In other news, bank robber promises to give 10% of the proceeds of latest heist to the family of bank teller he shot during said heist.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I'm going to have to hold off for now. Based on their last release, I expect version 1.0 will be missing submarines and the US AI won't build any transports.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Well, I've noticed it has some of the same hit detection issues that Binding of Isaac has, i.e. altitude is a mess, and the dodge roll would be more fluid if it didn't get hung up on walls quite as easily. Overall though I'm enjoying it, it's not quite as tight as Isaac, but has more variety.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

The problem with Arcen's titles is that the feel low effort. I know that they aren't low effort, but every time I see recycled UIs and hear recycled music it cheapens the experience.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I noticed that the link to the investment documents was removed, though it seems like it is still up though...
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xp4sd5sxmwhbfed/AADzoyPR6Njt76D29uu2ek2Ua?dl=0 [External Link]

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: burzmaliAlso, investments are investments, "classic" doesn't figure into it.

They stretched the concept of investment here. Classic investment usually gives investors more say in the company. Fig doesn't want that - it wouldn't be any better than publishers skewing creative process. I.e. they want funding, but they want to preserve creative independence.

Fig is just issuing preferred stock, that's been around for centuries. Fig isn't reinventing the wheel, they are just trying to sell slightly warped ones to a bunch of country folk that don't really know what a wheel is, but they've heard that city folk use them to get rich.

And they don't just want funding without creative interference, Kickstarter gave them that, they also wanted more of the pie and to have the relationship with their backers slanted in their favor as much as possible. Being as the former would cost KS money and latter their consumer confidence, Doublefine had to cook up Fig instead.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: neffo

Quoting: ShmerlI think Fig actually tries to make it more of an investment and less of a pre-order. Because crowdfunding is indeed more of the former. However they don't make it a classic investment either. It's something on its own.

Also, they so far listed quite respected people in their advisory board, including Brian Fargo from inXile. I doubt he'd like to be associated with a Ponzi scheme.

It's both.

You can either reward pledge or you can invest. The money just goes into the same total funding pool.

You'd think that, but technically they go into 2 different pools of money according to emails I've exchanged with one of their folks, which is likely to be the source of a lawsuit in 3-4 years time.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: ShmerlI think Fig actually tries to make it more of an investment and less of a pre-order. Because crowdfunding is indeed more of the former. However they don't make it a classic investment either. It's something on its own.

The problem is that they are still handling the pre-order type crowdfunding bit, only it's not the developer that owes the rewards but the publishing subsidiary and even then fig advises you to treat the pledges like "gifts" in their TOS, which isn't all too likely to hold up if the FTC glares at them for long.

Also, investments are investments, "classic" doesn't figure into it. If you are offering an investment opportunity, you have certain obligations, slightly modified recently, but likely to return to their original forms once a handful of "crowdinvesting" scams blow up in a major way over the next few years. I'm not suggesting that fig isn't following the regulations, there's nothing illegal about offering a crappy investment, as long as you disclose exactly how crappy it is, which Fig does, in great detail, in the investment information.

The lawsuits that will tear this apart are going to spring from the discrepancies within those documents and between those documents and the promises made in the pitch to backers (e.g. the due dates are six months apart and the contract only requires PC, Mac and Linux whereas the site promises XBone and PS4).

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: neffo

Quoting: scaineBut yeah, the video makes it clear that some extremely shady practices are at foot here. You can't compare this to Kickstarter, because a) Kickstarter is up front on the risks and b) Kickstarter equates to a pre-order, whereas Fig is hyping itself as a share vehicle. Two very different things.

It's both. (And Kickstarter isn't preordering.) So yes you can.

The video is trash. It's hard to take someone seriously who clearly is upset at where the industry is going. He's angry at the world. He's had to ignore so many inconvenient facts to make this hatchet job of a video. DF being shady? There's 20 hours of video documenting the development of Broken Age. (And there will be the same for this game as well.)

A Kickstarter pledge has been viewed as a pre-order by state AG offices when higher profile projects have failed to deliver and KS has released information to backers of failed projects to assist them in recovering funds. From a legal standpoint, on Kickstarter, projects are on the hook to deliver the pledges promised in the campaign and failing to do so does and has opened them up to legal action, both civil and criminal. Fig attempts to dodge this issue by simultaneously insulating the developer from the funding campaign and disclaiming any responsibility on their own behalf. As the video does a poor job of explaining, the responsibility for delivering the Fig rewards is in the hands of the Fig publishing subsidiary which is technically not the same as fig.co, the fig parent company, or fig's parent Loose Tooth.

In short, the legal ramification of failing to deliver a Kickstarter project suck, Fig fixes this by both disclaiming up front and obfuscating responsibilities in the background.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: scaineI think there's a few people commenting here that haven't watched the video, not just yourself!

I thought the video was superb. It's a real shame it's made by a GamerGate supporter (and general misogynist judging from his twitter feed - assuming not all GamerGaters are misogynists, I suppose).

But yeah, the video makes it clear that some extremely shady practices are at foot here. You can't compare this to Kickstarter, because a) Kickstarter is up front on the risks and b) Kickstarter equates to a pre-order, whereas Fig is hyping itself as a share vehicle. Two very different things.

Shady isn't quite the right word, after watching the video, it's a bit melodramatic, all the relevant documents are available via a link of the investor page, though drama aside it isn't too far off. A better word might be "unbalanced". In most crowdfunding activities on sites like Kickstarter, the site requires a series of minimal commitments from the project owners that provide some protection to the funders. For example, if you and thousands of your friends back a project on Kickstarter and the project owner fails to deliver, Kickstarter will provide enough information to allow to file a class-action lawsuit to recover your investment. How about on fig? Well, from the TOS "Contributions should be considered a gift or donation rather than a purchase..." so sucks to be you I guess. You can't go after DF, your agreement is with fig, not them, well part of them really.

Basically, at every point in the relationship were a right could be in DF's favor or you as the funder or investor, sites like KS give some to each side where as fig pushes them all in the developer's favor.

View this comment - View article - View full comments