In slightly related news, $37.5M has been raised in pledges for a space simulator that still has yet to be released: https://robertsspaceindustries.com.
There has to be something about space that makes people toss money at videogames.
There has to be something about space that makes people toss money at videogames.
Also of note is that Star Citizen is helmed by the same person who was the driving force behind Wing Commander, which all of us space combat sim aficionados remember fondly as the game which got us into the hobby -- a hobby which has been experiencing a severe dearth of new titles for most of a decade, now, more or less. Given all that, it's not terribly surprising what happened when Chris Roberts showed us a pre-alpha video of the game we've been dreaming of playing for most of our lives and said "Here's the game I want to build. How much is it worth to you to be able to play it?"
(Sources: I've had friends who played EVE Online, and investigated the game fairly thoroughly a while back with an eye toward possibly getting into it; I've donated $140 toward Star Citizen so far, and will probably buy another ship or two before launch.)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-danger...
(Didn't realize he was also a co-founder of the raspberry pi foundation till just now)
Which is a damn travesty when people won't throw money at space in real-life. Other than a few huge backers (Musk, Branson) that have loads of money to hinge on this stuff, no one seems to care or pay attention.
That said, the more interest there is in space in concept, the more popular it might be to fund actual space flight research in reality.