I've made posts before calling HoloEarth a "classic boondoggle"
If you want a great example of a boondoggle, look at Concord. The parallels to HoloEarth are staggering
>game is planned to be the "future of Sony" with crossreferences to all other Sony media>gathers tremendous steam within the company, the budget bloats to insane levels>development team is a small insular group that operates free from any criticism or feedback>gets merch, tie-ins, plus a netflix series before the launch>even after 8 years of development and $200 million spent, was still in a half-broken state>had to spend another $200 million outsourcing to other studios to fix problems before launchhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAcmrjguf8M&t=2156Remember the characteristics of a "boondoggle"
1) Project goals are often idealistic, and loaded with buzzwords (i.e. "metaverse)
2) The project goes on way too long, and seems to never be completed
3) The budget bloats to extreme levels even though very little is accomplished
4) Calls for sanity are ignored. Failure is met with further budget increases.
It gathers steam until it crashes and blows up all your money in a fireball.
It really gets insane when you consider the opportunity cost. For the price of Concord you could afford 4 Falcon Heavy rocket launches. Or 8 of their previous triple-A releases. Instead you get a massive pile of money being ignited with gasoline.
