Well, we didn’t quite make it. Still, this has been a very positive experience for all of us at Move Rate 20. We’ve learned so much about the process. and gotten some great feedback. And to have acquired over 100 backers for our first project tells us that we’re not far off. So, THANK YOU so much to all our supporters, everyone who backed the project, and took the time to like & share our posts, we really appreciate it! Now we’re going to take a little time, apply everything we’ve learned, retool things a bit, then come back with a new & improved campaign later this year. We hope we can count on you all again when that happens, but regardless, thank you all again for everything. We’ll be posting updates on our progress via the Move Rate 20 website, Facebook pages & Twitter (@MoveRate20). In the meantime, enjoy the weather, and we’ll see you all again later in the year!
Happy Gaming!
Best, The gang at Move Rate 20 Games
Will the last 24 Hours of the Kickstarter be as exciting as the first?
Nervously watching the Kickstarter in its final hours
It all comes down to the next 24 hours (where’s Kiefer Sutherland when you need him). We are a little less than $2,500 short of our Kickstarter goal. A long shot? Yes, but we’re not going down without a damn good effort. As I’ve said in earlier posts it’s been a learning experience and I plan on writing a blog post after similar to my “5 Things I Learned About Myself At TotalCon 2016“, but I need to wait to see how the story ends.
Of you are reading this before March 30th 10:00am EST, please got to our Kickstarter page and back us! Share with your friends.!
If we don’t make it, it’s not the end, we’ll take what we learned and revamp, retool and rest the campaign in a few months and try again.
Thank you for your support, no matter how small, it all means a lot!
We got a nice write up about “Master of Spies” on the “Care And Feeding Of Nerds” website. It’s a nice FAQ that allowed us to explain Master of Spies a bit more and the process behind it.
So here we are in the thick of a Kickstarter campaign!
So we’re past the initial rush of launch, the wellspring of support from our family and friends and now we’re into the part of the Kickstarter campaign where the real work begins, getting the world to notice “Master of Spies”. We’re looking at some strategically placed ads, reaching out to gaming websites and even doing some “street-team” canvasing of the local gaming and comic stores around the area. And we, of course, appreciate all the work you guys have done by sharing the project and your helping us to get the word out there!
Our deepest thanks,
Steve R, Steve P, Rob & James
The Move Rate 20 Games Team
After the second day of running a Kickstarter for and Indie Game, you begin to see things you should have done.
Today was, well let’s be honest, a little slow compared to yesterday. But that’s ok, we were expecting ebbs and flow. We are continuing to reach out to our friends in the local indie game community and planning to do some touring of the local (or not so local) gaming stores to carry the banner of Move Rate 20 Games out into the field. If any of you, our supporters, agents and mountebanks, have a local gaming store in the New England area) that would be open to us coming and giving a demo at, let us know and we’ll follow up. In the mean time spread the word, share the Kickstarter so we can all see this game made a reality.
As I said above, I’ve realized that there probably were some steps that we missed along the way to this moment, but there’s nothing we can’t fix with the Kickstarter campaign that can’t be fixed with some good old elbow grease (ew, always an unpleasant mental image for me). We love our little indie game and will do whatever it takes (within reason) to make it a reality.
After a year’s worth of work, the Kickstarter is finally here!
It’s a very exciting day for us here at Move Rate 20 Games as we launch our first (of many, hopefully) Kickstarter campaign. We’ve set what we believe is a very modest goal and reasonable backer levels, since this is our initial delve into crowdfunding.
It’s a momentous moment for us as after this, we will never be Kickstarter virgins again! For now though, we are ready for whatever happens, or as ready as we can be, we hope.
Please be sure to check our our Kickstarter page, back us if you’re interested in playing a fast, fun, quick to learn card game.
Don’t get me wrong, I really don’t want to see the government start to regulate and clamp down on crowdfunding. I’ve personally backed a dozen or so campaigns myself, but there was always that worry, “Am I every really going to see this product?” Fortunately the Kickstarter campaigns I dealt with were on the level and never disappointed me. They did make me wait, but that’s to be expected in the crowdfunding experience. Then you start to hear about these Kickstarter nightmare campaigns. Last year Jyrobike, the auto-balancing bike, launched it’s campaign looking for $100,000 and was quickly funded and exceed its goal, then a month ago I read a story about the inventor. His company’s board of directors, excited about the new influx of cash , started arguing over where the money should go. The inventor said, “To build the Jyro-Bikes every ordered.” The Board didn’t agree, voted the inventor out and never produced the bikes the backers had ordered. Now there’s two tragedies here, one is that the backers, who gave their money in good faith, never received their promised reward, of course. The other is that the inventor, the guy whose name was on the Kickstarter campaign, has had his reputation destroyed . He’ll never be able to run another crowdfunding campaign again.
Kickstarter and The Doom That Came To Atlantic City
I was told the cautionary tale of “The Doom That Came To Atlantic City” by a friend, and now partner in Move Rate 20 Games, who is familiar with the gaming industry. It’s a tale of how the creators of the game, Lee Moyer and Keith Baker, worked in good faith with a “friend?” who would manage their Kickstarter campaign to get it funded. The campaign was a success, hitting $100,000 before even the first month, everyone was thrilled. Then slowly the updates from Erik Chevalier grew more and more infrequent. The backers wanted to know what had happened to the $122+K that had been raised and when would they be getting their game? On June 31st, 2013, a little over a year after the initial Kickstarter, Chevalier posted that the game studio had been shuttered and refunds would be forth coming. (You can read most of the posts here on the original Kickstarter page) Obviously the refunds never came and nothing was heard from Chevalier.
Luckily, Moyer and Baker were rescued by Cryptozoic Entertainment, who agreed to publish the game and provide the backers with the copy of the game they were promised, all out of their own pocket. These guys are the real heroes of this story.
Finally, Justice?
So the FTC charged Chevalier with the failure to produce any of the rewards for the backers and never issuing any refunds. They fined him $111,793, however, it has been suspended due to his current financial situation, ahem…he’s broke. He is also permanently barred from raising money through crowdfunding. So…”yea”…I guess.
What do you think about the FTC getting involved and the punishment they levied against Chevalier? Too soft, too harsh, just right? Leave a comment below and let me know.
