Star Citizen $115 in funding? Ridiculous

exactly.

thats why a concept sale does not slow down development.

I don't care if it effects development or not. When I see people spending an inordinate amount of money on something so ridiculously stupid I call it out. It's their right to spend spend their money on whatever dumbass things they want but that doesn't make it any less stupid. It's just more fodder for those with common sense. And it's not like digital pictures of ships will ever run out but yet its a gotta have now thing with no finished game in sight...LOL
 
really excited for this game, I hope it can live up to atleast 50% of its hype. I was a few hundred dollars in when they first really started funding (below 10 mil) but after so much waiting I backed out and sold everything for a nice profit except for 1 starter ship worth about $40. Hope it does well and that everyone that spent hundred or thousands on it get their monies worth but I lost my game of chicken, im willing to bet $40 on it and thats it lol.

On a plus side the profit from my sale bought me a nice destiny edition PS4 that has easily earned its price tag, I have been really enjoying console games again :p
 
$115 million is getting on par with your typical AAA game. Newsflash: games cost money to make. Then you have games which go further, like BF3, which was just as much about the game as it was making Frostbite a modular and viable game engine for all sorts of games such as Mass Effect, the upcoming Star Wars games and whatever else EA has. BF3 cost around $300 million. $115, or even $140 million, is not unprecedented for game development.

Now will Star Citizen be a great game? That remains to be seen. Personally I think a lot of the things proposed in the game sound fun on paper, but are dull in reality. Hiring AI workers for your ship, juggling lots of insurance policies and the like. That can't be fun. It would have been better for development and purposes of fun if that kind of stuff was not present or simplified, and the focus was on the combat, ship controls, unique and fun (focused) content. We will see how Squadron 42 pans out, which I am sure is intended to give people an intro to learn all the systems.

By Chris' own assertions, since he doesn't have a publisher or marketing or all that other nonsense to pay for, every dollar he gets is like 4 or 5 dollars to a regular game. So really his budget isn't 140 million, it's over half a billion. So really it's like he hasn't just spent 100m+ so far, it's like he spent 400m+ so far. And what have we got to show for that 400 million? Well...
 
They're literally selling artist renderings of an idea that someone had. CIG is not a developer they're an artist studio, they'll completely transition to selling photos of imaginary ship designs.

Zero invested here... but I have to admit, it's some awfully pretty space craft art that they are pumping out. Maybe they should just shift their business model into selling deluxe wall posters and coffee table art books?
 
Star Citizen should be my dream game, but all this crowd funding nonsense has ruined it for me. I'm glad I didn't back it and will wait for reviews and buy it if it ever gets released. I doubt it will live up to expectations though.
 
By Chris' own assertions, since he doesn't have a publisher or marketing or all that other nonsense to pay for, every dollar he gets is like 4 or 5 dollars to a regular game. So really his budget isn't 140 million, it's over half a billion. So really it's like he hasn't just spent 100m+ so far, it's like he spent 400m+ so far. And what have we got to show for that 400 million? Well...

The "we don't need to spend money on marketing" is a load of nonsense, because they have many people with jobs dedicated to just that. The concept sales, various youtube series - all marketing.
 
The "we don't need to spend money on marketing" is a load of nonsense, because they have many people with jobs dedicated to just that. The concept sales, various youtube series - all marketing.

the youtube series stuff is generally funded by subscribers not actual pledge funds.
 
I had $200 invested and then after 2 years of watching shit fall apart, feature creep take over and excuses emerge, I sold my ships/packages off to some die hard I know for a small profit. So at least I got some $ out of this cluster!
 
It's not so much about this game being epic as it is about a lot of people being starved for this kind of game for the past 15-20 years or so, people now in their 40's and 50's with enough disposable income to throw at the game so this is now being made.

Not everyone like the same kind of games you know, and we who like this kind are very happy that Chris Roberts and everyone at Cloud Imperium Games making it happen.
I am one of those people who is almost 40 and was super stoked about this game coming out and spent lots of disposable income on it. Now i dont give 2 shits if it ever comes out, its a joke.
 
the youtube series stuff is generally funded by subscribers not actual pledge funds.

I was thinking more of those ship sale videos. They're really well done and were fairly nice to see up front, but after so many you have to wonder how much time and money they spend on them. Especially if the game is still pre-alpha. It does not reflect gameplay at all. Great cinematics, I'll give them that.
 
As far as im aware those were not that expensive, they were put together/animated bye one person. a few lines in the recording booth for the voice actor, and Pedro their commissioned orchestral guru did the music audio tracks, which is music to be reused in the game.

And from a marketing stand point trying to get people interested in the project, the worked flawlessly to build interest, so if anything they more than paid for them self by bringing in more pledges.
 
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I would love to see the game and finish product, but still confuse on the whole packages and stuff, don't know how they are selling them, and what I should buy.
 
CR is a fuckton smarter than that. Sean Murray's fuckup was sticking to an official release date. Official release will always open one up to more criticism, since the devs can no longer hide behind the: "this is pre-alpha/beta/... state of the game."
And the problem with not having a release date is that devs aren't held to milestone requirements or having something to push against feature creep (a release date). This is not a new problem to Chris Roberts as he has been known to be "too ambitious" and had to be smacked around by publishers in the past to get his shit on track. Since he has no publisher to be accountable to, he has no one to rein him in on his bullshit.
 
I would love to see the game and finish product, but still confuse on the whole packages and stuff, don't know how they are selling them, and what I should buy.
I don't think even anyone and CI knows how will it all fall in place yet.
 
I would love to see the game and finish product, but still confuse on the whole packages and stuff, don't know how they are selling them, and what I should buy.

The packages are rather simple.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/Packages/Mustang-Alpha-Star-Citizen-Squadron-42-Combo

Its $60 to pre order the game, and get both single player story and multi player portion of the game. You don't need to spend more then that on the game.

And if you need a referral code at account creation to get an extra 5000 starting credits when the game comes out you can use either mine

STAR-3NY6-FGN3

or a friends.
 
Checking in with my own version of "spent $60 on the Kickstarter, then an additional $120 for more ships, then got really tired of waiting, then got my $180 refunded because I don't care anymore."
 
I actually tried to get a refund and they told me no. But at least I'm in for an LTI Constellation and Aurora. And I SHOULD be getting a little statue thing and a metal case with the game and star maps and stuff so... yea.

*sigh*

I so swallowed the hype pill on this 4 years ago.
 
I spent around $40 on this way back in 2013...at this point I don't care, they can keep the money. I'm hoping we get some sort of game eventually.
 
I actually tried to get a refund and they told me no. But at least I'm in for an LTI Constellation and Aurora. And I SHOULD be getting a little statue thing and a metal case with the game and star maps and stuff so... yea.

*sigh*

I so swallowed the hype pill on this 4 years ago.
Weird after I bought a new house I couldn't justify having $400 wrapped into a video game so I requested a refund because I had a ton of expenses fixing the place up. They gave it to me without an issue.
 
Weird after I bought a new house I couldn't justify having $400 wrapped into a video game so I requested a refund because I had a ton of expenses fixing the place up. They gave it to me without an issue.

Yea no they shafted me completely. Probably because my reasoning was YOU SUCK I WANT MY MONEY BACK. But you know.. more polite than that.
 
For getting more income hasn't the focus shifted to more of the selling their latest type ship? I hear more about that these days than the crowd funded donations.
 
According to https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals : Current funding $144,208,360

OP there is a lot wrong with the SC project but you clearly have not done your research.
It is absolutely ridiculous how star citizen received $115,000,000 in funding to develop their game.

And right now, I still don't see anything "epic" about it

I seriously wonder how the CEO is spending all that cash

This is the state of the game in 2016:



The real question, that I can't find the answer too, is how much of that money have they spent.
 
And the problem with not having a release date is that devs aren't held to milestone requirements or having something to push against feature creep (a release date). This is not a new problem to Chris Roberts as he has been known to be "too ambitious" and had to be smacked around by publishers in the past to get his shit on track. Since he has no publisher to be accountable to, he has no one to rein him in on his bullshit.
TIL being ambitious and a perfectionist is bullshit.
 
At $144M, and if it all goes into development, than SC is only second most expensive game (development cost only) behind the SW:TOR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop Assuming of course, this list is accurate.

I'm sure the pledges have slowed down a bit over the years (how many has it been now, five?) but I can see them topping that too at some point.

I think the pledges are slowing down because people like me think its complete vaporware. There are working versions, but nothing near what you would expect with that budget. They are on their own deadlines (that I dont believe exist) and are making more money now than if they released it, so why release it? Its going to fizzle away eventually and the only thing we will get from it is a pre-release game and the knowledge that we made a few people insanely rich over our hype/stupidity.
 
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