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to quote myselfThe Moon Monster posted:Anyway it reads to me like people are reading some real nefariousness into this guy's actions because he's kind of a dick and they don't like him. I've yet to see any evidence of him abusing his position whatsoever.
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May 19, 2020 18:06
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homullus posted:Ok, so that's something: through his job, he makes game-publishing-relevant connections and friendships. That's clearly valuable in any industry. He could, for example, ask an industry connection to mention that there is a Torchbearer 2e KS going on right now, on their blog or at a convention in Ye Olden Times when those still happened. Do people think it's unethical for a game creator to use friendships or professional connections to promote their games when they gained that connection through their job? For example, if I worked for a general publishing company that sometimes published RPGs, and I met some game designers through work and later asked them to mention my own new game when I had one, would that be unethical? That doesn't sound unethical to me. "Unfair," in that I have a professional connection that not everyone does, but not unethical at all. It's the power dynamics that makes Luke's omission unethical, not the exclusivity. Its a small industry with small margins, even minor influence over a clearinghouse like kickstarter has potential for abuse. Disclosures help keep everything that much aboveboard.
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May 19, 2020 18:10
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right and the reply to that was "it doesn't really matter if he did anything wrong or not the point of disclosure is to prevent issues before they happen and safeguard in the event of abuse of power as people with power who abuse it also tend to be in positions where proving they abused it is hard or impossible and it's not really a huge ask to have a single line in the kickstarter about that" that you haven't seen any evidence that he abused his power doesn't really make a difference. you probably wouldn't if he had. i don't think having to include 'luke works for kickstarter' in the risks section is a huge ask and i don't really understand the argument that he shouldn't "have" to. its trivial and as a standard would help safeguard any industry that relies on the platform.
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May 19, 2020 18:11
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:i don't think having to include 'luke works for kickstarter' in the risks section is a huge ask and i don't really understand the argument that he shouldn't "have" to. its trivial and as a standard would help safeguard any industry that relies on the platform. Why would that be a risk for a project though?
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May 19, 2020 18:12
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The Moon Monster posted:Why would that be a risk for a project though? Put it wherever, the category isn't important. make a special "disclosure" tickbox that kickstarter employees have to tick. i dunno, it's not really the important part of the post
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May 19, 2020 18:14
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GrandpaPants posted:In non-Luke Crane news, the Bullet(heart) Kickstarter is up: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/level99games/bullet-a-shmup-inspired-board-game I really admire there being only three pledge levels, and all of them feel reasonable for what you get. That almost seems kinda unusual these days?
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May 19, 2020 18:15
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GrandpaPants posted:In non-Luke Crane news, the Bullet(heart) Kickstarter is up: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/level99games/bullet-a-shmup-inspired-board-game This looks neater than I thought it was going to. It's a refreshing take to see it have no stretch goals, as well.
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May 19, 2020 18:15
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Why "it's about ethics in the game industry and conflicts of interest!" as a cover for your dislike of somebody isn't making you all throw up on your keyboards, I do not understand.
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May 19, 2020 18:27
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Put it wherever, the category isn't important. make a special "disclosure" tickbox that kickstarter employees have to tick. i dunno, it's not really the important part of the post even if what you were saying were a thing we all agreed should be done, the onus would be on kickstarter to mandate that, not on an individual employee.
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May 19, 2020 18:28
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homullus posted:Why "it's about ethics in the game industry and conflicts of interest!" as a cover for your dislike of somebody isn't making you all throw up on your keyboards, I do not understand. I get it, because people are saying this is a conflict of interest, and some gamergate people also said the phrase "conflict of interest" at some point, therefore making people saying the first thing gamergaters by proxy
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May 19, 2020 18:29
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Impermanent posted:even if what you were saying were a thing we all agreed should be done, the onus would be on kickstarter to mandate that, not on an individual employee. I guess it would I don't really have a problem with it being Kickstarters responsibility. I don't really care about luke cane as a person and these are rules that should be in place for all KS employees Reframing the problem as people just not liking one particular person is silly and assumes people give way more of a poo poo about one specific designer than they do. If you work at Kickstarter and you run a Kickstarter it's not really asking the world that you should disclose your relationship to the platform. It's like 101 poo poo E: tbh I somewhat naively assumed it was already policy to disclose relationships to the platform if you were using it as an employee. silly me Nemesis Of Moles fucked around with this message at 18:46 on May 19, 2020 |
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May 19, 2020 18:34
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:I guess it would I don't really have a problem with it being Kickstarters responsibility. I don't really care about luke cane as a person and these are rules that should be in place for all KS employees that's fair tbh - as of now its hard to know who any community manager is, and the community experts section just lead you to a bunch of consultancy agencies.
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May 19, 2020 18:35
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homullus posted:Why "it's about ethics in the game industry and conflicts of interest!" as a cover for your dislike of somebody isn't making you all throw up on your keyboards, I do not understand. I don't dislike Luke though? I get why he's pissed some people off, but he seems fine, overall. Hell, I'll probably pick up a copy Mouse Guard at some point. I just disapprove of this specific type of unprofessionallism. It would make me trust anyone less.
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May 19, 2020 18:38
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:basically every popular designer in ttrpgs is getting by on a big list of undisclosed connections and i think that sucks and makes life hard for people who don't happen to work at google or ad agencies or the biggest crowdfunding/marketing platform and i think its fine for other designers and consumers to be annoyed about that I mean, this is true. Industry connections are super important. We've just gotta maintain our own connections and promote each other. In fact, I'm going to go tweet about skull diggers right now.
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May 19, 2020 18:54
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Haystack posted:I don't dislike Luke though? I get why he's pissed some people off, but he seems fine, overall. Hell, I'll probably pick up a copy Mouse Guard at some point. I just disapprove of this specific type of unprofessionallism. It would make me trust anyone less. Yeah. I thought that one of the reasons Luke Crane liked aggressively issuing refunds was that it means the refundee is a not a backer any more and cannot comment on the project. That keeps things nice and positive on the comments. Having that ability and possibly more with his company position seems like it could cause problems. Like, if you report the project and the report just goes to Luke Crane, what exactly do you expect to happen? That doesn't seem like the intent of kickstarter reports. It's not illegal, but it is a bad look. I don't know the details for refunds or KS reports. So if it doesn't work that way, by all means let me know. But the refund = no comments is what I took away from a blog post about Crane's refunding for the wizardspeak shipping question. (I tried to find that post but wasn't able to do so.) Given that, it seems reasonable to ask that he be listed on the project - and no, listing "from Burning Wheel" isn't putting your name on it unless the audience is already familiar with both Crane and Burning Wheel. That reads like deliberately leaving it out.
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May 19, 2020 18:59
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homullus posted:Why "it's about ethics in the game industry and conflicts of interest!" as a cover for your dislike of somebody isn't making you all throw up on your keyboards, I do not understand. Because nobody is doing that would be my guess. He routinely treats people with seething contempt and disrespect. He affects the speech of a child wizard in professional spaces. He also operates at a questionable intersection of interests. All of these things are bad independently. It's frankly weird to see anyone argue that they aren't.
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May 19, 2020 19:02
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The Moon Monster posted:I've yet to see any evidence of him abusing his position whatsoever. Another part of the issue is that he's in a position to do so, and neither he nor KS has evidently put up any protections against such conflicts of interest. The final part is - just go ahead and ask him about potential conflicts of interest; see what kind of aggressive wizardspeak you get back, I dare you.
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May 19, 2020 19:12
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If you're excited about Kickstarter visibly tagging Luke Crane as an employee for reasons totally unrelated to your dislike of him personally, entirely for the very shady ethical intersection he occupies in making more money for his employer, consider suggesting it to Kickstarter directly, as a promotion of section 4B of their corporate charter.
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May 19, 2020 19:14
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Oh, poo poo no I get it. Yeah that's a great idea, thanks.
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May 19, 2020 19:24
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there is some merit to the idea of community managers, and products they are involved with, being tagged as such. For example, it seems far less likely that they'd up and disappear on you, like a few of the kickstarters I've gone in on have. Will Hindmarch is still updating the "almost done" project: dark as of january of this year.
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May 19, 2020 19:26
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Impermanent posted:there is some merit to the idea of community managers, and products they are involved with, being tagged as such. For example, it seems far less likely that they'd up and disappear on you, like a few of the kickstarters I've gone in on have. Did that actually come out? I remember Always/Never/Now taking forever.
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May 19, 2020 19:34
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ha nope not yet
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May 19, 2020 19:40
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Evil Mastermind posted:Did that actually come out? I remember Always/Never/Now taking forever. the only reasons it's not as much of a meme as Far West, despite being delayed at least as long as Far West was before it achieved meme status: (a) Will Hindmarch seems genuinely remorseful and is evidently still laboring away at it in some respect, whereas Skarka is a jerk about it. (b) Far West has not yet been released, so that's still the gold standard. (c) Will has a much cleaner track record re: promising and then missing delivery dates
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May 19, 2020 19:50
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dwarf74 posted:
this is actually what i get mad at hindmarch for - the performance of contrition as some sort of balm to cover the fact that he just can't ship a product.
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May 19, 2020 20:23
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Impermanent posted:this is actually what i get mad at hindmarch for - the performance of contrition as some sort of balm to cover the fact that he just can't ship a product.
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May 19, 2020 20:29
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homullus posted:Why "it's about ethics in the game industry and conflicts of interest!" as a cover for your dislike of somebody isn't making you all throw up on your keyboards, I do not understand. While I don't doubt a few people simply have hateboners for Luke Crane (a lot of TG goons do seem to really dislike the dude for some reason) I really don't think it's cool or fair to roundabout accuse people of being gamergaters for discussing conflicts of interest in Kickstarters he's running.
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May 19, 2020 21:03
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moths posted:
My passive-aggressive wording made my intent less clear, but doing it looks like a win for them and a win for people interested in transparency on this issue.
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May 19, 2020 21:07
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moths posted:Because nobody is doing that would be my guess. I think the first one is bad, and have agreed. The second is a thing he did once years ago. I don't think the last one is actually bad unless he actually abuses his position. This is a small industry. Almost everyone has a day job. Some people have day jobs in related fields. Having a day job in a field related to the game you are making is certainly an advantage because of all your contacts and access that other creators don't have, whether that's an advantage in publishing or marketing or whatever. Is it unfair? Yeah, but like, that's just how things work. And complaining about it only for specific people is just what gamergate was. I'm not calling you a gamergater obviously, but like their whole thing was that these women were using their connections to get ahead and they saw that as a problem because of their misogyny. People use connections to help promote their games - that's how it is. Would I prefer it if there was a super-intelligent AI that could play all games and then give an objective evaluation of which are actually good? Yes, of course! I'd put that AI in charge of the "games we love" feature. But it doesn't exist, and even if it did, Kickstarter wouldn't use it because they don't want to promote good games - they want to promote games that will bring in lots of money. That's their interest. Bad games get one up over good ones all the drat time. And we all know it and it sucks. But Torchbearer isn't even a bad game - it's a drat good game and it deserves success!
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May 19, 2020 21:32
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Everybody already expects journalists to say ‘hey I was part of the team that made this game’ and the connections Gamergate made were ludicrously thin when they weren’t spurious. Here he does in fact have his hand on the button to make a TTRPG KS much more successful versus not, and basic transparency would mean he ought to say so in his Kickstarters, and probably someone else should be in charge of receiving complaints about his projects; The fact that he’s apparently also the person complaints about his behavior would be directed to is also a problem. None of these are bad because an individual is already visibly abusing them, but inherently bad. Crane could be a saint and this would still be a bad way to organize it, and small industries aren’t inherently exempt from abuses of power or the basic protections that exist to reduce them. This isn’t really about Crane for me, but about the system he’s ensconced in - KS is bad in all sorts of ways but this is the one in front of us, and it’s something they and he could fix with minimal effort.* * not fix entirely of course, it would still be a pretty bad set up for transparency because KS is that. But it would be better and show a concern for that. It’s not about which games ‘deserve’ to succeed, it’s about the framework in which a large part of the industry exists. Torchbearer seems cool; does it therefore deserve a leg up compared to many small, equally good games that don’t already have a following or Crane’s position at KS? Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 21:52 on May 19, 2020 |
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May 19, 2020 21:49
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Nobody is saying that he shouldn't be able to make KS, but he should disclose that he works for KS. It's like, a sentence to throw in, and I'm kinda surprised at the resistance that the very idea of basic transparency is getting in this thread. I don't know what sort of actual power his role provides him, but I imagine it's more than what Nemesis of Moles and other people here have gotten.
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May 19, 2020 22:01
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Jimbozig posted:I don't think the last one is actually bad unless he actually abuses his position. how would you know he abused it if he doesn't have to disclose he even has it? like i think everyone has already said, this one guy isn't the problem, it doesn't really matter how ethical he, in particular, is. it's not even about ttrpgs or board games, kickstarter is for a ton of different things and all of them should be required to disclose if their employees are running projects because it prevents and guards against abuses of power before they happen.
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May 19, 2020 22:10
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:how would you know he abused it if he doesn't have to disclose he even has it? Please tell me how an indicator marking Crane's affiliation with Kickstarter appearing on projects he launches prevents an abuse of power. I don't think it does that.
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May 19, 2020 22:17
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You don't actually know who makes decisions on the "projects we love". You don't know if Luke is in charge of that, and if he is, whether he recuses himself when his own games are considered. You don't know that he would be handling complaints about himself. You could complain and find out. It's all total speculation, as far as I can tell. I might be wrong - if you have evidence of any of that stuff, you could let us know. I would like to see it and I'm happy to change my mind if I'm wrong.
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May 19, 2020 22:22
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For the same reason that all conflict of interest disclosures work to prevent abuses of power; it informs consumers to the relationships behind the project and allows people to identify when abuses of power take place (like, say, if a hypothetical KS employee were using the tools they have at their day job to promote their own work at the expense of others) and maintains culpability in the case of retribution (if, say, someone talked poo poo about KS Employee #2212's lovely camera lens they kickstarted, and found their camera lens kickstarter snubbed in the rankings or indefinitely delayed or something). they act as safeguards against future bad behaviour by making it clear who has access to resources that may be misused and ensures the public in general have access to that information - not just a bunch of inside baseball dorks on a dead internet forum or w/e this is, again, pretty basic 101 poo poo. waiting to see if anyone does abuse their power (in a way that you can observe and verify) before putting in any controls is really silly for reasons so obvious im struggling to understand why "prove this one specific person has abused their power" is a thing anyone in here is saying. i can't prove anything, i'm not even accusing anyone of anything. At worst I'm saying my own personal ethics code sees the lack of disclosure as problematic and i'd like it v much if kickstarter required the very barest most basic protections against abuse of its platform. Jimbozig posted:You don't actually know who makes decisions on the "projects we love". You don't know if Luke is in charge of that, and if he is, whether he recuses himself when his own games are considered. these are all very good reasons one might have a disclosure section on a project that involves a kickstarter employee! Nemesis Of Moles fucked around with this message at 22:28 on May 19, 2020 |
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May 19, 2020 22:23
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GrandpaPants posted:Nobody is saying that he shouldn't be able to make KS, but he should disclose that he works for KS. It's like, a sentence to throw in, and I'm kinda surprised at the resistance that the very idea of basic transparency is getting in this thread. The whole conversation thread about him working at KS being a conflict of interest virtually started with: Lemon-Lime posted:At the very least, the dude should be banned from running Kickstarter campaigns as long as he works for Kickstarter.
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May 19, 2020 22:29
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:these are all very good reasons one might have a disclosure section on a project that involves a kickstarter employee! Yes, I agree. I think a disclosure of what influence or power that employee has would be useful. We do agree on that. I don't think it's fair to cast aspersions on Luke Crane personally because Kickstarter doesn't have that policy.
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May 19, 2020 22:32
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malkav11 posted:so yes, at least one person is saying that he shouldn't be able to make Kickstarters. I for one have a problem with that idea. Just putting an employee tag on employee run projects or whatever, that seems fair enough, though I'm not convinced it accomplishes that much. I feel like the idea that working for Kickstarter is some secret he's jealously guarding is a bit off base given that he talks about it constantly in public venues, but I accept that it's possible that people are encountering projects like Torchbearer without prior knowledge of the man or his games despite their position as very well known in a particular niche and basically invisible outside that niche. Yeah, the "Everyone knows who Luke Crane" arguments I've seen through here are hilarious. I run a podcast about exceedingly nerdy poo poo for a vanishingly small group of often knowledgeable dorks, and I still get emails all the time asking "You mentioned that piece of poo poo Zak, who is that and what did he do?"
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May 19, 2020 22:51
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I do think it's kind of funny that all of this is basically because Luke Crane seems physically incapable of not acting like a dumb dickhead over the most trivial exchanges for no readily apparent reason, something you'd think would be incredibly easy to do and yet.
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May 19, 2020 22:57
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Kai Tave posted:I do think it's kind of funny that all of this is basically because Luke Crane seems physically incapable of not acting like a dumb dickhead over the most trivial exchanges for no readily apparent reason, something you'd think would be incredibly easy to do and yet. The really funny thing is that moths was trying to give him more money, and he went all "gently caress off" with it. I guess beggars can be choosers?
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May 19, 2020 23:02
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theironjef posted:Yeah, the "Everyone knows who Luke Crane" arguments I've seen through here are hilarious. I run a podcast about exceedingly nerdy poo poo for a vanishingly small group of often knowledgeable dorks, and I still get emails all the time asking "You mentioned that piece of poo poo Zak, who is that and what did he do?" I think most people backing a Luke Crane Kickstarter probably know who he is and are there because of it. But yeah, he's not exactly a household name in most circles.
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May 19, 2020 23:14
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