How will the Doom Kickstarter fraud scandal affect future Kickstarters?
Hellcow
Adventurer
Hey everyone!
I should have dropped in here earlier, but I've had a lot of things to keep track of. While the backers have still been hurt by the Forking Path - which I hope holds true to its pledge to repay - I'm at least glad to have found a way to get the game to the backers. But I did want to clear a few things up.
The Forking Path wasn’t my first choice for Doom. In 2010, The Doom That Came To Atlantic City was licensed to Z-Man Games, and early in 2011 it was on the verge of going to the printers. Then, in 2011, Z-Man was bought by Filosofia. The new owners evaluated everything in the production queue and decided that Doom didn’t fit their company vision and released it. And the key point here: I completely understand why they did it. Every company has to establish a brand and standards, and regardless of who designs a game, not every design will work for every company. Gloom is a good design with a successful track record. I have a great relationship with the people at Looney Labs. But if things fell apart with Atlas, Looney Labs wouldn’t produce Gloom; a gloomy game about killing your family just doesn’t go with their vision for the company, regardless of who made it or how successful it is. On the other hand, it fits right in between Lunch Money and Let’s Kill.
TDTCtAC is a very weird design. Breaking it down, it’s Cthulhu-themed, with a humorous tone, has lots of colorful components including plastic minis, and it’s a roll-and-move beer-and-pretzels game. Because of all the components, you’re looking at a minimum $40-50 price point. It’s got a distinctive visual style (and all the art is done). And just to cap it off, it pokes fun at a certain popular real estate game, which some companies wouldn’t want to touch.
Steve Jackson? Good for Cthulhu, funny, and beer-and-pretzels… bad for minis, price point and art style. Fantasy Flight? Good for high-cost and Cthulhu, but bad for tone and beer-and-pretzels. Wizards of the Coast? Never going to touch something that’s poking fun at That Other Game. The beer-and-pretzels/roll-and-move playstyle knocks half the companies out there off the list right away. It was a good match for pre-2011 Z-Man; post-2011 Z-Man wanted more Agricola and less Cannibal Pygmies In The Jungle Of Doom, and Doom is no Agricola. I would have dropped it if I was running Filosofia. It doesn’t matter how good the game is; there’s a lot of great designs out there, and you need to decide what will define your brand.
So in 2012, Lee and I just had the game sitting on a box on the shelf – art done, design done, mini masters sculpted, ready to go but with no company that really seemed like a good match. Neither of us were interested in producing it on our own. The Forking Path approached us and asked if we’d license it to them to be their first product. Key points here:
• Every company has to have a first product… and this game had already been set to go to the printer once before. It didn’t seem like a big production challenge from our perspective.
• Kickstarters only kick if they raise enough money – so either it would work and he’d have the money he needed to pull it off, or it wouldn’t and it wouldn’t happen. Throughout the project, we always assumed that TFP had set aside enough money to finish the game, in part because, like the backers, we were told in was in the production queue at the printers.
• We weren’t doing anything with the design at the time, for all the reasons mentioned above. It’s actually a pretty good match for Cryptozoic’s lineup, but they were a fairly new company and I didn’t have them on my radar.
My biggest mistake - and one I certainly won't repeat - was thinking of this as being a normal publisher-designer relationship. This isn't the first time I've had a publisher screw things up and fail to produce a game of mine. It's not even the third time. But on those previous occasions, it's been me and the publisher who've been hurt. When a Kickstarter fails, it's the backers who suffer. So why did I take a chance with the Forking Path? Because the game was ready to go; because I believed that if the Kickstarter was funded, they had what they needed; and because I didn't realize how different this risk was from all the others I'd taken in my career.
Again, not a mistake I will make again. I won't participate in another Kickstarter unless I am integrally involved from start to finish, unless I trust the other people involved, and unless I know and believe in the budget and the production timeline. Once the fate of the Doom Kickstarter became clear, I did everything I could to make things better, from assembling and giving away the PnP to finding a company willing to give it to the backers for free. Originally, I thought I was the one taking the risk by letting the Forking Path make Doom; now I see that it was the backers who took the biggest risk, and when I run a project of my own, I’m certainly going to put the backers first.
I should have dropped in here earlier, but I've had a lot of things to keep track of. While the backers have still been hurt by the Forking Path - which I hope holds true to its pledge to repay - I'm at least glad to have found a way to get the game to the backers. But I did want to clear a few things up.
Evaluation of my intellect aside, these are valid questions. So let me draw back the curtain on the Secret Life of Game Designers and discuss it.
The Forking Path wasn’t my first choice for Doom. In 2010, The Doom That Came To Atlantic City was licensed to Z-Man Games, and early in 2011 it was on the verge of going to the printers. Then, in 2011, Z-Man was bought by Filosofia. The new owners evaluated everything in the production queue and decided that Doom didn’t fit their company vision and released it. And the key point here: I completely understand why they did it. Every company has to establish a brand and standards, and regardless of who designs a game, not every design will work for every company. Gloom is a good design with a successful track record. I have a great relationship with the people at Looney Labs. But if things fell apart with Atlas, Looney Labs wouldn’t produce Gloom; a gloomy game about killing your family just doesn’t go with their vision for the company, regardless of who made it or how successful it is. On the other hand, it fits right in between Lunch Money and Let’s Kill.
TDTCtAC is a very weird design. Breaking it down, it’s Cthulhu-themed, with a humorous tone, has lots of colorful components including plastic minis, and it’s a roll-and-move beer-and-pretzels game. Because of all the components, you’re looking at a minimum $40-50 price point. It’s got a distinctive visual style (and all the art is done). And just to cap it off, it pokes fun at a certain popular real estate game, which some companies wouldn’t want to touch.
Steve Jackson? Good for Cthulhu, funny, and beer-and-pretzels… bad for minis, price point and art style. Fantasy Flight? Good for high-cost and Cthulhu, but bad for tone and beer-and-pretzels. Wizards of the Coast? Never going to touch something that’s poking fun at That Other Game. The beer-and-pretzels/roll-and-move playstyle knocks half the companies out there off the list right away. It was a good match for pre-2011 Z-Man; post-2011 Z-Man wanted more Agricola and less Cannibal Pygmies In The Jungle Of Doom, and Doom is no Agricola. I would have dropped it if I was running Filosofia. It doesn’t matter how good the game is; there’s a lot of great designs out there, and you need to decide what will define your brand.
So in 2012, Lee and I just had the game sitting on a box on the shelf – art done, design done, mini masters sculpted, ready to go but with no company that really seemed like a good match. Neither of us were interested in producing it on our own. The Forking Path approached us and asked if we’d license it to them to be their first product. Key points here:
• Every company has to have a first product… and this game had already been set to go to the printer once before. It didn’t seem like a big production challenge from our perspective.
• Kickstarters only kick if they raise enough money – so either it would work and he’d have the money he needed to pull it off, or it wouldn’t and it wouldn’t happen. Throughout the project, we always assumed that TFP had set aside enough money to finish the game, in part because, like the backers, we were told in was in the production queue at the printers.
• We weren’t doing anything with the design at the time, for all the reasons mentioned above. It’s actually a pretty good match for Cryptozoic’s lineup, but they were a fairly new company and I didn’t have them on my radar.
My biggest mistake - and one I certainly won't repeat - was thinking of this as being a normal publisher-designer relationship. This isn't the first time I've had a publisher screw things up and fail to produce a game of mine. It's not even the third time. But on those previous occasions, it's been me and the publisher who've been hurt. When a Kickstarter fails, it's the backers who suffer. So why did I take a chance with the Forking Path? Because the game was ready to go; because I believed that if the Kickstarter was funded, they had what they needed; and because I didn't realize how different this risk was from all the others I'd taken in my career.
Again, not a mistake I will make again. I won't participate in another Kickstarter unless I am integrally involved from start to finish, unless I trust the other people involved, and unless I know and believe in the budget and the production timeline. Once the fate of the Doom Kickstarter became clear, I did everything I could to make things better, from assembling and giving away the PnP to finding a company willing to give it to the backers for free. Originally, I thought I was the one taking the risk by letting the Forking Path make Doom; now I see that it was the backers who took the biggest risk, and when I run a project of my own, I’m certainly going to put the backers first.
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Well, any publicity is good publicity as the old saying goes. I wouldn't have known anything about this game without this thread, and now I want to see it & play it. I hope Cryptozoic publishes it like a license to print money.
As for Kickstarter and other crowdfunding, the best product I've gotten so far is The Express Diaries (Indiegogo). I love that the book refers to it as a patronage project. So, I am really sponsoring the project as a benefactor because I like it or I believe in it. I do expect to get the physical reward object, but there is an element of risk.
The later a couple of projects get in delivery, the more discerning I become in what I back however. I look for reputation & consider whether I really need or want the things. And that is what I think confronts Kickstarter & crowdfuding - backer fatigue. A failed project like this one will contribute to backers' wariness. But, I will still Kickstart things I like from sources I trust, especially if I can get a signed copy.
As for Kickstarter and other crowdfunding, the best product I've gotten so far is The Express Diaries (Indiegogo). I love that the book refers to it as a patronage project. So, I am really sponsoring the project as a benefactor because I like it or I believe in it. I do expect to get the physical reward object, but there is an element of risk.
The later a couple of projects get in delivery, the more discerning I become in what I back however. I look for reputation & consider whether I really need or want the things. And that is what I think confronts Kickstarter & crowdfuding - backer fatigue. A failed project like this one will contribute to backers' wariness. But, I will still Kickstart things I like from sources I trust, especially if I can get a signed copy.
Mark CMG
Creative Mountain Games
I see what you're saying though they did put out a new version of Wiz-War which covers both tone and beer-and-pretzels. But, clearly, those aren't regular avenues for them.
But you're a class act, Keith Baker.
