dsmart

Derek Smart · @dsmart

21st Jul 2015 from TwitLonger

Why Star Citizen Is Destined To Fail


Anyone who read the latest Chairman (https://goo.gl/Z9M6HX) update, and watched the 10 for the chairman video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1Mkcq160cE) and thinks this game has any chance of seeing the light of day, is delusional. Or just a fanboy clinging onto false hope.

In fact, their funding fell off a cliff in June. Note that my first blog appeared July 4th weekend. So I had nothing to do with that. I suspect that the July numbers will be even worse when they are tracked.

https://twitter.com/georgeb3dr/status/623252194700058624

And since my three blogs (http://www.dereksmart.org) went up on July 5th, 10th, 17th, all they've done is damage control, while causing damage (e.g. killing my account) in other areas.

Thus far, they've unscrupulously killed my account - while engaging in defamatory conduct, refunded me, refunded some others, un-banned some others, posted massive meaningless dev updates etc

And in this latest July 20th video, CR clearly admits scope creep (item #5 in my 2nd blog) @ 1:04:41, and addresses one aspect of the nepotism (item #7 in my 2nd blog) (Erin @ 51:28) , while ignoring the massive smoking gun (it's not what you think it is - more on this soon) that's his wife (Sandra Roberts) involvement in this project and the implications of same.

Basically, what White Knights are downplaying, is that he has now gone on record and admitted that he increased the scope of the game from the original Kickstarter.

All these videos and dev blogs are going to come back and haunt him at some point in the very near future.

I am going to say it again, this Star Citizen game, is never seeing the light of day as currently pitched.

When the dust settles, what's going to be left are all these disjointed, incomplete, buggy, modules (hangar, arena commander, star marine, multi-ship, planetside, social) and possibly EP1 of SQ42.

I was astonished to hear, in 2015, a developer talking about increasing client count in a multiplayer game (Arena Commander) to 16 players. Yes, it's a fact that the module struggles with basic 6v6 players at this point. And that's just one small module in the bigger scheme of things.

From an economics standpoint, what people fail to realize is that most games don't sell 927K (their approx pledge count) copies. So this $85m, at this point, are pre-sales because people expect something in return for their money. Thus, any money needed to continue ops after that money runs out within this year, has to come from somewhere.

So the question is, who is going to continue pledging to a project that seemingly stands very little chance of completion, if they haven't first received what they pledged in the first place?

F2P games work on the premise that most of the whales (those buying stuff), pay for those who don't buy anything. The ratio is massive, and even if the numbers go from 927K to 1m, it's not enough for long term financial success, even if 70% of those are whales who keep buying stuff. And with 255 (as of this July statement) employees, plus an undisclosed number of contractors, that monthly burn rate is killer.

This biz model, beyond this $85m pledge phase, is unsustainable.

Which is why, most of us in the industry, and who aren't part of a cult, are watching this closely, and shaking our heads.

And when the crash comes, as most of us expect that it will, the fallout will be unprecedented and have long term ramifications for the industry, as well as videogame crowd-funding in general.

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