Whatever floats your boat, man. I'm just trying to figure out why you went from "I'll pay for a title screen and options menu" to "If they're not giving me a date, I'm not giving them money."
I guess he caved in to the temptation in the end. How disappointing.
That reads clear as day to me.
They do not need crowdfunding to finish the game this year.
They
are giving people something in return, just not
right this instant. If they said "Donate money, we'll get the game out faster", that'd be one thing, but they decided to start selling pre-orders, in the same way non-indie games have been doing forever. The only difference between pre-ordering Starbound and walking into a Gamestop and ordering a PS360 game is that you leave Gamestop with a date and an unshakable feeling of being badgered. And maybe a little bit dirty. AAA publishers can afford to give a date; they have lots of money and people for crunch, and usually a reputation that allows them to both push back the date (as they often do) or release a half-assed game (likewise). Indie devs aren't so lucky; they're small companies without a ton of resources who, if they don't deliver on promises, can disappear overnight, their reputations ruined. They're not going to promise anything because they know how people will react, whether there are pre-orders involved or not.
And I would disagree that selling Pre-orders = Crowdfunding. A fine line, maybe, but one in which I think they fall safely on the right side of.
I'm eager to throw money at a game I can play. The more they delay the game, the more disillusioned I have become for ever playing the game. The fact that they previously shot down ever doing a Kickstarter style crowdsourcing A YEAR AGO, and then proceeded to do the exact thing now, with the game still nowhere in sight, just makes me more disillusioned.
And yes, they ARE selling "donations" the same way people call Kickstarters "donations". If this is a standard pre-order, there would be one tier and a 4-pack option. Not $2000 tier option with a statue of you in the game. Please, don't kid yourself.
I'm not even shitting on the game, I'm just disappointed that they're not doing what makes the most sense - selling a playable but unfinished version of the game like Minecraft and Terraria did.
1. I think at this point, you'd have to be a little nutty to think the game isn't coming out
eventually.
2. It's not a kickstarter in that they are asking for money to 'kick start' development. Yes, some people use Kickstarter as a rough form of pre-ordering as well, but I don't think that really applies here; they have a mostly-finished game they want to get out sooner.
3. So any game that has a higher-priced collector's edition that includes pointless extras that don't impact the game are 'donations' and not 'pre-orders'? What about the insane Limited Edition collectors editions with Master Chief's helmet or chainsaw controllers or statuettes of characters and such? Personally, I think having the higher-end pre-order include something in-game, that you can actually enjoy while playing the game, is a much better option.
4. I don't know enough about Minecraft to comment, but Terraria was a fucking horror story in game development. They were forced to launch early (Redigit later commenting that it was almost a year early) because the community was so rabid to play it that when the beta leaked, it spread like crazy. To get ahead of it, they released the game in an unfinished state (multiplayer was a mess, features were missing, etc.). Redigit commented later that the current release (1.1) is basically where he had wanted the game to be at launch.
