculation a while back that the May investment might have been the Freelancer moment of this project.
While Chris may hold the vast majority of shares, the terms are such that his excesses are on a very tight leash, held by the outsiders. Since they (unlike the remaining CIG contingent) can declare that his trying to go forward with his latest harebrained scheme constitutes a conflict of interest, any such ideas can be blocked.
That would rather leave Chris in a position that's essentially reduced to “creative consulting”, with a couple of talking-head PR roles on the side to maintain appearances and keep the whales happy. Meanwhile, cooler heads and cash-providing institutions take over the actual decision-making process. The only difference from last time is that there is no graceful exit or escape hatch for the man himself.
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The marketing they did in the ways of cons and weekly videos were sponsored by subscriber money which are more for the subscribers and backers.
This would be for external marketing which, to be fair, they have not had any official marketing where they have purchased commercial spots, ads or other similar ventures.
At best they have had through backers and word of mouth marketing but not official marketing through the proper channels so to speak.
So what does the VP of Marketing actually do?
I understand where you are coming from, and maybe you don't even realize it, but your wording is absoloutely marketing speak. Maybe you work in marketing or sales, so you just your natural style, and i certainly don't want to say that you are wrong in your impressions, they are after all your own.
But when we post, we project an impression of ourselves, and yours really screams marketing.... not something i think you want to project in a thread like this... or to be honest, any thread, unless you have a forum tag of Community Manager. I mean, i'm sure you've seen community managers get flack on various forums for hyping things or wording things in a way that don't reflect the general sentiment of the forums.
At the end of the day, they are your posts and I have no right to tell you how to post, but if you want to look like a genuine fan of the game rather than someone being paid to promote the game...
I work in the advertising and marketing field and, unfortunately, know what it looks like. (Edit: To clarify, I have a compsci degree, hide in the background doing non-client facing stuff for one of the major multinationals, and - for a time at least - was banned from even communicating with clients. Long story, that one.... [hehe] )
They have done a huge amount of marketing/PR, and spent a fair chunk on it. That is was primarily to existing customers (although Gamescom, etc, was to the wider world) is utterly irrelevant to my question as the money has been spent on promotional materials.
Possibly interesting marketing fact: It costs 1/10th of the money to retain a customer then it does to bring in a new one, generally speaking. The CIG situation is a bit weird, but the most cost-effective way for a company to make money is to make sure that your existing ones don't jump ship. Makes one think.
I am still interested to know how much they have spent already vs what the supposed budgeted $30-odd million is going to achieve. That's a pretty decent budget for global reach but isn't on the level of the majors.
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I'm not 100% that it's at the full Freelancer level yet (CRoberts taking a long walk off short plank) but May was definitely a turning point.
Assuming - and I can't be bothered to look up the details but it should be close enough - that May saw CIG having pulled in ~$160 million, an injection of an additional 1/4ish of funds is highly significant.
Since the reply to you has been diverted to answer completely irrelevant set of answers, I'll answer: No, no, no, no and no
Yes
Depends on what they plan to use their acquisition with. Maybe it's not so much about releasing Star Citizen than having a database of gullible customers to sell to.
Dude, when I shill here for SC in periods when it's so quiet and no lulzbucket gets filled by visitors you never said anything like that to me!
Interestingly, the same answer applies to ED as well.
I think for ED it would be Yes, yes, no, no, yes, with the difference that autonomous persistent NPCs with good AI and massive visitable cities weren't promised (AFAIK). But of course you'd then argue that the economy isn't fully fleshed (and I'd disagree), living and breathing universe is not living and breathing (and I'd disagree) and the war with Thargoids isn't actual war (and I'd disagree) and we could argue for another hundred posts.
Let's not =w=
Which will be duly recycled and revitalised by pumping it through the pipelines. You'll see - it'll come out cleaner than anything before.
^^^
This.
The days when I can guarantee that I'll be able to play at a certain time are currently long behind me, as well as long ahead of me. Unless I'm interested in a pick-up group, which can be a hit or miss experience (more miss than hit, IMO), I'm playing an MMO solo. If an MMO requires me to play with other people, I'm simply not interested.
Fun 2 read :https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/sceptics-of-sc-are-starting-to-see-reality-slightl
comments are golden...
comments are golden...
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