Goblin Squad Member
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I can't find anywhere which actually makes "don't fund your own project" an official rule of KS...Look here.Granted this quote references credit card rules as the reason. However, up above that:Can I pledge to my own project?
No. Credit card rules forbid project creators from paying themselvesWhy would a project be suspended?
A project may be suspended if it:
• Violates or acts inconsistently with the letter or spirit of the Kickstarter Guidelines or Terms of Use.
...
Hah, I didn't think of looking in the Troubleshooting for the FAQ about it. Good find.
That being said, given that Goblinworks is a separate corporate entity from Paizo, Lisa, or Ryan, it's probably legal for them to donate personal money (or corporate money in the case of Paizo) to the corporate entity of Goblinworks via Kickstarter. In call cases, that's not technically giving money to yourself (and in the case of Vic donating, there's even a bit more separation). That doesn't change your question, though...
So the million dollar question (literally) would be: would Kickstarter consider the above action to be a violation of the "spirit" of the "don't fund your own project rule"? The next question is, would it be worth the risk?
That is really the key question. Does it violate the spirit? I don't know. It's one thing to say "Eh, I'll pull $1000 out of savings and donate it to my project so it'll be funded, and it'll come back to me anyway." It's something else entirely to say "I'm going to take my personal money and give it to a corporation," even if you have total control of that corporation. For better or worse, corps are separate legal entities from the people who run them, and there are restrictions on what you can do with corporate money which don't apply to your own funds.
Contrast with contents, which seem to always exclude anyone who works for the company offering the contest, the one fulfilling it, and anyone dependent on them (or closely related to them). It's a much broader brush of exclusions than KS's "You can't give money to yourself".
That being said, I probably would consider it a spirit violation if it were my call. But I might also consider it worth risking if I were trying to decide to do it.
In another 20 hours, it'll be moot either way.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you look at the KickTraq chart, you can see that in the last three days they've been pulling in almost twice what they were in the days before it... but they're also predicting that it won't even reach $900k, even with that bump taken into account.
That 'prediction' is just the average results per day thus far (around $17,600) times the total number of days in the pledge drive (49). Thus, in this case, it is 'predicting' that the final day will earn only about a third as much as the three preceding days. Which seems unlikely. If it continues on pace it would get to about $920k.
However, Goblinworks is apparently planning a final day announcement for about five hours from now. Which is also when they expect people who check their e-mail at work to start getting the reminder notice that went out two days ago. If they're right about a lot of people not having seen the e-mail yet then we can expect another surge and probable success. That could also happen if the last day announcement contains something that a lot of people would want to pledge for. Either of those scenarios (or both) should be able to put it over the top and seem more likely to me than a few people making really large pledges.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My group and I agree that Goblinworks was a bit greedy on this one. Would have been better to set the goal at $500,000, with stretch goals of $750,000 and $1,000,000. I know that there was some people complaining about a second Kickstarter, but I'm happy they had one. I didn't get an opportunity to invest last time, as money was tight, but I threw what money I could at this thing. The only thing I regret is that when this fails, it will be as if I didn't support it at all. More than anything, I wanted the pride of being a Goblin Squad member, or something. We were really looking forward to playing in the Beta.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It isn't a matter of greed to project your project requirements and set funding goals to meet that requirement. If it would take a million then you ask for a million.
From what I'm seeing, the only thing they're wanting to do is raise money to develop the game faster... somehow. If money develops the game faster by being able to hire additional programmers or developers, then $500,000 would work toward that goal the same a $1,000,000. In fact, they specifically said much faster and much larger, which seems to imply that they can do it faster and larger with less money, or much faster and larger with more money. It's their timeline to set. They could have set a different timeline with a less stringent money requirement.
Maybe greedy was the wrong word to use. Ambitious? They got a bit too ambitious due to the previous success, and set their goals too high, obviously. I wish they had set lower goals, and then set some stretch goals, as I'd rather have a completed Kickstarter with less money, than an incomplete Kickstarter with no money.
My group raised the $500 for a Crowdforger Guild pledge, and I paid an additional $35 just because I had it. Now I'm hoping that, because I selected the Emerald Spire PDF, I can still get my cool Goblin Squad badge for the $35 pledge, as I didn't choose that reward because my guild had already pledged $500, so I've got my early ticket into the game.
Course, I guess that all hinges on the Kickstarter being funded, which isn't looking likely, unless Vin Diesel steps in and saves the day. Or Tim Duncan. Or Jon Favreau. Or any other celebrity gamer that has the money to make some online gaming dreams come true.... quicker.
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Goblin Squad Member
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They've got a wide web spread. I expect an email update today to really get the bar moving in the last 10 hours here. There are a lot of backers, and maybe even people who were waiting for the last day. I think the $ increase we need per backer to get this thing funded is fairly low. Let's get it done!
I am curious though why they picked the 14th as the date since most people get their money they can spend on the 15th?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I put up a chat room to discuss the pathfinder online kickstarter if anyone wants to chat, discuss, or embed the chat room on their own site to get more momentum for this project.
Link is:
http://www.softballcenter.com/news-articles/2010-news/1812-pathfinder-onlin e-chat-room.html
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Goblin Squad Member
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It isn't a matter of greed to project your project requirements and set funding goals to meet that requirement. If it would take a million then you ask for a million.From what I'm seeing, the only thing they're wanting to do is raise money to develop the game faster... somehow. If money develops the game faster by being able to hire additional programmers or developers, then $500,000 would work toward that goal the same a $1,000,000. In fact, they specifically said much faster and much larger, which seems to imply that they can do it faster and larger with less money, or much faster and larger with more money. It's their timeline to set. They could have set a different timeline with a less stringent money requirement.
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Project resources and human resources don't quite work that way. It isn't a matter of throwing money at it and if you throw 90% of the money it happens 10% slower than it would at a million.
It takes a team. Teams have individual members, each of whom has an annual salary and entails specific expenses (tools. training time, orientation time, software licenses, workstations, and similar). If you add only part of that team you create bottlenecks in production and can actually slow things down. So when you think of adding a team to your existing team you have to think of the integral synergy of the whole. I assume GW identified what it would take to achieve a synergistic state with an optimal product flow and the price came out close to a million. Delivering only half of that could under some conditions actually increase the time to delivery.
Ryan stated they had three optimal solutions, each a million higher than the previous. I haven't seen his design or the numbers he used but since the project has been funded it is a sure thing he has those numbers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yep. And I don't want to call my bank and preapprove the transaction until we hit the goal. I'm much more comfortable when able to prearrange things. Waiting until the last minute just feels so... I dunno... sloppy. And nervous.
This thing is really cutting into my productivity today, how about you?
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Goblin Squad Member
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$10,176 an hour.
Still not moving in the right direction.
See: Not Helping.
We can do the math. We know the stakes and how the chips are falling. Having someone crying out every play of a football game on how far your team is behind does NOT inspire morale.
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Goblin Squad Member
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$10,176 an hour.
Still not moving in the right direction.
See: Not Helping.
We can do the math. We know the stakes and how the chips are falling. Having someone crying out every play of a football game on how far your team is behind does NOT inspire morale.
Particularly if that person is fundamentally ignorant of the rules of the game, marking each cry as a bleat of ignorance.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well, its over 7000 backers now and we're just about to cross $900k which is a huge psychological barrier. Getting it down to 5 figures to go is going to feel a lot more doable and will help bring those people in who were sitting on the fence to see if it would happen. Excitement builds at the end of these with everyone seeing if we can pull through. Yeah, productivity will be out the window today.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Math challenges our various states of denial, Ajaxis, and you know how sensitive we are about those.
It has nothing to do with denial. Waruko was the first person I heard say this game might fail. Saying how far we are behind every few minutes is not a morale booster though. Why not go advertise the game instead unless you get off on rooting against us?
I'd guesstimate that Ajaxis is more "glass is half empty" inclined rather than rooting against his fellow Goblin Squad Members. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Andius is right about my "lack of faith" shall we call it and little has changed that throughout this venture. Currently I have nothing nice to say about the KSer. But instead of spreading anything that could negatively hurt morale I'm keeping my mouth shut on that angle. To give a comparison I'm the opposite of Darklord with the exception I don't deal in absolutes.
I understand Ajaxis only wants to inform so I was only pointing out as nicely as my curmudgeon attitude would allow that it was not a morale booster. Seeing the numbers go in the opposite direction however is.
And there is a difference Skeld in saying "STFU" and "You're not helping." One is a command and one is a criticism. The latter being something the Paizo forums has been a place for better or worse since the start. See: Monk Threads.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Paizo's forums have never been a place where it's cool to tell people to keep their comments to themselves.
-Skeld
I remember a few topics where the moderators told people to do just that. Pointless negativity should be kept to yourself on the Paizo forums and everywhere else. It's not inspiring people, it contains no useful suggestion, and therefore it is useless.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I remember a few topics where the moderators told people to do just that. Pointless negativity should be kept to yourself on the Paizo forums and everywhere else. It's not inspiring people, it contains no useful suggestion, and therefore it is useless.Paizo's forums have never been a place where it's cool to tell people to keep their comments to themselves.
-Skeld
We did not just go there again.
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I remember a few topics where the moderators told people to do just that. Pointless negativity should be kept to yourself on the Paizo forums and everywhere else. It's not inspiring people, it contains no useful suggestion, and therefore it is useless.Paizo's forums have never been a place where it's cool to tell people to keep their comments to themselves.
-Skeld
Thanks for your input. :D
-Skeld
CEO
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We had said more than once during this Kickstarter campaign that the real bump comes at the very end. But I would be lying if I didn't think it would happen a bit earlier. Let's just say that I didn't get much sleep on Sunday night. :)
Thanks for hanging with us through this crazy roller coaster ride! And thanks for supporting Pathfinder Online!
Now comes the fun part...making the game!
-Lisa
PS: And NO MORE KICKSTARTERS...PLEASE! :) I think I lost a year of my life to the stress of it!