I love space sims! I've played every game in the X series and I've put hundreds of hours into Elite Dangerous at this point, so it is safe to say that if a game lets you lets you choose your own adventure in space I'm all for it... Except for star citizen. It promises a huge open ended universe with limitless possibilities but I never could quite wrap my head around the sheer absurdity when it comes to rgw star citizen business model.

They kickstarted over 70 million for it(and continues to soak up more money buy the day through their own crowd funding site) and you have to pay $60 to play it. That makes perfect sense to me but what I don't get is how they can charge hundreds of dollars for individual ships outside of kickstarter and people continue to eat it up. Especially when they game full game won't even be released for at least another 18 months. If any other developer did this I feel like there would be massive backlash.

Personally I don't think I can support SC they are making tens of millions from the good will of fans but I feel like the game will just be a huge money pit based on the pricing and "rental models I've been reading about. Is anyone else a bit frightened that so many people have forked over massive amounts of cash for this when we have only had vague promises of what this game is?

I see this setting a bad precedent for future games I just fear that we'll start to see EA or Ubisoft games with the same pricing model if Chris Roberts is pulling it off. Full disclosure, I don't have all of the answers, I am not a backer and have not given a dime to star citizen. I just want to know if I'm missing something here. Can people please fill me in?

Whose backing it? Whose not? and Why etc.? Thanks.

i don't have a dog in this race, as i've never participated in a crowd-funeded project.

but i would say with specific regard to star citizen: to early to tell. yes, people have thrown an unprecedented amount of cash at a game that isn't fully released yet- so the potential for disappointment is massive.

but at the same time, they are still working on it, right? if 2 years from now it still isn't out- then yeah- people got hosed.

When the full game comes out, you'll be able to buy any ship with in-game money, like in Elite: Dangerous or other games like this. I also recall read/hearing somewhere that when the game is released they'd stop selling ships for real money.

Doing a quick read on the rental system, it's got nothing to do with the persistent universe and seems to not be attainable with real-world currency. From playing the game, you earn a separate in-game currency used for renting Arena Commander gear. Which sucks, because renting gear is lame, but there's not real money involved there.

I remember this thing seeming like a real clusterfuck business model until I realized them selling the ships and shit was more or less a continuation of their Kickstarter campaign. Pledge if you wanna support development and get access to the game, or just wait till it's out officially, which is supposedely later this year right? And didn't they recently make it so you could use any ship in Arena Commander, or was that just for a weekend or some shit?

In any case, if what they've said about the final release is true, it won't be the batshit insane business model that it might seem to be right now.

I agree to some extent, but I guess if I were one of the people that were throwing used car or new car or new house levels of money at this game, I don't think there's anything they'd be able to do to justify that individual investment of money. If it were me, I'd probably be expecting a stake in the game's profits for that tier of financial support.

Looking at it in terms of the grand total they've raised (around $77 million at this point), I think they face a similar uphill struggle for producing a game that looks like it cost eight figures to develop.

I'm hoping it fails or comes out like a steaming pile of turd after it came out of the microwave just so we can have a case study on the most expensive crowd funded product in history. And to teach people a lesson on how to spend money wisely.

How much "in-game money" do I need (or a better question, how long do I need to farm it for) to get the equivalent of a $100 spaceship? If you make it reasonable then you trivialize other people's $100s and if you make it unreasonable (e.g. hundreds of hours) then you're making it resemble a P2W model. Let's not forget there's also a $1000 spaceship in that game, too. How long will it take for normal people to get that?

Looking at how other games implement systems with a real money equivalent, either officially or unofficially, I'm not looking forward to that answer.

I don't think big name companies could ever do something to this scale or with the business model of Star Citizen. They have to meet their quotas, due dates and have developers constantly working to turn a profit for the year. RSI doesn't have to meet corporate producer needs and deadlines since all the funds they work with are strictly from "donations". Sure the Star Citizen team and Chris Roberts flap their mouths a lot about how ambitious this game is going to be, but I think they and many backers know not all concepts are going to be in the final product or really ever in a video game. Star Citizen will probably have a much smaller universe than Elite Dangerous. The whole point of this game is to have lush detailed worlds with intense memorable action and not just a bunch of empty barren planets where you go grind for cash or whatever. So basically quality > quantity. The reassuring thing for backers is that just about every couple weeks or so there seems to be some big update from RSI about a new feature that is in testing and that is getting ready for future playable modules. It's a slow crawl for this game and it basically doesn't really have a release date until the team decides it's polished to perfection for launch. As for the purchase of $100 dollar ships, you can melt down $60 starter ships and use the money as credit to a $100 ship. So you can see people who in the beginning may have payed $60 for a ship 2 years ago would not mind throwing down another $40 now for a bigger ship.

Its hard to tell when the developers would consider Star Citizen done, though. Its a platform that seems to be constantly upping its ante. I have a question, though:

Are they taking money through other means, i.e preorders? I often wonder with that project whether it'll hit retail / virtual shelves or whether their crowd-funding is the point of sale for this.

@white said:

The thing is, they've never said that paying hundreds of real dollars for a ship was a good investment, or that you wouldn't be able to earn those ships for far cheaper (in terms of in game money) once the game is out. They simply set a price on those ships and people came and ate them up anyway.

They're so far out from balancing in game costs at this point that we won't know if the game is a grind fest for at least a year, if not even longer. The one thing that keeps me optimistic is how varied the ships are; sure you can plonk $1000 on a big destroyer, but that ship is useless for mining or dogfighting or racing. Since I can't really see a case of "Ship B is better than Ship A at everything," hopefully that will keep the model from being purely P2W.

@theht: Thank you for clarifying that's what I've missed. However, that begs the question How much in game currency is equivalent to a $150 ship. Do we enter a pay to win scenario with the economy? It just seems to me that SC has way to much money behind it to deliver its hype or expectations.

Comparing it to Elite Dangerous on the other hand it had somewhere close to an 8 million dollar crowd funding budget plus pre-orders and while it has not yet delivered on all of its promises it is a vast and enjoyable persistent universe that totally works. A universe that I have already had plenty of memorable experiences in. Everyone on a pretty even playing field due to the all ships and equipment are bought with in-game currency. I see the release of SC creating a "1% versus the 99%" type of economy with the top Kickstarter backers pretty much controlling the things and everyone else left to at a huge disadvantage.

Not sure how that will go over. I want it to be good and I want it to live up to the hype and be worth all of this money but I I don't see how it avoids major fallout due to the endless ambition and promises. I think Vinny or someone mentioned it on a Bombcast at some point to the effect of, "I don't know what that game is and it scares me cause with all of that money behind it it's either going to be the best thing ever, or go down in history as the biggest disappointment of all time of all time" I guess that's what I feel.

When I see videos of the guys at Polygon salivating over a $150 ship or a hanger full of 10 thousand actual dolloars worth of content with no caveats or apprehension whatsoever, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

This is what I mean

I backed it (pretty much exclusively for the SP campaign), but yeah, no interest whatsoever in the paying for individual ships nonsense. People are ofc free to be stupid with their money however they like, but it's not a model I would support and I wouldn't have backed the game at all if I'd known it would go so heavily in this direction.

edit: On reflection, I think it's actually the stupidity of the people lapping this shit up which irritates me most. The people taking advantage of that weakness are pretty shitty and little better than con men, but at least I can sort of respect that.

What even is Star Citizen at this point?

The pure hype surrounding this game is so insane that no matter if Star Citizen is everything it promised and more a lot of people are going to be disappointed. Personally I hope the whole crowd funding of larger games goes away. I think it is gross.

I am usually of the mind that you should let people do what they want. If someone want's to spend 1000 dollars on a virtual ship, great! Go for it! I am not sure I am still with this though. I don't think people actually understand what they are getting when they pay for things like Starcitizen or Kickstarter. There were a shit ton of people who go really pissed at Double Fine for splitting up Broken Age/how long it took to developer. People don't understand how drastically projects change from the original plan and how shit goes wrong all the time throughout development. I think that no matter how good or bad Startcitizen is, there is going to be a bunch of people who paid 100+ dollars on a ship and are super pissed that it doesn't work exactly how they thought, or the combat isn't exactly how they wanted, or the graphics look shitty compared to how they remembered. I just think a lot of people get REALLY invested in kickstarter projects or things like Starcitizen and when final product arrives and it isn't as amazing as they thought it would be, they freak the fuck out.

I think this model is fine for a lot of reasons, but it has a ton of baggage that you just can't escape.

@lkpower I am pretty sure they are being facetious/sarcastic. Whenever they mention the price/availability of the ships they REALLY emphasis the ridiculousness of it all. I could be wrong though. I don't visit Polygon so for all I know these guys are known to be big fans of this stuff.

The only people who are "concerned" about what they are doing and how they are spending the funds are the people who haven't backed. I used quotation marks because the backers certainly have the right to concern with how their contribution is being spent, they have a stake in the game but those that are the most sour are those with nothing to lose, those that haven't backed.

Speculation on whether the project will be successful or not is natural but often lacking in perspective. The reason the project is being funded and executed this was, is because it can. Chris Roberts is very clear that he is doing it this way because he saw an opportunity here vs the old plan of Kickstarter + Venture Capital; I'd say most backers know this.

It seems that this pattern repeats itself with all crowd funded projects, where you have onlookers saying:

"how dare they fund the project like this and fleece the backers"

Actually in most crowd funded projects the backers are plenty happy with what they get, provided the project has good communication and visible progress. Plenty of concern also comes from those who are misinformed about the project and often base their concern on outright lies.

They charge that money because they state that it is to fund the game. People are impatient and want their ships now, and thus pay a premium to own them now and to have them when the game launches publicly. All communication related to this matter is very clear. Buying ships is often an impulsive act, but it is totally the responsibility of the person buying a virtual good. Frankly, I'd rather whales spend money for an ambitious project such as this as opposed to some POS mobile game.

Also it should be noted that the kickstarter was only 4 million or so, the rest was crowdfunded directly.

Another particularly egregious example of the false concern is the Double Fine Adventure, where the people who are angriest aren't the kickstarter backers but random people looking to make a fuss. We (at least the vast majority), the Kickstarter backers got the documentary and part of the game, and the promise of the rest of the game. There were all sorts of people with false concern for the poor backers that got half a game and would have to spend more money to get the rest (utter falsehood btw).

Yeah, most ships have very specific functions in mind, it is unlikely that somebody could have a ship that does everything well. However, a person can have many ships, some people bought packages for all the ships for fees I would call exorbitant, but it is their money and many backers have lifetime insurance on the ships that they bought.

Well that's just the thing, as I understand it the hundreds of dollars people are spending are more analogous to Kickstarter pledges than a pay-to-win model. As such, I wouldn't expect the devs to give much thought to matching the in-game currency price to what the real-world prices were, and instead only focusing on making the in-game costs balanced for the in-game economy.

The question is if players right out the gate are piloting massive starships that other players would need to take tens or hundreds of hours of gameplay to save up for, how problematic would that really be for persistent universe?

Those players are definitely getting a headstart, but is that something that actually negatively affects the experiences of those who didn't?

I am fine with what they are doing to an extent, but the extremes of it are off putting. There should be a reasonable cap.

I don't mind that games have whale type supporters though. A lot of those games get played for a long time so it's a nice way for them to keep earning money. As always, it's a fine line.

I just hope hey stay true to their word and this ceases once the game is finally released, I'm an original backer and that was a long time ago plus I haven't been following it very closely at all, but I do remember them saying that the whole selling ships for real money would stop at release and that the only things being sold would be useless cosmetic stuff.

But it kinda worked out pretty nice for me since I got a game package with a simple ship for 60 bucks plus a stand alone ship for like 100 bucks, more because I wanted to help fund the thing than anything else, then about 2 years later I realized how stupid buying a digital ship in a game for 100 dollars was and sold the thing on reddit for 250 bucks, so in a way I'll be playing the game for free and even with a slight profit :)

I myself don't mind people having the best stuff right from the get go, I intend to play it 100% offline (another promise I'm hoping they keep).

For the extreme buyers who have paid over $1000 for this game already, there's no way they are getting a "good deal". It would break the game if they were getting true value for their money. My perspective is that the Star Citizen guys realized that people were willing to crazily overpay for this stuff and priced according to market demand.

I haven't backed the game and am more curious than excited, so the only issue for me is that one of the big draws for this game initially was in how damn good it looked...in that first video, before the modern consoles were released. I'm not saying that this won't look better than a PS4 game but by 2017 when this game comes out I can't see Star Citizens visuals standing out that much compared to contemporary PC titles.

In my previous comment I forgot to state why I personally backed it, so my reasons are the following:

1. I like Space Sims.
2. They are developing a PC-ass game. No compromise for console deficiencies, systemically or graphically.
3. It is a very ambitious game with some neat ideas.
4. I'm interested in the technology involved and want a seat at the table to experience the game as it develops.
5. They are very communicative, if you go on their youtube channel you will see Dev interviews, concept art and status updates every week without fail.

I only backed for a starter pack of 37 euros and I'm perfectly satisfied, despite all the expensive and cool ships, I don't feel the urge to spend more than I want, nor do I feel that they're attempting to heavily funnel me into doing so.

The whole project could end up a flaming wreck, but plenty of people are having fun today while playing it so it isn't like you have nothing to do while you wait for the full game.

This game murders contemporary PCs. They are targeting future 2016 - 2017 PCs for the final release. This game is being extremely ambitious graphically. Do a search for sxsw star citizen on youtube...

You know as much as the players who bought ships with real money have an advantage, I think it could have a interesting unintended side effect. With all these players with a variety ships available it fills out the game world with something other than starter ships which I feel makes things a bit more immersive.

I really hope that they trivialize the investments that people made. I'd rather that than a P2W model. It would also be hilarious. I'd feel really really bad for those people... but when you spend that much money, that's your fault...

But have this ships out in the universe prior to the games release helps start and catalyze it. Once the game releases there'll be an economy and everything ready to go by other players... or something like that.

I'm not gonna get it though until it's out for a while and it's known just what kind of time and money investment it'll take to actually experience this game.

Edit: I feel that once this comes out, it'll be something people look at and wonder about, but never truly care to get immersed into because of the sheer premise of it all. KNOWING that others spent thousands of dollars and then there's you, who just wants to play a game... it'll be hard to draw that audience in after all of this nonsense already.

For Star Citizen I think it makes sense. They need a shit load of cash to make what they want to make, and it's working and they have a dedicated fanbase. The only thing they need to do now is deliver, and that's a huge task.

That said, I really hope I don't see this model adopted for smaller kickstarter projects. I don't want to see massively overfunded indie games that let you buy weapons to be used before the game comes out. Star Citizen created this model because that's what works for their universe and their game, but I don't think other games should straight up copy it.

@onarum: A good point. Something I never thought of. You paid more because you wanted to see it succeed and to a certain extent I'm glad people are doing so. It seems you were savvy enough to already get more than your value (in dollars anyways) out of the game. Thus, no matter how the final release sits with you it is of no financial consequence. I applaud you for this.

How much more must we donate to reach the stretch goal that allows realistic baby punching physics?

@vucubcaquix88: I never thought of that either. Letting people opt into top tier ships right out of the gate will make the world more immersive around the time of release.I still can't help feel like RSI is taking advantage; not of the average backer but of the so-called "whale" players-the big spenders-. There are SC bundles that value up to several thousand dollars and more can be added piece meal beyond that. RSI has the right to charge whatever price they deem appropriate for goods and services provided people pay for it.

I understand that that because that is often the counter argument, but this seems like capitalism run amok. I feel as though the only reason they charge exorbitant fees for a single ship is simply because they "can". The highest bundle as it stands is 15,000 USD. More than my car costs, a good chuck of my yearly earnings, I've had had major surgery that has cost less. Maybe its my perspective but but that seems like a loosing proposition. I can't fathom how anyone would get 15,000 of value out of the game and the fact that people are willing to hand the cash over sight relatively unseen is kind of mind blowing. I think that just someone is willing and able to pay 15,000 dollars into a videogame doesn't mean they should. Am I wrong? this whole thing is draving bonkers and you've all been super helpful in discussing it and I thank you for it

PS. I know it seems like I want to rage against SC and I don't. I want the game itself to be good I just want to understand how the huge sums of money people are dumping into it fit into the equation. How it will affect the game itself. I wish I could talk to someone who bought the completionist bundle for 15 grand

I backed it for 35€, that got me the game, a ship and LTI. Not gonna give them more, they don't need it and I sure as hell won't buy a ship for more then 10$

@bartok: There are no more stretch goals.

Why do some people back higher tiers on Kickstarter? Same deal.

Also as I stated above, some people spend that much on shitty f2p games like clash of clans. Why? I don't know. At least here it is going towards development of an ambitious game instead of lining the pockets of developers that spent magnitudes of orders less in developing their games (and earning far more revenue than this game has generated).

@lkpower: yeah I think most people that are dumping ridiculous amounts of cash on it are doing it mainly because they want to see it done, but I'm sure there are a portion of them that just have the disposable income hanging around and want the good stuff without the hassle, to me that's actually detrimental, I want to earn the cool ships myself ingame.

@onarum: Yes! Earning a ship can in-game be a story, triumph, and conversation starter in and of itself. Bringing up Elite dangerous again (I realize it's my go-to comparison but right now its the closest cousin that Star Citizen has) I started the game out and I was struggling to make make enough credits to get my hands on better ships. By chance I started text chatting with another player who had a very fine ship. I simply asked him how he saved up millions of credits for for for ships and upgrades.

He then proceeded to show me the ropes of the trade system, how to find holes in the market and fill them as a means to make money and now we run together and watch out for each other. I just feel like there will be plenty of encounters in the early stages SC where someone will have a high powered ship and when asked how they got it they will simply say I spent "X" dollars and the conversation will end there; versus the novel social experience in ED that I was fortunate enough to have.

Also, there is something incredibly satisfying about setting your own goals and achieving them. A kind of self- made feeling. I'm not saying that this will be missing from SC entirely because it is the way RSI intended for people to play the game. That being said, I fear that people who shelled out thousands during the pre-release period will miss out on certain experiences and it seems to me that such an absence would detract from their overall enjoyment. I see it as an unfortunate and possible side effect of the current business model. Although, they did do it by choice so I guess it's fine.