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

​

 

[Adammar]

Yep - Every post makes me doubt more whether they know what they are doing. They have spent 1.2M on a product that isn't ready but they need to have a kickstarter to judge if there is a market? I would think you would have judged the market before putting that kind of money into it. If you make $25 dollar pure profit per sale you are looking at close to 50,000K subscribers to brake even. (Not counting kickstarters which offset the money kickstarted.) Seems kind of high judging from print runs of product. I think the 1.2M may be overstated also. (a lot of it appears to be sweat equity which is a made up value.) Just wondering what the last couple of postings was supposed to do. They don't seem to entice anyone to actually participate.

 

[fjw70]

I have been a supporter of the Morningstar idea for a while now (I have backed the kickstarter) but it is just idea to most of us and the statement about being happy with the status quo if you don't back them sounds a little . . . arrogant.

 

[Psikosis]

I think the gaming community has made their "decision". I know I have. I read this project and watched their video a couple weeks ago (or thereabouts). As others have noted above, they haven't clearly articulated what the product is or how/why it's better than existing tools (including paper, pencil, and books). To which I'd add, it's cloud-based. As a user, I appear to have nothing, I may likely own nothing. If it goes down, so does my content in it. If they shut down, my content disappears. I have no interest in such fragile toolsets. There is some reference to 'offline' capability, but if it's truly cloud-based offline mode is almost certainly limited at best. Lots of marketing buzzwords (I don't think they missed a one), but very light on any actual details.
More important than the paucity of information about the product (to me) is the demo. It's a bunch of people sitting in the dark staring at, and interacting, with their tablets more often than each other. I like tabletop games, in part, because you get to interact with people personally, perhaps in my (well-lit) friendly local game store. This system seems to make gaming yet another experience of people staring at their devices rather than interacting with each other.
So my answer is "No, thanks." I'm happy with my books, paper, pencils, and dice supplemented with the occasional pdf or character-generating app...and, of course, interacting with my fellow gamers personally.

PS- I completely agree; the false dichotomy Mr. Matney set up was neither respectful nor humble (status quo v. our latest wiz-bang software), it was more than a smidgen condescending and arrogant.

 

[fjw70]

I agree that demo video wasn't the best selling point. A bunch of people sitting in the dark looking at tablets is not the gaming experience I am looking for. I am interested in the Ebook and mapping aspects but not really in the player aspects.

 

[dd.stevenson]

I have been a supporter of the Morningstar idea for a while now (I have backed the kickstarter) but it is just idea to most of us and the statement about being happy with the status quo if you don't back them sounds a little . . . arrogant.

In fairness, that quote mainly sounds bad when taken out of context in the pull quotes. "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" isn't nearly so bad.

 

[SharnDM]

Man, if it's one thing Codename Morningstar is teaching me it's that being open with all the behind the scenes stuff is a mistake apparently. This community sure is turning on Trapdoor Technologies fast!

 

[Elvish Lore]

No, Chris Matney, you guys not funding means people aren't loving your arrogance, the lack of proof that you can carry off such a project and your product isn't much different from technologies already out there -- it looks like a more dynamic Obsidian Portal meets a pdf reader: sorry, you're not exactly blowing me away here with your revolutionary product.

Also, as fjw70 said -- this isn't the gaming experience I want to have -- in the dark staring at screens. Ugh.

 

[3catcircus]

Perhaps they ought to ask themselves, is, if they were venture capitalists instead of software developers, would they fund this project?

You look at their main webpage and get a "coming soon," yet they apparently have a trapdoor books website - an "emerging small press."

If we know that WotC couldn't manage to figure out how to develop digital tools (as a large publisher), what "warm fuzzy" would we get from these guys? We already know that WotC (having had bad experiences previously), finally wised up and dumped them at the nth sign of trouble (we don't know if n is 1, 2, or some larger quantity of missed deadlines or functionality).

Even if they were to somehow manage to develop this product - I don't know what the heck it is or does, nor do I have an overwhelming burning need for it... Herolab, PCGen, Campaign Cartographer, and any set of office software (take your pick of Microsoft, Google, or something else) does the job just fine. And besides, I don't tend to spend my gaming time buried in a tablet or laptop - the only time I do is when looking up an obscure rule and using PDFs instead of lugging all the books around. I don't use PCGen or Herolab's in-play features, nor do I project maps onto a screen, wall, or using a laying-down TV...

I just don't see a market for this product based upon the demo trailer. What we'll never actually know is if WotC played with a working demo of what they were developing and came to the same conclusion.

 

[marv77]

I want them to be successful.

But I think they should have offered a much more limited version of the product at a much lower funding point, and added to it with stretch goals.
I suspect that people are more likely to pile on an almost funded or already funded project than one that isn't looking too hopeful.

Also the web beta of Dungeonscape didn't impress me very much. And I play 5E and not Pathfinder.

 

[Feeroper]

I tried the beta when it was dungeonscape and that certainly did not seem to be working so great. I have no idea what this is supposed to do that is revolutionary, as others have pointed out it seems to be an amalgamation of other digital tools in one. that's fine and all, but I could care less. I barely use any digital tools, mainly just a character creator sometimes, and I have used Obsidian Portal. However, ultimately I find nothing beats pencil and paper. I suppose if you had a group that was doing this online or something, but even then Roll20 is a great mostly hassle-free environment.

Ultimately though, as was said earlier, I don't want to be at a table where we are all just staring a screens. I don't want to be focussed on that stuff at all. A pencil and some paper works wonders, everything else should be the players and the DM engaging in storytelling and imagination, not accessing trendy new features and launching apps. Just my opinion.