General Game News

[Variety of Cells]

Board Game Kickstarter Canceled Amidst Claims of Malfeasance

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/126293-Board-Game-Kickstarter-Canceled-Amidst-Claims-of-Malfeasance?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=news

This story is quite sad.  Being in debt with nothing to show for it is one thing; you get a job and slowly pay back your loans or credit card or whatever.  But being in debt to thousands of angry nerds is quite another thing all together.  That would be a really shitty place to be in, and I'd want to lock myself in my room for a year.  A room with no computer, mind you.

But the article does point out that he has taken money to create a game before, and failed just as horribly.  So why did he think it was a good idea to take money from strangers?  Because they were the only ones who would give it?  I wonder how common stories like this will be.  Hopefully not too common.

[Lembach]

Wargaming.net, the folks who make World of Tanks, now own the rights to the Master of Orion and Total Annihilation. On the latter title, they outbid Uber, who are making the spiritual sequel Planetary Annihilation. Wargaming also recently purchased the assets of Gas Powered Games, formerly run by Chris Taylor who was the developer of TA. Hmmm.....

Maybe if they hadn't set the price of their Planetary Annihilation alpha release at $89.99, they would have made the sales to outbid. Oh well.

[Edward J Grug III]

Board Game Kickstarter Canceled Amidst Claims of Malfeasance

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/126293-Board-Game-Kickstarter-Canceled-Amidst-Claims-of-Malfeasance?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=news

This story is quite sad.  Being in debt with nothing to show for it is one thing; you get a job and slowly pay back your loans or credit card or whatever.  But being in debt to thousands of angry nerds is quite another thing all together.  That would be a really shitty place to be in, and I'd want to lock myself in my room for a year.  A room with no computer, mind you.

But the article does point out that he has taken money to create a game before, and failed just as horribly.  So why did he think it was a good idea to take money from strangers?  Because they were the only ones who would give it?  I wonder how common stories like this will be.  Hopefully not too common.

There's a couple of big flame-outs in the boardgame-kickstarter world.

Glory to Rome took forever to get to the people that have it so far )not everyone does) and the guy that ran the campaign claims he lost his house over the deal.

Then there's this one: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1820893788/katalyka/posts

Ever since about December, I've been harassed by a voice that is claiming to be the sun, and its been attacking me and harassing me almost every hour of the day.

This is the best way I can explain what I am going through... if anyone has any advice or can offer help with this problem, it was not really what I was hoping for and it was very much NOT what I was told making this game was going to be like last year when I started working on it:

Voice says: "The sun doesn't want you to publish Katalyka, because it wants to be almost exactly LIKE Katalyka, but it keep it all a secret.  If you publish your game, it is going to let people in on too many secrets." (paraphrasing)

My response:

The giant glowing mass of hydrogen that lights up our entire planet with heat and color wants to remain a secret?

Seems a bit like a pipe dream to me.

Besides, there have already been a few different "galactic themed" video games and at least one other board game that have all gotten rather popular, so I really don't understand why "The Sun" is supposedly obsessing over the details in this game, specifically.  The voice won't tell me what it is that I'm supposed to change or remove, because apparently that would give too much away?  This is all rather strange to me, and hard to believe.

We already demonstrated that the sun's long term goals and survival are threatened by people who manipulate elements, and that the Sun has NOTHING to lose by being honest and open, but the people who want to control it and the less educated people around them have their entire fortunes to lose if Life on Earth came together in a healthy way along with the blessing of the Sun.

Apparently, my design for the game was based on ideas that are too close to reality, and people who have a lot of influence over Life itself have been stomping on me and trying to keep me from finishing it.

I hope you can understand why I've been hoping that production would have gone smoother and just get the game done, but this harassment has gotten so persistent I can barely even think any more.

When I started working on it, I was told that it would be my opportunity to make something that would help teach, bring various levels of Life together, and would be fun and popular... but its just been roadblock after roadblock, and endless harassment for months over any minute detail or idea that I put into it... and even though its finished, then the voices started obsessing over keeping me from printing it, mostly by distracting me constantly with insane trivia, nonsense, and annoyances to the point where I can't even think.  What's kind of frustrating is that half of the stuff that it complains to me about are things I was essentially instructed to put into the game, by the same voices that are harassing me now.

I honestly don't know what to do about this.  I'm starting to feel that I've been set up by someone and I'm feeling kind of lost.

The main problem is the actual printing of the card decks.  I have all the other materials, and I have cardstock to print the cards on but it was too thick for my printer and I can't afford to take it to a second hand printer, so as soon as I can finish it I am determined to see this project done.  I looked into exchanging or returning the cardstock, and it would cost me about $500 to do that (which I don't have, since I am on disability due to an injury, I only get about $200 a month after rent and most of that goes into food.)

I put way too much time and effort into Katalyka to give up now, so if anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them.

[Compound]

Wargaming.net, the folks who make World of Tanks, now own the rights to the Master of Orion and Total Annihilation. On the latter title, they outbid Uber, who are making the spiritual sequel Planetary Annihilation. Wargaming also recently purchased the assets of Gas Powered Games, formerly run by Chris Taylor who was the developer of TA. Hmmm.....

Maybe if they hadn't set the price of their Planetary Annihilation alpha release at $89.99, they would have made the sales to outbid. Oh well.

Hmm. I swore that I commented on that before. Oh yeah. Here we go:

2) As for PA, Yeah, it's $90 as the bid level for Alpha access on the Kickstarter was $90. Pretty simple. If someone paid $90 for alpha access last year and someone else was able to get in for a lower price now, those folks who paid the higher price would be rather massively annoyed, and with good reason.

Is it really that hard to understand? If they had said "Hey, you can get into the alpha by playing $20, like the Kerbal folks did", do you really not get that the 8,000 people who paid $90 or more  for the same privilege might be just a little bit pissed off by that offer? "Oh, sure. You gave us money to get this started but that was almost 9 months ago. Ancient history there."   It would be a horrible decision that would burn through pretty much all the good will that they had built up. So, yes. It's $90. It'll go down when the Beta phase arrives and then go down more when the game itself hits.

[Compound]

Back to the KS, I'll give another example: Haunts. It was a strategy game where you control either a group of people or a number of spooks and they try to eliminate the other group. It raised about 28k in funds and then the months passed and no game. After about 5 months, the designer of the game posted that they'd run out of funds to finish it, breaking down exactly what the cash had been spent on. (Short version, the programmer was hired for x months and couldn't finish it in that time.) Other folks offered to help, but there's been no progress on the game since March.

Sadly, these things happen.  I'll note that "Doom" was a game that I almost backed. The only reason that I didn't do so was due to a lack of funds at the time. The Ogre and Zombicide Kickstarters had just ended (and Ogre still hasn't shipped, but it getting closer) and the Sedition Wars was going on at the time. (And Katie Tiedrich wanted money too.) I'm frankly thankful that I didn't, but folks on Kickstarter need to constantly remind themselves that there's no guarantee that you'll ever see anything for that money.

And Katalyka. Yeah, that one is a still ongoing trainwreck.

[Compound]

Okay, one more note: This isn't the first Kickstarter boardgame this month that ended badly.

Odin's Ravens, which was to be a reprint of an already published game, got funded in March. And then the Project founder vanished. The artist hasn't gotten paid. The printer hasn't gotten paid. The original designer hasn't heard from him.  The guy who was doing an iOS version hasn't heard from him. His Facebook pages got deleted. He started buying a lot of items on ebay (He didn't delete that account) and fraud reports then started coming in from there for thousands of dollars.  And his room mates have reported that he's skipped out on them too, after owing them for a few months of expenses there as well.

Now, this guy took in about $100k less than Doom, so it's less of a financial issue than that Kickstarter, but while Doom's project leader did some rather stupid things with his money, this guy seems to have gone far, far over the "Yeah, this is a legal problem" line of malfeasance.

[Variety of Cells]

Is it really that hard to understand? If they had said "Hey, you can get into the alpha by playing $20, like the Kerbal folks did", do you really not get that the 8,000 people who paid $90 or more  for the same privilege might be just a little bit pissed off by that offer? "Oh, sure. You gave us money to get this started but that was almost 9 months ago. Ancient history there."   It would be a horrible decision that would burn through pretty much all the good will that they had built up. So, yes. It's $90. It'll go down when the Beta phase arrives and then go down more when the game itself hits.

Yes, it doesn't make any sense to charge less than $90 now, but I would say they should have charged less than $90 during the kickstarted for alpha.  Perhaps they would have made less during the kickstarter, but there would have been a much larger influx of cash once they went to alpha with Steam's large user base if they would have charged $60 or $70.

[Edward J Grug III]

Okay, one more note: This isn't the first Kickstarter boardgame this month that ended badly.

Odin's Ravens, which was to be a reprint of an already published game, got funded in March. And then the Project founder vanished. The artist hasn't gotten paid. The printer hasn't gotten paid. The original designer hasn't heard from him.  The guy who was doing an iOS version hasn't heard from him. His Facebook pages got deleted. He started buying a lot of items on ebay (He didn't delete that account) and fraud reports then started coming in from there for thousands of dollars.  And his room mates have reported that he's skipped out on them too, after owing them for a few months of expenses there as well.

Now, this guy took in about $100k less than Doom, so it's less of a financial issue than that Kickstarter, but while Doom's project leader did some rather stupid things with his money, this guy seems to have gone far, far over the "Yeah, this is a legal problem" line of malfeasance.

Huh, I've wanted a copy of Odin's Ravens and might well have backed it if I had seen it.

[Variety of Cells]

Yikes.  Which is why I'm glad I have only backed games from companies that already exist and have made games before.  I'm sure all the up and coming inde devs on kickstarter hate to hear people say that, but as an average Joe I don't have the ability to vet people.  All I have to go by is your kickstarter page and what works you have made public in the past. 

[Edward J Grug III]

Yeah, I am pretty choosy about which ones I back too.

[Compound]

Sad thing though- The Raven guy *had* done a successful Kickstarter before. It's a really odd situation.

[Lembach]

Wargaming.net, the folks who make World of Tanks, now own the rights to the Master of Orion and Total Annihilation. On the latter title, they outbid Uber, who are making the spiritual sequel Planetary Annihilation. Wargaming also recently purchased the assets of Gas Powered Games, formerly run by Chris Taylor who was the developer of TA. Hmmm.....

Maybe if they hadn't set the price of their Planetary Annihilation alpha release at $89.99, they would have made the sales to outbid. Oh well.

Hmm. I swore that I commented on that before. Oh yeah. Here we go:

2) As for PA, Yeah, it's $90 as the bid level for Alpha access on the Kickstarter was $90. Pretty simple. If someone paid $90 for alpha access last year and someone else was able to get in for a lower price now, those folks who paid the higher price would be rather massively annoyed, and with good reason.

Is it really that hard to understand? If they had said "Hey, you can get into the alpha by playing $20, like the Kerbal folks did", do you really not get that the 8,000 people who paid $90 or more  for the same privilege might be just a little bit pissed off by that offer? "Oh, sure. You gave us money to get this started but that was almost 9 months ago. Ancient history there."   It would be a horrible decision that would burn through pretty much all the good will that they had built up. So, yes. It's $90. It'll go down when the Beta phase arrives and then go down more when the game itself hits.

Yes, it doesn't make any sense to charge less than $90 now, but I would say they should have charged less than $90 during the kickstarted for alpha.  Perhaps they would have made less during the kickstarter, but there would have been a much larger influx of cash once they went to alpha with Steam's large user base if they would have charged $60 or $70.

I couldn't have said it better myself. If they hadn't been so greedy during the Kickstarter, and had to price this way now, they might have made up for in overall greater quantity of sales. I didn't realize I'd have to go into that level of detail with my comment.

Hmm. I swore that I commented on that before. Oh yeah. Here we go:

Is it really that hard to understand?

Do you always feel the need to lash out like a condescending douchebag? Or is it just this one subject matter?

[Compound]

Do you always feel the need to lash out like a condescending douchebag? Or is it just this one subject matter?

Just on this particular issue.

No, I'm not going to say any more than that. I can already feel Grug and Pak itching to use the "knock it off" button, so I will and without any snarky last comment. Except for that one.

[Edward J Grug III]

BANNED

[mrbasehart]

I think it was kidna inevitable that one Kickstarter project would go tits up in spectacular fashion.  This doesn't seem quite as huge as say, if Double Fine decided that all that Massive Chalice money should go on hookers and blow, but it tests the waters for the potentiality and how the backers who funded the project will react. 

On a more positive note, there's been good things said about Shadowrun Returns, one of the first big Kickstarter games to get released.