Action Force and Valaverse

Damien said:
Bone Smoker
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This made me react just like Elaine seeing the pez dispenser.

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Fletch said:
How does someone just walk away with Kickstarter money? Isn't the whole system designed as produce or refund?

Urmmm... asking for a friend.
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No.

They claim to. They legally frame it as supporting a project not buying a product. Their own text will tell you that you are due a refund.

But in practice, and we've had a decade plus of this, they don't investigate, they don't enforce. As long as someone comes forward and says whoops we ran out of money, they're happy.

Giving it a shot satisfies their needs in practice.

Buyers have legal recourse. Anyone going in with intent to scam knows that most people aren't going to do it. You'd have to get your state or country laws, figure out how to file individually or class, get the lawyer in the first place. Realistically that's not going to happen.

As a video game enthusiast, I read about these projects all the time. One problem is that you don't have to escrow the money. And that a lot of consumers think when you're asking for $200,000 it takes $200, 000 000 to complete. That isn't true at all. Sometimes they're just looking for... A kickstart. Something to get the angel investors interested. Then consider that that money has to go towards living expenses contracting artists, manufacturing quotes, prototypes, travel for conventions, marketing (updates), and your favourite - taxes (Kickstarter money is taxable income.)

Like your own paycheck, even when it sounds nice on paper, even when they mean well, do you ever really see it? And like a lot of businesses, people really downplay the math and rainy days it takes to succeed.

When the time comes to produce, the money is already gone. Kickstarter doesn’t require creators to escrow the funds.

It's a platform of dreams and promises, and from the jump, it's also anti-consumer and anti-accountability.

Edit: And just to make a point about how legal recourse generally isn't going to happen, consider that Amazon of all companies doesn't even do price adjusts. You buy something. It goes on sale 3 days later. There was a time you could just go to the service desk and they would credit you back the difference.

Amazon could do this from their CS system. Instead, you have to order a new one at the new price and return it.

They do this because they know most people aren't going to do that for 10, 20, even a couple hundred bucks when you're dealing with something unwieldy like a TV or desk top. They know what they're doing.
 
altcunningham said:
Like your own paycheck, even when it sounds nice on paper, even when they mean well, do you ever really see it? And like a lot of businesses, people really downplay the math and rainy days it takes to succeed.
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Also worth noting, a lot of folks are encouraged to kickstart for less money than they actually need to increase the chance of "funding" in the hopes that funding early will excite folks and lead to the actual number they need down the line. There's also a lot of encouragement to do things for the absolute bare minimum cost to consumer, which typically also means no margins at all for the person making the product, or sometimes going in the hole.

This is what fells a lot of comic book kickstarters. I know a guy who has had like a dozen "successful" comic kicks, but for the most part he's just covering printing. He basically gets nothing for the work he took to make the books. And the sad thing is, the way consumers are, because they simply cannot understand economies of scale, he never will make anything, because he can't print books for the same cost per unit as Marvel and nobody will pay for them to be priced the way they should be.
 
How would the Escrow-holders know more about the legitimacy of paying production costs for all the ridiculous number of projects KS and other companies host? A lawyer/banker is going to know which plastics manufacturer is legit more than the guys running the project itself? Plus know all the boardgame printing companies, and the A/V recording companies, and the... And where does the escrow holder make *their* money from if not taking a portion of the money I gave for an action figure, meaning it's all just gonna cost more to allegedly guarantee a product gets made at all?

Do any of these questions come up when investing in the stock market? No, because it's all a gamble; just like Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and all the other fund-raising sites are. Gambling on the process is the *entire* point, for both the gambler and the house. Action figures, being pretty much the pinnacle of plastics technology; are very hard to pull off; especially nowadays when the standards are so high, especially for people brand-new to doing it all. Frankly, we've been astonishingly lucky by how many of these projects have come together successfully, imho.
 
adrienveidt said:
Do any of these questions come up when investing in the stock market? No, because it's all a gamble; just like Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and all the other fund-raising sites are. Gambling on the process is the *entire* point, for both the gambler and the house. Action figures, being pretty much the pinnacle of plastics technology; are very hard to pull off; especially nowadays when the standards are so high, especially for people brand-new to doing it all. Frankly, we've been astonishingly lucky by how many of these projects have come together successfully, imho.
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Agreed.

I also think a lot of people go into kicks without a keen eye. There's a lot of red flags to look for. I've backed 3 dozen kickstarters of various kinds and only two didn't deliver and both were run by the same person (the Army Alphas and his blanks). In that case I'll be honest, they got some good will because they were a Fwoosh member. It was a bummer, but I was a little skeptical already and I made sure I didn't spend more than I could afford to lose. Some of the things I backed delivered late, but a ~5% failure rate isn't bad overall. If you're paying attention to what they're promising, and what they seem to already have figured out, you can usually sense the crappy ones a ways off.
 
Most of my crowdfunds are for known quantities in the comic, art, or music world.

I suppose I also feel better supporting an individual like Jim Mahfood or Ashley Wood than I do a whole studio. And the toy and game products that turn out generally end up at retail anyway.

My favourite crowdfund grift is Star Citizen.

www.pcgamer.com

Star Citizen truly outdoes itself with a $48,000 bundle for its most loyal whales

We live in a society where virtual spaceship DLC can cost more than most peoples' annual salary.
www.pcgamer.com www.pcgamer.com
 
My KS Pledges shows I've gone in for 55 successful campaigns and all of 2 haven't delivered minus the 4 still in-progress. 2 out of 51 is an amazing success rate, imho.

The never-delivers are the aforementioned HellScreamerz, the figures of which I still want because I had a very cool unit in mind; and a GODS RPG book that seems to have just faded out after a couple of years of good updates.
 
altcunningham said:
Most of my crowdfunds are for known quantities in the comic, art, or music world.

I suppose I also feel better supporting an individual like Jim Mahfood or Ashley Wood than I do a whole studio. And the toy and game products that turn out generally end up at retail anyway.

My favourite crowdfund grift is Star Citizen.

www.pcgamer.com

Star Citizen truly outdoes itself with a $48,000 bundle for its most loyal whales

We live in a society where virtual spaceship DLC can cost more than most peoples' annual salary.
www.pcgamer.com www.pcgamer.com
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Star Citizen is a weird one because it is technically a playable game, it's just basically still in alpha (a very pretty alpha) and because of how absurd its goals were it likely will always be. I've seen people play it and when the stuff is working that game is kinda magical. I'm never going to play it because my threshold for bugs is too low, but when it works its wild.

I'm not sure it's a grift, because I sincerely don't think the aim is to swindle. I think it's just that the game is being run by folks wildly out of touch who will just tweak and tweak and tweak until the sun burns out chasing goals they can't realistically ever hit.

I'll agree though, their bundles are bafflingly priced.
 
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JakeEkiss said:
but I was a little skeptical already and I made sure I didn't spend more than I could afford to lose.
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Honestly, I think that's how we should all be approaching any non-necessity item at this point. If you are going to absolutely lose your mind over 200 dollars you put into a Kickstarter that doesn't produce - you probably didn't have 200 dollars you should have been putting down on a Kickstarter. (Not saying you can't be -angry- that someone didn't make a thing, or feel like you were ripped off or whatever.)

But yeah - some are sleazier than others. Some are more realistic than others. If you've been in the community of whatever the product is that you're kicking, you can probably get a pretty decent read on what's got a good chance and what doesn't.
 
Damien said:
Honestly, I think that's how we should all be approaching any non-necessity item at this point. If you are going to absolutely lose your mind over 200 dollars you put into a Kickstarter that doesn't produce - you probably didn't have 200 dollars you should have been putting down on a Kickstarter. (Not saying you can't be -angry- that someone didn't make a thing, or feel like you were ripped off or whatever.)
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Yeah. A lot of the vitriol I see on Kickstarter, even around successful, but sometimes late ones, seems to be from folks who either a) do not understand that a Kickstarter is *very* distinct from a preorder, or b) who clearly aren't careful with their money anyway, or both.

Like it would've been nice to get those figures, but the moment a kick closes and the money is out of my bank I basically memory-hole it. If I get the product or not, that money is gone and I don't expect it back.
 
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