Weekender XLBS: Give A Friend Free Backstage & Ninja Division Fallout
February 17, 2019 by brennon
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1st again? Did lightning really strike twice?
lol nice one mate
happy sunday
……….*shakes head* ….. *deep sigh * ………you really can’t help some people …. 😉 😛
Edible bug challenge accepted. Australia is full of the things. Hell this place is so overrun with bugs you end up eating them even when you don’t mean to! HM Customs better not stop this package. Witchetty grub on way Justin! We even have edible ants and spiders, well people have been know to eat them.
@dignity we are so on lol
Witchetty grubs are ok to eat
i can’t compete with australia, but i think we have some disgusting things here in texas, time to hit the trails hunting for justin’s dinner..
damn if i only skipped doing dishes..
Just kidding. Here’s to a fun, carefree thread today. 😀
Thank god you didn’t go for the marathon man version of that meme!
Happy Sunday!
The ‘Pass on a Pass’ sounds like a great project. Just wish I could have gotten some of my friends to keep logging in here so I could sign up for the ‘Pass’ to pass on to them. I guess that is their loss.
I really enjoy hearing about everyone’s personal hobbies.
Kickstarter………..what can I say. Every time I back one it seems like they never hit their promised deleivery time. I’ve found myself only supporting games that capture the theme or spirit of a game I’ve always wanted or have the first version of and want more of it because it’s a proven winner. Which leaves me not backing anything on a whim. I don’t like taking risks on something that could just be taking me for a ride.
Hobby on Dudes!
Play the classic game via TTS
Tabletop Simulator
https://store.steampowered.com/app/286160/?snr=1_5_9__205
Raid on St Nazaire [Solitaire Wargame]
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1161482296&searchtext=wargames
There is someone doing this in the project threads
Thar would be me 🙂
Hopefully will get through a few more turns today.
Yep link here guys https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1346865/
🙂
And I’ve got round to doing turn 2 🙂
Happy Sunday!!!
Happy Sunday .. looking forward to this it has been a busy day so far
I’m one of the backers of the Relic Knights Kickstarter.
I agree there is a risk with kickstarters. There are genuine reasons why kickstarters can fail. The problem is in my experience, most people that fail to deliver on a Kickstarter campaign simply walk away with no explanation to backers about what went wrong.
There’s two points that speaks to the dishonesty with which Ninja Division have conducted themselves. The first is that it has become clear that the Company was in financial strife well before they ran the Relic Knights kickstarter. They ran it as a revenue generating exercise with no realistic prospect of delivering. They have acted like con-men running some type of pyramid scheme trying to keep their company afloat and themselves getting salary/wages.
They used the kickstarter mechanism because there is little to no legal risk and no accountability mechanism. Kickstarter only cares about the income it generates. It could easily prevent companies or individuals from taking advantage of backers by preventing additional kickstarters from being run until delivery has occurred or a proper report has been provided to backers setting out the reasons why a particular kickstarter campaign failed.
The second point is that after the kickstarter Ninja Division allowed backers to purchase existing products in addition to paying for your pledge and shipping. All up I gave Ninja Division US$1500 and have received absolutely nothing. They have not even provided backers the existing products we purchased.
If the actions of the individuals behind Ninja Division are not illegal they are most certainly unethical. They are dishonest and they are cowards.
I’m so sorry to hear this mate 🙁
There’s an interesting distinction legally that could and should be made between funds raised in the KS for rewards and for products and services subsequently bought and paid for in the post-project PM. In the first you’re gifting funds for which you may or may not receive ‘rewards’, in the PM you should be able to treat this as a more standard transaction for which there may be more redress (despite what they may suggest in any terms and conditions). Particularly if you use a credit card for the PM purchase!
Anyone had any success with Credit Card companies or realise PayPal for funds spent in the PM that didn’t realise any goods or products?
Although having just checked BackerKit’s Terms of Service they consider their service as an extension on the crowdfunding at backer’s risk. US regulation still makes crowdfunding subject to the prohibitions on fraud and false advertising that apply to all commercial transactions. (Crowdinvesting and crowdlending are different models and regulated by specific laws).
even KSer own terms of service state that the product or a refund should be given, but saying that and enforcing that are two very different things.
(I’ve backed Railraiders, Starfinder miniatures and Relic Knights; only RR did deliver)
I think part of the problem for failing kickstarters is that we’re last in line to get any info at all.
As a result there simply be no one left who can contact backers.
There is no practical way for Kickstarter themselves to manage this when you look at the amount of kickstarters that are active at any given moment. And other than increasing the reliability of the platform there is no reason for them to do so.
I do have to say that the ration of completed vs failed is pretty good when I look at the projects I’ve backed. As such I wonder if the cost of ‘perfect’ protection has a return of investment at all.
Do we really need Kickstarter to do things that a potential backer can (and should) do so themselves ?
While it can be tricky to check if a kickstarter has been completed it is not impossible.
In theory all Kickstarter would have to do is show the percentage of backers who have ticked the ‘got it’ box. Problem with that approach is that there is a margin for error, but it is the only source of info we’ve got that doesn’t rely on the creators themselves.
In addition … a lot of kickstarters tend to be very quiet at various times simply because there isn’t anything to report. This makes checking the status of projects difficult.
I genuinely think a ‘tick to say I got my promised goodies’ button would be enough to actually let people know if a company is worth looking at as a prospect.
the box is there … there simply isn’t any use for it for backers.
I don’t know if the creators of a project have access to that data, but given that practically everyone uses a 3rd party site as a pledgemanager there must be a reason.
The Law enumerates crimes and supersedes any Terms of Service document. Thus if fraud has occured ( of course, a crime), then KS’ Terms of Service cannot prevent you from seeking Justice.
Unfortunately, there is also prosecutorial discretion to pursue charges or not based on the strength of the case. But it sounds to me like a lot of people are in the same boat as you, and the Justice system does like to set examples if Kickstarter Fraud is a new avenue of wrongdoing.
Happy Sunday!
Kickstarters… Kickstarters… Who got me into this whole Kickstarter habit?
BoW! That’s ####ing who! And it all started with Myth, 6 years and over 100 backed projects ago.
The first Myth KS went well apart from a few delays (to be expected) and some issues with poorly written rules. But then a sorry tale of overlapping KS projects, poor communications from MegaCon (as they became called – who says Americans don’t get irony?). It soon became obvious that they hadn’t managed cash flow and project spend properly so appeared to be borrowing funds from the next campaign to complete a previous one. They also got lax on quality control of manufacturing and the end drew nigh… Still awaiting on some Journeyman rewards.
But that’s one of only a handful that have disappointed or failed completely. My other bugbear with some projects is the gap between waves so when you’re into the game you can’t help but feel something is missing (often variability and some replayability) but when the extra characters etc finally arrive in the last wave everyone’s moved on from that game (SFG… I’m talking DS here!)
So eventually I lose trust in certain companies and individuals and avoid future projects from them… and warn others away by telling them the facts from previous projects, but them’s the risks! The vast majority of positive experiences more than make up for the poor ones. I really need to move out some of the clutter…must learn how to use eBay!
As for monitoring progress post KS towards delivery there’s a wide variation in effective communication: From little comms before a package arrives at the front door to regular updates. Some examples:
>>> Poor comms:
Mercs/MegaCon… during the timeline discussed above there was a habit of them releasing an update for an existing (often over-running with problems) project hours before they started yet another KS or launched the PM.
Poots/KD:M… sorry to say, but the only communications we tend to get for KD:M 1.5 is on regular holidays (Halloween, St Valentines etc.) but these tend to be “here’s the instore items on sale this holiday” with very little progress reporting on the project. Yes, some waves are over-running (as expected) but by how much we have very little idea.
>>> Others causing concern: several who could but won’t be named for going ‘a bit quiet’ while the project has severely over-run. It’s in this vacuum of lack of real information that rumours and dis-information can begin and propagate – often leading to dis-gruntled project creators who let it happen in the first place.
Another habit I’m fed up with is with creators who then say “but you need to follow our fb/twitter/instagram/etc for latest updates.” You were happy to communicate with us through KS when the project was raising funds – that should still be your main channel to backers post-project!
>>>Good Comms:
Mythic Games: What’s up Wednesday updates for each of their ongoing projects. Some may see it as over-kill but they tend to be very responsive to questions from backers etc.
Daily Magic Games: check out their simple but effective progress tracker they keep up to date at the top of their project pages, for example: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dailymagicgames/valeria-card-kingdoms-shadowvale
>>>Others deserving of a mention for good comms habits: Battle Systems (Core Space etc – yep it’s a bit late but we know what’s been happening); Shem Phillips/Garphill (North Sea Saga etc) – regular updates and sense of confidence that goes with that. Wow – two very small companies I’d trust my money with everytime.
Good comms doesn’t take long – 15-30 mins a week to provide a simple “We’re still here, working away… bit a lot to show at this point but here’s an update to your expectations” goe a long way; lets backers know you’re thinking of them as stakeholders who have concerns and show’s them you’ve not done a bunk!
“Join us in the back room” – “Join us in our windowless van”
@avernos ‘s ‘pay it forward’ idea sounds cool; will have to have a rummage around to see if there’s anything in my collection that I want to offload. 🙂
Re: boners – there’s a famous Batman comic from the thirties or fourties where the word boner is repeated a rediculous number of times where it’s meant the sense of blunders/bloopers/etc.
http://www.superdickery.com/batmans-boner/
Pressure pots and vacuum chambers – you do know you’re the Beasts of War and not the Mythbusters right @warzan ? 😜
If you want to make the game really explody, how about packing the ship mini with actual fireworks to set off when it blows? 😜
As for alarm raising, surely going in fast should raise the alarm quicker as it’s suspicious? Might be adding too much complexity, but how about having there be a ‘goldilocks’ speed somewhere in the middle; maybe something like the Germans having to make tests to raise the alarm and going faster means less tests, but each fail raises the alarm level by a larger amount while going slower means more tests but only small increases? Ie going fast means there’s less time for them to take note and start raising alarms, but is highly suspicious so makes them more alert while going slow means they think it’s a regular ship coming into port but gives them more chance to notice things are off and see through the disguise.
“There’ll be some sort of cat in there somewhere” – anyone else getting the image of someone bringing their pet in and the pussy jumping onto the table and rampaging across it like some sort of furry kaiju? 😜
Lloyd’s lighting rig – anyone else envisioning it coming down on the back of his neck guillotine style when he bends forwards over the desk to paint? 😝
Kickstarters – like the sound of you doing a review of kickstarters to keep us all up to date with how they’re going. Got to agree that transparency is crucial for Kickstarters; there’s one that I backed a few years ago that has yet to deliver and the thing that’s frustrating some of us backers is not so much the lack of fulfilment (although that is frustrating), but rather the lack of communication from the company, with months going by without any updates or posts (in fact the last time they even logged in was before Christmas). We’ve asked multiple times for better communication, but to no avail, even though we’ve said we don’t even need full updates; we’d be satisfied with something once a week or once a fortnight saying ‘X pledges manufactured this week/fortnight, Y pledges packed, Z pledges shipped’ or a note to say that production is still stalled or has resumed. We’d still be ticked off at it being years behind schedule, but at least we’d be kept in the loop about what’s going on. Further there have be some whispers that the company are considering starting another Kickstarter and some of us are wondering if they’ve run out of money and said Kickstarter is a cash grab to try and raise funds to pay for this one. This experience has soured me to Kickstarter slightly (I’ve put off even thinking of backing others while I’ve been waiting and it feels like that’s been a waste and I could’ve gone and backed others if I hadn’t backed this one) and it’s put me off wanting to deal with this company again; at this stage I wouldn’t consider buying something else off them, even at retail, and if they do eventually ship I’m in two minds whether to pay the shipping fees (considering how much I’ve sunk in and how long I’ve waited I want to get something out of it, but on the other hand I’ve lost faith in them and don’t know if I can trust them to actually ship it and not just pocket the money 😕) ; at the very least I’ll be earning people away from this company if asked about them (I’ve refrained from naming them to avoid sounding like I’m bad mouthing them for the sake of bad mouthing them, but will name them here if @warzan asks me directly).
When it comes to running multiple kickstarters, I think it depends on the company in question, and that’s where the ideas you guys have put forth would come in really handy; eg someone like Mantic running multiples before previous ones have delivered wouldn’t bother me or raise red flags because they’re such a big name and have a proven track record, whereas a company like the one I’ve griped about above would give me cause for concern.
OTT eating challenge – you do know you’ve doomed @dignity and yourself to eat the testicles, penises and other offputting body parts of every edible animal right Warren? 😜
when he mentioned it I immediately thought about the Boner comic, but I didn’t want to derail the conversation, as you may have noticed we can be easily derailed on occasion 😉
Good point, bringing it up in the show would have been a right boner.
😜
Whoever draws Justin, please consider naked fanatics, naked hoplites, naked Celts.
GERRY I WILL FINISH PAINTING THAT GIANT SPACE MARINE ONE DAY!
don’t worry mate I’ve still not started the Greeks XD
@warzan half ground scale is actually what every 28mm Wargame uses so it should work great for your game.
The Campbeltown exploding wasn’t a guarantee. In the book “Churchill’s Secret Warriors” they cover the raid and the Commando’s had doubts about the reliability of the fuses after the massive impact and the German’s had been on the ship for hours before it was meant to explode and when it didn’t almost all the commando’s lost hope, they imagined the German’s had found the explosives. When it did explode the commando’s got a massive moral boost.
Maybe have a set turn that the Campbeltown is meant to explode and roll a dice of some kind every turn (a D20 perhaps?). If you don’t roll an explosion all the commando’s lose some effectiveness that goes away when the ship explodes. Maybe also have a critical failure that represents the German’s finding the explosives and preventing it. That way the Campbeltown can still have an impact after it “docks”.
That bit about the German mocking the British Officer and the Ship exploding did happen exactly like that. It’s one of the few moments in history that hasn’t been embellished.
Great to see you getting your Grognard on 🙂
Immature fun fact the magnetic bombs the Commando’s used were made from Childrens Sucking Lollies and Condoms.
That Document goes into WATU in WWII and Lindybeige has a great video about it here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVet82IUAqQ
Kriegspiel was the First Official Wargame adopted by a Government and it’s also the worlds first recreational wargame. It was adopted by a recreational wargame club at Oxford in 1873. The Prussian King was given Kriegspiel in the mid 1810’s by it’s creator and apparently he and his inner court quite enjoyed to play wargames. @avernos was right after the Prussian’s stomped the French in the Franco-Prussian War the world took notice of this whole wargaming thing.
I’m with Justin on the Flagging vs Feedback issue. So many people will just ignore that confirmation email from kickstarter and companies will be forced to chase people down just to have their items ticked off which just wastes time. Rather than Kickstarter prohibiting creating new projects maybe just a massive warning on any future projects and the company itself.
As someone who’s been on the periphery of a business failing I have an enormous amount of sympathy for business owners but zero for reckless spenders. My family owns an industrial shed (my Grandfather owned and developed multiple News Agencies before he retired so I grew up in a business world) and we had a tenant that was injured, then his wife who worked with him and helped run the business was injured and the company tanked. Not his fault, he immediately informed everyone involved months before bad things happened because he saw what was going to happen and he dealt with his issues. It looks like these Ninja guys owed people money and still went around recklessly spending money trying to chase that pot of gold (buying that license is disgusting when you owe people money) to pay for everything and I have zero respect or sympathy for people being incredibly reckless and it going bad, pay the people you owe and if you can’t don’t wait until the last minute to tell them and above all never ever lie to anyone you owe something to.
Insurance for Kickstarters would be a great idea and maybe even an option for the backers to get insurance. Backer insurance would probably be the way to go just like we have buyer pays shipping insurance today.
Oh boy can I get you guys some creepy crawlies. I’ll just have to look into how I can send it to the UK.
Mybe your right and we could have the Campbelltown possibly not explode.
From a gaming perspective though I cant think of any way to ‘influence’ the result through choice or skill. And for me there is not a lot of fun in random effects completely out of control of the player. (Aka the end of talisman etc)
This is why I’m thinking it will blow by default, but maybe we adjust when it blows and give the player some influence over who is on board when she does? So perhaps safe evacuation of crew, vs some kind of tempting axis soldiers on board. (Either way it’s a gruesome aspect of the game and while spectacular its one of the less savoury parts of the game for me, and why I want to give it a bit of thought on how it’s played out in a fashion that suits the more comic book vibe I’m after)
@warzan you could guarantee it explodes but not when. e.g. 3 tokens in a bag, pulled in turns 5, 6 and 7. So it will definitely explode but there’s also an element of ‘we don’t know how long we have to hold out’.
Yep that could work for sure!
@angelicdespot that’s a much better idea.
Justin the Alpha Strike should be my new The Two Towers mud character warrior 😀
Just a couple of quick footnotes to the Gareth Sarka / Far West RPG debacle.
One of the reasons folk are so done with Gareth is that he has claimed to be weeks/days away from completion on multiple occasions, only to go radio silent for months before bouncing back up with another round of woe tales.
As far as I know Gareth hasn’t attempted to run another crowd funded project since Far West, but he has undertaken paid work in the sphere, notably as a contributor to Modiphius Entertainment’s Star Trek RPG, which generated a modicum of controversy as he appears to have initially attempted to obfuscate his involvement, having his name left off the credits of some, if not all, of the products.
I guess we shouldn’t begrudge anyone a livelihood, hopefully he’ll use some of the money to fulfill his obligations.
Oh and the guy he threatened to punch is a retired NYC cop if I recall correctly, so I can see that going real well for him…
Thanks for the expanded background on this @cutter mate not easy for anyone involved I’m sure 🙁
Oh boy, you guys may have just underestimated the twisted sense of humor that the internet has. That said this is the backstage and we don’t won’t to hurt you guys but like an older brother tricking his younger siblings into trying stuff for the sheer laughs….we have an responsibility to get a reaction.
The miniature swap/gift discussion seems like a nice idea as well. Hopefully the free subscription give-away leads to a whole host of new “normies” joining us past the 6 months.
LOL
I’ve got some very tasty then 30secs later painful mango hot sauce, I’m betting we could get Justin to do a reasonable red skull impersonation…
Did you just say touching your cock makes you happy ?
Thanks W… today is the first time painting since early Dec with my poor health, so today listening to you have been a healing day indeed…need to post you guys something in the week..!!!
hope you’re feeling better mate!
make sure whatever you send is minging lol 😉
Typing as someone that was trying to get a FLGS established, that had crowdfunding as a competitor, to hear that FLGS “were sacrificed”…..
No words, Warren, no words.
I hope you haven’t taken that as some form of insult – as it really wasn’t meant to be at all – it was more a statement of the responsibility the industry/community have in their dealings.
There were repercussions of kickstarter and everyone in the industry was aware of them, they were no big secret, and a by product was to some degree the sacrifice of the FLGS.
I mean this in a number of ways too.
1) Obviously money took a direct route to projects and bypassed the traditional distribution model.
2) The speed of new product introduction skyrocketed leaving FLGS in a position where its impossible to keep up.
3) Very large sums are invested into large projects leaving a bit of a famine between projects to be spent in FLGS
So again I hope you weren’t offended it was a statement of ‘We all know the ramifications of this, collectively as an industry/community the choice was made – lets consider was it worth it…
I’m still in calming down mode, watching some other outlet’s content.
I’m trying to live by a saying I picked up recently:
“Don’t react, respond”
I’ll PM you.
As I’ve written before, I reckon that the industry has missed an opportunity to have a mutually beneficial model that benefits the FLGS by using them within the fulfilment/distribution chain. This would potentially reduce shipping costs, give the FLGS a small fee but also a contact with a new customer that they could support hobby, expansion and gameplay wise encouraging growth of communities that will support those games wanting to release into retail models.
Agreed, it was attempted by Battlefront but then the whole dust fiasco put them right off the model all together. (Which is a pity as they may well have made traction on that model with their connections)
On the subject of failed kickstarters I found the view on companies running into difficulty very interesting. I think some sort of flag would be nice for people who aren’t savvy enough to do a bit of research.
I was an AVP backer and I have a bleaker view of Prodos kickstarter. I can absolutely take @warzan ‘s point that things can snowball, but my issues with prodos were never about the delays or difficulties they were facing & I would have had a lot of sympathy for them… if they told us about it. The problem I had with them is that they outright lied to their backers repeatedly about the status of the project and couldn’t and wouldn’t explain what the delay’s were about. Archon are run by some of the same people and frankly they’ve left such a sour taste from AvP for me that I won’t even back projects that are using Archon or Prodos for manufacturing if I know about that up front.
Kickstarter is great for giving the little guy a chance. If a kickstarter fails, well that’s fine, it’s the risk we take in backing them. If you run into trouble and tell me about it then we’re good, you tried, you hit some problems, it happens. But don’t f**king lie to me and tell me it’s all rosy. And when you’re caught out, don’t continue to do it.
Sorry… AvP hits a nerve with me.
Well within your rights to have that nerve hit mate – the whole fiasco is a model of what not to do these days.
Certainly one of those situations where companies could have just owned up ahead of it all going to hell. Also, not biting off more than they could chew.
I agree with the team, platforms that allow crowdfunding should keep a record of the projects and how they did and what they did and make this public information. They should also do some homework towards the companies that want to do a project.
I don’t see them doing this for several reasons as long as they get their cut of the pie.
@dignity I would be one of the DnD other ones 😀 @avernos thanks for remembering me 😀
lol let me know if he tells you the 72 shot 26 save centurion story during the next play through lol 😉
he takes so much looking after
Really nice to hear you talk about Ks…. says the man who backed Robotech and the Evil dead boardgame…..
Until I saw the t-shirts I really thought you were saying “Snag an Army” with an Irish accent 😂
lol
Happy Sunday folks
Justin you seem very stressed today 😀
Re. Kickstarter Watch, looking forward to see it make a return. Luckily I have 99% very positive experiences so far out of 31 backed projects (though I am backing Confrontation, so we’ll see about that ratio) and it would also be nice to give some kudos to those creators via the OTT platform.
P.S.: Weird food challenges, really? I thought you were above such YouTube trash.
Never underestimate the depths we (ok I) will sink to to get a rise out of @dignity 😉
I’m not as phallophobic as @dignity but I still don’t really want to see a rise out of him…
LOL
lmao
What I would like to know and it’s probably nothing to do with this weeks show is why Subbuteo has been added to the company/games section?. An interesting addition in my book
I used to really love it but was really crap at it when I was a kid. I remember a game where I lost 26-0. My mate had 27 shots and I only made one save
Maybe an article or something referencing it is in the works?
It might be part of the Snag a Normie initiative; in other vids the guys have mentioned using sports games as a way of snagging sports fans who might be put off by fantasy/sci-fi games, so naturally Sebbuteo has been brought up.
Alternatively, ‘subbuteo’ is just Latin for ‘hobby’, so technically everything can be tagged as subbuteo. 😜
or maybe someone is about to start a project of their pet bird 😉
I think Kickstarter will have no choice but to become more responsible as the platform grows. I have some experience with this being for many years one of the senior team at JUST EAT, as we grew and ended up representing tens of thousands of restaurants the pressure was on us to ensure the quality, pricing, allergy advice was up to scratch, even though there was no regulatory responsibility (this is down to trading standards) but to the public we were the platform and if we hosted/represented a restaurant they want to know we had done our due diligence.
I see this the same as projects hosted on Kickstarter, they are the platform and take a decent cut of the money made so they should take more responsibility (within reason) to ensure who they host is a reputable, responsible, in good standing financially etc.
Perhaps introduce something like NPS (Net Promoter Score) or something similar to give people more insight into the company.
There is of course always a risk and everyone has to be ok with that but I think the more information you can put in front of a potential customer and demonstrate that as the platform you have done your own quality checks it should mean you are at least make a more informed decision.
hear hear!
@laughingboy – interesting perspective and good point.
If KS have any sense they ought to be able to see the way things are headed. If you look at the increasing pressure on social medial platforms to get rid of fraudulent or criminal content and/or offer protection to vulnerable users, KS ought to realise that with the amount of money we’re talking about and the relative maturity of the platform that they ought to be doing more.
Agreed, at this stage of the game, they are not underfunded to begin trying to tackle this issue.