Kickstarter and other crowdfunding

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MarsDragon
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby MarsDragon » Fri Feb 13, 2015 11:58 am

Yeah, that is pretty great.

"Fools, you think you can challenge me, the first Great Disappointer? Not in a hundred, not in a million years! Behold my castles in the air and DESPAIR!"

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Büge
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby Büge » Fri Feb 13, 2015 2:19 pm

Air castles coming soon.
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TedBelmont
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby TedBelmont » Fri Feb 13, 2015 7:25 pm

Sorry, did we say "air castles"? We meant "air".

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Mongrel
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby Mongrel » Fri Feb 13, 2015 7:52 pm

Sorry, did we say "air"? We meant "smog".
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beatbandito
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby beatbandito » Fri Feb 13, 2015 7:56 pm

Smog? I can't really comment as I've moved on to an exciting new project that I can't wait to not have a straightforward reveal for!
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IGNORE ME
Woah Dangsaurus
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby IGNORE ME » Sat Feb 14, 2015 1:34 am

RPS follows up with an interview.

Well.

(UPDATE: RPS seems to have gotten crushed right now, probably because of a huge influx of readers to that particular article. I've read the whole thing but I'll keep my tongue in my teeth about it for now, it's certainly uhhh... one of those things that generates discussion, let's say.)

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zaratustra
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby zaratustra » Sat Feb 14, 2015 2:49 pm

Oh, I've been vomiting acid about that on Twitter for the last 36 hours or so.


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Silversong
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby Silversong » Mon Feb 23, 2015 1:52 pm

If you like fun card games made by nice people, check out Red Dragon Inn 5. I'm already planning a cosplay group for working the booth this Gen Con....

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Mongrel
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby Mongrel » Mon Feb 23, 2015 2:10 pm

Hey keen - Koipond used to (still does?) work with Slugfest Games and helped them design RDI 3 & 4 (and maybe 2?). They are good people.
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Mongrel
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby Mongrel » Thu Feb 26, 2015 3:48 pm

So KS and IGG are rife with scams, which I think most of us know. Not "I'm an idiot who can't run a business, so I lost everyone's money. Haha whoops. You probably would have been better off going to Vegas.", but actual outright, straight up scams from the get-go.

But man, this has to take the cake as far as sheer blatancy: "PROSCAN, the world's first FOOD SCANNER"

I will use SCIENCE MAGIC to tell you what's in this food! Oh my Christ that's fucking ridiculous.

Like, don't even start with a basic logical reply like "Mass spectroscopy on an orange, on a plate is ridiculous for a number of reasons! First...", just don't even bother. This is indubitably, indisputably, a complete, total, and utter sham.
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Mongrel
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby Mongrel » Thu Feb 26, 2015 8:51 pm

Meanwhile there this rather unique KS: Help us find the loneliest whale in the world

EDIT: This one is actually not a scam, though it is a bit whimsical, I guess. I know it's wedged between two posts where I make fun of KS scams, so I just wanted to make it clear that this one is in fact legit.
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Mongrel
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby Mongrel » Thu Feb 26, 2015 10:00 pm

Some of these KS scams are nuts. Like Crystal Wash: Clean your laundry with no detergents!

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HAHA WHAT. It's even a KS STAFF PICK. Way to go, you fucking useless idiots.
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François
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby François » Thu Feb 26, 2015 10:20 pm

When looking at the food scanner one, at first I thought "they even put the amount to reach reasonably low so they have a chance to make it and keep the cash", but that doesn't even matter, they got flexible funding so they're getting paid anyway.

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nosimpleway
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby nosimpleway » Fri Feb 27, 2015 12:54 am

A good way to increase the pH of your wash water and oxidize your clothes with hydrogen peroxide is... to... add hydrogen peroxide to your laundry.

I mean that's totally missing all the weird-ass stuff in that KS but, like

If you want peroxide in your laundry for whatever reason, it's really not that complicated.

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Mongrel
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby Mongrel » Sat Feb 28, 2015 3:29 am

Has anyone here ever done, or been involved in a Kickstarter in any meaningful way before?

An opportunity has come up for me to run a very small, conservative KS for a friend who has money, is lazy, but has already done all the hard and risky work for getting stuff made. It's a line of minis he had commissioned but just can't be bothered to sell.

It seems very solid so far. The miniatures are already cast and if we need more, additional casts will be inexpensive. My friend has more than enough money if we need to get a few more figures done for stretch goals, the sculptor (Alan Marsh) is established and reliable, and the caster (Eureka miniatures) is established and reliable.

The main goal will be to simply sell the existing stock, so additional sales to the point where we have to pay for more casts will actually be gravy. We might have minor stretch goals of a few additional figures if the math works out such that the base set is still saleable. My cut would be modest - a couple of hundred bucks, assuming we sell all the existing stock - as the main idea is jut to help recoup the original investment. He offered because a couple hundred bucks is worth the hassle of doing all this to me, whereas it isn't to him. And that's fine and fair!

I am mainly asking to see about "backend" bookkeeping things related to Kickstarter itself. I know they take 10% of profits and that in the US shipping must be free (not sure about Canada yet, have to see), but what else might someone trip over. I am trying to search for any blogs or past entries people might have had from the past year or so regarding KS campaigns, but I'm mainly turning up campaigns themselves (including a very interesting one for a VR version of the Apollo 11 mission). The most important thing I will need to do is properly calculate all costs, all potential costs, and build margins of error, then to see if those allow for additional risk factors like stretch goals (which would represent a new investment to recover, albeit a modest one).

Anybody have any experience with these? I'd like to try and make sure to calculate all additional cost factors on Kickstarter's end that I ought to take into consideration.
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Joxam
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby Joxam » Sat Feb 28, 2015 6:13 am

The biggest thing I've heard from people that have both run successful and not so successful kickstarters is that you HAVE to ask for what you need from the start. Don't low ball it so that you are more guaranteed to hit the goal. Most shit kickstarters happen because the person doesn't ask for enough money so that they wont seem greedy and then they get funded and can't pull it off because they tried to be modest.
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Mongrel
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby Mongrel » Sat Feb 28, 2015 12:18 pm

Yeah, that's something we're set on. If we do stretch goals (we might not!), the potential costs need to be baked in from the start (margins do get better with increased numbers sold though).
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IGNORE ME
Woah Dangsaurus
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby IGNORE ME » Sat Feb 28, 2015 3:42 pm

It's infinitely better to not get funded than to get funded and not deliver.

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sei
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby sei » Sat Feb 28, 2015 3:48 pm

Silversong wrote:If you like fun card games made by nice people, check out Red Dragon Inn 5. I'm already planning a cosplay group for working the booth this Gen Con....


Heh, that name...
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Mongrel
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Re: Kickstarter

Postby Mongrel » Sat Feb 28, 2015 5:42 pm

Brentai wrote:It's infinitely better to not get funded than to get funded and not deliver.

Yep. No argument.
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