Star Citizen Central

[Baines]

I think some of the money is from whales but I think there is new players joining.

When CIG can get people queuing to be able to pay $2000+ for a single ship, it seems a substantial chunk of their playerbase are whales. That is also what the constant stream of new ships feeds upon, people who are already invested and now want to go for the new shiny, the new game feature ship, a “better” version of what they’ve already bought, or just a new color. CIG’s support for melting ships and transferring “lifetime insurance” also allows the lure of new ships to draw somewhat more conservative players to “trade in” a previous purchase for a potentially more expensive newer model.

I’m not saying that there aren’t new players. I’m just saying that I believe the substantial majority of funding is coming from existing players. This honestly probably isn’t that different from other games that are built to take advantage of whale economies, or at least what companies tend to dream of when they aim to target whale economies.

[greywar]

When CIG can get people queuing to be able to pay $2000+ for a single ship, it seems a substantial chunk of their playerbase are whales.

For sure, the SC financial ecosystem is gigantically skewed towards whaling. Even people who don’t consider themselves SC “whales” have routinely spent amounts that would make them junior whales for any other games (at least!).

There are always a few folks around who haven’t bought in at all, or bought in at the barest minimum, but the game economy isn’t driven by those folks.

[Viktor]

Some people are expecting more info about Crusader Ares in upcoming Thursday.

The version in PTU has reached to version alpha 3.8.0h. Maybe first wave will get it on their hands soon …

[alms]

Even people who don’t consider themselves SC “whales” have routinely spent amounts that would make them junior whales for any other games (at least!).

Wait, isn’t that implying that SC whales do spend millions of dollars?

From what I recall reading, a whale is worth tens to hundreds of thousands. Anything less is called a dolphin, at the bottom of the pyramid there’s minnows which are regular folks whose routine spending roughly equates the price of regular games, while not on sale. And at the bottom there are people like me whose monthly spending is 14 EuroCents per month, AND dropping.

That figure referred to games that are nowhere near as impressive to what we regular folks effing freeloaders buy for one buck in a Humble bundle.

To preemptively put to rest the idea that I might have had too much herbal tea, today this is but one reference from 2012:

These Guys' $5K Spending Sprees Keep Your Games Free to Play

In there, several mentions of guys dropping 5 grand or more a month to buy in-game currencies with which to “help” their clans, as well as a link to a GDCVault presentation called “$100,000 whales”.

[Curry]

I play War Thunder occasionally because I like tanks and it’s the best thing out there, unfortunately.

There’s a thread on the forum asking people what they’ve spent. The amount of people that come in there and then "discover " “oh lol, I’ve spent more than 2000 euros, oh well xD” is high. It’s the reason the game’s development is completely skewed towards selling new vehicles for 50-100 euros per vehicle to these players and adding an impossibly titanic grind for anyone else to get them for free.

And they think they’re supporting the game, rather than making it worse. That’s what bothers me the most. They make it profitable to base the entire gameplay loop around pay2notbefrustrated rather than fighting in vehicles.

[LexW]

What a “whale” is depends entirely on the game and the pricing structure. Anyone telling you that there is a fixed, standardised definition, or that the term “dolphin” always means that and “whale” always means this is simply lying to you. @greywar is certainly correct that for some games, spending a few hundred dollars makes you a “whale” by their terms, but for others it might be more like ten k over a year. Even in games where some people spend six digits, though, it’s likely everyone spending even five digits is considered, by the devs, to be a “whale”. Quite possibly four, but it really does depend on the game.

[greywar]

What a “whale” is depends entirely on the game and the pricing structure. Anyone telling you that there is a fixed, standardised definition, or that the term “dolphin” always means that and “whale” always means this is simply lying to you.

That ^

The spending habits of SC are wildly different than normal video games and are much closer to the abusive models in place on mobile platforms.

And no, mobile “whale” do not need to spend millions or even 10’s of thousands to be a whale. Simple spending multiples of what a normal “AAA game” (I can’t type that without hearing Jim Sterling in my head now) costs puts players into a whole new category.

This is why the industry has been chasing live services so hard.

[LexW]

Yup when they see that some POE or Warframe or Destiny players blow literally hundreds or thousands a year, thus being the equivalent of 10+ full-price AAA sales each per year they start getting crazy visions. Even if it averages out so across the game the per player spend is only like 1 AAA per year, that’s still equivalent to the dream of the “annual franchise”, only with a small fraction of the development cost (it’s far cheaper to keep an MMO er “live service” going than to build a new game, too, because players are fine with limited new assets and mechanics in a “live service”, but not fine with that in a new game with a number and a subtitle and stuff.

[Skalpadda]

I haven’t been following SC at all beyond a bit of info and outrage casually absorbed through internet osmosis. So, what have they actually released so far? Is it a game yet? Is it fun?

[alms]

And no, mobile “whale” do not need to spend millions or even 10’s of thousands to be a whale

You started by comparing SC to other games and arguing that their whales are so big that they somehow redefine the notion of a F2P whale. Here’s a refresher:

Even people who don’t consider themselves SC “whales” have routinely spent amounts that would make them junior whales for any other games (at least!).

When I asked whether that was implying that SC Whales are spending millions, which would make them bigger then Clash of Clans whales, for instance, and could help the case of “making other games’ whales looking junior”, a deflection was the reply.

So, perhaps it would be more productive to just focus on how much SC whales spend, so everybody else in the thread can decide for themselves whether they are a special case or not.

If you pointed towards data to that could prove that assertion, I would certainly be interested, for one.

[greywar]

If you pointed towards data to that could prove that assertion, I would certainly be interested, for one.

Since I don’t work for the company, that seems unlikely. Believe literally anything you like here.

Anecdata: I personally am a SC backer at $250 USD. This places me in a category that most AAA game publishers would love to get in for one of their games.

This is still relatively small compared to huge numbers of SC backers and yet it is far in excess of what a AAA publisher gets from the majority of it’s customers.

For non “live services” games this is the equivalent of buying the ultra premium $99 edition 2.5 times.

Call it a whale, a dolphin, a fish on a stick… who cares.

[Baines]

When I asked whether that was implying that SC Whales are spending millions, which would make them bigger then Clash of Clans whales, for instance, and could help the case of “making other games’ whales looking junior”, a deflection was the reply.

From how I read the initial statement, I would say that it did not imply that SC whales spent millions of dollars.

You appear to have read it as saying: “If the people who don’t even consider themselves whales are spending this much, then just imagine what the people that do consider themselves whales are spending.”

I read the statement as instead talking about how much of the user base is spending substantial amounts of money. There is no inherent implication about absurdly high spending habits of self-proclaimed whales. A person that would spend a few thousand dollars in another game would be a “junior whale” and would probably self-identify as such a spender. A person that spends a few thousand dollars in Star Citizen may have just bought a couple of ships and simply considers themselves a regular player.

The statement does exaggerate the state of Star Citizen players a bit, but some measure of that is due to “whale” having different dollar meanings for different people. Some people will create complex multi-animal hierarchies with arbitrary hard dollar-limit delineations, where a whale only refers to someone who spends between X and Y. Some will call anyone who spends more than $20 on cosmetics or “time savers” a whale. Some may define “whale” status based on a game’s overall proceeds. Which runs into where you replied with a multi-animal dollar-limit delineation.

[alms]

Don’t get this wrong: this isn’t a terminology issue, much less a matter of catering to one’s own biases.

Personally, I have no horse in this race, Star Citizen is just massive and that’s the reason why it comes under such close scrutiny from so many gamers.

In that context, convincing evidence pointing towards “Star Citizen whales outspending cetaceans from any other game” would make for a head-turning headline. It doesn’t have to be secret documents stolen from CIG’s headquarters, either.

OTOH, if Star Citizen is somewhere towards the top end of the scale for whales, that would be still of interst, but also be kind of expected and not as attention-grabbing.

PS:

@Baines, I made absolutely no claim as to the definition of what a whale is; since F2P models have gone mainstream, there is a fairly accurate idea of how much a whale spends in the top-end games. For SC whales to make other games’ whales look “junior”, SC’s must be spending more. They either do (how much do they spend then?) or they don’t. Comparing SC to less successful, smaller games is not a relevant argument. I’m not playing a game of definitions, nor splitting any hair there.

[greywar]

It doesn’t have to be secret documents stolen from CIG’s headquarters, either.

I am idly curious where else you think such data would be coming from? Especially post-KS where you could at least see the raw numbers of backers at given levels.

There are plenty of stories regarding individual big spenders in SC, but all that is still just anecdata.

Any actual “evidence” would have to come from within the company as literally no one else is in possession of the data.

[Baines]

In that context, convincing evidence pointing towards “Star Citizen whales outspending cetaceans from any other game” would make for a head-turning headline. It doesn’t have to be secret documents stolen from CIG’s headquarters, either.

You are arguing against something that no one has said.

No one said that Star Citizen had the biggest whales of any game, or that Star Citizen whales outspend the whales from any other game, or anything of the like. You objected to a statement that you had misread or misinterpreted, and have continued to argue from that mistaken interpretation.

The stuff like definitions of a whale and the like are just quibbling over minor points, when the two sides aren’t even arguing the same topic.

[Zephro]

I haven’t been following SC at all beyond a bit of info and outrage casually absorbed through internet osmosis. So, what have they actually released so far? Is it a game yet? Is it fun?

I’m in the same boat as you. But there’s not an actual release yet right? But there’s an Xth convention of fans? How does that even work or make the slightest bit of sense?

[Shadoko]

I’m in the same boat as you. But there’s not an actual release yet right? But there’s an Xth convention of fans? How does that even work or make the slightest bit of sense?

There’s a beta of sorts, IIRC, which also has periods where it’s free and open to all. It’s sort of confusing. SC has been threading the line between released/not actually released but sort of playable/eternal early access since its inception.

In any case and no matter what the whole thing makes the Elite devs sound clear and focused, which is sort of an achievement.

[greywar]

In any case and no matter what the whole thing makes the Elite devs sound clear and focused, which is sort of an achievement.

That is a good point… you are right that simply remaining on message, pushing out new updates, and avoiding Pathfinder-esque gamebreakers simultaneously for this long is pretty epic in the current gaming dev environment.

[Viktor]

There are Star Citizen PU alpha releases but not any sort of public releases for Squadron 42. SQ42 and Star Citizen PU roadmaps are available here.

Patch notes for alpha (Live) releases can be found from here.

Star Citizen Alpha 3.8.0 PTU was released for wider testing couple of days ago.

CitizenCon is a good place to meet other backers and developers (photo gallery 1, photo gallery 2) and learn more about the project in detail. The convention seems to be success in many ways and people having lots of fun so I guess there is no reason to not have one.

[Zephro]

A simple “no this game hasn’t actually been released” would suffice. I’m not reading a development plan.

I mean I probably wouldn’t trouble myself with a convention for a game I truly loved, as other fans are weird people, but for alpha releases? The mind boggles.