![]() I saw the amount of money they raised, and while laypeople were saying "why are you so slow when you have so much money?" my response was: "Yeah, how do you think that's going to be enough budget for what you're trying to do? especially since you guys are based in Bellevue, WA?" (I live in this area, it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ expensive to live here, never mind renting an office space.) That being said, the last status update on the forum was actually this April, and there's really no reason to do that if it's dead since they are not currently asking for money and even that information is restricted to a place (community forums) that only those who are still interested in the project would see it. I followed Chronicles of Elyria and I don't think it was a scam, just a wildly over-ambitious and poorly scoped idea with little understanding of game budgeting, that was predictably mismanaged and fell on its face hard. It's still a terrible prospect, to be sure, but crowd-funders really need to be aware that this is the kind of risk they're taking on when they fund these projects. They're simply too inexperienced to even recognize that they're biting off way more than they can chew in their enthusiasm to realize a dream, and end up scrabbling around in a panic when reality slaps them in the face which leads to all kinds of further bad decisions and inept communication with their backers as they try to keep their heads above water. While there are a non-zero number of game development scams out there, the vast majority of failed game projects people accuse of this really aren't scams - they're small teams with insufficient experience, particularly where business and project management are concerned, and an idea that is too big to reasonably realize with their limitations and level of competence. Gamers are pretty quick to cry scam when crowd funded projects don't go as planned. Looking at other prospective projects, this is the one that I feel the most confidant about the success of, by a wide margin. I'm among the top tier contributors, and while I will probably end up giving them more money than I've spent on the entire Sims franchise by the time this releases, it will be worth it to see a successful entry to this genre that The Sims has monopolized to the point of complacency. But these things do take time and they've still got a long way to go. That being said, based on my own experience in the industry, the current pace of progress shown in their regular status updates meets my expectations for the size of the team, and after seeing the roadmap, I have more confidence in the project than when I first joined their Patreon. ![]() I'm sure you can think of plenty of examples of big and small studios alike making grave miscalculations here. Though the Patreon funding model inherently lends itself to more sustainable development than Kickstarter, because they know what their budget is on a month to month basis, rather than having to work out how to parcel out a large lump of cash over a long-term schedule appropriate to the game's scope indie studios are often terrible at this and even big studios with deep pockets struggle to appropriately scope their projects and predict the development time and resources necessary to deliver them. For a game of this scope, however, you would expect a dev team at least five times this size, and again, this wouldn't avoid the need for several years of development before a company would normally announce. Paralives has, I believe, 10 people working on it, and it started with one person and only ramped up the team size relatively recently as the Patreon following made it possible to hire people. Crowd-funded games suffer a great deal from the fact that in order to get the funding they need, they need to announce early in development and generate buzz. What most gamers who don't pay much attention to the workings of the industry itself fail to understand is that games of this scope from major publishers are in development for YEARS before they are announced.
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