Chris Roberts - Going Beyond Crowdfunding

[TeaLeaf]

Here's a video of a CR presentation given at the last GDC (Game Developer Conference) entitled 'Going Beyond Crowdfunding'.    It's got some really solid messages in there for us about the way CR thinks, what he is wanting to deliver and the way he wants to work with the community to deliver the game we all want.   It's not a short video (43 mins) but there's some gold in there if you are looking for reassurance about the game and what it is looking to deliver to us in 2015.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/209302/Video_Going_beyond_crowdfunding_with_Star_Citizens_Chris_Roberts.php

[TeaLeaf]

One of the interesting sets of numbers from this video, which have also been seen elsewhere but are worth repeating, is the difference between the direct to PC model being used with Star Citizen and the traditional publisher to retail route.  

E.g. for a publisher game retailing at $60, the purchase price is typically broken down like this:
$12 - to the developer (as a 20% of retail royalty)
$9 - marketing/PR
$9 - sales promotion
$12 - retail margin
$18 - publisher margin
$60 retail price

For a 'direct to PC' model, the $60 retail price breaks down approximately like this:
$48-51 - to the developer
$6 - marketing/PR
$3-6 - kickstarter/processing payment fees
$60 retail price


So by going direct to the gamers, the developer gets about 4 times the amount of money to develop the game that a traditional publisher model would have provided.   Multiply the $39m already raised by 4 and you get a very significant $156m equivalent development budget.   Console games have even higher cost ratios, so the multiplier is higher for comparison with console games.

Interesting numbers to compare with other well-known games!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop

[Vargen]

That's a pretty significant margin! Let's hope they put it to good use!

It's a pretty ambitious project, combining a space sim with an FPS. It will set the bar really high if it succeeds. Kind of like WoW did for their genre.

[TeaLeaf]

Did you notice the bit in the video where they said that 81% of the SC player base have built their own PC? (from the survey they did)

[Vargen]

Yeah, that's pretty cool. I have a rig I could upgrade, but would be cool if I could play on my laptop.

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