I can't see why they can't just fund it, finish it and sell it.

You know, Steam is flooded with games these days. There's no shortage of games.

There really is no context today where some poor individual can't create and market their niche game to the world. The reverse is true, creating a indie game is the kind of thing many people have shown, over and over again that an individual or small group can do successfully.

So why are games developers continually asking gamers to buy unfinished games? We've no shortage of other games to play and, frankly, the risk we take that the game will suck or never get finished means, it really doesn't make sense.

If you can't gather up the skills and resources to finish your game - if you don't have all the skills required and can't find a small group of people who believe in it enough to work on the game with you then your game is probably not that good.

If you have a good idea and the skills to develop it - then develop it. And then ask for money for the finished game.

Kickstarter and Early access, in gaming terms, is really about developers wanting to jump on what they perceive as a "get rich quick" scheme because they've seen other developers get a big payday like that.

Ok there have been some big projects on there asking for lots of money. You could argue that AAA game development is out of reach for any game developer with an idea that can't get a publisher.

However, these kind of projects on kickstarter and early access have, imo, shown that gamers don't make good surrogate publishers. The idea sounded good but it hasn't really worked. It just tends to create a big shitstorm when the hype collapses, the gamers sober up and look at what they've paid for.

Game developers don't like publishers because publishers have this odd thing where, when they pay an advance of $20 million to a game developer they want a say in the finished product. Who'd have thought it eh?

But, as Molyneux has probably discovered replacing publishers with gamers doesn't really make your life better. You'll just have a few hundred thousands angry buffoons when they decide your game sucks or that you didn't do what you promised.