Steven Sharif’s withdrawal from Ashes of Creation is the latest act in a drama that has been repeating itself for over a decade. Whether Star Citizen, Chronicles of Elyria, or Camelot Unchained – the pattern is almost always the same. MeinMMO editor-in-chief Leya Jankowski analyzes why it is so attractive for us to believe in the dream castle time and again and to invest in it.
There was no spectacular trailer or extravagant stage show. It all started with a simple blog post in which Steven Sharif painted the picture of an MMORPG that was supposed to become a revolution and our second home.
He spoke of a world that reacts to us. A world that we can breathe, build, and – if we want – lay waste to. As we play, nodes and regions form. The more we play in a region, entire cities develop there, land is claimed, housing systems are created, and we manage an entire political system. We fight with others for these nodes and lead our guild to glory and wealth.
All that was missing for this dream MMORPG was $750,000, which was to be raised through Kickstarter – and the credit cards were drawn. In less than 12 hours, the goal was reached, and ultimately over $3 million was raised.
Today, 10 years later, we are facing the ruins of this enthusiasm. Sharif is gone.
The Alpha servers feel more like a construction site in perpetual raw build than like the promised land. But what is truly frightening is not the rubble at Intrepid Studios. The frightening part is the déjà vu.
Welcome to the “Star Citizen” syndrome. Ashes of Creation is not the first project that has choked on its own dream castle – and its backers along with it.
The Dream Castle in Its Parts
To get straight to the point: The big problem with projects like Ashes of Creation, Chronicles of Elyria or Camelot Unchained is that we are not buying finished games, but a dream. And the biggest problem is that the dream consists of an unfinished air castle, where we ourselves have to fill in the last bricks.
But let’s dismantle the air castle again.
The Alluring Narrative
In Steven Sharif’s case, there is this extremely charismatic leader who presents himself as one of us. A gamer next door, who is also pursuing the dream of the ultimate MMORPG – and now wants to build this perfect game for himself and us.
All of this is of course supposed to happen without the “greedy publisher” in the background, who only wants our money and does not understand us gamers at all. A feeling of “Us against them” arises, which strengthens the bond between the community and the studio. A nearly parasocial relationship develops.
And we could observe exactly this narrative in the other Kickstarter MMORPGs as well.
The Paradox of Endless Freedom
We are currently living in a gaming era where especially AA studios are asserting themselves against giants like EA, Ubisoft, or Activision. The success of games like Arc Raiders or Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 underscores this.
Studios like Larian have shown with Baldur’s Gate 3 that it is indeed possible to create a complex and content-rich game without the publisher’s pressure. Studio head Swen Vincke never tires of talking about the exploitative nature of large publishers. And yes, greedy publishers certainly have a negative influence on studios and game development.
However, what must not be overlooked here is that the free-spirited studios still need to have a solid plan in place to finish their game.
Deadlines are necessary, a realistic budget calculation is needed, and strong project management is required for complex products like video games. A wonderful, creative, and ambitious idea is not enough. If you don’t have a publisher’s pressure pushing these things, a studio has to take care of it themselves.
The Psychology that Makes Us Reach for Our Wallets
We are given a sense of being able to actively shape the development. Whether in the case of Ashes of Creation the promise of the “Node System”, through which we can exert influence on how the world develops in the game. Or in Star Citizen feedback channels like Issue Council, where current balancing is discussed.
Then there is the “Sunk Cost” effect, which describes the phenomenon of holding on to projects, investments, or decisions even if they turn out to be wrong, simply because time, money, or effort has already been invested. Whoever has once spent 250 € or more for an alpha package or a virtual plot wants and must believe that it will be a success.
FOMO is the Kickstarter here, the fear of missing out. Limited alpha access and exclusive skins create artificial pressure.
The Promise We Actually Only Make to Ourselves
To secure funding, crowdfunded MMOs must sell a dream. And so come these promises that are hardly keepable. In theory, these offer endlessly deep systems like fully destructible worlds, an economy that develops automatically from PvP guilds, and political systems that also somehow arise from playing. Then there are some nice concept arts that invite us to dream.
The details are missing, and we start to fill them in our heads. And this is where the big catch lies. We have had 10 years to craft the absolute dream MMORPG in our heads and to make it bigger and more glorious than it could ever technically be programmed.
Buying access is buying a daydream. Nothing more.
Instead of Dream Castle, an Eternal Construction Site
How Ashes of Creation will proceed now is uncertain in the wake of Steven Sharif’s departure. Whether the game will be discontinued or will continue to be developed with a smaller team – and without Sharif – cannot be said at this point. The charismatic face that dreamed with us for the last 10 years is gone.
With such a development, Ashes of Creation is not alone:
- Chronicles of Elyria started almost 10 years ago and raised nearly 8 million euros in 2019. The MMORPG is not dead yet, but is now embroiled in legal disputes.
- Camelot Unchained has been in development for 12 years for a technology that seems outdated today.
- Crowfall aimed to revolutionize the MMORPG genre in 2015. The game was released in 2021 without hype, intended to be revamped again, and now shows no signs of life.
Let’s come to the namesake of this article and the supergiant among crowdfunding MMOs: Star Citizen.
Pre-production began in 2010, about 16 years ago. More than 5.6 million supporters have raised over $809 million through crowdfunding. Since then, the space MMO has been in development, progressing only brick by brick.
Let’s be honest: The dream castle of Star Citizen is now so large that the science fiction MMO can no longer be released as “finished”. The dream has long become the product. The sale of expensive ships appears from the outside as the actual gameplay loop.
The hardcore community is fine with it, and to be fair, there is more than just the ship sale. For instance, it is also possible to fly through space and complete missions. Players describe this as something that is indeed not comparable.
However, the project and studio head Chris Roberts must continue to be critically observed. Reports continually emerge that depict a picture of wasteful spending, poor management, and harsh overtime phases.
This air castle could still implode.
At this point, I recommend the Kickstarter reckoning by our MMORPG expert Karsten Scholz:
Why We May Still Be Allowed to Hope
So is it stupid to invest in projects like Ashes of Creation or Star Citizen?
No. It is human.
We all passionately love to play and have a longing for something that major AAA publishers have denied us for years: Real innovation, real risks, and the feeling of being part of something big from the very beginning. It feels good to believe in the fairy tale of “gamer for gamers”.
However, passion alone does not write net code, and visions do not pay for servers indefinitely. A dream castle does indeed need a foundation composed of cool project management, realistic budgets, and – as much as I hate to say it – sometimes also a “bad” publisher to enforce the tough decisions, so that something actually appears at the end.
All these projects have ultimately fallen victim to the same air castle on which we built our hopes. The minds behind the games also believed that the foundation was strong enough and that the rest would come together during construction. In the end, Ashes of Creation had a playable alpha version that was partly praised before the Steam release. All of this could not withstand the dream that was sold 10 years ago.
And this applies not only to crowdfunding MMORPGs. This applies to all games that sell us a dream or fat early access packages intended to support development. There are many examples where this has worked wonderfully. This can be a great way to involve the community early in the development process. However, if we are ready to pull out our credit cards too early, the question should first arise: “Does that sound too good to be true?” – Here it should once again be remembered that hopes are not finished games. We may keep dreaming, but we should perhaps refrain from using our credit cards until real code has emerged from the concept arts.
At the end of the day, an average game that I can install today on my hard drive is worth a thousand times more than the most beautiful vision that has been swirling around in our heads for ten years.
What about you? Are you backers of any of these projects, and do you regret it, or were you aware of the risks from the beginning? Feel free to share in the comments.
