Nemesis: Retaliation and Firefly board games boost Kickstarter competitor Gamefound to record earnings
Consumer appetite for crowdfunding appears to be bigger than ever before
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Consumer appetite for crowdfunding appears to be bigger than ever before
Consumer appetite for crowdfunding appears to be bigger than ever before
The campaign launch follows layoffs at UK-based Steamforged Games
79-year-old Draper is often remembered for his influential early encounters with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and Draper’s early association with Apple Computers is even recognized in the film’s title — “Employee 13.” But the trailer also promises the larger life story of Draper, “an eccentric genius who went from being a penniless hacker to a millionaire and back again.”
What if inventions as big as the internet were envisioned before its time by a brilliant and divergent individual you’ve probably never heard of?
What if someone long overlooked is responsible for inspiring some of the most legendary names in Silicon Valley yet whose notoriety is, oppositely, more synonymous with scandal rather than success?
Employee 13 is an important new film project illuminating the intriguing life and influential achievements of John Draper, also known as “Captain Crunch,” a hacker and inventor with autism.
The campaign says “John’s ability to see what others could not influenced an industry, society and culture,” and argues that his unique perspective in living with autism “enabled his notable discoveries and contributions advancing technology.”
The film is in pre-production, “but we need your help to make it happen.” (And to “shed light on the dim outcome of one brilliant man’s life that was scrutinized without understanding, at a time when autism awareness and support did not exist.”)
A poster for the movie hails Draper as an “OG hacker, internet technology pioneer, and champion for digital privacy.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Tabletop RPGs are a time-intensive hobby, with some gamemasters spending hours setting up the perfect virtual or physical map for the climax of the D&D session. If you’re looking to add a little more pizzaz to your sessions, one Kickstarter will sell you a 3D-printed portal that lets you make your own fog gates, and the effect is pretty impressive.
Black Scrolls Games is one of many companies that sells 3D-printed terrain pieces for D&D campaigns, which are intended for use with grid-based combat, or to simply give your players an idea of the battlefield. However, this Kickstarter also includes portal pieces that hold your phone, which allows you to make a swirling gate effect, or even the fog gates made famous by FromSoftware’s Souls series. They can even be used horizontally for a witch’s cauldron effect. However, you’ll need a 3D printer to make these, so make sure you know that before you back it.
“Act 1” of the Kickstarter includes almost a dozen portals that can be used in various configurations, including one with a pond effect that drains to reveal a dungeon entrance beneath. Very nifty. Act 2 includes at least 4 more, including a particularly impressive tree portal called Summoned Souls. While these pieces aren’t necessary for a great D&D campaign, they’ll definitely have an effect on your party if you’re a GM who pays particular attention to presentation. Backers who commit $45 or more will receive the full set in 3D printer format.
“We will still be shipping all orders that are made through the Mycroft website, because these sales directly cover the costs of producing and shipping the products. However we do not have the funds to continue fulfilling rewards from this crowdfunding campaign, or to even continue meaningful operations.”
The announcement details Mycroft’s long, strange trip, from a hardware-focused partner that couldn’t provide stable hardware to their switch to using off-the-shelf parts — followed by supply chain disruptions (with hefty import and manufacturing fees):
The best plan we could devise to fulfill the remaining campaign rewards was to use the slim margins we have on new sales to cover the increased costs of hardware production. With that plan in mind, we pushed forward and started production. We got plastic injection molds cast. We started printing custom PCBs. We engaged audio engineers to optimize the quality and volume of the sound output. We got the device FCC and CE approved. Many of these steps took multiple iterations to get right, and there are many more things that I’m glossing over. All up this costs — a lot of money. Far more than the total contributions from the campaign, which is why I personally committed so much additional funding. I could see a clear way forward that strengthened Mycroft as a project, as a business, and as a community.
So what went wrong? The single most expensive item that I could not predict was our ongoing litigation against the non-practicing patent entity that has never stopped trying to destroy us. If we had that million dollars we would be in a very different state right now.
With so much of our focus on hardware, and less funding to devote to improving our software — the quality and features available on the Mark II at launch were clearly underwhelming. It is more robust and stable than it has ever been, but this came at the cost of fewer new features. That in turn I believe has resulted in less than flattering reviews, and little mainstream coverage. The hardware itself has proven itself to be a solid base to work from, but without good reviews you get less sales, and without strong sales, the plan doesn’t work.
Thanks to stx23 (Slashdot reader #14,942) for sharing the news.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The group trying to monetize AI porn generation, Unstable Diffusion, raised more than $56,000 on Kickstarter from 867 backers. Now, as Kickstarter changes its thinking about what kind of AI-based projects it will allow, the crowdfunding platform has shut down Unstable Diffusion’s campaign. Since Kickstarter runs an all-or-nothing model and the campaign had not yet […]
Kickstarter shut down the campaign for AI porn group Unstable Diffusion amid changing guidelines by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch