Landmark ruling for crowd funding in the America

My first experience of crowd funding came in 2012 when a group of heroes from a gaming forum I moderated paid for me to attend Gamescom in Germany. At the time I was feeling pretty low, I had just been made redundant and I was having one of those break ups that lasts for years because despite it being terrible you keep trying to get back together.

Having the support of individuals who didn’t really know me was a wonderful and curious thing. For a start the support of strangers made me feel worthwhile and like the project really mattered in a way that I hadn’t originally considered. It gave me personally a sense of value but also brought with it a feeling of obligation – these people had, between them, donated almost €100. Many of those donating were still in education and their contribution must have been hard felt. For their troubles, I wrote thousands of words, took hundreds of pictures and several mortifying videos of myself that I would gladly burn.

Crowdfunding like Go Fund Me, Kickstarter or Steam’s Greenlight have now become a legitimate way of funding projects as wide ranging as an artist selling real-estate on her body for tattoos to the record breaking campaign to bring Shenmue 3 to the world. By offering different tiers of rewards proposers encourage backers to part with their cash.

But what happens when proposers fail to meet their promises? Until now the situation had been untested but in a landmark case in America, a court has ordered a Kickstarter-backed project to deliver. Altius Management promised backers of the Asylum card game that they would receive rewards ranging from the basic deck of cards at $9 to higher contributions and signed original works of art all to be delivered by the end of 2012. When, in 2014, backers had not received their rewards despite the project smashing their target by over $10,000 a case was brought against the company by a backer in Washington.

Altius Management present Asylum – a retro-horror themed playing card deck.

Ultimately the courts decided that compensation should be awarded to the 31 Washington-based backers of $668 each. Altius Management has also been fined $1,000 and ordered to cover the court’s legal cost of $23,168.

While this verdict only extends to backers in Washington and backers in other places have been encouraged to bring their own cases where they are the results of this landmark case will undoubtedly have further reaching consequences. In the US as well as the UK consumers are protected by laws that aim to prevent fraudulent transactions and now, thankfully, it seems that these laws will also be extended to crowdfunding in the future.

Thanks to Polygon for the figures.

Do it. It’s your Destiny.

My Destiny journey started a few weeks ago when I impulse bought it second hand at my local independent. Anyone who’s seen me play Battlefield or Halo knows that traditionally I’m terrible at FPS and I received more than a few puzzled enquiries from my Live contacts when I first booted up the game.

Buying the vanilla game a year after release and a week or so before a major game changing update was also a decision that I clearly hadn’t thought out. If my head had been screwed on I should have waited for Taken King which comes out on 15/9/15 and comes bundled with the game and the two previous expansions The Dark Below and House of Wolves. The thing is, as I’ve been offered an opportunity by EA for a hands-on with Battlefront at the upcoming EGX I felt it was probably time to sort out my FPS affliction or face embarrassment on a fairly public platform. I am supposed to be a serious industry individual after all. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried.

From very early on I felt that Destiny was trying to push me towards the Endgame – that the Endgame was the most important place to be. I know it’s been oft criticised so I shan’t dwell on it here but the story missions really are shallow and you level remarkably quickly. Whether by luck or design I received my first legendary weapon (a scout rifle called One/One Synesthete) from my first public event at level 4. Although admittedly the weapon can’t be used until level 20, by the end of the week I was using it to wrack up impressive numbers of precision kills.

My Titan takes a break to enjoy the sunset in The Tower.

As a self-confessed FPSphobe (I’m making that a thing, let it go) Destiny was refreshing because the controls are extremely tight and made my other FPS experience seem fudgy and dull in comparison. I discovered that I’m actually pretty nifty with slower firing weapons such as scout rifles or hand canons and I regularly enjoy 75% plus precision kills of my overall PvE kill total. This feels rewarding as a player and requires a modicum of skill over and above my standard “spray and pray” Halo approach.

The Crucible, Destiny’s PvP platform, is another matter entirely however. The arena opens at a laughably early stage and I was completely unprepared for the total shit storm it was going to be. At level 5 I decided to check it out and quite frankly it was a slaughter fest. By the end of my first control game I had a 2/10 KD and one of the two was posthumous because I panic launched a grenade at the hunter that was coming at me AGAIN with Thorn.

Luckily for noobs like me much maligned, over powered PvP weapons such as the hand canon Thorn and the rocket launcher Gjallerhorn have faced a royal nerfing with the 2.0 Taken King update and now that I’m level 28 I probably should tackle the Crucible again and I will, just as soon as I stop being a total chicken.

So now I’m faced with the prospect of buying Taken King. At £40 GBP it’s not a decision I’m in a position to make lightly. People who’ve been invested in the game since day one will probably be close to breaking the £100 mark with the latest expansion and I am aware that not only is this an MMO model but an Activision one too. It is a strange marriage between the slow, thoughtful Bungie and Activision who notoriously enjoy pumping out the same re-skinned bilge several times a year. But what other publisher would commit to an MMOFPS with a proposed 10 year life-cycle? First person shooters are fast. They burn bright and never for very long and then players turn to the next one. It’s therefore crucial for Bungie to keep Destiny fresh as I’ve discovered after just shy of two weeks where I’m now faced with the prospect of the same strike maps over and over again but with a smattering of different difficulty modifiers in the Endgame. In this respect I feel like I am being channelled towards the expansions.

Then there is the recent information made public by the infamous Marty O’Donnell v. Bungie lawsuit which hints at a darkness seeping in to the production line. It’s not clear to what extent Bungie’s creative freedom has been stifled and I don’t know enough of the particulars to comment personally on whether Bungie has failed to protect its employees from the jaws of the industry machine but now is the point where I need to decide if Destiny is a game in which I want to become properly invested. I’ve dipped my toes but once I’ve taken the plunge I’m not sure there’s any going back.