Acterius said: Redoing mo-cap then saying they bought all the equipment to make the mo-cap instead of renting like most companies do. So that right there is going to cost them millions by redesigning and mo-cap buying.
They seem to have both, "lower end" mocap for simpler animations and such, and ofc the high end mocap that was the SQ42 stuff.
Renting alone couldn't be cheap, the mocap shoot must have been the "single" most expensive thing; 3 months on Immaginarium I couldn't imagine that costing anything less than 20M from the info that exists on its costs.
Well, it's well known that the highest costs of running a business are the employee salaries. Taking into account some sample salaries of game development positions on Glassdoor, and then cutting those salaries by 20% across the board, multiply each year (2013 - Present) by the # of employees presented at Citizencon, I come out to about a total of $40-$42M salaries paid since the start of the project.
Then you gotta figure decent PCs and materials for the workers, etc. (3 tier workstation builds cost) Through the growth of the project from 2013 - Present that comes to about $1.5M
(2013 - PRESENT) Very High Level
$42M - Employee Salaries (currently at about $18M per year) $1.5M - Employee PCs & Equipment $1.5M - Motion Capture Equipment & Other?? $30M - SQ42 Actor's Fees?? $15M - Network Infrastructure / Servers etc.?? $.5M - Travel and other expenses??
$95M - $105M Total spent thus far (SPECULATIVE)
Given just alone their currently yearly salaries total is about $18M, it's likely they can only go for another 2 years at max at their current levels. 3 Years if they're able to raise another $20M within the next 3 years. (Likely)
I'll be highly surprised if they can extent any further than 3 years before they'll need to release the game and cut back on employees.
Well, it's well known that the highest costs of running a business are the employee salaries. Taking into account some sample salaries of game development positions on Glassdoor, and then cutting those salaries by 20% across the board, multiply each year (2013 - Present) by the # of employees presented at Citizencon, I come out to about a total of $40-$42M salaries paid since the start of the project.
Then you gotta figure decent PCs and materials for the workers, etc. (3 tier workstation builds cost) Through the growth of the project from 2013 - Present that comes to about $1.5M
(2013 - PRESENT) Very High Level
$42M - Employee Salaries (currently at about $18M per year) $1.5M - Employee PCs & Equipment $1.5M - Motion Capture Equipment & Other?? $30M - SQ42 Actor's Fees?? $15M - Network Infrastructure / Servers etc.?? $.5M - Travel and other expenses??
$95M - $105M Total spent thus far (SPECULATIVE)
Given just alone their currently yearly salaries total is about $18M, it's likely they can only go for another 2 years at max at their current levels. 3 Years if they're able to raise another $20M within the next 3 years. (Likely)
I'll be highly surprised if they can extent any further than 3 years before they'll need to release the game and cut back on employees.
Seems to be doable.
You're probably a little conservative with your numbers. You could be right about the physical salary amount paid. However, there are other costs associated with having employees as well, referred to as labor burden. This would include everything from equipment to space used to benefits. Often times this can be anywhere from 50%-100% of the employee salary. So that would put your estimated spent to date somewhere in the area of $60-$80 million spent. So they probably have a year left, maybe 2 at most.
Something that would support this idea is that both CR and other person(s) who have industry knowledge and is opposing the project both suggest that annual costs related to doing business would be in the $30 million range.
Well, it's well known that the highest costs of running a business are the employee salaries. Taking into account some sample salaries of game development positions on Glassdoor, and then cutting those salaries by 20% across the board, multiply each year (2013 - Present) by the # of employees presented at Citizencon, I come out to about a total of $40-$42M salaries paid since the start of the project.
Then you gotta figure decent PCs and materials for the workers, etc. (3 tier workstation builds cost) Through the growth of the project from 2013 - Present that comes to about $1.5M
(2013 - PRESENT) Very High Level
$42M - Employee Salaries (currently at about $18M per year) $1.5M - Employee PCs & Equipment $1.5M - Motion Capture Equipment & Other?? $30M - SQ42 Actor's Fees?? $15M - Network Infrastructure / Servers etc.?? $.5M - Travel and other expenses??
$95M - $105M Total spent thus far (SPECULATIVE)
Given just alone their currently yearly salaries total is about $18M, it's likely they can only go for another 2 years at max at their current levels. 3 Years if they're able to raise another $20M within the next 3 years. (Likely)
I'll be highly surprised if they can extent any further than 3 years before they'll need to release the game and cut back on employees.
Seems to be doable.
I think your Actors Fee part is too high. Many of the actors (like Hamill and Rhys-Davis) are old buddies of CR and will take much less than their usual fees. Also mocap is NOT YET paid like a real acting part. Its more in the line of voice acting - and even big stars get MUCH MUCH less for voice acting compared to their normal acting fees.
There is an old rule of thumb in the gaming industry. Take number of employees, multiply by 10 k$ and you get your monthly cost (FOR EVERYTHING .. salaries, buildings, licenses, equipment, labor cost on employer side etc.). That would put the current burn rate in the area of 3.6 M$ per month. Much less in the past, as CIG had significantly less employees in the early years (see numbers in CR presentation in CItizenCon 2016 presentation).
My estimation is that at current level (127 M$ crowdfunding) they have around 1.5 years "left". Add the current rate of additional crowdfunding per year (30+ M$ ish) and you get to roughly another 2.5 years until SQ42 sales are REALLY needed for sustainable operation of CIG.
So we arrive at approximately equally numbers ... 2 to 3 more years.
Something that would support this idea is that both CR and other person(s) who have industry knowledge and is opposing the project both suggest that annual costs related to doing business would be in the $30 million range.
This should be around that yeah, as far most of the speculation goes.
Seeing the Crowdfund stability on funding, 2015 was 35M; depending of the last year sales that should bring up 2016 to the +30M tier as well, they seem sustainable enough.
This as the big majority heights on the monthly funding to cover the costs, when it doesn't it's when they have to use money from the reserves they have.
Erillion said: Much less in the past, as CIG had significantly less employees in the early years (see numbers in CR presentation in CItizenCon 2016 presentation).
There's one important thing to note here.
CIG had been terminating outsourcing contracts, he heard about some of them. When Illfonic leaves the project, or Moon Colider and such; and CIG hires more employees in-doors, wouldn't the cost have been around the same instead of growing?
Reminding when CIG had +200 people working via Outsourcing for the project, if that number was still real this would mean SC has almost 600 employees and that simply can't be (remember the numbers they share are in-doors across 4 studios).
Something that would support this idea is that both CR and other person(s) who have industry knowledge and is opposing the project both suggest that annual costs related to doing business would be in the $30 million range.
This should be around that yeah, as far most of the speculation goes.
Seeing the Crowdfund stability on funding, 2015 was 35M; depending of the last year sales that should bring up 2016 to the +30M tier as well, they seem sustainable enough.
This as the big majority heights on the monthly funding to cover the costs, when it doesn't it's when they have to use money from the reserves they have.
Erillion said: Much less in the past, as CIG had significantly less employees in the early years (see numbers in CR presentation in CItizenCon 2016 presentation).
There's one important thing to note here.
CIG had been terminating outsourcing contracts, he heard about some of them. When Illfonic leaves the project, or Moon Colider and such; and CIG hires more employees in-doors, wouldn't the cost have been around the same instead of growing?
Reminding when CIG had +200 people working via Outsourcing for the project, if that number was still real this would mean SC has almost 600 employees and that simply can't be (remember the numbers they share are in-doors across 4 studios).
To my knowledge CIG had AT MOST +80 people in outsourcing companies ... that included Illfonic back then. Now its significantly less (Turbulent, Moon Collider, some art freelancers .....).
The rumours about 500+, 600+ all come from one well known source that is prone to exaggeration in extremis.
To my knowledge CIG had AT MOST +80 people in outsourcing companies ... that included Illfonic back then. Now its significantly less (Turbulent, Moon Collider, some art freelancers .....).
The rumours about 500+, 600+ all come from one well known source that is prone to exaggeration in extremis.
I can't find where, but I had a slight memory of a mention of 200 people working externally to SC; stated I think before 2015. Maybe I'm just confused...
Also I think Moon Collider contract was terminated, they seemed to work mostly on AI and it seems CIG moved AI in-doors mostly to the Germany Office. Unless I'm mistaken Disco Lando confirmed that on the forums.
Lately the only subcontractors mentioned in the monthly reports are BHVR and Turbulent. So the AI work done previously by Moon Collider is now done in house by CIG (including Foundry 42 Frankfurt).
Ship prices are on the increase and are doing very well. That should stretch things out a bit. People are still buying lots of ships with no signs of that slowing down. People really like the videos which bring in more people.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Ship prices are on the increase and are doing very well. That should stretch things out a bit. People are still buying lots of ships with no signs of that slowing down. People really like the videos which bring in more people.
It has been mentioned on multiple occasions that ships would become more expensive as they moved closer to release. Provided that, that has been mentioned previously, I'm not concerned with it. I just get a bit irked when people mention, or news agencies erroneously report that packages cost "at least" hundreds of dollars. Anyone who does a tiny bit of research will learn that the cheapest package is actually $45.00, which is more than reasonable.
...[F]or marketing purposes it sounds better they made 126 million this month. But it should be made clear to backers we are not even close to having that amount left. It also shouldn't automatically be understood.
Given the headlines that this game generates, both positive and negative, I believe people are clearly aware of how long this game has been in development. With that realization, I think it's further reasonable to assume that backers (and potential backers) already understand a portion of that money has been used. Otherwise, we have a very serious intelligence problem.
That SHOULD be plenty of money to produce a final product. It has been estimated that GW2 did cost 60-70 million over the 4-6 yrs it was being developed. CD has this amount of money and 4 yrs already in. If they cannot get a product out in 2 more years than this is a shell game, plain and simple.
It seems Star Citizen is going to beat its funding record this year won't it?
Being that the Crowdfund last year generated 35M; if they ever made the same amount of money on Nov/Dec as last year... 2016 could be looking at 40M or close to it.
@botrytis you can't compare really; we could also put SWTOR with its reported 200M cost with also with reported 6 years of dev. And then put the SP Game over the MMO side of it, and fun costs!
That SHOULD be plenty of money to produce a final product. It has been estimated that GW2 did cost 60-70 million over the 4-6 yrs it was being developed. CD has this amount of money and 4 yrs already in. If they cannot get a product out in 2 more years than this is a shell game, plain and simple.
Keep in mind that the GW team started with a fully developed team and game studio.
While CIG spend the first year (more like 2 years) building up its team and infrastructure.
That SHOULD be plenty of money to produce a final product. It has been estimated that GW2 did cost 60-70 million over the 4-6 yrs it was being developed. CD has this amount of money and 4 yrs already in. If they cannot get a product out in 2 more years than this is a shell game, plain and simple.
Keep in mind that the GW team started with a fully developed team and game studio.
While CIG spend the first year (more like 2 years) building up its team and infrastructure.
Have fun
Not really. GW1 was still going so they had only a few people really working on GW2 (it was called a different name back then). They were transitioning people from GW1 to GW2 and losing the older employees while trying to hire new ones. Also, they did not have all that money at once. A.Net is not a large studio buy any means.
One can make up tons of excuses for CIG, but they are just that, excuses. There are many game programmers out there (I have several friends who do this looking for work). It seems they were more interested in the hype train than putting out an actual game. Nothing has changed, just the amount of money they are getting.
...[F]or marketing purposes it sounds better they made 126 million this month. But it should be made clear to backers we are not even close to having that amount left. It also shouldn't automatically be understood.
Given the headlines that this game generates, both positive and negative, I believe people are clearly aware of how long this game has been in development. With that realization, I think it's further reasonable to assume that backers (and potential backers) already understand a portion of that money has been used. Otherwise, we have a very serious intelligence problem.
Look at this year's election situation. I think there is a very serious intelligence problem.
That SHOULD be plenty of money to produce a final product. It has been estimated that GW2 did cost 60-70 million over the 4-6 yrs it was being developed. CD has this amount of money and 4 yrs already in. If they cannot get a product out in 2 more years than this is a shell game, plain and simple.
Keep in mind that the GW team started with a fully developed team and game studio. While CIG spend the first year (more like 2 years) building up its team and infrastructure. Have fun
Not really. GW1 was still going so they had only a few people really working on GW2 (it was called a different name back then). They were transitioning people from GW1 to GW2 and losing the older employees while trying to hire new ones. Also, they did not have all that money at once. A.Net is not a large studio buy any means.
One can make up tons of excuses for CIG, but they are just that, excuses. There are many game programmers out there (I have several friends who do this looking for work). It seems they were more interested in the hype train than putting out an actual game. Nothing has changed, just the amount of money they are getting.
Not so.
However it is actually much more fundamental than that. You can check out some previous posts but - in simple terms - there was no company in place to hire the staff. NCSoft has a HR department in place to recruit / transfer staff; it had amenities staff who could sort out building space (relocate or rent new); it had purchasing and IT staff who could procure desks, PCs and software licences; it had a finance and payroll team who could pay the team once they were hired. And it also had a budget - money - in place.
Legal stuff; corporate stuff, travel arrangements and more - there is a huge amount involved. Especially on an international project.
Think about it and you will get the idea. RSI didn't even have the HR folk to do the hiring - advertising for staff, interviewing, sub-contracting, getting contracts sorted.
I have been involved in setting up international projects. Its very time consuming. Even with an established company and a plan in place.
If you want more insights however into how hard it is - check out the interviews with Mark Jacobs regarding Camelot Unchained if you want a non-SC view.
Star Citizen Backers have passed the 132 million dollar mark (almost 133 M$). (132,823,748 $)
Number of "Star Citizens" is currently at 1,662,864
(up from 1,650,656 .... + 12,208 since the 130 million mark)
Number of "UEE Fleet": 1,132,864
(up from 1,117,338 ....+ 15.526 since the 130 million mark)
Notable
was the Star Marine trailer, Espera Prowler Trailer, Capital Ships of the UEE trailer and the ongoing Intergalactic Aerospace Expo event (complete with ship sales, that caused a significant jump in crowdfunding ... typical for the Star Citizen campaign during November).
That SHOULD be plenty of money to produce a final product. It has been estimated that GW2 did cost 60-70 million over the 4-6 yrs it was being developed. CD has this amount of money and 4 yrs already in. If they cannot get a product out in 2 more years than this is a shell game, plain and simple.
Keep in mind that the GW team started with a fully developed team and game studio. While CIG spend the first year (more like 2 years) building up its team and infrastructure. Have fun
Not really. GW1 was still going so they had only a few people really working on GW2 (it was called a different name back then). They were transitioning people from GW1 to GW2 and losing the older employees while trying to hire new ones. Also, they did not have all that money at once. A.Net is not a large studio buy any means.
One can make up tons of excuses for CIG, but they are just that, excuses. There are many game programmers out there (I have several friends who do this looking for work). It seems they were more interested in the hype train than putting out an actual game. Nothing has changed, just the amount of money they are getting.
Not so.
However it is actually much more fundamental than that. You can check out some previous posts but - in simple terms - there was no company in place to hire the staff. NCSoft has a HR department in place to recruit / transfer staff; it had amenities staff who could sort out building space (relocate or rent new); it had purchasing and IT staff who could procure desks, PCs and software licences; it had a finance and payroll team who could pay the team once they were hired. And it also had a budget - money - in place.
Legal stuff; corporate stuff, travel arrangements and more - there is a huge amount involved. Especially on an international project.
Think about it and you will get the idea. RSI didn't even have the HR folk to do the hiring - advertising for staff, interviewing, sub-contracting, getting contracts sorted.
I have been involved in setting up international projects. Its very time consuming. Even with an established company and a plan in place.
If you want more insights however into how hard it is - check out the interviews with Mark Jacobs regarding Camelot Unchained if you want a non-SC view.
Just an FYI - although NCSoft does OWN A.Net, A.Net does it's own hiring and firing. A.Net is a wholly owned subsidiary, not an actual part of NCSoft. So I think you really don't understand the difference (your comments suggest you don't). If A,Net was part of NCSoft, as your post suggests, don't you think the patching system that was developed and patented by A.Net would be used in every game that NCSoft makes? It prevents servers downtime, etc. and allows for more gaming.
A.net had 150-200 employees at the end of GW1 and they now have around 250. That is not many employees considering Blizzard has 2500-3000 and some others such as EA, etc. have even more.
NCSoft does some basic development in the US but it's actual main market is Asia. That is why Lineage, Lineage 2, etc. are mainly there and not in the US.
Comments
When you have cake, it is not the cake that creates the most magnificent of experiences, but it is the emotions attached to it.
The cake is a lie.
They seem to have both, "lower end" mocap for simpler animations and such, and ofc the high end mocap that was the SQ42 stuff.
Renting alone couldn't be cheap, the mocap shoot must have been the "single" most expensive thing; 3 months on Immaginarium I couldn't imagine that costing anything less than 20M from the info that exists on its costs.
I come out to about a total of $40-$42M salaries paid since the start of the project.
Then you gotta figure decent PCs and materials for the workers, etc. (3 tier workstation builds cost)
Through the growth of the project from 2013 - Present that comes to about $1.5M
(2013 - PRESENT) Very High Level
$42M - Employee Salaries (currently at about $18M per year)
$1.5M - Employee PCs & Equipment
$1.5M - Motion Capture Equipment & Other??
$30M - SQ42 Actor's Fees??
$15M - Network Infrastructure / Servers etc.??
$.5M - Travel and other expenses??
$95M - $105M Total spent thus far (SPECULATIVE)
Given just alone their currently yearly salaries total is about $18M,
it's likely they can only go for another 2 years at max at their current levels.
3 Years if they're able to raise another $20M within the next 3 years. (Likely)
I'll be highly surprised if they can extent any further than 3 years before they'll need to release the game and cut back on employees.
Seems to be doable.
You're probably a little conservative with your numbers. You could be right about the physical salary amount paid. However, there are other costs associated with having employees as well, referred to as labor burden. This would include everything from equipment to space used to benefits. Often times this can be anywhere from 50%-100% of the employee salary. So that would put your estimated spent to date somewhere in the area of $60-$80 million spent. So they probably have a year left, maybe 2 at most.
Something that would support this idea is that both CR and other person(s) who have industry knowledge and is opposing the project both suggest that annual costs related to doing business would be in the $30 million range.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
There is an old rule of thumb in the gaming industry. Take number of employees, multiply by 10 k$ and you get your monthly cost (FOR EVERYTHING .. salaries, buildings, licenses, equipment, labor cost on employer side etc.). That would put the current burn rate in the area of 3.6 M$ per month. Much less in the past, as CIG had significantly less employees in the early years (see numbers in CR presentation in CItizenCon 2016 presentation).
My estimation is that at current level (127 M$ crowdfunding) they have around 1.5 years "left". Add the current rate of additional crowdfunding per year (30+ M$ ish) and you get to roughly another 2.5 years until SQ42 sales are REALLY needed for sustainable operation of CIG.
So we arrive at approximately equally numbers ... 2 to 3 more years.
Have fun
Seeing the Crowdfund stability on funding, 2015 was 35M; depending of the last year sales that should bring up 2016 to the +30M tier as well, they seem sustainable enough.
This as the big majority heights on the monthly funding to cover the costs, when it doesn't it's when they have to use money from the reserves they have.
There's one important thing to note here.
CIG had been terminating outsourcing contracts, he heard about some of them. When Illfonic leaves the project, or Moon Colider and such; and CIG hires more employees in-doors, wouldn't the cost have been around the same instead of growing?
Reminding when CIG had +200 people working via Outsourcing for the project, if that number was still real this would mean SC has almost 600 employees and that simply can't be (remember the numbers they share are in-doors across 4 studios).
The rumours about 500+, 600+ all come from one well known source that is prone to exaggeration in extremis.
Have fun
Also I think Moon Collider contract was terminated, they seemed to work mostly on AI and it seems CIG moved AI in-doors mostly to the Germany Office. Unless I'm mistaken Disco Lando confirmed that on the forums.
Have fun
Star Citizen Backers have passed the 128 million dollar mark. (128,023,748 $)
Number of "Star Citizens" is currently at 1,551,155
(up from 1,545,064 .... + 6091 since the 127 million mark)
Number of "UEE Fleet": 1,102,015
(up from 1,099,169 ....+ 2846 since the 127 million mark)
Notable was once again the introduction of the Polaris Escort Corvette and news about the Procedural Planet development.
Have fun
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Anyone who does a tiny bit of research will learn that the cheapest package is actually $45.00, which is more than reasonable.
Have fun
Star Citizen Backers have passed the 129 million dollar mark. (129,004,456 $)
Number of "Star Citizens" is currently at 1,562,618
(up from 1,551,155 .... + 11,463 since the 128 million mark)
Number of "UEE Fleet": 1,108,201
(up from 1,102,015 ....+ 6,186 since the 128 million mark)
Notable was the "Homestead" demo showing of the possibilities of Procedural Generation of Planetary Surfaces in combination with an artists touch.
Have fun
Being that the Crowdfund last year generated 35M; if they ever made the same amount of money on Nov/Dec as last year... 2016 could be looking at 40M or close to it.
@botrytis you can't compare really; we could also put SWTOR with its reported 200M cost with also with reported 6 years of dev. And then put the SP Game over the MMO side of it, and fun costs!
While CIG spend the first year (more like 2 years) building up its team and infrastructure.
Have fun
Not really. GW1 was still going so they had only a few people really working on GW2 (it was called a different name back then). They were transitioning people from GW1 to GW2 and losing the older employees while trying to hire new ones. Also, they did not have all that money at once. A.Net is not a large studio buy any means.
One can make up tons of excuses for CIG, but they are just that, excuses. There are many game programmers out there (I have several friends who do this looking for work). It seems they were more interested in the hype train than putting out an actual game. Nothing has changed, just the amount of money they are getting.
However it is actually much more fundamental than that. You can check out some previous posts but - in simple terms - there was no company in place to hire the staff. NCSoft has a HR department in place to recruit / transfer staff; it had amenities staff who could sort out building space (relocate or rent new); it had purchasing and IT staff who could procure desks, PCs and software licences; it had a finance and payroll team who could pay the team once they were hired. And it also had a budget - money - in place.
Legal stuff; corporate stuff, travel arrangements and more - there is a huge amount involved. Especially on an international project.
Think about it and you will get the idea. RSI didn't even have the HR folk to do the hiring - advertising for staff, interviewing, sub-contracting, getting contracts sorted.
I have been involved in setting up international projects. Its very time consuming. Even with an established company and a plan in place.
If you want more insights however into how hard it is - check out the interviews with Mark Jacobs regarding Camelot Unchained if you want a non-SC view.
Star Citizen Backers have passed the 130 million dollar mark. (130,006,767 $)
Number of "Star Citizens" is currently at 1,650,656
(up from 1,562,618 .... + 88,038 since the 129 million mark)
Number of "UEE Fleet": 1,117,338
(up from 1,108,201 ....+ 9,137 since the 129 million mark)
Notable was the large number of new trial accounts from the last Free Fly event and the new monthly studio report.
Have fun
Star Citizen Backers have passed the 132 million dollar mark (almost 133 M$). (132,823,748 $)
Number of "Star Citizens" is currently at 1,662,864
(up from 1,650,656 .... + 12,208 since the 130 million mark)
Number of "UEE Fleet": 1,132,864
(up from 1,117,338 ....+ 15.526 since the 130 million mark)
Notable was the Star Marine trailer, Espera Prowler Trailer, Capital Ships of the UEE trailer and the ongoing Intergalactic Aerospace Expo event (complete with ship sales, that caused a significant jump in crowdfunding ... typical for the Star Citizen campaign during November).
Have fun
Just an FYI - although NCSoft does OWN A.Net, A.Net does it's own hiring and firing. A.Net is a wholly owned subsidiary, not an actual part of NCSoft. So I think you really don't understand the difference (your comments suggest you don't). If A,Net was part of NCSoft, as your post suggests, don't you think the patching system that was developed and patented by A.Net would be used in every game that NCSoft makes? It prevents servers downtime, etc. and allows for more gaming.
A.net had 150-200 employees at the end of GW1 and they now have around 250. That is not many employees considering Blizzard has 2500-3000 and some others such as EA, etc. have even more.
NCSoft does some basic development in the US but it's actual main market is Asia. That is why Lineage, Lineage 2, etc. are mainly there and not in the US.