• Star Citizen investigation concludes at Kotaku UK
    9 replies, posted
[url]http://www.pcgamer.com/star-citizen-investigation-concludes-at-kotaku-uk[/url]
KotakUK has done remarkably well on these articles, though they're very lengthy and hard to digest if you're all about black and white labels
[QUOTE=Orginal Kotaku UK article]Speculatively, it's hard not to wonder whether Roberts and Cloud Imperium Games might have been better off if Star Citizen hadn't seen such vast crowdfunding success in the earliest days. If it had raised $2-4 million, perhaps its scope would have been contained. Perhaps it would even be finished by now.[/QUOTE] How about no? It's called Elite: Dangerous and it's still a mile wide and an inch deep almost two years after leaving beta. If the crowdfunding had raised $4mil, private investors would've ponied up another $16-20mil, and the game would've done what it could with the cash, but it'd be a thin imitation of what's being built now. I'd rather the extended delay on a finished product that we have now over the hypothetical timeline where it was a much more basic and underdeveloped game but is out of beta. [QUOTE=Kotaku UK]In the midst of all this, the people working on Star Citizen have also had to deal with an extraordinary amount of drama, perpetuated by a seemingly never-ending feud that started 24 years ago and shows no signs of wrapping up. It’s been an unpleasant but unignorable facet of the Star Citizen story so far, and one of the things that makes it tough to report: so much of it is tainted by this unpleasantness. This, surely, has contributed to some unwise decisions by people at Cloud Imperium Games in how it has dealt with its community and the press: enforced bans and refunds, derogatory language and legal threats against media outlets are not a good look. I can’t think of a single other game project that has had to wrestle with all the challenges of development while also dealing with someone whose main purpose in life appears to be to discredit it. It is difficult, after all these months of research and having heard from so many people involved with the project, to seriously entertain the notion that Star Citizen is some kind of intentional scam. Hundreds of people all over the world are working hard on it, and have been for years. Although there have been plenty of scandalous allegations, not one of them has checked out in our research – though of course nobody outside of its management team has full visibility on Cloud Imperium’s finances. If Star Citizen goes down – and it yet might – it will likely be because its sheer scope is out of step with the reality of actually making it, or because the money runs out, or because it’s taken too long and its funders have finally withdrawn their support. If there is anything more nefarious than that going on, we have found no convincing evidence of it.[/QUOTE] The people who really want to believe there's something evil going on will skip right past this, but it's nice to see it printed.
I really wish Frontier got more money. E:D is really gorgeous and fun but they don't have a stable source of income.
[QUOTE=Map in a box;51133115]I really wish Frontier got more money. E:D is really gorgeous and fun but they don't have a stable source of income.[/QUOTE] Considering some of the things they did (not referring to the the quality of the game), i'm kinda glad they didn't - things like removing the offline mode and not telling anyone until about a month before launch, or saying the lifetime expansion pass would be gone for good and never return only to bring it back around a year later at[I] 3 times the price[/I].
[QUOTE=Map in a box;51133115]I really wish Frontier got more money. E:D is really gorgeous and fun but they don't have a stable source of income.[/QUOTE] As much as it's created headaches for balance and preventing both the actual P2W phenomenon and the mere appearance of being P2W, the fact that SC sold ships is what's caused it to have such a tremendous windfall. Braben was absolutely adamant that there would not be ship sales, and while this is certainly an admirable position to take and eliminates the entire P2W argument in one swift move, it also created a large problem for Frontier - what they could replace those tiers with. They chose to gate access to development builds by reward tier, which I feel was a mistake because it's essentially paying for the ability to influence development in earlier, more nascent states when the foundations are more flexible and can be altered. It also puts a hard cap on how much they'd get from a wealthy backer who wants to see the project through -- after you've backed for the earliest alpha access available and have a lifetime DLC pass, what else can they offer you? On top of that, they did themselves no favours by pricing the annual expansions equal to the cost of the game and including a copy of the game with it. Everyone knew that the post-release content was going to include paid DLC, but nobody expected such a steep price; I have to imagine that Frontier wouldn't charge that much unless it had to, which circles back around to their past questionable marketing decisions that left them with the comparatively-meager budget they have. Their skin shop is also doing it wrong, and surprisingly I think they're doing it wrong by not having any skins available for free. I think a few basic skins should be automatically there for players to get, even if only in certain stations. But, because that isn't the case, if you go into the livery section of a station, and you don't already own any skins for the ship you're in, all you get is a shortcut to the Frontier Store to spend money. It's the most immersion-breaking thing. I look at the livery button in the hangar as a reminder that Frontier is greedy for my money, but if there were some free skins it'd seem at least more like an option rather than a demand. I wonder how much money Frontier spent advertising ED: Horizons in front of The Force Awakens on opening weekend in the US and UK, and if Braben thinks that was worth it (considering Horizons is months behind schedule).
The expansions pricings aren't really a surprise to me because the game doesn't have a monthly cost to it and its almost on par with games that do (the expansion has a decent amount of content for me to consider it worth it IMO) [editline]30th September 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=nightlord;51133142]Considering some of the things they did (not referring to the the quality of the game), i'm kinda glad they didn't - things like removing the offline mode and not telling anyone until about a month before launch, or saying the lifetime expansion pass would be gone for good and never return only to bring it back around a year later at[I] 3 times the price[/I].[/QUOTE] The offline mode removal wasn't much of a surprise and IIRC it wasn't even a guarantee. The lifetime pass only came back due to a ton of demand for it, they weren't going to do it initially.
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;51132742]How about no? It's called Elite: Dangerous and it's still a mile wide and an inch deep almost two years after leaving beta. If the crowdfunding had raised $4mil, private investors would've ponied up another $16-20mil, and the game would've done what it could with the cash, but it'd be a thin imitation of what's being built now. I'd rather the extended delay on a finished product that we have now over the hypothetical timeline where it was a much more basic and underdeveloped game but is out of beta. The people who really want to believe there's something evil going on will skip right past this, but it's nice to see it printed.[/QUOTE] Wow, an intentional scam? Let's pay hundreds of people around the world eheheh they'll believe it more, oh and let's make the game while we're at it, let's make 3d content to show off they'll believe us even more! Let's make a convention for this scam AHAHAHAHAHA they'll gives more money! Tss, i fucking hate those kinds of article.
[QUOTE=Map in a box;51133115]I really wish Frontier got more money. E:D is really gorgeous and fun but they don't have a stable source of income.[/QUOTE] I'm never gonna buy Elite Dangerous but Planet Coaster looks little it'll be the same as what Cities: Skylines was to Simcity. If it ends up as a good game I'll be happy for them
[QUOTE=Map in a box;51133498] The offline mode removal wasn't much of a surprise and IIRC it wasn't even a guarantee. The lifetime pass only came back due to a ton of demand for it, they weren't going to do it initially.[/QUOTE] The offline mode being removed isn't so much the problem as them acting as if it was still there (store page and thing slike that) and not telling anyone it was gone until just before release and then refuse to give refunds to anyone unhappy about that (at first). The lifepass pass coming back is scummy even if it is due to "demand", you don't say (exact quote) "don’t forget to grab it before we withdraw it forever" and then bring it back only a year later at 3 times the cost no matter the reason. It wouldn't be so bad if it was the same price but increasing it by such a huge amount is not a good thing. There are quite a lot of other bad things that happened with it as well. The people who say that SC should be more like Elite dangerous seem to ignore all the terrible things that have happened with the game and it's pretty poor quality overall at launch.
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