Out of Pod Experience

Hello fellas. I've been following the development of this game for quite some time now, but I haven't done any real research to understand the financial model of it. You may call me a distant follower or just plain stupid. However, I thought someone could confirm/deny what I get out of this project from the financial PoV and even explain few points; here we go:

1.The whole start capital is coming from the player base via donations or pre-sales of in-game content.

2.The more money RSI gets from their supporters (future players), the better quality and features they will deliver.

3.They started with a goal of $2mil and right now they are over the $9mil mark. It has come so far, that their most expensive package worth $15k (the completionist package) sold out already.

4.RSI will acquire a whole MoCap studio, so they don't have to pay $25k-$50k/day every time they want to capture motions for characters once they get up to $10mil, taking in mind this in a spaceship based game (although there will be a single player version of the game, which should profit from this a lot, correct me if I am wrong please).

5.Once the game is out, there will be micro-transactions and a lot of potential for more money input from the same people who financed the game from scratch.

One could add a lot more of peculiarities but I think that's enough to make my point.

The only thing that players will get out of this, is an awesome, probably AAA+ quality game in all relevant regards for this niche market which is dandy and all... but (yeah "but") don't they see a slightly imbalance there, when it comes to who is getting shitloads more out of this business? Are players so passionate and/or is the market delivering so badly, that they decided to maintain and sustain a project by themselves regardless the obvious profit imbalances? Or it's just me and my environment not allowing me to think any further as for example of the existence of a richer player base where the laws of elasticity are as valid as the idea of germany being chosen by god to lead the world and protect israel from any threats.

--end of transmission--

Some quick points...

The development cost for Star Citizen is up to 20+ million dollars. Of those, a part have been raised through crowdfunding, and part have been raised from private investors (someone had to pay for the licensing of CryEngine 3, fai).

As for what players get, well, obviously they get extended access to the game. 200,000 pledgers will access Alpha, Beta, Gold and then will obtain the release game for the price of their pledge. I personally pledged quite early (pledger #3,000 some) for what i think it was a good deal: 45 euros for a game whose retail price very likely will be higher than that.

AND, there's intangibles, which are the reason why homo aeconomicus is bovine fecal matter, with all due respect to economists and other charlatans.

The main reason to pledge for SC it's not economical, period.

Space Citizen is destined to fail , and will become nothing more than a mere tech demo.
The very intrinsic nature of multiplayer games is fluidity and performance .

In a market where those with current gen graphics card are the few and performance junkies are the niche .
The number of international player won't be able to support the MMO nature of Star Citizen.

1st: it's Star Citizen. Hence wrong title

2nd: yeah, it is, a game to be delivered in 2 years

3rd: which was the question? The crowdfunding model? The amount of money gathered so far? The amount of money necessary to build a AAA game? The amount of money Chris Roberts is making with his internet spaceship business?

for sure the leadership is important, but it's hard to say if more or less than the content

Two easy examples: Oculus Rift and Star Citizen. The former was such a genial and revolutionary "thing" that even my mum would have got the money. The latter was surely a nice idea, a very well built project, a focused campaign, but the fact the one presenting it was a guy named Chris Roberts for sure made the difference. And indeed the "idolatry" is a very common behaviour in the Star Citizen community. Seriously, they are totally fanatic with Chris.

That being said Star Citizen willl be a pay once play forever title, like all the classic ones. Then in the "online version" (I can't call it MMO tbh) you could probably purchase stuff via microtransactions and so on.

But I don't have to tell ya we're writing on a forum of a game that asks us 17 bucks per month to be played! So who's throwing more money at who?

Ya, dem internet spaceships is serious business.