Shroud Of The Avatar - Shit Went Persistent

This is not advertising. Advertising says, HEY! look at me! and that's it. The moment money changes hands it becomes a sale, if the buyer is receiving goods at the time of purchase; or in this case, an investment. A sale of goods has a lot more protection for the buyer than an investment. However, a solicitor of investors can still be found guilty of fraud.

Just because someone branded a public capital raising scheme with a nifty logo, does not suddenly make it exempt from legal recourse.

Perhaps I'm missing something but with Kickstarter and really the whole concept of crowdsourcing is it really 'investing', or is it more like preordering vaporware with no refund recourse? That's the part I have issues with, as well as the methodology and lack of oversight.

Venture capital is a risk/reward paradigm. Crowdsourcing is just 'donations' with the hope something will come out of it, but without the oversight or real accountability of real investment.

A donation is a gift of money with no expectation of a return. These kickstarter campaigns aren't really soliciting donations when they they have long lists of items that correspond to specific levels of funding. Even a PBS fund raiser could get into trouble if they failed to deliver all those mugs and tote bags.

There are only two situations I see where a person could go after someone heading a kickstarter project.

1. The project is completed successfully, but the person does not get what was promised in their funding tier.

2. The project fails with any amount of kickstarter funds left over. This would be hard to prove without some sort of audit. Not to mention all the other crowd sourcey type people would be fighting to get a piece of what was left.

This shit is a scam and only retards are donating to these sorts of projects. If you donated to this shit you just gave your likely hard-earned money to some rich asshole who is looking for the easiest and simplest way for his vision to become the reality without him having to put any skin in the game. Not only did you give him that money but you are gaining nothing out of it. You are an investor but you have no organization, no rights, and no ability to do anything.

Kickstarter has turned into a place where the rich and famous are allowed to freely scam retarded losers.

Pancreas_sl said:

This is not advertising. Advertising says, HEY! look at me! and that's it. The moment money changes hands it becomes a sale, if the buyer is receiving goods at the time of purchase; or in this case, an investment. A sale of goods has a lot more protection for the buyer than an investment. However, a solicitor of investors can still be found guilty of fraud.

Just because someone branded a public capital raising scheme with a nifty logo, does not suddenly make it exempt from legal recourse.

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Are you gonna file a class action when someone scams this system? Some lawyer somewhere probably will. And they will probably make some fine (and true) legal arguments which honestly have fuck all to do with anything that's actually happening.

This is advertising. It's just begging, dude. If you're concerned that he's just gonna go buy some mad-dog then don't give the wino twenty bucks. It ain't the wino's fault.

It's not the job of the courts to insure this kind of shit. I'd rather they spend their time with what you might call crime.

Edit: I've got nothing wrong with the idea itself -- someone could make a name for themselves with this and do some good in funding small enterprise. Or it could just be an old grift with a new face. I think it's a fine idea. Maybe someone can make it work.

I didn't donate to this project, and I wouldn't. I gave it a once over and it looks tired before it's even started. However, fraud IS a crime. And anyone who takes the money and runs, no matter what venue they choose to operate in, is liable for penalties.

And don't worry about civil cases taking up the courts time as opposed to REAL crime. Criminal cases always get preference when scheduling is concerned.

Neogaf is having a "kickstarter" is the devil thread that might be a relevant read for some.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=528903

Its starting to seem getting around the "no fund my life","no charity", or other personal gains are being circumvented by creating low target kickstarters, which get massively overfunded, by abusing good will.

My favorite part of that Kickstarter is that it's for a 9 year-old to go to RPG Camp and one of the rewards is a "Can Koozie" that says "I drink like a girl.... keep up!"

Caliane_sl said:

Neogaf is having a "kickstarter" is the devil thread that might be a relevant read for some.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=528903

Its starting to seem getting around the "no fund my life","no charity", or other personal gains are being circumvented by creating low target kickstarters, which get massively overfunded, by abusing good will.

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That is an amazingly shitty KS "project". I've reported it, as apparently have many others. Just reinforces for me how stupid people are. I'm seriously thinking up how to help my wife's business with KS. I was looking around a lot of the KS projects and some are so insanely stupid (and overfunded) I know there's a way to for actual real shit to have SOME chance (no matter how small).

Should rename this thread...

I just can't listen to someone who paid to go to fucking outer space, and needs kickstarter for 1m.

Garriot is over on Reddit doing a little Q & A, some that I found interesting:

-]PsychoKuros 605 points 18 hours ago

How did it feel getting killed by Rainz in UO?

perma-link

[-]RichardGarriott 615 points 18 hours ago

RAINZ!!!! Some day I will get my revenge! When it happened, I was in shock and disbelief. I did not know what to do. I could no longer speak. I could not resurrect myself. I was in my office alone. Fortunately someone in QA could see me and resurrected me. Then the team, decided to kill everyone, as we did not know yet that it was Rainz.

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[-]RichardGarriott 144 points 17 hours ago

Wow, great idea... my team (or at least Chris Spears) will freak out on that one... I do hope we get to the weather stretch goal ($50k to go). If so, I will look into "seasonal" influence as well!

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What a piece of crap, essentially saying go pay more money and you might get to see it! While I sit virgin style on my 100's of millions looking like I have the social skills of an albino sociopath!

Thread here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comment...reator_of_the/

Another read on Kickstarter is for con-arists.
http://www.dailydot.com/business/why...er-ripe-scams/

er... why is this thread in teh mmorpg forum at all?
Even the garriatt project was not a mmo.

I like the new title of the thread even if I didn't come up with it! Caliane, initally it was a posted as a discussion of Garriot projects: UO, Tabula Rasa, and his post that MMO game designers all suck, except for himself.

I don't think kickstarter sucks. I really wish I had a project I could sell where thousands of people would paypal me loads of coin so I could quit my day job!

Garriot has turned into a total douchebage.. Or maybe he always was.

To be honest the Board Game kick starters "kicked" ass.

The only video game project that was worth the money was SolForge but even that wasn't as great as some of the Board Game kickstarers.

Tmac47_sl said:

The title of this thread is misleading/pandering.

Kickstarter sucks in specific instances and its amazing in others.

In time, once people have learned a couple of $100 lessons, you'll probably see more of a vetting process for projects like Garriot's.

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Misleading/pandering? Lighten up nancy.

Tmac47_sl said:

The title of this thread is misleading/pandering.

Kickstarter sucks in specific instances and its amazing in others.

In time, once people have learned a couple of $100 lessons, you'll probably see more of a vetting process for projects like Garriot's.

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I didn't change the title of the thread, I'm guessing a mod/admin did, maybe to be funny. I made it to discuss MMO Design and Garriot's <overinflated> opinion on them and himself.

My opinions on kickstarter are simply my own, and have more to do with the lack of real accountability in crowdfunding, and also the fact the 'kickstarter' company gets such a big kickback.

Anyways, I think crowdsourcing MMO design and opinions is actually a good discussion here. I just wish it wouldn't have taken over this thread which was more about MMO design and making fun of Richard Garriot, Tabula Rasa, and his asshattery.