Reply To: Darkest Dungeon: The Board Game – Shipping surcharge

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@ced1106 yeah, the lack of transparency on actual funding can be annoying. I think more than a few videogames (Shenmue 3 and Castlevania reboot?) did effectively use Kickstarter as a marketing vehicle with a publisher (Sony? not sure) providing the actual funding. As such I’m glad that Hasbro didn’t use kickstarter to fund Heroquest …

@pagan8th I have … and let me tell you : the games tend to be the least risky, because unless the creator never did something of that scope/type before things will get done. They may miss deadlines but they will get done.

RPG books (technically still games) tend to be risky if they need to write the actual material. Getting books printed with kickstarter funding is low risk, but you should help them out by proofreading whatever material they send to backers. The good ones do ask for feedback.

Anything with electronics is a big gamble …

Best (and worst) example in my list has been the Mycroft kickstarter.
They needed to get additional funding when their initial hardware concept failed and they had to redo the entire thing from start. As a result they also used a competing platform to gain more funding as well as going one level up towards actual investment. All of this was done with complete transparency towards their backers, although the communication wasn’t always perfect.

However I do not mind  them going that route, because in addition to making the product they’re also running a company that has a very good open source / privacy focus ideal that really needs to exist.  Google and Amazon will harvest your data in order to make a profit. Mycroft is the only privacy first approach to voice assistants.

Mycroft – The Open Source Privacy-Focused Voice Assistant

(off-topic … I really wish more people understood how dangerous voice assistants are that are not privacy focussed …  this was why I backed it and why I would have given them even more money if I had some available … )

I did back a bicycle related kickstarter that I knew going in would be risky as the thing had no equivalent at the price range they were targetting.
(top tip : always check if the product exists … if it doesn’t there’s usually a very good reason … !)

I’ve not done software kickstarters, because they are too high risk. If you’ve ever heard of Star Citizen …
Let’s just say that makes all of this look like child’s play.