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[Girlinhat]

I like the look of this game but this thread seems to have gotten awfully heavy.  Can someone describe this drama in a series of simple sentences?

[hemmingjay]

2 guys inspired by DF and Minecraft start working on a project in their free time.
They decide to do a Kickstarter.
Halfway through the kickstarter they decide they are too busy in real life so they set a 9 month delay on the completion of the game/rewards.
They released a post mortem where they put their foot in their mouth(s).
We all live and learn.

[Girlinhat]

Fantastically done!

What's a postmortem though?  And does this mean the project is dead?

[Draco18s]

IIRC, DwarfCorp guy said something about deciding to be greedy and keep it for himself, in a joking manner. I would love a copy of that article if you still have it.

Ah, he did.

"We got a bit greedy and decided to go our own way with DwarfCorp.  We still have a positive relationship with the Towns devs."

Anyway, here's the saved file:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7950499/Dwarfcorp-Kickstarter-Postmortem.html

I probably won't keep it up for very long though.

[hemmingjay]

Fantastically done!

What's a postmortem though?  And does this mean the project is dead?

It's what we called in the military an After Action Review, it's when you discuss what went right and wrong with an action, in this case how they did with the Kickstarter campaign. It's still alive, just delayed for a while so the main dev can focus on his Doctoral studies and whatnot.

[Meta]

Thank you for the cache, Draco18s.

I had to read the whole post-mortem to find the explanation of why they thought Bay12ers dropped their pledges:

Notice we have $0 from bay12forums.com. We at one time had over $1k from there. I’m too afraid to check the forums but I suspect there was some kind of rally after we announced the delay.

Juggling between a game's development and a PhD is not impossible (cf. Ultima Ratio Regum), but it's not something easy. I decided not to pledge because of this difficulty, not because of some kind of delay I was not even aware of.

[Draco18s]

Juggling between a game's development and a PhD is not impossible (cf. Ultima Ratio Regum), but it's not something easy. I decided not to pledge because of this difficulty, not because of some kind of delay I was not even aware of.

It was a guess on your part.  Its not going to be accurate for everyone.

[Niveras]

It sounds like a lot of the problems were just inexperience with Kickstarter, campaigning/marketing, the overhead involved, and the resulting stress/burnout. Hopefully you guys will still be able to get the thing finished. Not to mention a good helping of professional ethics, something quite lacking these days.

I will point out that relying on site referral information may not be accurate. While it is certainly damning that at least ~$1000 of donations "from" bay12forums disappeared (which could, in theory, represent hundreds of backers), it is obvious that we should not assume that all donating bay12 users were referred there from the forums. Also privacy addons like adblock or ghostery may interfere with site tracking (although I don't think it would be the case, being unfamiliar with how it works behind the scenes; how kickstarter assigns "referrals" to donators, specifically in the possibility that it might be able to be changed, may also be a factor).

PS: Why the devil does your robot have a knife? Is there something we should know about your work? :-p

[hemmingjay]

There was clearly a problem with the tracking because he said that all backers from Bay12 cancelled, which was not the case.

[Anvilfolk]

Heck, I'm from CMU I could've told the guy his advisor wouldn't want him to start working on a game instead I doubt any advisor would

[Draco18s]

Heck, I'm from CMU I could've told the guy his advisor wouldn't want him to start working on a game instead I doubt any advisor would

Greg Lobanov's adviser probably would have.  The kid was the first in Drexel history to hire himself for his 6 month co-op.

I don't mean that other students didn't go into business for themselves as their co-op, I mean that he already had a business and hired himself as his own intern.

http://www.geekosystem.com/student-hires-himself-for-internship/

Also, he is entirely deserving of the award he won last week at the Philly Geek Awards, even if I wanted it for myself.

[ank]

also, like the third google result had the post mortem:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:z5GKLFbClxwJ:www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MatthewKlingensmith/20130826/198990/DwarfCorps_Kickstarter_Postmortem.php+&cd=3&hl=da&ct=clnk&gl=dk&client=firefox-a

[10ebbor10]

Doesn't look to bad. The Usual reaction were the cardhouse of Idealism collapses. Could be worse.

[Draco18s]

Doesn't look to bad. The Usual reaction were the cardhouse of Idealism collapses. Could be worse.

Pretty much what I've been saying.
It's not worth over-reacting about.

[mendonca]

Yeah, I wouldn't have been offended if they kept that up. In fact, I would have probably preferred they kept it up and discussed around the issues.

There are a couple of issues with it, but really nothing that rankles me personally at all.

The comments around Bay12 are just clearly not factual, in terms of backers. Also if they are afraid of checking in to Bay12 to see the reaction - I can't imagine what they would think about several other places on the internet where videogames are discussed.

Troll assholes sending stupid emails is also not a surprise - it is a practice that has been going on for time immemorial. Too much weight is given to these sorts of comments, really. They needn't bring it up AT ALL, let alone three or four times throughout the text.