There are many, many flagrant kickstarter horror stories and scams (look up “Ken Whitman” and you’ll get a fuckin face full with just one guy), but there are many that are much, much more subtle in their failure that people don’t really bitch about, because they only sort of suck, or only sort of failed to deliver the goods. Here is a list of failed kickstarters for me and some of these are real questionable —but not overtly failures. Have they failed so far to deliver on time? Fuck yes. Are they scams? Possibly. This does not include a list of kickstarters I backed and then never even used the games or stuff yet (like Bulldogs!, Wasteland 2, Planetary Annihilation (the pre-titan version) as those are MY fault and not the fault of the creators.
Double Six dice roller, estimated delivery: August 2014
This kickstarter was 10$ for a set of D12’s that have D6 dots on them, or have the FATE +/- on them. This kickstarter still has not delivered and has been so long in coming that, since I don’t even play FATE and likely never will again, I don’t even want the dice I ordered. FATE does not suck for some people, so I have friends I can give them away to at least. Using them for other games is a possibility. Apparently this will ship at some point? Fucked.
Journey Wrath of Demons, estimated delivery: July 2014
All I wanted was to follow this because the mini’s looked cool and get a T-shirt. It never came. What’s more, when I tried to set my order for one as a backer, they only had SMALL sizes left. Since this kickstarter looks like it failed for all of it’s backers, why would they care about a little thing like a tshirt…
Exalted 3rd Edition: Estimated delivery: December 2013
This is incredibly late and so far a failure, but apparently this too will get delivered some day in the far future because otherwise it looks like a huge fucking scam to me. They had a debacle early on with one of the developers having health problems, but as a the producers of the product, you give that guy a rest and move to another developer who can deliver, which even after months and months stretched into years, doesn’t look like it happened. It’s so incredibly late that the market for this type of game is gone. I got a beta version of the rules on the internet (not even sent to backers!!!!) and I can say for sure I will never, ever play this except goofing around (and who has time for that when there are so many other good RPG’s to play?). 2nd edition Exalted captured the imagination certainly, but the rules were just a horrible, horrible mess. 3rd Edition looks like a slight step up, but why would anyone want to bother with something this grossly complex in 2015? After reading the rules, I commented that stunt descriptions BEFORE the die roll is a horrible design decision that has since been changed in other stunting games, but was shouted down by the fan boys. You can imagine what sort of lickspittles are surrounding the designers when you get this sort of jagoffery from just internet fansies.
Martin Wallace’s Moongha Invaders, estimated delivery July, 2013.
This was a game that had 500 copies made a mess of years ago and the kickstarter was going to bring it back to the masses. As a Wallace game, it had high marks all around, but so far, it has never come and now it’s ridiculously late.
Tabletop Forge
This tanked and the guys said so. However, we got FREE memberships and assets to Roll20, so they hooked up backers solid. Can’t complain about this one really.
Star Citizen, Estimated delivery: Nov 2014.
This is the big one– so far this is the big scam that has THOUSANDS of people on the hook for what looks like vaporware. There is tons of ‘content’ for this game: ship designs, 3d models, a semi-playable combat engine (didn’t work when I installed it), info on planets and trading but this game is nearing a full year late–and I really don’t think it’s ever going to actually come out. Every time I see a youtube video or read a kickstarter backer post I think more and more that while this turned out to be a scam, they didn’t mean it to be in the beginning. Something is very, very wrong with whatever this team is doing. It’s constant press about nothing–in a way much like Master of Orion 3 was. Maybe someday this will deliver, but it’s not looking good. When you back a game that hasn’t started development, be VERY wary. For example while Banner Saga shipped and looked great, but is one of the worst games I’ve ever played, with some of the worst sound design imaginable–that was 50$ blown. I think Star Citizen will be case in point why you do not just give people a bunch of money to do whatever they want with it before there’s anything. Since they already have your money, they will do as they will and won’t focus on shipping a product to compete in the marketplace. While I think this group is working on something, it’s obvious more and more from every single update or youtube video that it’s far off the rails and a fuckstarter.