Elite Dangerous History - Part 1, The Kickstarter.

[Sir.Tj]

I may have been around for a while myself....

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I must admit, this is the only game Kickstarter I've supported (and my experience, writer's pack etc - was not typical) but I don't think I'll support another one. I'll wait until the finished product is available.

Whilst I do like ED a lot, there's a massive delta between what was originally intended and what was ultimately produced (with both positives and negatives).

Cheers,

Drew.

Kickstarter is unregulated fairy tale land. Basically no accountability has made a lot of fraudulent activities emerge. Crowdfunding does have its merits but the average consumer can't tell between dreams and reality. It is marketing's wettest dream come true and I'd rather have less lies and propanganda going around.

 

[VR jefranklin18]

I wasn't just there, in your question, which is referring to the kickstarter, I was HERE, on this forum when David Walsh announced the kickstarter. The true moment in Elite Dangerous history it started, yet always seems to be forgotten. It doesn't help that the thread that proves this, has been moved to a restricted section of the forum, only viewable by moderators and above. Some of us have been asking Frontier to return this thread to a section where we can all see it, but for now you'll have to make do with a wayback machine link ...

Watch This Space

Everyone: thank you for your patience. We should have some exciting news for you within the next couple of hours..

web.archive.org

So yes, I was there, and I was HERE, at the start.

But I can make a claim one better than being on the forum when it was announced. A bit of Elite Dangerous history everyone has missed. I, yes me specifically, I was pushing Frontier to make Elite IV a year before the kickstarter. It started when a gaming magazine reported that The Outsider had been cancelled, a curious fact that Frontier still have yet to officially announce. I grew impatient waiting for news on Elite IV as the rumour back then was that Elite IV would begin development after The Outsider.

Frontier had not long published Kinectimals, and I asked for news on Elite IV. I told Frontier to "stop making fluffly kids games, and make the game everyone wants". I got this reply from Michael Brookes: "We'll announce something when we have something to announce". I told them they did have something to announce, the cancellation of The Outsider.

A year goes by and one night in November 2012, I was refreshing the forum when a post by David Walsh pops up "We'll have something to announce in an hour", and an hour later, the thread I linked to via the wayback machine popped up.

I .... me specifically ... I had a role to play in Frontier launching the kickstarter, which by their own words was "to gauge interest".

No-one ever remembers that that's what happened. But I do.

I used to hang out on alt.fan.elite when David Braben was posting there and got into an email conversation conversation with him about Elite IV. He was very keen on doing it but the reception of Frontier First Encounters and the bugs it had made him want to make sure that any publisher they worked with allowed them to develop it how they wanted to.

This was back in 2002 or so.

 

[Gold Trygger]

I wasn't there then, but I am here now. And now that I am here, I wish I was there then. I installed on Xbox during GPP but put the game aside. I came back to ED just after the Salome event and have played it solidly ever since. I cant help but feel like I missed some of the best content the game has had.

 

[metatheurgist]

I was just thinking about how great it'd be to have an updated Elite about a year before the KS. I got heavily into Oolite as a result. Then just as I was hitting the limits of that game I read the BBC and saw the KS article. Pretty much backed as soon as I got home.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Nice video. Bonus points for the theatrical narration.

It ended too soon though, when the next part!?

 

[sqzbox1]

I was there. Monitored the sites on a regular basis. I knew in my heart that David really wanted to do it but there were some copyright issues with Ian Bell that he had to get released from as well. I am: Alpha Backer #53721.

 

[Cmdr Snuffler]

I was there...and still am.
I have very fond memories of the DDF, alpha forum and the launch event.
Good times

 

[Arioch]

Backer #2764 - pledged straight away but only at the base level for the game; at the time I spent many months of the year away at sea with no online access. Jonty’d up to the boxed edition once the offline mode was announced in the final weeks of the campaign. Yeah, that turned out...hmmmm

Probably my most played game ever, in no small part due to VR. Not something I envisaged even in my wildest youthful imaginings back when playing the originals.

 

[LOTGS]

I was backer #6841, and would have been earlier too if I hadn't been travelling around India at the time. I don't know what it's like there now, but back then the owners of the few wifi points were weirdly super protective of them, as if paying per data usage or something. Cue a few weeks of me trying track down wifi that I could actually get access to in order to keep track of how the Kickstarter was progressing. Increased my pledge to £90 along the way and got ridiculous value for money over the proceeding years.

More recently I haven't had time to really play in a while due to life circumstances. But I keep an eye on the forum as I wait patiently for the day when I will have time to properly re-engage.

 

[gooddoc]

I wasn't there for the kickstarter, but something in my mind got me to internet search for Elite in late Nov 2014.
I was looking for some Space game to play, after finishing work due to ill health. I was actually looking to see if I could get a decent download of the '84 game to play on my laptop.
I was amazed when I discovered ED was due to launch in December......so ordered my copy & I'v been playing since day 1 of the game release.

 

[VR andysonofbob]

Brilliant!
I really enjoyed watching this.

 

[Patrick_68000]

I was there during the Kickstarter.

Always nice to remember happy days.

Thanks to the OP

 

[DaveB]

I was there, hadn't the money to participate when it was first announced, but bought in at the first pre-release opportunity when I had enough to go in at LEP level Even if there was no more "gameplay" than in the '84 edition but with modern graphics and a 1:1-scale galaxy it would have been worth it to me, and it has been.