+Jolly Blackburn asked the following last night on Facebook and I thought I'd give the question some wings:
Someone brought up an interesting question a few moments ago. Anyone know of an individual or company with more abandoned/failed kickstarters than d20 Entertainment? (they have six failed projects and had two more readied to launch).
I can't think of anyone that comes close.
This is really a question about Kickstarter's ability (or inability) to get in front of project creators with so many red flags around them.
Some quick recaps for the curious:
Knights of the Dinner Table: Live Action Series - 795 Backers, $69,525 raised
59 Day funding period - Dec 8, 2013 through February 5, 2014
Spinward Traveller - 827 Backers, $49,588 raised
44 Day funding period - June 1, 2014 through July 15, 2014
Castles & Crusades: Beyond the River - 125 Backers, $6,001 raised
30 Day funding period - October 3, 2014 through November 2, 2014
Pencil Dice - 1351 Backers, $38,161 raised
30 Day funding period - January 29, 2015 through February 28, 2015
RPG Pencil Dice - 337 Backers, $8,623 raised
20 Day funding period - February 18, 2015 through March 10, 2015
Deck Dice - 184 Backers, $5,197 raised
30 Day funding period - March 8, 2015 through April 7, 2015
Some random observations:
-Ken didn't want to wait too long for the monies to come in, thus going from 59 days to fund and gradually cutting to 30 days (with a 20 day in there for good measure)
-The last three projects overlapped in funding periods. Because, you know - the monies.
-Not one of these projects has completed, although some Traveller ship models have shipped. Some even shipped to backers.
David Hill has racked up an impressive number of failed Kickstarters. He doesn't just not deliver, he sells your product in stores.
ReplyDeleteJust for clarity, I'm certain you mean the David A. Hill who lives in Japan, and not Mothshade David A. Hill. :)
ReplyDeleteRight? Better to be clear in the difference between David A. Hill of Mothshade and David A Hill Jr of Machine Age Productions who has at least 3 abandoned kickstarters (maybe many more - I cannot tell). Those are two VERY different people.
DeleteSpeak my name and up I pop.
DeleteThank you for having my back, men.
Could not find anyone to match or beat 5. 5th Street Games / Phillip Kilcrease came really close with 5 funded projects and failed to deliver.
ReplyDeleteThere were also a couple of Kickstarters that he funneled through 3rd parties as well.
ReplyDeleteTrue. (That we know of).
DeleteSuch a shame. A whole lot of losers... It is worse than a lot full of lemons...
ReplyDeleteThe "dice-o-matic" Kickstarter was started by Ken, but through a different account (not d20 Entertainment). It was shut down because it violated KS rules. Specifically: "Resale. All rewards must have been produced or designed by the project or one of its creators — no reselling things from elsewhere." (the "dice-o-matic" was just some cheap piece of crap readily available all over the Internet that Ken was fraudulently selling as an original invention).
ReplyDeleteKen also had this one
ReplyDeletehttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kenwhitman/knights-quest-family-card-game
He had an add-on for a dice bag for this one (spoiler: did not get). I did get the actual game, though not everybody did. I also got a 50% refund for the dice bag with a promise to still send it out, mainly because I asked about it through the KotD LAS "contact" link while that KS was running, and I think he didn't want to be found out.
he also did the Knights Quest Family Card Game. It delivered, but was badly flawed. It was an Uno variant with special rules for nearly every card. Some of the cards were exclusive to the Kickstarter edition of the game.
ReplyDeleteThose cards were in the final printed rulebook, but not all of the non-exclusive cards were in the rulebook.
It was slapdash and unplayable as written.