it's a lot more than just a model viewer though, it's more like a playable game engine with a shit ton of animated actions
A model viewer for the original half life (1998) would let you load up any model and play every animation that was associated within it.
I'm not trying to split hairs or argue, but the build that is available is just a series of drop down menus that play an animation. It isn't that far removed from what a model viewer is in concept. The key difference here is that this is all within a game world... but the gameworld doesn't offer anything other than to act as a stage that users can decorate and set up their own series of animations, but that's as far as it goes. There aren't any functional gameplay loops.
And this is fine.
There isn't anything wrong with this. If people are happy, let them be. There isn't anything out there that seems to do what wildlife does. But to suggest that there is a game underneath this is at best delusional, and at worst, lying. I don't mean to come off as a hater or a naysayer, I'm not a backer or a competitor. I'm just some jabroni who doesn't see what could qualify this as a game. Just comes off as trying to pretend like a brazzers porno is actually a short indie film about a nihilist who comes over to fix "der kable".
Its all subject to change of course. It would be outstanding to come back in 3 years and see there are working stats, gear, quests, story progression, and hell even maybe have player actions cause consequences within the game world - fail to save an npc and that npc is permadead as an example.
What a game makes is irrelevant to scope and release.
It makes too much in your opinion, but I'd wager the people working on it don't see it that way as there are plenty of employees that like getting paid for their work. Not like it's one or two devs taking home that money like the vast majority of games here for shoddy work, they have a team well over a dozen people and if you think what they earn a month is making them filthy rich, then you don't understand how business works and all the expenses that come with it.
Just check back in once or twice a year for progress until it eventually releases, not like you were ever gonna pay for it anyways, so its not really worth getting worked up over.
Saying a person would never pay for a game because they're not active on patreon is very dishonest. If the wildlife team could snap their fingers and magic down a 1.0 release that has all the features they could dream of then you'd see plenty of people who don't even have patreon accounts make the purchase. Divinity original sin 2 comes to mind.
To be clear, I'm not a patreon, but I am one of those people who have checked in once/twice a year to see what's going down.