Fans Have Dropped $77M on This Guy's Buggy, Half-Built Game - Wired
The United Empire of Earth Navy caused quite a stir last November when it announced that it would be putting 200 decommissioned Javelin Destroyers up for sale. Each 1,132-foot-long spaceship has the sort of amenities that your average interstellar mercenary finds hard to resist: four primary thrusters, 12 maneuvering thrusters, a heavily armored bridge, private quarters for a captain and an executive... The document that announced the Javelins' impending sale took pains to stress that these warships were fixer-uppers. it was 2,500 real dollars. Actual, real, present-day American Earth dollars. The sale brought in half a million dollars for Cloud Imperium Games, the company behind the space-exploration and combat videogame Star Citizen. Cloud Imperium has hit upon a truly futuristic business model. There's nothing new about inviting players to spend real money for virtual goods—a vehicle or weapon or article of clothing that can only be used inside a virtual gameworld. What's new about Star Citizen is that most of its goods are doubly virtual—they can only be used inside the gameworld, and the gameworld doesn't actually exist yet. Star Citizen began as a crowdfunding project in the fall of 2012. Source: www.wired.com
