I’m baffled as to who is still giving Star Citizen money in 2021. Like, is it existing whales? Do guys who paid $600 for virtual spaceships in 2017 still buy $600 virtual spaceships in 2021? New whales? Small purchases from a lot of people? I don’t understand it at all.
Am I correct in understanding that blurb means that 2021 was actually the biggest funding year yet?
I suspect so. I don’t think there’s much buzz around the game anymore except for people who’re taken in by the con and people making fun of it.
I agree.
It would never occur to me to put money into a game that had such an appalling history (I like saving up to buy a well-reviewed game.)
But sometimes a wave of enthusiasm sweeps across and sucks suckers in: 
OK? Who leaked the newest special mi$$ion$?
In those examples, at least greed is a motivating factor. People think they’re going to get rich following the latest craze. It’s dumb, but you can at least understand their motivation. But I haven’t read anything about being able to sell star citizen assets, so I don’t think people have convinced themselves it’s an investment or anything like that.
I think it’s more FOMO (fear of missing out) than greed.
Man, this thread is full of great ideas for things to add to Star Citizen. In this case, a secondary market in space ships. You can buy a Supreme Eradicator now, for only $1500, but we guarantee to only create 100 of them, and tie each one to an NFT. You can re-sell the NFT, possibly for far more once the game opens!
There’s no comparison here though. Cyberpunk 2077 had technical issues (and a few broken systems), but it had, at launch, a an exhaustive storyline featuring dozens of complex characters, a couple hundred side activities and adventures, and actual world that rewarded exploration and observation. This is not to ignore its real problems (I could easily go into that in another thread), but CP77 was a very good game with a rough launch. More to the point, it’s complete - even maybe a bit overstuffed with content and variations and endings.
I feel like I remember reading about ship selling being a really big deal relatively early in the SC saga. The earliest backers were able to buy a lot of exclusive ships and there was a booming secondary market.
And yeah, Cyberpunk 2077 was a good game. It wasn’t the next Witcher, but it was never going to be that. I bought it at launch, played it in its initial state, and had a perfectly pleasant time with it.
It’s okay for a game, even a game from a big developer, to not revolutionize a genre.
Well I Googled something and it took me to Star Citizen Youtube videos and that answers two questions:
There are early access games that have much more polish, function, and features than Cyberpunk 2077. If Cyberpunk released as early access, people would be surprised (because it’s form a big studio) but it would make sense as an early access game that clearly needed a lot more development. You’re doing the sort of stereotyping I’m talking about when you assume all early access games lack content, that is simply not the case. Many early access games have more content and more polish than Cyberpunk 2077 did. The only difference is that those games choose to label their on-going developmental status as “early access” whereas AAA titles just release a broken game and gradually fix them but don’t call them early access. It’s just a self-applied label.
It’s foolish to decide whether you’re going to buy a game based on whether they choose to use the label early access or not. To scoff at early access games that, for whatever reason, are still called early access by their developers despite being feature complete and polished (which is not uncommon) but to think completely broken “released” games are okay is arbitrary and really makes no sense.
Games should be judged on their individual merits, “early access” or not. There is really no rigid categorical difference between early access and non-early access games except that early access indicates an intent to keep developing games whereas non-early access games may or may not continue development.
I think he was comparing Cyberpunk to Star Citizen, rather than Early Access games in general, which as you point out are so wide ranging in quality and content that they don’t make an easy comparison. I’ve certainly playing Early Access games that are in a broken, unsaleable state.
When I checked last year sometime, upthread, most of the ships sold were actually playable in game - 110 playable, 27 ‘in concept’ and 13 in production.
Looking at the same link now, I don’t know how I got that information - it looks like they’ve taken the playable/concept/production information out of it. It is available elsewhere:
Many of even the expensive ships are playable, although the multiple-thousand-dollar ones aren’t.
So, there is a sandbox style tech demo, and you can buy a variety of ships to fly in it - they’ve got enough ships now that they can cycle sales of them to always be offering flyable ones. They all apparently have different roles, but how those roles currently play out I don’t know.
Maybe a money laundering scheme.
Lots of 1000 buck untracable source money purchases getting funneled into paying the lease on a big new office building they want.
I think we are not going to agree there. CP77 is a 100+ hour masterpiece that asks, and allows you the player to answer in a meaningful way, serious existential questions about life (and it’s an absolute blast which allows for a wide array of fun adventures and experiences). There are games with more content. There are games which are more polished. There are games with more features.
I am not certain I’ve ever seen a better game, merely different games.
That being said, other popular Early Access titles include Valheim, Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord, and Satisfactory. These are good games. I would go so far as to say that each one is great in its own way. However, none of them really have characters, or a story, or even gameplay apart from building and fighting - a common theme of Early Access games. By contrast, CP77 was intended from the beginning to as a story-based RPG. The content is extremely large, but deliberately not infinite.
I don’t think whether the story of a game asks existential questions about life really has anything to do with its level of development, how finished/ready for release it is, and whether or not it’s more or less developed than an early access game. By that standard, any story-based games that are a little philosophical or challenging are always superior to a game like, for example, factorio.
“Early access” connotes a level of development, not the genre or aim of a game. Cyberpunk was undercooked, at least a year from being suitable for release, and in that way, it was actually less developed than many early access games currently are. I’m saying that every game should be evaluated on its individual merits. It is ridiculous to me to say something like “I wouldn’t buy Dyson Sphere Program, it’s early access!” but then be willing to buy broken, clearly underdeveloped and not suitable for release AAA games because they’re not labelled early access. I think we may have lost the thread on this one. My original point was that some people irrationally avoid anything that says “early access” under the presumption that they are underdeveloped even when the game in question is not, and then happily buy underdeveloped AAA games because they have aren’t going to be labelled as “early access” even though their developmental state is worse than many early access games.
The very fact they sell ships for thousands of dollars at all tells me everything I need to know.
It also confirms the suspicion that the marks now are all existing marks being Spanish-prisonered out of more of their money. No one new to the game would buy something like that.
You know, I’ve got a buddy who’s been playing WoW since its very first days. He’s at the point where it’s not even about the game anymore; it’s about the community that he’s a part of. He only puts serious playtime in when expansions come out, and otherwise it’s just a social space that occasionally involves doing various bits of end-game content.
Star Citizen’s kickstarter was nine years ago. Whatever else you want to say about the game, that’s more than enough time to build a sense of community. And it does appear that CIG is very, very good at making its backers feel like they’re part of something special.
Feeling special is an important part of this type of confidence scheme. The mark keeps paying not only because of the sunk cost fallacy, but because they don’t want to go back to being normal.
So you’ve got the Spanish Prisoner layer. But the classic Spanish Prisoner is a fictional stranger. This is like one of those schemes where a family member conspires with the kidnappers to split the ransom. “Freeing the prisoner” isn’t just about the payoff - they genuinely want the game to be successful because they genuinely care about both it and its community.
So what are the options for a whale who’s just beginning to see the light?
Option 1) You can just stop buying stuff and remain an active part of the community, but you’ve got to watch your fellow members becoming more and more special as your own fictional ships become one, two, three, four years out of date. You’re falling out of the loop! You are becoming less special each time a new ship or package is released and you don’t buy it.
Option 2) You can stop buying stuff and also withdraw from the community. If the game ever finishes, great! But that’s the sunk-cost sweet spot. You’ve already spent the money, and if you’re not supporting the game in some way (even if just by word of mouth and generating buzz), it might never finish and you lose everything. Further, not only are you cutting off contact with your friends in the SC community, you’re actively betraying them by no longer supporting the Great Work.
Option 3) You can try to get a refund. Depending on where you live, this has varying levels possibility and will almost certainly involve some level of legal action. In the best-case scenario, you get your money back and your account is permanently deactivated. You are a pariah, a traitor, an exile.
All bitter pills to swallow for a whale. A lot easier to say, “well, I’ve been budgeting fifty bucks a month for the last six years. No reason to stop now, and it’s still cheaper than a nice cup of coffee every day.”
Option 4: try to bring the community with you to somewhere else.
~Max
Earth 2 for example.
Earth 2 is like NFTs, but not bothering with blockchain.