Im writhing this because since I am a long community member and I have being following INFINITY almost from the beginning Im having doubts about this whole issue:
Even if BS is another project and its in fact being used as a launching platform not mentioning INFINITY MMO is a HUGE MISTAKE. Why? Well you should always mentions your biggest goal and people will follow to that if what you deliver is good enough, in this case I would say is exceptionally good. You want to be a studio? You want to develop something greater/better? SAY IT !
The first and real project since the beginning from our understanding was the MMO, BS was an intermediary to show the technology and get starting funds.
Then goes question, after the KS campaign what happens?. Say you meet your goal. No more nor less. What the next step? Create another kick starter campaign just for the MMO?. Are the goals being set on the developing only BS and nothing more? By the time you get thereā¦someone with more funds might get you.
How long could it take between BS and INFINITY to be developed saying that you actually met your primary goal?
Are you planing to just create the technology and then sell it to a higher bitter? that will develop the game much faster because of the funding they have?
Thatās all fine, but IMO if your going to mimic what Starfighter KS are doing then you may have some issues getting funding. Their video is basically (Dogfight Dogfight Dogfight, explosions, PVP PVP PVP)ā¦ Nobody was impressed. But they may still just squeeze in their funding.
I hope Battlescape gets backed, maybe go to Steam also right after KS to acquire further funding to help expand features once the basic ones are in place. Also remember ED/SC were majorly successfully because they offered MORE then just a PvP shoot friends in space game, they had shit all to start with also and a small team (where Inovae are atm).
Perhaps adding functionality for users to create content for the game will be a good middle ground?
Frontier was an established studio, yes, but didnāt Roberts first pitch for Star Citizen compose of a single freelancer (excuse the pun) made ship and a scene that was made in Unity?
Iām sorry, but you really canāt compare where we are starting from, to where both ED and SC started from. Both of those projects had big money behind them even before they started work on their respective Kickstarter campaigns. As well as, iirc, both with the promise of 10ās of millions of dollars post successful KS by investors outside of the crowd funding campaigns. We will actually ONLY have the money we get from KS (after all fees, taxes & rewards are taken out) to make our game. We donāt have the investor parachutes those projects had, we cannot overpromise game features knowing we will have significant investor backing post successful KS.
Sorry, tl;dr
ā¦what about 3d-printed stuff? I know it reads non-physical. But for higher pledges, you could order 3d-printed ship models and sign them.
We have spoken about this on IRC, old forums and probably on these forums too. Think one of the devs even had a model printed. Bottom line, the quality is crapā¦
Weāve discussed 3D printed ships. We have a team member who is intimate with the process, and advised us it is not a good option due to cost of product and shipping.
The scene youāre talking about was a massive battleship, its entire hangar + props, the player-controlled ship ( exterior + interior + cockpit ), character + anims and the environment ( asteroid field ) + a bunch of stuff I probably forget.
That equals many man-years of work, and hundreds of thousands dollars of investment pre-KS.
All I ever remember hearing was CR wanted a completed/proven engine, Iām not sure if he ever considered INE. And iirc, I read that they spent over 1 million USD on the pitch video.
Also from memory, CR said the crowd funding was a trial for PC games, and that if he reached his initial goal, investors were prepared to fork over the bulk of the funding (I read $20 million, but I donāt think it was ever publicly disclosed). Now of course, their crowd funding went ballistic, so add that ~$20 mill to the 80 or so he got in crowd funding.
I read that ED had an additional ~$15 mill lined up for them if their KS was a success.
From my memory, CR pitched using INE to his team/board/whatever and they told him that the INE is just not ācompleted/provenā enough to be used. Also itās nearly impossible to find little snippets of information like that, web is just flooded with CR/SC information.
I too remember that he had investors lined up and they are probably still an option if he ever needs more funding. Itās possible that it was subject to him passing the crowd funding campaign.
Does INS have any alternative funding sources lined up?
I would have suggested Sony, since they financed PlanetSide series and might be a reason that No Manās Sky is also developing for only one console, Playstation. PlanetSide is definitely closest thing to Battlescape category wise. Strangely they chose to have Windows as the primary platform for both PlanetSide and PlanetSide 2. I would understand the former was due to the fact that Playstation 2 was largely an offline platform, but not Playstation 3.
Having said that Sony Online Entertainment that developed and published PlanetSide 1/2 was sold to investment company Columbus Nova.
Unless you are in software business, where you can create unlimited copies and then sell them for a price that has practically zero intrinsic physical value.
