Indies, Integrity, Reputation, and Crowdfunding

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 5, 2014

I’ve warned about Kickstarter before. I’m hesitant to throw any support behind crowdfunding campaigns here unless I know the creators, either personally or by reputation. And reputation is an interesting thing. It usually originates in personal character, but it also makes good business sense. A good reputation is something that’s very hard to build up, and easy to destroy.  I expect some of these folks would rather lose their house than ruin their reputation… the house is a lot easier to rebuild or replace.

Anyway, I’ve heard the failure rate of Kickstarter projects is somewhere around 50%. That’s bad. Although for game projects, a good portion of that is “late” projects, rather than actual failures. As a gamer (and game developer), I know all about lateness. It’s a scary problem, to be sure – late often means higher costs. But it’s common enough, and I’m somewhat familiar with the warning signs that a project really is in trouble. So far, I haven’t had any of the funded projects I’ve backed look like its seriously in trouble. Knock on wood.

I’m not talking about actual, deliberate scams on Kickstarter (and those do exist). I’m talking people who may not be reliable or who do not know what they are getting into. There’s managing the project. There’s managing the budget – especially with physical rewards. Even the final amount received from the pledges can be a surprise. It’s not like that lump sum that appears on the KS site is magically deposited into one’s account. Between taxes, Kickstarter’s cut, Amazon’s cut, and failed pledges, the final pool of money can be significantly less.

If someone happens to be very bad with money in the first place, problems can get compounded. Some folks – the ones with a good reputation and the character to back it up – will do everything they can to make good on their promises, at least as far as they can. The recent little saga with Double Fine is an example of that. Their reach didn’t quite exceed their grasp, but they did have to get creative with their fulfillment. I have no problem with that, really. Crap happens. People make mistakes. People can have moments of weakness or foolishness. It’s how life works.

I was aghast when I read about one particular narcissistic douchebag who decided to post a video of himself burning books that he owed backers and turn it into a protest rather than face up to his own mistakes and the personal embarrassment it would cause. In a final update to backers, he blames rich people, capitalism, his backers themselves, religion, his own sexual identity (?), classism, racism, and society as a whole for his actions. He might spare a little blame for himself – his past self, he explains. He finishes up by the announcement that he is seeking people who will subsidize his lifestyle with no thought of any kind of return or reward for him.

Honor. Honesty. Integrity.  Professionalism. Personal responsibility. Respect for others. Self-respect. These are the kinds of things I value. These are the sensibilities that were offended by his actions. But, he explains in his final rant, “If you have negative feelings about the actions I am taking, that is part of what I am protesting against. I am protesting the values you use to determine how you feel about and interact with the world.”

If anything, my values have been more solidly reinforced. I would not want to live in a society of people with this pathetic individual’s attitude. I don’t think many people would live very long at all in such a world.

Anyway, I don’t want to spend any more talking about this epic failure of humanity and Crowdfunding. There’ll be another scam-artist or foolishly optimistic individual tomorrow. Just be careful out there. If you want mode details, you can read  this commentary. Or read the guy’s final “Screw You” Kickstarter Update.

Know who you are getting involved with when you back someone. Although – to be fair – if I’d gotten this guy’s first book, I would have probably assumed he was a “safe bet” on the second.

Fortunately – at least in my own experience – this is noteworthy in that it is an aberration. The majority of my experience in my little subset of the “indie community” has been good to fantastic. Yeah, you can have problems with outsourcing content sometimes – but the other game dev types may not always be perfect at hitting schedules (I know I am not!), but they do have the integrity to follow through and make good on promises.

I had an experience once – and I am going to keep this deliberately vague (and please don’t speculate in the comments) that really struck things home for me, and serves as a huge counterpoint to the story above. Several years ago, someone who was involved in the indie world promised me a sum of money, but due to circumstances outside of his control, couldn’t deliver. He promised to make it up to me somehow, and I kind of dismissed it. It’s not like I didn’t believe his intentions, but I wasn’t holding my breath.  Crap happens. I chalked it up to a loss.

Years later, my wife and I were personally struggling with some unforeseen expenses. Crap happens, as usual. It wasn’t disastrous, but it wasn’t pretty. We were pretty much at the nadir of this crap, with the attendant stress that comes with it, when I get a letter in the mail from this guy. It includes a check for the full amount from so many years ago. My wife and I were literally in tears.

I contacted him, and thanked him. He’d been saving up for years to make good on his promise. I will never know what kind of personal sacrifice he had to make to do this. I did get a little bit of history of how things went bad initially.

I will say that I would unhesitating in recommending this guy if he were to run a Kickstarter or involved in some kind of business. I can’t necessarily vouch for his talents as a programmer or his skill in running a business. But I can vouch for his integrity, honor, and sense of responsibility. I won’t necessarily go into details, but I would say, “Give this guy a chance.” Every time.

If a society was full of people like that, that would be a place I really would like to live.

We can’t make guarantees that some previously stable guy will never go off the reservation. And it’s hard to know what people will be like when pressure exceeds their tolerance.  And crap always happens. I know I’ve personally taken some issue with how much more willing people are to buy into a promise than to buy a finished product. That still bugs me.

But, as developer Craig Stern told me about his upcoming Telepath Tactics game, “There is just absolutely no way Telepath Tactics would be getting made to its current standard of quality without the funding that that site allowed me to receive. Not a chance.” There’s a place for it. There are people that are safer bets. The folks with the proven track record, who have earned a reputation the hard way – that’s where I see crowdfunding as an amazing development. It allows things to happen. Cool, awesome things like Wasteland 2, Broken Age, and The Banner Saga, all the way down to the small projects like Telepath Tactics.

Maybe we just need a better “reputation system” in the real world. 🙂

Filed Under: Biz, Geek Life - Comments: 4 Comments to Read



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