Scamwow!
The Shamwow is actually pretty cool – but Kickstarter scams make Vince angry!
If you’re interested in the goings-on in the world of crowdfunding and your living arrangements don’t involve rocks and being under them, then you’ve undoubtedly caught wind of this project. We actually were clued into this story on Sunday by a tip from a regular reader. Since getting word, we’ve seen this tale of Kickstarter malfeasance blow up to pretty epic proportions, with the internets divided on precisely how screwed up the whole affair is and on precisely who is culpable in the whole thing.
Even though we may be a little late to the party at this point, I thought I’d chime in on the controversy. Peek below the fold for the skinny.
Miniature Mondays: Ain’t About Much
This week was insanely busy for me, weekend included. I lived out of three different hotel rooms in two different hotels, and drove through one blizzard. The culmination of these events is that for the first time in 2013, I didn’t get anything painted; about the only productive thing (in a creative sense) was that Caffeineforge’s taxes got done.
Unfortunately, they came out about how I expected, and thus there isn’t anything interesting worth sharing with all of you.
But the show must go on. Just because I didn’t paint this week, doesn’t mean that nobody else did. It also doesn’t mean that no new miniature related projects were launched. So for those of you interested in all of that, you know what to do.
Guilty Pleasures
I love this guy.
As an avowed geek, I think it’s pretty safe to say that we live in interesting times. Over the past few years, geekery and nerdosity of all stripes have gained a lot of acceptance. And in many cases, even become kinda cool. Consider video gaming. Just a few years ago, it was the province of basement dwellers, late-life virgins, and bespectacled, pie-faced shut-in’s (according to popular culture, anyway). Now, video gaming is still the province of all of the above (thank you, Big Bang Theory… thank you soooo much), but its also found acceptance in the mainstream, and is actually, you know, kinda cool. I no longer feel even a twinge of shame or embarrassment at my love of games, comics, or sci-fi and fantasy. How can you, when Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, and Ironman are raking in hundreds of millions in movie receipts all around the world? Even Twilight has had a positive impact on nerd culture (never thought I’d say that), by making vampires and werewolves into something accessible to housewives and teenage girls. When I reflect, on the castigation of nerds back in high school, I have to imagine that there is at least a little more empathy flowing now, thanks to the impact of Legolas, Jack Sparrow, and Edward Cullen on females in the 11 to 17 demo…
But even with great strides towards geek-acceptance, there are still some things I enjoy, that I don’t really care to share. Things that make me feel just a little twinge of embarrassment. In my mind, these are guilty pleasures. We’ve all got them. Peek below the fold to see me lay my guilty pleasure on the table.
Complications
For the next few weeks, my professional life is in transition (in a good way.) Basically I will be living out of a hotel room for some span of time between a couple weeks and a couple months. This period of upheaval in my personal affairs corresponds rather well with an uptick in Chris’s business travel.
While this is going on, the blog output will be reduced to a more moderate Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. I hope to resume the content rich schedule that you all are used to just as soon as possible. Please continue to send tips about interesting Kickstarter projects to caffeineforge@gmail.com. Thank you for bearing with us for the time being; both of us have an awful lot on our plate right now.
A Success in the Making
I noted in my last post that I wasn’t going to post about anything Shadowrun related until something significant from the “Year of Shadowrun” hit. I figured that would give me a couple of months to think about, you know, anything else. But just when I was settling into my Shadowrun reprieve, something came along that pulled me back into the Sixth World. Better yet, its part of a Kickstarter success story that is clearly going to deliver on all its promises and more.
Peek below the fold to find out more.
Miniature Mondays: Board Game Mania
As many of our frequent readers know, I love board games. Preferably the ones that are hideously complicated and contains oodles of little wooden meeples and plastic bits. I f there is one really great thing that Kickstarter is doing, it is creating more of these. Whether this is because the amount of money available to finance such luxuries is on the rise, or because creators are better integrating a budget supply chain to Asia, I can’t say, but it is having an effect.
I, for one, am certainly willing to pay a little extra for higher quality components, but is the quality there? With no reviews on most crowdfunding projects in this vein, it is hard to say whether there are good books behind these pretty covers.
Let’s dig right in, shall we?
The Gentrification of Kickstarter
Wikipedia defines Gentrification as, “a dynamic that emerges in poor urban areas when residential shifts, urban planning, and other phenomena affect the composition of a neighborhood.”
It is also my greatest fear as far as crowdfunding goes. Everyone has their own private boogeyman the scammer, the fraudster, or maybe even an old timey grifter for a little variety. For me though, I fear the rise of the Kickstarter professional, and it’s already happening.
Plenty will argue that increasingly professional projects drive dollars and traffic into the neighborhood. I agree – they do drive more in, they just stick to the expressway, and don’t stop for anything short of professional.
Today I discovered a new symptom of this insidious problem. Interested? Read on.
The Debacle of “Sullivan’s Sluggers” A Cautionary Tale of Kickstater
My name is David Bitterbaum and I am doing my 2nd guest post here on Caffeineforge. I can be found on my own site, www.thenewestrant.com where I discuss a variety of popular culture but mainly comics, and that is because I absolutely love comics. I also am a fan of Kickstarter, seeing as how it helps comic-creators get products out there that might otherwise be unable to exist due to reasons as varied as the person is an new talent publishers are wary to take a chance on, or the creator just wants to use Kickstarter because they find crowd-funding neat. That is why it makes me sad when I see a Kickstarter project go wrong, and boy is the saga of the “Sullivan’s Sluggers” quite the tale of something that seemed wonderful going sour.
Mark Andrew Smith
Mark Andrew Smith is a comic writer. He has made stuff I’ve enjoyed such as, “Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors,” or the “Popgun” anthologies for Image he has helped edit. He is talented, that is not being questioned. At one point I even started to pursue getting an interview with him for my blog, but due to my generally being-busy I wasn’t able to follow-through with that. I wonder what that interview would have been like, before all of this “Sullivan’s Sluggers” Kickstarter nastiness started.
For those who don’t know, “Sullivan’s Sluggers” was a Kickstarter that Mark Andrew Smith ran where a comic he wrote about a team of baseball players playing a game against demons could be funded. The art was by the always-stellar James Stokoe (of “Orc Stain” fame) so that was especially appealing. Smith wanted 6,000 dollars and got $97,626, so yeah, it was wildly successful . As the money and book’s backers grew so too did the features of the book itself. It went from a little thing to a slip-cased & over-sized hardcover, with all kind of fun little bonuses such as baseball cards of the characters. It sounds wonderful, right? Well, things started to go horribly wrong.
Mark Andrew Smith had to dramatically push back the release date of the book to get all the new features made and printed. The book finally started shipping some months ago though, so the problem was over right? No, because then he claimed that as the book had changed so much, his initial promise of the publication being Kickstater-exclusive didn’t count anymore. Besides, what are you whining about? You’re getting the book for cheaper than other people (I imagined Smith shouting when I read this post where David Brother’s pointed out the lack of ethics in this)! Therefore, the book was in fact sold to retailers and put on Amazon. When this caused a fuss Smith offered the sheepish excuse that because he mis-estimated what it would cost to ship the book internationally what with it having grown in size and girth, he needed to make some extra money. Maybe if he had said from the start, “I screwed up, but so that none of you have to pay more cash/pounds/euros I’m going to make some extra scratch selling this to stores and Amazon, I’m sorry,” people wouldn’t have felt as rubbed the wrong way. That’s the end of the drama though….isn’t it?
As of this week things became uglier. Smith created a new Kickstarter with the goal of one dollar for people who “missed their first chance,” to get the book. Never-mind that while copies of the book have been shipping there still are backers in the US who haven’t gotten any copies (and nary a single book has shipped internationally yet). Also, never-mind that Kickstarter is not supposed to be used as a store and this goes against its rules (which resulted in the project being suspended once folk pointed this out). Plus, let’s never-mind that I saw this book a month ago for sale at one of my comic shops so if I wanted I could just get it a store–defeating the purpose of if I had supported the Kickstarter as I may not have even yet gotten my book. Yes, let’s “never-mind” all of that to the point I’ve used those two words so much they have lost all meaning. Putting aside all that, things have gotten even more hideous, believe it or not.
James Stokoe
You may have noticed that in all of this I’ve barely mentioned the artist, James Stokoe. That’s because other than having turned in art all that time ago he hasn’t really been involved. He isn’t co-owner of the rights to “Sullivan’s Sluggers,” he just did it as work-for-hire. He sees no profit from any more copies of the books being sold–nada. Smith has continuously created a perception that Stokoe is benefiting from all this somehow, though. Therefore, Stokoe made a post on his blog saying, “No, I don’t get anything.” He also stated that due to the negativity that seems to be associated with the book and all the confusion he would prefer to have his named removed from any future products related to it.
Stokoe was completely polite, and Smith responded by unleashing a lot of vitriol and blame. Basically, Smith said that Stokoe turned in art so slow that it lead to his divorce and that Stokoe’s “camp” has been bullying him–quite the hilarious claim considering that Smith has done plenty of bullying himself as this Comic’s Alliance post discusses, in addition to pointing out Smith probably never meant for the book to be Kickstarter exclusive anyways.
This has been an utter debacle and besides the backers I would argue the biggest victim in all of this is Kickstarter. Kickstarter is still a relatively young entity and I fear that high-profile messes like this will paint the website in an negative light even though there have been plenty of Kickstarter projects that have delivered on their promises (and admittedly, some that haven’t). This is a cautionary tale of how not to run your Kickstarter, treat your backers, or otherwise do pretty much any of the things Smith has done.
While I may have enjoyed Smith’s work in the past, the way he has conducted himself with this Kickstarter has simply disgusted me. My sympathy goes out to all of those who supported his Kickstarter and are still waiting for their books…or his other Kickstarter project which is starting to look like it may not meet deadlines itself.
Kickstarter can be a fabulous tool and introduce its users to fascinating ideas, projects, and products. It is just sad how things can also go so horribly wrong.
Small World 2, Take 2
Relaunching is a fact of life on Kickstarter. Projects that fail to reach the finish line go back to the drawing board to tweak a few things in the hopes that the second time is the charm. Often as not they are right. While I don’t generally post about projects a second time when they relaunch, sometimes when a high-profile project cancels its funding to go again, it deserves a second look.
That happened just recently, with Smallworld 2 – lets see how their second bite at the apple is turning out.
Kickstarter and Taxes
Every year, sometime between flu season and allergy season, everyone’s least favorite holiday arrives on the scene, and I don’t mean Groundhog day; how could you even think that? Any holiday with a movie that good is absolutely worth celebrating!
Of course I mean tax day. Everyone has to do it, but for those who Kickstart, it takes on a whole new significance. Starting a small business (which is basically what a successful Kickstarter does as far as the tax man is concerned) is intimidating but don’t worry, I’m here to help.
Join us below the fold and I will share with you the trials and travails that my partner and I shared on this very topic.
Caffeineforge 