KSP 2 - Budget Estimate

[Deadmeat24]

7 hours ago, Vl3d said:

When? We've had 5 posts in the last 6 months and the game is supposed to drop this year. And let me remind you: terrain rendering, atmospheric scattering, resource system abstractions, procedural radiators and interstellar travel. This is all info we already knew from 3 years ago.

Where's the marketing team? They should have a 20 mil. budget in my opinion. Why aren't they using it?

If you want my opinion, it will likely start this summer. If the "something more" portions of the feature videos are to be believed, we just had our last feature video. They will probably go heavy on trailers, gameplay demos and reviews, and advertising. This will run for a couple months and then the game will come out. They are likely finishing the heavy lifting of the development process as we speak. So now that they know EXACTLY how everything will work and what we can expect, they can get material prepped to share exact details. 

[THE_JUDGE]

Basically every episode of the feature videos has been focused on some new feature they advertised at the announcement of KSP 2. 1. New Tech. 2. More Animated Kerbals 3. Better Tutorials. 4. New Planets. 5. Interstellar Travel.  Unless I'm forgetting something, all that's left is Colonies and Multiplayer. Things will start accelerating soon at the end of the feature videos. I don't really know what else they would do while the game is still in active development and thing still subject to change.

[Pthigrivi]

59 minutes ago, THE_JUDGE said:

Colonies and Multiplayer.

And to be fair these and career progression are the hardest components of the game to design and test and optimize. You really need everything else working before you can start to drill these down into something really smooth. 

Edited April 17, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[intelliCom]

9 hours ago, Vl3d said:

terrain rendering, atmospheric scattering, resource system abstractions, procedural radiators and interstellar travel. This is all info we already knew from 3 years ago.

Procedural Radiators actually wasn't known until it was said. Procedural wings on the other hand were introduced. We've only just recently gotten confirmation that manuevers can be executed during timewarp. It just feels like you're willingly ignoring everything genuinely new to support the argument that "they're not posting anything new", except they have been. And besides, you can just ignore KSP2 for a while and do something else, right? Try and make an Eve SSTO? Practice gravity assists? Maybe get better at KSP1 so you can jump into KSP2 with a large body of experience when it releases?

[darthgently]

28 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

And besides, you can just ignore KSP2 for a while and do something else, right? Try and make an Eve SSTO? Practice gravity assists?

Or if you want a real challenge, @Vl3d, you can chronologically replicate every mission Scott Manley has done, but beat him in time, fuel, etc

[Jcklemme]

1 minute ago, darthgently said:

Or if you want a real challenge, @Vl3d, you can chronologically replicate every mission Scott Manley has done, but beat him in time, fuel, etc

I'm pretty sure telling somebody to kill themselves is against forum rules 

[K^2]

14 hours ago, Vl3d said:

KSP sold more than 5 mil.

I must have looked at an old article. Even better. This is 5M people already familiar with KSP, meaning PD won't have to spend nearly as much marketing KSP2 as it would for an obscure game, and it makes RoI even more reliable here. So the fact that KSP2 is on an expensive side for a brand new studio is entirely justified here. It also doesn't look like they're squandering resources based on the progress the game is making. So again, I don't see a problem.

[Vl3d]

3 hours ago, Jcklemme said:

I'm pretty sure telling somebody to kill themselves is against forum rules 

Let's keep it close to the budget topic guys. Avoid the primal instincts of ganging up on someone with a different opinion from the majority of the group. I'm not easily offended, you're just making me laugh. I also did not ask for KSP1 challenges to keep my mind off KSP2 - I care about the potential of the second game, it could be the greatest game ever made (without the awkward bits and bugs of the first).

4 hours ago, intelliCom said:

It just feels like you're willingly ignoring everything genuinely new to support the argument that "they're not posting anything new", except they have been.

If procedural radiators is what tickles your fancy then be my guest and enjoy the bread crumbs. I will not list all the things improved by KSP1 mods that were announced to be re-implemented and integrated in KSP2. You call those new, I call them known. I'm interested in what makes KSP2 a completely new game from KSP1 + mods, in the lore, in the automation, in the multiplayer. And those topics are top secret. I have never heard of players to NOT want more game-related media and a marketing campaign about their favorite game. You do you. I'm gonna leave it at that.

It would have been amazing if they announced a collab with NASA to send a copy of the game around the Moon on Orion / SLS. I wonder how much that would cost?

Also here's some more statistics to show that there is a lot of room for growth with a little more marketing / advertising budget. Right now it seems like it's always the same people watching and interacting with promo videos. The trend is actually going slightly down, not up...

 

Edited April 17, 2022 by Vl3d

[K^2]

It's hard for me to say if that's the correct call, since I don't do marketing, but it looks like PD isn't doing any marketing yet. Intercept is doing normal PR outreach, with a lot of what's being shared being prepared primarily for internal consumption. Clearly some editing work is done and promotion is happening, but just enough to keep us here.

Real marketing from PD hasn't started yet. This is typical for a game not scheduled to release until late in the year. Marketing tends to ramp up quickly right before preorders open up, which you obviously can't do until the date is set. The only real conclusion is that we shouldn't expect a release in the summer, but that was everyone's assumption as is. E3 is probably where we'll see marketing kick off, and maybe a booth at Gamescom with a demo. This is assuming PD is marketing this like any other title with similar budget and sales expectations.

[Guest]

18 hours ago, Vl3d said:

When? We've had 5 posts in the last 6 months and the game is supposed to drop this year. And let me remind you: terrain rendering, atmospheric scattering, resource system abstractions, procedural radiators and interstellar travel. This is all info we already knew from 3 years ago.

Where's the marketing team? They should have a 20 mil. budget in my opinion. Why aren't they using it?

This is getting ridiculous, Starfield is going to release in November and Elden Ring just dropped a month and a half ago, both games are huge AAA games, from popular AAA studios and both games probably have a marketing budget that's bigger than the overall KSP2 Budget.

For both games the strategy has been to keep their mouth shut until the last possible moment, filling the silence with the same teaser trailers served as ads and vague interviews talking about the principles behind the design of the game. 

On the other hand we have two examples of games that flopped hard (regardless of their quality as games) due to overhyping and over-sharing ideas and features that then got cut in the final version, NMS (pre "redemption") and Cyberpunk 2077.

It's not like KSP2 is the only game around, before complaining about something that seems strange at first glance we should check with other games to see if such a strategy is a thing.

Even if we stick to Indie games or games coming from small studios, 2021 (at least for me) has been the year of Timberborn and Dyson Sphere Program, two games that basically came out of nowhere with a release that, despite being an Early Access, offered a polished and refined experience.

[THE_JUDGE]

2 hours ago, Master39 said:

This is getting ridiculous, Starfield is going to release in November and Elden Ring just dropped a month and a half ago, both games are huge AAA games, from popular AAA studios and both games probably have a marketing budget that's bigger than the overall KSP2 Budget.

For both games the strategy has been to keep their mouth shut until the last possible moment, filling the silence with the same teaser trailers served as ads and vague interviews talking about the principles behind the design of the game. 

Compared to the absolute radio silence that Elden Ring had between it's first trailer and any other information being released (Seriously, for over 2 years all we had was a cinematic trailer with no gameplay. There was a youtube channel that just posted of 30 second clip of someone in the community saying "There is no news about Elden Ring today" every single day for like a year and a half of it. The subreddit basically went mad trying to speculate about anything that could be in the game it basically designed a whole new one.), the Ksp 2 teams as positiveley pouring information down our throats, with regularly spaced show and tells and feature videos.  

[SciMan]

On 4/17/2022 at 4:57 AM, K^2 said:

E3 is probably where we'll see marketing kick off, and maybe a booth at Gamescom with a demo. This is assuming PD is marketing this like any other title with similar budget and sales expectations.

Now hold on just a minute there, unless I'm misinformed, E3 isn't happening this year because none of the big studios showed up to book slots there. All the big game studios took a look at what E3 was charging for a slot (IIRC several million dollars per slot!), looked at how well their "In-house streamed pandemic emergency presentations to prove we still exist" went (that weren't at E3 did last year and the year before), and came to the collective realization of "The crowds aren't following E3 for E3, they're following it for us being at E3" and decided that the price of admission wasn't worth it, and then since E3 didn't have enough bookings to reserve a venue the whole thing kinda collapsed in on itself.

That being said, I'd be extremely surprised if KSP 2 didn't show up at Gamescom in some form this year, since the last time KSP 2 was showing up at conventions (pre-pandemic) Gamescom was IIRC the biggest one they showed up to.

[K^2]

On 4/26/2022 at 4:08 PM, SciMan said:

Now hold on just a minute there, unless I'm misinformed, E3 isn't happening this year because none of the big studios showed up to book slots there.

There's still a digital E3, which might have limited turnout itself, but a bunch of big studios are doing their events around the same time. It's an important time point even if mostly by convention at this point. I don't know if T2/PD will have something as part of digital E3, or have their own show, or simply use that time of increased media attention to push a lot of marketing. They'll certainly be doing E3-adjacent marketing of their other properties. So either way, it'd be a good time to kick off KSP2 marketing, whether actually at E3, or just around that time. Not the only option, mind, but it's a high probability one given the release schedule. Only starting marketing push at Gamescom feels a little late, and there isn't really anything else going on that would have sufficient media attention. You'd be wasting free publicity, basically, if you don't start marketing at E3. But yeah, Gamescom and maybe PAX Prime is where I expect it turned to 11 and where we'll see booths, possibly playable demos, certainly some sort of fresh gameplay videos, etc.

[kerbiloid]

On 4/16/2022 at 8:23 AM, intelliCom said:

What was the budget for the original KSP?

For food?

[Vl3d]

On 4/17/2022 at 9:22 AM, Vl3d said:

It would have been amazing if they announced a collab with NASA to send a copy of the game around the Moon on Orion / SLS. I wonder how much that would cost?

I was close enough. Congrats KSP team, thank you NASA!