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If the last 30 years is anything to go by, MD won't actually release anything in Boardgame form.

guru wrote:

Dear backers,

We want to comunicate our decision of stoping the campaign were you had pledged: ‘Heroquest 25th Anniversary’

The urge to publish the project by the authors today sunday 8 at 1 am has precipitated it’s publication without being able, the team of verkami, to spend the right time to review the project.

After carefully studying the campaign, we believe that the content of the project could be misleading to our users.

Your pledges will be cancelled so no charges will be made in your card or PayPal account.

We thank you for your trust, and we want to apologize for any inconvenience our handling of the project might have caused.

Verkami team

I give up. If this thing ever makes it to retail I'll import it in - until then i'm going to hop off this roller coaster ride :(

Well, GZ really fethed that up, didn't they?

Yes, bit of a train-crash really.

What a shame :(

GameZone misleading .... Shock and horror!

It's done finished they've messed this up so badly now I found it interesting that nearly all the Verkami backers last night seemed to be Spanish based going off the shipping destinations selected International backers staying away.

Hasbro and GW don't need to do anything GZ is more than capable of getting their own project shut down by themselves.

 Smacks wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Ugh.

You're not... serious, are you?

Well this is probably a discussion for off-topic, but since it's you (and since no one likes me there...)

I'm fairly serious. For example the U.S. farm subsidy program, cost taxpayers nearly $20 billion in 2007. A Cato Institute study found that, two-thirds of the subsidies went to the richest 10 percent of recipients. Recipients include Ted Turner, and former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay. A later study found that around 93 billion was wasted on corporate subsidies.

It's almost like people with money and influence... are influencing legislation... to get themselves... more money.

People with no money usually have zero influence, so I think the addition of laws is less likely to send nice things their way. I'm certain in a lawless world I could beat up Donald Trump and steal his stuff, so I stand by original statement.

Yeah, that whole 'civilization' thing never really worked out in the end, did it?

Anyway...

...maybe Gamezone should go the "STRONGLY INSPIRED BY..." route, and relaunch on, dare I say it, Kickstarter?

 judgedoug wrote:

Joyboozer wrote:
So, are we just going to end up with a rushed version of "heroquest" released by whoever actually own it, to take advantage of its sudden popularity?
I'd much prefer someone who actually gave a gak had control.

Nah, we'll get Moon Design's awesome HeroQuest board game in the Glorantha universe, complete with a paper mat and chit counters (to represent anthropomorphic ducks, of course) and an awkward dated ruleset (to retain the system's clunky flavor from the RPG)

Or, to put it another way...

guru wrote:

Dear backers,

We want to comunicate our decision of stoping the campaign were you had pledged: ‘Heroquest 25th Anniversary’

The urge to publish the project by the authors today sunday 8 at 1 am has precipitated it’s publication without being able, the team of verkami, to spend the right time to review the project.

After carefully studying the campaign, we believe that the content of the project could be misleading to our users.

Your pledges will be cancelled so no charges will be made in your card or PayPal account.

We thank you for your trust, and we want to apologize for any inconvenience our handling of the project might have caused.

Verkami team

So Moon Design had nothing to do with this being shut down, it was all Verkami's doing. Man, what a train wreck...

Maybe Verkami should have consulted with the Dakka posters who assure everyone there's nothing misleading at all here . Okay, cheap shot, sorry... But that's another company passing up their share of the profits in order to not be involved with this.

At this point, "HQ25" is having serious trouble, but as judgedoug says, making HQ compatible parts would avoid all issues and any possibility of confusion / misleading backers (Verkami's term). Heck, I'd even back that now. Hopefully they think things through a little more next time... Something like that would be much better for everybody at this point, imo. Or at least, much more likely to be able to be run as a campaign for more than a few days

I wonder if they could get around the issues by selling Heroquest Dungeon Crawl Miniatures, then having stretch goals that add things like he board.

 Alpharius wrote:

I'm certain in a lawless world I could beat up Donald Trump and steal his stuff, so I stand by original statement.

Yeah, that whole 'civilization' thing never really worked out in the end, did it?

Anyway...

...maybe Gamezone should go the "STRONGLY INSPIRED BY..." route, and relaunch on, dare I say it, Kickstarter?

Haha that's awesome! . I think it worked out pretty well for Donald Trump evidently! Is this really the end though? Is the civilization process now complete?. In the grand game of err... Civilization (tm). Are we just one Starbucks away from achieving the coffee-house critical mass victory condition. One day we just all wake up to the words 'A winner is you!' printed across the sky, before the universe is reset, and we are replaced with an 8-bit high score table. The word AAA_ being the only lasting testament to how badly we 'pwned' dolphins.

On topic... I was also curious as to why the '#4 change the name' option was not considered. There have been loads of games that had their names changed because of IP issues, and they went on to be very popular. Wasn't Space Crusade supposed to be Star Quest?. They should have called it Hero Crusade 25th to keep with tradition!

I wonder how many people would really have been turned off by it loosing its pedigree? They could even have blamed the whole thing on Moon Design, and reaped all the free Hero Quest publicity and come out shining. Though it seems too little too late now.

I admit it would be a shame to see the nice logo go to waste, but it's better than the whole project folding. I was also really hoping that the remaining 20% missing from the box art was orthodontic work for the barbarian. Every time I look at him I think about Peter Pettigrew on steroids.

I'm beginning (!) to see why you might have problems down there in that oh so problematic section of Dakka Dakka!

Anyway - what a gut punch for GZ this all turned out to be!

They go from 500K in a few days and on their way to at least a couple of million to... this?!?

A bit more up front work and making sure of things, and they would have really been set up nicely for years to come.

What a disaster...

 Alpharius wrote:
I'm beginning (!) to see why you might have problems down there in that oh so problematic section of Dakka Dakka!

Anyway - what a gut punch for GZ this all turned out to be!

They go from 500K in a few days and on their way to at least a couple of million to... this?!?

A bit more up front work and making sure of things, and they would have really been set up nicely for years to come.

Not to mention the fact that they've already sunk a fair bit of money into the project (not to mention time) - you have to worry how much this eats into the rainy day fund of a fairly niche company.

Hero Crusade actually is a pretty cool title. Could have a grimdark world overrun by monsters and only being held back by a generation of heroes born for the purpose. You take a band of such heroes as they heroquest and slowly eat away at the monstrous hordes and the evil villains who lead them.

Maybe they should try out a new revolutionary type of crowdfunding ... called preorder

Just having a quick look around for further information now most of this has come through google translate (French and Spanish) but the jist of it is there.

It seems that this will not be returning to Verkami. Verkami are not satisfied with the work GZ have done to date and require a more developed prototype and more time (another 10 days or so) to analyse the project before they might let it proceed. This seems to be where the "misleading" part of Verkami's statement came from. They are also concerned with how the KS ended and any reputational damage they themselves might suffer if it proceeds and then crash and burns later.

GZ are looking for another European based crowd funding platform to host this ASAP as in today or tomorrow.

There seems be a serious desparation by GZ to get this going and funded makes me wonder why they have to do it right now, why not go off spend a month or so sorting everything then relaunch with all the i's dotted and t's crossed would a months delay really prevent them from launching next December. Seriously who will back this now if 2 crowd funding platforms have already dropped it.

I'd suspect they've put enough time/money in that not to successfully fund in the next month or two may well sink the company

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I'd suspect they've put enough time/money in that not to successfully fund in the next month or two may well sink the company

Agreed, or it will at least put them in dire straits. Gamezone is a small niche company and they've invested a lot in this Kickstarter. I hope they realize that if the Heroquest thing isn't going to work out for them, they should at least release components of it (eg, the monsters they've sculpted) in order to break even or make a small profit on this ordeal.

If nothing else, I think they can still email from the Kickstarter which may get a bit of a bump.

They should just set up a pre-order for the thing on their site at this point.

Some Spanish posters here earlier also seemed to think GameZone is a bit on the ropes financially. I'm sure they'll get some backers no matter how they run this... Defiance raised 50k with almost no credibility, and obviously GameZone has a much better reputation than them. But clearly this particular project of theirs is a bit of a question, at least as far as the crowdfunding sites are concerned.

If a lot of the 3D modeling is already done, paying that artist is where a chunk of change was already spent.

If another company approached GZ and bought the renders from them, they could possibly produce the models (if they were good enough).

There is half a million dollars sitting on a table somewhere, ready for someone to figure out how to get it.

Maybe we should all write Hasbro and convince them to do it legit retail.

 DaveC wrote:
GameZone misleading .... Shock and horror!
It's done finished they've messed this up so badly now I found it interesting that nearly all the Verkami backers last night seemed to be Spanish based going off the shipping destinations selected International backers staying away.
Hasbro and GW don't need to do anything GZ is more than capable of getting their own project shut down by themselves.

Well, to be fair, we don't know if they were torpedoed again by MD on the QT. There was a rather unsubtle threat that they had been selling their Heroquest RPG in Spain...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

decker_cky wrote:

Hero Crusade actually is a pretty cool title.

There we are. Hero Crusade/Hero's Crusade - retitle it, put it on KS, and away you go!

 RiTides wrote:
But that's another company passing up their share of the profits in order to not be involved with this.

You misspelled "litigation".




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Smacks wrote:
I was also curious as to why the '#4 change the name' option was not considered.

Money. You know there are plenty of dungeoncrawlers out there, but how many can you name that are made by one-man shops -- or were KS projects?

Half a million CAD in three days is a *lot* of money.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

decker_cky wrote:
Not to mention the fact that they've already sunk a fair bit of money into the project (not to mention time) - you have to worry how much this eats into the rainy day fund of a fairly niche company.

IIRC, They only showed renders.

Quote from Madadventures.com: "A Spanish website published an interview with GameZone (which was roughly translated on this thread on BoardGameGeek) in which they said that they do not have any agreement with Hasbro to produce the game, even the Spanish division of Hasbro. This is a dramatic turn from what they had said in their previous statements, indicating that GameZone may be flip-flopping. Additionally, the interview also noted that GameZone believes that they do not need a trademark or agreement with Hasbro to produce a 25th Anniversary Edition of HeroQuest, as they believe a commemorative edition does not borrow from the previous intellectual property (IP). "

http://www.madadventurers.com/gamezones-heroquest-kickstarter-debacle-continues/

ced1106 wrote:

decker_cky wrote:
Not to mention the fact that they've already sunk a fair bit of money into the project (not to mention time) - you have to worry how much this eats into the rainy day fund of a fairly niche company.

IIRC, They only showed renders.

If you can point me to a free digital sculptor that does that level of quality, I'd love to see it.

 Cyporiean wrote:


If you can point me to a free digital sculptor that does that level of quality, I'd love to see it.

RENDERS is an investment. 3D artists who make models which can be printed and cast takes skill, and they can make hundreds of dollars per render at the low end. So if they had renders for 15 heroes and 20+ monsters and so on, that could have been thousands of dollars already paid to a professional artist.

I have seen renders made, but a company fail to produce them and then the renders find themselves to another model producer. So it is not unheard of for these to find their way to another producer if GZ needs to salvage some money if this project dies.

ced1106 wrote:http://www.madadventurers.com/gamezones-heroquest-kickstarter-debacle-continues/

Nothing new in the article aside from some further confusing of issues:

Looking at their site, one can see various factions like Dwarves and Elves, however they also have a faction called “Chaos”. This again seems another case of being rather close to the Chaos faction miniatures that are produced as part of the Warhammer fantasy world by Games Workshop. I am not sure what GameZone’s company policies and mission are, but it would seem that they may be rather ignorant (or simply do not care) about the concept of Intellectual Property.

Ignorant comment about intellectual property that accuses a company of being ignorant about the concept of intellectual property. Good stuff.

edit: Sorry for the misrepresentation RTides.

I didn't post that link, you messed your quote tags up

Edit: No problem

decker_cky wrote:

ced1106 wrote:http://www.madadventurers.com/gamezones-heroquest-kickstarter-debacle-continues/

Nothing new in the article aside from some further confusing of issues:

Looking at their site, one can see various factions like Dwarves and Elves, however they also have a faction called “Chaos”. This again seems another case of being rather close to the Chaos faction miniatures that are produced as part of the Warhammer fantasy world by Games Workshop. I am not sure what GameZone’s company policies and mission are, but it would seem that they may be rather ignorant (or simply do not care) about the concept of Intellectual Property.

Ignorant comment about intellectual property that accuses a company of being ignorant about the concept of intellectual property. Good stuff.

How dare they use Michael Moorcock's--err... Games Workshop's... yeah... concept of Chaos!

 judgedoug wrote:

decker_cky wrote:

ced1106 wrote:http://www.madadventurers.com/gamezones-heroquest-kickstarter-debacle-continues/

Nothing new in the article aside from some further confusing of issues:

Looking at their site, one can see various factions like Dwarves and Elves, however they also have a faction called “Chaos”. This again seems another case of being rather close to the Chaos faction miniatures that are produced as part of the Warhammer fantasy world by Games Workshop. I am not sure what GameZone’s company policies and mission are, but it would seem that they may be rather ignorant (or simply do not care) about the concept of Intellectual Property.

Ignorant comment about intellectual property that accuses a company of being ignorant about the concept of intellectual property. Good stuff.

How dare they use Michael Moorcock's--err... Games Workshop's... yeah... concept of Chaos!

And, ironically, RuneQuest, the game that used to be Glorantha's system, which had Chaos before GW even existed....

Even Ral Partha had Chaos warriors before GW....

But then... we are talking about a company that has tried to claim 'fur', 'Roman numerals', 'halberds', 'skulls', 'Space Marines', and 'grenade launchers' as IP... so it is not beyond the scope of reality for GW to try and do something daft.

Something to bear in mind - MD has a TM on the RPG[/] HeroQuest - not a board game. Cutting close, I will admit, but I think that MD is relying more on the matter [i]not making it to court, rather than thinking that it is as clean cut as they are presenting.

International IP law is a tangled mess - and with this we have Spain, the US, and the UK all with fingers in the pie.

I cannot fault Kickstarter - they really have no reason to care who is right or who is wrong, they don't want to be named as a party in any lawsuit that follows.

Verkami... harder to say - they may just want to be left out of this as well.

I think, however, that it is very unlikely that there would be any confusion between a very good board game and a really crappy RPG. (Not a fan of HeroQuest - I own a copy, read it through, and wished that I had not spent the money on it - the game was an enormous let down after the excellent RuneQuest RPG. Or after the very good HeroQuest boardgame, for that matter.)

At this point, rebranding the game seems the only viable option for Gamezone - which is a shame.

DungeonQuest is already used, AdventureQuest is used, Heroes' Journey, perhaps?

The Auld Grump - I will say that I will never buy anything from Moon Design at this point, I may like Glorantha, and the Glorantha book may be systemless... but I will not put money into Stafford's pocket.

Hey Gamezone, there's always Cuba
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=71056

 Dullspork wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:

Joyboozer wrote:
So, are we just going to end up with a rushed version of "heroquest" released by whoever actually own it, to take advantage of its sudden popularity?
I'd much prefer someone who actually gave a gak had control.

Nah, we'll get Moon Design's awesome HeroQuest board game in the Glorantha universe, complete with a paper mat and chit counters (to represent anthropomorphic ducks, of course) and an awkward dated ruleset (to retain the system's clunky flavor from the RPG)

Or, to put it another way...

You could say that. Of course, you could also say that Runequest hasn't been relevant since Nineteen Eighty NEVER. Seriously, the only reason people are even referencing Gloran-fething-whatever is because it managed to leech itself on something that people give two farts about. Aside from two dudes living in Moon Design's mom's basement, no one cares about ducks, broos or any of their other stupid crap.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:

decker_cky wrote:

ced1106 wrote:http://www.madadventurers.com/gamezones-heroquest-kickstarter-debacle-continues/

Nothing new in the article aside from some further confusing of issues:

Looking at their site, one can see various factions like Dwarves and Elves, however they also have a faction called “Chaos”. This again seems another case of being rather close to the Chaos faction miniatures that are produced as part of the Warhammer fantasy world by Games Workshop. I am not sure what GameZone’s company policies and mission are, but it would seem that they may be rather ignorant (or simply do not care) about the concept of Intellectual Property.

Ignorant comment about intellectual property that accuses a company of being ignorant about the concept of intellectual property. Good stuff.

How dare they use Michael Moorcock's--err... Games Workshop's... yeah... concept of Chaos!

And, ironically, RuneQuest, the game that used to be Glorantha's system, which had Chaos before GW even existed....

Even Ral Partha had Chaos warriors before GW..../quote]

My first D&D character (who was an elf. that's, right suckas, race and class all in one!) was Chaotic.