Reply To: Soloman Kane KS about to arrive, and I couldn't care less!

[zoidpinhead 12492xp 2]

Intersting discussion.  Thanks to contributors and @horus500 for starting us off.  I’m a Solomon Kane all-in backer and have Conan and Mythic Battles: Pantheon (1.0 and 1.5) as well as Batman: Gotham City Chronicles and Kingdom Death 1.5 so I have experienced plenty of complexity and delay in KS delivery with these epic experience, miniature heavy boardgames.

I’m excited to finally be getting Solomon Kane as I’m still as much a fan of REH and this character as I was when I backed it.  Still annoyed about the delays mostly because of the inconsistent communication that made it seem like they just weren’t working on the game for such a long time.  Also worth noting this is only the main game and as an all-in backer I’m owed the expansions too (no deadline for when they will get here).

I won’t back another one of Monolith or Mythic’s projects on KS.  Both have shown an intention to go to online retail to provide an additional outlet for their print runs and I’ll look there for stuff I thought was cool (HEL, and the Scythe ripoff Steamwatchers).

The issue for me is one of the trust relationship between me and the company.  To make a mistake as an up and coming independent business and get your timings wrong on a bigger than you anticipated project is forgiveable.  What isn’t acceptable is to use that as a positive business model and run one ambitious Kickstarter after another, using the money from new projects to fund the completion of old ones.  This over stretches your design and management time/capacity as you need to constantly develop new projects to keep fresh money coming in at the expense of fixing and finishing existing projects for which you have had (and already spent) the money.

Kickstarter relies on trust as it isn’t a preorder platform – it is a speculative investment platform.  They have proven themselves untrustworthy by my judgement.  No trust means no more money for them.  Kickstarter on the other hand is still somewhere my money goes.  I tend to back either STL projects (Iain Lovecraft’s are great, The Frost is running right now) or model based projects (Agema’s Etruscans last year and today Ragnarok’s naughty dwarves).  I want to support small business in my hobby and will return to people who deliver what they promise when they say they will e.g. Iain Lovecraft.