Home Gaming The cost of making a ship in Star Citizen is pretty high

The cost of making a ship in Star Citizen is pretty high

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11

Eagle 5

It’s amazing how expensive developing games can potentially be. While some developers have the benefits of reusable assets to lower costs, creating new code from scratch can sometimes be prohibitively expensive. But in the case of Star Citizen, it’s money well spent.

So how much does it cost to create a spaceship in Star Citizen? Around enough cash to buy a new car, apparently. “It can be anywhere from $35,000 to $150,000,” Chris Roberts said to Joystiq.

Modelling, labour, realism and having parts that react on their own all contribute towards the cost of a space vehicle, according to Roberts. Each ship also happen to be wrapped up in polygons, with the largest of them requring up to 70 million pieces of emotional coding.

Compared to a game with an even larger budget that happens to have vehicles, a run of the mill spaceship has around ten times as many polygons when put side by side, at around 300 000 of them in total.

Still, Star Citizen has the cash to keep crafting those magnificent solar system vehicles, as it managed to pull in over $10 million in crowdfunding, and more through the fiscal magic of partner investments as well.

Now to get moving on my Kickstarter to fund the cash needed to upgrade my PC to something that will be able to handle that game.

Last Updated: June 28, 2013

11 Comments

  1. Woah, that’s a lot of cash for a virtual ship 0_o

    Reply

  2. ElimiNathan

    June 28, 2013 at 20:27

    Still pretty awesome though and prob worth it for them in the end

    Reply

  3. CaptainNemo42

    June 29, 2013 at 16:14

    Best Header EVER!

    Reply

  4. Joe Bold

    June 29, 2013 at 20:14

    “[..] and more through the fiscal magic of partner investments as well.”

    Do you have any sources for that? As far as I know, and also mentioned again in the recent 24h hours livestream, the project is completly founded through pledges so far. Portential Investors are currently put aside, since the pledging works so well, which gives CIG exactly the freedom they need regarding the development.

    I’m curious if the advertisement of the final game will also be financed though the crowd.

    Reply

    • Major Commodore 64 Darryn B

      June 30, 2013 at 07:48

      It’s not exactly investments from big companies as far as I can tell, but more from private individual investors who have more cash to throw around.

      http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11/star-citizens-6-3-million-haul-breaks-gaming-crowdfunding-record/

      Reply

      • Joe Bold

        June 30, 2013 at 14:14

        Well that makes sense. During the recent 24h live stream a “new” ship was released, the Idris Corvette, and this thing was put up for 1.250,00 USD in a limited manner, though gone within a blink of an eye. I’m not sure to how many it where actually limited to, but seeing it getting sold out so fast just shows that there are a lot of people have alot of Money and really want to see this project coming true.

        Also the high pledge packages during the original pledge campaign where taken pretty quickly.

        Reply

        • Snibbig

          July 1, 2013 at 07:03

          There were 50 put on sale.

          Reply

    • HvR

      July 1, 2013 at 08:26

      I think the other pro to having the biggest and most successful kick starter campaign is that the whole core gamer group knows about the games and have seen the screenshots and trailers.

      Reply

  5. HvR

    July 1, 2013 at 08:28

    Well looking at the total budget of the last Tomb Raider game Lara Croft was wearing $250 000 shorts and had a $5 000 000 boob job.

    Reply

  6. Ultimo_Cleric N7

    July 1, 2013 at 08:53

    Totally worth it, this game is going to own!
    EDIT: HEADER OF THE WEEK BTW

    Reply

  7. Zefninja

    July 2, 2013 at 12:56

    For a great Star Citizen community you can check out http://www.capellan-confederation.com

    In particular we also have quite a South African community

    Reply

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