Yes, another Kickstarter video game project... This time, from Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen

Having seen those vids, it looks almost exactly like the space sim I've been dreaming for over the years...

Nice. Man, all these Kickstarters only make me want to start one. Except the only personal cause I could make one for is "donate me money so I can buy extra pizzas every week". Trés shamefuloux.

Maybe if this game is successful, it could be the focus of the new Massassi community.

A new game from the director of the hit film Wing Commander.

Haha did he direct that movie too? That movie was terrible. Maybe it wasn't his fault, though- I have a feeling that the choice of actors were forced upon him by the movie studio, for their "teenage appeal." He got much better performances out of Luke Skywalker and Biff Tannen in the games.

Nope. Up to that point all video game movies were lazily adapted by people who obviously never played or cared about the games themselves (e.g. the Mario Bros Movie). The Wing Commander movie was a huge deal because they were giving total creative control to the creator of the game.

It was Roberts' choice to cast Saffron Burrows, Matthew Lillard, and Freddie Prinze Jr. for their "teenage appeal".

The Wing Commander movie notwithstanding... This looks pretty awesome. I really hope it meets its funding goals and I also really hope I can get a computer that will run it if it actually comes out.

When I first saw the Super Mario Bros. movie, I thought the people behind it did care, in the sense that they wanted the audience to hate the source material as much as they did and ruin every kid's imagining of the Mario universe.

The Super Mario Bros. movie was terrible... and it's a guilty pleasure of mine.
Sorry, don't know how to play this video :(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM4KWXMeScE

The Wing Commander movie aside, the games were quite enjoyable & Mr. Roberts went on to produce some good films after his epic video game to movie failure(s) as a director/producer.

iT'S BEEN funded.

( Mg , Fe ) [SUB]7[/SUB]Si[SUB]8[/SUB]O[SUB]22[/SUB] ( OH ) [SUB]2[/SUB]

Oh, look. Freelancer with prettier graphics, slightly better multiplayer support, better physics, and bigger ships. Literally all the other features of this game were implemented in that one.

Also,

"PC games and PC gamers don't get any respect."

wat

Gamers in general are the worst kind of entitled little ****s that come up with absurd mental gymnastics to justify what they think they deserve.

He's been trying to make the same game for the past 20 years. Every time it turns into an over-budget runaway project that ships several years late, and only after the publisher bails them out and forces them to cut features.

It's good that they aren't bull****ting people about needing to pursue external funding beyond their kickstarter goal (cf. Ouya and Doublefine), but don't expect to end up with a new game after this.

He's already raised 1.5 mill IN ADDITION to the funded 600+ Kickstarter initiative.

http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/

2,000,000 USD sounds like a pretty good budget. K, GTA 3's budget was about a 100 mill when it was in production, BUT STILL!

If you tightened your belt, 2m would be about enough to run with a team of 9 devs on a two year runway, with no money left over for QA, publishing, or marketing.

idk. Maybe? Probably the smallest game budget Chris Roberts has worked with since 1993.

Dread donation pirate Roberts more like it.

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gta3 came out 2000 im sure it didn't have that much, perhaps you are thinking of gta4 (2008)
it doesn't matter but still

oh god this game sounds so good pls dont **** it up roberts
Please.

Yes, you're right, of course, I was thinking of GTA4.

If I'm good at anything- it's sperging over trivial information.

Sorry if this is considered an unacceptable revival. I have been following the development of this game and its site and found an interesting link. Although it does not directly respond to the criticism from the post I quoted it is obviously, generally, meant to address the mediocrity his name is attached to. Some may find it interesting as well as other developments with regards to the Star Citizen project that can be found at his RSI site.

domo arigoto gozaimasu, misaru roboto

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I know that you're merely exaggerating for the sake of humor but I just wanted to add that while the Kickstarter gaming scene has certainly had its disappointments, it has also had some successes (Faster Than Light (an amazing & addictive experience), Oculus Rift, Ouya, etc.) & outside of the gaming scene it has been even more impressive. Kickstarter is certainly far from perfect but it's a step in the right direction. A friend of ours even had a bit of success for her band.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1595225731/liberation-prophecy-world-domination

The Wing Commander games were great fun.

The only majorly successful Kickstarter I'm aware of is the one for my favorite webcomic. And really, I never thought you could amass $1,000,000 for anything webcomic related anywhere ever.

i like you, mr roboto

FTL was an extremely simple, but well executed indie game. That's not a great example, because it wasn't the sort of thing that would require a large budget.

It reamins to be seen, (and I am doubtful) that Ouya will be a success, and if Oculus Rift is a success, it will be because it got noticed and backed by industry figures, not because of the kickstarter. At best, the kickstarter got it noticed, which I think is probably the best case scenario for a lot of these projects.

I'm certainly a layman when it comes to matters such as these but...


I don't see why the size of the budget is significant. The developers sought $10k, received $200k, developed a quality game, received good reviews & sold a ton of units. That strikes me as the very definition of success. Every analysis of Kickstarter that I've read seems to show that -$20k is the sweet spot for increasing ones chance of success.


I suppose that your definition of success doesn't include the 'raising a vast amount of money--beyond what was being asked' on Kickstarter--mine certainly does. I wasn't really even commenting on Ouya & Oculus Rift as products--merely that they were successfully funded--which is a type of success in & of itself. Also, it's likely that Kickstarter did a lot for these people in actually getting the industry to notice them, so I don't think that it's accurate to say that it's only because of "industry figures" (though they're certainly relevant--Carmack, etc.).

I think Kickstarter is cool and hope that the indie isometric RPGs (eg., Wasteland) won't fail (as in, not happen or happen in a terrible way) miserably.

Talking about Star Citizen, they claim that they're raised an additional 6 mills to the Kickstarter's 2 mills. Hopefully something will happen.

It matters because FTL is a very simple indie games, and while well executed, it did not require a large budget.



It definitely does not. For the dev it might, but from mine, it means delivering on what is promised. What the kickstarters for major titles are asking for is still a fraction of what it takes to produce these games, and that's assuming there won't be any delays and everything goes perfectly. (hah!) Their funding goal is a conservitive esitmite of what they think they can get, not what they need to develop the game. The Kickstarter money is a good way for them to scare up more investors, and prove consumer enthusiasm, but from the customer's point of view, there is a whole lot more risk than these guys let on, especially since the only reason most of these games are on Kickstarter is that people in industry thought it was a bad investment. Even well funded devs get flack for having to compromise on features that they mentioned they were planning on in interviews, and game devs tend to avoid laying out all the cards for just that reason. Not only are these Kickstarter guys are promising the moon, they are obligated to deliver on every single stretch goal.

Kcikstarter is great for small indie projects that are well underway, and need a bit of funding to deliver some extra polish. But as far as these completely undeveloped AAA titles go, I think there are going to be a lot of pissed off, disappointed people here in a year or so. It's easy to pitch an amazing game, but it's clearly much harder to actually make it happen, even with traditional funding sources. Gamers are whiny entitled bunch at the best of times, when real money is at steak, **** will hit the fan. This "stick it to the man" attitude may be popular now, but as soon as a few high profile kickstarter developers start to slip on their promises, you can bet that kickstarter will go out of fashion pretty quick.

It's a shame too, because I really want a lot of these games that have been funded by kickstarter.

+1, liked and subscribed.

I know a bunch of people IRL who are nuts about Kickstarter and this **** drives me up the wall. You basically have two kinds of people who start Kickstarters: starry-eyed creatives who don't understand businesses, and jaded execs who view it as a way of building hype while milking a little extra cash out of their fans. In spite of Kickstarter's policies I've never actually seen a single project that was trying to cover the true costs of business.

For example, someone wanted to build a steampunk-themed food cart so they opened a project for the cost of the cart. They were successfully funded, built the cart, but ended up having to sell the cart because they had no runway.

Games are expensive things made by expensive people. $8.2 million is not enough. Not even kidding, for a AAA today you're talking about $30m just for payroll and overhead. Crack open Excel and you can do the math yourself. Roberts' kickstarter haul is barely enough to pay for his cryengine license.

It should be noted that the Kickstarter that started all this, the Doublefine Adventure game, is actually struggling really hard with their budget. The game will get made, but they're trying to cut as little content as possible. The team working on the game isn't exactly enormous as is, and the game isn't going to be some big triple-AAA title.

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No and if/when it is it's going to be a terrible pile of ****.

Development units have shipped. Amateur hour board layout, the case is completely inappropriate for the hardware, the controllers are very badly designed, flimsy with squishy buttons and indescribably awkward battery placement. Same build quality you'd expect from one of those chinatown flea market "Game Station GS2"s with the flip-up lid and hard-coded LCD game.

Is anybody even still excited about it?

Hmm guys, maybe when other companies are spending 10 times Ouya's entire budget just designing controllers it says something about the quality we can expect fr...

"NO **** YOU JON YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. KICKSTARTER IS THE FUTURE, WHY DO YOU HATE THE FUTURE??"

BUT BUT BUT MY EMULATORS AND PIRACY
JON YOU CAN'T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME!!!!!!!!