Those games got the support of patient (evil) publishers. They are willing to foot the bill for so long. If CIG had said they would take ten years and people would still have funded it, fine by me. But lying and then revising history is not fine by me. So either be honest and find backers willing to support you that long while being told so up front, or find patient publishers who will do so. But that is why you cant compare this to any of those games: publishers believed in them enough to put a lot of money in it, and they didnt want to give CR a penny. Even after he asked a bunch of them. So he had to turn to common folk, but he knew that originally pretty much noone would support whatever the heck SC is now, so he actively decided to just his way through at other people's expense.
"Hey guys, here's whats gonna happen: I'll get the money for the KS, then I'll buy myself an engine that wont do what it should. We'll then spend years trying to make basic demoes work, but dont worry cause we'll call it 'not real development' and 'building the company'. We'll then lie a couple of times about releasing something decent, and then brush it off as 'building pipelines'. Eventually we will brag about completely re-writing the engine we bought, which proves we shouldn't have bought that engine but forget it. That'll leave us in 2017 with a release within five years, after starting in 2012 with a release date of two years. Hopefully, because what we'll have in 2017 wont be anywhere near what we are intending to do, and what little it does doesnt quite work well either.
So, who is with me? YAY for me!"