That sucks, but it seems almost inevitable with these new funding/purchasing models: the risk necessarily shifts from the developer and onto the consumer. This is a big reason why I'm a "patient gamer:" why should I be the one exposed to uncertainty when there are plenty of other complete and patched games out there vying for my attention?
I mean, it does need to be treated like an investment, and you can lose on an investment. You can say, "That Camera rig is amazing. I've always wanted something like that. There's nothing on the market like that."
If you put like $600 in, you're hoping for a return on that investment in 8 months of a product. You might get something amazing, or something okay or nothing at all. Just like any other venture.
Okay, so you might say, "Well I don't want to invest, but I'll buy it once it's build if other people put up the funding." It's successful aaaaaand that's it. No more units.
That's a big issue, because now people with existing units may not even have a repair path. Devices could start getting rare and go on eBay for tons. This might even violate some basic product warrant laws in some country.
This doesn't apply here though, because games can always be purchased and distributed to people later without having to get them made in a factory.
If you are have no expectation to get your principle invested much less potential for additional monetary returns then it is NOT an investment. The potential monetary returns on this is $0 in all cases.
> why should I be the one exposed to uncertainty when there are plenty of other complete and patched games out there vying for my attention?
Because sometimes if you don't fund an idea that idea doesn't happen. Of course I'm not suggesting you jizz $4500 into a promise of a game like the guy in the article but throwing ten or twenty bucks behind an idea you wan't to see happen isn't always a bad idea.
If it happens and it's bad? nevermind it was only 10 bucks, nice to see the idea attempted though.
If it happens and it's good? awesome.
If it implodes and I get nothing? meh, never mind it was 10 bucks.
$10 won't make or break a game's development. It'll happen (or not) with or without my tiny advance payment. I'd rather hold on to that $10 and buy an actual game now instead of gambling on the promise of one in the future.
As consumers, it's not our responsibility to support other people's open-ended projects. Let developers (and their actual publishers and investors) take on the risks themselves. It's better that way: with their skin in the game, they'll know when to say "no" to dumb features and actually get to a viable product.
You can say the same thing about elections. However, because each choice is independent you end up collaborating with like minded people. Thus your 10$ ends up as 10,000$ from people like you.
Game theory has a lot of interesting incite into these sorts of decisions.
> As consumers, it's not our responsibility to support other people's open-ended projects.
Why not? Patronage has been a key part of art for thousands of years. The current state of the game dev biz is that innovation and risk has taken a back seat to yearly releases churned out for mass appeal.
