Chris Roberts' Star Citizen Crowdfunds $35 million

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-12-23-star-citizen-raised-an-astronomical-USD35m

In case you don't know who Chris Roberts is, he's the creator of the legendary space combat series Wing Commander and he has recently been crowdfunding an MMO-space combat-trading sim in the vein of Wing Commander Privateer, called Star Citizen. The startling news is that the campaign has now racked the astronomical (no pun intended) amount of 35 million dollars.

Whether you are interested in this particular game or not, this is encouraging for another reason: it shows that the space combat genre still has a following and that if this game succeeds there may be a future for other abandoned franchises such as Colony Wars, G-Police, X-Wing and Rogue Leader.

Here's hoping.

Its insane and i dont get why people keep throwing money into this game without even having seen a working playable tech-demo.

Uh....There's a hangar module that's been out for months that lets you walk around and even get inside your ship(s). Also a dog fighting module is due out early next year.

I just got done running around in there a minute ago, man this game is just going to look incredible. I'm pretty excited to see how the dog-fighting module handles! :D

I'm guessing most people do it because they badly want another game is this genre, and they're not aware how incredibly risky it is to invest in a video game. It will be interesting to see what the crowd reaction is when the team has to publicly share details every time they slip on a milestone, and the crowd-funders are suddenly put in the shoes of a publisher.

This is a very good example of what we've been missing because publishers are forced to release games at $60. Space sim fans are specifically the kind of people who would be willing to pay more than $60 for a high-quality game. But since it's a niche genre, there's no money to be made at the $60 pricetag, so publishers would not approve such a project.

This crowdfunder is so successful because fans of the genre are paying hundreds, and even thousands of dollars to be able to play this game. Meanwhile, "we" are outraged every time a developer wants to release a game for more than $60...

Privateer was amazing but the game came out 20+ years ago... its hard to believe they can remake it unless they have a full team of people... from the website you don't see much about the game so i'm thinking they are not gonna spend that 35 million on making the game.

You just have to watch some of the vids they make weekly to see their whole team. Or even read some of the articles on RobertsSpaceIndustries. There's a lot of information there about the team and everything they're doing with the money we've provided.

Up to this point they seem to be on top of the development of the game, they have a lot of content to create still but it's been entertaining to watch so far.

The hangar demo is not the game nor is it playable. (and yes i know you can walk around looking the ships or drive the hanager car)

Also the dog fighting module has just been delayed so again nothing playable is out.

You just get the feeling that something like this will be a letdown. I mean 35 million is nuts. I thought that the money that Baldur's gate remake Obsidian was making pulled too much money. What are they going to do with all of it? You see so many stories of kickstarters getting more than they needed and then when they try to expand the game they overshoot and end up needing even more.

For instance?

It's been awhile since I've seen a report of this nature, but say 12-18 months ago there was at least 3 with one by a really well known dev that had either run out of money or delayed the project considerably because they had tried to do too much with the extra funds they had received. I obviously can't remember the specifics but I'm not making it up lol.

I guess this might be true for one-man studio amateur developers, but I doubt this applies to professionals like Chris Roberts or Tim Schafer.