Annoyance with Crowdfunding

I have no particular problem with crowdfunding items. It’s nothing new. At one time, Pre-orders were a ‘crowd-funding’ where you could pre-order something BEFORE it was made (of course, some pre-orders were after it was made). Some people didn’t like that as they wanted Pre-orders to be a guaranteed thing, which probably lead to the … I can’t remember what it was called but it was like a pre-order in that you paid money for the item, even if only a down payment and not the full thing, but it was clear it was also kinda ‘express your interest’. terms and names get all confused. You even have things like Building societies (the most well known one in the UK is nationwide) where people would basically put some money in and that money would build up and be used to help someone build a house, which would then bring in money to both pay back what they borrowed but with some interest. yeah.. nothing fancy or state of the art, but same kinda thing. And it seams that kinda thing is .. being remade at the moment? and some people are moaning.. I don’t know.. Don’t keep up with that.

In the last.. 15 years or so, some new forms of crowdfunding via the internet have come about with places like Kickstarter & Indiegogo, among others. I have nothing against these and have support stuff on them. only really had.. mm.. 3 projects which have started to get a bit iffy and all bluetits up, though one was technically not VIA one of them crowdfunding platforms but still. So far, I don’t think any of them three is due to a scam, which is probably good for me. I do believe all three were due to rubbish management. Without naming names, one was for a update to a board/miniatures game but there were some lies being told, some not lies but not quite the truth and also some not knowing what the hell they are doing, despite having been around for a little while and having run a number of successful crowdfunding campaigns. The company was always known to be a little pricey for what they offered but then they kinda started to get WORSE to a stage where.. of course they aren’t gonna be able to support the company if they are doing rubbish like that.. When GW prices are starting to look good compared to yours then something is wrong. But that was a few years back and there hasn’t been any news I know of, so I see it as dead. In fact, it looks like the company has now folded, which isn’t too much of a surprise with how they started to run things.

The second is kinda current, meant to be a small-time kinda one-man operation, and a pretty simple thing as it’s mostly card and paper game.. and yet alot of silence when there shouldn’t be and ‘issues’ which don’t quite add up.. all the while ‘new’ projects are coming out by them.. yeah.. something a bit off there. But it’s still ongoing, just a little bit late right now.

The third is by a company I saw as fairly big and with a number of successful lines, even still current to gaming shows, yet you couldn’t buy any of there stuff at shows.. just demo games… mmm.. okay.. and my experience with there figures are.. they are pretty weak.. thin resin details, more pieces then needs to be making MUCH harder to put together etc.. and got to a stage where I started to wonder if the company is the same one as the other.. wondering if they just had PRETTY MUCH the same name.. and the same licenses and stuff… cause I couldn’t quite see why they screwed up so much. But again, still current, not a major issue yet.. well, I say no major issue yet.. people are debating how long before the company goes under cause they did something bloody stupid which involved paying alot of money for a license (or atleast, one which wasn’t cheap), releasing stuff in a method which would have made license cost even HIGHER and it flopping bad (which wasn’t a surprise).

In fact, third one brought out something that annoys me no end.. It’s a game where there is a base set and some expansions. Fine. You can buy the game, or expansions etc, or all in and get the lot. Fine.. Stretch goals? fine the more money they get, it allows them to put in some freebies. But then after some time, “Oh, we now have some new expansions which will be coming out tooo. They aren’t part of the all-in, you have to add them later.”.. not really all-in then is it? surely that’s stuff you wait till AFTER the game is released, or you do a second crowdfunder for then next wave.. I also get very annoyed when the crowdfunding is done by companies which don’t NEED to crowdfund. They often claim it’s so they can make some special items which would be outside what they normally do, but often that is just rubbish.

It also does sometimes annoy me.. I have no problems with exclusives for crowdfunding.. like Pre-order Exclusives etc. It can be annoying if you really wanna complete a set or something but fair enough.. It’s a bit more annoying when it’s kinda… well.. not a core feature but a fairly major part which has been ‘locked off’ for people. One project I didn’t support cause I didn’t know about it and kinda got into it later (though I did support a later one they did), was a board game based on a video game. And a couple of fairly well known and.. mm.. hard to say ‘major’ but.. a main part, not optional, was made into optional in the board game.. fair enough.. but then it was only released as a Kickstarter Exclusive! So if you didn’t support it then, you had this fairly important part missing. It was quite a notable part in the video game, which was now completely optional and removed from the board game.. sigh.. just a bit annoying.. I prefer it when the KS exclusive stuff improves and its great, but is optional. Alternative Sculpts are often a good one of them. You don’t need them but they can be very nice. It’s like you get an old Cluedo set where you have standard pawn pieces, OR as a special, you get one of them Cluedo sets which have nice little 28mm miniatures for the characters, instead of plain pawns. very nice but not needed at all and it doesn’t feel like you are a bit cheated by not having them. (Oh wait, the first Cluedo set that did that.. It was Mark Cobblestone sculpts and you can now get them figures from Em-5 Miniatures).

Anyway.. Something else which can really annoy me is useless bonus stuff! Now… I have mentioned alt sculpts. They are completely unneeded. “Oh, instead of the original character, I can play it with the original character wearing a new hat!”. Can be nice, not needed. Doesn’t make it useless. A special themed dice tower or card wallet? fine. you don’t need them, but they are nice if you want them. One game came with neoprene mats to replace the base-set card/paper which is very nice. Completely unneeded but they are pretty nice and work well. But.. sigh.. One board game gave you the option of buying a second version of a boss miniature.. BUT IN GOLD PLASTIC!… this is not a pre-painted figure.. this is not a figure designed to NOT be painted (in fact, unpainted they look a bit.. ugh).. There is a tiny bit of a reference in the fact it’s gold but.. not much.. and.. well.. If you want to paint it.. the gold is going to be covered up. If you care about it being gold, you could easily paint a normal version gold. It wasn’t a freebie add-on, it was a special exclusive ‘right to buy’.

But, you could still.. somehow, say that wasn’t completely useless (oh and they gave you shiny versions of the cards to use the boss.. compared to the normal versions which were.. the same but not shiny.. yeah.. big deal. Not even fancy enough change like in trading cards when they did fancy shiny versions… though even them could be a bit iffy as it often meant the print on them would rub off much quicker and you got far less of the good artwork). Well, one game came with a very special thing.. a Special edition DIE! It was the same as a normal die it came with (well, I say normal, it was a custom print job for a set function in the game) BUT.. IT was glow in the dark! Yay!..

I was telling a friend about it a while back and he said, as I was telling him, at first he thought, that’s a nice thing.. then as I carried out he then thought about how useless it really was. You would be playing this board game.. Even if you are in an old castle with candles, you would need a fair amount of light to see what you are doing.. and thus, the die wouldn’t be glowing brightly in the dark. The die only has a use if you are playing the game, pretty much in pitch blackness. Which isn’t gonna happen cause if it was that dark, you couldn’t PLAY the game in the first place.. If it has an LED in it, or something so it lit up? that would be something. Not very nice and it would mess about with the balance but it would be something (do we want to go into dice balance? not really.. It’s more then just making sure each side is the same weight (one reason why all opposite sides on a normal D6 add up to 7, and also why the average D6 does in fact have more chance to land with the 1 face up then the 6 but it’s not a HUGE thing..)) but nope.. IT only glowed in the dark. Completely useless. No situation, apart from if you drop the die under the table, where it would be of use. Oh and the one case? it’s a quite bright colour anyway.. so… yeah…

I don’t know if you would call this one bonus content (I’m not just talking about Crowdfunding, but that is a major source of such things) but… an special character figure.. yay! new special character… huh.. It’s.. just a re-issue of the figure for a different character, but cast in a clear plastic, compared to a normal painted plastic (or unpainted in some versions).. The fact the two characters… aren’t really that close but.. oh well. I guess with miniatures, the characters look close enough.. but being clear doesn’t make sense for the character anyway. It’s a bit like how some ‘collectable figures’ blind packs like doing rarer ‘transparent’ versions of the figures which often.. just mean you are getting a worse version. Get nice painted version of the character, or an unpainted clear version which not only doesn’t have the paint apps, but details are harder to see cause it’s clear. Don’t know about others but.. I would prefer the nicer version (or a unpainted (but not clear plastic) version I can paint myself.. but then, I would hope it would be cheaper then the fully painted one but I think experience says they charge more for the ‘right’ to paint it at home and not have them pre-paint it with harder wearing (but highly toxic when in a liquid state) paint).

way more of a ramble then normal.. not that it isn’t normal for me to ramble but oh well.