Will crowdfunding continue after the Kickstarter completes?

Topic.

Kingdom Come Deliverance announced that even though they raised more than 3 times their minimum on their Kickstarter, they are going to continue crowdfunding with early access perks on their own website much like Star Citizen did.

Is I-Novae going to follow this trend as well?

I say this without any real knowledge of the ins and outs of crowdfunding, but my gut says this could not be a bad thing. I’m sure there would still be people willing to contribute after the Kickstarter and that might help I-Novae to keep going and maybe add extras, depending on the extra funding.

As Keith said in another thread.

Kingdom Come looks great. By the time I got to their KS it was over and done, no big deal it will be on steam for $29.95 usd, less than the KS pledge, although I would’ve happily pledged.

SC model for micro transactions is horrible. More and more pledge goals. I would hate to see the devs go down their path. There is a correct way of fund raising after a KS without putting more and more pressure on the team to deliver those new stretch goals. Even carrying on the pledges from the KS on the I-Novae website is fair and reasonable, slightly altered as not to irritate the early KS pledges perhaps, less bonuses as such…

Fewer bonuses aren’t necessary. Just jack the prices on the pledge tiers a little. That basically treats people who took part in the Kickstarter as “early bird” investors.

Very much this.

What’s worse about the SC model is that it’s effectively pay to win, as your pledges will typically be on ship packages to give you a free ship in game with lifetime insurance. So what’s happened is that all the large orgs have already got in on the action, formed groups and pooled massive fleets before the game is even half-finished.

It’s like EVE without the gameplay, and it made me pretty angry.

I’ll do you one better, after the game launches, you’ll be able to buy credits with cash, a limited amount per week.

And even then, I still disagree with you. It’s not pay to win and it’s not like Eve at all. Eve is not a player-skill based game.

The definition of pay-to-win is obtaining a gameplay advantage that is otherwise completely unobtainable without paying extra cash. All of the ships that people pledge for are obviously obtainable by normal play.

What SC is, is pay-for-time. You save time by paying money upfront and after release. One advantage of this is that people who work a 40 hour workweek and have a family to take care of during the evenings can still achieve their personal goals in the persistent universe. And they do this while paying for the people who don’t have the same amount of money to support the game but have the time to play it.

Again, it isn’t Eve. The emphasis will not be on massive massive ship battles, it will be on medium group dogfighting. The persistent universe will splinter off instances if there are too many people. Skill will be more important than sheer numbers… unlike in Eve and the infamous Goonsquad.

I pledged 130.00 bucks or thereabouts for SC, for a quick and nimble fighter. A friend of mine pledged 275.00 for essentially a capital ship. If this was Eve, he would win, no doubt- the weapons automatically hit. In Star Citizen, I would kick his ass. Does that seem unfair to you? I think it’s unfair… for the guy who pledged more money. I would win because I can fly circles around him. His weapons wouldn’t even hit me. His ship is far slower, I could run if I wanted to, or I could strafe his flank until his ship started falling apart. Maybe if he had two other players on his ship that were incredible turret gunners, he would stand a chance.

The point is, is that Star Citizen is rock-paper-scissors and it’s skill based. Everything has strengths and weaknesses. Saying that a 275.00 constellation is better than a 140.00 hornet is like saying battlecruisers are better than marines (starcraft).

I’m only posting this because you seem to be rather misinformed about EVE, and I don’t like seeing people being misinformed about stuff.

Although I don’t know if you have played EVE or not for a longer period, but during my time playing, I myself got to the conclusion that EVE takes quite a pile of ‘skill’ (and time). It might not be the twitch reflexes of the average dogfighting game, but the needed skillset for (solo/small group) PVP in EVE is massive.

This makes me assume that you don’t play EVE (or you are not aware of how the game works). If you fly head on a target, sure he’ll nail you. But orbiting big ships like you described, still lets you to hold them in place virtually indefinitely. Although people like to describe EVE as Spreadsheet Online, it’s not just a game of numbers as it might seem like. If I had to guess it’s much more tactical and skill based than your average MMO. (A huge part of the skills you have to acquire in EVE is the knowledge of different ship types, effective fits, tactics and the understanding of different ship modules that make up the asymmetrical nature of the game. Then again there are other things that matter, like having good situational awareness or good reflexes for timing different actions.)

I don’t fully agree with that definition. Any significant advantage obtainable by paying extra cash would enter my definition. But it doesn’t really matter, the point is you’re paying to avoid extra work and/or grind, as you say here…

Which I assert is basically the same thing.

Yet, in my opinion, both sides should feel cheated. The worker should feel cheated for having to pay additional money to have the same experience as someone who only bought the game and nothing extra. The non-worker should feel cheated because the amount of effort required to attain the same level of kit as someone who pays is a significant time sink.

It’s also almost certainly why games that have these two-tier systems are so damn grindy… they have to make those that pay little work hard for the stuff the big spenders get for free.

If the sides were balanced. A side full of top-tier carriers and battleships will be significantly better off than an equivalent number of entry-tier ships in any pairing.

I’m going to stop there however, because the remainder of your post descends into speculation about battle physics and the amount of skill required to engage and dodge capital ships and vice versa…

1 Like

I played Eve, but not for long at all and I agree with you Aleon. When I was referring to skill, I was referring to twich fps-like skill. I consider the things that Eve requires, is what you described as tactics as opposed to player-skill. Maybe we use “skill” differently. Basically, if you’re really smart, you’ll be better at Eve. If you can remember all of the strategy about whatever ship you’re facing and what you have, and the best tactical approach considering the situation and can process this all very quickly in the heat of combat, you can win it. And it’s an admirable challenge.

What Star Citizen will have and I imagine what Battlescape will eventually have, is exactly all of that stuff, except with the FPS twitch skill added on top.

[quote=“Topperfalkon, post:8, topic:315”]
The worker should feel cheated for having to pay additional money to have the same experience as someone who only bought the game and nothing extra. [/quote]

Why should they feel cheated? They have the option of not paying extra. Nobody holds a gun to their head. The option is simply there if they feel the money is worth accomplishing their personal goals. I have to remind you that the goal of Star Citizen isn’t necessarily to get a more expensive ship. Someone could take their 60 dollar ship and spend the rest of the game in only that because they find that it’s the best balance between the traits that are important to them. There is going to be meaningful and specific gameplay for you no matter what ship you have, except maybe the Aurora/Mustang. There are probably no universally redeeming qualities of those two compared to the 300 series. But then again I’m sure purchasers of those ships would argue with me on that.

[quote=“Topperfalkon, post:8, topic:315”]
The non-worker should feel cheated because the amount of effort required to attain the same level of kit as someone who pays is a significant time sink.[/quote]
I don’t understand the logical correlation of why they are cheated. The only scenario that I can think of is, if what makes them happy while playing Star Citizen is the knowledge that they are the best ship hoarder or credit hoarder in the game and they don’t want other people to achieve their respective goals in the 'verse. Frankly, I don’t care very much about those people to be honest. There are always going to be people better than you (unless you’re sponsored by Monster and play MLG, then I guess you’re the best). The only difference in Star Citizen is that the 'verse starts mature instead of young as far as ship class variety. But it was going to be like that 6 months in regardless. The difference is that Star Citizen has a 40 millions dollar dev budget and rising. The only price that had to be paid was starting the 'verse as if it had been going for a few months already. In all reality, that’s all that changed.

The very basic entry ships like the mustang and aurora? I would completely agree with you. However, you get into some of the combat fighters like the hornet, and you could take one down if you’re good enough. And the beauty of the matchmaking persistent AI is that you will usually be pitted against people of the same skill/asset combination along with some other factors. Say you bought an Aurora for 35 bucks and the game package, and another guy buys the Idris Corvette for 1,250 bucks. In the 'verse, you guys won’t see each other in open space because the matchmaking AI won’t put you up against each other.

Not as speculative as you think. I’m pretty much paraphrasing what CR himself said combat will be like. I think he literally used the example of strafing capital ships with a fighter. I’m also basing my analysis on previous Chris Roberts games which feel like how I described. You hit and run capital ships to take them down, if you have enough skill to dodge the turrets, you can take down a bigger ship. And they’ve outlined exactly what this game should feel like, and it’s akin to the Wing Commander games, with a tiny tiny bit of Freelancer mixed in. Assuming they’re not misleading pledgers by how they’ve described it, it seems like that’s what they’re aiming for.

I LOL’ed at this. Yea they are, they all want new super cars and holiday homes, thats where your pledge has gone.

But seriously can someone or has someone worked out in a round about way how many people and what the average pledge would be to get this $40 mil??? Seems bloody high…

@Topperfalkon I agree with your thoughts on the SC crowd funding, we think alike.

I’m going to assume you’re being sarcastic.

You can find out yourself. On the front page of RSI, it gives you the total amount of money raised in real-time. And it gives you exactly how many people have pledged in real time. You just divide the amount raised by the number of people. It currently stands at 98.75 USD per pledger as an average.

There is a public access Google spreadsheet that gives detailed information on the progress of continuing crowdfunding by Cloud Imperium.
https://docs.google.com/a/moshezusman.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ariqrruk80VHdHVMREsxRWkwTXg2Rlc3clE0a3RwaXc#gid=4

Nope, not really.

Well for all of you who have sunk some money into it I guess you’ll be fairly pissed if its a failure. I mean getting everything they have said they want to do to work is a big call, not saying they won’t…yet…

Its one thing to pledge on KS and get a game into development, help the team. Its another to pay of a 3D model in a textured box in the hopes a game, as they are saying they want to do, will come from it.

Many of the developers currently working on Star Citizen said they took a pay cut to do so. But don’t take their word for it, just do the math like you did for the total per pledge.

As of February, Cloud Imperium has at least 212 people working on the dev team. It is the second largest PC game currently in development, the first being Elder Scrolls Online. Divide 40 million by 212 and divide that by 3 (length in years of the dev cycle, although technically the dev cycle is more like an mmo, where it doesn’t stop because they will release free new content every week after release) and you get 63,000 USD per employee, per year. Now this of course, doesn’t include, equipment, offices for 3 in-house studios and 3-4 contracted studios, taxes, fees taken by credit card companies and kickstarter, miscellaneous contractors like mocap subjects, contracting orchestras for the soundtrack, ect. This also doesn’t include overtime, benefits, and health insurance for each employee. I’m also not including the amount of time that the studios were under 212 people during the dev cycle. Rudimentary, but I figure it about evens out.

You can’t buy a second home on less than 60k USD/year. That’s in a lower-middle class income bracket. You can barely buy one house in California on 60k/year.

edit* I should also point out, that nobody took a bigger pay cut than Chris Roberts to do this. He was making likely 500,000 / year or far more as a Hollywood producer with Ascendent Pictures.

The way it’s going right now, especially since it has a 40 million dollar budget says it won’t. But if the unlikely happens, and it is a failure, then absolutely, everyone will be pissed and disappointed. That should include you and everyone who cares about the gaming industry regardless of whether we pledged or not. There is more riding on the success of Star Citizen than Star Citizen itself.

Like what?
If you’re talking about the ‘proving PC gaming isn’t dead’ idea, or the ‘proving space sims aren’t dead’ idea, then no there isn’t. Not for anyone who thinks for themselves.
Any semblance of SC having a broader meaning is due to Roberts himself pitching it as “proving PC gaming isn’t dead”.
So if it’s not a success, does that prove PC gaming is dead? No of course not. It just shows they didn’t make a successful game and/or that PC gamers demand a higher standard of gameplay than the average console gamer.
The idea that by pledging to SC you’re “proving PC gaming isn’t dead” is just marketing.

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When I first saw the trailer, I did think that that was a bit over the top, but I enjoyed the loud theatrics.

No, those aren’t what I was referring to. It’s the fact that Star Citizen is proving that you can get AAA title money for a AAA title game without the publisher, by going direct to fans. Have there been games before Star Citizen that were successfully crowdfunded? Of course. But it’s the sheer volume of money in this campaign that changes the game completely. That and the way Cloud Imperium was able to build and connect to a community so quickly and effectively.

Star Citizen is paving the way for bigger games in the future to be developed without Activision or EA fucking you over. I NEVER want to see what happened to Infinity Ward ever again. That shit is tragic and it happens all the time. It’s the biggest bane of the industry… the shareholder profit margin.

So much ignorance and pessimism. But we can’t expect everyone to keep up to date with Star Citizen can we Saturday? A bit of personal background so you all don’t think I’m just jumping on this bandwagon. I’ve been following Infinity: The Quest For Earth since January 2007 and logged into the site daily for 5 years. The only thing I’ve consistently followed for longer is a web comic called Questionable Content. I also have about 2 years all up of EVE experience under my belt.

I read all the fiction, all the dev updates, all the drama and theory crafting, saw literally hundreds of excellent ship designs and cityscapes and music tracks come through the contributions forum. What I’m trying to say is i know my shit when it comes to being a supporter of I:TQFE. But then the site went dark and those of us from those days will know how that felt. My dream space game had disappeared without a trace.

Fast forward to July 2013, the month I discovered Star Citizen. It’s everything I always wanted from Infinity, though with a hand crafted focus rather than a whole Milky Way. I’ve read almost everything from before July, and you can bet your ass I’ve kept up with every single article posted since, of which there is an average of 5-8 a week, 3 now being weekly videos. I hear you exclaiming “silly fanboy, blinded by the shiny”, but you couldn’t be more wrong. It’s precisely because I want it so badly, that I go over everything with a fine tooth comb and a healthy dose of reality.

So when I say that Star Citizen and Chris Roberts are literally the saviours of the PC gamers, I’m not exaggerating, but stating cold hard fact as far as I’ve been able to ascertain. What they are doing is giving a giant middle finger to the publishers and making the game they and we the gamers want to play. I have not seen a single thing to worry me.

See you in the verse.

/drops mic

It’s not the same comparison, because the total reach of “AAA games” is far wider. The reason SC got so large an investment is from trading off CR’s name and gaming history, the CryEngine label, and clever marketing. Therefore the total income is propped up by excited fans paying way over the expected face value of the game. As you say earlier…

I don’t really understand US game pricing, but that figure seems atypical to me. I’d also like to see a pledge distribution graph, to see what pledge level it skews towards.

So if I buy the game at launch I should just accept that I’m at a 6 month (or so) disadvantage to every other player that managed to pledge for and receive in-game rewards?
I dislike games that have “deluxe edition” or pre-order pledge bonuses, because they’re unfairly differentiating the game experience based on how much you’re willing to pay to play the game. This may sound hypocritical because I tend to purchase these editions, but I do so only because I can generally afford to do so and don’t really want to miss out on parts of the experience. The primary reason I dislike it is because in order to give value to these editions the bonuses can often be substantial or even game changing.

I also dislike games that allow you to pay rather than actually play the game to unlock stuff. I don’t dislike it on that principle alone, but also on the principal described above. If you can pay to unlock stuff, then to make it of value it’s generally harder to unlock stuff in the first place. This is typically how “free”-to-play games earn their money, yet others have used it for more traditional single/multi-player games (I’m looking at you EA), and some free-to-play or hybrid MMO games like GW2 do this less offensively, by making the things on offer largely cosmetic. As a result, most free-to-play games are excessively grind-driven, and not that fun to play as a result.

Except it isn’t and he isn’t, where are those facts you speak of. The PC gaming industry is in pretty good shape at the moment.

Except they’re not really doing that in either case. In the first instance, they’re not really giving a middle finger to publishers at all. Maybe to MGS, which killed off Digital Anvil after Freelancer, but that’s a different issue. In the latter case, what I certainly want is many of the things Infinity aspires to be. Star Citizen is a distant second-best. Even Infinity probably wont be the definitive game I want to play, but that’s because the people making the game and contributing to its making have different opinions to me. And that’s fine. One day I will hopefully take the time to make the games I want to play, and maybe there’ll be others that share my vision, but to me that’s not the point of making games.

I mean, it’s nice that you’re passionate about that project, but I think until there’s an actual game to play you should reserve some of the hyperbole :wink:

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I don’t know what you mean by this. Which comparison?

[quote=“Topperfalkon, post:17, topic:315”]
The reason SC got so large an investment is from trading off CR’s name and gaming history, the CryEngine label, and clever marketing. Therefore the total income is propped up by excited fans paying way over the expected face value of the game.[/quote]
I would say that’s pretty accurate. I might also throw in the fact that the space sim, whether people remembered CR or not, was fairly dead. PC gaming as a whole? Not dead, but certainly greatly diminished. Space sims though? That’s undeniable. You only have a tiny handful of options in that genre. And they suck, a lot. Wing Commander used to be the cutting edge of technology at every release. Freelancer was going to be the cutting edge but there were delays. It was still incredible. After Freelancer, the genre declined relative to the rest of the gaming industry.

I would also say the type of game he was making (completely revolutionary from a features and mechanics standpoint) was like nothing else before. In otherwords, I don’t know how successful a simple “Freelancer 2” would have been even if he could have gotten the IP.

I also think the reassurance that regardless of how well or not well the crowdfunding goes, the fact he made it known he had private investors lined up to make a 20 mil game even if crowdfunding only got him the minimum 2 mil was successful in mitigating the risk to the pledger that is present during any crowdfunding project.

However he did it, he proved it can be done. And other developers in the future can emulate his strategy or improve on it and succeed.

It is atypical. The normal AAA game at release in the United States is 59.99 USD.

[quote=“Topperfalkon, post:17, topic:315”]
So if I buy the game at launch I should just accept that I’m at a 6 month (or so) disadvantage to every other player that managed to pledge for and receive in-game rewards?[/quote]
I should ask you a question. If Star Citizen was completely a single-player game. Would you still feel “cheated”?

Because when people bring this up, I’m trying to figure out exactly how and in what situation their goals and gameplay will be affected negatively. How will how much “fun” you have be affected? If this was any other game, with any other game mechanics, I would completely agree with you. I wouldn’t like it.

But I’m asking these questions because, through a variety of game design choices, Cloud Imperium has managed to almost entirely mitigate the negative effects of their crowdfunding model.

I think I know what you’re worried about. You’re worried about the following situation:

Player A and Player B buy Star Citizen. In the current model, Player A buys the 65.00 USD 300i Personal Fighter package and Player B buys the 275.00 Constellation Frigate package. Both players play the same amount on release. They encounter each other in deep space. Player B defeats Player A with an advantage of a ship with more hull points, more weapons, and thicker shields that come with the frigate. Player A is now dealing with the time lost, the setback of losing their ship in combat, a setback that would not have necessarily occurred if Player B did not have access to buying a frigate for 275.00 USD. In this situation, I completely agree with you. It is unfair for Player A.

Let me give you a list of game design mechanics, working as a whole, that make this situation uncommon in the persistent universe.

-PvP Slider- Star Citizen will feature a slider in the settings than can be changed when landed or docked. You can choose how much you want the persistent universe AI to put you up against Players or AI combatants during your journeys through the 'verse. You can slide it all the way to PVE and 80% of your encounters will be against AI instead of players. But say you want all PvP, just without the scenario described above (like I do), fair enough. Keep reading.
-Real Time Matchmaking AI- Star Citizen’s persistent universe will feature real-time seamless instancing. The servers decide who you see at any given location or time in the 'verse. Everyone is on one server, but you can’t see everyone all the time. The game decides who you will encounter in deep space based on each of your assets (ships/weapons, ect) and your player skill. Most of the time, you will encounter roughly a fair fight, Some of the time, the server will choose not to give you a fair fight, about as much as it decides to sometimes give you a fight weighted in your favor (after all, space is dangerous). All of this will be happening behind the scenes as you’re doing whatever you’re doing.
-Rock Paper Scissors Balancing- Even if the server decides to put Player A against Player B, on the offchance, then comes the balancing of the ships. Each ship will have strengths and weakness. As I described before, the constellation frigate will not be as fast as the 300i fighter. It will not be as maneuverable. If an attack is executed properly ie, if Player A is utilizing their strengths, and minimizing their weakness, Player A can win that fight, possibly even easily. Player A can also simply just outrun the frigate. If Player B is keeping their turrets in position and is stocked with a full crew, and minimizing their engine blindspot exposure ie playing to their strengths and minimizing their weaknesses, then they would win the fight. Which leads me into-
-Twitch Skill Combat- An idiot with a frigate is going to lose against an expert with a fighter most of the time. Star Citizen is a skill based game. The outcome of combat is going to be based more on your personal skill as a player more than anything else.

To sum it up. The only time where an unfair fight occurs between Player A and player B in the persistent universe is if,

-they are in the same place, at the same time
-both have their PvP sliders set to PvP
-the matchmaking server decides to give an unfair fight to Player A
-Player A is worse skill-wise than Player B and doesn’t know how to take advantage of the strengths of their ship and weakness of Player B’s ship

Only if all of the above criteria are true, will this combat result in a losing battle that was unfair because of the crowdfunding system.

And even if all of those criteria were fulfilled, and this fight happened. Player A could still simply run, Malcolm Reynolds style.

To recap, I agree with you Topper, that in a “normal” game, this crowdfunding design would result in unfair encounters. But Star Citizen doesn’t have the normal mechanics. It’s not a normal game.

LOL, you must know how ironic this admonition is on this forum of all places.

Just in case someone forgot …

This thread has been derailed …

Please argue over the matter in the Star Citizen thread or open a new general thread concerning financial models/marketing/pc gaming/etc.etc.etc…

This thread is about crowd funding after the Kickstarter of Infinity:Battlescape specifically. Star Citizen was just an example of it.

This only applies for the last 5 or 7 posts.

Done. Sorry about that…

Also, I love Discourse for the ease in which you can split off a new topic.