From the Reddit thread linked in the previous post:
what_is_a_shitender wrote:The reason why income increases is because the game keeps improving.
If income is their motivation, then they should want to get the game completed, because this way they'd make in 1 year what it took them 10 to make so far.
Furthermore they're spending more than they have already, with all the commitments they've made for the next several years. One single flop year would ruin the company financially.
The idea that "there's no motivation" to get things done fast, or what some people say that there's some kind of incentive to never complete the game is completely delusional and disconnected from reality. A single look at their financials, history, and commitments for the next years, as well as the reason why they keep getting a bigger audience, would reveal that this reasoning is nonsense.
whippletriple wrote:As for what the devs want, I think the time investment into Quanta shows what they want. A universe that is truly dynamic and unpredictable.
There are a few systems they could work on to do this.
Persistence (they are close), a dynamic economy (requires Quanta), larger server populations (think 500+ people), the ability to choose a server to join, true multi-crew gameplay (co-pilots, engineers, etc).
Add those things and the game skyrockets in playability. You'll have groups of players creating bases on random moons using landed ships, you'll have people blockading high value trade routes, you'll have people claiming territory. It would be a true MMO that lives and breathes and doesn't even require forced content to become interesting.
BSSolo wrote:Two new full gameplay loops that I'm enjoying are:
Legal/illegal ground derelict missions - item recovery, crew identification, etc. Each derelict is some combination of puzzle mechanics and sometimes combat, and you can do up to 5 missions at a time at the same derelict.
Legal/illegal bunker content - FPS content which sometimes requires air and ground transport to reach mission locations. Around Hurston especially, there's the parallel loop of illegal bunkers which involves the tug-of-war over comms arrays, then ship-vehicle-ground combined bunker operations as well. Legal and illegal bunker explorers will often come to blows when encountering one another.
I believe that caves are also most of a full loop with similar experiences to derelicts, and medical gameplay has emerged as a viable in-game profession, as solo players need rescue if they are downed in FPS combat.
This is the first time I have gotten back into SC and lasted more than a couple of weeks, because it is more fun and has more to do than it did in years past. Salvage and "soft death" are also right over the horizon in Evocati testing. CIG has not gotten any new money from me this season, but I do feel like SC has become a game to actually play, rather than just one to passively watch and test every couple years.
BSSolo wrote:I'd absolutely agree that you can burn through the current content in 6 months of active playtime. I guess where we different is that for me, that not unexpected or a negative thing. certainly a fine amount of content for $45 already. I'll likely play actively for a couple more months to see how 3.18 turns out, then return sometime in the future when Pyro drops or something.
The last time I ran bunkers, the person I was playing with was downed several times because he didn't know that the restricted area doors opened to spawn enemies. They can be a threat, but the low tick rate of the servers does mean that you can often kill them before they see and target you.
th3orist wrote:getting around 6 months of playing out of 45 bucks seems a pretty good deal to me. people spend more money on other triple AAA finished products and play them not more than 20h or so, so i think we really need to keep it in perspective here. Also, you could make the argument that as long as the game is not in a live release version 1.0.0 there is actually really no point in even playing, yet you yourself say you can get months out of it already. to me thats an actual achievement for an unfinished product. Also, it really depends whether or not you just joined the project in this years IAE and discover the game from the ground up for the first time or if you are a backer for 5-6 years and know every little inch of the 'verse because you keep up with the development. So of course your reality and the reality of someone who just joined are completely different. For you there is "nothing to do", while someone new will be like "omg theres so much stuff to do and see"(for the next months).
On top of the above, 3.18 adds an insane amount of content to the game, and we'll be getting it in Dec-Jan. I'll make a separate post about that. That "6 months of content" is about to become 8-10. And that's before Pyro comes out next year that will take it to a full year of content and beyond.
Cyberwulf74 wrote:They are NOT making a Lot of money in fact they are barely covering their costs last time I looked they had Just, for the 1st time in 9 years, Made a profit of a Whole 1 Million Dollars!! Now divide that between their like 6+ Shareholders/Investors..that's nothing.
An actual Released product will make BILLIONS of dollars over time that a BIG Motivation.
EnglishRed232 wrote:Now re-read their accounts and look at the assets. There are massive asset write offs to reduced realised profits and therefore corporation/business tax. It's a pretty standard procedure but yeah, that's why there isn't much "profit" on the books.
dereksalem wrote:Literally, this. I hate when people look up profit calls and go on the internet like they're CPAs telling everyone that Amazon barely makes a profit.
is-this-a-nick wrote:Why would they if they get $100M a year NOT doing it?
LT_Bilko wrote:That's not a valid argument because as development progresses, the number of devs drops. Once the game reaches a stable release, there will be layoffs and a reduction of overhead. It happens all the time. Even if they don't, with access subscriptions and cosmetic microtransactions, they can easily make 2-3x what they are making now for a lot less work. If just half the current paid for accounts subscribed at $15/month, they'd make more than 150M every year. That's only HALF the people who currently have already bought the game. There are an additional 2+ million accounts that have been created and it stands to reason a chunk of those would buy the game. Selling jpegs is not the future. Subscriptions, lower overhead, and easy cosmetic sales will net them multiple billions of dollars in very short order.
what_is_a_shitender wrote:The game we crowdfunded is long dead.What we have now is infinitely better and more interesting, in my opinion. But considering how extremely it changed (from cutscene transitions, no free-roaming in planets, just the usual missions and no deep dynamic systems) to what they're working on now, I imagine you can argue for a refund if you want, since the original product is indeed dead.
We ordered a rusty bicycle, and are getting a space rocket instead, but have to wait 10 more years than originally expected.
Agreeable-Weather-89 wrote:They should have finished the original vision and used funds from that to make a Star Citizen 2.
Years of time and effort was at best not fully utilised and at worst utterly wasted for a vision that still feels influx and a product still ten years out.
whippletriple wrote:They probably should have, but once Chris Roberts realized he had his shot at making his perfect game, there was no way he was going to make any compromises on the chance the compromised game would sell enough to let him have a 2nd chance at making his perfect game.
The problem is that his perfect game appears to be everything possible at all times.
Agreeable-Weather-89 wrote:Developer: We have these two mutually exclusive ideas for the game which should we go with?
Chris: Yes
Developer: But
Chris: Next
socialmediaiscancerr wrote:Does he even know what he wants out of this game?
DrPhilow wrote:That always depends on the last movies or series he saw. The new Top Gun movie is probably the reason why we get a new flight model. The last one was „inspired“ by „the expanse“
Agreeable-Weather-89 wrote:That's a bit narrow minded... He also is inspired by the latest hit game.
Surprised they didn't announce a auto chess version of Star Citizen.
whippletriple wrote:https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm ... a-spacemanI encourage new backers to read that and keep in mind that's a manifesto. Once you understand the mindset Chris is going for there (a world of risk and dynamic content) a lot more of CIGs decisions start to make sense.
Liefx wrote:What do you mean? Last numbers I saw were 50k a day average, which IMO is WAY above what I had expected.
Most people hop in at new patches then take breaks. Having 50k people come back every day is wild for an Alpha game that has constant wipes and knowingly won't be out for many more years.
Unless the numbers changed, if so can you share them with me? (This is what I could find "50,000, with a peak of 130,000 players happening several times during the year".)
RenThras wrote:Yeah, but that doesn't change the reality much. Even if 2 million people spent $50 each, that'd be $100,000,000 ($100 million)
There are a lot of whales, but there are also a lot of people that just spend $45 or people that spend between $100 and $500. When I think whales, I think of the people with Krakens/Javelins/Idrises (even just ONE runs you $1000, and having several gets you into 5 digits), but there are a lot of dolphins and minnows in this pond, too.
It all adds up.
RenThras wrote:Yes, but we have no idea what that fraction is. 51/100ths is a fraction, but is also a majority.
And I'm not saying this to be sarcastic, I honestly have no idea what that is. I remember reading a year or so ago that the average account spent something like $100-$150, meaning a lot of people just buy the starter package, some buy that and maybe upgrade a ship or get a second ship or vehicle, and that's all they do.
The average person probably has between 1.5 and 4 ships. Many only have a starter ship, some might have a vehicle or second ship, many have 2-3 ships and a vehicle. You do get those people with entire fleets, but you get a lot of people who have spent $100-$500 (more than 100, less than 500) on this game over its lifespan (for the record, $500 over 10 years could be thought of as $50 per year or roughly $4/month, which is cheaper than any MMO; and yes, SC is unfinished, but it also is only a quarter what any sub-based MMO costs these days, so imo that comes out fairly even - I get $4/month worth enjoyment out of tooling around in it, and I haven't even spent that much)
I'd say it's the majority voting with their wallets.
Unfortunately, this IS heavily padded by the people who vote with bank accounts the size of small nations...
crazybelter wrote:There are 1.7 million backer accounts, Chris told us at CitCon.
The average spend then is around $300 per account.
Those that voted with their wallets this week ($19m from iae) can't have been the majority (850k+), else CIG would have made lots more than $22 per majority-backer account ($19m / 850k), like A LOT more.
arkhammer wrote:What happened to trigger the spike from 2019 to 2020??
OldHoustonGuy wrote:They added a new show event in May that is similar to this one. It is called Invictus and specializes in military ships.
So that's what Invictus is.
pam_the_dude wrote:Didn’t they also changed the ccu game at some point with more regular warbond ccus during the events?
I feel people stacking up on those worbond ccu chains attribute a lot to funding. Especially long time backers. You might not buy a big new ship for $300+ if you already spend a lot. But a $5 here and a $25 there. That adds up with all those events.
And all of the sudden you save 200 bucks on a $500 ship you had not thought about buying if you hadn’t stacked up all those warbond ccus
I'm still not clear on how this scheme works. It sounds like it might be worth the effort though.
Andras89 wrote:I know how this looks to many..
But I want people to look at this one important thing for a moment. Funding/Citizen# has gone up in recent years. And in that time, we've had more ships and a few more gameplay things happen in that time.
So yes we can sit here and complain, but the thing I want people (and CiG) to really think about is what does this look like with a finished product?
This is proof that people a yearning for this type of game. And I hope we see the day we get most if not all we asked for.
What this guy doesn't get is that "people" asked for NOTHING. It was CHRIS ROBERTS who kept adding stuff to the design, often OVER THE PROTESTS OF THE PEOPLE. There are still countless people protesting that the game is still in development (i.e. that there's still stuff being added to it).
People's opinions count for literally ZERO to Chris Roberts. He just wants to make the game he wants to make, and if that takes the most Byzantine psychological ship-selling tricks in the history of gaming, he's hiring those psychologists asap.
Plot thickens btw:
Genji4Lyfe wrote:And with that, almost $600m in total funding.
$527.25 million backer funding + $63.25 million in invested funds
Total: $590.5 million in funds.
Rul1n wrote:btw, who invested the 63 mio, and how are they getting their money back?
Genji4Lyfe wrote:A billionaire, Clive Calder, and his son. And apparently, they’re already receiving some dividends back (a few million so far), so they expect to make their investment back (and then some) over time.
Kurso wrote:I wonder if they will break even for the year.
pam_the_dude wrote:They did 2020 for the first time in a long time. At least when you don't count in extra investments from non-baker sources. Even turned a nice profit that year. The financial report for 2021 at the end of this year will be interesting to see.