[Aesaar]

Exactly.  As long as CIG can keep selling the dream, devoted citizens will happily excuse the reality.  The more Star Citizen becomes reality, the harder it becomes to reconcile it with the dream.

[666maslo666]

That's not what *I'm* expecting. It's what you were predicting.

I predict the funding will go on as usual, neither increasing nor decreasing significantly.

As an example, FDEV, with three games in flight, manages to earn just 37 million pounds gross revenue in the last year (you see, the nice thing about FDEV being a normal company and not a scam dressed up like one is that they have to provide hard numbers for this stuff). The financial statements aren't broken down by game, but from the text of their statements, the release of Planet Coaster and its derivatives brought in a lot more money than ED does right now, since pretty much everyone who wanted to play ED is or has been playing it.

FDEV earning $47 million dollars last year, and that is without even having space legs to offer, seems like it supports my point rather than the opposite. Also, there is no fixed amount of consumers that make up the spacesim market, new ones are entering the pool every year.

But there is certainly merit in discussing whether subscription is required for an online game to survive long term, instead of a one time sale. It may be a good idea and I am not opposed at all to SC going the EVE online route if it isnt financially sustainable otherwise. This seems like a separate discussion from whether there is a hole in the market SC fills or not, tough.

[Det. Bullock]

All I know is that I expected a new Wing Commander with another title and some modern stuff added in but what we've seen so far is 90% a crappy niche MMO that is gonna be unplayable the moment they shut down the servers.

As an example, FDEV, with three games in flight, manages to earn just 37 million pounds gross revenue in the last year (you see, the nice thing about FDEV being a normal company and not a scam dressed up like one is that they have to provide hard numbers for this stuff). The financial statements aren't broken down by game, but from the text of their statements, the release of Planet Coaster and its derivatives brought in a lot more money than ED does right now, since pretty much everyone who wanted to play ED is or has been playing it.

FDEV earning $47 million dollars last year, and that is without even having space legs to offer, seems like it supports my point rather than the opposite. Also, there is no fixed amount of consumers that make up the spacesim market, new ones are entering the pool every year.

You missed the part where the profits were largely from Planet Coaster and related spin off titles.
The only possibility for a spacesim to be a major moneymaker is being tied with a major franchise and being developed at mid to low budget levels, but these licenses are usually handed to publishers like EA that don't do mid to low budget anymore unless it's on mobile.

PS: also **** space legs, and I leave it at that because I explained multiple times why already.

[Aesaar]

Also, there is no fixed amount of consumers that make up the spacesim market, new ones are entering the pool every year.

It may surprise you to learn that the people who want to play spaceship games prefer to fly spaceships, while the ones who want to play an FPS go play an FPS.  And I feel pretty safe in saying that most people who like both space sims and FPS would rather play two separate games that are each good at one thing than a single game that is mediocre at both.

Also that the people who want to play an FPS and fly spaceships are probably more likely to enjoy something like Battlefront II than Second Life in space.  Battlefront II also happens to be less of a money-grubbing project than SC.

[Det. Bullock]

Also, there is no fixed amount of consumers that make up the spacesim market, new ones are entering the pool every year.

It may surprise you to learn that the people who want to play spaceship games prefer to fly spaceships, while the ones who want to play an FPS go play an FPS.  And I feel pretty safe in saying that most people who like both space sims and FPS would rather play two separate games that are each good at one thing than a single game that is mediocre at both.

Also that the people who want to play an FPS and fly spaceships are probably more likely to enjoy something like Battlefront II than Second Life in space.  Battlefront II also happens to be less of a money-grubbing project than SC.

On point, Battlefront II with all its lootboxes shenanigans (which seems like child's play compared to the infamous JPEG sales) is still a nice game where you do both space marine and space top gun like Squadron 42 was supposed to, but for some reason with all the money in the world Roberts and his team haven't been capable of delivering.

[wookieejedi]

On point, Battlefront II with all its lootboxes shenanigans (which seems like child's pplay compared to the infamous JPEG sales) is still a nice game where you do both space marine and space top gun like Squadron 42 was supposed to, but for some reason with all the money in the world Roberts and his team haven't been capable of delivering.

Not to mention the Original Battlefront 2, from 2005 allowed players to run up to a fighter, hop, fly to the enemy ship, land, destroy it, and then steal another ship. Modders have since added their own ground to space combat and maps. There is also a free game that is a spiritual successor to BF2, and that game also has a very nice space to ground mechanic, and it is built by one person using the Unity engine (https://www.moddb.com/games/galactic-civil-war). There is also the game, Angels Fall First, which also uses FPS and ship combat together. That game is a good example of a small team doing early access the right way. Overall, FPS with dog-fighting is nothing new...

[The E]

It may surprise you to learn that the people who want to play spaceship games prefer to fly spaceships, while the ones who want to play an FPS go play an FPS.  And I feel pretty safe in saying that most people who like both space sims and FPS would rather play two separate games that are each good at one thing than a single game that is mediocre at both.

Also that the people who want to play an FPS and fly spaceships are probably more likely to enjoy something like Battlefront II than Second Life in space.  Battlefront II also happens to be less of a money-grubbing project than SC.

And that's something you gotta let sink in for a moment. When your monetization practices are more scummy than EA's, you done ****ed up, son.

And, yeah. SC wanting to be everything to everybody will ensure that it will be nothing for anyone.
I mean, just imagine it. You want to play SC to get some sweet spaceship action, but between each trip in your shiny spaceship, you have to go do chores in first person, because ~immersion~. Where Elite optimizes the **** out of all interactions that aren't done with a vehicle and abstracts away cargo handling and other such trifling matters, SC promises us that no such shortcuts will exist. No, if you want to do a mission or ten, you better get your ass down into some bar to talk to some NPC.

I do not see how that's an improvement.

[StarSlayer]

Its funny Galaxies gets thrown around.  It was shut down in 2011?  Star Trek Online hovers around two thousand population maybe?  Both those have the biggest space IP franchises to draw from too boot, as opposed to pseudo-WingCommander?  That seems to indicate to me the "space legs" community is not some vast untapped sea of users.

I'd also note a lot of big "skids up" MMOs typically compromise on graphics and gameplay in order to be sustainable long term.  SC on the other hand fell into being a giant MMO as well as trying to be AAA in just about every gaming vertical possible.  The amount of money they will need post release to just keep the thing patched, let alone generate new content is going to be very difficult to sustain.  Especially since much of the playerbase has already contributed so much.

[Grizzly]

But how does it compare to Universal Combat

[Buckshee Rounds]

Refundians on Star Citizen's Gamescom presence:-



And furthermore, Star Citizen is good!

[Axem]

https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/Add-Ons/CitizenCon-Digital-Ticket

Digital Ticket for CitizenCon 2948. Includes live streaming access to all presentations, exclusive digital items given away at CitizenCon, including an in-game wearable duster jacket, CitizenCon 2948 trophy, CitizenCon 2948 Weapon, access to purchase exclusive CitizenCon merchandise, plus an Imperator subscription for the month of October. (Subscription included with this item will begin on Oct 9th and end on Nov 9th)

Now how are we going to get all the best Star Citizen memes.

Reactions seem good though, this can only be good for Star Citizen.

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/9box4p/confirmation_citizencon_stream_is_a_concierge/
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/9bovrm/looks_like_you_have_to_pay_to_watch_citizencon/
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/9bovd7/i_support_you_cig_but_i_will_not_be_buying_a/

[MikeRoz]

What if this is like 2016, only two years ago, when they decided at the last minute that the demo they planned to show simply wasn't ready? Can you imagine if people had paid $20 to watch a stream of that?

[Axem]

One can only dream.

[karajorma]

Hang on a sec. They want you to pay $20 to watch their adverts for a game that isn't even finished yet?

[Col. Fishguts]

I think last year's fiasco (game crash during the live stream, deadly ramps, etc.) has traumatized Crobblets so much that they now try control what footage goes out.
Whatever happens during the live stream, they can later release a sanitized version to youtube.

Obviously this is good for the most open game dev project ever.

[Lorric]

Shame on you CIG. $20. Just think about what you can get access to regarding streaming services for $20.

[MikeRoz]

You guys have got to stop getting under Chris's skin. Some of us actually want to see this project complete, if not succeed.

I don't post often but this is a case where I will break that rule.

Why?

Because there seems to be a lot of vitriol and outrage that is unfairly directed towards Community and Marketing .

If you're upset, you should be upset at me.

Because this was my idea.

Let me give you some context.

This year's CitizenCon is much bigger than last years, with two separate stages and tracks. We did this because we felt the format we tested last year was a success and because of this we wanted to expand it to allow more people to attend and provide more opportunities to hear from and interact with the devs.

With a venue and planned attendance three times the CitizenCon in Frankfurt, with more panels (so more devs needing to travel) , more food and drink options for everyone the proposed budget for this year's CitizenCon was almost double last years. And this was without any video coverage, let alone streaming of the second stage, and a plan to just stream the opening keynote from the main stage.

Yes, you read that right, the original plan didn't have any plan for streaming anything beyond the opening keynote. There was not even video archiving of the second stage due the additional costs of getting a second video crew for that stage. Even then there was some debate as to whether it was truly worth it to spend a chunk of change to stream the opening keynote for 90 minutes when we're always in a foot race to compress it as a high-quality video and post to YouTube as quickly as possible after the demo so people can enjoy a HD Video as opposed to a crappy re-post of a Twitch Stream.

While we get a nice viewership from streaming by far the most views is always through YouTube as the resulting press coverage links to it, whether its via our official channel or in the case we aren't quick enough someone else's re-posting of our stream. In terms of showing off Star Citizen, getting a high quality video up on YouTube is always our top priority. While everyone else is having a celebratory drink or mingling after the show the video team is locked away cleaning up a cut to post online, often staying up to 2am and past to do this. Which is why there was an argument to just let the attendees see it live and everyone else an hour or so later as a nice high-quality video.

Of course, me being me, wanted more.

I felt if we were bothering to put these panels on with all our top developers we should record all of it for the community to see. And if we were recording all of it then couldn't we also stream it all for the community members that were interested? And since we constantly get criticized for our home-brew approach to videography and streaming, let's bring in a specialist company that can handle multiple simultaneous stages, cameras and streams.

Now of course this doesn't help with the budget because what I just asked about adds a low six figure amount to the cost of the event. We really try to spend the money we raise on game development not community content or events. For that we use our subscriptions and try to defray the costs with sponsors like Intel last year.

Since we originally announced CitizenCon for this year in Austin there's been multiple threads about digital passes for those that can't make it to Austin midweek, I thought let's take a leaf out of Blizzard's book and have a digital pass to allow people to virtually be there for all the presentations and the money for these passes would help offset the not inconsiderable increase in costs that I was asking for because I wanted to do it better for all of you. It was a gamble because we're committing to the increased costs without knowing how many people would take us up on it but I decided we would take the gamble this year and if it doesn't pan out we'll write it up to experience and not be as ambitious in our video and live stream goals next year.

Because we do use subscription revenue for Community Content and Events we felt that subscribers should get the streaming perk for free as it is their contribution that pays for our video shows as well as other forms of community content and engagement. Also, because concierge level backers have contributed far more than anyone could expect to help us build the crazy dream that is Star Citizen I felt they should also be included (not unlike we early PTU access as a perk)

The plan is to record all presentations at a high quality, edit and post them to YouTube as we go, with the Keynote being up as soon as possible after it finished, and the other panels going out over the following days (you got to give the video team some time; we're talking 10 hours of finished content!)

Nothing was ever planned to be pay-walled or withheld form the community, and honestly I like the idea of most people seeing the presentations in their own time as a high quality video rather than a stream of potentially questionable quality. The live-stream aspect was always intended for the most ardent community members that want to see it live as it unfolds but can't make it to the event to be there in person.

We're not likely to cover the costs of the additional coverage and live-streaming but I felt we should be fiscally responsible and try to defray at least some of additional costs, which is how the current plan came to be.

We debated back and forth about whether we want to stream the keynote and closing for everyone, and have the rest require a streaming pass or require a streaming pass for all. We ended up coming down on the side of the pass for all, mostly for our ability to deliver a high quality video to everyone in short order and control the message and coordinate any press from the opening or closing. If we can give game sites a link to a video and guarantee that they will all get it at the same time we don't have to worry about different sites all trying to preempt each other, some linking to our stream, some linking to someone's YouTube re-post.

What we didn't anticipate is how dearly some of you value watching the main CitizenCon presentation live.

I get that some of you may not be considering these nuances when you're whipping out your pitchforks, which is why I thought it would help to detail our thought process and decision process. We're always trying to give you more, at a better quality, sometimes that requires us to charge for things that we haven't in the past.

But I get that some of you could feel that you've lost something that you've had previously, and you are not a true Star Citizen fan unless you've sat through an awkward live-stream with crashes and technical glitches, so we will have the opening keynote and my closing available for everyone that has a Star Citizen account, no digital pass required, with the other sessions requiring a digital pass to see live (and remember you'll be able to see these at your leisure, no restrictions a few days later)

I just don't want to see threads about how we shouldn't live-stream and just post a polished video afterwards (because that has never happened! /s)

Peace,

-Chris

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/citizencon-streaming

[Luis Dias]

I can't wrap my head around just how amazingly this game project is going. Nothing can top it. It's like going to heights of gamedevelopment never before reached.

[Lorric]

Of course, me being me, wanted more.

That's the problem, Chris!!!

[BlueFlames]

Some of us actually want to see this project complete, if not succeed.

That ship has long since sailed.  That ship sailed when the Kickstarter started adding ludicrous stretch goals.  That ship sailed when some numpty thought that CryEngine was going to be the fastest, easiest path to making a finished game.  All that's left at the dock are the citizens with their $48,000 boarding passes for a ship that's left them behind and is never returning.  But hey, for $20 more, you can watch Chris Roberts tell you that the seagull **** is rain.