I feel like CIG is double dipping backers and has incentivized themselves to make the PU as slowly as possible
I'd like to start by saying that this may all be just my misconception. This is a complicated project to follow, but I have been watching it on and off for over 8 years and this is what I think I saw unfold. If at the end you want to correct me, I'd welcome it, but this is the roughest of outlines. I made doodles.
The Dream
Once upon a time, a guy who makes space games pitched a new space game. Or two new space games? But really just one space game. Basically.
The first idea was a single player game with drop-in, drop-out co-op and a bunch of actors and stuff.
The second was a space MMO, similar in some ways to other series he had made, but way bigger and more ambitious.
The first game pitch brought him some money, but that second one, buddy...
The Deal
The way the funding model worked at first was that backers paid one low price, got both future projects, and CIG had this real lucrative side hustle selling virtual ships. Some might be interested in one, or the other project, but it was the PU ship sales bringing in most of the money. Maybe development was evenly split? I don't know. Don't care. it's easy to pretend they are one game when you get them for one price. Then the games got bigger, and bigger, and more complex, with more systems and more ships. More dreams. More monies. Bigger smile!
The New Deal?
Then, suddenly, they weren't the same game? Not the same, but the same. Sort of like the Holy Trinity, only with two video games instead. Now backers had to "back" both projects. But were assured that work on one was forwarding the development of the other. Yet the existence of both, and the co-development of both, has dramatically slowed the progress of both. That side hustle really started to get going. Not sure the way they had developers split, but SQ42 must have been getting a bigger slice of this co-development pie than it brought in, which didn't really matter until the development timeline dragged to into a Muskian eternity of "sometime next year(s)"
Where it sounds like we are today
Ten years in development and we don't do timelines anymore. In January(?) they announced they were moving a lot of/most of their PU development teams over to SQ42, and a recent slip let's us know this move will be for at least another two years, more likely longer. More money coming in from that PU side hustle than ever, but never has less of it proportionately gone toward PU development. Except through the close relationship between the games, in which they are basically the same, of course. "Basically" until you go to play the Alpha, or when it's time to hit "Check Out." This feels unfair to those of us who have been waiting for the PU forever, and it feels unfair to new people. Old backers get to wait more for our ships as our money is funneled to SQ42, new PU backers get to begin to learn patience AND they get to pay extra for the privilege. No SQ42 for them!
Patch timelines for the PU Alpha we actually get to play during this prolonged development are being missed by a country mile. But as is plain to see, the longer the delivery, the bigger the haul. I call this the "Why are you hitting yourself?! Why are you hitting yourself?!" funding model. The longer it takes, the more concepts, the more sales, the more money, the more confident they must get that it doesn't matter what they do, we will just keep buying in. And the more bought in, the more invested we become, the more we buy in (sunk cost.) The more we buy in, the less the are incentivized to assign resources to make the game. In this sense, it would be a big mistake to deliver the PU first, it might turn off the fire-hose of money. No? Regardless of CIG's true and best intentions, is this not the incentive structure we are dealing with here? What am I missing? I have heard they are "legally obligated to deliver SQ42 first," but I haven't found any statements like that from them.
If this is mistaken, I'd love to hear about it. I'll even delete/amend the post if it turns out I've gotten some critical piece wrong. But if this is really the way things are, I'm not confident I will ever see the ship or either of the games I backed for, and maybe I should cash out. Honestly, I can use money right now more than I can use a jpg, and it bothers me that things are happening this way.
Some of you follow this stuff pretty closely. Thoughts? Picards?
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