Kickstarter King of war 2.0

[Gareth]

Here is a tale of two companies. One called Mantic and one called Wyrd.

Mantic proposed to release a game, called Kings of War. So they approached the community and asked "here is our vision, who will fund us?" and the community replied we will. They then proposed to release a game called Dreadball, so again they asked the community and asked "here is our vision, who will fund us?" But the community replied "wait a minute, we are still waiting on our Kings of War products, whats going on?" So Mantic replied "thank you for funding our Kings of War project. You will notice that at the moment, we have not missed any of our projected shipping dates on Kings of War. We have paid our concept artists to produce concept art, and they are currently sat about doing nothing. We have paid our rules designers to write rules, and they have honed thme down to a degree we are happy with, but now they are sat about doing nothing.We have paid our sculpters to do our sculpts, which they have but they are currently sat about doing nothing. We are waiting for our miniature producers to produce the miniatures for us, but whilst we wait, we would like to start a new project, utilising the resources we currently have available." So the community agreed this was a wise decission and funded Dreadball. Then Mantic said "Hey community we have an idea for a game, called Deadzone, who wants to help fund it?" And the community said "wait a cotton picking minute, I'm waiting on Dreadball stuff to arrive." So Mantic sat down and explained all of the above again, and the community decided actually Mantic were doing things correctly, and funded Deadzone. In all the time Mantic have asked for Kickstarter funding, they have never massivekly missed their shipping tagets.

Then there was a company called Wyrd. Wyrd had a game, called Malifaux, and it was popular. But Wyrd wanted to expand their company and said to the community, "we want an Evil Baby Orphanage." So the community said what a great idea, and it funded EBO, and the community recieved their products earlier than expected. Wyrd then said, "we want a Malifaux roleplay game. However we cannot fund this without your support," and the community said yes.And everything was going well, then after six months Wyrd diverted some of the staff that the Kickstarter had funded for Through the Breach, towards developing M2E. And then Through th Breach missed its completion target by twelve months, because Wyrd decided to divert its funding elsewhere.

Now I have no real love for Mantic, I have played one of their games once (a demo of Dwarf Kings Hold, with Ronnie at TWG.) I think their models look garbage, and whiklst I want to play Kings of War, I want to do so, when I get around to painting their models. Which look garbage, so they shift to the back of the queue. Wyrd on the otherhand, I am technically employed by, I love their Malifaux universe to pieces, EBO is one of my favourite games, and despite a v1 preference, I am really lookign forward to playting more M2E. But I know which one of the two game companies acted out of hand, and I know which of the two I trust to deliver products on time.