andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2021-05-11 12:00 pm
andrewducker) wrote2021-05-11 12:00 pm
Entry tags:
- bonus,
- business,
- death,
- europe,
- games,
- goodnews,
- independence,
- italy,
- kickstarter,
- lgbt,
- links,
- money,
- neanderthal,
- ohforfuckssake,
- pandemic,
- politics,
- prehistory,
- publishing,
- salary,
- scotland,
- security,
- snp,
- society,
- software,
- trade,
- trains,
- transgender,
- transport,
- uk,
- vaccine,
- voting,
- women,
- writing
Interesting Links for 11-05-2021
- Scottish independence referendum to go ahead when Covid crisis 'stable,' says SNP
- (tags:Scotland independence pandemic )
- How the transphobes harm cis women
- (tags:transgender women LGBT society )
- Covid vaccine: One AstraZeneca dose lowers chance of death by 80%, new research shows
- (tags:death pandemic vaccine GoodNews )
- "To an outsider we were success incarnate, but inside we were hollow": How my dream job at a board game startup became a nightmare
- (tags:business games OhForFucksSake kickstarter )
- How to make everyone in the company hate you with one email
- (tags:trains security bonus OhForFucksSake )
- By eating them, hyenas gathered 9 Neanderthal skeletons in one cave
- (tags:prehistory Italy neanderthal )
- Game developers break silence around salaries
- (tags:games salary software )
- What did Nicola Sturgeon's victory speech say
- (tags:politics Scotland snp independence )
- Exodus of EU truckers leaves UK hauliers facing acute driver shortages
- (tags:trade transport UK Europe )
- Very few writers make money. Here's how some do
- (tags:writing money business publishing )
- Some Analysis of the Scottish Election 2021 Results (what could have happened differently?)
- (tags:voting scotland )
- Covid in Scotland: Variant detected in Highlands cluster
- (tags:scotland pandemic )
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I'm trans, but short and slight and I have fine facial features, small hands and feet.
My voice is 'normal' female pitch.
I dress in fairly 'standard' female fashion.
I have a male life partner.
No one is going to question my presence in the public loos.
Many young cis women are way taller than me (how out of date terfs are in this- average European female height is now 5'6" and that's my own height exactly).
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It's the strength of the platform as well. It breaks up the risk of starting a new thing in to two parts. The risk that nobody wants it is dealt with through the funding / trigger model. Not enough funding then the project doesn't start. The risk of the project going wrong is definately allocated to the funders. And where that risk sits is pretty clear.
The failure state is that of serial fraudsters or incompetents repeatedly running Kickstarters that fund and then not delivering on them.
In a legal model where there is a contractual obligation this would lead to the bankruptcy of the legal entity behind the Kickstarter and eventually the stricking off as a director of the management team. Which is not good for them and might be very bad for them. But see unsavory business practices in, for example, drive way tarmacing or roof repair businesses.
So reputation becomes important. Specifically a way to communicate bad reputations.
For example Ken Whitman (about whom I know nothing other than there is an entire - badly structured - blog about his failure to deliver Kickstarters.
https://notanotherdime.blogspot.com/
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Why do you want this loan? - To build up my boardgames business.
That's an honest answer.
Why should we give you this loan? - I have a successful Kickstarter.
Also an honest answer.
Show me your projected profit and loss. - Here it is?
Still an honest answer.
The key question is perhaps - what happens to your projected profit and loss if your Kickstarter doesn't deliver? And how is delivery going?
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I appreciate that they explicitly have as part of the business and funding model that execution risk sits with the funders but I don't think they do enough about serial deliberate failures or violations of the laws of physics.
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On the more positive front, it's worth noting that Kickstarter has developed a very informal but very useful "web of trust" ecosystem, with KS creators recommending stuff from other creators.
I use KS heavily (I have mixed feelings about gaining the title "super-backer", but it's true enough, especially in board games and comics), and a large fraction of the projects I back come in this way. That's helpful -- I've rarely backed a true failure-to-deliver, since the creators have a strong incentive not to mislead their own followers, and folks inside an industry tend to have at least some idea about each others' reliability.
For all the fancy modern tech, sometimes old-fashioned word-of-mouth reputation is still the most reliable mechanism...
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I've seen several Kickstarters recommend other people's Kickstarter and I backed quite a lot of Dungeons and Dragons Zines this spring and I'd seen a few blog posts (from bloggers I follow) recommending a slate of them.
I've also seen a number of blogs about people with bad reputations warning people to steer clear.
I think you're right, that web of trust is pretty active if you're paying attention and looking for it and it does do a lot to close the knowledge gap.
How to make everyone in the company hate you with one email
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I've fallen out of board gaming for multiple reasons, so I was taken aback when I saw claims that TMG is a husk of what it was with lies to backers about product updates, and I think, as in the article, one game designed later came out before a previously backed kickstarter.
IDK if this is that common or not. I thought since they mentioned the UK it probably wasn't TMG,but realized that could be altered to conceal it.
Shame...
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Truly, they were doing their part for science.
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My employer did in fact send everyone vouchers for Christmas, but the email was so badly drafted (and was from the voucher supplier, not in-house) that a significant number of people (including me) deleted them on the grounds that they were clearly spam/phishing. Fortunately my employer sent a subsequent email saying no, they are real vouchers, and deleted emails are recoverable.
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