This is bittersweet. First person fantasy is my favorite genre but I just cant support parceling out your games integrity to the highest bidders. Seeing people pay 4 grand to be a god, cities full of npcs and portraits and statues of people who paid to be there. It just feels wrong to me.
It's not ideal, but compare that to the toxic nature of most bigger studios... might be the lesser of two evils. And I strongly suspect that the donor insertion isn't going to compromise the vision or quality of the game.
It's definitely a bit weird, but probably better than the shenanigans of AAA studios.
I mean it's portraits and statues, and you work with the artist and devs for all that stuff, seems like work they would be doing anyways and now it gives community engagement
If it’s “use my name a likeness, maybe my voice work,” I’m not mad, it’s people paying to do stuff the devs would need to pay someone else to do instead. If it’s “I have some ideas how this story should go” I’d be a bit more concerned.
Still not really out of the ordinary for Kickstarter, or collaborative world building in general, at least the ttrpg games I'm in. And, still, the devs work with you on that stuff. Yeah I suppose it's not a pure product, but I imagine there won't be anything actually out of whack design wise when it releases.