by mintyh
Counterpoint to some of the "Kickstarter is broken" / "I will never use it again" / "It owes me big":
I've just had Sentinals Of the Multiverse turn up... and the expansion cards are a different size to the main deck.
Also, Escape From The Temple... a die is incorrectly printed.
And Roma: cards are in German instead of English.
Oh, and Plethora, funded by an NZ alternative to KS, has just been delayed due to production issues.
We'll see what happens when the Flashpoint expansion, Gauntet of Fools and Kings Of Air and Steam turn up, all further KS projects I've backed.
But am I going to blow a fuse? Nup. I think the games are great, innovative and fresh, and for all the production/delivery issues you might get with smaller independant companies, they're still hardly the complete travesty that the new LOS rules for Descent 2 are :p
I can remember the times when, to get an answer to a rules ambiguity, you had to *mail* your question to the US, and enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope, and then WAIT. A LONG TIME. For just a rules answer.
So game delivery delays (and I stress that this is for me, and not for people who have ordered and it has a livelihood impact) are not optimal, but they're not going to cause me to divert massive amounts of time into expressing my ire and angst, especially when I could spend that time actually playing Endeavor or Alien Frontiers or First frickin' Quest (my kids are loving that 1980s CD flashback).
To me, Kickstarter is like most (ahem) game-changing events: there will be true scoundrels who try to defraud you, there will be over-optimistic people, there will be dumb ideas (and the perception of dumb will vary)... but that doesn't change the fact that it is a venue for someone who has created a great idea to make it reality. It gives me a chance to state "I'd like that!" rather than reply to "Do you like this next repackaging of Monopoly/Risk/WH4k?".
And for that freedom, I'll try to use my smarts to avoid pure scamsters on KS, and otherwise forgo going nuclear over delays as long as a game does finally get to me.
Kickstarter: sitting somewhere on the scale between Perfect and Bernie Madoff Ponzi Schemes. And still a way for great ideas (one of the defining positive features of civilisation) to become real, instead of withering for want of finding an audience...
Cheers,
Minty
Ps. For all its LOS and Monster-shrinking issues, I reckon Descent 2 is a pretty damn fun dungeon crawler...