The Perfect RPG Kickstarter mess

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The Perfect RPG Kickstarter mess

Luke Crane, famed author of RPGs is also the head of communities at Kickstarter. He is in a position of power within the company since he can influence (if not outright decide) who gets the “games we like” award, which has been proven to be a huge hook for more backers.

Let me see if I have understood this… I just woke up to this news.

He now starts a project on Kickstarter. Uhmm…. OK… that alone is a bit… potentially suspicious and “conflict-interestie”.

And then that project gets awarded the “projects we like” award wich is… well….

C’mon…. That looks bad. Very bad.

Because we have no idea how those awards are given. So, from suspicious, we go to alarmed.

“But Paco” you might say “if he wants to make a project, he should be able!”

“Of course” I would reply. “But not to use some tools unfairly to position yourself above other creators you claim to be at the same level of”.

See? There have been nearly 800 zines in this year’s Zinequest. That is a lot more than I expected.

Some of those zines are from people who have no other way to make their game. The true initial objective of the exitance of KS were these people. And crane is a celebrated author with a paid job who truly doesn’t need the money to make his zine. Or who could create the campaign another time of the year and probably get even more traction.

And who has no business awarding or getting awards awarded without proper transparency.

But this soup-funding doesn’t end here… ohhhhhh no!

Enter Adam Koebel.

Yep… Adam “I am going to perform some rapy shit without warning live during a game” Koebel.

Well, THAT Koebel doesn’t have anything else to do other than to recommend the project on Twitter.

Because Crane didn’t have enough problems.

Also, Koebel was a contributor to the project whose name was left out so not to raise people against them. Holy proverbial cow!

Apparently, Koebel had contributed a short RPG called “it’s symbolic of course” but none of the other contributors were told he was contributing and when the ‘full list’ finally appeared, his name had been relegated to the bottom by dint of the reverse alphabetical order Crane choose to use.

Crane obviously knew Koebel’s name shouldn’t be highlighted. But still thought it ok to include him. I’m speechless. The abuse of his position to make it a Project We Love is bad enough. To then compound it with this is just stupid.

So people, as they are perfectly entitled to do, jumped onto their Twitter accounts and decided to call on Crane’s, Koebel’s and KS’ bullshit because, c’mon…

And now the project is cancelled.

Of course there has been some mentions from creators and sympathisers alike that “cancel culture”. Ohhhh please…

So people, as they are perfectly entitled to do, jumped onto their Twitter accounts and decided to call on Crane’s, Koebel’s and KS’ bullshit because, c’mon…

The morals of the story:

  • Don’t do anything that could make you look like you are abusing your power.
  • Don’t let shitty people get involved in any way because shitty people stain everything they touch with their shit.

 

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