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homullus posted:The Far West case may create a cruel environment where writers and artists and other creative types may have to run campaigns to fund the publication of already-finished products, giving a boost to things that just need funding to be put in the format and venue the market demands. I shall dub this process "kickstarting," after the manual process of starting an engine that is already built and functioning. I think we already have institutions that will lend money to people that can demonstrate that they don't need it. If crowdfunding isn't for distributing the risk between a large number of minor backers and prefunding projects that couldn't be made without that funding, what's the point?
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Sep 15, 2015 15:39
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Rand Brittain posted:I think we already have institutions that will lend money to people that can demonstrate that they don't need it. I am saying that writing -- specifically game-writing -- and a great deal of art is unworthy of pre-creation funding via Kickstarter. If you want to fund a process, there's Patreon. There are certainly specific projects in the heads of some people that could only ever be realized if they were free of the burden of their day jobs, but I don't care about them, quite frankly. I think games should be 100% complete and tested before they hit Kickstarter; KS is for collecting the money for the things not in the creator's range of ability, i.e. art assets, layout, printing, and distribution. The "kickstart" between a functional vehicle and one for sale on the open market. It's "Kickstarter" rather than "QuitYourJobAndSitArounder" for reasons other than URL brevity. I recognize that present-day KS is not the thing I want it to be. I am not the least upset that a smackdown of GMS' literally aggressive inaction might make KS more the way I think it should be.
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Sep 15, 2015 15:54
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Rand Brittain posted:If crowdfunding isn't for distributing the risk between a large number of minor backers and prefunding projects that couldn't be made without that funding, what's the point? Will there be delays or unforeseen delays? Of course, that's what happens on any project. But when it gets to the point where it's months of delays with no word from the project people, or missed date after missed date, then they need to answer to someone.
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Sep 15, 2015 15:57
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quote:Hi, folks. As some of you are aware, I’ve issued a partial refund (from their original level, down to the digital-only level, to reflect that they’ve been receiving digital copies of the rewards) to a backer who filed a complaint with the Washington State Attorney General’s office. I wanted to talk about that in more detail. So…what are the sole reasons for issuing the one or two similar refunds to the guys that didn't contact their AG's office? 
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Sep 15, 2015 17:01
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GMS is a moron, yes, we know that, but this "good faith" belief takes it to a new level. As someone who has actually been in litigation where the defendant tried to pull a "good faith" defense he's gonna get torn apart. The judge is going to hear "4 years with no delivery, and here's emails from 2+ years ago where GMS said the product would be out in 3 months" and crush him. His own words make a lie out of that defense. One thing that people don't understand is you're arguing to the Judge, and for the most part they don't appreciate you trying to get cute or clever and they absolutely do not loving care about your excuses, they care only about documentation and there's enough of that to gut GMS. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Sep 15, 2015 |
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Sep 15, 2015 17:40
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I don't think there's enough momentum for this to go anywhere near a court room, and if it does it'll quickly go to a settlement. I also believed him on the last finally for real final May-June release dates, too. So what the gently caress do I know? 
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Sep 15, 2015 18:03
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The Networks looks interesting. Neat theme, seems like it is thoughtfully made (low chance element), and has nice art. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gilhova/the-networks-a-tabletop-strategy-game-for-1-5-tv-e?ref=card https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FwkWEt6GYs I am actually debating picking it up at the $35 level.
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Sep 15, 2015 18:08
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Rand Brittain posted:I think we already have institutions that will lend money to people that can demonstrate that they don't need it. Maybe the point is that there's a reasonable amount of risk and some Kickstarters wind up going past that threshold, then have no system in place to handle backers who are unsatisfied with this except to try and spin excuses like "you're funding a process." I'm sorry this game you keep going to bat for has had a lovely Kickstarter but Ex3 seems in many respects to be fairly anomalous by Onyx Press standards so hopefully they take it as a lesson in why jumping the gun on something like that in the future is maybe not a great idea, or institute some guidelines to keep future Kickstarters from going down that road again or something.
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Sep 15, 2015 18:18
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Kai Tave posted:Maybe the point is that there's a reasonable amount of risk and some Kickstarters wind up going past that threshold, then have no system in place to handle backers who are unsatisfied with this except to try and spin excuses like "you're funding a process." I'm sorry this game you keep going to bat for has had a lovely Kickstarter but Ex3 seems in many respects to be fairly anomalous by Onyx Press standards so hopefully they take it as a lesson in why jumping the gun on something like that in the future is maybe not a great idea, or institute some guidelines to keep future Kickstarters from going down that road again or something. I'm not arguing against guidelines; I just think that "backers all individually take a small hit from their disposable income" is a way better outcome for a failed Kickstarter than "creator gets her wages garnished for the next few decades to pay off fines and drops out of creating entirely."
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Sep 15, 2015 18:21
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Rand Brittain posted:I'm not arguing against guidelines; I just think that "backers all individually take a small hit from their disposable income" is a way better outcome for a failed Kickstarter than "creator gets her wages garnished for the next few decades to pay off fines and drops out of creating entirely." And I think this sounds like you yet again trying to shift blame away from people who haven't delivered the thing they said they would in a timely fashion onto the shoulders of people who paid out money expecting to get a thing and got excuses in return. If you want a service that lets people fund your creative process with the payout being "the joy of knowing you've helped me, a creative person, be creative" then Patreon is over thataway. Again, there's a difference between "I had a cancer scare" and "actually we decided to scrap what we'd written when we solicited a hundred grand and start over from the beginning, whoops, money's all gone now, sorry no refunds or we'll have to quit." One of those I have sympathy for, the other less so.
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Sep 15, 2015 18:31
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Rand Brittain posted:I'm not arguing against guidelines; I just think that "backers all individually take a small hit from their disposable income" is a way better outcome for a failed Kickstarter than "creator gets her wages garnished for the next few decades to pay off fines and drops out of creating entirely." That's the risk involved in starting your own business. If you can't deliver, your business fails, and you need to accept the consequences, which includes financial implications. Getting crowdfunded doesn't change that.
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Sep 15, 2015 18:31
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Rand Brittain posted:I'm not arguing against guidelines; I just think that "backers all individually take a small hit from their disposable income" is a way better outcome for a failed Kickstarter than "creator gets her wages garnished for the next few decades to pay off fines and drops out of creating entirely." Oh no, accountability means some grifters might not make an elf game or might face the same consequences as any other business that takes people's money and produces nothing, how horrible!
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Sep 15, 2015 18:40
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Rand Brittain posted:I'm not arguing against guidelines; I just think that "backers all individually take a small hit from their disposable income" is a way better outcome for a failed Kickstarter than "creator gets her wages garnished for the next few decades to pay off fines and drops out of creating entirely." I cannot fathom why you think "people should be held accountable for their failures, especially when it costs a bunch of people money" is being treated like a bad thing.
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Sep 15, 2015 19:04
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I like idea of KS as a place where weird and niche stuff has a chance to be made and I am personally willing to gamble with my money to for the chance of getting a product that would never otherwise be made. But, I am really thinking more about mechanical/electronic products, like a sou vide unit, that really needed money for R&D and prototyping. Also, anyone who decided to sell anything without an LLC and good lawyer is a fool who deserves to get their pants sued off. But I have to think that the cooperate veil for most small TG companies looks like Swiss cheese so idk what a reasonable solution is.
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Sep 15, 2015 19:25
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Crowdfunding is invariably going to be a venture that carries a degree of risk with it. Someone who wants a 100% guarantee that they aren't going to lose their money if a project implodes shouldn't crowdfund. I mean, conventional pre-orders are no protection against things loving up either as those who backed Bill Coffin's Septimus (or Duke Nukem Forever) can attest. That said, the bone of contention that people have with situations like Far West, and to a lesser degree Exalted 3E, is that the only reason these projects got funded in the first place was the promise of A Product Being Delivered. GMS can fly the "but it's a process!" flag all he wants, but he didn't Kickstart the "Pay GMS Money So He Can Engage In a Process Foundation," he Kickstarted Far West: The Game You Can Actually Play. Similarly the Exalted 3E Kickstarter didn't raise six figures worth of money by going "please give us money so we can maybe have a game finished for you in the next couple of years depending on how satisfied we are with drafts and such," it raised that money because HOLY loving poo poo EXALTED 3E ARE YOUR READY BECAUSE IT'S HAPPENING GET HYPEEEEEEE It's one thing to say "well this is just how crowdfunding is, deal with it," but you know that if people soliciting crowdfunding for their ideas told people that they wanted money to maybe in a couple of years have a finished product for them or maybe not, who can say, that they probably wouldn't get funded. Kickstarters in general bank on the promise of delivery to get people to give them money. To then turn around and try to shuck responsibility for not fulfilling that promise in a reasonable timeframe while simultaneously laying blame on the people who pitched in the actual funding that got it off the ground in the first place is disingenuous as hell.
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Sep 15, 2015 19:39
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Rand Brittain posted:I'm not arguing against guidelines; I just think that "backers all individually take a small hit from their disposable income" is a way better outcome for a failed Kickstarter than "creator gets her wages garnished for the next few decades to pay off fines and drops out of creating entirely." I think "creator with nothing done beyond what's necessary to launch a Kickstarter (who then does little beyond that other than spend the KS money) gets her wages garnished for the next few decades to pay off fines and drops out of creating entirely" is a better outcome than ten thousand people being robbed with no justice. Of course, the obvious middle ground few seem to take is "creator who's dangerously behind on Kickstarter releases sloppy and unpleasant and ultimately unpolished product to avoid decades of reduced wages." Like, I could create an entire, if crappy, RPG called Far West in the space of a couple weeks for $50,000. It wouldn't be good and wouldn't have art beyond what I could "GMS" with Photoshop on short notice, but hey, $50k. He literally has no valid excuse for nearly 4 years of complaining about the nerve of the people who complain about him. He could have finished the game in the time it has taken him to write the G+ posts he's written over the last 4 years.
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Sep 15, 2015 19:52
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That does seem to be the obvious solution, doesn't it? Just bang something out, get it delivered, wash your hands of it. At this point it's not like GMS' professional reputation can really get much worse.
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Sep 15, 2015 20:01
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homullus posted:He could have finished the game in the time it has taken him to write the G+ posts he's written over the last 4 years. In 4 years lots of people complete a university degree, often while also working at the very least a part time job, and often working multiple part time jobs.
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Sep 15, 2015 20:01
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In four years Andy K has managed to translate two RPGs from Japanese to English and get them published. I think it's safe to say we'll get the physical copies of Ryutaama before Far West.Kai Tave posted:That does seem to be the obvious solution, doesn't it? Just bang something out, get it delivered, wash your hands of it. At this point it's not like GMS' professional reputation can really get much worse.
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Sep 15, 2015 20:07
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How's that Tianxia fiction anthology that GMS is supposed to be part of coming along?
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Sep 15, 2015 20:10
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Risk is one thing. Risk is inherent to Kickstarting, that's why they have those 'risks' entries at the bottom of most pitch pages these days. They also require physical prototypes of things to be pledged for, to help avoid the 'whoopsie, turns out we can't do this!' scenario. Bullshit malfeasance like what happened to Atlantic City, or Far West, is another matter entirely. I'm sorry, I understand the rigors and challenges of being creative, but this is why everyone from your grade eight English teacher to your editor down at Baen imposes deadlines on material that you've agreed or been required to produce for them. If you cannot force yourself to produce what you've been paid to within a reasonable time frame... then sorry, you're loving liable. And yes, 'reasonable' is variable! It's still a variable that needs to be nailed down during the negotiation/funding process. I don't think this is unreasonable, and I don't think it's going to kill crowdfunded games, because the vast majority of developers on Kickstarter or Patreon or whatever are not skeevy motherfuckers like Skarka. At worst, they need a fire lit under their asses or an opportunity to renegotiate their deadlines because they misjudged their abilities or life got in the way.
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Sep 15, 2015 20:12
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Bieeardo posted:Bullshit malfeasance like what happened to Atlantic City, or Far West, is another matter entirely. I'm sorry, I understand the rigors and challenges of being creative, but this is why everyone from your grade eight English teacher to your editor down at Baen imposes deadlines on material that you've agreed or been required to produce for them. If you cannot force yourself to produce what you've been paid to within a reasonable time frame... then sorry, you're loving liable. Well the Doom That Came to Atlantic City debacle is somewhat unique among failed and might-as-well-be-failed Kickstarters in the sense that what happened there was literally a case of someone taking the money and running. It's less "oh man making a thing is actually really hard and I got sick and my dog died and I had to move houses and it's a process" and more "one of the three people involved took all the money and, without informing the other two of anything, spent it all starting up an entirely unrelated venture." It's less a case of some creative type drastically overextending themselves so much as literal criminal fraud.
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Sep 15, 2015 20:17
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Far West is a tabletop, right? I can understand having to scrap a videogame kickstarter project (technology issues, licensing problems, etc.) but how can you fail to finish something that can be uploaded as a .pdf and nothing more (al a Septimus) EDIT: But even then, I haven't had one videogame project cancel on me so 
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Sep 15, 2015 20:21
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I'm shocked someone brought up blades in the dark because in a few months Harper has releases three play test documents that look good as hell, and is actively updating the kickstarted page and having conversations with fans and backers on G+ every drat day.
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Sep 15, 2015 20:25
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Fenarisk posted:I'm shocked someone brought up blades in the dark because in a few months Harper has releases three play test documents that look good as hell, and is actively updating the kickstarted page and having conversations with fans and backers on G+ every drat day. Wasn't it brought up as an example of how to do things right, though?
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Sep 15, 2015 20:28
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Fenarisk posted:I'm shocked someone brought up blades in the dark because in a few months Harper has releases three play test documents that look good as hell, and is actively updating the kickstarted page and having conversations with fans and backers on G+ every drat day. I only brought it up because of the whole "changing the rules" thing, which if you squint is something it has in common with the Ex3 Kickstarter, and I was using it to point out that changing and revising your product post-funding isn't inherently problematic, it's all in how you go about doing it.
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Sep 15, 2015 20:29
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Evil Mastermind posted:In four years Andy K has managed to translate two RPGs from Japanese to English and get them published. I think it's safe to say we'll get the physical copies of Ryutaama before Far West. Of course we will, as Ryuutama's being printed right now.
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Sep 15, 2015 21:08
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Kai Tave posted:Well the Doom That Came to Atlantic City debacle is somewhat unique among failed and might-as-well-be-failed Kickstarters in the sense that what happened there was literally a case of someone taking the money and running. Paging Gau to the white courtesy telephone...
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Sep 15, 2015 21:23
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Maybe James Wallis will finally finished Alas, Vegas now.
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Sep 15, 2015 21:33
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DigitalRaven posted:Paging Gau to the white courtesy telephone... I'd laugh, if I wasn't still annoyed as hell by it all.
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Sep 16, 2015 09:34
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I did say somewhat unique, not entirely unique. At any rate it's unsurprising to me that Atlantic City is the first such fallen-through tradgame Kickstarter to receive legal scrutiny of that sort because it really is relatively cut and dried. Both Keith Baker and his other co-creator (the artist, I think) are publicly on record that they never saw any of the money, the guy who misappropriated it apparently has a sketchy history of stuff like this, there's a paper trail involved, etc. That Far West is receiving some scrutiny now is interesting because unlike the other guy who pretty much cut all communication post-funding, GMS has been adamantly and often angrily promising that Far West is going to be done any day now you guys. I don't know if anything serious is going to come of it, but it's something. (And of course I have no real sympathy for GMS because he's a huge ludicrous tool, so.)
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Sep 16, 2015 09:49
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Infinity RPG Kickstarter is up.
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Sep 16, 2015 14:56
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$30 minimum for the PDF, no alpha doc, a retailer buy-in tier, hit location die, lifepaths, and the usual garbage Corvus Belli approach to drawing/designing women characters. I can't wait to see how bad this is. 
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Sep 16, 2015 15:56
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Fenarisk posted:I'm shocked someone brought up blades in the dark because in a few months Harper has releases three play test documents that look good as hell, and is actively updating the kickstarted page and having conversations with fans and backers on G+ every drat day. It was brought up in a generally positive light, but also because BITD has undergone some significant revamps, which can set off some alarms as far as the possibility of the game losing its focus. I agree that it's nowhere near Far West/Exalted.
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Sep 16, 2015 16:17
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As someone who has a group actively playing Blades in the Dark since about the time the kickstarter ended, I remain completely satisfied with it. I had a few worries at times during revisions, but they were quickly settled by actually playing it. So far basically everything has been an improvement and the game is fun.
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Sep 16, 2015 17:16
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There's a Kickstarter for a collection of 7th edition Call of Cthulhu scenarios called Tales of the Caribbean. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/golden-goblin-press/tales-of-the-caribbean It's from Golden Goblin press and they're about to make their goal. quote:Tales of the Caribbean will be a collection of Jazz Era (1920s) scenarios set across the Caribbean for the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. We are offering a wide array of backer levels, some of which include special packages and exclusive items. We have planned many exciting stretch goals for this campaign, including expanded art, additional scenarios, bonus setting content, and unlockable add-on merchandise.
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Sep 16, 2015 20:01
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clockworkjoe posted:There's a Kickstarter for a collection of 7th edition Call of Cthulhu scenarios called Tales of the Caribbean. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/golden-goblin-press/tales-of-the-caribbean I backed their last one about New Orleans and was VERY satisfied with the result. Not in on this one because of a moratorium on new KS, but if I didn't have that, I'd totally go in on this too.
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Sep 16, 2015 20:24
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Did anyone back the Mutant Chronicles pnp? The same company just launched an Infinity pnp and I'm on the fence since I don't know anything about the system.
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Sep 16, 2015 20:40
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Myrmidongs posted:In 4 years lots of people complete a university degree, often while also working at the very least a part time job, and often working multiple part time jobs.
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Sep 16, 2015 21:20
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I've said it before, I'll say it again: if GMS put half the effort into getting Far West done as he did being hostile on the internet, Far West would have released years ago.
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Sep 16, 2015 21:33
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