Comments on: A Dangerous Kickstarter.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 13:53:12 +0000

Nope.

Also, to forestall any more comments on this piece from people posting from space-year 2014: judging from what I’ve seen of Elite: Dangerous now, this post might just be the wrongest post I ever make on this blog, and I’ll happily say so if it does turn out to be as good as it looks when I review it.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Nov 2014 13:58:16 +0000

Does anyone even read the comments down here?

By: Avramovic

Avramovic — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 23:13:03 +0000

…so how you like me now?

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 15:03:00 +0000

It wasn’t until I saw the Elite kickstarter that I realised just how much money was being thrown around here. Some weird mental effect of it being in pounds rather than dollars, no doubt, and I knew that some backers were giving hundreds or even thousands of dollars to past projects, but they’re asking for a hell of a lot of money for anything more than the basics.

(Which, again, they’re entitled to if they think people will pony up the cash, because this is Kickstarter and not a shop. I’m drawing my own conclusions from it, though.)

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 14:40:50 +0000

Lots of responses to this one, which is interesting. I’ll accept that maybe Braben and his company just don’t really know how to run an effective fundraising effort on Kickstarter (although this is stretching credulity given that Star Citizen was running at exactly the same time.) It’s a far kinder conclusion than the one I jumped to in this piece, but it’s possible.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 14:35:42 +0000

And here we have the main problem with Kickstarter drives these days: they’re not asking for money for a game being made *now*. They’re asking for money for games that were made 15-20 or even 30 years ago. They’re trading on nostalgia, not creativity. Something about that rubs me up the wrong way.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 14:28:17 +0000

And that’s a perfectly fair way of looking at it. I dunno, I just can’t look at it with that optimistic eye, though. Where you see naivete, I see cynicism.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 14:25:28 +0000

That’s exactly the thing I don’t like about this Kickstarter. It’s not so much that they’re asking for quite a large amount of money, it’s that they’re asking for quite a large amount of money while running a spectacularly low-effort campaign. If they’re invested enough in making this game to take the risk of putting up a kickstarter I expect to see some enthusiasm on the part of the developer. Again, Star Citizen might have been even more ambitious and had similar pledge levels, but the amount of feedback and information coming from Chris Roberts and his company was insane. It was a game they clearly wanted to make. I’m not getting that from Elite.

By: Tony

Tony — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 19:27:34 +0000

He may have proven himself with the original Elite, but little else since. Makes you wonder if Ian Bell was the brains of the outfit after all…

By: James

James — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 16:45:53 +0000

I can’t believe what I am reading. C’mon people, this is the game we have all been waiting for these past 28 years. Surely its worth the risk of a small pledge. Why waste this opportunity with pessimistic comments. Why waste this unique chance of having ELITE back in our PC’s. Lets give it a try for the sake of ELITE!!! We can always comment after we play the game. We all have very high expectations for ELITE DANGEROUS, and surely unless David and his team builds the perfect game, many of us will be disapointed. However, at least, we would have done our part by helping David and his team. Anything else is in David Braben hands….who has proved himself with the original ELITE! Please, do not waste this unique opportunity. Thank you all.