They clearly know what they are producing. How have they been doing it until now?
Haphazardly. Following the latest flash of
inspiration desire to copy that hit Chris while watching some new (or ancient) trailer or movie or whatever.
They have yet to actually present the larger picture; the way systems will work together; the way in which different mechanics will gel into coherent dynamics (or indeed how the mechanics themselves will be made coherent); the way in which dynamics will deliver different aesthetics. All they have are a handful of “wouldn't it be cool if…” vignettes without any cohesion or linkage.
So they should have stayed small and pocketed all the crowdfunding?
No, they should have stayed small and spend the crowdfunding on a focused effort towards a clearly defined goal. The first part of that effort should have been to actually define the goal itself.
Components fit? They are updating towards clear objectives outlined every week and month.
…and those objectives are only ever intrinsic to the components themselves, not the larger whole.
Do you know how much iteration and changing paths are in gamedev?
Yes.
That's exactly
why you lock things down. So that you
can iterate and, eventually, change paths rather than tread the same ground over and over and over again. So that you
avoid all those anti-patterns where you get stuck in constant revision loops that never actually move forward to any completed state. So that you
don't have to revisit one component to fit another because you worked on both at once and changed the first so that it would fit with the second, but also changed the second so the first still does not fit.
