#the fact that this has 36 pages is irrelevant because of the format

[eudico-my-beloved]

waugh

[sammieongames-blog]

An analysis of the unusual funds raised for the "Upstart" Kickstarter project.

A PR company known as the "Woodshed Agency" recently made a post that crossed my news feed: https://medium.com/@jeff_52578/how-a-failed-kickstarter-campaign-told-the-world-half-the-story-and-painted-us-as-crowdfunding-b0582fd11f93 It tells the story of how a campaign that they helped promote had some suspicious pledges in the final 48 hours. The campaign was the "Upstart" board game, run by a company known as "D-cal." This is D-cal's response: http://d-cal.com/2017/12/20/how-a-pr-agency-stole-our-kickstarter-money/ For reference, here is a link to their campaign page. I'll be referring to it throughout this post. http://kickstarter.com/projects/rdacalos/upstart-the-board-game/ Firstly, it seems like the obvious solution is for D-cal to fulfill their commitment to the backers and provide proof of such to Woodshed. Based on Woodshed's blog post, that seems to be the only thing necessary for them to release the funds. How did I come to hear about this? Well, Woodshed's blog post appeared on my news feed. (Thanks, Google.) I took a look at the Upstart project because the incredible funding in the last 48 hours is, well, incredible. For reference, here's the Kicktraq for Rabbit Island, a game I designed that was successful on Kickstarter. https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/playihg/rabbit-island-explore-build-conquer-0/#chart-daily I'll focus on the last 48 hours. While there's an uptick in pledges in the last 48 hours for *any* project, it's usually by people who have been watching the project, and it's approximately the same amount of pledge value as you'll see in the first 48 hours. Now, I'll take a look at the Kicktraq for the Upstart project: https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/rdacalos/upstart-the-board-game/#chart-daily Immediately something looks fishy. D-cal raised 10x the expected amount in the last 48 hours. While rare, it's certainly not unheard of to get a massive popularity flood by someone notable plugging your project. A call to action can definitely spike a project to success. But that's where things start to break down. To emphasize how unusual this is, here's one more comparison, this time focusing on the number of backers: Rabbit Island had 183 backers in the last 48 hours, raising about $6,700. That's approximately $36 raised per backer. (For reference, Rabbit Island was priced at $36 on the campaign page.) Upstart had 33 backers in the last 48 hours, raising about $19,500. That's approximately $590(!) per backer. (Upstart was priced at $68 on the campaign page.) Okay, so let's take a look at the weirdest-case scenario where those 33 backers all snatched up the 33 largest rewards: 4 backers @ $1,500 = $6,000 3 backers @ $750 = $2,250 9 backers @ $128 = $1,152 11 backers @ $90 = $990 6 backers @ $68 = $408 That equals $10,800. I'm not the best at math, but that doesn't account for the extra $8,700 pledged. That's an unprecedented amount to simply donate to a struggling campaign without anything in return. In D-cal's blog posts, they haven't said anything about that overage being charitable (in fact they're suggested quite the opposite), so let's assume that those who contributed the additional $8,700 did so for additional copies of Upstart -- keep in mind that $8,700 is just the minimum overage possible. Now, let's also assume that, again, weirdest-case scenario, D-cal offered no discount on that overage, retailer or otherwise. $8,700 / $65 = ~134 overage. Add in the 68 copies that would be produced from the actual rewards that the 33 top backers would receive, and that totals 202 copies of Upstart from the top backers' pledges, which is a minimum average of 6 copies. Any bulk discount could easily double this number. Now let's review the lower tier backers: 44 copies @ $68 68 copies @ $53 4 copies @ $40 That's 116 copies of Upstart. In the reward tiers, some rewards come with 1st edition boxes. I'm not including the 1st edition rewards since those are already fulfillable. So, all in all, D-cal has at least 316 deliverable copies going to 183 backers. Keep in mind, 316 is a hard *minimum* quantity -- again, this doesn't even consider discounts. Now, I was not a significant part of running the Rabbit Island Kickstarter, but if I recall correctly, retailers and resellers for Rabbit Island got a discount when ordering more than 5 copies. Considering Upstart cost almost double what Rabbit Island cost on Kickstarter, it's safe to believe that, if the largest contributors of Upstart excpet product, these are some large orders with deep discounts. With those extra copies, it isn't unbelievable that the total to be fulfilled exceeds 500 copies. But, for the sake of this discussion, I'm going to continue to assume no discounts were given. Now, here's where things get even more interesting: D-cal supplied photos of the game materials. And coming from someone in the gaming industry, I am able to see that D-cal is doing the fulfillment (assembly of components) themselves. That's a rough cost-cutting measure, but it also reveals the approximate number of components they've set up for fulfillment. So from here on out, this is me going into a little more obsessive detail than I should, but I love a good mystery, so I'll use clues to assess what we have here. First, let's see what's in the box: https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/014/318/950/ac6d9a2e5179b7ebb518d0396760acf3_original.png?w=680&fit=max&v=1477843348&auto=format&lossless=true&s=5cff7f171593751ccee36fa1c899b7d0 1 upstart game board: I can't see the boards anywhere in the photos, so either they're already in the boxes, or they're in the brown paper-wrapped stacks to the right. Odd that none of them are opened. Of note is that a game board is typically one of the most expensive components of a board game -- it's possible that they haven't arrived yet. That explains why the three copies to the left are still open -- they're awaiting the boards. Inconclusive, but also irrelevant. There are other more interesting sights. Instruction manuals: Looks to be a stack in between the deck sleeves. Deck sleeves: These appear to have come flat, and later assembled by D-cal, then tossed into the box and bag. Cards: I can't see where they're stacked, but I can see that they're fulfilled on the left 3 boxes. Perhaps the stack on top of the action boards is one full set of cards to a game. I don't see the rest of the cards. They could be in the brown paper-wrapped bundles. Character sheets and action boards: Big white piles of paper and card stock. Looks like ~2500 sheets of action boards -- enough for 500 copies. Dice: Missing. Where could they be? The glass frame on the floor by the wall in the empty space between the stacks of orange boxes gives a glimpse of what's behind the camera: nothing notable. Okay, now for the most interesting item of note: the game boxes. Game boxes: There are approximately 100 closed game boxes in the photos, plus an additional three stacked to the left that are open for fulfillment. And that's all. So now that I've assessed the materials, I can start to consider my observations, and there's one striking thing to notice: All the existing components are placed there in their full quantity, except when it comes to the boxes, of which there's only ~103 visible. Also notable is that they were eventually carried to their resting places in stacks of 5 -- this is most observable on the leftmost tall stack, where every 5th box (counting from the bottom) juts out just a bit more. This suggests an intentional counting of boxes -- if they were unloaded directly from shipping boxes without care, they'd be uneven in their jutting. Why does this matter? Because there's room for more boxes in between the tall stacks -- it's unlikely something was moved just to take the pictures. If it were a moved component, it would still be there for the photo shoot. If it were furniture of some sort, it would have been moved earlier to make room for more boxes, suggesting that they didn't need room for any more boxes. Assuming these photos were taken shortly after confirming that D-cal could do fulfillment on the surface to the left, it's reasonable to assume that D-cal counted the exact number of boxes in order to complete fulfillment. Why is that a reasonable assessment? Because I've done fulfillment of this sort for other projects. The first thing we did was count the number of boxes required to meet all orders. Then we began fulfillment. This explains the claimed order of 500 copies of Upstart, the fulfillment of ~103 orders, and the discrepancy of a $19,000 overage. Wow, that got long! So, I could be wrong about everything. And D-cal certainly have the methods to show me I'm wrong. So, these are the questions I want to ask D-cal: 1) Kickstarter allows you to review the names and addresses of those who pledged. Without naming names, do you personally know any of the backers that pledged in the last 48 hours? If so, what is the total dollar amount that you plus acquaintances you know pledged in the final 48 hours? 2) How many copies of Upstart are going to the top 30 backers? (That is, the ones who pledged the most money.) 3) After fulfillment and shipping, how many copies of 2017 Upstart will be left in stock? 4) Which game components are you still waiting to receive, if any?