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]

​

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

I'd be curious to know what sort of issues they ran into working with WotC.

I work in software as a project manager doing custom solutions, so 400k doesn't make me blush for something the size of that. 1.2 million, though, would be a fairly significant project but not out of the ordinary for a large piece of custom corporate software.

I'm curious about the sixteen man team. I've got about that many developers but we're doing multiple 250-500k projects simultaneously. I've got one team that can burn through 120k/mo at a billable rate but there are five devs, a senior dev, a PM and an account manager attached to it.

Not sure what their featureset is, though. We've done some significant data-driven medical applications for mobile but I haven't had an opportunity to do anything for RPGs.

A team that size ... maybe 2 PMs working on two areas that are relatively independent (database and UI?), 3 QA engineers ... I'd have 6 devs (3 on back and 3 on front) ... maybe 2 UX engineers in addition or instead of 1-2 of the front end devs. A senior PM maybe? Writers?

--HT

 

[fjw70]

Another problem with it that occurred to me, is that you are presumably locked into their ecosystem when it comes to adventures. Yet most people, especially those in the current target audience (Pathfinder), probably have a large host of PDF adventures.

Presumably you would be able to somehow enter in those adventures manually, but that would be a lot of work.

That is a concern. If they had an official deal with Paizo to publish PF adventures in this format the I think the product would have more appeal.

 

[Remus Lupin]

That is a concern. If they had an official deal with Paizo to publish PF adventures in this format the I think the product would have more appeal.

<WEDDING SINGER>Once again, things that could have been brought to their attention YESTERDAY!</WEDDING SINGER>

 

[lkj]

We've had the technology for many years. What you're talking about boils down to little more than hyperlinks and search bars; d20srd.org on steroids. And d20srd.org did not take a 16-person team and a million-two to make. To the best of my knowledge, it was built by one guy working in his spare time.

I keep hearing good things from people who've actually tried the software. So I assume they do in fact have something solid built for 5E using iOS. However, I don't believe it's anything revolutionary, as they keep suggesting with stuff like the "status quo" comment. I hope we do get a 5E OGL and they put the iOS version of CN:MS on the market. I'd be willing to pay decent money for a good set of 5E e-tools. What I'm not willing to do is pay up front for a set of e-tools whose quality I can't judge for myself (even if it weren't targeting Pathfinder). I can run just fine with no electronic tools at all, using Ye Aulde Pencil and Paper; it's a convenience, not a necessity. Since Pathfinder fans already have some decent e-tools, I expect they'd be even harder to convert.

To be clear, I was only tryong to address the question about the value over a PDF. It is a bit more complicated than just hyperlinks, given the context sensitivity and the value of a good interface, but yes that's the general idea. And although I suspect what the trapdoor folk are trying to do is cool, I am certainly not suggesting that I know they'll do it well, that you need to believe in them etc. I'm just saying that the idea is something I personally am interested in and that I hope that it happens one way or another.

AD

 

[Krypter]

I'm happy with the status quo. Bye.

 

[Stacie GmrGrl]

I hope they learn from this... and realize that while they asked for a huge ton of money, they did get over $60k pledged and that's no small feat. It just looks bad compared to their overall goals of $425k. If they would have asked for a base goal of $50k and had a revision of what this product is they are offering along with a workable demo I bet this would get well over $60k.

I also think they have to rethink their pricing on what they are offering. It does seem pretty over priced for what they are offering.

What does this do that Roll20 or Hero Lab doesn't do?

 

[JStillfeather]

Personally I'd be interested in seeing a working prototype not just vague programming full of bugs and glitches!

 

[jaycrockett]

During Morrus's interview with Trapdoor at Gencon, Rachel Bowen said there were "two and a half" people on the team. They staffed up to sixteen since then?

 

[Gryf_the_knave]

During Morrus's interview with Trapdoor at Gencon, Rachel Bowen said there were "two and a half" people on the team. They staffed up to sixteen since then?

That was in regards to the CS/Community team, not the whole company.

 

[3catcircus]

That was in regards to the CS/Community team, not the whole company.

So then it sounds like they are trying to use the kickstarter for one project to fund the overhead for their entire company? How are other products/projects that they claim are using their technology faring? I'll reiterate that their website simply states "coming soon" with no additional links to other products, company officer information, other companies/partners using their technology etc. Meanwhile, their trapdoor books website is offering a grand total of 6 titles.

I'm guessing that they bet the farm on this stupid morningstar thing and are now so far in debt that they can't afford to pay residuals to their grand total of 6 authors - and we don't know how well trapdoor books was doing to begin with - I mean - their own website indicates that they used a kickstarter to fund publication of an author's (Norman Lafave) book... Think about that for a second. A publisher. Whose job it is to publish. Doesn't have the funding to publish. And that, they barely managed to scrape by - funding to the tune of 105% with 64 backers. And the best part - the quote "...it was an heroic effort in the last hours by Norman. More than a few frantic phone calls later, some big donors pushed us over the top." So - the author had to do most of the heavy lifting to get his own title published using these guys... I wonder how many people are really going to buy this book when only 64 people backed it? Wouldn't it be easier, as an author, to self-publish and throw it out there on Amazon, RPGNow or Lulu?

Doing some more reading on their website - it appears Trapdoor's biggest "innovation" is having advertising embedded in their ebooks that readers can shut off by paying for the book. Not innovative, and certainly is not going to be keeping their operation afloat for $4.99 per copy.

What I've not yet been able to suss out is whether or not all of their authors also happen to be company employees. That would be interesting to find out.

The more and more I investigate, the more shady their whole operation feels to me.