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I miss thon, it had that epic space opera feel to it.

such beauty.

It did feel alot fresher than other recent "new" games including the ubiquitous reboots. I realize that it borrowed heavily from general scifi and mass effect in particular for style but I liked the underlying look and feel of the game which is why it was so frustrating that the creator couldn't see that there was an issue with the price and scale.

scale of the game size or scale of the minis?

I remember some odd process he had, he 3D printed minis at a rather large scale, showed them off and said they would be resized for production. Or something to that effect. It's was quite odd.

It is nice to see he now has such a huge following on facebook. 18k plus potential customers.

If done right, I mean really really right, he could have a huge KS, is he chooses to go the route again.

Was/Is Thon going to be a "multiple squad game" like 40k or more like Infinity/Malifaux with just a handful of figures.

Seeing as there are vehicles I'm assuming similar to the size of 40k.

I've been following this thread, and the KS, for quite a while now.

I never actually backed, although I was tempted once they were forced, almost at gunpoint it seemed, to specify a material.

Now I realise that I would have been a minority backer for this as I don't play games with this sort of figure, not 40K, Infinity, or anything. But I do collect and paint miniatures. And the designs were interesting, I would have loved a small set, preferably a few characters and a single basic troop from a couple of the factions -maybe even all of them.

As I don't game, I had no worries over what scale the actual figures were, but the fact that Scale didn't seem to know what scale they were was a concern, as was the initial confusion over material. I have no terrain for them not to match with, nor do I intend to use them in a game of a different scale - unless I had bought in on enough models to actually make a chess set, and again, I could make the size of that board fit the size of the minis, so no problem there.

Unfortunately, the dithering exhibited by Scale, not changing the main information, etc. has put me off. I did not actually pledge, mainly because as I was going to, the project went into decline and ended up unfunding and eventually being cancelled.

whether I pledge if it re-launches will depend on how well they prove that they have learned from this experience. If they come out and say "It will be made of this material, of this scale. You will be able to pledge for these things, and we have these stretch goals." I will be much more likely to join in and pledge - even if I don't particularly like the material or scale. I can paint well enough that I can enhance soft detail or add it in from scratch if necessary, and as I have already said, odd scales don't bother me. But there is a point for people to consider. People have said that larger minis are easier to paint, and that is not necessarily true. With larger areas to cover, better detail moulded in, they can be harder to paint well. I have seen some attempts to paint Space Marines that look good on a "28mm Heroic" scale that will not translate well to Inquisitor scale. Ok, Tabletop standard or '3 colour minimum' would be relatively easy to do, but larger minis mean more work as a modeller to get looking like they are something special. Again, something that may or may not come into your decision.

But I also understand that I am not their target demographic, and if what I want is not in their KS, then it won't be a great loss to them - except that all I want is good looking minis and clear communication, which I believe every backer wants.

While their communication was not good, the overall negativity this got especially from members for the community who can are part of the industry pushed it from something that could be salvaged to something destined to fail.

People want to rally to something and kickstarter has an inherit fear in it, so they will rally to somebody they feel is important if he is in their minds important and people who are known to have their own companies or be part of one are by default someone to rally.

Personally I did not like the industry's negativity on this project, far more than on projects it should have been like the hardsuits for example, if they wanted to help and there is no indication they didn't they should have done it more on the backstage, I don't say they didn't, I say what they did on frontstage was way to visible.

As far as the project goes, its a valid project, scale is not as important as some people make it to be if it is intended to be its own thing, design is nice enough (although something must be said for Ares boobplates...), communication and clarity needs to be well addressed and lessons from here learned, yes even the "negativity" of the industry I ranted above is valid and should be taken into account too, I am ranting on the way it was expressed, not what it was said.

I feel their format is wrong, they do not need a boxed set and terrain is too much of a drain to have, they should stick to Starter+ rulebook, then add ons and leave terrain to others who specialize for it.

Thing is with blaming the negativity is it clouds over the real reason people were voicing concerns - caution.

It's been about two years since gaming Kickstarters really took off with Zombiecide starting the trend. Since then we've had many fly through News and Rumours and not all of them have ended well. Some of the bigger kickstarters have had no end of problems. We've had Sedition Wars and Relic Knights with the well documented problems with PVC. Mantic and their ever changing concept to sculpt process not to mention more PVC shenanigans. (Such is the frustration with PVC, we've seen The Restic Knigths being formed!) Raging Heroes and their laughable attitude to backers. The ongoing sagas with Robotech and Deliverence games. The Through the Breach debacle. And those are just the ones that spring to my mind. So, after all that, after the mountains of malformed PVC, the out of scale models, the undelivered Kickstarters can you blame people being more cautious and rightly questioning what companies intend to do with their money?

Instead of the "Ooo shiny" effect of the early Kickstarters, piling in with £££ and then receiving a product that didn't meet their expectations of what was promised, people are now being more discerning and looking in detail at what is on offer. They're asking things like what material, what scale, who's sculpting, who's involved. In effect, acting like investors and not magpies.

This behaviour isn't Scale75's fault. However, I think we're perhaps seeing the first signs of a period of Kickstarter maturity. More and more the successful Kickstarters are the ones that have their plans organised, questions answered and an idea that is developed enough to appeal to the average gamer. The days of just stick it out there and people will back are ending.

IF Scale Games had said, from the outset, clearly, that this was a 40mm scale game, and that at £90K funding they would be resin miniatures and if they got to £130K funding they would be in HIPs, then NONE of this would have happened.

The campaign would still be active, and if it wasn't at £90K yet, it would be close, and climbing still.

Alph, IF they'd said that at the outset, they'd probably be around the £130K.

Don't forget, they got over £90K even with the confusion and controversy. If the'y not had that, they could well have gone much higher. And as they closed on the £130K, interest would have increased as more people thought of cheap HIPS figures.

Yeah, that's probably true!

And all of this crumbled due to a convuluted start and a confusing message/front page/etc.

But hopefully lessons learned and all that, and they come back with a better, more focused launch of 'Fallen Frontiers" - I'm looking forward to it!

I think we will be waiting for a while now. Besides, their previous campaign is about 3½ months late by their own admission, so their ability to actually produce anything is in doubt.

 zedmeister wrote:
Thing is with blaming the negativity is it clouds over the real reason people were voicing concerns - caution.

It's been about two years since gaming Kickstarters really took off with Zombiecide starting the trend. Since then we've had many fly through News and Rumours and not all of them have ended well. Some of the bigger kickstarters have had no end of problems. We've had Sedition Wars and Relic Knights with the well documented problems with PVC. Mantic and their ever changing concept to sculpt process not to mention more PVC shenanigans. (Such is the frustration with PVC, we've seen The Restic Knigths being formed!) Raging Heroes and their laughable attitude to backers. The ongoing sagas with Robotech and Deliverence games. The Through the Breach debacle. And those are just the ones that spring to my mind. So, after all that, after the mountains of malformed PVC, the out of scale models, the undelivered Kickstarters can you blame people being more cautious and rightly questioning what companies intend to do with their money?

Instead of the "Ooo shiny" effect of the early Kickstarters, piling in with £££ and then receiving a product that didn't meet their expectations of what was promised, people are now being more discerning and looking in detail at what is on offer. They're asking things like what material, what scale, who's sculpting, who's involved. In effect, acting like investors and not magpies.

This behaviour isn't Scale75's fault. However, I think we're perhaps seeing the first signs of a period of Kickstarter maturity. More and more the successful Kickstarters are the ones that have their plans organised, questions answered and an idea that is developed enough to appeal to the average gamer. The days of just stick it out there and people will back are ending.

Perfectly said.

I'm sure I fall into the... whats the phrasing we're using here? Oh yes. I'm sure I fall into the "culture of negativity" in the eyes of some folks, but really all it is is a desire to be informed, and a desire for the company to whom I'm going to give a free loan to earn my trust.

Scale Games didn't satiate either of my desires very well.

They were obtuse and skirted around both scale and material for far longer than they should have. If that doesn't indicate duplicity (and I don't think it does here) then it means something worse: ill-preparedness and ignorance. There's a lot to be said about a project being run by someone that knows how to run a project. Whether or not that's based on previous KS experience (we've seen this with CMoN and with SDE: Forgotten King, Soda Pop) or having someone that actually is a project manager as their 'other profession,' it makes a huge difference. And for those people that don't have that experience, like Scale...well there is a GLUT of completed and unfunded projects from which to base your project. I mean hell, Guillotine is in Spain, like Scale75. Make a call. Ask for advice. I can't imagine the gaming community in Spain is SOOOO large that some of these people dont run in the same circles.

Then, look at the fact that their previous KS, Duel Fighters, is late (and will be, at minimum, 4 months late) with only 175 backers, and I don't think the question of whether or not they could actually produce resin in this volume is unreasonable. And that just got pushed to the side. I don't know how people could so cavalierly ignore that. To me, it was sort of a big indicator for me of their efficacy to complete the project in a timely manner.

They gave us plenty of reasons to distrust them and the project itself.

Blaming it on "negativity culture" is a huge cop out.

Thinking about it for a few days, from an economics stand point "negativity culture" is really the baseline. We don't spend money on most things we could buy, less than 1% certainly. The fact that Kickstarter works at all, with relatively unknown people asking for money up front to start a project whose planning and execution are unknowable, in exchange for a product you can't see now and won't see for months at best, without any sort of contract enforcing compliance on the part of the people running things, that is amazing. That doesn't generally happen, and the amount of successful KS campaigns that exist is a testament to how fantastically optimistic and positive people in the gaming community are towards those who are starting new things. (One could also argue it is a testament to how much money we are willing to piss down a potential rat hole, but there is enough established stuff on store shelves to spend money on that it can't be the main answer.)

Let's face it, most miniatures KS are run as a pre-order system, and despite the obvious fact that it isn't at all, we all put money into it. That shows a remarkable amount trust and positive thinking on our part. That we have become more discerning over time, not trusting money to people with vague and seemingly poorly run projects is not even a return to the base line, more of a "maybe we should stop going into strangers' panel vans, no matter how much candy is supposed to be inside." How often do you drop 100$s of dollars of cash on a product without at least reading a review or two, seeing it in person, or at least knowing it comes from a manufacturer you have dealt with in the past and trust? I can't think of many things outside of KickStarters where that happens.

If anything the community has a strong "positivity culture" still. A really shocking one in context of how we deal with just about any other group.

I agree with a lot of the above few posts, and I'd like to add one more to the list. Some of us in the industry have started realising that it's in 'our' best interests to start holding kickstarters to a higher standard and to look out for consumers in general not just our own direct customers.

Every kickstarter failure makes the platform look bad and lots of us plan on using it. Every backer who feels screwed is one more backer who may not back our upcoming project.

And please note this has nothing to do with jealousy or competition, I am talking 'any' gaming kickstarter whether or not it's relevant to anything we sell.

And read between the lines, because it also means we 'want' other gaming kickstarters to do well. Every good game helps us as an industry, it helps draw new players into gaming or old players back, it helps expand the money in the hobby and keep gaming stores afloat etc. We all need that.

We don't all sit around hoping failure on our competition, this industry is too small for that in the gand scheme of things.

A second point that this kickstarter in particular brought up is a level playing field. Companies in the boutique end of the market are judged on their products quality, and you 'need' to know the size of a mini to judge it properly. You just can't compare a 54mm mini to a 30mm mini based on what they look like, you 'have' to take their size into account. It is simply physically easier to make better looking models the larger they get.

So when a company lies about the size of their minis to make them smaler they are removing that level playing field. That's not on.

The best result from this kickstarter, from a business point of view, for me personally would have been an honest, well thought out, well sold, well designed 40mm sci-fi game that took off and sold well. Anyone who thinks otherwise is both wrong and woefully ignorant of business.

I think one or two industry "professionals" really embarrassed themselves with their unnecessarily vitriolic attacks on this Kickstarter project.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Aside from that, I think the biggest culprit was probably the language barrier. The broken English made it somewhat difficult for people to be sure exactly what Scale Games had intended to say in many cases.

Albino Squirrel wrote:
I think one or two industry "professionals" really embarrassed themselves with their unnecessarily vitriolic attacks on this Kickstarter project.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Aside from that, I think the biggest culprit was probably the language barrier. The broken English made it somewhat difficult for people to be sure exactly what Scale Games had intended to say in many cases.

Pretty certain 35 means the same in Spanish when written in numbers.

Albino Squirrel wrote:
I think one or two industry "professionals" really embarrassed themselves with their unnecessarily vitriolic attacks on this Kickstarter project.

Do you have any examples of this you can quote?

It's up to the customers to decide whether a company should be punished or not for badly performing in a KS. Imo it should, since it shows lack of respect. If you aren't sure you are up to the task, do not ask for people's money, it's as simple as that.

Personally I've backed 6 projects, 2 of which failed me horribly (one in Spain and one in England, the Spanish one is not Scale-75). I made an oath to myself never to buy or back any crowd-funding campaigns (KS, Indiegogo etc) from these companies ever again. It's a good thing when faith and enthusiasm is handed over, since great things can be accomplished when more and more people work together. The more professionals there are the better for us consumers. As long as they are professionals.

Honestly I find that Scale Games/Scale-75 did well to cancel the campaign at this point (I also hope they are reading this *wave* ). They paid the fact people have become more responsible towards KS creators (me included). They should finish their first KS they have to prove their 175 backers right and form a wider customer base, then go re-sculpt these beautiful minis in 28mm scale, re-paint them, have an Englishman deal with comments etc etc (all of the things mentioned above) and then re-launch. I'm sure this will take some 3-6 months, but that's how things should go if they want to succeed. And I want them to succeed, after all, why not?

Albino Squirrel wrote:
I think one or two industry "professionals" really embarrassed themselves with their unnecessarily vitriolic attacks on this Kickstarter project.

.

Citations, please.

As others have said the honeymoon period is over for Kickstarters. If you are going to bring something to the table you better make sure you have dotted the I's and crossed the T's.

The campaign is over anybody who feels they must attack those who had an opinion during the campaign should get a grip. I'm a big fan of scale games but they did not help themselves if you don't see this then you are kidding yourself on.

Who does it benefit now keeping the comments going if all you are going to do is attack people in the social media certainly not scale games. If you want to help scale games get involved in the FF forums. If you are not going to help them why get involved.

 Pilgrim_uk wrote:
If you want to help scale games get involved in the FF forums. If you are not going to help them why get involved.

Well, the Falling Frontiers forum is almost entirely Spanish, so that won't help most folks here.

Plus, Scale75 made it pretty clear they had people reading Dakka.

I think a discourse about the shortcomings of this project, especially in regards to this mythical "negativity culture" that some folks want to blame the failure on, is important.

 zedmeister wrote:
Thing is with blaming the negativity is it clouds over the real reason people were voicing concerns - caution.

It's been about two years since gaming Kickstarters really took off with Zombiecide starting the trend. Since then we've had many fly through News and Rumours and not all of them have ended well. Some of the bigger kickstarters have had no end of problems. We've had Sedition Wars and Relic Knights with the well documented problems with PVC. Mantic and their ever changing concept to sculpt process not to mention more PVC shenanigans. (Such is the frustration with PVC, we've seen The Restic Knigths being formed!) Raging Heroes and their laughable attitude to backers. The ongoing sagas with Robotech and Deliverence games. The Through the Breach debacle. And those are just the ones that spring to my mind. So, after all that, after the mountains of malformed PVC, the out of scale models, the undelivered Kickstarters can you blame people being more cautious and rightly questioning what companies intend to do with their money?

Instead of the "Ooo shiny" effect of the early Kickstarters, piling in with £££ and then receiving a product that didn't meet their expectations of what was promised, people are now being more discerning and looking in detail at what is on offer. They're asking things like what material, what scale, who's sculpting, who's involved. In effect, acting like investors and not magpies.

This behaviour isn't Scale75's fault. However, I think we're perhaps seeing the first signs of a period of Kickstarter maturity. More and more the successful Kickstarters are the ones that have their plans organised, questions answered and an idea that is developed enough to appeal to the average gamer. The days of just stick it out there and people will back are ending.

Yes and no.

Kickstarter is crap at the end of the day.

A "project" that morphs as the time goes by, the Project manager has no obligation after they receive money, as has been shown more then should be reasonably acceptable by this way of funding, and MOST miniatures projects are experiencing no end of problems because they get wrapped up in their own hype and think they can deliver everything and the moon with a cherry on top.

People can put the blame on negativity, but at the end of the day these projects are victims of their own success. Yeah, some might have good projects, but the dogs in the woods are cutting into your general security when they consistently put up a wiz-bang humdinger project, and then DON'T deliver or give excuse after excuse as to why they cannot finish it.

I'm down with just a straight up game. You put up a project, the figures get made, no excuse, and then we have some fun developing more to evolve the setting. This crap about "Oh I have EVERYTHING and the kitchen sink already DONE, so gives me monies!!!" is laughable, especially when we're seeing someone working it out of their garage, or back room workshop.

THIS KS feels just that way. They might have a good game, but they painted themselves into a corner when they promise a gak load of stuff with no past experience's AT making a game with figures.

A lot of these projects SHOULD be just no questions, I get some funding, and then I make some cash as I put out a great product- NOT I make the product with the lowest common denominator material while I walk off into the sunset with half a million bucks like Sedition wars did, and others who think they are "Game designers" just because they put out a couple of figures and some half written rules sets.

I'm just genuinely burned out on Kickstarter projects that have really just disappointed me with their end state. Longer they take, the longer they finish up with giving me a real feeling of getting gaked on and then I'm supposed to be happy about it.

This is just one players opinion. I'm not pointing the finger at any one game/ game system.

Well, the Falling Frontiers forum is almost entirely Spanish, so that won't help most folks here.

Not the last time I checked it was mostly english, have you been there? And if spanish people do comment they have an english version below it.

Albino Squirrel wrote:
I think one or two industry "professionals" really embarrassed themselves with their unnecessarily vitriolic attacks on this Kickstarter project.

Interesting how critique has somehow become to mean attack in the current culture.

Good news!

SCALE GAMES 5 days ago

We are studying several options. KS and Indiegogo are the crowdfunding options, but there are other options as auto-crowdfunding, or the traditional bank loan...but what it´s sure is that Fallen Frontiers wiil be launched.

What is auto-crowdfunding?

Maybe...raising the funds themselves on their own website?

I won't back it again if it goes IndieGoGo.

I think that would be a terrible decision on their part.

Same here - that not a platform I'm at all interested in using...

Kickstarter would be the most exciting way to go for potential customers. Their presentation wasn't bad. If they can improve on it and stay away from any pitfalls, they should have no trouble funding the endeavor.

How'd their other KS turn out? Looks like it's still outstanding, but I haven't followed it at all.

They canceled their last KS.