Star Citizen, Holiday Sale (aka Sale 2.0)

Daikuru

MadFrenchie

Daikuru said:

Haha, indeed.  The comedic timing (this was the first post of the new page, dunno if you planned that or not) was impeccable.

My discussion with @SpottyGekko ;has long departed from my original point: that it's not unfair to call Roberts a bad bet if one so chooses.  That's not to say he didn't do some good work with Wing Commander in the past; just that he hasn't followed a project through to completion in a while, and the last time he tried he ended up having to leave it to someone else to finish.  Folks can take from that whatever they like, but my original post was justifying @Uhwop 's weariness of supporting a Roberts project.

However, I didn't mind arguing with Gecko over the points, as his argument consists of much better supporting logic than does the arguments about MMO labeling I've been reading over in the Pub lately.  And I always enjoy a good argument.

SpottyGekko

MadFrenchie said:

SpottyGekko said:

Can you cite some sources for this alleged "feature creep" in Freelancer that you keep mentioning ?

I can cite, but really it isn't something that needs to be.  Roberts admitted he didn't have the funds to finish the game, which was part of the reason the talks with Microsoft began.

Microsoft subsequently stated they were cutting some of the planned features in order to finish the game.

So Roberts, being the director of the project, planned grand features for the game.  He runs out of money trying to develop the game with all these grand features he wanted in the game.  Subsequently, DA has to look to Microsoft for more funding.  In the process, Roberts leaves the project (retaining only a minimal consultant role and having no authority to make any design decisions from that point on).  Microsoft cuts some of Roberts planned features and, lo and behold, we get a gold release to favorable reviews.


What part of that is confusing?  Do you think, had Microsoft told Roberts, "Here's a bunch of money, you can continue development however you like!"  Roberts still would have been like, "Nah, F the man, dude!  I'm going indie!" And threw up the hang loose sign as we walked out the door?

Or is it a much more likely scenario that Microsoft said, "Yea, we will fund, but we don't see this releasing within a reasonable timeframe with all your planned features.  You'll have to cut some of those."  At which point Roberts, seeing the game would not see the light of day but not wanting to be under the heel of Microsoft, probably did what was best for his team at DA and the game by simply bowing out to allow them to get paid to finish the game like Microsoft wanted while he moved on to another project without Microsoft's oversight?

Which goes back to my point about someone reigning Roberts in.  Had Microsoft not offered to fund in exchange for the authority to cut features, Freelancer would never have released.  Remember, Roberts isn't even credited as the game's designer- Neumann is.

All of this (Roberts admitting he needed more funding and Microsoft narrowing the scope) can be found in GameSpot's coverage of the game around the year 2000, if you'd like to check it.

Again, a rambling 1000-word essay that does not answer the question at all.

You alleged on several occasions that CR "kept on adding stuff" (i.e. feature creep), when in fact there's nothing to support that allegation. You also stated that Microsoft "stopped adding stuff". Nobody was "adding stuff", so nobody could "stop" adding stuff, lol Where do you get this nonsense from ?

It's a well-known fact that many people were concerned about the original design and feature list of Freelancer. It was extremely ambitious for its time, and many thought it wouldn't be technically feasible. There are plenty of references to support that.


It's also abundantly clear that Microsoft missed their own announced deadlines twice, each time by a whole YEAR ! So it wasn't all rainbows and ponies under MS's guidance either. They obviously underestimated the challenges and complexity of the project significantly.

SpottyGekko

MadFrenchie said:

...

However, I didn't mind arguing with Gecko over the points, as his argument consists of much better supporting logic than does the arguments about MMO labeling I've been reading over in the Pub lately.  And I always enjoy a good argument.

Salut !

Glad to see my arguments are considered more logical than that hilarious labelling triviality. It's not much of a bar, but at least we're above it, lol

Brenics

Fun in SC, who you will be playing with!

MadFrenchie

SpottyGekko said:

MadFrenchie said:

SpottyGekko said:

Can you cite some sources for this alleged "feature creep" in Freelancer that you keep mentioning ?

I can cite, but really it isn't something that needs to be.  Roberts admitted he didn't have the funds to finish the game, which was part of the reason the talks with Microsoft began.

Microsoft subsequently stated they were cutting some of the planned features in order to finish the game.

So Roberts, being the director of the project, planned grand features for the game.  He runs out of money trying to develop the game with all these grand features he wanted in the game.  Subsequently, DA has to look to Microsoft for more funding.  In the process, Roberts leaves the project (retaining only a minimal consultant role and having no authority to make any design decisions from that point on).  Microsoft cuts some of Roberts planned features and, lo and behold, we get a gold release to favorable reviews.


What part of that is confusing?  Do you think, had Microsoft told Roberts, "Here's a bunch of money, you can continue development however you like!"  Roberts still would have been like, "Nah, F the man, dude!  I'm going indie!" And threw up the hang loose sign as we walked out the door?

Or is it a much more likely scenario that Microsoft said, "Yea, we will fund, but we don't see this releasing within a reasonable timeframe with all your planned features.  You'll have to cut some of those."  At which point Roberts, seeing the game would not see the light of day but not wanting to be under the heel of Microsoft, probably did what was best for his team at DA and the game by simply bowing out to allow them to get paid to finish the game like Microsoft wanted while he moved on to another project without Microsoft's oversight?

Which goes back to my point about someone reigning Roberts in.  Had Microsoft not offered to fund in exchange for the authority to cut features, Freelancer would never have released.  Remember, Roberts isn't even credited as the game's designer- Neumann is.

All of this (Roberts admitting he needed more funding and Microsoft narrowing the scope) can be found in GameSpot's coverage of the game around the year 2000, if you'd like to check it.

Again, a rambling 1000-word essay that does not answer the question at all.

You alleged on several occasions that CR "kept on adding stuff" (i.e. feature creep), when in fact there's nothing to support that allegation. You also stated that Microsoft "stopped adding stuff". Nobody was "adding stuff", so nobody could "stop" adding stuff, lol Where do you get this nonsense from ?

It's a well-known fact that many people were concerned about the original design and feature list of Freelancer. It was extremely ambitious for its time, and many thought it wouldn't be technically feasible. There are plenty of references to support that.


It's also abundantly clear that Microsoft missed their own announced deadlines twice, each time by a whole YEAR ! So it wasn't all rainbows and ponies under MS's guidance either. They obviously underestimated the challenges and complexity of the project significantly.

I submit the feature creep point still stands because, as a project lead, he should have been able to see before running out of funding that not all his features were feasible.  I feel that feature creep is still feature creep, no matter at what point the features that are not feasible are introduced to the project.

As for the delays, though Microsoft may have delayed to the end of 2002, Roberts himself submitted the project needed a year and a half more work at the end of 2000 (I believe it was in the interview with GameSpot at the time of the acquisition announcement).  I personally was not able to find a release date estimate from Microsoft before the aforementioned end of 2002 estimate.  Like I said, I couldn't get your link to work on my phone to look at that article.  Regardless, the project needed both extra funding from Microsoft and a trimming of features to even be completed.  As a lead, Roberts should have seen he wouldn't be able to manage all the planned features before running so dry on resources he had to hand the project off.  With that in mind, I can't put my faith in him as a project lead and back SC.

SpottyGekko

MadFrenchie said:

...

I submit the feature creep point still stands because, as a project lead, he should have been able to see before running out of funding that not all his features were feasible.  I feel that feature creep is still feature creep, no matter at what point the features that are not feasible are introduced to the project.

...

No, lol, you cannot make up your own definition for a well-established piece of industry jargon !

The definition of "feature creep" (or "scope creep") is that something gets bigger over time. For instance, it starts with an original design with 10 features, then becomes 11 features after 3 months, then 15 features after 6 months and so on. That was not the case with Freelancer.

This is a relevant point with regards to SC, because it's my opinion that SC, unlike Freelancer, did in fact suffer from "feature creep", due to the ballooning list of stretch goals. That stopped a long time ago, which is somewhat encouraging.

As for the changing release dates under Microsoft's watch, I set those out nicely a few posts back. Apologies for the link, here's the proper one: http://www.bluesnews.com/s/22790/freelancer-delayed

Kefo

SEANMCAD said:

Kefo said:

SEANMCAD said:

Kefo said:

SEANMCAD said:

which is something that happens ALL THE TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

pretty much every industry and pretty much every product almot to the point that its expected.

Maybe for you but if a company says they are delivering a product on this date then I expect it on that date. 

'for me' is completely irrelevant to my point that you are just glossing over
 

I didn't gloss over anything. I made a statement that if someone promises a product by a certain date then they better deliver by then. Exceptions are if they have a good reason to delay said product and delaying by more than a year means you have piss poor project management skills or someone seriously screwed up in which point I 90% wont be buying your product anyway.

then you know 'for me' doesnt have any revelance whatsoever to what I said. because i am not stating an opinion. I am stating a fact.

oh and please do link about lets say 5 post on one game from another fourm related to a different game that was late. because MOST are.

I venture that you are NOT upset when someone gives a date and breaks it just when CR does it. Not when EA does it, not when ubisoft does it...no no..just CR

You sprinkled fact in with your opinion. Products are late(that's the fact) you saying almost to the point it is expected is your opinion. I don't expect products to be late outside of the exceptions I listed. Feel free to continue focusing on the smallest detail of my post in the hopes that you will be able to direct this topic somewhere that has no relevance.

Erillion

Clarification from Ben Lesnick on post launch ship sales:
(There will be only starter ships, no larger ships)


"BadNewsBaron is incorrect, I have not made any such post and CIG has made no such announcement. "
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/6176447/#Comment_6176447

Have fun

MadFrenchie

SpottyGekko said:

MadFrenchie said:

...

I submit the feature creep point still stands because, as a project lead, he should have been able to see before running out of funding that not all his features were feasible.  I feel that feature creep is still feature creep, no matter at what point the features that are not feasible are introduced to the project.

...

No, lol, you cannot make up your own definition for a well-established piece of industry jargon !

The definition of "feature creep" (or "scope creep") is that something gets bigger over time. For instance, it starts with an original design with 10 features, then becomes 11 features after 3 months, then 15 features after 6 months and so on. That was not the case with Freelancer.

This is a relevant point with regards to SC, because it's my opinion that SC, unlike Freelancer, did in fact suffer from "feature creep", due to the ballooning list of stretch goals. That stopped a long time ago, which is somewhat encouraging.

As for the changing release dates under Microsoft's watch, I set those out nicely a few posts back. Apologies for the link, here's the proper one: http://www.bluesnews.com/s/22790/freelancer-delayed

But what difference is the effect on the project whether the features are introduced in the beginning and not cut when the resources necessitate it as opposed to features being added when there aren't resources to support the development of the new features?  In the end, both result in a bloated development that causes resources to run thin before the game approaches a releasable state.

Thanks for the updated link btw.

Erillion

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/6176433/#Comment_6176433

More clarification from Ben Lesnick on various theories w.r.t. post launch monetization theories. "We are not even talking about this."

Have fun

SpottyGekko

MadFrenchie said:

But what difference is the effect on the project whether the features are introduced in the beginning and not cut when the resources necessitate it as opposed to features being added when there aren't resources to support the development of the new features?  In the end, both result in a bloated development that causes resources to run thin before the game approaches a releasable state.

Thanks for the updated link btw.

There's a significant difference.

Feature creep is a sign of bad project management. Here a properly budgeted project is endangered by consciously adding things which were not initially planned for. Often leads to the fallacy of "if it takes 1 programmer 30 days to write this, then we can do it in 1 day if we hire 30 programmers". Believe me, I've seen shades of that bizarre logic on several projects, lol.

Overambitous initial design will result in unexpected delays and cost overruns as problems are encountered during the development process. This frequently happens to "bleeding-edge" projects, because it's basically impossible to accurately estimate how long it will take to do something that has never been done before.

Freelancer suffered from the latter, and SC has a bit of both, it seems.

In a project with a fixed budget and timeline, these two issues can be potentially fatal, especially in combination. Luckily, SC has neither of these constraints.

TheYear1500

Erillion said:

1) there would not BE 104 million in the crowdfunding pot without Chris Roberts

2) E:D was NOT cheap (in the order of 84 million) and the current scope is much smaller than SC (and delivered over years in sequential parts) - and that is coming from an Elite fan. 


Have fun

hahahaha, so you are just making up numbers now? 

In no way did ED cost 84 million.  Try less then 20 million.  

MadFrenchie

SpottyGekko said:

There's a significant difference.

Feature creep is a sign of bad project management. Here a properly budgeted project is endangered by consciously adding things which were not initially planned for. Often leads to the fallacy of "if it takes 1 programmer 30 days to write this, then we can do it in 1 day if we hire 30 programmers". Believe me, I've seen shades of that bizarre logic on several projects, lol.

Overambitous initial design will result in unexpected delays and cost overruns as problems are encountered during the development process. This frequently happens to "bleeding-edge" projects, because it's basically impossible to accurately estimate how long it will take to do something that has never been done before.

Freelancer suffered from the latter, and SC has a bit of both, it seems.

In a project with a fixed budget and timeline, these two issues can be potentially fatal, especially in combination. Luckily, SC has neither of these constraints.

But, again the end result is the same if the project leads aren't managing it properly.

Either way you start, if the management of the project is poor (due to feature creep or the managers lack of foresight in cutting non-essential features as delays and overruns happen), it will result in a poor quality product if that product makes it to release at all.

Both are undesirable, and both are the result of poor project management.  However, your statement about SC not having a fixed budget nor a timeline is interesting, as it's what sparks the largest fear in my mind: a Roberts who has no reigns whatsoever, who can simply do a little marketing and rake in more cash over and over, who can keep extending deadlines with justifications to folks who are living on the dream and suffering from confirmation bias in the form of wishful thinking because they've sunk resources of their own into the project.  They want to believe Roberts will manage the product better than he did the last one he was in charge of (with no real portfolio of work between that project and this one to serve as any evidence) because they want that game to happen and they do not want to believe they might have bought a ticket on the maiden voyage of the Titanic.  Crowdfunding backers have much less say; they are simply unable to enforce anything upon Roberts other than releasing something, which (I think) is why crowdfunding is a dream come true for him.  He stated way back in 2000 he didn't want to be a part of a larger organization due to the restrictions it placed upon him.  Well, that project needed those restrictions to actually make it to launch.

That's a scary thought to me.  We've seen in the past that he refuses to allow a publisher to reel him back in, preferring to leave the project instead.  Now, he has no publishers to worry about, and the backers have pretty slim avenues of recourse against him simply saying, "Oh, we've hit a snag: not this year.  Next year!" over and over while promoting ship sales through the justification of, "every dollar you send brings us closer to our dream!"  I don't think Roberts does this maliciously.  I think he just wants his dream so badly, too, that he is incapable of being realistic about it.  And that is based solely on the evidence of the last time he tried to make a "bleeding-edge" project.

Had he even managed one project between Freelancer and SC to completion, proving that he was able to keep his feet on the ground through a project's development from start to launch, I would not feel so worried about this project and the backers who've spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on the dream.  In stark contrast, E:D has taken a route of "Let's polish up the basics first, then we can add those bells and whistles that we all want in our dream game."  This route not only seems to be working for them, but it is a much more upfront and honest way of building such a crowdfunded game (in my opinion).

Erillion

TheYear1500 said:

Erillion said:

1) there would not BE 104 million in the crowdfunding pot without Chris Roberts

2) E:D was NOT cheap (in the order of 84 million) and the current scope is much smaller than SC (and delivered over years in sequential parts) - and that is coming from an Elite fan. 


Have fun

hahahaha, so you are just making up numbers now? 

In no way did ED cost 84 million.  Try less then 20 million.  

Estimated Development cost had, in Braben's own words, "grown by quite a lot" beyond the estimated cost (see E:D Wikipedia entry). 

By checking out the yearly company reports a significant amount of money has been spend on an unspecified project. Significantly more than the money from the Kickstarter and Frontiers own Paypal  campaign for E:D. 

The 84 is the upper limit. Depends on how many OTHER big  unspecified projects Frontier is working on at the moment. In my personal estimate: not many.
 

Have fun


PS:

That estimate includes development of Horizons DLC, the console and Mac versions. 

MadFrenchie

Erillion said:

TheYear1500 said:

Erillion said:

1) there would not BE 104 million in the crowdfunding pot without Chris Roberts

2) E:D was NOT cheap (in the order of 84 million) and the current scope is much smaller than SC (and delivered over years in sequential parts) - and that is coming from an Elite fan. 


Have fun

hahahaha, so you are just making up numbers now? 

In no way did ED cost 84 million.  Try less then 20 million.  

Estimated Development cost had, in Braben's own words, "grown by quite a lot" beyond the estimated cost (see E:D Wikipedia entry). 

By checking out the yearly company reports a significant amount of money has been spend on an unspecified project. Significantly more than the money from the Kickstarter and Frontiers own Paypal  campaign for E:D. 

The 84 is the upper limit. Depends on how many OTHER big  unspecified projects Frontier is working on at the moment. In my personal estimate: not many.
 

Have fun

Yea, I read they put a lot, lot, lot of their own money into development of E:D.  Crowdfunding didn't come close to covering all the costs.

SpottyGekko

MadFrenchie said:

SpottyGekko said:

There's a significant difference.

Feature creep is a sign of bad project management. Here a properly budgeted project is endangered by consciously adding things which were not initially planned for. Often leads to the fallacy of "if it takes 1 programmer 30 days to write this, then we can do it in 1 day if we hire 30 programmers". Believe me, I've seen shades of that bizarre logic on several projects, lol.

Overambitous initial design will result in unexpected delays and cost overruns as problems are encountered during the development process. This frequently happens to "bleeding-edge" projects, because it's basically impossible to accurately estimate how long it will take to do something that has never been done before.

Freelancer suffered from the latter, and SC has a bit of both, it seems.

In a project with a fixed budget and timeline, these two issues can be potentially fatal, especially in combination. Luckily, SC has neither of these constraints.

But, again the end result is the same if the project leads aren't managing it properly.

Either way you start, if the management of the project is poor (due to feature creep or the managers lack of foresight in cutting non-essential features as delays and overruns happen), it will result in a poor quality product if that product makes it to release at all.

...

That's just a flat-out wrong assumption.

Missing a deadline or even several deadlines, or going over budget, doesn't mean the project won't be completed at all, or will be of "poor quality" when completed.

Taking longer in no way means the project can't deliver what it originally promised. You still get exactly what was promised, just not when it was promised.

I've worked on numerous multi-million dollar software projects in my career, many of which missed deadlines and/or had significant cost overruns. All of them were eventually delivered with completely satisfactory results, even if the ROI took a knock due to penalty clauses, etc..

Your attitude seems to be that a project manager that misses a deadline should never be allowed to manage another project ever again. That simply doesn't happen in RL.

On the ONE project where CR had "complete control", he missed ONE deadline (the 2000 Freelancer launch date). After that he had no further control over the project. The 3 deadlines that were subsequently missed after December 2000 were not on his watch.

rpmcmurphy

Erillion said:

TheYear1500 said:

Erillion said:

1) there would not BE 104 million in the crowdfunding pot without Chris Roberts

2) E:D was NOT cheap (in the order of 84 million) and the current scope is much smaller than SC (and delivered over years in sequential parts) - and that is coming from an Elite fan. 


Have fun

hahahaha, so you are just making up numbers now? 

In no way did ED cost 84 million.  Try less then 20 million.  

Estimated Development cost had, in Braben's own words, "grown by quite a lot" beyond the estimated cost (see E:D Wikipedia entry). 

By checking out the yearly company reports a significant amount of money has been spend on an unspecified project. Significantly more than the money from the Kickstarter and Frontiers own Paypal  campaign for E:D. 

The 84 is the upper limit. Depends on how many OTHER big  unspecified projects Frontier is working on at the moment. In my personal estimate: not many.
 

Have fun


PS:

That estimate includes development of Horizons DLC, the console and Mac versions. 

Haha, there's no way it cost anywhere near $84 million. At the time of that Eurogamer quote they had spent around £14 million ($20 million) which was approximately 15 months ago. You can't seriously think they have gone through $64 million in 15 months on a team of 100 people.

$4.25 million a month for a single premise studio would equate to wages of $42,500 per month. I don't think so...

You said:
2) E:D was NOT cheap (in the order of 84 million) and the current scope is much smaller than SC (and delivered over years in sequential parts) - and that is coming from an Elite fan. 

And now you're saying that you didn't mean that because it includes any other unspecified projects.. lol

MadFrenchie

SpottyGekko said:

That's just a flat-out wrong assumption.

Missing a deadline or even several deadlines, or going over budget, doesn't mean the project won't be completed at all, or will be of "poor quality" when completed.

Taking longer in no way means the project can't deliver what it originally promised. You still get exactly what was promised, just not when it was promised.

I've worked on numerous multi-million dollar software projects in my career, many of which missed deadlines and/or had significant cost overruns. All of them were eventually delivered with completely satisfactory results, even if the ROI took a knock due to penalty clauses, etc..

Your attitude seems to be that a project manager that misses a deadline should never be allowed to manage another project ever again. That simply doesn't happen in RL.

On the ONE project where CR had "complete control", he missed ONE deadline (the 2000 Freelancer launch date). After that he had no further control over the project. The 3 deadlines that were subsequently missed after December 2000 were not on his watch.

No, I'm saying that one that misses a deadline and allows so much cost overrun he has to have another company come in and save the product, financially, is a bad project manager.

He only missed one deadline because upon missing that one, he had exhausted all his funds and only had a tech demo to show for it.

Erillion

rpmcmurphy said:

You can't seriously think they have gone through $64 million in 15 months on a team of 100 people.

No, i am speaking about money having been spend in the last years, even BEFORE  the E:D Kickstarter campaign started. Plus the money for the development  of the Horizon DLC, the Mac and console versions. 

The point: Development cost is not that far away from SC as some people think. While the E:D team was "only" 100 people, it was that size from Day 1, working out of existing facilities. While the SC team started at 5 people and was below 100 team size for half the current development period- with no preexisting studio facilities. 


Have fun

SpottyGekko

MadFrenchie said:

SpottyGekko said:

MadFrenchie said:

.

...

Either way you start, if the management of the project is poor (due to feature creep or the managers lack of foresight in cutting non-essential features as delays and overruns happen), it will result in a poor quality product if that product makes it to release at all.

...

That's just a flat-out wrong assumption.

...

No, I'm saying that one that misses a deadline and allows so much cost overrun he has to have another company come in and save the product, financially, is a bad project manager.

He only missed one deadline because upon missing that one, he had exhausted all his funds and only had a tech demo to show for it.

There's no indication anywhere that Digital Anvil had "exhausted all their funds" in 2000. No layoffs, no missed payrolls, no cancelled games, no creditors breaking down the doors.

CR certainly indicated that they would not have been able to carry the load indefinitely, and hence the sale to Microsoft.

Some might even call that a good strategic move by a CEO with foresight... ;D 

It most certainly saved the game, which would have been cancelled due to lack of funds otherwise.

Axxar

No reason to buy anything. We don't even know if the game will be any good. Wait until release, see if it's any good.

MadFrenchie

SpottyGekko said:

There's no indication anywhere that Digital Anvil had "exhausted all their funds" in 2000. No layoffs, no missed payrolls, no cancelled games, no creditors breaking down the doors.

CR certainly indicated that they would not have been able to carry the load indefinitely, and hence the sale to Microsoft.

Some might even call that a good strategic move by a CEO with foresight... ;D 

It most certainly saved the game, which would have been cancelled due to lack of funds otherwise.

Quote from the GameSpot article with Roberts:

GS: Does that mean that Digital Anvil was ever at the risk of running out of money? Was this acquisition necessitated by a need for funding?

CR: Partly. Whenever something runs later, it needs more funding. Becoming part of Microsoft made this issue less of a problem.

Now, if you wanna take the "partly" and "less of a problem" at face value, go ahead.  But no one is going to do a press interview on their project, with other people's livelihoods at stake, and say, "Oh yeah, if it hadn't been for Microsoft, this project would've dried up and shut down before we could release anything to the public."

The fact that he admits the acquisition was even partially necessitated by a need for funding shows that he had exhausted his funds to a point where he knew he would not be able to complete the project with the remaining funds.  If they had exhausted all their funds, completely, by that point: he would have certainly been in a Red 5 situation.  So I guess kudos to him for not getting to a point where he couldn't pay his employees?  That seems a super-low bar to set for a project manager.  The fact that he ran into a point where he could no longer complete the game (even if he cut all non-essential features) with the remaining funds shows he lacked the foresight to see the situation coming because he was too enthralled with his dream.

Dreamers are great to have at the beginning of a project.  Leading a project from start to finish requires realists and doers.

EDIT - I should add to that last sentence that it requires realists and doers, unless that dreamer can continuously go to the "bank" for more funds without any obligation to provide a return on investment.  And that's the scary part when you look at SC.

TheYear1500

Erillion said:

TheYear1500 said:

Erillion said:

1) there would not BE 104 million in the crowdfunding pot without Chris Roberts

2) E:D was NOT cheap (in the order of 84 million) and the current scope is much smaller than SC (and delivered over years in sequential parts) - and that is coming from an Elite fan. 


Have fun

hahahaha, so you are just making up numbers now? 

In no way did ED cost 84 million.  Try less then 20 million.  

Estimated Development cost had, in Braben's own words, "grown by quite a lot" beyond the estimated cost (see E:D Wikipedia entry). 

By checking out the yearly company reports a significant amount of money has been spend on an unspecified project. Significantly more than the money from the Kickstarter and Frontiers own Paypal  campaign for E:D. 

The 84 is the upper limit. Depends on how many OTHER big  unspecified projects Frontier is working on at the moment. In my personal estimate: not many.
 

Have fun


PS:

That estimate includes development of Horizons DLC, the console and Mac versions. 

LOL, including all there other games, so in other words you are counting everything that FD spends as being spent on ED, instead of the mobile games they are making and supporting, and Planet Coaster.  

Instead how about you look at just what was spent on ED, that was about 20million for the first two years.  

You are right, it is a public company, and that is why anyone can look up and see the BS you are stating.  

SpottyGekko

MadFrenchie said:

....

Dreamers are great to have at the beginning of a project.  Leading a project from start to finish requires realists and doers.

EDIT - I should add to that last sentence that it requires realists and doers, unless that dreamer can continuously go to the "bank" for more funds without any obligation to provide a return on investment.  And that's the scary part when you look at SC.

Seems to me we are in a "glass half full or glass half empty" situation here. 

Whereas you believe that lack of external oversight and limitations spells inevitable doom for SC, I believe that the very absence of those limitations will enable the game to be produced as envisaged. Most probably very late and hopelessly over budget, but polished and full-featured nevertheless.