Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

I still believe strongly that there are several 'shadow investors' or dodgy money in the mix somewhere. There simply aren't enough whales, free spending or not, to consistently supply the amount of funding month after month or year after year to even begin to tally the funding tracker. I've been involved with this thing for way too long to be convinced that even a constant stream of subscribers, new $50-$100 backers or the preverbial and much maligned $1k-$35k whales buying up pixel spaceships or jpegs as being the sole source of Ci¬G's considerable annual income.

As much as I'm a concierge level backer and fairly typical with regard to the spending habits of the majority of that particular group or trend...I haven't given Ci¬G a penny for over 2 years...and I'm by no means alone in that regard. There's only so much you can tie down to sunk cost fallacy in a space game before it becomes highly unlikely...or even nonsensical 🤷‍♂️
I personally would be surprised if nefarious funding sources were used. There are many, many examples of whale SC idiocy, often posted in this thread, that demonstrate that there's a bottomless pit of below-average-IQ Star Citizens willing to throw money at CIG. And the marketing and graphics-over-substance shallowness are designed to attract new payers.

The whale-fracking money printer go brrrrrr
 
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I personally would be surprised if nefarious funding sources were used. There are many, many examples of whale SC idiocy, often posted in this thread, that demonstrate that there's a bottomless pit of below-average-IQ Star Citizens willing to throw money at CIG. And the marketing and graphics-over-substance shallowness are designed to attract new payers.

The whale-fracking money printer go brrrrrr
You're still assuming CiG's primary 'business' is developing a space game? Interesting...


:whistle:
 
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Looking at replies to blocked users, i get the impression LA has been playing the "But i have fun" card over and over again.

You know what i had years of fun playing?

Angband.png


Now, that might be the Best Damn Roguelike Game Ever, but it doesn't actually make it some sort of great never been done before kind of game.
 

I'm not sure that's actually a good thing, surely if something is working so good to bring in the money that just encourages them to keep doing exactly the same thing? Whereas being forced to actually release a game to generate funds might just happen if the never-ending spigot of whale funding was shut off.
 
I am pretty sure some people actually benefitted from Enron or Theranos aswell in one way or another, but that does not excuse how disgraceful those cases were.
That seems like a pretty hyperbolic comparison. Sure, there were probably beneficiaries of Theranos, but they would have been a comparatively small number of insider people who made money off of it and somehow managed to keep that money after the collapse. With Star Citizen you’re trying to handwave satisfied end users. That would be like if Theranos had a large contingent of fans who were like “I don’t know what everyone’s complaining about, those blood tests worked great for me . . .”
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
I'm not sure that's actually a good thing, surely if something is working so good to bring in the money that just encourages them to keep doing exactly the same thing? Whereas being forced to actually release a game to generate funds might just happen if the never-ending spigot of whale funding was shut off.
Assuming those figures reasonably reflect the actual situation yes. Although I think that for as long as CR is in charge, and given his personality, there will be no “gold” release of SC/SQ42 until he believes the game is of a quality level that can actually get it/him widespread recognition.

Given the state of the thing after 10 years that seems rather unlikely. I suspect (and I may be wrong) that if push comes to shove and/or funds dwindle at most CR could explicitly announce a PU Early Access of some kind (maybe even release a few missions for SQ42). And I say at most since CR has already issued some vague statements along those EA lines with which he can be already satisfied.
 
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Thing is, we have no actual idea where funds come from.
In this case, the file diving that suggested whales provide the bulk of SC’s cash, not new blood, would probably be of interest ¯\(ツ)/¯
I still believe strongly that there are several 'shadow investors' or dodgy money in the mix somewhere.
I personally would be surprised if nefarious funding sources were used. There are many, many examples of whale SC idiocy,..
The whale-fracking money printer go brrrrrr
I love how the majority dodge one of the most evident answer : more people playing everyday and more people enjoying the alpha for a longer time. You like it, you buy it + the more time you spend on it, greater the chance you spend some additionnal cash on it = increase in funding.
But it doesn't fit the narrative "No no it's impossible for CIG to have more players, I've seen all the bugs and bad comments posted daily here by Golgot and SaltEMike was angry yesterday/last week/last year !"


Indeed. Some actually think that "complexity" in SC is just a very handy little lie
If that's a deliberate bit of trickery to get the sliding sections to work for now, it seems like a bit of an issue for the bigger Hulls. The rear sections are habitable for those ;)
So, SC is complex or not ? you should agree :rolleyes:
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
more people playing everyday and more people enjoying the alpha for a longer time.

Source?

So, SC is complex or not ? you should agree

There is no conflict in those statements. SC is so far and after 10+ years still a failed promise on ambition or “complexity”. Also you seem to be confusing complexity and depth. Complexity for the sake of it is a waste.
 
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Again "I love how the majority dodge one of the most evident answer". Nobody except McGlashan talk about it. Do you have source for the "other" explanations ? No. Do you consider this explanation as plausible ? No, because it doesn't fit with your narrative.
There is no conflict in those statements. SC is so far and after 10+ years a failed promise on ambition or “complexity”. Also you seem to be confusing complexity and depth. Complexity for the sake of it is a waste.
But SC is complex AND have depth. And the complexity of SC is for the sake of emergent gameplay + immersion + adding variety of gameplay. For exemple some are laughing at box management in SC here but they should not, it add great variety to the gameplay. JumpTown and Xenothreat were fantastic events thanks in large part to the boxes management gameplay. Do you know that the box management give action to snipers ?
 
The 'from "you can I have fun with only the basic 45$ game package" to "people have fun ergo the funds flow"' sounds a lot like the 'from "fun? You're not supposed to have fun in an alpha" to "yeah it's an alpha but I have more fun than in any other AAA ever made"'
 
And you cannot stand the idea that fun can be the main reason why newcommers fund SC...
nothing in reddit or resetera SC discussions or any other wider gaming related news, youtubers/streamers and communities ever support the evidence of what you claimed... especially when you compared the activities on those SC discussions with other games like elden ring, cyberpunk or even the soon to be 10 years old gta v... the wider informed gaming community already know that SC is a scam joke of a game not something worthy to be supported.

look at the wider NMS internet communities where it's the closest thing the "space sim" genre ever get to have a mainstream audience, just ask them how many of them support SC? I believe the answer would be it's only a tiny miniscule group of people compared to the number of people that ever played NMS.

no, newcomers don't fund SC anymore, it's very probably huge majority of the funding comes from the whales and people like you, despite your claim that you only invested at minimum.

edit just saw Mole's post from previous page, well also there's that, I've long suspected that too, there are possible illegal/money laundering/dodgy money movement behind the door that has been going on for years outside this "game project" if the funding tracker is to be believed, after all where exactly did the all that money come from?
 
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I love how the majority dodge one of the most evident answer : more people playing everyday and more people enjoying the alpha for a longer time. You like it, you buy it + the more time you spend on it, greater the chance you spend some additionnal cash on it = increase in funding.
But it doesn't fit the narrative "No no it's impossible for CIG to have more players, I've seen all the bugs and bad comments posted daily here by Golgot and SaltEMike was angry yesterday/last week/last year !"

Maybe they should release official player numbers then? I have seen unofficial stats claiming nearly 2.5m players, but by the same token it also claimed;

With upwards of 2.5 million players, in a galaxy of 91 star systems and 900+ planets and stations, the world of Star Citizen is an ever-expanding feat of audience engagement.

So if we actually take that player number and divide it by 100 to match the actual released systems and planets we get 25,000.

I have seen figures of over 17m subscribers (note not players) and over 160,000 daily players for Elite dangerous;


Now there is an argument that the number of total "subscribers" must always increase so therefore SC could have 2.5m subscribers, but that doesn't necessarily translate into players and/or payers.

The problem with the above stats for SC of course do mean that some people may buy into something that doesn't actually exist and may never pay more than the actual initial subscription, but I highly doubt the record figures for funding this month come from all new subscribers. That figure came up on the first page of google search for number of players in SC, the same for number of players in ED. But of course as long as SC is in Alpha there are no official players of SC, only Alpha testers so those numbers really mean nothing, I mean the game may not actually ever get released so there may never be official player numbers!
 
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