Around 100 people are working on the game

[Viajero]

Also keep in mind in 2013 Frontier did a minority offering of stock that brought in about $43million USD. That's their primary source of funding for Elite right now.

Not quite, no. I believe that was just the market valuation of the company as a whole (and that was in £ I believe, not USD). The additional cash intake due to the IPO itself was a much lower number:

http://www.frontier.co.uk/docs/files/Frontier_Developments-Year_end_results-14_November_2013.pdf

Roughly 6.7 £ MM IPO related. Then 3 MM via revolving credit with Banks.

Plus the kick starter cash. And then all backer cash that came after the kickstarter finished.

Now not all the IPO and credit funds will go to Elite, but I guess one can safely assume most of them will.

Someone with more knowledge feel free to correct me. This is just at a quick glance.

 

[KING5TON]

Music is probably the one example that won't be needed 100% all the way through development. Pretty much everything else is needed for the forseeable future, especially as the game is only just getting into the content expansion stage.

Either way, that 3 million kickstarter money won't go a long way. They haven't been skimping on talent, that much is obvious from the quality of what has been released so far (I'm particularly impressed by the audio).

The kickstarter money isn't running the company.
Just the kickstarter money isn't funding the game.
We can expect FD to pump their own money into the game.
They aren't a startup that needed kickstarter to get going, they were a fully fledged company before and after the kickstarter.
Any game making £3 million+ before actually releasing the game is a success.
Just wish people would stop making excuses for them.

 

[StarTux]

Music is probably the one example that won't be needed 100% all the way through development. Pretty much everything else is needed for the forseeable future, especially as the game is only just getting into the content expansion stage.

Either way, that 3 million kickstarter money won't go a long way. They haven't been skimping on talent, that much is obvious from the quality of what has been released so far (I'm particularly impressed by the audio).

I am quite sure the Kickstarter (as then explained by David) was more of a "lets see if we have enough interest in the game to get further investment and to take a bigger risk". To me at least it was a true Kickstarter as it provided the "kick" to get things going .

 

[SzaryWilk]

Imagine they earn £40k per year. FD are burning over £330,000 per month just in salaries. That kickstarter money is already gone....
A bit of a simplistic calc I admit but it makes you realise how much this stuff costs to make. GTA5 was over 100m USD i believe.

Big money.....but let David cares about them .

 

[RaynMaykr]

Not quite, no. I believe that was just the market valuation of the company as a whole (and that was in £ I believe, not USD). The additional cash intake due to the IPO itself was a much lower number:

http://www.frontier.co.uk/docs/files/Frontier_Developments-Year_end_results-14_November_2013.pdf

Roughly 6.7 £ MM IPO related. Then 3 MM via revolving credit with Banks.

Plus the kick starter cash. And then all backer cash that came after the kickstarter finished.

Now not all the IPO and credit funds will go to Elite, but I guess one can safely assume most of them will.

Someone with more knowledge feel free to correct me. This is just at a quick glance.

Yes it appears I read that incorrectly.

 

[Gibbonici]

Imagine they earn £40k per year. FD are burning over £330,000 per month just in salaries. That kickstarter money is already gone....
A bit of a simplistic calc I admit but it makes you realise how much this stuff costs to make. GTA5 was over 100m USD i believe.

Those developers would still be working for FD regardless of whether ED was being developed. Remember, Frontier isn't a one-game house with everything riding on one project. It's entirely possible that their Xbox One game Zoo Tycoon could bring in more money than ED. It's also possible that profits from that game could fund ED's future expansions.

Kickstarter was never meant to fund the game, it was more of an exercise in market research.

Everything Frontier has done for the past 20 years has been aimed at producing Elite 4.

 

[Cosmo]

You don't hire all those people for the full length of development on one game.
E.g. you don't need the people who create the music to work for 1+ year on the music, they work for 3 months and either go work on another project or they're contractors and you let them go.

Yes and Frontier has more game projects in development to move employees to when they finish work on Elite Dangerous.

AAA big budget games are one thing that do cost daft amounts of money, normally for things like licensing and their advertising budgets (which cost more than the game most times). E: D isn't a AAA game. It doesn't have a lot of the things that AAA games have (like a publisher).

This is a triple A game with high quality production levels. I think they will self-publish it. Maybe online distribution services like Steam. They won't do big GTA marketing campaigns. They'll keep selling ED till it makes more than enough profit.

 

[Zyre]

Imagine they earn £40k per year. FD are burning over £330,000 per month just in salaries. That kickstarter money is already gone....
A bit of a simplistic calc I admit but it makes you realise how much this stuff costs to make. GTA5 was over 100m USD i believe.

Didn't Frontier find a investor?

 

[Patrick_68000]

the source about this 100 people?

other question: is still possible to see how many money Frontier is rising for Elite?

Source please?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...il&utm_term=0_eb767c006f-c5e7202cb7-302003581

 

[Steve 67]

Had a wee grin at this post, having just come from the average age post.
You don't find this title analysis in CoD forums! that's for sure

I don't have any detailed intel, but I have considered the timing of financing (in fact it was one of the reasons I jumped in premium beta when I did).

I get the impression there's some smart cookies behind the scenes. This has taken careful planning/preparation and I sincerely congratulate them on it...

... after that? It's their business, their livelihood & unless I'm either going to work for them, considering heavy investment or competing ~ is it really any of our business or are we just being nosey?

Annual report will be a public document, sure we'll all get a clear 'company' overview then, if we want it. I kind of hope it doesn't get dissected here in the forums though

 

[Viajero]

Yes it appears I read that incorrectly.

No worries. Still if you add those numbers up, i.e. 6.7 GBP MM, 3 GBP MM, kickstarter etc and then make a guess at how much cash came after kick starter and then you add the theoretical costs of having an infrastructure already up and running (so to make the total budget comparable to SC for example) and then convert ot USD, then my own wild estimate is that FD can(tm) have around 20-25 MM USD as a budget for the release of the game.

Now, I´m not an expert in the games dev industry by any measure but I d guess that 20-25 MM USD is already worth a product that can perfectly rival the "vision" of anyone out there, including SC. At those levels of funding for indy companies without the need for huge marketing overheads of AAA games I d imagine it really comes down to good old execution and delivery.

The good thing going for FD is that given their financing structure they know they need to provide a return on the investment to their shareholders and to pay their creditors, which indirectly (or directly) drives to a more disciplined and self sustained project that may more naturally lead to expansions..

Whereas a 100% crowd funded game has no incentive to submit accounts to anyone (other than regulatory bodies maybe) and has, in my mind, a higher risk to suffer inefficiencies and to remain stagnant due to a lack of some degree of healthy discipline and control.

 

[huwthomas]

Also keep in mind in 2013 Frontier did a minority offering of stock that brought in about $43million USD. That's their primary source of funding for Elite right now.

Do you have a source for this (not the IPO itself, the notion that the cash raised has gone to fund the game, rather than going to the previous shareholders as would normally happen when shares are sold).

 

[Viajero]

Do you have a source for this (not the IPO itself, the notion that the cash raised has gone to fund the game, rather than going to the previous shareholders as would normally happen when shares are sold).

Read my response to that a few posts after that post :

http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=27809&page=3

We do not know (at least I dont) for sure how much of what was raised (IPO and creditors) has gone to Elite, but given the profile of the game among the other games in FD portfolio one can probably guess it has been most of it.

 

[huwthomas]

Read my response to that just below that post

Ninja'd me ... I was studying it while you were posting

 

[huwthomas]

Those developers would still be working for FD regardless of whether ED was being developed.

Well they do lay people off sometimes, unfortunately.

Then again, if ED hadn't happened, as an independent, self-publishing game studio FD would surely have been looking for other business instead.

 

[Greeboski]

Well they do lay people off sometimes, unfortunately.

Then again, if ED hadn't happened, as an independent, self-publishing game studio FD would surely have been looking for other business instead.

i seem to remember an early BD comment that ED was being ''tinkered'' with in ''spare time'' . so a kickstart launch it wasnt a blank slate waiting for the KS market resurch thing before deciding to start it.

my guess would be at minimum a ''note book'' with many refind structures of how it will work once started


EDIT : also 100 staff are working on ED , that leaves 160 working on other projects