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Larian have had huge success with crowdfunding and showed how customer investment can bring great success to a game. Then of course there's Star Citizen...

SXX 3y ago
Like it or not, but Star Citizen delivered exactly what majority of whales who donated millions into it wanted: spaceship garage simulator. Some people were happy to pay for their space ship "NFTs".
- Turskarama 3y ago
  Ha! I very much doubt it delivered what they wanted, but they're prepared to pretend it's what they wanted because the alternative is to cry over how much money they wasted.
  - nolok 3y ago
    At this point, SC is a giant exercise in sunk cost fallacy for the whales. There are so many people who have sunk thousands, tens of thousands for some, in stuff that still only exists as jpeg or text blurb a decade later. The core game they're building is not too bad, it's just not even reaching 1% of the promises, and they SOLD those promises. I'm not betting on whether or not it will be a good game in the end (for many what it offers is already enough to have loads of fun), but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind they won't ever reach 50% of sold features developed, because it's impossible. I've been in enough project to recognize massive feature creep and the need for a proper reset, and SC passed that years ago, now they're in the "you better not release because you're fine as long as it's in dev, but once released the chicken will come home to roost". Another big issue is that, even if they somehow did it all, reached 100% completion, they're sold so much advantage left and right that the game would HAVE to be pay to win. It's already pay to win by design before even existing in its final form. I don't have any right to tell people how to spend their money or what they should enjoy, and I have paid my fair share of "overpriced" stuff I enjoyed, but my main issue is that I was really into the idea of another AA/AAA single player story-driven space game and Squadron 42 seems further away today than ten or five years ago.
  - zamalek 3y ago
    I don't think SC has delivered on $50m (or whatever absurd figure they have now reached) worth of value. However, "SC is a scam" meme hails from years ago and the game has been under continuous development since then. There are now viable and enjoyable gameplay loops. You can do all the things with spaceships. The absurd level of scale has been delivered. But, the game is a mile deep and an inch wide (the exact opposite problem to Elite Dangerous) - there is very little content. It's also a buggy mess. I am also somewhat upset with my purchase - in the intervening years I have grown to have less time, and the gameplay is too realistic/hardcore for a casual. I probably won't be playing it. Regardless, your stance on the game is problematic from a factual standpoint: 2 minutes in the game would prove you wrong to anybody - a result that can be replicated a couple of times each year for free.
    - appplication 3y ago
      > I don't think SC has delivered on $50m (or whatever absurd figure they have now reached) worth of value Add another 0 to that. Not even joking.
    - Turskarama 3y ago
      To be fair, I don't exactly think it's a scam (or at least, I certainly don't think it _started_ as a scam) but has just been horribly mismanaged to the point where I think it is now beyond saving. It has taken such a long time to make that the technology stack it's built on is now horribly outdated, but it's also far too big to redo in a new and more fit for purpose engine. They should have stopped adding more features years ago and instead spent as much effort as possible to get the basics done. I honestly don't think it can be recovered at this point.

SXX 3y ago

Like it or not, but Star Citizen delivered exactly what majority of whales who donated millions into it wanted: spaceship garage simulator. Some people were happy to pay for their space ship "NFTs".

Turskarama 3y ago
Ha! I very much doubt it delivered what they wanted, but they're prepared to pretend it's what they wanted because the alternative is to cry over how much money they wasted.
- nolok 3y ago
  At this point, SC is a giant exercise in sunk cost fallacy for the whales. There are so many people who have sunk thousands, tens of thousands for some, in stuff that still only exists as jpeg or text blurb a decade later. The core game they're building is not too bad, it's just not even reaching 1% of the promises, and they SOLD those promises. I'm not betting on whether or not it will be a good game in the end (for many what it offers is already enough to have loads of fun), but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind they won't ever reach 50% of sold features developed, because it's impossible. I've been in enough project to recognize massive feature creep and the need for a proper reset, and SC passed that years ago, now they're in the "you better not release because you're fine as long as it's in dev, but once released the chicken will come home to roost". Another big issue is that, even if they somehow did it all, reached 100% completion, they're sold so much advantage left and right that the game would HAVE to be pay to win. It's already pay to win by design before even existing in its final form. I don't have any right to tell people how to spend their money or what they should enjoy, and I have paid my fair share of "overpriced" stuff I enjoyed, but my main issue is that I was really into the idea of another AA/AAA single player story-driven space game and Squadron 42 seems further away today than ten or five years ago.
- zamalek 3y ago
  I don't think SC has delivered on $50m (or whatever absurd figure they have now reached) worth of value. However, "SC is a scam" meme hails from years ago and the game has been under continuous development since then. There are now viable and enjoyable gameplay loops. You can do all the things with spaceships. The absurd level of scale has been delivered. But, the game is a mile deep and an inch wide (the exact opposite problem to Elite Dangerous) - there is very little content. It's also a buggy mess. I am also somewhat upset with my purchase - in the intervening years I have grown to have less time, and the gameplay is too realistic/hardcore for a casual. I probably won't be playing it. Regardless, your stance on the game is problematic from a factual standpoint: 2 minutes in the game would prove you wrong to anybody - a result that can be replicated a couple of times each year for free.
  - appplication 3y ago
    > I don't think SC has delivered on $50m (or whatever absurd figure they have now reached) worth of value Add another 0 to that. Not even joking.
  - Turskarama 3y ago
    To be fair, I don't exactly think it's a scam (or at least, I certainly don't think it _started_ as a scam) but has just been horribly mismanaged to the point where I think it is now beyond saving. It has taken such a long time to make that the technology stack it's built on is now horribly outdated, but it's also far too big to redo in a new and more fit for purpose engine. They should have stopped adding more features years ago and instead spent as much effort as possible to get the basics done. I honestly don't think it can be recovered at this point.