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this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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I can tell you why I care. Maybe you don't care but I'll tell you anyway. Because this sort of bullshit people lap up blindly and let the industry set it as a new standard. Can we milk users for in-game ships for a game that doesn't exist for a decade? Do I want that for the future of gaming? Pay now for the upcoming necromancer in the upcoming Diablo 6 that's been in the making for 10 years! This funding model is predatory and the game is already primed to be soaked through with Eve-level of toxicity.
You should care. It's your gaming too.
Before reeeeeee, note that I don't attack anyone's enjoyment of the "game".
Adult take
Spot on.
I do care. I cared so much that I was a games journo for over 5 years. I love gaming. Always have always will.
I'm well over 50. My first gaming devices predate the 2600. Calling this predatory is hyperbole. People are not paying now to play later. They are paying now to play a title in development. That's not the future of gaming. This is the present. Diabolo 6's bs isn't really an apt example. I can give you a much better, more relevant and apt example: Watframe. Warframe used exactly the same funding model as SC and was nowhere near complete for almost a decade - people still played it to the point that it successfully ran its own convention over multiple years. Now it's feature complete and has dropped multiple addons and expansions. Would that have happened without audience financial participation? I don't think so. Hell, no studios of scale or pubs believed in it and Dark Sector had to be so heavily bastardised to fit with the FPS warshooter trend to even get published. If Digital Extremes didn't shift models to crowd funding they would have died. Cloud Imperium are making a very specific game for a very specific audience and they are smart to sell directly to that audience. That money has no negative impact on you and has a positive net effect on the industry - lots of people are being employed across different nations and lots of others are also earning money in audience participation (bloggers, influencers, convention staff etc).
This is the present for this niche audience but if it becomes a way for more games of greater variety to reach the audiences that will pay for the specific experiences they want while being able to avoid all the bs associated with seasonal trends and ridiculous short shelf lives leading to crazily overreaching copy protection and awful cycles of boom/bust hire/fire/studio closure I'm all for it.
Warframe never had this level of bullshit. The ratio of cash:dev lead time wasn't remotely close. I played Warframe for ages and their funding model very quickly crystalized into a very transparent and rewarding model. "Wanna support us? Buy skins, frame slots, gun slots, etc" their early funding didn't even register as a blip on the radar when compared to the sheer millions of dollars dumped into SC just so they can deliver nothing close to their promise.
The "this is the present" schtick is nice and all but that exact same "niche" audience that's waiting for sc is waiting in Eve online, for it's true successor and are getting more and more disenfranchised. That money has a negative impact on me directly because those millions could have gone to a better place for gamer, instead of being in perpetual escrow In a tech-demo-game that is now filled by such zealots that any mention of refusal to accept this so called new dogshit status quo gets their Spidey Senses tingling the same way a Musk enthusiast rallies to defend him.
You care that the bloggers, influencers and convention staff are getting jobs to shovel this game, that's cool, you've spent time in the industry and they're maybe your people. I'm not going to put a gun to my own head and say that giving people jobs is a bad move in trying to counter this point.
All the stuff you're talking about in your last paragraph, SC isn't going to avoid any of it from where I'm standing. It's either going to flame out on launch, or it's going to be jam packed with the original whales that will grief beyond all measure.
I hope I'm fucking wrong about all this and I'm just a jaded lil bitch. I hope we get another NMS that is redeemed to that same degree. Until then, remember, no pre-orders.