Two long dormant kickstarters that I pledged updated yesterday and it's amazing how differently things went. The first one was the Ascension Online kickstarter. It's been 16 months since the campaign ended for it and all they've released was a buggy beta for the pc. Since the goal of the drive was to get the game on the android os it's pretty much been a failure. Amazingly enough their update made it worse. You see they announced that they were going back to having the app be developed by Playdek, the people who did the original ios app.
Backers are angry. Very angry.
It seems that lots of people backed this kickstarter because of the spit with Playdek. They wanted to support Stoneblade's in house development. With the return to Playdek they're understandably upset. They're calling for people to report the campaign, for refunds or additional content free of charge. They're looking for digital blood.
The other kickstarter I pledged that updated yesterday was a completely different story. It was for Victor Gischler to write a sequel to his gloriously trashy novel Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse. It ended almost two years ago and there's been no book. His update apologized, promised refunds to everyone, and promised copies of the book when it's done to everyone as well.
Almost everyone in the comments for his update have said to keep the money. Most of the ones who haven't advocate spending the refund on more of his books. Most importantly they're all supporting him.
So why? Is just because they're getting their money back? I don't think so. I think it's because Gischler is taking responsibility and being proactive about what he can do. And most importantly he's engaging his backers directly. He's always been extremely accessible, often responding to tweets from random people he doesn't know (like me) about things he's working on. He's built a community of people who's response to "it's not done yet" was "keep writing and let us know".
Stoneblade has been much more corporate, and they likely have to be, but that has never bought anyone any goodwill. It just makes people think you should have your ducks in a row, and eliminates the slack you might otherwise get.
I suppose at this rate it's hard to say if I'll get my book or my game first. But I know which one I'm willing to wait longer for.
