Hopwin wrote:
Midgen wrote:
Hopwin wrote:
I took a minute to read this thread finally (print screens look amazeballs!). Is my understanding correct in that you guys are spending what appears to be hundreds of dollars on ingame purchases for a game that doesn't exist yet?
that's kinda how the whole crowdfunding thing works...
So if the game never launches do you get your $$ back?
Nope. Crowdfunding occupies a space somewhere between investment and pre-ordering. It lacks the consumer protections that pre-ordering would grant, in that it carries risks that the product may not be finished, and no guaranteed return policy like you'd get from a retailer. However, by substituting for investing (by venture capitalists or a publisher), it allows the creator to try more boutique concepts and be accountable directly to the audience rather than to a party whose only interest is profitability.
Star Citizen is a pretty extreme example of crowdfunding, to be sure. Most crowdfunded video games don't get nearly the "upsell" that Star Citizen has managed, because with most video game projects, the rewards beyond the initial "you get the game when it's complete" tiers are either limited in quantity or primarily involve the addition of physical goods. The reason Star Citizen has managed to get such a high average commitment (I think that, though the Aurora ($30-45 pledges) is the most popular pledge by count, the average contribution per player is skewed much higher, to around the $80 mark by pledgers with bigger pledge packages and ones who've pledged for multiple ships) is due, in the majority, to the respect and name recognition Chris Roberts himself carries, coupled with the success of his pedigree, and how very clear and reasonable (though enormously ambitious) his plans have been laid out from the beginning. Couple that with an incredibly open and communicative development process that is already producing deliverables for its users, and the absolutely starved nature of fans of the genre, and what you're seeing here, in many cases, is people pledging for an entire lost decade of Space Simming.