Also, a Jelly monster truck racing game wouldn't be ambitions.
According to your proposed argument above - no other game has done it, it would. Hence why I am pointing it out as falacious...
Racing games have been done so changing what type of racing vehicle doesn't seem ambitious. The features being added and the scope of the project is what makes it ambitious.
So a Barbi rock em sock em robot fighting game has never been done. But if one were to just slap a barbi skin on any of the released fighting games then not really ambitions. It's not been done but that would not make it ambitious.
However, adding multiple components that stretch what a fighting game is, especially in "the barbi world" would be ambitious.
So again, it's the scope of the project, not that it hasn't been done.
Compare Star Citizen to Star Wars Galaxies, and which do you think has/had the biggest scope?
I dont really see Star Citizen adding much to what was available in Star Wars Galaxies way back before the NGE.
Also, a Jelly monster truck racing game wouldn't be ambitions.
According to your proposed argument above - no other game has done it, it would. Hence why I am pointing it out as falacious...
Racing games have been done so changing what type of racing vehicle doesn't seem ambitious. The features being added and the scope of the project is what makes it ambitious.
So a Barbi rock em sock em robot fighting game has never been done. But if one were to just slap a barbi skin on any of the released fighting games then not really ambitions. It's not been done but that would not make it ambitious.
However, adding multiple components that stretch what a fighting game is, especially in "the barbi world" would be ambitious.
So again, it's the scope of the project, not that it hasn't been done.
Compare Star Citizen to Star Wars Galaxies, and which do you think has/had the biggest scope?
I dont really see Star Citizen adding much to what was available in Star Wars Galaxies way back before the NGE.
So do you know much about Star Citizen, or are you just going based on limited high level information? Like apples and oranges seem very similar if all I'm judging on is if they fit in my hand.
EDIT: Oh! On that note, if someone were to recreate SWG with update graphics, would you not consider that to be an ambitious project? I would. Maybe that's where we differ though.
Compare Star Citizen to Star Wars Galaxies, and which do you think has/had the biggest scope?
I dont really see Star Citizen adding much to what was available in Star Wars Galaxies way back before the NGE.
Absolutely SC.
When you weight something like Planets alone, when in one you have a map you load in and in the other you have a full planet that you can seamlessly visit with the landing zones and all the other stuff, a planet that rotates providing proper day and night and orbits its sun, you get the proper idea of the scope here.
That's the ambitious part, of course, you could just do planets and do the transitions in a scripted or even under screens, add a day and night skybox, but invest in being able to load highly detailed landing areas in a planet at that graphical quality seamlessly in a performing matter, that's the type of things that show the ambition being undertaken, otherwise, they would have just gone with shortcuts like most other games.
Considering that by the time SWG came out and even Freelancer that released earlier same year, they were ambitious in their own ways.
Also, a Jelly monster truck racing game wouldn't be ambitions.
According to your proposed argument above - no other game has done it, it would. Hence why I am pointing it out as falacious...
Racing games have been done so changing what type of racing vehicle doesn't seem ambitious. The features being added and the scope of the project is what makes it ambitious.
So a Barbi rock em sock em robot fighting game has never been done. But if one were to just slap a barbi skin on any of the released fighting games then not really ambitions. It's not been done but that would not make it ambitious.
However, adding multiple components that stretch what a fighting game is, especially in "the barbi world" would be ambitious.
So again, it's the scope of the project, not that it hasn't been done.
Compare Star Citizen to Star Wars Galaxies, and which do you think has/had the biggest scope?
I dont really see Star Citizen adding much to what was available in Star Wars Galaxies way back before the NGE.
I never had the pleasure of playing the Jump to Lightspeed expansion although I did play vanilla SWG.
Was the space fighting game seamless with the ground game? Did travel between star systems involve loading screens?
I'm hardcore into flight sims. I have the Earth modeled with quite accurate detail. I have study level aircraft and weather simulators. These sims are very demanding on desktops and many people who are hardcore into them, run networks in order to achieve fluid frame rates with the detail they desire.
Star Citizen looks very ambitious to me with many roadblocks to overcome.
The amount of money raised shows the demand for such a game.
A couple
AAA/indie parallels, mostly coming from my experience with Camelot Unchained
and Crowfall; Namely, I believe that we are, so far, too much focused on big
numbers and big names i.e. the very top of the spectrum, so here’s a brief view
“from below”:
-First
of all, Camelot Unchained has ~9M total ATM, as hinted by MJ in late 2016, and
should end somewhere around $15M at least (licensing, hinted future major investors,
beta hype…15 is likely quite pessimistic but OK, let’s roll with that for now); Can one make a decent MMORPG with that money? I certainly hope so, see below!
-Crowfall
has $13M so far, and based on current dynamics should end with ~$20M, hopefully
more, in couple years (around launch – I’d say roughly at the same time as CU launches
and roughly for the same reasons);
-Both
of these are sandbox(ish) without classical PvE i.e. quests, raids, themepark dungeons
and such: this kind of PvE takes ~70% of budget, per Gordon Walton (ex-UO/SWG/SWTOR)
– allright, take it with a grain of salt, same as Chris’s famous “4x less”
formula – but I doubt the former one is far from truth;
-Both
games were opened to extremely early public testing – which goes on for years
already – and continuous, sometimes very harsh, feedback made them make very
early critical design changes, lack of which would be either impossible later (say,
in beta when things become buried too deep in the code) or would make them sink quickly after launch; The financial value of
these is impossible to estimate, and this goes on as we speak (also note that,
at this point of development, we wouldn’t even be aware of the existence of some
future AAA titles, not to mention testing and contributing);
-For
last couple years, community is virtually writing parts of the code of Camelot
Unchained (ModSquad), for free – a bunch of quite enthusiastic contributors
including IIRC a couple senior programmers;
-Speaking
of marketing, say Crowfall is “saving” extra millions - which they, oh by the
way, don’t have - by having no NDA since 2015 (! – the year of Kickstarter)
thus being open to streamers/youtubers/journalists…and all kinds of previews which
clearly shows on their pledgemeter – another luxury AAAs are deprived of so
early, and for so long; A small price to pay are continuous “OMG looks like
crap!” and such typical comments on it’s alpha+indie state;
-It also
means that your fans can both create and share your promo material for free i.e. videos, GIFs, image
galleries, forum threads (including other forums) or even Wikis plus stuff such
as beginner guides or anything that would “normally” cost AAA some money (including the partial role of community service) – that
is, if we even knew they existed at this early point;
-Indies
are much more comfortable with the deadlines (gamemakers are also “suits” i.e.
owners), with all the good and bad that comes with it;
-There’s
no pressure of returning the investment, since it’s lion’s share comes from
Kickstarter/pledges, with rather weak (read:no) strings attached;
-Connected
to that, the success bar is much lower + they can focus on their niches – none of
these will kill WoW, nor are they trying; Say Mark Jacobs, when asked to define CU success, said: "30-50K subs and 80+ on Metacritic would be great"; Similar numbers were given by J. Todd Coleman of Crowfall, and please note that "great" (instead of good or bearable), while the number of registered CU accounts is likely already in that range;
Back to
numbers, speaking of some insanely big AAA figures mentioned earlier: total
pre-launch cost of DAoC was only $2.42M (per Mark Jacobs), EVE too was made for
just a couple; I know, the times were different, but these figures should be
compared to vanilla WoW/SWG rather than Destiny: to generously take the (much)
lesser of these two - SWG had less than $20M pre-launch, IIRC what G. Walton
said couple years ago (did he say $17M?18? not sure) – anyway, the number was
certainly somewhere in that range, and we are speaking of EVE/DAoC era.
Shouldn't it be the cost of producing two video games at once?
"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
I know they are supposed to be releasing two separate games, but are they really producing two separate games at once?
Isnt there a lot of crossover between the two games? systems created for one being used in the other?
Maybe it is more like 1.5 games being produced at once cost wise?
Same engine and assets end up developed benefit both games, but there's a budgeting for SQ42 due to its cast, mocap shoots and all the SP-campaign specific stuff that won't cross to SC.
Also, a Jelly monster truck racing game wouldn't be ambitions.
According to your proposed argument above - no other game has done it, it would. Hence why I am pointing it out as falacious...
Racing games have been done so changing what type of racing vehicle doesn't seem ambitious. The features being added and the scope of the project is what makes it ambitious.
So a Barbi rock em sock em robot fighting game has never been done. But if one were to just slap a barbi skin on any of the released fighting games then not really ambitions. It's not been done but that would not make it ambitious.
However, adding multiple components that stretch what a fighting game is, especially in "the barbi world" would be ambitious.
So again, it's the scope of the project, not that it hasn't been done.
Compare Star Citizen to Star Wars Galaxies, and which do you think has/had the biggest scope?
I dont really see Star Citizen adding much to what was available in Star Wars Galaxies way back before the NGE.
I couldn't begin to, I never played Star Wars Galaxies. Are they even the same type of game?
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Also, a Jelly monster truck racing game wouldn't be ambitions.
According to your proposed argument above - no other game has done it, it would. Hence why I am pointing it out as falacious...
Racing games have been done so changing what type of racing vehicle doesn't seem ambitious. The features being added and the scope of the project is what makes it ambitious.
So a Barbi rock em sock em robot fighting game has never been done. But if one were to just slap a barbi skin on any of the released fighting games then not really ambitions. It's not been done but that would not make it ambitious.
However, adding multiple components that stretch what a fighting game is, especially in "the barbi world" would be ambitious.
So again, it's the scope of the project, not that it hasn't been done.
Compare Star Citizen to Star Wars Galaxies, and which do you think has/had the biggest scope?
I dont really see Star Citizen adding much to what was available in Star Wars Galaxies way back before the NGE.
I couldn't begin to, I never played Star Wars Galaxies. Are they even the same type of game?
In some ways, yes, some ways no, both regarded as space games though.
At the most basic level, they both have ground combat, both have space combat/flight, both have planets, both have quests.
Im not sure about crafting, Star Wars definitely, Star Citizen will have at some point?
Same with housing, Star Wars definitely, Star Citizen no idea.
In some ways, yes, some ways no, both regarded as space games though.
At the most basic level, they both have ground combat, both have space combat, both have planets, both have quests.
Im not sure about crafting, Star Wars definitely, Star Citizen will have at some point?
Same with housing, Star Wars definitely, Star Citizen no idea.
They are different games on point and design, this is the same with Elite Dangerous, features both share yet they go different directions on gameplay.
As for questions, crafting No, housing is a different matter, constructing modular bases on planets.
I find that interesting.
No plans for crafting, yet you will be able to construct bases on planets. The construction of bases is a form of crafting I think, would be a shame for them to not extend that and have players craft items, like armour, weapons, and ship modules.
No plans for crafting, yet you will be able to construct bases on planets. The construction of bases is a form of crafting I think, would be a shame for them to not extend that and have players craft items, like armour, weapons, and ship modules.
It comes from the design of its economy, crafting always was something very niche to specific cases within the game and not that's one of the massive gaps between games, what generates and drives the economy.
Base construction would be one layer of crafting but details are still to be announced of how it will work.
What the economy design shows is that who crafts, is the game, what the players do in the economy is move the resources around, as part of the mission system that would then let factories ask for raw resources then after manufactured ask for transport/trade missions to move stuff around.
It wouldn't be the player go to X place and mine, then go to a "crafting station" and craft some missiles, that's my take from its design.
It wouldn't be the player go to X place and mine, then go to a "crafting station" and craft some missiles, that's my take from its design.
Because it is silly to personally craft a high-tech missile at a crafting station.
And i say that as a person that absolutely loved the intricate crafting system of SWG and would have loved to see that in SC. We had a lot of factories and automatic mining stations in SWG too.
Because it is silly to personally craft a high-tech missile at a crafting station.
And i say that as a person that absolutely loved the intricate crafting system of SWG and would have loved to see that in SC. We had a lot of factories and automatic mining stations in SWG too.
Have fun
Yeah but that would be the game itself.
Say not something you personally do, from players trading and transporting goods around, the factories and such would do the producing, your interaction with the economy would exclude the actual crafting process of such things.
That's more related to a mission system meant to drive economy, it's a rather different approach than what we would be used to.
So you are saying they are currently paying for as many support people and live servers now as they will need when the game goes live?
When the game goes live and many more people get in, only logical revenue also will, as with any game title, so it will be a matter of scaling the setup they already have to sustain that.
You did not answer my question. Typical deflection/misdirection tactic.
Also, to comment on this latest nonsense you post, it is not logical that more playing will bring in more revenue because people are buying ships at this point when they can not earn them in the game. You and Erillion are always using the excuse that these $1000 ships will be earn-able in the game so people wont have to buy them anymore. You both also deny that the game will have a sub fee so how does that work?
"Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game." - SEANMCAD
The parent company gets most of the money and has much less employees. I think some of the other offices are in excellent financial shape and can transfer funds as necessary.
Do you have a source for any of this?
I see you still have not answered this question. Wonder why...
"Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game." - SEANMCAD
You did not answer my question. Typical deflection/misdirection tactic.
Also, to comment on this latest nonsense you post, it is not logical that more playing will bring in more revenue because people are buying ships at this point when they can not earn them in the game. You and Erillion are always using the excuse that these $1000 ships will be earn-able in the game so people wont have to buy them anymore. You both also deny that the game will have a sub fee so how does that work?
Meh, I'm not going to bother to respond you because this discussion with you is one infinite loop, as seen by the countless times we had this exact same discussion before, yet here you are again like it never happened. I would prefer having this discussion with someone who legitimately wants to discuss it.
There is no such thing as a straight up cost,it varies,studio to studio by a lot.
I or we can only use known facts of past games and even point at recent games to prove a huge discrepancy in both quality and competence.
85 million for FFVII,approx of course depending several factors.They said it would way too expensive to remake in this day n age.So if we assume "way too expensive" to mean somewhere around 150 million,that is a lot for a rather ho hum game,even with newer graphics.
SWTOR...200 million,again give or take depending on stuff like marketing ,shows etc etc.Not nearly a good enough game,designed pretty much like Wow but in a sci-fi setting with an added good/evil side ordeal.
SC going to be over 200 million by time is done..if ever and when considering free money and not loaned from banks/investors,it is worth more like 500 million.Does anyone think the game will resemble even a 100 million game,not me that is for certain.
Then after games are officially released,how much goes into the game,how much is scammed from gamer's in DLC's and cash shops?
There are other factors i personally look at when deciding how serious a developer is.Did they attain their own financing,are they using bull crap gimmicks like early access or Kickstarters.Are they trying to get money from gamer's with only a few months of production value,is it a long term commitment before releasing or just a fast cash grab,trons of factors will tell a person if the game/developer is a scammer or serious.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The parent company gets most of the money and has much less employees. I think some of the other offices are in excellent financial shape and can transfer funds as necessary.
Do you have a source for any of this?
I see you still have not answered this question. Wonder why...
Because the source of my opinion is my brain and you do not get that ;-)
Have fun
PS:
perhaps your question refers to the first sentence before the "I think ..." :
Source for "much less employees" --> --> 60 and 50 in the two US studios respectively, compared to 220 ish in UK
You did not answer my question. Typical deflection/misdirection tactic.
Also, to comment on this latest nonsense you post, it is not logical that more playing will bring in more revenue because people are buying ships at this point when they can not earn them in the game. You and Erillion are always using the excuse that these $1000 ships will be earn-able in the game so people wont have to buy them anymore. You both also deny that the game will have a sub fee so how does that work?
Meh, I'm not going to bother to respond you because this discussion with you is one infinite loop, as seen by the countless times we had this exact same discussion before, yet here you are again like it never happened. I would prefer having this discussion with someone who legitimately wants to discuss it.
100 developers are going to accomplish more than half of what 200 developers can do simply due to the factor of managing larger teams. The fact is the game industry is poor at managing large teams. Most creative fields are like this. A smaller team and longer development cycle will be the cheaper solution in the long run. It would take quite a long post to explain this phenomena. Considering Star Citizen is developed by an independent company, the management will be worse. Still I would remember that not all the people are needed at the same time. You can get by with a small team during initial development. A lot of the team will be added within the last year of development for testing purposes, marketing, and setting up for deployment. There are also other factors to consider in the cost of a game. On Star Citizen they licensed a lot of technology. Integrating this and working with outside companies adds onto the costs. They switched game engines. This actually isn't that expensive since the majority of assets for an MMO are transferable between engines. The biggest effort will be converting levels over. Art, sound, and the server can be transferred over. What a base game engine offers isn't the biggest hurdle in MMO development, but this is mainly due to the complexity of MMOs. Advertising will be a big expense if they ever get around to release. Most of the budget on new games is advertising.
Comments
I dont really see Star Citizen adding much to what was available in Star Wars Galaxies way back before the NGE.
So do you know much about Star Citizen, or are you just going based on limited high level information? Like apples and oranges seem very similar if all I'm judging on is if they fit in my hand.
EDIT: Oh! On that note, if someone were to recreate SWG with update graphics, would you not consider that to be an ambitious project? I would. Maybe that's where we differ though.
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
----------------
When you weight something like Planets alone, when in one you have a map you load in and in the other you have a full planet that you can seamlessly visit with the landing zones and all the other stuff, a planet that rotates providing proper day and night and orbits its sun, you get the proper idea of the scope here.
That's the ambitious part, of course, you could just do planets and do the transitions in a scripted or even under screens, add a day and night skybox, but invest in being able to load highly detailed landing areas in a planet at that graphical quality seamlessly in a performing matter, that's the type of things that show the ambition being undertaken, otherwise, they would have just gone with shortcuts like most other games.
Considering that by the time SWG came out and even Freelancer that released earlier same year, they were ambitious in their own ways.
Was the space fighting game seamless with the ground game? Did travel between star systems involve loading screens?
I'm hardcore into flight sims. I have the Earth modeled with quite accurate detail. I have study level aircraft and weather simulators. These sims are very demanding on desktops and many people who are hardcore into them, run networks in order to achieve fluid frame rates with the detail they desire.
Star Citizen looks very ambitious to me with many roadblocks to overcome.
The amount of money raised shows the demand for such a game.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
A couple AAA/indie parallels, mostly coming from my experience with Camelot Unchained and Crowfall; Namely, I believe that we are, so far, too much focused on big numbers and big names i.e. the very top of the spectrum, so here’s a brief view “from below”:
-First of all, Camelot Unchained has ~9M total ATM, as hinted by MJ in late 2016, and should end somewhere around $15M at least (licensing, hinted future major investors, beta hype…15 is likely quite pessimistic but OK, let’s roll with that for now); Can one make a decent MMORPG with that money? I certainly hope so, see below!
-Crowfall has $13M so far, and based on current dynamics should end with ~$20M, hopefully more, in couple years (around launch – I’d say roughly at the same time as CU launches and roughly for the same reasons);
-Both of these are sandbox(ish) without classical PvE i.e. quests, raids, themepark dungeons and such: this kind of PvE takes ~70% of budget, per Gordon Walton (ex-UO/SWG/SWTOR) – allright, take it with a grain of salt, same as Chris’s famous “4x less” formula – but I doubt the former one is far from truth;
-Both games were opened to extremely early public testing – which goes on for years already – and continuous, sometimes very harsh, feedback made them make very early critical design changes, lack of which would be either impossible later (say, in beta when things become buried too deep in the code) or would make them sink quickly after launch; The financial value of these is impossible to estimate, and this goes on as we speak (also note that, at this point of development, we wouldn’t even be aware of the existence of some future AAA titles, not to mention testing and contributing);
-For last couple years, community is virtually writing parts of the code of Camelot Unchained (ModSquad), for free – a bunch of quite enthusiastic contributors including IIRC a couple senior programmers;
-Speaking of marketing, say Crowfall is “saving” extra millions - which they, oh by the way, don’t have - by having no NDA since 2015 (! – the year of Kickstarter) thus being open to streamers/youtubers/journalists…and all kinds of previews which clearly shows on their pledgemeter – another luxury AAAs are deprived of so early, and for so long; A small price to pay are continuous “OMG looks like crap!” and such typical comments on it’s alpha+indie state;
-It also means that your fans can both create and share your promo material for free i.e. videos, GIFs, image galleries, forum threads (including other forums) or even Wikis plus stuff such as beginner guides or anything that would “normally” cost AAA some money (including the partial role of community service) – that is, if we even knew they existed at this early point;
-Indies are much more comfortable with the deadlines (gamemakers are also “suits” i.e. owners), with all the good and bad that comes with it;
-There’s no pressure of returning the investment, since it’s lion’s share comes from Kickstarter/pledges, with rather weak (read:no) strings attached;
-Connected to that, the success bar is much lower + they can focus on their niches – none of these will kill WoW, nor are they trying; Say Mark Jacobs, when asked to define CU success, said: "30-50K subs and 80+ on Metacritic would be great"; Similar numbers were given by J. Todd Coleman of Crowfall, and please note that "great" (instead of good or bearable), while the number of registered CU accounts is likely already in that range;
Back to numbers, speaking of some insanely big AAA figures mentioned earlier: total pre-launch cost of DAoC was only $2.42M (per Mark Jacobs), EVE too was made for just a couple; I know, the times were different, but these figures should be compared to vanilla WoW/SWG rather than Destiny: to generously take the (much) lesser of these two - SWG had less than $20M pre-launch, IIRC what G. Walton said couple years ago (did he say $17M?18? not sure) – anyway, the number was certainly somewhere in that range, and we are speaking of EVE/DAoC era.
"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
Isnt there a lot of crossover between the two games? systems created for one being used in the other?
Maybe it is more like 1.5 games being produced at once cost wise?
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
At the most basic level, they both have ground combat, both have space combat/flight, both have planets, both have quests.
Im not sure about crafting, Star Wars definitely, Star Citizen will have at some point?
Same with housing, Star Wars definitely, Star Citizen no idea.
As for questions, crafting No, housing is a different matter, constructing modular bases on planets.
No plans for crafting, yet you will be able to construct bases on planets.
The construction of bases is a form of crafting I think, would be a shame for them to not extend that and have players craft items, like armour, weapons, and ship modules.
Base construction would be one layer of crafting but details are still to be announced of how it will work.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/13128-The-Star-Citizen-Economy
Have fun
What the economy design shows is that who crafts, is the game, what the players do in the economy is move the resources around, as part of the mission system that would then let factories ask for raw resources then after manufactured ask for transport/trade missions to move stuff around.
It wouldn't be the player go to X place and mine, then go to a "crafting station" and craft some missiles, that's my take from its design.
And i say that as a person that absolutely loved the intricate crafting system of SWG and would have loved to see that in SC. We had a lot of factories and automatic mining stations in SWG too.
Have fun
Say not something you personally do, from players trading and transporting goods around, the factories and such would do the producing, your interaction with the economy would exclude the actual crafting process of such things.
That's more related to a mission system meant to drive economy, it's a rather different approach than what we would be used to.
Also, to comment on this latest nonsense you post, it is not logical that more playing will bring in more revenue because people are buying ships at this point when they can not earn them in the game. You and Erillion are always using the excuse that these $1000 ships will be earn-able in the game so people wont have to buy them anymore. You both also deny that the game will have a sub fee so how does that work?
I or we can only use known facts of past games and even point at recent games to prove a huge discrepancy in both quality and competence.
85 million for FFVII,approx of course depending several factors.They said it would way too expensive to remake in this day n age.So if we assume "way too expensive" to mean somewhere around 150 million,that is a lot for a rather ho hum game,even with newer graphics.
SWTOR...200 million,again give or take depending on stuff like marketing ,shows etc etc.Not nearly a good enough game,designed pretty much like Wow but in a sci-fi setting with an added good/evil side ordeal.
SC going to be over 200 million by time is done..if ever and when considering free money and not loaned from banks/investors,it is worth more like 500 million.Does anyone think the game will resemble even a 100 million game,not me that is for certain.
Then after games are officially released,how much goes into the game,how much is scammed from gamer's in DLC's and cash shops?
There are other factors i personally look at when deciding how serious a developer is.Did they attain their own financing,are they using bull crap gimmicks like early access or Kickstarters.Are they trying to get money from gamer's with only a few months of production value,is it a long term commitment before releasing or just a fast cash grab,trons of factors will tell a person if the game/developer is a scammer or serious.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Have fun
PS:
perhaps your question refers to the first sentence before the "I think ..." :
Source for "much less employees" -->
--> 60 and 50 in the two US studios respectively, compared to 220 ish in UK
Source for income earned -->
Crowdfunding Amount of money earned on SC homepage
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals
There are also other factors to consider in the cost of a game.
On Star Citizen they licensed a lot of technology. Integrating this and working with outside companies adds onto the costs.
They switched game engines. This actually isn't that expensive since the majority of assets for an MMO are transferable between engines. The biggest effort will be converting levels over. Art, sound, and the server can be transferred over. What a base game engine offers isn't the biggest hurdle in MMO development, but this is mainly due to the complexity of MMOs.
Advertising will be a big expense if they ever get around to release. Most of the budget on new games is advertising.