That’s the primary pitfall of crowdsourced funding. When a studio is paying you to make a game, you set milestones and if you don’t make them, you don’t get paid. They’re the adults in the room. With nobody looking over their shoulders, these guys are wasting vast amounts of money expanding an already insanely ambitious project. Why? Because they can get away with it.
Not that crowdsourcing can’t work, obviously it can. But only if the executives and project managers maintain discipline.
They should have started off with a much more limited project, a Wing Commander nostalgia piece; branching campaign with forty total missions and a skirmish mode. Release on consoles and PC. That can actually be done in two years and done well. Then take the proceeds from that title and build towards a more ambitious target, once people trust you can release something great.
Timex
4390
Tons of people clearly already trust him, so there’s not really any reason to half ass it.
They just put up all their assets as collateral for a shockingly small loan. They’re failing.
If their goal was to essentially cheat people out of their money to never release a game, I guess they’re right on target. But I don’t believe that for a minute-- these people are passionate and want to build something great. The path they took isn’t leading to that destination.
Timex
4392
It’s fine for you to believe this, but it doesn’t make it so.
I am still a tad miffled at this game. I just went in for the basic option that got me Squadron42 because that is what I want to play. So all these delays for their uber ambitious multiplayer simulation feel especially insulting to me.
Leinad
4394
That’s honestly a horrible plan and not how you would get a ambitious project done.
You don’t get anyone excited for a rather limited modern take on Wing Commander. It’s also pretty naive to think you can build a “normal” game and then just extend it later on in the way SC is supposed to go.
You have to create the technical foundation first and if you don’t do this there is just no way to go bigger later on (it will just create even more issues in development than they already have).
So I really don’t get this “doing a less ambitious game” stuff because that’s not what most people want and why this project is interesting in the first place. They obviously could have settled for mediocrity but it’s really “funny” that people now complain about the fact that a crowdsourced project isn’t doing what has always been criticised by gamers, ie game companies not taking a risk and just producing the same stuff over and over again.
I am not a SC fanboy (haven’t spent an Euro on the game) but I follow it with curiosity because it has at least the potential to be something very different, something that can push games in general forward.
That’s a very rare thing and something we need more of (as gamers) and not less. And don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of risks involved with such a project but I think the public development of this game leads people to really bad conclusions because they simply aren’t used to the way game development goes.
I saw recently a good example where Jake Solomon talked about how often they had to redo XCOM pretty much from scratch in their development and that was “just” a game with rather limited technical challenges.
Yeah! Direct nostalgia kicks to popular games from your childhood? Who wants that garbage! Y’all sure convinced me, hoss.
Timex
4396
Stusser, did you give CIG money for the original kickstarter? I forget.
I mean all I ever wanted was Squadron 42 because I secretly hate multiplayer gaming, and I always figured it would be out way before all the crazy mmo shit. D’oh.
Timex
4398
Ya, I’m the opposite, in that my interest in the single player component is somewhat minimal at this point. I’m much more interested in an EvE type game world where I can actually fly a ship instead.
meeper
4399
I almost backed for SQ42, but then their collections went crazy and I figured they had more than enough money to complete SQ42 as-described so I wound up taking a pass.
I had no interest in the SC component, but man did I ever want a new Wing Commander. That’s my biggest disappointment about this: even if SQ42 comes out, it’s not going to be the WC game I was hoping for.
KevinC
4400
I feel the same way. I loved Wing Commander back in the day, but a nostalgia trip doesn’t really hold a lot of appeal to me.
It’s too bad that this game has all the signs of a mismanaged project, in my opinion. Because the game they describe sounds fantastic, but it increasingly sounds like fantasy. I’d love to be wrong!
I’m used to software development in general (after all, it’s been my career for over 20 years now), and I’ve been in all kinds of projects. I was part of well-managed and chaotic projects, boring projects and projects with a more “creative” flavor. But I’ve never seen anything like CIG. Ever. And I don’t mean that in a good way.
I’m primarily interested in the MMO as well.
Leinad
4403
Then you are not being honest (or lucky?). I only work on boring corporate software and have different experiences (I had projects that were scrapped after 3 years without ANY output, I had projects where the underlying tech was changed multiple times and so on), not to mention there are plenty of stories in the games industry that go far beyond what SC has experienced so far (look at all the game projects that actually fail to deliver anything at all).
SC is actually making visible progress, it’s not vaporware and you can clearly see the direction they are going in. Is there also significant feature bloat? Yes but that’s to be expected due to the nature of the whole thing.
What irritates me is that people pretend like it’s just a “normal” software project. Let’s be honest, this whole thing is much harder to handle then your usual AAA games. Can you put some blame on Chris Roberts etc.? Yes you could but at the same time I do think that it’s kind of inevitable.
You can’t have a game that is pushing the limits of what games can do (while doing so without a huge publisher backing you) and at the same time expect a process that’s as smooth after decades of experience in a very limited area.
I have a lot of respect for what they are doing, especially on a technical level and imo people are far too quick with negative hyperbole and various conspiracy theories.
You know that calling someone dishonest in the opening of your reply won’t put them in a very favorable frame of mind to read the rest of what you wrote, right?
There are far more reasons to blame CIG for dishonesty than to blame me for that, but there’s no point discussing that with you, apparently.
So my only comment will be that, for the record, I have some degree of respect for what CIG is trying to do. What I have little or no respect for is how they are trying to do it.
Nope, I have never given them a penny.
I want two things for Christmas, more than anything!
- The Trump piss tape
- A Wing Commander or Tie/Fighter sequel
Hery
4406
I paid them 40 dollars back in August of 2013, I consider it like accidentally dropping two twenties down a storm drain back in August of 2013.
I did fund Shroud of the Avatar, a similarly mismanaged crowdfunded game that’s years behind schedule and built metric craptons of content but never managed to create one nanosecond of enjoyable gameplay and now has a cash store selling in-game content like houses for hundreds of dollars that people will never see because while the game may eventually release isn’t actually any fun, if that makes you feel better. I’m a sucker too.
