I used to quite like browsing KS in the early 10s. I didn't fund that many projects as I got burned by a couple, and a couple more were pretty underwhelming, but I used to like browsing it to see what innovative ideas people had (often my favourite were too far out of the norm, so never got funded). Nowadays I see ads for Kickstarter and other crowd funding sites popup in my feeds quite a lot. The product is often in…
The Cole-Bar Hammer, a 7-year old Kickstarter that is still going
81–90 of 110 posts
Re: The Cole-Bar Hammer, a 7-year old Kickstarter that is still going
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was writing a comment asking what's the point of a lighter hammer, then I realized that a lighter hammer you can swing faster is actually exponentially more effective than a heavier hammer. KE = 1/2mv^2 babe! Physics, bi*ch! :)
Do you definitely want to transfer kinetic energy more than momentum? I reckon a lighter hammer swung faster is more likely to end up with a bent nail. Also, exponential would be 2^v. v^2 is quadratic. (And you need to sub in the F=ma part as well to demonstrate your point, so your gain from the lighter hammer should be less than quadratic. Exercise left to the reader.)
Re: The Cole-Bar Hammer, a 7-year old Kickstarter that is still going
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the king of stringing along backers is still Star Citizen who - 8+ years after the original Kickstarter[1] - are still taking crowdfunding money with no finished product in sight. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen
It's not fair to say SC doesn't have a product. They have an alpha that's fun to mess around in and gets big updates 4x a year. There are plenty of games that cost $60+ that are worse than SC for $45 and the promise of bigger updates. If CIG folds after a decade, that's not a scam... that's just a mismanaged studio. CIG has delivered a product. You can judge whether it is a good product, but they have delivered and c…
They've spent nearly 10 years and close to half a billion dollars, and all they've produced is a glorified model viewer with some extremely buggy and half-baked gameplay mechanics tacked on. There is no visible progress towards a viable MMO or indeed of server instances supporting more than ~30 concurrent players without breaking in bizarre ways.
>If CIG folds after a decade, that's not a scam... that's just a mismanaged studio
It became obvious years ago to anyone but the wilfully ignorant that CIG are incapable of delivering, and to continue to take people's money in this circumstance is indefensible. If they cannot deliver they should gracefully admit it and refund backers and investors as much as possible. Instead they continue to pump out new ship models while making no progress towards core tech required to actually deliver something resembling the game they promised.
>CIG has delivered a product. You can judge whether it is a good product, but they have delivered and continue to deliver.
That is the problem - they continue to deliver eye candy to attract new victims, but nothing of substance. Star Citizen is vapourware with just enough bait to keep luring gullible whales into dropping cash on ship models.
Re: The Cole-Bar Hammer, a 7-year old Kickstarter that is still going
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
$363,500,000 and no finished product. LOL, Jesus Christ if this isn't proof-positive that Modern Monetary Theory has corrupted everything I don't know what is...
$300MM isn't even an absurdist number for a AAA game [0]. Cyberpunk 2077 single-player was $121MM and they have multiplayer planned so probably add another $50MM - $60MM on top, if not more. I have no doubt that GTA 6 and Elder Scrolls 7 will both come near or break $300MM. $300MM is an absurd amount, but that's just where the market is headed; big and expansive games. I am not defending CIG necessarily but scoffing…
I find it interesting that there are currently zero Bethesda games on the list despite their fairly broad scopes, which is... telling, considering the reputation of their games. That said, I have doubts that ES6 will hit $300M. Maybe ES7 as you say, but that's not the next Elder Scrolls game.
Re: The Cole-Bar Hammer, a 7-year old Kickstarter that is still going
#85I go into Kickstarter and IGG and friends with the view that I want to contribute a small sum of money to see something realized. If you take a good crack at it and eat the money, that's okay. After all, I gave you like $200. It's not the end of the world.
Where's my $200?
Re: The Cole-Bar Hammer, a 7-year old Kickstarter that is still going
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not fair to say SC doesn't have a product. They have an alpha that's fun to mess around in and gets big updates 4x a year. There are plenty of games that cost $60+ that are worse than SC for $45 and the promise of bigger updates. If CIG folds after a decade, that's not a scam... that's just a mismanaged studio. CIG has delivered a product. You can judge whether it is a good product, but they have delivered and c…
>They have an alpha that's fun to mess around They've spent nearly 10 years and close to half a billion dollars, and all they've produced is a glorified model viewer with some extremely buggy and half-baked gameplay mechanics tacked on. There is no visible progress towards a viable MMO or indeed of server instances supporting more than ~30 concurrent players without breaking in bizarre ways. >If CIG folds after a dec…
Re: The Cole-Bar Hammer, a 7-year old Kickstarter that is still going
#87https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tangibleinstruments/arp...
'Tangible instruments' have a product 'ready to ship. Turns out to be an empty case. Essentially spent all the investment money, but didn't get ownership of the hardware design from the ee they contracted so had to start again. Still no product, and years after it was due to ship it's been superseded in terms of functionality by products available in the marketplace.
Re: The Cole-Bar Hammer, a 7-year old Kickstarter that is still going
#88Kickstarter campaigns are basically the modern day infomercials. It’s all about having the perfect pitch video and impressive tram bios, getting shallow pro-forma coverage in all the tech blogs, and then name-dropping them all in order to bolster your image (along with the obligatory credulous pull quotes). Make sure your social media team keeps putting out updates, and don’t forget to add some ridiculous stretch goa…
You mean "home shopping", like on TV where you call "right now" and you get useless stuff... Kickstarter is purely a marketing business, many backers still don't understand it. The client is the project creator, not the backers. Since Kickstarter makes money on successful marketing campaigns. Apparently, they are still doing well https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats Good for them. I will never back anything on that…
Re: The Cole-Bar Hammer, a 7-year old Kickstarter that is still going
#89I go into Kickstarter and IGG and friends with the view that I want to contribute a small sum of money to see something realized. If you take a good crack at it and eat the money, that's okay. After all, I gave you like $200. It's not the end of the world.
> After all, I gave you like $200. It's not the end of the world. Where's my $200?
Re: The Cole-Bar Hammer, a 7-year old Kickstarter that is still going
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
>They have an alpha that's fun to mess around They've spent nearly 10 years and close to half a billion dollars, and all they've produced is a glorified model viewer with some extremely buggy and half-baked gameplay mechanics tacked on. There is no visible progress towards a viable MMO or indeed of server instances supporting more than ~30 concurrent players without breaking in bizarre ways. >If CIG folds after a dec…
There's plenty of $60 games released that have less substance than Star Citizen. You can argue whether the product is worth the price as it stands, but it's clearly marketed as a work in progress, with no unrealistic promises made. You, like several others, seem to be blaming it for not being something it does not claim nor aspire to be. I haven't bought it, but I just might when it can be run well enough on Linux, w…
There's plenty of similarly priced or cheaper games which have far more substance (in terms of delivered scope, not promised scope).
>but it's clearly marketed as a work in progress, with no unrealistic promises made
Star Citizen's kickstarter originally promised to release in 2014/15 [1], and they continue to push back that date with no end in sight. This behaviour is literally illegal in my jurisdiction - there are reasonable exceptions for things outside the supplier's control, but scope creep is not one of them.
>You, like several others, seem to be blaming it for not being something it does not claim nor aspire to be.
I mean, they've claimed to be able to deliver a game and have failed pretty spectacularly at that. They claimed to deliver an accurate flight model which accounts for centre of mass, individual thrusters, etc. and as I understand the current flight model is basically "noclip mode but with collisions". They've sold so many ships for various lifestyles (journalism etc.) but show no progress towards even a vague idea of how those game mechanics would work, let alone implementing them. User created content and modding tools, land claims, private servers, all have been promised and then silently dropped in favour of spruiking newer and shinier ship models. They've claimed to deliver a universe of star systems and are still manually grinding out content for the first star system.
> I haven't bought it, but I just might when it can be run well enough on Linux, with limited expectations on my part
I'd advise you hold off until they deliver something close to a finished game, or even just hit beta, but you do you.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20121019000754/http://www.kickst...