Runs With Scissors, James has been running weekly sessions of Dwimmermount on Google+. It appears you’re unaware of this. And it was clear from the outset that Dwimmermount wasn’t yet in publishable form. Yet you’re accusing others of not doing due diligence?
I did my due diligence.
Launched: Mar 2, 2012
Closed: Apr 14, 2012
PDF to backers June 2012.
Book printed and to backers August 2012.
I fucking know about the G+.
How would a “project” be publishable in that fucking time frame? In addition, if the the PDF was to go to the backers by June, when was the cut off for these epic sessions? I mean, it takes some time to layout a fucking book. It takes time to print a fucking book.
Now do you see?
That’s right, I am the wrong one here. I forgot. Jim the Scam is the innocent one. I mean, fuck he has all the fucking time in the world to blog. Fuck the internal time schedule.
Just out of curiosity, what level did you back dwimmermount at?
i would like to have read this thread out of interest and without making any comments BUT i have to:
please mr. IRSWS, could you please do me a favor and stop posting that “F”-word in every sentence you write? i know you are pissed off, but…whatever…it’s becoming really annoying and (care or not) does not make a good picture of you…and yes i know, that i can stop reading this, if this pisses me on, so please nothing from you along these lines…
I see that you're coming from a place where you work to obscure your identity. You want to have a discussion about appropriate levels of trust, but you're conducting it through a series of sock puppet accounts. You represent yourself as a backer, but you set up these accounts with emails and usernames that don't match any in the Kickstarter registry. If you want me to wise up and verify the facts before extending trust, you've chosen a curious way to make your point.
Beholder.
“He’s an angry elf.” -Buddy
well, then he should go deep into the woods, hug some trees, bite into their bark to cool somewhat off and then return… 
Umm… everyone? The guy’s a troll. Just ignore him.
Another learning experience of the "things had been going smoothly so we didn't realize what mistakes were left to make" variety is that we need guidelines for forum posting and moderation.
It's important that members of our community to be able to voice their feelings and raise issues, and that should be taken seriously and given space. But we also need to set forth and maintain standards for what kinds of online behavior are acceptable in our particular corner of the internet.
I'll post a draft of these guidelines in general discussion shortly, but going forward, posts that are characterized by hostility or obscenity will be deleted. The aim is not to stifle criticism and dissent, so when a post is deleted I'll make an attempt to contact the author requesting that they post what they want to say in a non-hostile, non-obscene way. If that doesn't bear fruit I'll post a synopsis of the point it seems like the deleted post was intended to make. (Obvious spambot output will be summarily deleted as will duplicate posts, as I've been doing earlier in this thread.)
+1
He’s not a troll. He’s upset and asking hard questions.
I don’t envy Tavis. You’ve collected and dispersed funds for a project you have no control over. I bet that doesn’t happen again.
I’d like to see a response from James on why he’s continually updating Grognardia, twice a day, when the product is late.
+1 to this. It’s not a hobby project anymore if you had a five-figure sum handed over. people deserve to hear from the guy holding the money on this one.
Yeah, this is kind of like the G. R. R. Martin thing, only with the product pre-payed, making the concerns legitimate.
I am going to put on my “I managed creatives for a year and a half in the publishing industry” hat for a moment (specifically: I was e23’s managing editor for that period, before I decided I liked writing code better than herding cats).
Your critique has two elements:
- You think James should be doing nothing but Dwimmermount until it’s done.
- You think James could creatively produce more per week than he is producing.
. . . and possibly also
- You think that “one entire dungeon level per two weeks” is not continuous, whereas “two fluff posts per day” is continuous. This may be reading too much into your one sentence, though.
In my experience:
-
The creatives who follow this strategy fall behind faster. The ones who caught up the fastest, or in some cases, completed the project at all, were the ones who only spent a portion of their time on the project.
-
Actually, that’s pretty much what he tried to do after his family emergency and then failed at. Most creatives have a given, regular amount they can put into a particular project - trying to do more just results in burnout and failure and tears. I don’t know that James has found the secret, precise maximum amount he can do, but I do know that (given that he’s successfully managing one level per week), he has found an amount he can do, which leads to:
-
I can’t do much here other than to point out that, yeah, James may be slow at writing and awful* at forecasts, but he is continuously updating Dwimmermount at this point. As long as he maintains that, Dwimmermount can’t avoid being completed.
- Re: forecasts: My critique of this whole thing with Dwimmermount is the following, and Tavis has already owned up to it:
Creatives are notoriously unreliable at estimating how much they can produce in a given period of time, and Tavis & co. accepted James’ original estimate at face value.
I find that the difference is this: The work has been paid for.
If you a short delay that is one thing. To close the funding and not have the work close to being done guarantees delay and that is not clear to the funding party. If the kick-starter said Pay X and JM will write it up afterwards that would set a different expectation. If JM were making updates regarding the work that would be one thing.
He now has money for work he hasn’t done and has no clear schedule to finish and doesn’t feel the need to update people on it.
That is dishonest at the least and shows a lot of disregard for those people who paid for what they thought was a nearly done project.
If my comments here are refuted by facts I’m unaware of, then I will happily retract them upon having those facts communicated.
Until then SHAME!!!
Posting concerns, showing how pissed of you are, airing disappointment, and calling out the leaders of the project is one thing… continuing to be a jerk, continuing to lay your entire discourse with f-bombs, thrashing other posters without provocation, while all-the-while shading your identity… that’s uncalled for, cowardly, and should not be tolerated.
I find Autarch’s continued lack of meeting deadlines disturbing as well (I pre-ordered the Adventurer’s Companion pdf months ago and haven’t received a single response… no confirmation e-mail… nothing), but I’m not going to go on and be a complete ass about it.
The difference is this: I was talking about something entirely different from what you appear to be talking about, and in fact, the thing I was talking about doesn’t disagree with the thing you’re talking about.
My post above was a response to a specific issue: the idea that “James posting regularly to Grognardia” had anything at all to do with “James being behind on Dwimmermount.”
My concern is that people will be angry because James is posting regularly to Grognardia, and that they will shame him into stopping . . . and then the Dwimmermount level per two weeks will break down, because James burns himself out.
And given that he has a history of doing exactly that, I would much rather see him continue to post to Grognardia, and stick to a schedule he has so far proven able to maintain.
The fact that he’s managing one level per two weeks? That means I’ll get to see this fabled dungeon for reals someday.
Shaming him into burning himself out, and then watching the whole project go down in flames? That’s the Pointy Haired Boss method, and I would rather not see it applied to a product I’m reasonably sure I would like someday.
The thing is, he offered the thing for sale with the pretext seeming to be it was mostly done. That isn’t the case. If he were honest he would communicate the status and meet his goal. OR he could simply return the money to the funders and then finish the project on his own time and sell it later via kickstarter once it’s done.
He has been paid.
No one made him sell this. It was his choice. He has now been paid. Return the money or publish the project. One thing is for sure…fool me once, but never again.
edawe wrote: The thing is,The thing is, that has nothing to do with either of my posts you replied to, so why did you reply to those posts?
If you just want to endlessly repeat your point, use the thread reply button. It’s at the bottom of the page.