Gamer salt is not always what it seems

[Bambooza]

That's true. In my mind, it makes sense though if I take two things into consideration. The first is how much time has been wasted due to going back and redoing old work. It sucks to see all that work get thrown out, but the results can't be denied. The game and the ships look much better.

The second thing is the background systems. They've spent a ton of time working on the tools needed to make their job easier and quicker in the future. It's a matter of more investment now for higher returns later down the line. The problem is, we don't see that part. We have also been hearing that same excuse for a couple years now. So even though it's a reason, it is starting to sound like a broken record.

This is due to the huge amount of money they got at the start. The game engine and development houses they picked would have been capable of releasing the original concept with in a reasonable time frame. In fact we would have been playing the release of Star Citizen if they stuck to the original concept. It would have been a good game and we would have had fun but it is nothing compared to the behemoth the game has grown into.

The current game requires huge changes to the engine and it might have been better to have grabbed another engine and I am sure they would have if they knew going into this what the end result would have been.

 

[Bruttle]

You say this game cost $170mill yet they haven't spent that on development yet.
People need to learn the difference between money raised vs money spent on the project.

The problem is overhead. It's always overhead. Star Citizen brings in tons of money, true. However, they ship it back out by the boatload as well. I used to work for a paving company. One year they did over 9 million dollars in revenue. What shocked me was when I found out that the owner of the company made less than I did as a union operator.

Star Citizen suffers from the same affliction. The last I heard, they had over 360 employees. I would wager a guess that their payroll alone is around $2,000,000 per month. At that rate, the entire $170 million would be burned up in around 14 months. I would be surprised if they even had a 6 month cushion at this point. That's playing it pretty tight for a company that size. The bottom line is, $170 million sounds like alot, but really isn't when you're running a company as big as CIG.

 

[FluffyVonRage]

The problem is overhead. It's always overhead. Star Citizen brings in tons of money, true. However, they ship it back out by the boatload as well. I used to work for a paving company. One year they did over 9 million dollars in revenue. What shocked me was when I found out that the owner of the company made less than I did as a union operator.

Star Citizen suffers from the same affliction. The last I heard, they had over 360 employees. I would wager a guess that their payroll alone is around $2,000,000 per month. At that rate, the entire $170 million would be burned up in around 14 months. I would be surprised if they even had a 6 month cushion at this point. That's playing it pretty tight for a company that size. The bottom line is, $170 million sounds like alot, but really isn't when you're running a company as big as CIG.

I'm assuming the $2M a month isn't including building lease and utility costs either - gotta be nearer to $3-4M a month all in.

 

[Bruttle]

I'm assuming the $2M a month isn't including building lease and utility costs either - gotta be nearer to $3-4M a month all in.

Absolutely. The $2M was just a payroll estimate. You have office space at anywhere from $1.50-$3.00 per sq. ft., the IT costs for all that hardware, the data cost of all that transfer between their locations, electric, water, gas, phone charges (unless they're on a VOIP system), server maintenance and security (each terminal at my company costs around $3k per year in just network security and license fees), facility maintenance, insurance, and other secondary costs like ergonomic assessments for the staff. The list goes on and on. You might actually be underselling it a bit at $3-4M per month in total overhead.

 

[Passeeo]

I wonder how much if anything is made from collabs with Intel for example. Do they include things like this within the pledge tally or does it just include money from ship/package/merch sales?

 

[Printimus]

It's my money and I will spend it as I see fit. :D

 

[Crymsan]

This so called big developer has spent a whole year producing a very very very buggy patch and thats it. They cannot all be involved in ship sales.

 

[Passeeo]

This so called big developer has spent a whole year producing a very very very buggy patch and thats it. They cannot all be involved in ship sales.

I'd honestly rather they gave us nothing and were able to work more in a fashion towards the end goal.

You wouldn't expect to jump into any other game midway through development and judge them based on what they have at that time.

I really don't get some people's comparison to other projects and timelines when game development doesn't usually work this way.
The time they take out for keeping the backers informed and putting together these "buggy patches in a semi-palatable state" actually takes up time from the rest of the work they do behind the scenes on things we haven't seen introduced yet.

Just because this iteration of 3.0 is what we have access to, doesn't mean that is all they have been doing and what they have accomplished this year.

If you've spent money on this which is essentially a kickstarter, you should maybe take a bit of time as the project goes on to actually watch an ATV or two and see how the process is moving along and you can be slightly more informed on what game development actually looks like.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

This so called big developer has spent a whole year producing a very very very buggy patch and thats it. They cannot all be involved in ship sales.

Yeah, they are working on a whole other game. S42. In essence you have HALF the company working on SC and half working on S42 if it's even that simple. Could be 3/4ths working on S42.

Hows that for perspective? ;)

 

[Thalstan]

Giving us nothing would have resulted in not much more than the original Kickstarter. Only by giving the people a look into the vision would they continue to get more funding.

 

[Vavrik]

Something to think about at the bottom, but long ass post post. If you reply TL;DR I care less than you want to know. this only takes a couple of minutes to read.

You're entitled to your opinion about CIG, and Star Citizen. I am also entitled to mine, and that is, If you can't take the heat, maybe you should think about backing away from the fire a little. If you don't like testing alpha software, or don't care to learn what the term means, then don't test it. Walk away, and come back when the software is released.

If I just told you I think you need to walk away from Star Citizen for a while, skip down to the last two small paragraphs under the line of asterisks, or stop reading. Your choice. If you're interested in the process, but find yourself frustrated then please read on.

Software design and development are very complex tasks, indeed it is among the most complex things that humans as a species will ever engage in. Because of the complexity, there is a very high possibility that things will go wrong. To mitigate against this, developers have implemented a series of best practices designed to identify what is going wrong. As part of this, is dividing the software development into phases. In large projects, there are three distinct phases of development, identified by a test of that phase:

• Alpha software is software that is both incomplete, and untested. At some point, the developer wants to identify where issues are in the software that they have, and get feedback on the direction they've taken, and quite honestly they can't do it on their own. So, they start an alpha trial or alpha test.
  • The primary goals of alpha trials is to work out where hidden bugs are that didn't show up during development, where things aren't working properly, and what can potentially be implemented better.
  • As modules are added to the software, alpha testing is repeated. Wash, Rinse Repeat.

• After successful alpha trials (which may require several test cycles known as alpha builds), the software is moved into a beta phase, which means that its individual components have been tested, but now the software needs to be tested as a whole. All the desired functionality is in place, and everything has been individually tested. Developer confidence in each module is relatively high at this point, but low for the overall system.
  • Any new problems with the way that the software is working can be fixed, and new beta builds can be released during the beta trial period.
  • But if any new functionality is added to the software after beta trials have started, the software goes back to Alpha, and requires successful alpha trials of the new functionality before beta trials can continue.

• The final stage of software development is the release candidate. These are builds where everything has been included, and fully tested. The developer's confidence is high that everything is working as designed.
  • The focus now changes to "does the software work as desired".
  • If so, the development process for that release ends, and the software is released.
  • If not, the deficiency is identified, and fixed, and the software is put into beta trials. If successful another release candidate is identified, and this process continues until it a release candidate is accepted.

Just for your information, generally the more complex a piece of software, the longer this process takes. Pressure from stakeholders, on the project's management team to short circuit this process is the number one reason why software projects fail.

**********************

Now, When Chris Roberts started this process, he said something to the effect that because this is a player funded game, CIG would follow an open development process, and give backers access to the alpha releases so that we can follow and participate in the development. That means specifically you are going to have the opportunity to see the result of alpha code, in all it's glory.

This is a departure from the safe, secure standard development model in which software goes through alpha and beta testing in a closed and secret environment. Very limited numbers of the user community are only exposed to the final stages of beta testing, and this only once a release candidate version has been identified. The reason CIG is doing this is that they want to build the game WE want, and not just what Chris Roberts wants. That's actually a noble cause. Just for fun, tell a company like Blizzard what you want in a game, and see what you get back.

 

[Talonsbane]

As a former programming student, I understand all about the complexity of creating software from a highly limited point of view. Yet what I do know allows me to appreciate the immense complexity of this game they are developing. When watching somebody else play or playing SC myself & I notice a glitch, bug or something goes totally wacky unexpectedly, I jokingly exclaim "Bug Report!" I do my best to take the things that go wrong in stride if not make a joke out of what happens or the timing of them happening. I also do my best to make sure that when I find the opportunity to chat with somebody from the game to thank them as well as all of the staff for their efforts. If I ask a question pertaining to the game & get a definitive "no, that will never happen" while I was hoping that it would, I generally say "bummer" before thanking them for taking the time to listen to my question or request. Are their things about Star Citizen that I would love to be different? Sure. I'm sure that is the case for everybody about every game. However, I love how this game is & is becoming overall by far. Especially since SC is still in its alpha stages of development that effectively started from scratch only a few years ago with only crowd funding to keep things going.

 

[Passeeo]

Nice post and echos some of the sentiment i tried to put across.

I have to say i can empathise with peoples annoyance about what we have available to us as they may have been following the project really closely and have become burnt out by some of the missteps along the way. I myself have only really taken the time to look into what is going on with the development in the last 5-6 weeks so i don't have the sense of despair that some have, but on the contrary i'm actually quite inspired by it.
I'm pretty sure that in recent history no one has tried to do a project of this scale so openly without the heavy backing of money men lingering over the project.

I personally am pretty worn out with the FIFA 2017, Destiny 2017, Farcry 2017 Assasins Creed 2017 cycle that game development has gotten bogged down in.
So Star Citizen trying to do all these new things and having to fight all the way to keep the doors open is something that's worth backing, when you see 500m spent on Destiny 2 for a comparatively empty experience of a game.

So having spent a little time looking into what is involved, i'll never look at game development the same way as i did regardless of what project it is.

 

[Richard Bong]

Small note...the Hammerhead has 6 turrets with 4 S4 weapons. This is the same as the main weapon systems of the Connie on each turret. If they get turrets working, fighters will have a hard time living in this fire zone unless they swarm it under. This is the counter to small pirate groups....for instance, a pirate group has 5-10 fighters and a Caterpillar.

Two Talies should be able to put it down, especially if a Sentinel is in support with no damage to return fire.

It is all about Rock Paper Shotgun.

 

[Bruttle]

Nice post and echos some of the sentiment i tried to put across.

I have to say i can empathise with peoples annoyance about what we have available to us as they may have been following the project really closely and have become burnt out by some of the missteps along the way. I myself have only really taken the time to look into what is going on with the development in the last 5-6 weeks so i don't have the sense of despair that some have, but on the contrary i'm actually quite inspired by it.
I'm pretty sure that in recent history no one has tried to do a project of this scale so openly without the heavy backing of money men lingering over the project.

I personally am pretty worn out with the FIFA 2017, Destiny 2017, Farcry 2017 Assasins Creed 2017 cycle that game development has gotten bogged down in.
So Star Citizen trying to do all these new things and having to fight all the way to keep the doors open is something that's worth backing, when you see 500m spent on Destiny 2 for a comparatively empty experience of a game.

So having spent a little time looking into what is involved, i'll never look at game development the same way as i did regardless of what project it is.

I am right there with you. I think one of the main driving forces behind backer dissatisfaction is a result of three things. The first is not knowing how incredibly easy it is to make most of these regurgitated games. The second is how much extra work it is to deviate from the industry standard. The third and final force, is the double edged sword that is CIG's transparency.

Even rocket science is not rocket science. Some professions carry a misconception that they are difficult or require some spectacular training and intelligence. They don't. General practitioner doctors regurgitate the same few dozen prescriptions and diagnosis every day. Have an infection? Take some antibiotics and call if it doesn't go away. They neither know or care what the infection is. Do you have a problem with your back? Take an ex ray, make sure nothing really crazy is going on, and prescribe minor pain pills. Thanks for coming, pay the lady on your way out. Game development is no different. They rely on turnkey solutions and presets that are built into the engines. The skin may look different, but gameplay uses the same techniques from game to game. Within a week, any of us can make a simple game and be selling it inside a month. For example, my 13yr old daughter is working on a game. It's that easy. Here's a video of Lumberyard (the one my daughter's using), Amazon's FREE game engine.

Star Citizen, however, does not use presets. They are not applying turnkey solutions. They are using Cryengine (now lumberyard) for its basic features, but are building something that has never been done before. The turnkey skybox? Not in this game. Instead of a painted on video playing in the background, sunsets occur as a side effect of the planet rotation and orbit around the sun. Item 2.0? There is a reason why most games have a cinematic cut scene when you drive your car into a ship. So many of these things are done from scratch. Most games MIGHT have one original concept. They spend tons of developer resources creating that one fresh new feature. It is the selling point of the game and it takes work, tons of work. That's just for one thing. Star Citizen is packed full of those never before seen features. So not only do they have to develop them individually, they have to make them work together. The combination of which is, I suspect, the main reason why 3.0 has taken so long.

Most game developers spend the time to custom draw scenery, character skins, vehicles, weapons, etc. For all intents and purposes that's exactly what they are, skins. They are applied to the game engine in a very predictable, turnkey way. When I first dove down the game engine rabbit hole over a year ago, I was amazed by how easy things were. Yet games still take a half decade at minimum to develop these turnkey experiences. They also take millions and millions (getting more expensive every year) to make them. We never see it though. We see the final version, hear the final cost, and might play for a few weeks in the open beta that happens just before the release. We never get to look at the thousands of failures. We never hear about when the roadmap stalls out and is set back by years. We never knew that a year in, they had to scrap damn near the whole thing and had to start from scratch. We never had a clue that the "one new thing" took 50% of the manpower and 35% of the total budget.

We are casual observers. We're armchair developers looking behind the curtain for the first time. Without looking further into the development process, it is incredibly easy to become discouraged. The good thing is, all your worry and doubt won't stop this from happening. There are almost 2 million backers now. That's more than some AAA mmos have at release. So feel free to worry. Feel free to have your concerns and voice them. However, do so with the knowledge that this game is happening whether you like it or not. It will be ground breaking. It will be amazing. Just wait till 3.0 hits the PU. It's buggy now, but once it does hit the question "Is SC vaporware?" will be gone for good. Hell, they could package up 3.0 and it would still be a better release than almost every single AAA game I have played in years.


Edit: TLDR: Yay! another exhausting post! I need to drink more...

 

[Crymsan]

Yeah and feature creep has nothing at all to do with the delays.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

Yeah and feature creep has nothing at all to do with the delays.

I believe there was some kind of vote at some point in regard to this? I joined after that so can't comment. I knew what I was getting into.

If you were part of the game when the vote happened, what did you vote for?

 

[Talonsbane]

I don't know of any vote on features as far as SC is concern, but if I'm given a vote, I'm patient enough to vote that this game do what it must to come out as awesome as I believe it can be given the talent behind it, the crew working on it & the wonderful people here with me supporting it. Would I love to see it come out soon? GOD yes! However I would rather it be the best it can be instead of a massive let down like so many other games have been through the years.

 

[supitza]

I don't know of any vote on features as far as SC is concern, but if I'm given a vote, I'm patient enough to vote that this game do what it must to come out as awesome as I believe it can be given the talent behind it, the crew working on it & the wonderful people here with me supporting it. Would I love to see it come out soon? GOD yes! However I would rather it be the best it can be instead of a massive let down like so many other games have been through the years.

Yes but... are you willing to wait 5 more years so that the NPC shopkeepers get metatarsophalangeal articulations in their feet? Because, you know, fidelity.

Yeah and feature creep has nothing at all to do with the delays.

Nope, nothing at all.

We are casual observers. We're armchair developers looking behind the curtain for the first time. Without looking further into the development process, it is incredibly easy to become discouraged. The good thing is, all your worry and doubt won't stop this from happening. There are almost 2 million backers now. That's more than some AAA mmos have at release. So feel free to worry. Feel free to have your concerns and voice them. However, do so with the knowledge that this game is happening whether you like it or not. It will be ground breaking. It will be amazing. Just wait till 3.0 hits the PU. It's buggy now, but once it does hit the question "Is SC vaporware?" will be gone for good. Hell, they could package up 3.0 and it would still be a better release than almost every single AAA game I have played in years.

I really hope you're right. The relationship between some of the backers and the development of SC has been a rollercoaster.

 

[Talonsbane]

Yes but... are you willing to wait 5 more years so that the NPC shopkeepers get metatarsophalangeal articulations in their feet? Because, you know, fidelity.

If in 5 years the game has advanced to that point & is ready for launch, I'm willing to wait for that if need be. It's not like we don't have the ability to enjoy what is available of the game currently or haven't been able to enjoy the goofy glitches that happen when they are funny to offset the frustration when they aren't. I've been figuring that this game wouldn't be ready for Beta until 2020 already & that would take at least 6 months to a year until full release. If they can get things that realistic while boosting the frames to great levels & it simply take a couple years longer than I was guessing, I'm willing to accept that.