Long Delayed Star Command Now "99 Percent" Complete

[StewShearerOld]

Long Delayed Star Command Now "99 Percent" Complete

Though its developer won't say when, Star Command should be finished soon.

Kickstarter is the world's premier site for crowdsourcing. That said, many are uncomfortable with the lack of accountability fundraising campaigns have to their contributors. While there are success stories originating from Kickstarter, there are also cases of failure that have cost people money and left them with nothing to show for it. Warballoon's Star Command could easily look like such a fiasco. The benefactor of two successful Kickstarter campaigns, Star Command has, nonetheless, been delayed multiple times since the end of its first fundraiser in 2011. According to Jordan Coombs, co-founder of the game's developer Warballoon, however, it may finally be nearing the finish line.

"The game is 99, maybe 98 percent complete," said Coombs, <a href=http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/20/4127328/star-command-kickstarter-release>speaking to Polygon. "It's really close." As definite as that sounds, Coombs himself is reluctant to put out any new release dates, on the off chance the game needs to be pushed back again. "No release date until it's final," said Coombs. "We have made too many people angry issuing release dates." Coombs's caution may be prudent. Originally slated for a December 2011 release, Star Command is now nearly fifteen months past its original deadline. "We expected a six month process because that's what it takes to make a mobile game," said Coombs. "But we're making a PC game, for all intents and purposes, this isn't Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja as far as complexity"

Complexity aside, Star Command has endured several setbacks during its development. In April 2012, WarBalloon revealed that, out of the $37,000 the studio had raised from its Kickstarter campaign, <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/116805-Star-Command-Dev-Reveals-Where-the-Kickstarter-Money-Went>only $4000 had been spent on development of the game itself. Warballoon eventually launched a second Kickstarter campaign to help finance PC and Mac versions of Star Command, a move that <a href=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/starcommand/star-command-kickstart-part-2-the-pc-mac-space-adv/posts/268722>drew criticism from some of its backers, disgruntled over the lack of progress on the versions already in the works. Despite this, the second campaign raised an additional $151,000 and, since then, the game's development has chugged along to its current near-end point. With the conclusion of its orderal now on the horizon, one can only imagine the relief both Warballoon and the thousands of people who funded Star Command must be feeling.

Source: <a href=http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/20/4127328/star-command-kickstarter-release>Polygon


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[Candidus]

I wish I could get into the heads of some of my fellow backers. I mean, why the anger? You know the risks before you take the plunge. Heh.

The best mentality to use kickstarter with is that you're putting money in an advanced wishing well which, unlike its corporeal counterpart, just occasionally delivers. But you should still expect that it won't.

 

[Therumancer]

I wish I could get into the heads of some of my fellow backers. I mean, why the anger? You know the risks before you take the plunge. Heh.

The best mentality to use kickstarter with is that you're putting money in an advanced wishing well which, unlike its corporeal counterpart, just occasionally delivers. But you should still expect that it won't.

I tend to disagree, I think you should expect a Kickstarter to succeed, and usually they seem to.

The rage seems to largely be when someone raises money under false pretenses. In the case of this game they raised $37,000 for the game, but then only spent $4,000 of that money on the game. If they had spent the entire budget on the game and found it more expensive to develop than they thought ot whatever, that would be something else entirely.

Another good example right now is everyone's favorite Troll, Anita Sarkeesian, someone who was hacked and shown to be pretty much the worst kind of person during this entire contreversy, but who also raised an incredible amount of money from "White Knight" liberals to produce videos, and whose end results are pretty much the same quality of videos she was producing before her fundraising, leading to the newest question of "Hey Anita, where did all of our money go", she certainly doesn't seem to be using it for the videos.

Some would argue that this is one of the risks of Kickstarter, personally I feel that it shouldn't be. The risk of Kickstarter should be whether a project succeeds or fails. I think there needs to be some oversight when money is raised for a purpose, and then apparently not used for that purpose.

For example if I was to get on Kickstarter tomorrow and tell you all that I was collecting money for my epic length "M" rated Steampunk CRPG, that was going to be a spiritual successor to "Arcanum" and Arcanum fans rallied send me say a million bucks, and I instead decided to take that money and you know... live like a millionaire for a while, I'd deserve to get in trouble for that since I never even made the effort of trying to see that game developed. If I honestly said "donate to me, so I can live like a king for a couple of years and spend your money like water on garbage" nobody would donate, and that's effectively what I raised money for. That the guys behind Star Command or Anita Sarkeesian basically did something similar to this is at the root of the complaints they faced, though in the case of Star Command they are apparently really working on a product, where with Anita she doesn't even seem to be making high budget troll videos, just more of the same.

 

[Candidus]

Snip

I think it's a little unfair to say that the 37,000 is a good example of money raised under false pretenses. They blundered into huge bureaucratic costs because of their inexperience. I can't remember it detail for detail, but they goofed in a handful of ways that exacerbated their costs and sapped most of their funding. Whether or not they should have foreseen the extra costs isn't the issue. I think their motives were good.

On the Anita side of things, I won't get too far into it because derailment will ensue. I'll just say: I agree 100%.

The risk of Kickstarter should be whether a project succeeds or fails.

I agree, but I think you can broaden the definition of success or failure related to expenses provoked by the project to avoid labelling people like Warballoon as deliberate misusers of the service.

You can't expect it to get here... Faster Than Light.

Ho ho...

I was even going to include some sort of FTL pun, but I backed out. Now a bolder man has usurped me. *sigh*