I followed a lot of Freelancer hype and some of the over-promise/under-delivery I experienced of Freelancer was exactly why I didn't put early money into Star Citizen.
Though my rule of thumb for Kickstarter projects is "get my money's worth from the entertainment value of development updates" and by those heuristics Star Citizen seems a great value for the money, and quite successful.
Interesting, I only learned about Freelancer a year after release and never knew about the promises made during development.
My general rule for Kickstarter is don’t back software, I am just not good at estimating the likelihood of delivery with software. It’s a rule that I have only broken twice (font awesome and star citizen). In total I have backed 24 projects and Star Citizen is the only one not delivered.
Yeah, it's primarily software projects where I developed my risk heuristic of "will backer updates and development logs be amusing enough, whether or not anything is delivered" and for videogames the subheuristic of "is the value of the soundtrack worth whatever state the game is in at release". A lot of KS games I have backed for their soundtracks and anything about playing the game itself has been a welcome surprise, usually. Most games on KS you have a good idea of who the composer will be and the likelihood of delivery of a strong product from that composer, no matter whatever else with the game.
I've actually think I had more projects not deliver that weren't software, though, than software projects. At some I should review the statistics. Under the "did the backer updates entertain" heuristic though, I don't count any real losses.
Though my rule of thumb for Kickstarter projects is "get my money's worth from the entertainment value of development updates" and by those heuristics Star Citizen seems a great value for the money, and quite successful.