Actually I don't think it was.
Both SC & ED were in the advantageous position of having a large base of nostalgic supporters to tap into.
Not saying they wouldn't have made it without it but it certainly helped a lot.
The Star Citizen Thread v5
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Actually I don't think it was.
Both SC & ED were in the advantageous position of having a large base of nostalgic supporters to tap into.
Not saying they wouldn't have made it without it but it certainly helped a lot.
That's the thing though: When the Kickstarter opened, SC had actual stuff to show for it. The whole walking on the deck of a carrier, getting into a ship and taking off into space... Elite Dangerous actually started with nothing but a vision. It was only later during the Kickstarter that they started showing the first glimpses of a game prototype.
So frankly, I don't think anyone could've forseen what would happen. It was only during the Gary Whitta interview that I got the impression that David Braben had thought the entire game loop, economy and mechanics through way more thoroughly than Chris Roberts. But even then I thought, hey maybe Chris just has to refine his objectives a bit more in the coming weeks.
If you had told a SC fan that we'd still be playing a demo-PU without trading. mining, etc in mid-2016 you would've been called all sorts of names. The thing is, I WANTED a great Star Citizen. Even if you're the most die-hard Elite Fanboy the prospect of a great competitor is good! Competition breeds excellence.
I actually do fear that if SC keeps on its current trajectory, Frontier might get complacent.
This is true, the observations about CR being out of industry for a long period of time and not had a great track record in getting previous titles out on time and on budget will perhaps be a warning to future backers of kickstarters. ED was playing on that nostalgia, but DB was releasing games and running a company which clearly made backing the project a lesser risk.
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In my opinion DBOBE has never felt like he was in a competition with any other space game. His motivation is to make the Elite he always wanted to... just my opinion though and not a dig at NMS or SC or any other game.
In hindsight kickstarters are a catch22 situation for a lot of independent devs.
Nostalgia aside, for me I like to see what I'm getting and weather it's worth backing or not.
Youtube vids of ED Alpha flight/combat/etc over a number of months swayed my decision to purchase the PB.
With SC I was a curious observer more than anything else, there were a lot of grand ideas floating around at the time for sure, but the thing that actually killed it for me was when CiG announced they would be using Cryengine as a base for their game.
At the time I thought how on earth are they going to pull this off?
A good friend of mine who was about to pledge heard about the Crytech engine used as a base and dropped it instantly, when was that back in 2012 or 2013?
It was years ago anyway.
Nostalgia aside, for me I like to see what I'm getting and weather it's worth backing or not.
Youtube vids of ED Alpha flight/combat/etc over a number of months swayed my decision to purchase the PB.
With SC I was a curious observer more than anything else, there were a lot of grand ideas floating around at the time for sure, but the thing that actually killed it for me was when CiG announced they would be using Cryengine as a base for their game.
At the time I thought how on earth are they going to pull this off?
A good friend of mine who was about to pledge heard about the Crytech engine used as a base and dropped it instantly, when was that back in 2012 or 2013?
It was years ago anyway.
I must say that the ED forum MOD do it really well, thumbs up fellows.
This is the most heated long going thread in these forums, and why do you ask? Well, first CIG and project star citizen asked for money to build a game everyone was dreaming about.
"if you just give us money, we will build the game" CIG even promised that if they didn't deliver what they promised, we the backers could take a look at how they spend the money.
Time passed by, money rolled in, no game in sight at all. Deadlines were missed, milestones forgotten but the money rolled in. Some fallen backers even dared to ask what is going on?
Why are we not seeing progress in the game? They were placed on poles to be seen by all, this is what will happen to you if you dare criticise our master the true followers said.
The Citizen inquisition started, and the money rolled in, and the milestones was forgotten. Then the Master changed the rules, "sorry citizens, you can't complain, in the year of the lord 2014 there shall be no game". The fortification of the RSI fort was in full swing, anyone who spoke badly about the true one, must fall and so they did. Citizens was thrown into the RSI dungeons where they could sit in the dark and ponder about life outside the glorious light of Star Citizen.
Money rolled in, milestones was missed and it was all good. (insert story of DS here)
One day the master changed the law of the CIG land again. "I can do nothing wrong, you're simple peasants and I will punish you if you go against me, if you fart I will hang you, if you raise your voice you will be wiped from the surface of the RSI land".
This peasant had enough, and I will shout, "Remember Marie Antoinette".
This is the most heated long going thread in these forums, and why do you ask? Well, first CIG and project star citizen asked for money to build a game everyone was dreaming about.
"if you just give us money, we will build the game" CIG even promised that if they didn't deliver what they promised, we the backers could take a look at how they spend the money.
Time passed by, money rolled in, no game in sight at all. Deadlines were missed, milestones forgotten but the money rolled in. Some fallen backers even dared to ask what is going on?
Why are we not seeing progress in the game? They were placed on poles to be seen by all, this is what will happen to you if you dare criticise our master the true followers said.
The Citizen inquisition started, and the money rolled in, and the milestones was forgotten. Then the Master changed the rules, "sorry citizens, you can't complain, in the year of the lord 2014 there shall be no game". The fortification of the RSI fort was in full swing, anyone who spoke badly about the true one, must fall and so they did. Citizens was thrown into the RSI dungeons where they could sit in the dark and ponder about life outside the glorious light of Star Citizen.
Money rolled in, milestones was missed and it was all good. (insert story of DS here)
One day the master changed the law of the CIG land again. "I can do nothing wrong, you're simple peasants and I will punish you if you go against me, if you fart I will hang you, if you raise your voice you will be wiped from the surface of the RSI land".
This peasant had enough, and I will shout, "Remember Marie Antoinette".
I never considered CR's history beyond liking the wing commander games. The biggest early difference I saw between the two was having watched SC with interest waiting for a playable demo after their kick-starter trailer, I heard about ED via SC forums and TBH thought it was bandwagoning on SC (even though I've been an elite fan since 84). The ED low key non-bombastic kick-starter came and went with little fuss whilst SC raked in cash and I thought the ED underdog had been cancelled or pulled. Then ED popped back into the news and released the single-player combat training demo and after playing it I was immediately sold due to the look, sound and above all the feel of the flight model.
That was late 2014, SC was (I thought) way out in front yet hasn't now reached a comparable level. SC has always been louder and more heavily marketed, ED just went with boring old competence.
TL DR SC is style over substance.
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Even before SC, CR was known for crashing a project due to unconstrained feature creep. He already had a record of what he's doing now.
Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat
Banned
I was the opposite. I heard of SC through ED. I was looking at the BBC website and I saw an article about the ED KS. Not having played video games for about 10 years I wasn't aware of the current state of gaming, aside from seeing my nephew playing CoD, which I thought looked shallow and the same thing over and over (between games as well as between this year's'and last year's versions).
Nostalgia persuaded me to back ED's KS, and it turned out that a quite a few of people I knew in RL had backed it too (all in the UK and all around the same age as me). I looked at SC and it did look promising, but I didn't have the time to invest in more than one game, so decided to wait a while before getting involved.
Over the last year, unfortunately my opinion of SC is that the project isn't delivering (at least not yet), so from my point of view the risk/reward ratio is too high to put money in. I don't want it to fail though, and hope CIG can turn it around. I also hope the type of people that appear to constitute a large part of it's fanbase aren't typical, because they way they act around the web puts me off wanting to play (multiplayer) SC. I simply don't want to play with people who act like that. I'm hoping that those people don't represent the average fan, but are just a very vocal minority. Single-player SQ42 should be safe enough though.
I'll wait for reviews of the released SQ42, and if it looks good I'll buy it. Simple as that.
I must admit I didn't really know anything about CR back then, except that he made what he made in the past.
I enjoyed Privateer 2, so thought this was gonna be epic + times were grim in 2012 for space games, everybody was angry at console ports and crappy half-baked games, so this was welcomed as a water in the desert.
Turned out it was just a fata morgana
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I think the reason why the fanbase is so vocal to defend CIG is the fact that the game has grey market for ships and any kind of negative publicity affects the prices of ships in grey market. And since prices vary from 30 dollar space scooter to 2000 dollar capital ship things get flamey easily.
Its kinda shame that the game has no way to receive constructive criticism anymore. If it paints CIG in bad light it gets erased quite fast, even if the issue is true and visible to anyone playing the game.
Imagine what kind of game ED would be if it was as soapboxy as star citizen.
Theres just too much alarming stuff going on with CIG
RSI never crowdfunded anything.
CIG did that. If CIG goes down, all those Kickstarter liabilities with all those stretchgoals are gone and RSI just can use the money how they like and bring us a nice minimum viable product with it (Selling digital stuff on a website is not crowdfunding.) Now take a deep look at the new ToS: See CIG in there anywhere?
I didn't back either kickstarter, I would occasionally look each game up, watch the new videos, read a bit more and bide my time before putting down any money.
In the end Braben and his team won me over with their down-to-earth presentations, their methodological approach and in all honesty they came across as much more honest people.
By contrast, Chris Roberts felt like a salesman, there was too much emphasis on trying to hit all the hot topics of the day for my liking, like a politician trying to win votes. The more I read and the more I watched, the more I became convinced that this was the David Cameron of space games, the Chris Molyneaux of space games even.
I was surprised, and still am, that people are willing to spend so much money when documented history of a person should give them all the warnings they could ever need and even more surprised that showmanship marketing was so effectual at parting people from their money.
I sincerely hope the game is a success but at this time my belief is that SQ42 and SC will both be giant diamond coated turds, pretty on the outside, absolutely awful underneath.
In the end Braben and his team won me over with their down-to-earth presentations, their methodological approach and in all honesty they came across as much more honest people.
By contrast, Chris Roberts felt like a salesman, there was too much emphasis on trying to hit all the hot topics of the day for my liking, like a politician trying to win votes. The more I read and the more I watched, the more I became convinced that this was the David Cameron of space games, the Chris Molyneaux of space games even.
I was surprised, and still am, that people are willing to spend so much money when documented history of a person should give them all the warnings they could ever need and even more surprised that showmanship marketing was so effectual at parting people from their money.
I sincerely hope the game is a success but at this time my belief is that SQ42 and SC will both be giant diamond coated turds, pretty on the outside, absolutely awful underneath.
I just wanted to play something newer like Freespace 2 (which tanked horribly BTW and killed the space genre) with current hardware in mind.
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I think, SC and its hostile community is a big danger for the space game genre overall. When this is over people might just associate space games with all the negative things that came out of it.
The observation about the grey market's need to keep prices up is inspired - I think there's a lot of truth in that
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I think it's been enough of a special case that it won't scare too many publishers off - but getting kickstarter funding for big projects will be a lot harder for sure
I might scare customers off and that then scares publishers off.
Crowdfunding will simply be outlawed due to the Star Citizen fallout. It might even be called a Roberts scheme in the future.
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Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat
Banned
Hmm, it also seems as if CIG's efforts to eliminate bugs in the now live 2.4 update have been going exceptionally well, as with everything Lord Emperor King Roberts has a hand in. He is a beacon for all visionary game developers out there he is....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ggplTF3srU#t=10s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ggplTF3srU#t=10s
That would be very sad!
I'd hope the response would be to more firmly tighten up regulation over deadlines and refunds.
Thing is with publishers/customers is with the more traditional development model it really needs very little interest from customers in the early stages, indeed probably benefits from less to reduce the pressure on the developers. They can afford to spend vast amounts getting the framework built and functioning properly before anyone outside ever sees it, and then to take it to conclusion without needing to maintain customer belief
I certainly grew from super excited to very sceptical during the whole SC development, but i am also convinced that Roberts had and has no malicious intents. He is not a "con artist", nor did he invent a scheme to rip off gamers. I think he just really lacks the ability to access the feasibility of his ideas or critically question his emotional connection to his "visions".
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