One Crowdfunded Game to Rule Them All
Everyone and their mothers should know about Star Citizen at this point: it’s a Sci-Fi massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that everyone and their others are funding. Today we learn that it has made more money than ever other crowdfunded game in 2017 combined, and it’s only getting bigger.
The thing about crowdfunding is that there is a lot of passion involved and a multitude of creators seeking public help to get their projects off the ground, but there are no guarantees. Star Citizen, on the one hand, has exceeded the total funding of every 2017 game by a factor of two. And because of its particular crowdfunding success, the devs over at Cloud Imperium Games have been able to build upon the core gameplay experience.
At the same time, Star Citizen is subject to its share of scrutiny. Certainly, the IPs popularity and ability to break new funding goals are beneficial since they entail a better final product. However, this also leads to the project’s inevitable delay; anything the developers get wrong, any misstep on the road to launch can raise the ire of their backers. Fortunately, they’ve been pretty transparent via their recurrent dev diary updates.
You can probably say Cloud Imperium Games is the most transparent game developer out there. Does it help them in building more goodwill and funding from the fans? Well, it certainly doesn’t hurt. We also cannot deny that Star Citizen is a beautifully-rendered game – a great interstellar adventure with an emphasis on player choice. It truly helps fashion a unique experience for everyone involved, like no other game out there.
In total, Star Citizen is raking in more cash than a 700 crowdfunded games. Interestingly enough, it still made less money than it did in 2016, but by only $2 million USD (haha”only”). Thus, you can say the realm of crowdfunding has crossed a new threshold. Cloud Imperium may even be at the forefront of a shift from traditional publishing to donation-based productions. But, you can read more about that in our feature: “Gamer Rising: The Shift in Power from Publisher to the People.”
What are your thoughts on Star Citizen’s crowdfunding success? Let us know in the comments below.
Happy gaming.