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Gonna go ahead and agree with Ouyapants here, Kickstarter is a site for patronage, not purchases (and certainly not investment), and people should really stop considering it the latter. Don't give money to a kickstarter unless you're willing to risk it disappearing into the ether.
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May 3, 2014 11:25
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XboxPants posted:It sure is a pet peeve of mine when people use the word "technically" to mean the exact opposite of what it actually means. "Technically" and "effectively" are not interchangeable. You never replied after our first PM but the offer of some one-to-one English communication lessons still stands.
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May 3, 2014 11:53
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frozenpeas posted:You never replied after our first PM but the offer of some one-to-one English communication lessons still stands. Do you have a problem with what I said in that quote? I'm starting to have doubts about whether being a third-world high school (college?) English teacher really qualifies you as a master linguist.
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May 3, 2014 11:59
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XboxPants posted:Do you have a problem with what I said in that quote? I'm starting to have doubts about whether being a third-world high school (college?) English teacher really qualifies you as a master linguist. For once, you were completely right. Kickstarter has effectively become a site for pre-ordering products, but that was technically never the original or current mission. If anything, making the backer rewards include the actual product versus some just a t-shirt or keychain makes it more likely a specific project will blow up on the creators. If you can't get the product out, suddenly every backer reward can't be fulfilled.
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May 3, 2014 14:24
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It is probably fair to say that the campaign pages could be designed to look less like a store. I've definitely seen a couple suggested changes that'd make sense. Just ways of changing the layout so it looks less like you're buying something. (though I can't quite remember them at the moment)
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May 3, 2014 14:30
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XboxPants posted:The problem you're having is that you think Kickstarter is a website where consumers buy things. It's not. If there's protection needed there, it would be something to make sure the campaign people actually spend the donations on what they've said they're going to spend it on. The hell is this. If someone gets a kickstarter going, and makes a good faith effort to succeed, and fails, it can be due to two things - incompetence or getting hosed over by an act of god or a third party, like a supplier. Incompetence shouldn't be a get out of jail free card, for obvious reasons. And if its not incompetence then you can prove in a court of law that your manufacturer ran off with your payment or that the ship transporting the container filled with your poo poo sank to the bottom of the ocean, or whatever, and then you're off the hook. That thing you were talking about? The protection to make sure people spend the donations on what they said they would? That's what the court of law is. Idiot.
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May 3, 2014 15:01
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Present posted:The hell is this. If someone gets a kickstarter going, and makes a good faith effort to succeed, and fails, it can be due to two things - incompetence or getting hosed over by an act of god or a third party, like a supplier. Incompetence shouldn't be a get out of jail free card, for obvious reasons. He's not really being an idiot here. What about products that literally were not possible to release with the funds requested? Do you define that as incompetence or an act of god? EVERY creator, under what you propose, would be able to point to some 3rd party as liable. "I was unable to secure a reasonable manufacturing rate" or "the plastic needed was more expensive than I believed" or "I was unable to secure an artist". Also, competent people fail all the time because their research didn't reveal something that was reasonable for them to miss. There's no simple solution that allows people to have ambitious kickstarters without fear of getting nuked by lawsuits AND provides guarantee on the reception of back rewards.
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May 3, 2014 15:37
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theflyingorc posted:He's not really being an idiot here. If you ask for money and then realize that the money you ask for is not enough to do the thing you wanted to do, you give the money back because you are an idiot that had no business kickstarting anything. If anything else goes wrong in your project that makes it impossible to pull off, then you scrap it and give the money back to the best of your ability. That's how it works out there in the real world. That's the law. In fact, whenever you want to start a business and you go to the bank for a loan, they make you come up with a detailed business plan to show them exactly how you'll be making money off it in order to pay the bank back, and then if the bank is satisfied with your plan, you sign a contract. Why should a kickstarter be any different? Shouldn't people investing money in your project have a similar amount of protection for their investment? I love the idea of kickstarter. What I don't love is people coming up with a great idea for a product and then half-assing the details, loving over hundreds or thousands of investors. Those people need to be sued into oblivion. Bottom line is if you failed at your project, but you showed that you prepared reasonably well for meeting the demands of the kickstarter, the judge will rule in your favor. It's the scam artists/the unprepared that will (rightfully) get poo poo on by the courts.
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May 3, 2014 16:19
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XboxPants posted:Do you have a problem with what I said in that quote? I'm starting to have doubts about whether being a third-world high school (college?) English teacher really qualifies you as a master linguist. I wouldn't worry too much. I have some experience with primary level education too, so I think you'll get at least some benefit from the tuition. Towerfall looked fun. It's a shame they didn't put in real co-op. Not everyone wants to bring their Ouya to parties.
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May 3, 2014 16:20
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You're wrong, theflyingorc, and everyone else arguing against the WA lawsuit. There is a a simple solution that allows people to have ambitious kickstarters without fear of getting nuked by lawsuits. It's called saving your receipts. The meatspace equivalent of a kickstarter is a grant. Like kickstarter, the purpose of a grant is to fund exploratory projects with tons of risk, or provide purely philanthropic funding with no expectation of ROI at all. This does not mean that the person receiving the grant is free to whiz it away on Cheetos and vidja gaems with no oversight. There is a very well established method for exercising this oversight, and discerning honest failure from fraud: project management. I'm not saying that any random kickstarter needs to have the type of rigorous record-keeping and public transparency you'd have with an NIH grant. What I am saying is that if you're too dysfunctional of a would-be entrepreneur to save your receipts, then you're too dysfunctional to be coming to the internet with your hat in your hand to fund your zany idea.
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May 3, 2014 16:27
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Present posted:If you ask for money and then realize that the money you ask for is not enough to do the thing you wanted to do, you give the money back because you are an idiot that had no business kickstarting anything. If anything else goes wrong in your project that makes it impossible to pull off, then you scrap it and give the money back to the best of your ability. That's how it works out there in the real world. That's the law. Investing is not donating.
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May 3, 2014 16:27
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Variable 5 posted:Investing is not donating. We'll have to see how the courts rule on that, won't we.
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May 3, 2014 16:30
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Present posted:We'll have to see how the courts rule on that, won't we. If they rule its investing and people who cannot deliver can get hosed over then the whole idea will be dead apart from people who can afford to soak up such losses. The entire point of it is that it isn't investing and gives people a chance at trying something that would otherwise not be able to get funding. If you donate and the project fails for legitimate reasons, then that is the risk you take by kickstarting in the first place. Also even businesses who start up with a bank loan or investor backing which has been poured over by experts to ensure its as correct as possible still can fail due to unforeseen issues or costs that weren't planned for.
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May 3, 2014 16:41
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Stux posted:The entire point of it is that it isn't investing and gives people a chance at trying something that would otherwise not be able to get funding. Basically this. I am all about strict buyer protection in every other aspect of life, but this really is unique and different from selling a product. You're chipping in with the hope that someone will come through on something that basically wouldn't happen otherwise. At this point, the lawsuit is about failing to deliver - whether you just couldn't make it over the finishing line or you absconded with the money. Either way, it's not a purchase, and punishing everyone who can't deliver as if they were the scumbag is going to take the little guy off the site where he goes for money when he can't get it anywhere else. And then it's just "Corporate Investor Without the Dividends dot Com".
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May 3, 2014 16:56
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XboxPants posted:From what I've seen of Samurai Gunn, Towerfall has a lot more depth to it than Gunn. Not the item bullshit, but the basic mechanics are much more layered. Which is not to say at all that it's better; some of the best games ever made are quite simple. Depth does not equal quality. I think the dodging / catching was fun until you inevitably got into the 1v1 situation of "shoot all your arrows at once, mash dodge and hope the other guy didn't just avoid all your arrows." Also firing correctly under pressure was less fun than w/ samurai gunn. I think its still like almost as good as samurai gunn (showdown logic is not intuitive at all, and some levels are a shitshow with 4 players), especially with all the customization and items.
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May 3, 2014 17:20
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Stux posted:If they rule its investing and people who cannot deliver can get hosed over then the whole idea will be dead apart from people who can afford to soak up such losses. The entire point of it is that it isn't investing and gives people a chance at trying something that would otherwise not be able to get funding. If you donate and the project fails for legitimate reasons, then that is the risk you take by kickstarting in the first place. Hi, my name is James and I'm a third year English major at xxxxx. While working at the bookstore shelving twilight novels I came up with a great idea for a product that I think you will love! I didn't really call any manufacturers for quotes or anything like that, but last night I was getting high with my uncle and he said he knows a guy who will probably charge me $50,000 for a run of 5,000 of them and I think I'll need another $50k on top of that for shipping and stuff I didn't think of yet, so please donate to my kickstarter!" VS I'm Adam and I wish to manufacture and ship Goku Pants copper medallions. I have sourced quotes from three different manufacturers, shipping quotes from four different shipping companies, insurance, forecast operating expenses, all for different tiers of unit quantities, ranging 5,000 to 500,000, based on estimated price of copper in three months. All the information above is available at https://www.getsomefuckengokupantshere.com and will be updated with any changes. Does no-one see the difference between those two? If the second guy fails because the copper market explodes and his quotes are no longer valid no judge in the world will convict him (provided he returned the money he still hasn't spent on the project), because he did his homework and can prove it. If the first guy fails and doesn't return the money then he should go to prison. The fact that you're on kickstarter shouldn't mean that you can just ball park poo poo. Yeah, make your product but don't just pull dollar figures out of your rear end. Do your homework. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_diligence E: if the kick starter fails for legitimate reasons they have nothing to worry about in court, provided they documented everything. Present fucked around with this message at 17:36 on May 3, 2014 |
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May 3, 2014 17:23
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The problem is, defending a lawsuit can and will probably cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, so even if you did your due diligence and tried your best and refunded the remaining capital when it became apparent you were going to fail to deliver, you could still be on the hook for $250,000 or more in court and lawyer fees just to prove you did all the right things on your failed $20k kickstarter to make gokupants medallions.
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May 3, 2014 17:42
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...where is this idea coming from that people can be thrown in jail for incompetence? There are only very specific crimes for which negligence or recklessness alone are sufficient for criminal penalties: manslaughter, child abuse, etc. Having a loving unrealistic business plan is not one of them, and thank god for that, because otherwise 100,000 people a year would get arrested for not making rent at their new restaurants. You have to prove actual intent to deceive to prosecute fraud.
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May 3, 2014 17:46
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Debtors prison. If it can be proven that you're such a fuckup that you spent the money knowing that you won't be able to deliver the product and your request for bankruptcy is laughed out of court you should be going to debtors prison. Or if you outright stole it.
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May 3, 2014 18:46
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Present posted:Debtors prison. If it can be proven that you're such a fuckup that you spent the money knowing that you won't be able to deliver the product and your request for bankruptcy is laughed out of court you should be going to debtors prison. Or if you outright stole it. Well rip any sort of contract law, and rip anything more complicated than a spoon getting built ever.
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May 3, 2014 19:02
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A Yolo Wizard posted:I think the dodging / catching was fun until you inevitably got into the 1v1 situation of "shoot all your arrows at once, mash dodge and hope the other guy didn't just avoid all your arrows." Also firing correctly under pressure was less fun than w/ samurai gunn. I think its still like almost as good as samurai gunn (showdown logic is not intuitive at all, and some levels are a shitshow with 4 players), especially with all the customization and items. The trick here is to space out your arrows and don't get in a situation like that in the first place. I've played a lot of SG and towerfall and I think towerfall is way more interesting for longer periods of time.
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May 3, 2014 19:31
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Present posted:Debtors prison. If it can be proven that you're such a fuckup that you spent the money knowing that you won't be able to deliver the product and your request for bankruptcy is laughed out of court you should be going to debtors prison. Or if you outright stole it. Did you just seriously advocate for the return of debtor's prison? Let's restore one of the western world's most horrific institutions in order to make sure nobody gets screwed out of kickstarter rewards, guys!
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May 3, 2014 21:41
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Well maybe debtors prison is a bit much but if you can't see how having kickstarter projects be accountable to the courts is a BAD thing then I don't even know man. The one in the news in Washington was for 15k, but made 25k, was scheduled to deliver in Dec 2012, but didn't. "Oh it's OK you guys. You tried your best I'm sure. Keep the twenty five thousand dollars"
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May 4, 2014 01:29
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ambushsabre posted:The trick here is to space out your arrows and don't get in a situation like that in the first place. I've played a lot of SG and towerfall and I think towerfall is way more interesting for longer periods of time. Oh, that's one other thing, Towerfall is quite a bit better as a 1v1. 4 players gets messier which obscures some of the cool stuff. I would not be surprised at all to find that SG was better as a 4 player game.
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May 4, 2014 02:51
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Present posted:Hi, my name is James and I'm a third year English major at xxxxx. While working at the bookstore shelving twilight novels I came up with a great idea for a product that I think you will love! I didn't really call any manufacturers for quotes or anything like that, but last night I was getting high with my uncle and he said he knows a guy who will probably charge me $50,000 for a run of 5,000 of them and I think I'll need another $50k on top of that for shipping and stuff I didn't think of yet, so please donate to my kickstarter!" Your link is broken, where can i buy some goku pants? Or was I buying medallions with pictures of goku's pants? Your pitch is confusing and you are so getting sued when you fail to deliver.
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May 4, 2014 03:31
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Present posted:"Oh it's OK you guys. You tried your best I'm sure. Keep the twenty five thousand dollars"
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May 4, 2014 03:42
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theflyingorc posted:That can actually be fine depending on the nature of the contract! If anything, I suppose the "contract" that the backers are agreeing to could be made more transparent. I'm pretty liberal so I generally support the government protecting people, but it only needs to do that when people can't easily protect themselves, right? There could be a requirement for all Kickstarter-types to give a general summary of what the money is going to be used for. It could either be really specific, or fairly lax (so people aren't giving up their entire business plan and part sources or whatever) but even just "$10,000 on raw plastic, $180,000 on staff salaries" would be a big step up. I don't feel like that would be asking too much. I mean, if you came up with a specific Kickstarter goal you should be able to show how you arrived at that number, right? Unless your $$$ goal is total bullshit. Maybe give a run-down of everyone who's going to be working on the project, too. Those two things would really not be big asks and are noticeably missing from a lot of Kickstarter projects.
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May 4, 2014 05:07
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Present posted:"Oh it's OK you guys. You tried your best I'm sure. Keep the twenty five thousand dollars" Because everyone here is arguing that it's totally okay to just pocket the money and walk away with it! Oh wai-
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May 4, 2014 05:55
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Present posted:"Oh it's OK you guys. You tried your best I'm sure. Keep the twenty five thousand dollars" It's really crappy that some people are going to run scams, and this isn't the way business should work in most situations, but can you really not see that the cure is worse then the disease in this specific case? You don't literally believe in debtor's prison, so I'm hoping you don't literally believe that this is the mindset you're arguing against.
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May 4, 2014 06:29
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I mean, if someone is intentionally running a scam, that's already illegal, and not just tort-illegal where you can start a class action to get everybody's money back, but criminal-illegal where you can notify actual police and they will consider filing actual criminal charges for fraud. The thing is, the word scam does not, in fact, include "I had this really cool idea, but then I hosed it up because I didn't know what I was doing." It also seems to me that the correct answer to "shouldn't Kickstarter be requiring projects to declare at least a rough budget" is "plenty of projects do that already, and maybe you should think twice before throwing money at projects that don't", but that might be too libertarian-ish for SA.
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May 4, 2014 08:44
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rjmccall posted:It also seems to me that the correct answer to "shouldn't Kickstarter be requiring projects to declare at least a rough budget" is "plenty of projects do that already, and maybe you should think twice before throwing money at projects that don't", but that might be too libertarian-ish for SA. Honestly, that's more how I feel but I've gotten pretty negative reactions here for that philosophy. I figured the "rough budget" thing was a reasonable middle ground.
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May 4, 2014 09:00
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rjmccall posted:It also seems to me that the correct answer to "shouldn't Kickstarter be requiring projects to declare at least a rough budget" is "plenty of projects do that already, and maybe you should think twice before throwing money at projects that don't", but that might be too libertarian-ish for SA. The problem is that those numbers, in true libertarian style, are just whatever the kickstarter guys want to show you, they're not proper audited numbers you'd get if you were investing, they're just pure made up pie in the sky numbers more often than not. Either kickstarter and the like need to stop people from promising rewards for monetary contributions and essentially tricking people into donating, because lets face it most people are doing it to get the reward not because they want to donate to the company, or it needs to be governed like any other pre-order and people held accountable, because in my opinion Kickstarers as they are are deceptive as gently caress since 95% of them promise an end product in turn for donating.
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May 4, 2014 09:25
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Rudager posted:or it needs to be governed like any other pre-order and people held accountable, because in my opinion Kickstarers as they are are deceptive as gently caress since 95% of them promise an end product in turn for donating. Yeah but that idea in your mind of "they are promising a product to me!" isn't the result of the kickstarter campaign page, but the result of you being an idiot.
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May 4, 2014 11:09
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If you pledge X amount to a campaign and part of the pledge reward is "get a copy of the game, delivery December 20XX", you're not an idiot for feeling that you were promised a product. You were promised a product as per the pledge reward. The core of the issue is that the final product really shouldn't be a reward at any pledge level. The spirit of Kickstarter is that pledge rewards should be small tokens of appreciation that can be fulfilled immediately. And if the project fails, tough. But most people aren't interested in pledging to a project if they don't get the final product, so almost all projects are now offering that. There's no guarantee that a project will be successful -- that's part of the Kickstarter spirit -- but there is a guarantee that you should receive your pledge reward (or a refund). When project creators choose to offer the final project as a pledge reward, they themselves are promising to deliver -- both morally and, per Kickstarter's own ToS, legally.
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May 4, 2014 11:47
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XboxPants posted:Yeah but that idea in your mind of "they are promising a product to me!" isn't the result of the kickstarter campaign page, but the result of you being an idiot. Well how the gently caress else do you read "Pledge $100 and get an Ouya before it's released!", because we both know very well that 95% of people will read that and think they're pre-ordering an Ouya. It's deceptive as gently caress and that's not even getting into how scummy "flexible funding" is on other sites. Also, sorry for running over you cat or whatever the gently caress I did too piss you off.
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May 4, 2014 11:50
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Rudager posted:Well how the gently caress else do you read "Pledge $100 and get an Ouya before it's released!", because we both know very well that 95% of people will read that and think they're pre-ordering an Ouya. It's deceptive as gently caress and that's not even getting into how scummy "flexible funding" is on other sites. And let me bring up once more because it's the most  thing ever. There are some people out there who still haven't received the Ouya they paid money to kickstart.
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May 4, 2014 11:52
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edit: Rudager posted:Also, sorry for running over you cat or whatever the gently caress I did too piss you off. Sorry I called you an idiot, I didn't really think you'd be so upset. Christian Knudsen posted:If you pledge X amount to a campaign and part of the pledge reward is "get a copy of the game, delivery December 20XX", you're not an idiot for feeling that you were promised a product. Yes, you are. First of all, if you feel that way you've demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of what Kickstarter is. The point of Kickstarter is to raise money for a group so they can make an attempt at a project. It is not a store and if that's what you thought, you were either a fool, or someone who didn't even make glance around the sight you were paying money to which, again, makes you a fool. Even putting that aside, if you think a business start-up can realistically make an iron-clad promise that they'll succeed in their undertaking then you're an idiot. The whole reason they're on Kickstarter to begin with is because they weren't a sure enough thing to get traditional funding. You can hope they'll succeed but making the assumption that any start-up is a sure thing is foolishness of the highest order. If they're not an established company it's a little better but there are still no guarantees. XboxPants fucked around with this message at 11:58 on May 4, 2014 |
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May 4, 2014 11:55
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Well in legal terms, is Kickstarter just a donation akin to giving money to panhandlers across the street... ...or is it some sort of pre-ordering system that the company promised to make and in the end, delivers the final product to the public while giving early customers incentives to order early?
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May 4, 2014 11:57
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XboxPants posted:Yes, you are. First of all, if you feel that way you've demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of what Kickstarter is. The point of Kickstarter is to raise money for a group so they can make an attempt at a project. It is not a store and if that's what you thought, you were either a fool, or someone who didn't even make glance around the sight you were paying money to which, again, makes you a fool. Yes, we all understand the point Kickstarter is going for, but that's not how most people (both backers and kickstarters) use it.
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May 4, 2014 11:57
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Rudager posted:Yes, we all understand the point Kickstarter is going for, but that's not how most people (both backers and kickstarters) use it. You're right that they don't use it that way, but just because someone expects Kickstarter to work the same way as Amazon doesn't mean their expectations matter. It just makes them wrong. You and anyone else can argue it's "deceptive" until you're blue in the face but the basic premise of every Kickstarter campaign is that the company doesn't even have the funding yet. How can anyone with two neurons to rub together think that a company that currently doesn't even have the capability to attempt their project is offering them a "sure thing promise"? It astonishes me. I get that the company is often directly telling you "if you give us this money, we'll give you this product" but what world do you live in where you're used to believing every claim a company tells you about their products without a second glance? When you get a flier in the mail that says "Free car! Come into the dealership tomorrow!" do you call all your friends and throw a party? XboxPants fucked around with this message at 12:07 on May 4, 2014 |
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May 4, 2014 12:04
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