Star Citizen, Roberts Space Industries - Chris Roberts' life support and retirement fund [2012-]

[Shifty Geezer]

You're.....joking, right? A whole lot of Star Citizen's continued funding is coming from people who have fallen 10,000ft deep into the sunk cost fallacy.

It depends whether people bought the content because they wanted it as was, or whether they bought it to help fund SC becoming the game they want. I imagine not many are the latter and it's as tuna says, people buying content for a game they are playing.

 

[Seanspeed]

I imagine not many are the latter

Then you have not observed much of the Star Citizen community. People were literally purchasing hugely expensive ships that didn't even exist yet! And Star Citizen's *entire* funding has essentially been an exercise in people wanting to support what the game could be. What they dream in their heads it's gonna be like at the end of it all, even though reality will almost certainly not match that.

 

[Seanspeed]

I don't really get that "sunk cost" discussion regarding Star Citizen. You have the ships you have paid for, you don't really have to pay anything more to continue playing the way you have. It seems different from WoW etc. where you have to pay a subscription to keep playing and be a part of the community.

You're working under some assumption that everybody is rational and reasonable. They are not. That was the whole point of my little tangent there.

And it's funny you bring up the 'you have the ships you paid for', cuz there are absolutely cases where this isn't even true! CIG were absolutely selling ships that didn't exist yet.

 

[Daozang]

It depends whether people bought the content because they wanted it as was, or whether they bought it to help fund SC becoming the game they want. I imagine not many are the latter and it's as tuna says, people buying content for a game they are playing.

This is a question that cannot be answered without statistics and anyone can arrive to whatever conclusion suits them...
If I were to guess, I'd say it's the opposite, and the vast majority of people that bought in, are not playing the game, but it's pretty clear I'm negatively biased.

 

[Davros]

Is Star Citizen going to be a one time purchase or subscription based?
does Star Citizen rely on Cig running servers?
if they do, when Cig eventually shut down the servers there's going to be a lot of angry people who have just lost thousands of dollars worth of ships

 

[hughJ]

I'd imagine that the type of engagement the game sees is unusual compared to typical games. The demographics are also almost certainly unusual for the people that like to buy a lot of ships. The folks that I know of that play tend to come and go as a sort of pilgrimage. That type of irregular engagement probably lends itself to buying add-ons. And the dollar amounts we're talking about here are kind of peanuts, frankly. Most of the ships are 2-3 figures. You have a weekend off, the family is away, so you buy a ship and explore around. If you have a friend or two that you meet up with then that makes the expense inconsequential. It's basically the cost of a night out for a couple people.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Then you have not observed much of the Star Citizen community. People were literally purchasing hugely expensive ships that didn't even exist yet!

Some did yes. But what proportion? As I say, I imagine it's not many, but I might be wrong.

This is a question that cannot be answered without statistics and anyone can arrive to whatever conclusion suits them...

Yes. I said "I imagine". But there's no conclusion as I haven't made my mind up and I'm happy to be proven wrong.

If I were to guess, I'd say it's the opposite, and the vast majority of people that bought in, are not playing the game, but it's pretty clear I'm negatively biased.

Went looking...

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cloudimperiumgames.com

This line is taken directly from our daily published Funding Stats Counter, showing the net receipts from our backers and customers. The vast majority of revenues are of starter pack pledges granting access to the Star Citizen alpha game, as well as spaceships and digital items immediately delivered and playable in the game. A significantly smaller fraction of revenues came from pledges for concept ships, which all come with an included “loaner” ship for immediate use and playability within Star Citizen alpha. Due to exchange differences and small items that are not included in the counter, such as shipping costs charged on physical goods, the counter does not completely represent all revenue received. Other than subscriptions (referred below) these differences are included in the final income line, to give an accurate representation of total revenue received.

 

[tuna]

Is Star Citizen going to be a one time purchase or subscription based?

The current business model for Star Citizen is to sell ships which gives players new game mechanics. It is a new business model that actually seem to work.

 

[tuna]

Then you have not observed much of the Star Citizen community. People were literally purchasing hugely expensive ships that didn't even exist yet! And Star Citizen's *entire* funding has essentially been an exercise in people wanting to support what the game could be. What they dream in their heads it's gonna be like at the end of it all, even though reality will almost certainly not match that.

I think everything you write here is correct. But currently, it seems like people buy the ships that actually exists in the game, but I don't have any breakdown of sales of future or existing ships. And I can't google it since I'm in China right now (and too lazy to use my phone that has roaming).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think everything you write here is correct. But currently, it seems like people buy the ships that actually exists in the game, but I don't have any breakdown of sales of future or existing ships. And I can't google it since I'm in China right now (and too lazy to use my phone that has roaming).

From above sourced from CIG:

The vast majority of revenues are of starter pack pledges granting access to the Star Citizen alpha game, as well as spaceships and digital items immediately delivered and playable in the game. A significantly smaller fraction of revenues came from pledges for concept ships,

And that's revenue; given a significantly smaller fraction of revenue coming from concept ships, a far smaller fraction still will be from player counts.

 

[cheapchips]

From above sourced from CIG:

 

[Daozang]

Yes. I said "I imagine". But there's no conclusion as I haven't made my mind up and I'm happy to be proven wrong.

And I'm 100% certain you meant it that way.
I just wanted to emphasize that without active player counts we cannot draw any meaningful conclusions about the state of the game...
Because, I think there is a difference between buying for a game you are actively playing, and buying once, and playing for an hour before you decide the game needs a lot more time to be playable.
I'd really like to know the average account play time for example.

 

[Seanspeed]

From above sourced from CIG:

The vast majority of revenues are of starter pack pledges granting access to the Star Citizen alpha game, as well as spaceships and digital items immediately delivered and playable in the game. A significantly smaller fraction of revenues came from pledges for concept ships,

And that's revenue; given a significantly smaller fraction of revenue coming from concept ships, a far smaller fraction still will be from player counts.

Whether it's a smaller fraction or not is not really the point. Even for those who didn't buy these expensive concept ships, there are lots of other people who are still deluding themselves about what the game is gonna be when it's all 'finished', making them justify their continued investment into it. That's what made this entire thing pop off to begin with - it was literally meant to be a 'dream' game. And that is probably what it will always be, a dream. One that does some neat stuff, but due to the sheer practical realities of game development(especially with Chris Roberts and CIG), will never be able to truly deliver what their backers are hoping it will.

I mean, there is still barely a 'game' here in its current state. If they ended development right now, do you honestly think all the people who put in thousands would be satisfied with what they've gotten? If not, then we can safely say that people are not buying in with the expectations of only getting what currently exists. They are absolutely buying into what they hope the game will be later on.

Which is why CIG has basically adopted this expanded scope creep strategy on purpose. It allows them to always kick the can down the road and give people more and more things to 'dream' about, even if much of it doesn't come to fruition or end up how people imagined it would. This is where I think people have rightfully started calling Star Citizen a 'scam'. Even if not everybody is unrealistic about things, enough are. There are absolutely plenty of marks here.

 

[Subtlesnake]

Which is why CIG has basically adopted this expanded scope creep strategy on purpose. It allows them to always kick the can down the road and give people more and more things to 'dream' about, even if much of it doesn't come to fruition or end up how people imagined it would. This is where I think people have rightfully started calling Star Citizen a 'scam'. Even if not everybody is unrealistic about things, enough are. There are absolutely plenty of marks here.

Chris Roberts has been explicit that Star Citizen will never be "finished". The question is whether they can can finish all of the core gameplay loops (professions) and get the dynamic economy up and running over multiple star systems w/server meshing. Then you will have something that can stand on its own feet.

 

[Seanspeed]

Chris Roberts has been explicit that Star Citizen will never be "finished". The question is whether they can can finish all of the core gameplay loops (professions) and get the dynamic economy up and running over multiple star systems w/server meshing. Then you will have something that can stand on its own feet.

Oh I have no doubt they can get at least a skeletal framework of a proper gameplay loop up at some point. Point is, that still doesn't really exist, and so the idea that people are only spending money now based purely on what currently exists and nothing more, is quite clearly not true.

And should the money keep rolling in, it gives CIG leeway to continue to develop slowly, only incrementally adding on to such a skeletal framework over years instead of making it max priority, helping them kick the 'dream' can down the road ever more. "Dont worry everybody, I know it's not currently what was promised, but I assure you, be patient and it will come in time! In the meantime, here's what our guys in Frankfurt have been working on for the past year - ultra realistic interactions between oil and water on the ground, creating slippery surfaces!".

EDIT: Also, there was a time when Roberts said they were gonna stop adding items to the feature list for PU until they got it all done. That would have been the right move(though the feature list even at that time had already bloated to a ridiculous level), but Roberts is Roberts and simply cant help himself.

 

[tuna]

Oh I have no doubt they can get at least a skeletal framework of a proper gameplay loop up at some point. Point is, that still doesn't really exist, and so the idea that people are only spending money now based purely on what currently exists and nothing more, is quite clearly not true.

There are quite a lot of people playing now. But how much people view ship purchases as "investments" vs "fun now" is pretty hard to know. The whole business model of Star Citizen is to get people to buy stuff before it is fully functional and so far the audience seems to be OK with that. But it will be interesting to see what happens in a couple of years unless the development pace accelerates.

 

[tuna]

Oh I have no doubt they can get at least a skeletal framework of a proper gameplay loop up at some point. Point is, that still doesn't really exist, and so the idea that people are only spending money now based purely on what currently exists and nothing more, is quite clearly not true.

There are quite a lot of people playing now. But how much people view ship purchases as "investments" vs "fun now" is pretty hard to know. The whole business model of Star Citizen is to get people to buy stuff before it is fully functional and so far the audience seems to be OK with that. But it will be interesting to see what happens in a couple of years unless the development pace accelerates.

 

[Subtlesnake]

Oh I have no doubt they can get at least a skeletal framework of a proper gameplay loop up at some point. Point is, that still doesn't really exist, and so the idea that people are only spending money now based purely on what currently exists and nothing more, is quite clearly not true.

And should the money keep rolling in, it gives CIG leeway to continue to develop slowly, only incrementally adding on to such a skeletal framework over years instead of making it max priority, helping them kick the 'dream' can down the road ever more. "Dont worry everybody, I know it's not currently what was promised, but I assure you, be patient and it will come in time! In the meantime, here's what our guys in Frankfurt have been working on for the past year - ultra realistic interactions between oil and water on the ground, creating slippery surfaces!".

EDIT: Also, there was a time when Roberts said they were gonna stop adding items to the feature list for PU until they got it all done. That would have been the right move(though the feature list even at that time had already bloated to a ridiculous level), but Roberts is Roberts and simply cant help himself.

I agree, but in itself I don't think there is anything terrible about consumers being able to "invest" in unfinished projects, with the expectation that those projects will deliver something worthwhile down the line. That's basically the Kickstarter model.

Where it becomes more problematic is when the scope of the backed project changes radically over time, so the original investment was made against a set of targets that no longer exist. That's certainly the case for original backers of Star Citizen, so they have a valid complaint. It's not clear to me that this is still the case though, since the professions and their gameplay loops seem to have been decided on now and CIG say they have a set list of features of 1.0 and further plans for afterwards. If 1.0 never gets any closer and SC stays in Alpha forever with no attempt to lock anything down, then that would be a further failure of the crowdfunding model with CIG culpable of defrauding players.

But I believe the opposite of you with regards to the speed of development. The more complete an experience SC is, the greater the audience will be, and the more money CIG will be able to generate in microtransactions. It will also make their future claims seem far more credible to backers. If 1.0 is available and then they announce some crazy new expansion, then they can at least claim that they were able to ship the features they announced last time. If it's nowhere in sight, then backers are more likely to be sceptical.

Their development teams are basically a fixed cost that they need to offset via revenue from microtransactions or potentially SQ42. Going slowly lowers the size of their audience and so makes it harder to meet those fixed costs.

 

[Daozang]

There are quite a lot of people playing now. But how much people view ship purchases as "investments" vs "fun now" is pretty hard to know. The whole business model of Star Citizen is to get people to buy stuff before it is fully functional and so far the audience seems to be OK with that. But it will be interesting to see what happens in a couple of years unless the development pace accelerates.

How could anyone tell...
Is there a way to know how many accounts are active in the game?
Because if not, then anyone can claim there's a lot of people playing right now, therefore, there is a game and the audience is fine with it.
Without data someone might also claim that the people playing the game are relatively and mostly new customers enough to fill a forum, while the rest have either taken their loss, or log once every year and hope for the best.

Everything is pretty much vague regarding the project as a whole.
From the scope and the end goal, that changes every few years, to the customer satisfaction, that, without (user) reviews or player participation numbers, is simply impossible to be definitively determined (there is a reason Steam allows reviews for early access games).

Describing minute details about things that may or may not end up in game, could be considered transparent development if you don't change the final goal of the project significantly every once in a while.
Game development is iterative, but sales are absolute.
In no other world, would you promise to your first customers that you would deliver something in 2014, change your product and begin selling something (close enough but significantly different either in scope or in the end goal of what was promised) in 2016, do it again and again and again ten years straight, while the end is never in sight.

 

[Seanspeed]

Where it becomes more problematic is when the scope of the backed project changes radically over time, so the original investment was made against a set of targets that no longer exist. That's certainly the case for original backers of Star Citizen, so they have a valid complaint. It's not clear to me that this is still the case though, since the professions and their gameplay loops seem to have been decided on now and CIG say they have a set list of features of 1.0 and further plans for afterwards.

This is definitely a more interesting argument.

What's crazy though is that Chris Roberts was already saying back in like 2017-2018 that they had locked down features already promised(which were already massively expanded in scope) and were not going to add anything new. They recognized the complaints about scope creep even back then, and this was their answer to it.

But Chris Roberts is Chris Roberts and it lasted all but on one mild segment of time before he started agreeing to expand the scope and detail of the game massively. And like some drug addict, he's reverted entirely back to adding feature and details since without question.

In other words, they probably could have had some proper gameplay loop before now, but it's simply not their priority to do so. Cuz as soon as they do, the shades will be pulled off and a lot of people will realize they aren't remotely capable of providing a good, complete game. And so it's in their best interest to just keep pushing this 'dream' of what the game will ultimately be at some point down the road, as conveniently as they can get away with. That's gonna be their balancing act going forward.