Rock, Paper, Shotgun

“Whatever happened to Infinity?” is a question that regularly pops up in the comment threads and forums posts about adventurous space games. A few years ago, Infinity teased audiences with the promise of the next generation’s Elite. The grand plan was seamless space travel: solar systems, space stations, all the way down to the planet’s surface were going to be rendered, viewable from your cockpit as you flew by. Way back in 2006, they released a combat prototype, and in 2010 there was a pair of videos showing off the engine’s capabilities that still take my breath away. Most people suggested the game was too ambitious, that populating the game’s planets with flora and fauna and cities with missions, was too much. As it turns out, they were right, but it doesn’t mean Infinity isn’t coming out. The team have a plan, and it involves Kickstarter and a combat game called Infinity: Battlescape.
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As Elite: Dangerous enters the final quarter of its long, long Kickstarter, the figure sits at £820,657. Still a good distance from the £1.25m they’re asking for. Will Frontier make it to the finishing line? Or is this going to be a higher-profile miss-kick? Only time will tell, of course, but Frontier are hoping they’ll pull through with a new teaser trailer (below) and a direct Paypal option for those folks who can’t or won’t use the core Kickstarter project. It’s important to point out that direct Paypal pledges don’t contribute to the overall Kickstarter goal, and will only really help (I suppose) if the target is otherwise reached.

Did you pledge? Will you?
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The Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter trundles onwards to its hefty £1.25m goal, with a fancy £719,935 at the time of writing. Frontier have begun posting regular dev diary video updates, and the latest is probably the most impressive so far, illustrating the kind of roles that players can expect to play in the game with a long piece of footage showing off an attack on a convoy. Lots to consider in there, and it’s definitely worth a look, below.
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I wasn’t convinced by the initial Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter pitch. It was nebulous, and built on the notion that people played a game years and years ago and quite liked it. It felt like my memories and love were being sold back to me. But as the updates are slowly populating the site, I’ve become more and more intrigued in what Frontier are promising. The first look at the flight and fighting mechanics made me prick my ears like an interested Spock, but it’s the second update, concentrating on the evolution of the galaxy and the missions that could come out of that, that’s convincing me that this is more than just a loving gaze at my back pocket and the copy of Elite II on my desk.
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Elite: Dangerous generated a fair bit of ill will when its Kickstarter first launched, so short on detail or assets was its initial appeal for alms. With Peter Molyneux’s similarly vague Project GODUS setting up its crowd-funded stall a few weeks later, we’re now in the midst of the first major Kickstarter backlash – concern that big developers who arguably might not struggle to get publishing deals might be milking their fans’ nostalgia with surprise resurrections of the series and concepts they’ve for various reasons left alone for decades. It’s not for me to judge whether Braben and Molyneux are truly earnest in their intentions for these games or have just spotted an opportunity to make a fast buck, but I am relieved to see people are voting with their feet – demanding more concrete evidence of what’s being promised before they’ll cough up the internet-bucks. So it is that Elite Dangerous isn’t even halfway to its absurd £1.25 million goal even after several weeks, while Project GODUS has brought in ‘only’ £125k so far.

Elite seems to be on the long road back to doing what it should have done in the first place at least, with a slow trickle of real information and brief glimpses rather than generalised promises – and now it’s got a significant amount of in-game footage too.
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Continuing in a very unfortunate trend of talking a lot and showing suspiciously little, David Braben and co have finally seen fit to take the wraps off a teensy tiny meteorite bite of Elite: Dangerous footage. Yes, that’s right: RPS can now well and truly and probably Universe And All Alternate Dimensions And Timelines Exclusively confirm that the new Elite game has graphics. There are rocks and stars and even some clouds! Also, Braben says some interesting things about procedural generation. But I know you. You’re here for seven-and-a-half minutes of excruciatingly slow background panning.

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There are the good Kickstarters – the ones with prototypes, extensive mechanic breakdowns or videos of an eerily earless Jim Rossignol* demonstrating in-game footage at length – and then there are the bad ones, the ones that dangle a name but not a lot more. Tom Hall and Brenda Romero’s Old School RPG rightfully acknowledged its own (perhaps accidental) cynicism and pulled the plug, but it was this week’s Elite: Dangerous project by Frontier Developments that really offended me. I obviously don’t know the circumstances of the fund’s creation, but it had at least the appearance of being hastily arranged and trading on pure nostalgia rather than any definite promises. No artwork, no video, no concrete features – just a vague outline very heavily based on what Braben & Bell’s original spaceship sim already did. After decades of Elite 4-based promises and talk of ongoing development, I for one felt insulted, entitled little shmuck that I am.

Now, the Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter page is in more like the shape it should have been at first, with artwork and videos added to the pitch at last. “At last,” he says, as though three days is an eternity. What have you done to me, internet?
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Old-school RPGs? Please. That Kickstarter trend is so a few seconds ago. Now it’s all about mind-bogglingly ambitious revivals of legendary space series that need your help in the form of several trillion dollars. OK, maybe not that much, but Star Citizen came in space, no one can hear you screaming into existence asking for $2 million, and now David Braben is trying to resurrect Elite (again) for the low, low collective price of £1,250,000 – which is basically $2 million.

That’s right – Elite is back at long, long last, in the form of Elite: Dangerous. Are you ready to remember how much rage and sorrow could be extracted from the mere process of docking? I know I am.
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