What Happens If CODENAME: MORNINGSTAR Doesn't Fund?

With 2 weeks to go, and only 13% of the $425,000 raised, and those two weeks being Christmas, the odds are that Codename: Morningstar won't fund. There might be a last-minute turnaround, of course, but the prognosis right now does not look hopeful. Trapdoor Technologies leader Chris Matney addressed the possibility, saying that "not pledging is telling the industry that you are happy with the status quo."

With 2 weeks to go, and only 13% of the $425,000 raised, and those two weeks being Christmas, the odds are that Codename: Morningstar won't fund. There might be a last-minute turnaround, of course, but the prognosis right now does not look hopeful. Trapdoor Technologies leader Chris Matney addressed the possibility, saying that "not pledging is telling the industry that you are happy with the status quo."
[lq]...if there does not appear to be a sufficient market interest our continued investment in the gaming industry is not assured.[/lq]

Below is what Chris Matney said on the subject. You can find the Kickstarter here.

What If We Don't Fund?

Yesterday, I addressed the question about why Trapdoor needs $425,000 to fund the completion of Morningstar. Today, I want to chat briefly about what happens if we don't fund via our Kickstarter campaign. The answer is somewhat more complex than you might imagine, so please bear with me.

First, we need to assess whether the gaming community has a real interest in our technology. The response to our Kickstarter is part of that answer - and I won't deny that the role player in me will be disappointed if we don't fund.

Our decision to jump into the gaming market was not made lightly. Trapdoor is a software company that builds interactive publishing applications. This technology is at work in commerce, education, and other fields. Role-playing games are complex and thus a perfect showcase for our interactive technology which simplifies prep and play. This is a greenfield opportunity for us and the industry. No other gaming company provides digital distribution beyond PDFs.

Your pledge to our Kickstarter campaign is the best way to express interest in bringing a remarkable, captivating and new experience to our hobby. It is the only way to 100% guarantee the success of Morningstar.

If we don't fund (and assuming there is demonstrable interest in the technology), we will need to reevaluate the current gaming ecosystem: looking for publishers who are interested in leveraging Morningstar into their gaming system, assessing the OGL for D&D 5e (if any), combing the feature set in Morningstar to see what can be pushed back, etc. With $1.2M invested in the project to date, we would obviously like to see Morningstar launch. However, as with any business if there does not appear to be a sufficient market interest our continued investment in the gaming industry is not assured.

The community and you have some decisions to make in the next two weeks. If you share our vision, pledge. Even if you don't think we will fund - throw your support behind our cause. Kickstarter collects pledges only if the funding is successful. It's a no risk proposition - at worst, you will show your support. Not pledging is telling the industry that you are happy with the status quo. Hopefully, you elect to be on the ground floor of a truly remarkable journey.

Respectfully submitted.
Chris Matney
Managing Director
Trapdoor Technologies


[lq]...not pledging is telling the industry that you are happy with the status quo.[/lq]


morningstar.jpg
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Henry

Autoexreginated
Yeah, if you wanna feel sorry for anyone, feel sorry for all those kickstarter backers past and present who've actually funded vapor products two and three years running because of vendors who actually did swindle their backers. In this instance, I don't think Trapdoor made their case successfully, full stop.
 

log in or register to remove this ad


In the end, they simply placed far too high a monetary goal on the project.

I did a little back-and-forth with the developers (on another forum) and (based on my experience as a programmer) I really don't think they needed that much money to complete the project. I think they were trying to make up for the money they didn't get from WotC, rather than setting a realistic goal for their Kickstarter project. They didn't take a realistic look at the market.
 

billd91

Not your screen monkey (he/him)
In the end, they simply placed far too high a monetary goal on the project.

I did a little back-and-forth with the developers (on another forum) and (based on my experience as a programmer) I really don't think they needed that much money to complete the project. I think they were trying to make up for the money they didn't get from WotC, rather than setting a realistic goal for their Kickstarter project. They didn't take a realistic look at the market.

I'm not so sure of that. I've got experience in the software industry too and that amount doesn't seem beyond the pale to me. The fact of the matter is the last 10% of the project always seems to take a lot more than 10% of the budget whether it's time or money and that's very hard for most software companies to manage. Dates slip, projects fail, money runs out. That's why I usually don't back software Kickstarter projects.
 

It wouldn't seem out of bounds to me if we were talking about an MMO or a large scale video game of some kind. For the type of product they were describing, though, I just can't see it costing that much, particularly since they had already done a lot of development work when they were teamed up with WotC.

I suspect they were shooting for that amount to cover past debts, try to recoup time and effort spent with WotC, etc., rather than pricing it according to the money they needed to get it off the ground.
 


Your 425k$ question has been answered a long time ago. Whether or not the amount is appropriate is another question...

An appropriate amount is the amount that the customers will accept. They placed their goal many, many times higher than the market would support.

Apprently, they had no money coming in during development so many of their employees left as they were not getting paid. They likely were trying to recoup at least for some of it.

That may be a big part of why they wanted so much money, but wanting something and expecting Kickstarter backers to accept it are two very different things.
 

Remove ads

Remove ads

Top