Loanable Funds

In 2012, a former Wing Commander designer named Chris Roberts opened a Kickstarter campaign asking gamers to fund a new space combat game. The original ask was US$500,000. By 2024, Star Citizen had raised over US$700 million from individual gamers, making it the largest crowdfunded project in any industry ever. The game itself remained in alpha development. What is interesting is not whether the game is good. The $700 million did not come from venture capitalists, banks, or publishers. Each was choosing to defer current consumption, the dollars they could have spent on something else, in exchange for the promise of a future payoff. The studio was the borrower. They took the dollars, paid programmers, designers, motion capture studios, and infrastructure providers.