So it seems yet another Kickstarter has crashed and burned. Which means someone has crashed and burned along with it, leaving lots of peeved folks wondering what will happen to their "investment".
As unfortunate as the loss of a bit of cash might be when these products fail to materialize, it's also unfortunate that the folks behind these failed kickstarters almost always become pariahs in the same community that supported them to begin with. Not that the public shaming is unwarranted, but it would be nice if Kickstarter had more restrictions in place to protect irresponsible or unrealistic founders from themselves.
A lot of folks know I'm not a big fan of the whole Kickstarter thing. Crowd funding gaming stuff is a neat idea and all, and sometimes even pulls off something really cool (like the Reaper Minis deal), but all too often it ends up throwing way too much money at someone who has no real idea what they are doing and how they are realistically going to follow it to fruition. I have a feeling its only a matter of time before outrage over one of these failed Kickstarters ends up spilling over into a legal forum. Especially as some of these failures are starting to look less like naive incompetence and more like bald-faced fraud.
If you're curious, check out Tenkar's for a good list of overdue Kickstarters.
To me, the truly preventable thing about it is how often it's the creators bringing it on themselves. When they have failure issues and go into media silence, yeah, it's over for them in terms of social media. You can't keep posting about everything under the sun but things people paid you for and not expect to get taken to task for it. Updating a kickstarter in the comments, "I'm too sick to upload a preview right now." and then posting nothing for a month is not the win, as a recent military campaign would suggest, win hearts and minds.
ReplyDeleteSee this one?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KNE7TD3bK1E
@Billy - Perfect!
ReplyDeleteI tend to be extremely pragmatic about Kickstarter with regards to fringe-interest projects. If a large chunk of the fanbase put money into a project, with most of them getting a copy of the final product, then they would have to rely on the non-backing fans to support the line by buying the final product in a normal fashion. Without greater awareness of the new published product, it would fail to take-off. For a game book, it would probably be better to just publish it through Lulu or any willing indie-game publisher so the fans who are already aware of it can buy it at their leisure.
ReplyDeleteWhich one is it this time?
ReplyDeleteSo? No "Warriors of the Red Planet" crowdsourcing anytime soon?
ReplyDelete@School Master - just waiting to reach our goal of $3 Million. As soon as we reach 3 mil we will disappear... er... I mean publish the book and stuff.
ReplyDeleteGreat Post Keep it up!!!
ReplyDeletePower to Choose
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