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Gareth Everard has an interesting article on TechCrunch discussing what he believes crowdfunding will look like in the near future.
The golden age of irrational exuberance on Kickstarter has ended — Pebble is shutting down, marking the fall of crowdfunding's white knight after a string of other high-profile closures and failures.
Originally positioned as a medium for (especially arts-related) projects to garner modest seed funding from a diverse group of supporters, crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have obviously evolved since their respective launches in 2009 and 2008. Yes, crowdfunding has produced some inspiring success stories that have grown into innovative businesses, like Peak Design and Flow Hive.
However, it also has facilitated the transfer of significant sums of money to teams that ultimately proved themselves to be incompetent, leaving backers with nothing. Recent headlines have been chock full of projects that have declared bankruptcy or otherwise betrayed their early backers, exposing cases where founders' and companies' egos have simply overtaken their ability to reason, plan and communicate logically or truthfully.
Have the high profile failures doomed crowdfunding?
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday January 23 2017, @03:52PM
I backed them when they were on Kickstarter with the hype behind Freelancer in mind. While I don't understand the people who have poured thousands of dollars into building up a small armada pre-launch, I could certainly part with a bit of cash for the hope of at least Freelancer 2 maybe this time with a dynamic economy. I still play Discovery Freelancer [discoverygc.com] from time to time.
That being said, Star Marine was just recently released after what, over a year delay? I didn't even want an FPS, but it's nice I suppose. The single player game, Squadron 42, was supposed to have been released towards the end of last year. Now they're talking about releasing it in episodes supposedly this year. As far as Arena Commander, the dogfighting module, it would be nice if getting a decent ship weren't so grindy. I think I still have an Avenger I'm renting but even that gets torn to shreds by the first Falcon that engages me. I almost think I was doing better with an Aurora LN I rented since the missiles could usually oneshot anything except a Falcon. Port Olisar is nice, but since I can't use rental ships there I'm stuck with my Aurora MR, and it's a crapshoot whether I'm going to be able to do any mission that involves killing more than one pirate. Usually by the time I've managed to shoot down one with my pea shooter and get ready to EVA (which I admit being able to EVA is pretty cool) another pirate will show up and engage me.
I did eventually pull off the mission where you have to get a data file from a closed down Covalex station, and managed to grind the mission where you retrieve the flight data recorder from looks like the wreckage of a fighter. Then I was able to buy a blue space suit, a t-shirt, and a hat! Woo! (I'd much rather have at least a gimbal mounted ballistic cannon!)
Besides that, I was joking the other day that what I've basically helped fund instead of a video game is a reality TV show about making a video game! I really hope that Around the Verse, Bugsmashers, Loremaker's Guide to the Galaxy, etc aren't much of a time sink at all.
I'm still hoping that something that looks like an actual game will be released some time soon. As much as I want a Constellation, there's no way I'm paying real world money for one, at least not until 4.0 iirc when we'll actually be able to go somewhere else besides the Stanton system.
The schedule report [robertsspaceindustries.com] hadn't updated since before 2.6 came out so I just checked it, and it looks like they at least have info on 2.6.1, but they've removed the info on 3.0 and 4.0. Bleh.
I think they're biting off more than they can chew. I'd still be happy with Freelancer 2, but it looks like they're shooting for some kind of full immersion MMO holonovel. They seem to be delivering so I can't exactly call it hype like it was with Freelancer, but good grief is it taking forever.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday January 23 2017, @04:22PM
I must have been thinking Falcon because of the SpaceX story. It's the F7C Hornet [robertsspaceindustries.com] that basically tears apart anything else in Arena Commander no contest. Or maybe I just suck at dogfighting!
Would still be nice to take that Avenger Stalker [robertsspaceindustries.com] I'm renting out on Port Olisar. I might have an actual chance of completing a comm repair mission!