#NerdsUnite: When Scammers Turn to Kickstarter
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#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @violent_gamer
Let's face it, it was bound to happen eventually and it probably already has unwittingly taken place before, but a Kickstarter Project was created purposely to scam gullible gamers. If you happen to not know what Kickstarter let me explain that briefly. Kickstarter is a website, and service, that let's anyone put up a project and put out there for fans to fund. They are not often successful, but the video game portion of Kickstarter has exploded in the last four months and there has been some massive projects, like the Double Fine Adventure Game which earned over $2 million. A newly uploaded Kickstarter project called Mythic: The Story of the Gods and Men was quickly found out by the brilliant people of the internet. In late April someone from SomethingAwful, a somewhat large internet community, posted a ton of evidence to Rock Paper Shotgun's forums and then it was spread from there. The forum post was originally about the success of Kickstarter and how it's becoming something huge, but this is an interesting example of what could go wrong, yet at the same time it's a project that was quickly figured out and destroyed. Mythic had an $80,000 goal and already had $4,000 in pledges, but now the project has been cancelled and the "developer" has deleted their profile.
On the Kickstarter page for Mythic the first thing they show is this picture:
It turns out that picture is really from here: http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=211755
It is an article that shows a tutorial about how to draw that very picture that they slapped Mythic on top of. The next thing you read is about the project, which sounds very vague and odd. This sentence in particular should bother most people, "Game engine is custom but built based off of Unity3D and animations will be done via motion capture thanks to some friends at Disney/Pixar!" A small time developer that is looking for only $80,000 is planning to do motion capture? I think not. Another terrifying sentence is this one, "The gameplay characteristics will be similar to that of World of Warcraft and the graphics quality should be up there with Skyrim." So first off they are planning to do an open world game that gives you a lot of choices, very descriptive sounding I must say, and then they further elaborate by saying that it will be like World of Warcraft with the graphical quality of Skyrim? That is the craziest thing I've heard in a very long time. Were this a real project it would be doomed to failure based on those goals, but it's not a real project, it's a scam.
Interestingly enough the rest of their Kickstarter page is filled with more stolen images and art, plus some more absurd descriptions that are alarmingly ambitious. A good chunk of their page is filled with concept, all of which is stolen from this concept art website: http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=211755
The pledge reward tiers are also quite stolen as well. Most of them seem to be taken from a popular Kickstarter for the game The Banner Saga. The rewards are merely reworded to make it sound as if they thought of these pledges on their own. Here is an example of the two $50 pledges for the two projects:
The Banner Saga $50 Pledge:
"Be a real part of The Banner Saga! At this tier we'll provide you a template and you provide us with YOUR OWN CREST DESIGN which we'll put into the actual game."
Mythic $50 Pledge:
"Be a real part of MYTHIC! At this tier we'll provide you a template and you provide us with YOUR OWN GOD POWER SIGN DESIGN which we'll put into the actual game found on altar walls and pillars."
You can compare the large majority of the pledges between the two projects and see that the Mythic pledges are almost 100% copy and pasted from The Banner Saga's page. God forbid you want more proof than this of the project's false presentation, but if you do there is more to be found. Take a look at SomethingAwful's original post about it or the Rock Paper Shotgun post or the Reddit post, all of which have links and explanations.
I'm often writing about Kickstarters here and encouraging people to participate in interesting projects, but the fact that this Kickstarter made even $5,000 in pledges is worrisome. This is truly an amateur attempt to scam some gamers into backing this project, but what happens if some professionals do this? What happens if someone actually takes the time to make their own art, real and believable descriptions, custom pledges and in-game screenshots? I have faith that someone will succeed in rooting them out, once again, but it is still worries me a bit. Kickstarter truly is on the rise and we will see what happens to all of these projects, like Wasteland 2, The Banner Saga, Double Fine Adventure and many more. Hopefully they will fulfill their end of the bargain and we won't end up with a whole slew of failed projects and failed investments, but have hope my friends. We have not been betrayed yet and there is still plenty to be excited about. Thanks for reading and for if you want to actually see the Mythic Kickstarter Page take a look below.
Cancelled Mythic Project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/273246798/mythic-the-story-of-gods-and-men?ref=history
If you want to read the post in full head on over to Violent Gamer
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