Well... I'm sorry to say but it seems that you haven't been reading what Chris Roberts has been saying about these kind of things for months now.They have most of the stretch goals planned out far in advance. It's just that the money keeps pooring in and they become available pretty fast. So it isn't scope creep or something, he's planned this for about a year in advance, he just couldn't guess at what rate it would go.
To be fair, I haven't been keeping that up-to-date. All I'm going on is my perception of the Kickstarter and those stretch goals. I honestly can't believe that with a $500k initial target they were really planning on achieving $30m before launch.
The main issue I have with their stretch goals are that I don't think that a lot of them are really connected with reality, and that some of the more superfluous ones (e.g. customisable cockpit) are only likely to have a detrimental impact on the chances of delivery of the game. Some of them are sensible (e.g. $1m for a custom mo-cap studio), but others seem far-fetched ($500k for a new ship, or $3m for a space suit).
I think one of the main reasons money keeps pouring in because they have revenue mechanisms beyond the simple pledge levels, not because of the stretch goals. I'm astounded at the number of people who are willing to pay $500 or more for an in-game asset. I'd much prefer to have something tangible for my money (e.g. FD's physical 3D models of the ships, not that I can afford it).
I think the major difference is the big bucks SC was able to get from the get go and their American style of bringing it to the people. (shout BIG!!) This somehow seemed to work early on, which now also gives them a sound marketing budget to do things FD either can't or doesn't want to do.
That's true. They were well organised in their Kickstarter appeal, and clearly knew how to grab interest. But bear in mind that the vast majority of the funding they have received is post-Kickstarter, and IMO down to their desire to bring in as many $$$ as possible through the realisation that people will pay for these extras. Take the hangar module for example -- the amount of people who went crazy over what's effectively a static environment with nothing to do is phenomenal.
I'm not really knocking what SC have done; they've obtained a large amount of funding in a relatively short period. I just prefer the way FD have gone about it, that's all.
FD have always said they are happy about how the KS went. Although I myself sometimes had my doubts about their initial presentation which I think hurt the KS more than they could immagine at that time. Still I look at their presentations and feel like: Yep, they still don't know how to do this properly.
I don't know if that is their laid back English approach, if they just don't bother or if they really can't. That last one really would surprise and scare me because that would become a future problem. All the other reasons don't really matter. We'll have to see around launch of retail in what way FD has evolved on that subject.
There were many problems with FD's Kickstarter. I think one of the main ones was that they were relying on the nostalgia of the name, so didn't think they needed a real sales pitch other than "It's a new Elite, people!". That was flawed: 20 years is a long time, and FD haven't done anything similar to Elite in the intervening time, so even some hardcore fans of the series could have their doubts. Without much to show in the way of screenshots or video, we were pledging for an idea, and that's a scary thing for us Englishmen who find it hard to part with cash at the best of times. Kickstarter was also a new thing to the UK at the time, and for many of us it was the first we'd heard of it.
