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."
[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]

​

 

[ShadowDenizen]

I think a big part of the problem with this whole scenario is the PERCPETION.

I'm not a tech-guy in any sense of the word, but I think that, in all likelihood, the Kinckstarter amount requested is realistic.

BUT, I think that:
A) the intro video didn't really clearly elucidate what the product is/what it does effectively
B) the flip from 5E to Pathfinder probably put some people off (PF has a plethora of web and app support, while 5E [due to it's being new] has less support overall
C) Noting the "Top-Notch team, including executives" already on the payroll, as well as the $1M plus alerady invested makes people wonder why they should donate to this.
D) Though I'm sure it was not INTENDED as such, equating not funding this project to "being OK with the status quo" is a bit of a jarring statement, and seems more of a guilt-inducing tactic.

 

[kevtar]

I categorically disagree with Matney's claim that "...not pledging is telling the industry that you are happy with the status quo." Mr. Matney, my decision not to fund the kickstarter is because, while I am dissatisfied with the 'status quo,' I have not been adequately persuaded by your company to back the development of your product. I am not accepting the status quo, I simply don't feel I have a viable alternative.

I find your letter above to be part of the problem in that it seems you place the responsibility of your product funding on the gaming community. It is not our responsibility to fund your product. However, as a developer and entrepreneur, it is your responsibility to understand the market, identify and address the needs of your potential customers and present clear, compelling reasons that will persuade us to 'share your vision.' For me, that has simply not happened.

It might be time to take another step back and think about how your company is approaching this launch. That said, I wish you the best in the days to come.

 

[Feeroper]

I have to admit, I feel for them. They keep getting told folks don't know what their product is, but I feel they've explained that over and over again; and people keep saying it's the same as Hero Lab or Roll20 when those two products aren't even the same type of application. And people keep jumping into a thread about a Pathfinder product to say "I don't want Pathfinder; give me 5E", which they can't do a darn thing about. But Pathfinder is the biggest game in the world at last count, so the game system shouldn't be the issue.

In general I do agree with your post Morrus, but the fact that people clearly don't seem to grasp what this is seems to me that TT hasn't really done a great job explaining. I think the disconnect isn't so much that others cant understand what it is, its more that they are having a hard time connecting the dots as to why this is so revolutionary. I mean sure, it is a great idea on paper and would be very convenient to tie all this functionality together, and having a sort of app store environment for user generated content would be very cool, but ultimately, It just feels like another tool in the chest (at least to me).

I used to get excited about these digital tools in the past, I remember when I first signed up for Obsidian Portal for example, but in the end, they always fall by the wayside for me. I always end up with my trusty books, pencil and paper in the end. Now I get that other groups may feel different about this and really value tools like this, but I don't think this can be seen as a universal truth for every gamer. You raised excellent points about the way they have managed the kickstarter and I think you are absolutely correct about that, but I also think that 2 major knocks against them are 1) some of us have already seen their work and how it progressed during the beta as dungeonscape, and it does not instill a lot of confidence. 2) their choice of language through this process, it has confused some, and in this case, whether or not they meant it this way (and I'm assuming not) it did carry an arrogant tone and that shuts down a lot of what they are trying to say when the intended user feels like they are being talked down to. They present a very binary notion of what supporting or not supporting this project says about you (the whole if you're not with us, you're against us thing).

That's just my 2 cents. For the record though, I would like to see it successful as it is a cool product for those that want it, I just cant justify putting my money towards it myself at this time.

 

[lyle.spade]

Well, we as gamers have lived up to the higher and towards the lower ends of stereotypes in these comments: we overthink everything, we have opinions about everything (some of them even based in facts!), and we get fired up about anything that lies within terrain we claim as ours. I'm okay with all of that, by the way - it's just funny to watch it unfold so perfectly in post after post.

Here's my take, as I do not want to be left out of this wave of entirely predictable gamer behavior: it's not going to fund. Trapdoor/Morningstar will disappear. There will be lots of assumptions and conjectures by the greater community, aired out in forums like this, but we'll likely never know why WOTC and them parted ways, nor will we ever know fully what the project is/was/twas meant to do.

I agree with the comments about how vague they've been, and how gamers in a dark room looking at tablets does not look like the game I would ever be happy running or playing. I agree that PF already has a bounty of online tools - many of which are free or at least far less expensive than what they're offering...not to mention their functions are easily understood.

As passionate as all of us get about our babies, I can only imagine how frustrating this must be to them as they watch their project loafs toward a cliff, off of which it will walk in a few weeks. That has to hurt, and obviously the added dimensions of business and money make it even worse. We've all had campaigns implode and that hurts....but no one lost jobs because of them, right?

In closing, the market is a tough place, and we are demanding customers. I think that's a good thing, because it motivates people to work harder and be more clever in order to attract our attention, support, and money. And we are loyal to an obsessive fault when we are won over, aren't we? Perhaps this is less about people wishing to maintain the status quo than a business and designers who are not as clever and motivated as they assess themselves to be, in response to the market voting against them with its wallet.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Nebulous]

One thing is for certain though, attempting to guilt your potential customers into supporting you is a blatant desperation move...one that does more to harm your cause by making it look even less viable, than it does to garner support.

I think that this more than anything else is what bothered me. It came off as a last ditch desperate effort to guilt the gaming masses to support their product before it was too late. And as many others have pointed out, they need a product to WOW us with first. Show us we need it when we didn't even know it existed, and then you'll have your support. And as far as the generic map maker tile tool for print or Roll20, that is system neutral, and that is GENIUS. Show me you can do that and it won't matter what system the rules support. Hell, just release that separate. Being able to make and easily modify my own battle maps? God yes i'd pay for that. But first show me you have some ability to actually do it.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Here's the thing. I like the idea of Morningstar. I really do. But I have not backed the kickstarter for a good number of reasons:

1) I'm tired of Kickstarter. I have pledged money to too many projects that funded and nothing came of them. I would rather spend my money these days on finished projects. This is especially true if the makers of the project has nothing else to show for themselves. It would be one thing if the makers of Hero Lab were running a kickstarter. Why, because they already have damn good product out there and a proven track record. Other than the 5e support/no 5e support thing, I do not know what else they have done. Mind you, I could look, but this brings us to point 2.

2) I'm not sold on it. Other than a few flashes of screen shots, the video does not show what it can do. There were promises of what it will be able to do, but I have been burned by enough promises. I want results. If you have results , you can say, "this is what it does and here's how easy it is." Right now, just about everything they said that Morningstar will be able to do can be done with d20pfsrd and a shared google doc. I do not feel they really made a case for the explicit need for their solution in particular.

3) iPad. I watched the video a few times to do my best to identify the technology used, just to be fair on this point. The only tablet I saw being used was the iPad. There might be others in the video, but I was not able to spot them. And the kickstarter page does not come out and explicitly state what system this will be used for. So they are leaving a critical question unanswered. As someone that will is firmly in the android camp, having it only available for iOS is a non-starter for me. It could be the greatest thing in the world but if it is not for my tablet OS of choice, I am not going to back it. I am not going to buy an ipad just to use this app. And lastly ...

4) I wish any group I was involved with had this level of technology adoption. The group shown in the video had everyone staring at a tablet. The best level of technology adoption in a game I have been involved with was 50% with most of them being limited to only me.

So like I said, I like the idea, and if someone produced such a product (provided it was for Android), I would be all over it. But I am tired of waiting for promises to be delivered.

 

[Jester David]

I have to admit, I feel for them. They keep getting told folks don't know what their product is, but I feel they've explained that over and over again; and people keep saying it's the same as Hero Lab or Roll20 when those two products aren't even the same type of application. And people keep jumping into a thread about a Pathfinder product to say "I don't want Pathfinder; give me 5E", which they can't do a darn thing about. But Pathfinder is the biggest game in the world at last count, so the game system shouldn't be the issue.

The problem is twofold.

One, they keep talking about the character builder and hinting at the rest. For most people, all we've seen was the character builder. So Morningstar and HeroLabs are similar in our mind. And the Forge sounds vaguely similar to a campaign manager, and there are lots of those, from Masterplan to Realmworks.
Two, they haven't addressed those other systems. Not to my knowledge. They haven't said "this is how we're better than Masterplan" or "this is how we're different from HeroLabs and Realmworks." I'm not even sure what Roll20 is, so TT hasn't discussed how Morningstar is better.

Except for the focus of being used at the table. Which is, again, hasn't been described a lot. It's also one of the parts that seems less easy to see as it requires everyone at the table to have a tablet.
But, really, I already do a lot of what Morningstar promises to do. I send and receive messages all the time during the game via iMessage.

What the KS needed was:

1) Not being at Xmas.

2) A well-planned start and finish time during high traffic times of the week.

3) Immediate gratification for backers; a demo or something. Most RPG Kickstarters offer a playtest document at least. Even if that means waiting to launch the Kickstarter.

4) A minimal asking goal for a minimal feature set. *Everything* should be stretch goals. The asking goal should be as low as possible for the smallest thing that can be provided. Then the product just gets better for existing backers as stretch goals are met; your backers become your evangelists. If you want to sell a full colour hardback book, your KS goal is for the softcover b/w book. The full colour hardback is a lofty stretch goal - once folks have backed for the b/w softcover, they will want it to be upgraded to hardcover colour and will act to make that happen - in other words, they will promote your KS for you and say nice things about it everywhere.

5) An identified popular backer level which keeps getting better.

6) Not being at Xmas.

I agree with that 100% but I'd also add three more:

7) Not answering the burning questions in the FAQ from the start. They have some answers now, but many people would not have checked back. And many answers are only found if you check these threads online.

8) Not waiting until the licence situation was resolved. 5e is associated with Morningstar; not knowing if we can get 5e or not makes or breaks the program for most people.

9) Going with the PRD. Pathfinder was a mistake.
PF fans have no love for Trapdoor, and have the support of digital tools already. Crossing into that market means starting from the beginning relations wise. And they haven't done much to woo the Pathfinder community, only making a couple appearances on that message board and continuing their appearances on a D&D podcast rather than pushing for a guest spot on Know Direction. (Especially since, from the breakdown of why they need $400k, they have three full time staff members devoted to social media and customer support.)
If they *had* to launch now they should have gone with just the OGL and made it more of a generic tool divorced from mechanics. Going OGL would mean they still have access to all the D&D monsters and classes and they could launch all the tools except for the character builder, giving everyone a taste of how it's usable at the table sooner.

With those things, I really do think it could have been successful. A launch in March or so with a demo to offer backers and a goal of a very minimal feature set and I think it would have funded on its first day - it's important that Kickstarters fund early - and the rest of the campaign would have pushed towards stretch goals.

I have to agree.

But, sadly, they didn't. And because they didn't they made zero money rather than a lower portion. Plus any time and funds they spend getting the Kickstarter together. And they hurt their already shaky reputation.

I've been hard on Trapdoor, but a big reason for that is disappointment.
I was disappointed by the web beta and then disappointed by the management of the Kickstarter. I heard of the Kickstarter, I excitedly followed the link intent on throwing a few bucks their way, saw the $425,000 figure and immediately closed the tab.

 

[Jackal2100]

3) iPad. I watched the video a few times to do my best to identify the technology used, just to be fair on this point. The only tablet I saw being used was the iPad. There might be others in the video, but I was not able to spot them. And the kickstarter page does not come out and explicitly state what system this will be used for. So they are leaving a critical question unanswered. As someone that will is firmly in the android camp, having it only available for iOS is a non-starter for me. It could be the greatest thing in the world but if it is not for my tablet OS of choice, I am not going to back it. I am not going to buy an ipad just to use this app. And lastly ...
[/QUOTE]

It is for IOS, Android and Web initially.

 

[Hollow Man]

Clearly in addition to hiring a project manager and business manager, Matney has to hire a PR manager. The amount of hate Trapdoor is getting over this whole, "not pledging is telling the industry that you are happy with the status quo" comment is crazy! Although I guess if they did that, they'd have to raise the Kickstarter by an extra few thousand dollars...

I hope Hobo the Delightful and Newtonian are reading this stuff and passing it back to Matney. He just doesn't seem to get the community and what they respond to.

-HM