Exactly! I guess it's just overall ignorance when it comes to game development and how expensive & time consuming it really is. People just don't grasp the mammoth scope of SC.
I always give the example of
a pile of rubbish in The Division costing $3500. It builds perspective real quick.
These are estimates from someone who was trying to promote an AI building engine for procedural generating games.
He
ESTIMATED that the developer salary is $60/hr and how many hours it would take
HIM to create the scene. Completely forgetting that more and more companies shift their development to low cost countries.
Nor he got any numbers from Ubisoft of the cost of the game. Which by the way was on a brand new engine.
You need to read the whole article not the headlines only.
Yet none of those games, as far as I've seen and played, are at the level SQ42 or SC aims to be. Actually no game is or planned to be. Why? Because it takes time and technology to make it, while all are concentrating on what they can get out ASAP to charge as much as possible.
Ahh always the same argument. You brush under the amount of money spent already and how many engines and APIs already CIS has changed.
Also you dismiss the fact that Elite was made with 1/60th of Star Citizen money.
You completely ignore that SQ42 is not a single game. But multiple games lasting 8 hours each, where if you want to play the full "story line" of SQ42 you have to buy them all, one after the other at their full price also.
You completely ignore that the FPS module burn a substantial amount of money (around $100 million) was delayed 3 times and now is canned forever. That was money lost not from some publisher company, like
@Poneros trying to imply but from the people who spend money to buy artificial ships or back this project.
You completely ignore the fact that if Roberts wanted to have the game released, couldn't scope creep it over 7 years, while burning money at the rate of $4-6 million per month. Again not some investor money, but common folk who have made SC a religion given their reactions.
Star Citizen is doomed to fail financially and implode within the first year (at best) if ever comes out, because is a pyramid scheme. Need to comprehend that.
It has no market to expand with fresh money. Everyone interested in the game has bought into it. From normal casuals like myself having got everything from a voucher (that was a bargain), to the whales have spend tens of thousands. There is no money tree any more. All the money CIS managed to get for the project has already done so.
And if no new money come in, is bust given that CIS is running on "steam" after having just left with a year worth of expenditure for 2019 and no more money for 2020.
That's the difference between other games like ED. Because ED cost so little to make, it had market to expand and did actually sell a lot.
Roberts isn't stupid. Nobody in the game industry could give him the money to make a game after his track record. So instead of having all legal contracts from companies like MS, Ubi, EA, XYZ, decided to use crowdfunding away from normal crowdfunding channels also with his own T&C. Having change the T&C numerous times atm to his favour also.
All those who have bought the ships now legally cannot claim their money back. Because they can play with those ships to what ever space has provided. So even if he completely goes belly up tomorrow, owes you nothing. Regardless if there is no playable game there.
And then dream about big scopes of taking decades to be done, completely ignoring reality of economics and logic.
