Home Gaming Star Citizen’s key to success has come from a crowdfunding campaign that never stopped

Star Citizen’s key to success has come from a crowdfunding campaign that never stopped

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Cash off the starboard bow

$77.3 million. That’s how much money has been handed over and pushed straight back in to the development of Star Citizen. We’ve mentioned before how that is a ludicrous sum, a record-breaking feat that will most likely never ever be equalled or surpassed again. And the secret to that success? Not just expensive spaceships, but having more money. Lots and lots of money in a crowdfunding effort has never ever stopped.

Bugger the fears of feature creep or promising too much. Star Citizen launched a crowdfunding campaign back in January 2012, while also securing investors. And according to creator Chris Roberts, the key to success over the last three years has come from not doing certain things in the crowdfunded game. Such as stopping.

“The big thing is the thing that we didn’t do,” Roberts told Wired. “Most crowdfunding campaigns engage some people, convince them to become backers, and then the campaign stops. We didn’t stop.”

And that makes perfect sense. Look at any Kickstarter these days, and you’ll see a simple pattern: A developer offers said game to the public, they (hopefully) reciprocate and back the product over a one month period and everyone goes their merry way. Sometimes that works. Sometimes that results in game projects going over budget and inevitably crashing and burning out. Because making video games are expensive, even when you’ve got a million dollars banked.

One other area where Star Citizen has succeeded in raising capital, has been due to the fact that their success is public. A meter that keeps score of the millions of dollars donated can be seen at any time, something which backers appear to be quite proud of according to director of communications David Swofford:

We’ve talked about taking that down. But we asked the fans, and they like seeing that number.

The game is out…eventually. In the meantime, why not drop $250 on a fancy in-game spaceship? CHA-CHING!

Last Updated: April 1, 2015

20 Comments

  1. I read that Wired article earlier this morning, it was pretty cool.

    Reply

    • Dutch Matrix

      April 1, 2015 at 09:49

      Oh, THAT one!

      Reply

      • Blood Emperor Trevor

        April 1, 2015 at 09:55

        Yes, the one linked in the article above these comments. 😛

        Reply

        • Dutch Matrix

          April 1, 2015 at 09:57

          There’s an article????

          Reply

  2. Blood Emperor Trevor

    April 1, 2015 at 09:34

    This is the campaign that never ends, never ends, never ends
    This is the campaign that never ends, never ends, never ends

    And this is how it goes…

    Reply

  3. Ryanza

    April 1, 2015 at 09:38

    If Geoff did the numbers it would have been more believable.

    Reply

  4. Pariah

    April 1, 2015 at 09:38

    The real question is: how much money will they actually make when this goes gold? most of the people who wanted the game have already spent money on it, and if they’re pumping all that money back into development, where’s the profit coming from?

    Reply

    • Lord Chaos

      April 1, 2015 at 09:53

      Enjoying what they do for a living?

      Reply

    • Spathi

      April 1, 2015 at 10:19

      I don’t know. There are a lot of people still sceptical about the game that will only buy it after commercial launch, so I think they’ll be able to make quite a big profit on this. The average amount a backer has spent on the game currently is $90, which is ludicrous! The game has only “sold” 858 846 copies so far, so I believe that they’ll still sell a million or two at least after launch.

      Reply

    • Abram Carroll

      April 6, 2015 at 08:11

      Advertise or do a Console version?

      Reply

  5. Umar

    April 1, 2015 at 09:38

    Hmm…..Campaign was successful, I hope the game will be too. It’s too early to really make this seem like a success story.

    Reply

    • Pariah

      April 1, 2015 at 09:39

      It’s a successful funding story, at least. But as you say, time will tell if this becomes a great story, or a really terrifying tale.

      Reply

      • Umar

        April 1, 2015 at 09:41

        Yup, exactly that. Successful funding story. I hope it’s all fans want it to be.

        Reply

        • Pariah

          April 1, 2015 at 09:42

          Yeah, I hope so too. So many people have high hopes, and since this is real (ie: not HL3) there are real hopes from people who’ve paid real money. Chris Roberts had better deliver. There’s a lot of pressure on the dev team to do so.

          Reply

          • Greylingad

            April 1, 2015 at 09:55

            Well from what we’ve seen so far…It’s just…Well… We’ll have to wait and see what the complete package looks like, but you’d have to make not just one but hundreds upon thousands of mistakes to have a $77 million project fail…

  6. Codefridge

    April 1, 2015 at 10:09

    They also let backers test new ships, that cost tons of money. They are releasing more and more of the game to backers, so you really feel a part of the team. Also the community is massive and active. But I just hope its everything and more. Full Disc. : I backed it.

    Reply

  7. Lord Chaos

    April 1, 2015 at 10:23

  8. Ottokie

    April 1, 2015 at 10:31

    The more I read about this game the more my interest peaks… But my backlog of games is throwing a nice big fat shadow as well.

    Reply

  9. BacchusZA

    April 1, 2015 at 13:14

    I backed this game, threw maybe $150-200 or so at it, and I’m really excited to see it go live. Chris Roberts does story driven arcadey space shoot-em-ups **really** well.

    But I’ve stopped paying attention. I’ve stopped following the news. I’ve stopped listening to the ever growing list of features and gameplay elements and so on that have been announced. Because I know there is no way in hell they’ll meet the expectations.

    I fully believe they’ll do their damndest. And I’m certain we’re going to get an excellent game out of it. But the way expectations have been drummed up, largely by the community rather than CiG, I can see there are going to be a *lot* of very unhappy people. And they’ll only have themselves to blame, but that’s not going to matter when the shit hits the fan.

    I’d love to be wrong, I’d love to be *very* wrong even, but I really doubt that I am.

    Reply

    • Abram Carroll

      April 6, 2015 at 08:13

      Come earn some REC and load out your ship and try out some other ships.

      Reply

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