TLDR: Read the paragraph "Conclusion" at the end of this post. Preamble Traditional funding models in gaming industry relies on either financially strong publishers or on private risk of small development studios. Either way, it is a company, ultimately the private persons running the company, who bear the risk of loss. They have to spend money to make development possible and once they publish a final product, cash will (hopefully) cover the expensis and some dollars more. Since games in average are becoming more complex and demanding compared to old highlights like Tetris or Snakes, specifically in context of graphics, sound and realism, the initial investment often exceeds the capabilities of average companies. Even the advent of game frameworks like Unreal Engine or Unity do not help that much in this context as they require license fees and expertise in adoption to the games use-case. To minimize risk for the developer (and publisher), companies look for other funding models rather than disburse the complete expensis beforehand. The corwdfunding funding model made its way into the gaming industry. It might has different flavors like a pure kickstarter campaing or early access programs, reiterating crowdfunding requests, and content pledges (which are extended over the development process) up to exposing the developement process to investor based gambling lately which i will ignore in this post as it (hopefully) will never have a place in Star Citizen. Current State There is a mix in the gaming industry between traditional funding and an increasing number of crowdfunding. I personally expect that the majority of computer games will be crowdfunded progress in the not-to-far future as this funding model has proven its capabilities in the past two decades. As mentioned before, crowdfunding can have different flavors where I want to mention two in specific: 1. Early Access - One time purchase to access the game before release. In most cases, early access titles are essentially beta test of games which are close to release. That implies that the game should have a stable client and most of its core elements available. 2. Content Pledges - The developer/publisher offers content of the work in progress (WIP) game as pledges to the audience in expectation that the backers will repetively invest money if the project. Often combined with early access purchase, most often called "game package". Example 1: Valheim - Early Access (Iron Gate) Valheim is definitely on the winning side of the trend on early access titles. With more than 8 million sold copies, the developers earned much more money than they ever dreamt of. The reason for this success is multi-facetted with the following contributors (not complete list): - Refined game play, but still very limited "story" - Immersive world with sandbox feeling. Enables huge time sink for "builder" type audience - Suffient graphical representation with great visual effects - Easy to learn, yet sufficiently challenging - Little intial invest - Surprisingly low number of significant bugs As a result, Valheim created a very strong position as early access game which attracted so many players. The best proof is player retainment and a "current player count" of ~30k on Steam in January 2022 taking place in the top 50 most active games on Steam. Estimating the income to more than 80 million USD by copy sell only, the financial risk of developement isn't on the developers anymore. Crowdfunding - The positive side As shown with the example, the advantage of a crowdfunding funding model is obvious: - Minimize the financial risk of the producing parties (developer and publisher) by dividing it between future users (the backers) - Enabling backers to have (limited) input on the product before the product is finalized with the goal to improve quality and acceptance of the product - Evaluate audience ("Is the game concept acceptable by the gaming community? Does it create interest?") We could stop right here claiming crowdfunding was the silver bullet of funding models if there were not the negative sides. Crowdfunding - The negative side If a crowdfunding campaign surpasses its expectation, the developers and publisher have more money than anticipated. That often results in conflict on how to spend that money. The following incomplete list of points might occur: - Development process can significantly slow down as there is no immediate need for delivery - Feature creep (adding new aspects which were not initially planned while aspects which were initially planned stay incomplete or missing) - Risk of "overextending" by adding new development staff which requires additional financial resources - Intentional scam Example 2: Chronicles of Elyria - Kickstarter Early Access (Soulbound Studios) This project had more success than the developer could handle during the kickstarter period. While being too ambitious to start with, the following months were marked by feature creep and mismanagement. Commonly considered to be a scam over some years, the project is now cut down significantly and will probably release one day. However, it is unlikely that it will ever provide the proposed features of the kickstart campaign. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvbsQW4vo2Y Example 3: Day of Dragons - Kickstarter Early Access (BeAwesome Games) This project is a bit different to Chronicles of Elyria as it is assumed that the whole campaign was originally designed to be a scam. There is a lot of controversy on this, but it seems, similar to Chronicles of Elyria, the developer does provide some things to backers, but far from the promised features. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7I13ey6P9c Example 4: Valheim - Early Access (Iron Gate) Yep, here we are again with the shiny example of early access success. While there is no sign of scam in this game, it shows a significant slow down in progress compared to what was initially communicated in the roadmap. The original roadmap for 2021 included FOUR major updates with potentially smaller updates here and there. Coming 2022, the player base received ONE major update ("Hearth and Home") and a couple of smaller ones which didn't implement a lot of features other than bug fixes, performance improvements and graphical updates. Not saying that this is bad, but it is disappointing that they underdelivered to initial claims. Yes, the major update might have included more stuff than initially planned (e.g. Tar), but is that "excuse" enough? https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/892970/view/3056224118622201244 Example 5: Star Citizen - Kickstarter and Content Pledges (Cloud Imperium Games) Now here we are, in our beloved (or hated) "game". SC differs so much from previous examples that it is challenging to find a short, adequat description. So please refer to this video for more details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyuyEWeTolk I think we all agree that this project did encounter many times of mismanagement and definitely a huge amount of feature creep and shifts in focus that some backers feel scammed by CIG. CIG did not deliver what they promised. And the reason in my opinion is the funding model. Constant increase in amount of pledges while the financial model after release isn't carved out. There is simply no need for CIG to deliver a final product. Conclusion Since SC is built on a content pledge crowdfunding model which proofs to work well during the SC "Alpha" state, CIG has no real urgency to release a final product. Not even a Beta. Ship pledges are said to be removed once SC gets released, so paying the developer staff will be a huge challenge. Why should CIG risk to lose its income by releasing a game? Specifically if other games, which are said to endanger SC, are failing hard as they are pushed to market too soon (e.g. Cyberpunk 2077, Elite Dangerous: Odyssey). What motivation is required to have a crowdfunded software being released other than the personal pride and feeling of accomplishment within the developers who worked on the project? Specifically when the funding model proofs to grant stable or even increasing income over the years. Is it possible for us backers to nurture that pride and feeling of accomplishment at CIG to speed up the development process? How?