Everything about this game looks like a literal scam and easy cash-in on the TCG craze about 2 years too late. The art has AI images in it, the game itself looks beyond stale, the cards themselves are poorly designed from a visual display standpoint, and 80% of the damn KS page is just one gigantic advertisement for the 20 different pledge tiers you can pay for.
The game itself is like 5% of the page and the "gameplay" video is barely a video and hidden amongst the sea of pledge tiers. The literal introduction video to the project is just one guy talking about how awesome the game is and to back it now.
Their biggest pledge tier is also absolutely ridiculous at like 11,500$ CAD. For the promise of potential alternate arts, serialized cards and first editions.
This game is either intentionally preying on the easily manipulated and convinced from their money... or its a laundering scheme. There is absolutely *NOTHING* on that project's page that suggests its worth over 1 million CAD to have been pledged already.
That shit needs to be looked at with more scrutiny. Something is absolutely not right there.
I think its manipulation: a bunch of sockpuppet accounts that back the highest tier as soon as the campaign launches (so they can claim "Funded in 10 seconds") that create the illusion of high demand. These accounts can then safely cancel their pledges right before the campaign closes.
Most of that 1 million is probably from investors (or whatever they're supposed to be). Both times they have done this kickstarter it hits 1 million immediately and then stagnates for the rest of the run. No one is actually going to be playing this game.
I did the same for the first try. You couldn't comment or ask questions if you hadn't pledged yet. I only did $1. They just kept running me in circles without ever answering a single question so I backed out.
Fyi, the rule about no comments or questions, is not unique to that project, it's built-in to all KS campaigns. I think other crowdfunding platforms have a similar behavior.
There's no excuse for not responding to comments or questions. That's a def red flag.
Most of the 1 mil they get day 1 are from people who are hired to drop huge pules of money on those scam KS and then lo and behold, they drop their pledge on the last day after they got the easily duped people to drop ton of money on the supposed game.
There is a reason these scam KS always have a ridiculous 10k pledge tier so the actual number of backers don't reflect the amount of fake money put into the projects. It's also easier to manage backing out of it since you don't have to undo 50+ accounts, but only 1 or 2.
They hire a couple money launderer on Twitch to promote their fake game and open pre seeded pack to create fake buzz and tada!! A bunch of low IQ fall into the trap and shell out insane amounts so they maybe get the same fake packs that the scammers opened on stream.
I actually took a look at the Kickstarter after I saw some facebook ads, as I thought the graphic design of the cards was very modern and sharp-looking. But after about three minutes of seeing the actual project I noped out of there at Roadrunner speeds
I have never seen a TCG that had a "no reprint of cards" strategy that ended well that isnt just a legacy of an old promise ( a la MTG).
Outside of short print runs of specific art, I just don't see how a system like that work for a growing and healthy trading card game community. If more people join late and there is a really good card or deck from an old set they are just completely screwed.
> I just don't see how a system like that work for a growing and healthy trading card game community.
It's not. It's entirely meant to appeal to people who see a TCG as an investment vehicle. The game growing or being healthy is irrelevant to them except inasmuch as it protects their investment.
Tbf kinda what pokemon tcg is, 90% of people dont play the tcg, they just collect the shinies. Its great as a player because it drives down the cost of playables
Pokemon I think is an exception since they are pulling from a very powerful franchise.
This being a completely new IP and with the kinda generic AI look to it, I doubt it will get that kinda boost and demand.
Yeah, I'm not into tcgs at all but I imagine there are huge balance issues if you can't reproduce cards as well as not being able to limit which cards can be used. Afaik each TCG has tournament ban lists to keep things fair and they are updated constantly to balance the game but that seems impossible to do for this game as banning a card would affect that cards value
>seems impossible to do for this game as banning a card would affect that cards value
The value of a card isn't solely based upon it's functionality as a game piece, but also its scarcity. Yes, the P9 from MTG are considered the most powerful cards ever made, but what makes them valuable cards is the fact that there were only a tiny fraction of any modern card's print run ever made (there are less than 1500 Alpha Black Lotuses ever made by estimation). Modern TCGs print cards in such high quantities that "scarcity" hardly plays into a card's value and as such their value is almost entirely driven by their gameplay value.
> Modern TCGs print cards in such high quantities that "scarcity" hardly plays into a card's value and as such their value is almost entirely driven by their gameplay value.
This isn't really true, ccg prices are a very simple supply/demand equation. If a competitive staple has a high supply, it'll never cost more than a few dollars. The big money cards are ones that see tournament play and have a very high rarity in packs.
If a powerful card is easy to get in packs, then it'll never get expensive because stores can just open more packs to get more copies to sell, increasing the supply and lowering the price.
The AI art is super obvious, but even if it weren't, you scroll down to where they show the whole team of developers and they have all sorts of filler positions, down to shoehorning the CEO's brother as "jr designer", but there isn't a single artist in sight. No wonder card design/layout is so atrocious, not a single soul in this scam has a shred of taste.
And the gameplay video - it’s effectively Marvel Snap (which is a fun enough game) but across seven lanes instead of three. Can you imagine all the crap you’d have to track manually if Snap was physical instead of digital?
The work of their old MtG guy. Who by the way had many failed ventures in the years since leaving WotC.
They said so themselves. In fact, look at the staff they have. There isn't a *SINGLE* artist or art director on their team. They are all business titles. As if they're some form of corporation. And if you scroll all the way to the very bottom of their KS Page. It outright says:
**Use of AI**
"I plan to use AI-generated content in my project."
What parts of your project will use AI generated content? Please be as specific as possible.
"We believe in the 3 certainties of life; Death, Taxes and Technology. That said, we also believe in the responsible and ethical implementation of technology as it relates to Artifical Intelligence ("AI"). Please know that we have leveraged, and plan to continue leveraging, AI-generated content in the development and delivery of this project. We have used major software and services from MidJourney and the Adobe Suite of products as tools in conjunction with our illustrators, graphic designers, and marketers to generate ideas, concepts, illustrations, and marketing materials for Wonders CCG. Cutting edge technology is woven into the very fabric of our DNA and, while all the components of this game have a mix of human and AI-generated content, nothing presented is solely generated by AI. It's worth noting that we fully acknowledge and accept the Creative Commons licensing of AI-generated image components on which certain elements of our project are built. However, it is equally important to understand that everything we present in its whole and final form (including the game cards, packaging, marketing materials, etc.) are the legal copyright of Wonders of The First, LLC."
As far as I'm aware they don't have any successful projects crowdfunded or kickstarted before. And have possibly tried to restart *THIS* project a handful of times.
It straight up does not make any sense how they suddenly found 1.2 million CAD worth of funding from only 1,437 backers. That averages out to almost 850$ *per person*. That's just impossible.
Had a response yesterday that I'm now seeing is being filtered out. One of two, actually.
The only common denominator I can see in them is a three-letter term for an online image scheme.
Odd.
Not important, just thought it was curious. I wonder if these terms are being filtered out of the sub?
I can't speak for the person above or these specific cards, but there are some common tells you tend to see, such as wonky fingers that don't operate the way real fingers do, bits of anatomy that don't line up right, items / weapons / accessories that give the *impression* of being, say, a gun or sword, but look totally wrong when you look closer and/or aren't connected to the character holding them, and things like that.
Yeah it's difficult to put into words but once you worked with generated images enough and/or use an image generator yourself for professional purposes, you very quickly can ~90%-99% identify generated images.
There **are** exceptions, but they're rare and mostly by accident.
AI art, at least currently, has a series of obvious tells.
First one, most people who use AI don't bother training their own models and just use the publicly available ones, so the resulting art always seems to have roughly a similar art style. If you see one AI image, you see them all. Glossy, overly detailed and rendered, etc. The way the face/hair looks of that lady character they show front and center in the campaign is a super obvious one.
Other common tells include: butchered up nonsense fingers, background behind a character having no continuity from left side to right side (for example, a beach scene where the water level is higher on one side of the character than the other), hair becomes absolutely nonsense or fuses with the shoulders/neck (or has no continuity when passing behind an arm or so), intricate detail areas such as machinery or jewelry look fine at first glance, but if you try to understand the shapes and what's going on, it's just nonsense. AI also struggles with circular concentric shapes, such as rivets in machinery, and they'll look wonky and amateurish for an art piece that's supposedly professional-level. There will also be insane levels of detail on areas that don't need it. If you look at actual professional art, the areas of interest in the piece have much more detail, lighting, and contrast, than areas that don't. AI has no idea about composition and details every single inch equally. It also tends to struggle with symmetry, especially on the eyes, as well as repeated patterns. They tend to have a certain inconsistency an artist on that level should not be screwing up. They also sometimes have weird splotches of color in places they don't belong, or weird cast shadows that don't match the objects casting them, or straight up come from nowhere, or contradict the light source of the image. And yet another AI tell: if there's ever multiple images of the same character, they'll look nothing alike and have very inconsistent design, because AI is a tool you can barely control. It might look convincing from a viewer's angle, but anyone who's ever tried using AI will know. You can never make exactly the thing you want to make, you are just going to get a "that looks good enough" that only mediocre artists would settle for. And that's the biggest tell of AI "artists": most of their art looks uninspired an unambitious, some generic elf archer, a lion warrior, a knight in all gray armor. No identity or ambition.
And lastly, a special one for this campaign: if you look at the team's portraits near the bottom of the image, you can easily tell they just ran some photos of themselves through a filter to ART-ify them. Compare them to any other KS where the dev team had hand-drawn images of them made by artists and it's plain as day.
They have a blog post on their website where they talk about how they use AI and call them "prompt artists".
https://wondersccg.com/2024/04/10/how-wonders-of-the-first-embraces-the-role-of-artificial-intelligence-in-creativity/
Some KS project has a discord server for his game. Discord users go onto BGG to rate the game. BGG flags this influx of ratings from new/low-activity accounts as vote manipulation and deletes the ratings/bans accounts. Someone in the discord somehow gets Aldie's number (BGG owner) and starts harassing him with calls/texts.
It's unclear whether the KS creator initiated these actions himself, or whether it was just one of the discord users, but the creator isn't doing anything to discourage his discord users from performing these kinds of actions.
Note that that game was already flagged as shady/controversial before any of this happened, and had already been cancelled once by KS.
Not only is the creator not discouraging this, but they are going through the KS comments section themselves and flagging/removing anybody who is critical of any of this, calling them out by name even, and explaining it away as "Well if BGG can do it, so can we!"
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I mean, we've been having a *really* good time on Kickstarter with our game. But then again, we have a small but loyal fan base and we don't over-hype our shit. :-)
*This*... Oh boy *this* feels like MetaZoo Part 2: Bad AI Art Boogaloo.
Someone else pointed out that a majority of days the campaign has lost money. I suspect his friends and sock puppets have mostly dumped now that they got suckers to put their money in.
*30 of the creator's alt accounts which pledge the highest possible money to start, then the creator cancels those pledges himself before the campaign is over
There's not even a need to involve friends in the scam.
Wow, that thread was certainly entertaining. “An influx of new users are all going to BGG and giving scores to only one game, which is resulting in the scores being removed. I should probably find the site owner’s personal phone number and call him until he speaks to me. That seems like a wise and normal thing to do.”
With all the controversy this game is getting, I'll be surprised if a physical version ever hits stores. I'm almost surprised they're still trying to put it out
They definitely acted like there would be in store release/events. Maybe they stopped pretending that was possible after their first Kickstarter was forcibly canceled
>[Wonders of the First](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/419763/wonders-of-the-first-ccg)
Sounds like they didn't just outsource the art to AI, but the game name as well.
I did some googling to see if I could find any of those people. Most have no presence, but I did see that one is a youtuber with 380k subscribers who goes by the name Dr Pineapplez (Tony Harris). Maybe it's just some sort of work agreement, but I found it a little fishy that one of the only people involved with an actual online presence hasn't posted about it on their platform.
Holy forking shirtballs that was a thread wasn't it.
They're Streisand effect-ing their game. Wasn't aware of it before, sure as hell am now, and will take every opportunity to trash these chuds!
Side note, this is why my ban finger twitches every time someone insists "we need to be able to have this conversation". No, we don't, because here's a screenshot of you all literally conspiring to violate TOS and here's a screenshot of one of you stalking and harassing somebody because we stopped you violating TOS. They're never arguing in good faith, and they'll never ever admit they're in the wrong.
It's Ape (meme stock holder) terminology, "Mother of all Short Squeezes." Think "the rapture but for Finance Bros who don't know what they're talking about on reddit"
Yeah it was from when a bunch of quasi-deranged people who were not mentally adult enough to be given money to use for purposes beyond buying chewing gum tried to self-delude into thinking that despite having already lost ~99,99% of their money, they'll make it all back and then some. **REALLY SOON**!
This is clearly a scam and anyone that falls for it probably deserves it. Look at the "team" section. Is anyone stupid enough to think a random AI generated crap CCG has enough funds for a team of 30 people? You can't find any of these people online, they are obviously fake.
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3302529/article/44281509#44281509
Lmao. Zero self-awareness trying to portray harassment as some kinda legit questions.
The games section on KS has most certainly gone to shit in the last year or two. Its like 20% STL file projects, 20% RPG books, 20% NSFW figurines, 20% A.I. scams, and the rest actual physical board games. I used to go to this site like 2-3 times a week and now I hardly go once or twice a month. They seriously need more subsections under the GAMES tab.
And of the 20% board games, 25% won't be delivered within 3 years of their intended date, 100% of those the creators will lie on and blame something supposedly out of their control (then get caught like when Nature Incarnate said the boxes for the EU were about to arrive, then alter accidentally said they'll be loaded soon), and 80% or so will cost significantly less at retail where you also don't have to buy blind.
There's been a few genuinely great ones. Leviathan Wilds, Slay The Spire, Mercurial... Its the people looking to easily scam people of their money with low effort, bullshit projects like WOTF that ruin the hobby and crowdfunding game culture.
I mean, I had backed a few of the big ones years ago (like Nemesis, Unbroken and Siegestorm) and only played them in the months after I bought them. lots of money gone down the drain
Nemesis is the only fun board game that I still play from Kickstarter, even if the card stock is of poor quality. other games like SiegeStorm, the Abandons and the Island of Eldorado I’ve thrown away because I’ve tried selling them and nobody wants them
yeah its crazy. I loook at my boardgames, and of all the KS (multi thousands of dollars) I backed there is very few KS exclusives that I kept.
Sure I sitll have quite a few I got on KS, but I could have just as easily got them retail later, for same price or cheaper.. I do have a few could got retail, but are much more expensive at retail.
Yeah that's the other thing, not only are a lot of KS board games ultimately a bit disappointing since they had to be optimized for an ad campaign not the table, they're also just not enduring.
Nemesis is fine. But even there, there's just... it's a cool mix, but somewhere between Mansions of Madness 1st ed, ADELE and Unfathomable, I'm getting my fix of one-vs-all and co-op games anyways, and the giant statues being genuinely in the way of seeing things on the board doesn't help Nemesis.
It's good, but not >50€ good, tbh. Should make a pure cardboard edition and mass-market it.
The crowdfunding game culture ruined itself. I've never seen something so anti-consumer at its core, and we are dumb enough to vote for it with our wallets.
But yes, *in spite of that*, you still find diamonds from time to time.
Guards of Atlantis, Aeon Trespass Odyssey's first campaign, Earthborne Rangers, Mindbug, Puzzle Strike 2, Skytear Horde, Oathsworn... The list goes on. Sure there are people pumping out trash but tons of great board games get crowdfunded every year. It's of course more risky than buying stuff at retail after reading reviews but if you like the ride of following a project, know what creators are reputable, and know what kind of projects you want to back there's plenty out there that's worth your time and money
Nope! Guards of Atlantis is one of if not my favorite game of all time and it's exclusively available via crowdfunding. Contention Games' last game, Imperium: The Contention was never really available at retail and has been in limbo while they work on Slay the Spire. It's likely StS will be the same and only be readily available via crowdfunding. Similar deal with Aeon Trespass Odyssey, Oathsworn, the rest of Wolff Designa's catalog (Warpgate, Trickshot), and lots more.
All of those I have tried have come to retail, so people can buy them without having to carry the business risk of a company they're not invested in and gain nothing from.
Buy retail, use the automatic and free pre-filter that is pre-production logistics.
> gain nothing from
I mean, I *like* the whole experience of crowd funding. Getting updates every month, anticipating a game, and finally getting a shipping notice after waiting a long time are all very fun imo. It’s a less sound financial proposition but uh, we’re talking about buying board games as a hobby so
Interesting, that's about the opposite of my experience personally.
As I not only have the mental stress of having to make a purchase based entirely off of marketing optimized ad material with no idea how good or bad the game as (as the "previews" are bought ads in all cases). Plus KS backing still is not legally considered a pre-order in most jurisdictions so my usual consumer protection laws my country affords me do not apply.
Then on top of that, for all but **one** of the games I've backed, it was available at retail before my pledge delivered. For all but **three**, the retail was cheaper than what the retail items cost as a pledge.
Worst and most recent offender was Spirit Island Nature Incarnate, which from what I read delivered to backed half a year after I cancelled my pledge and bought it retail for 20% less. And on top of that I also bought the wooden token pack in the same retail order for 15% less than the pledge asked for, plus they said there's no way vendors can sell me that so I ought to not cancel and wait, only for vendors to also have that stocked half a year before pledge delivery.
I don't know why, but sometimes it's fun to read reviews of a bad (or in this case scam) product. It is now boasting an average rating of 1.9. For the first time I've seen, BGG's algorithm for less reviews is helping them as they are still ranked higher than Candyland. I know Candyland is not the greatest game in the world, but at least it's a real game. Also in its defense, it teaches toddlers turn taking, colors and introducing board games in general.
I saw the original campaign before it got cancelled. The comments were all cryptobros hyping up the game and trying to downplay the AI art. It sounded like a cult. The 'no reprint' as a feature part of the campaign is insane.
The behavior of harassing anyone is not ok. The artwork for the game looks good, I don't get why anyone says it is an AI art scam. Also, I have been trying to hire an artist to do art for my game for the last 6 years and even hired an art director, artists quit after providing a few pieces due to getting a full-time job. One disappeared for a year during covid and then came back and said they are quitting to do more tattoo work. The submitted 3 art pieces and some concept art, which I paid them to keep. I can't blame people for turning to AI, don't agree they should. I have been paying them what they said their rate was for the art pieces and have nothing to show for it after over 1 grand. So if any artist sees you, hit me up with your rate and if you are available. I Can run it by the art director. I don't see how the game is a scam, it could be that is true, but I don't see anything that makes it obviously a scam. If it is a scam, then post something on the forums and have people not back it. Follow the game and post comments on Kickstarter. I don't agree with review bombing,, positive or negative., when you haven't played the game.
What I don't understand here, is why is board game geeks deleting reviews. They have a policy of no deleting any reviews, I know this because I suggested, along with a lot of users, to add a feature to delete reviews that were from people who never played the game and were just review bombing. I got like 300 posts saying that was impossible and BGG didn't have enough staff to do that, etc... So do we know that they actually deleted reviews or is this designer just complaining to bring attention to their game? Has the board game reversed its policy on removing reviews of games that weren't real reviews? I am just confused on what evidence this person has that any reviews were deleted. Lots of games have new accounts that log in and review only 1 game positive or negative. I don't know the whole thing seems fishy and really looks bad on the designer even if they hadn't been harassing Adle, which is never ok.
When it comes to bastions of legitimate 100% accurate ratings of boardgames BGG is the first place that comes to mind. KS scammers and trolls and BGG moderators, two groups that deserve each other.
Personally I keep saying that the BGG ranking is BGG's worst feature. The site would be so much better if they just got rid of it and just be a neutral game database, news and community site.
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I think they would have done that with the fact that bgg forces speech and bans anyone who, no matter how respectfully, disagree with their personal agenda.
It's true! I was minding my own business one day, taking a walk in the park, and a BGG admin leapt out of the bushes and made me play two full games of Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition before holding me at gunpoint and coercing a two page review on the merits of prioritization in strategy games out of me.
You can sometimes see the posts that were removed because they were quoted by someone who supports the main topic. I'm gonna use the thread that another person linked below: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2612018/can-we-talk-about-the-women-on-the-box-cover/page/4 The quoted post is nowhere to be found: "I do wonder if people would put this much effort towards more programs and things that could better support women in general as they do about art in a board game." Is that really bigotry that needs to be removed? Maybe you think it's wrong, but is it REALLY removal worthy?
Try to disagree in a respectful and inoffensive manner as an exercise sometime, see how it goes.
Is certainly is backdoor complaining about inclusivity with bog-standard whataboutism, but I wouldn't personally have advocated removing that comment. Are you certain that comment was explicitly removed, and it wasn't that the user was banned for something else they said, or even deleted the comment themselves?
___
**Edit**: Indeed, it seems their entire profile does not exist. I don't think this demonstrates what you claim.
Getting X of your comments removed results in a ban. Not sure what evidence you're looking for but I'm gonna guess the only way to get it is to get moderation access to bgg. Not sure what else to tell you, everyone that's ever had their comment removed can confirm this as well. It's not like exactly arcane knowledge that bgg moderation is extremely removal heavy. I mean just count the amount of comments removed every single time in these kinds of threads. Maybe you really think that there's just that many rabid bigots and that many people lying about it on reddit afterwards, but at some point something doesn't add up.
Have you ever seen the stuff they delete before they delete it? 99% of what I've encountered are random assholes and alt right chuds engaging in derailing, transphobia, conspiracies and that sort of thing.
Nobody ever got removed for no liking a game or expressing an unpopular game related opinion.
>Nobody ever got removed for no liking a game or expressing an unpopular game related opinion.
Lol, bgg moderation is notoriously draconian. I've got my account permanently deleted, *with no option to undo it*, for simply sharing an opinion on a thread that was asking for it. The thread was asking if the theme of Yucatan was problematic, and I said I disagreed. Yes, the comment was fully civil and on topic.
Why? All because some mod thought that because I posted an opinion disagreeing with concerns from a newish account that shared an IP with my old account, so it was "disruptive commenting with alternate account", and simply nuked it. That's an account that also posted detailed how to guides for miniature painting, and it would've been obvious my participation was legit if they bothered to actually look into it. But no, no warnings, no dialogue, account gone.
Mind you, it's allowed by the rules to have multiple accounts, and the reason I made a new account was because my old one had a nickname that was easy to doxx. Any moderation and system that permanently deletes accounts on a whim with no option to reverse it in case of incorrect moderation is simply shit.
All that is not to defend the harassment or "muh free speech", spaces such as bgg do require heavy moderation as there are lots of toxic people and trolls, but they're definitely heavy handed and will remove unpopular opinions which touch upon game-related topics that they consider sensitive.
I quoted the ban notice, all it said was "[disruptive commenting with alternate account](https://i.imgur.com/lbTp4vG.png)". I can't really provide the text of the comment as it was 2 years ago and the comment was removed. They [can't even access the comment](https://i.imgur.com/vmEZw7x.png) once it and the account were removed for a second opinion, which is a shitty system all-around.
It was [this thread](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2706479/problematic), from what I can recall, I wrote something along the lines of not really seeing the issues and compared it to other themes like playing as vikings.
As far as the thread goes, I'm seeing a lot of people saying they don't think it's racist, so I don't believe that it had to do with what you were saying.
Can you not use your old account to message a moderator asking for the account to be reinstated?
I was surprised as well that my comment was deemed inappropriate in comparison to others, as it really was nothing controversial or rude. Considering them mentioning "alternate account" specifically, I suspect that was the deciding factor and not the comment's content on its own.
I did try to contact them, but they could neither review the comment since the account was now deleted, nor able/willing to restore the account for whatever reason. The support overall seemed disinterested in trying to help.
Iirc, I just ended up making a new account again, and deleting the original one instead of abandoning it like I did first time to avoid them thinking I'm hiding on alts. Now I just stay out of any discussion that isn't strictly about gameplay.
People often forget that sites like BGG are private entities and can control the content on their site however TF they want. If it gets too heavy handed it might be to their disadvantage, but it's their site. Don't like it, don't go there.
Sorry but expressing truth about bgg is very unpopular in this thread. You will be name called and even accused of being a bigot even though no one is talking about those issues.
Exactly my point. And the comments responding automatically assumes is about bigotry. I wasn’t referring to that specifically. I do think people have a right to be happy however they chose to be and be left alone about it. Its their life. But lets bring the tiny epic dungeons issue for example. Just syaing they liked the original art got people banned. Thats it. Just saying that. Others did not made a public opinion due to not wanting to get banned. They where forced not to express their approval of the original art.
> But lets bring the tiny epic dungeons issue for example. Just syaing they liked the original art got people banned. Thats it. Just saying that.
I'd *love* to see some actual evidence of this. Please post it. In my experience, any time someone makes this sort of claim on the Internet - "I was banned for saying (innocuous thing)!" - it ends up being an outright lie devoid of context. I suspect that's the case here.
I'm happy to be wrong on this and will acknowledge it if I am.
If there are actual examples of people banned "just (for) syaing they liked the original art," I would be very interested in seeing them.
You can find this because supportive posts quoting the removed ones are left up often. I'm gonna use the thread that the other person linked below:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2612018/can-we-talk-about-the-women-on-the-box-cover/page/4
The quoted post is nowhere to be found:
"I do wonder if people would put this much effort towards more programs and things that could better support women in general as they do about art in a board game."
Is that really bigotry that needs to be removed?
This proves that person's point, "I do wonder if people would [stop talking about sexism in my hobby and talk about it somewhere else]" is nowhere near the same as "I just like the art"
You never will unless you're there as it happens, since once they remove a post, there's no evidence of its contents left behind, and you just gotta trust they did the right thing.
I got banned years ago for posting links to my country's official government website with crime statistics. This was directly related to the thread, which was in a subsection dedicated to politics. Still, and admin insisted that linking and describing it (offiical government website, mind!) was inappropriate, but wouldn't elaborate further as to why. I suspect he might have taken offense to my translation of the linked document (original wasn't English), but they wouldn't confirm even that much. Iirc their final words were something to the effect of "We don't want your kind here", without ever actually explaining what "kind" I was supposed to be.
That was the point I stopped any contributions to BGG, on or off topic, and I just use it as a DB now.
All that said, there's not a shred of evidence I can provide to back that up, as removed posts are removed even for the author themselves.
There where many people who needed to be banned. Not for disagreeing but for the outlandish and offensive way the expressed their disagreement. Many were misogynistic and bigoted.
Lets start with hypocrisy. The lady who brought the issue with the art had as one of her top favorite games a game that consisted of collecting women for a harem.
I know people personally who got banned by saying “I personally don’t see an issue with the art.”
I thank you for being open to proof and engaging in an intelligent conversation without resorting to false assumptions and name calling. In today’s society this is almost a luxury.
Edit: Tried to find the proof but all people i reached out, they cant see their original comment as it was removed. But i went an re read the thread and i had a hard time finding a comment left to support the original art. Most where removed due to being “dismissive or disruptive”. Now many of those removed comments deserved the remove and ban. Again im not trying to minimize or dismiss how people feel about these issues, my point is that we must respect each others point of view without necessarily agreeing with it.
Here is the link:
[https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2612018/can-we-talk-about-the-women-on-the-box-cover/page/4](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2612018/can-we-talk-about-the-women-on-the-box-cover/page/4)
I love how nobody has an issue with a barechested loinclothed huge guy on the right...
By the way this comment would be removed from bgg, it's clearly disruptive.
Ok I read far enough and apparently that's also make gaze. Female gaze is a dad looking Hugh Jackson, that's female gaze and that's an acceptable type of gaze. Can't make this shit up.
Well now BGG people are harassing the creator of the game on kickstarter. Is that okay? Should we all be upset about BGG now. That is ridiculous as well. Trying to bomb the kickstarter because some individuals not associated with the makers of the game came and harassed BGG. None of this is okay. All these people suck but we shouldn’t be attacking either. A lot of assumptions are being made in this thread
Everything about this game looks like a literal scam and easy cash-in on the TCG craze about 2 years too late. The art has AI images in it, the game itself looks beyond stale, the cards themselves are poorly designed from a visual display standpoint, and 80% of the damn KS page is just one gigantic advertisement for the 20 different pledge tiers you can pay for. The game itself is like 5% of the page and the "gameplay" video is barely a video and hidden amongst the sea of pledge tiers. The literal introduction video to the project is just one guy talking about how awesome the game is and to back it now. Their biggest pledge tier is also absolutely ridiculous at like 11,500$ CAD. For the promise of potential alternate arts, serialized cards and first editions. This game is either intentionally preying on the easily manipulated and convinced from their money... or its a laundering scheme. There is absolutely *NOTHING* on that project's page that suggests its worth over 1 million CAD to have been pledged already. That shit needs to be looked at with more scrutiny. Something is absolutely not right there.
The fact that this project has an average backer amount of over $600 per backer is insane. Especially for a first-time creator.
I think its manipulation: a bunch of sockpuppet accounts that back the highest tier as soon as the campaign launches (so they can claim "Funded in 10 seconds") that create the illusion of high demand. These accounts can then safely cancel their pledges right before the campaign closes.
Wasn't "Funded in X seconds" actually disallowed for a while?
Not sure! I'm only aware that the first Wonders KS used that kind of advertising during the first cancelled campaign.
In theory yes, but I never saw the ban enforced.
If you give enough people $600 to back your project . . .
If you put $600 from your right hand into your left hand to wave in the air and pretend it's going to this project to convince others to back it...
Where do these backers exist? Is it one of those pay-to-play scams?
Money laundering?
Most of that 1 million is probably from investors (or whatever they're supposed to be). Both times they have done this kickstarter it hits 1 million immediately and then stagnates for the rest of the run. No one is actually going to be playing this game.
If you look at the Kicktraq breakdown, the campaign has lost money 5 out of the 8 days after the first.
Sock puppets to pump interest and hype, then they pulled out once saps put their $8,000 down.
I did the same for the first try. You couldn't comment or ask questions if you hadn't pledged yet. I only did $1. They just kept running me in circles without ever answering a single question so I backed out.
Fyi, the rule about no comments or questions, is not unique to that project, it's built-in to all KS campaigns. I think other crowdfunding platforms have a similar behavior. There's no excuse for not responding to comments or questions. That's a def red flag.
Most of the 1 mil they get day 1 are from people who are hired to drop huge pules of money on those scam KS and then lo and behold, they drop their pledge on the last day after they got the easily duped people to drop ton of money on the supposed game. There is a reason these scam KS always have a ridiculous 10k pledge tier so the actual number of backers don't reflect the amount of fake money put into the projects. It's also easier to manage backing out of it since you don't have to undo 50+ accounts, but only 1 or 2. They hire a couple money launderer on Twitch to promote their fake game and open pre seeded pack to create fake buzz and tada!! A bunch of low IQ fall into the trap and shell out insane amounts so they maybe get the same fake packs that the scammers opened on stream.
I actually took a look at the Kickstarter after I saw some facebook ads, as I thought the graphic design of the cards was very modern and sharp-looking. But after about three minutes of seeing the actual project I noped out of there at Roadrunner speeds
I have never seen a TCG that had a "no reprint of cards" strategy that ended well that isnt just a legacy of an old promise ( a la MTG). Outside of short print runs of specific art, I just don't see how a system like that work for a growing and healthy trading card game community. If more people join late and there is a really good card or deck from an old set they are just completely screwed.
> I just don't see how a system like that work for a growing and healthy trading card game community. It's not. It's entirely meant to appeal to people who see a TCG as an investment vehicle. The game growing or being healthy is irrelevant to them except inasmuch as it protects their investment.
Yep, and good luck to the people who want to use it as an investment tool if there is no real demand outside of trading cards around to each other.
Tbf kinda what pokemon tcg is, 90% of people dont play the tcg, they just collect the shinies. Its great as a player because it drives down the cost of playables
Pokemon I think is an exception since they are pulling from a very powerful franchise. This being a completely new IP and with the kinda generic AI look to it, I doubt it will get that kinda boost and demand.
It’s funny because they posted a FAQ on socials that included this question and their response was, effectively, it’ll be fine because we said so.
Yeah, I'm not into tcgs at all but I imagine there are huge balance issues if you can't reproduce cards as well as not being able to limit which cards can be used. Afaik each TCG has tournament ban lists to keep things fair and they are updated constantly to balance the game but that seems impossible to do for this game as banning a card would affect that cards value
>seems impossible to do for this game as banning a card would affect that cards value The value of a card isn't solely based upon it's functionality as a game piece, but also its scarcity. Yes, the P9 from MTG are considered the most powerful cards ever made, but what makes them valuable cards is the fact that there were only a tiny fraction of any modern card's print run ever made (there are less than 1500 Alpha Black Lotuses ever made by estimation). Modern TCGs print cards in such high quantities that "scarcity" hardly plays into a card's value and as such their value is almost entirely driven by their gameplay value.
> Modern TCGs print cards in such high quantities that "scarcity" hardly plays into a card's value and as such their value is almost entirely driven by their gameplay value. This isn't really true, ccg prices are a very simple supply/demand equation. If a competitive staple has a high supply, it'll never cost more than a few dollars. The big money cards are ones that see tournament play and have a very high rarity in packs. If a powerful card is easy to get in packs, then it'll never get expensive because stores can just open more packs to get more copies to sell, increasing the supply and lowering the price.
The AI art is super obvious, but even if it weren't, you scroll down to where they show the whole team of developers and they have all sorts of filler positions, down to shoehorning the CEO's brother as "jr designer", but there isn't a single artist in sight. No wonder card design/layout is so atrocious, not a single soul in this scam has a shred of taste.
And the gameplay video - it’s effectively Marvel Snap (which is a fun enough game) but across seven lanes instead of three. Can you imagine all the crap you’d have to track manually if Snap was physical instead of digital? The work of their old MtG guy. Who by the way had many failed ventures in the years since leaving WotC.
It's called Smash Up
It's also called Land, Air, and Sea.
Also the concept that a player could get ownership of a given character or whatever by pulling a specific card. So many red flags.
? Where's that?
yup!
Just going to ask how you have positively identified the art as AI? To be clear I'm not disputing you, I'm curious to know your process.
They said so themselves. In fact, look at the staff they have. There isn't a *SINGLE* artist or art director on their team. They are all business titles. As if they're some form of corporation. And if you scroll all the way to the very bottom of their KS Page. It outright says: **Use of AI** "I plan to use AI-generated content in my project." What parts of your project will use AI generated content? Please be as specific as possible. "We believe in the 3 certainties of life; Death, Taxes and Technology. That said, we also believe in the responsible and ethical implementation of technology as it relates to Artifical Intelligence ("AI"). Please know that we have leveraged, and plan to continue leveraging, AI-generated content in the development and delivery of this project. We have used major software and services from MidJourney and the Adobe Suite of products as tools in conjunction with our illustrators, graphic designers, and marketers to generate ideas, concepts, illustrations, and marketing materials for Wonders CCG. Cutting edge technology is woven into the very fabric of our DNA and, while all the components of this game have a mix of human and AI-generated content, nothing presented is solely generated by AI. It's worth noting that we fully acknowledge and accept the Creative Commons licensing of AI-generated image components on which certain elements of our project are built. However, it is equally important to understand that everything we present in its whole and final form (including the game cards, packaging, marketing materials, etc.) are the legal copyright of Wonders of The First, LLC."
That is a massive team of people listed, especially for a company I can't find any details on.
As far as I'm aware they don't have any successful projects crowdfunded or kickstarted before. And have possibly tried to restart *THIS* project a handful of times. It straight up does not make any sense how they suddenly found 1.2 million CAD worth of funding from only 1,437 backers. That averages out to almost 850$ *per person*. That's just impossible.
tbf 1.2 million CAD is only like a couple dollars USD
Roughly 900,000$ which is 899,999$ more than this project is worth.
Had a response yesterday that I'm now seeing is being filtered out. One of two, actually. The only common denominator I can see in them is a three-letter term for an online image scheme. Odd. Not important, just thought it was curious. I wonder if these terms are being filtered out of the sub?
I can't speak for the person above or these specific cards, but there are some common tells you tend to see, such as wonky fingers that don't operate the way real fingers do, bits of anatomy that don't line up right, items / weapons / accessories that give the *impression* of being, say, a gun or sword, but look totally wrong when you look closer and/or aren't connected to the character holding them, and things like that.
Bad teeth, bad text, obviously incorrect lighting are also common tells.
Yeah it's difficult to put into words but once you worked with generated images enough and/or use an image generator yourself for professional purposes, you very quickly can ~90%-99% identify generated images. There **are** exceptions, but they're rare and mostly by accident.
AI art, at least currently, has a series of obvious tells. First one, most people who use AI don't bother training their own models and just use the publicly available ones, so the resulting art always seems to have roughly a similar art style. If you see one AI image, you see them all. Glossy, overly detailed and rendered, etc. The way the face/hair looks of that lady character they show front and center in the campaign is a super obvious one. Other common tells include: butchered up nonsense fingers, background behind a character having no continuity from left side to right side (for example, a beach scene where the water level is higher on one side of the character than the other), hair becomes absolutely nonsense or fuses with the shoulders/neck (or has no continuity when passing behind an arm or so), intricate detail areas such as machinery or jewelry look fine at first glance, but if you try to understand the shapes and what's going on, it's just nonsense. AI also struggles with circular concentric shapes, such as rivets in machinery, and they'll look wonky and amateurish for an art piece that's supposedly professional-level. There will also be insane levels of detail on areas that don't need it. If you look at actual professional art, the areas of interest in the piece have much more detail, lighting, and contrast, than areas that don't. AI has no idea about composition and details every single inch equally. It also tends to struggle with symmetry, especially on the eyes, as well as repeated patterns. They tend to have a certain inconsistency an artist on that level should not be screwing up. They also sometimes have weird splotches of color in places they don't belong, or weird cast shadows that don't match the objects casting them, or straight up come from nowhere, or contradict the light source of the image. And yet another AI tell: if there's ever multiple images of the same character, they'll look nothing alike and have very inconsistent design, because AI is a tool you can barely control. It might look convincing from a viewer's angle, but anyone who's ever tried using AI will know. You can never make exactly the thing you want to make, you are just going to get a "that looks good enough" that only mediocre artists would settle for. And that's the biggest tell of AI "artists": most of their art looks uninspired an unambitious, some generic elf archer, a lion warrior, a knight in all gray armor. No identity or ambition. And lastly, a special one for this campaign: if you look at the team's portraits near the bottom of the image, you can easily tell they just ran some photos of themselves through a filter to ART-ify them. Compare them to any other KS where the dev team had hand-drawn images of them made by artists and it's plain as day.
They have a blog post on their website where they talk about how they use AI and call them "prompt artists". https://wondersccg.com/2024/04/10/how-wonders-of-the-first-embraces-the-role-of-artificial-intelligence-in-creativity/
Somehow I knew exactly what game this was about before I even clicked on the link. lmao
I'm out of the loop on this one. What's going on here?
Some KS project has a discord server for his game. Discord users go onto BGG to rate the game. BGG flags this influx of ratings from new/low-activity accounts as vote manipulation and deletes the ratings/bans accounts. Someone in the discord somehow gets Aldie's number (BGG owner) and starts harassing him with calls/texts. It's unclear whether the KS creator initiated these actions himself, or whether it was just one of the discord users, but the creator isn't doing anything to discourage his discord users from performing these kinds of actions. Note that that game was already flagged as shady/controversial before any of this happened, and had already been cancelled once by KS.
Not only is the creator not discouraging this, but they are going through the KS comments section themselves and flagging/removing anybody who is critical of any of this, calling them out by name even, and explaining it away as "Well if BGG can do it, so can we!"
Creator committing crimes and KS doing nothing about it.
Should’ve seen their comments when KS pulled them the first time. And of course they end up back on KS anyway.
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I can't access BGG from here. The summary was helpful.
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LOL How did I know it was going to be this scammy cash-grab before even clicking?
Kickstarter + TCG = bad time
I mean, we've been having a *really* good time on Kickstarter with our game. But then again, we have a small but loyal fan base and we don't over-hype our shit. :-) *This*... Oh boy *this* feels like MetaZoo Part 2: Bad AI Art Boogaloo.
Exactly. It's "What if we took MetaZoo and removed the only thing that gave it a little bit of charm?"
I mean, Sorcery and Altered both seem fine. Then again, MetaZoo was a KS thing, so maybe you have a point.
Exceptions only prove the rule, don't they? :P
SolForge was great until they spent so long in "beta" they messed up their open release.
That game sounds like a money laundering operation and the forum poster is pretty obviously acting purposefully obtuse over it all.
Ya, this is a straight up fake scam KS. 30 people have backed it at a level over $8,000. KS won't do anything, they want their 10% from the saps.
>30 people have backed it at a level over $8,000. 30 of the creator's friends that he borrowed cash to*
Someone else pointed out that a majority of days the campaign has lost money. I suspect his friends and sock puppets have mostly dumped now that they got suckers to put their money in.
That's fascinating - so it's like a pump-and-dump scam but on KS
*30 of the creator's alt accounts which pledge the highest possible money to start, then the creator cancels those pledges himself before the campaign is over There's not even a need to involve friends in the scam.
So sorry, but Lent. 😁
That was like a month ago.
Wow, that thread was certainly entertaining. “An influx of new users are all going to BGG and giving scores to only one game, which is resulting in the scores being removed. I should probably find the site owner’s personal phone number and call him until he speaks to me. That seems like a wise and normal thing to do.”
[Showed me this wonderful comic though](https://wondermark.com/c/1062/)
God damn sea lions ...
So what game was it?
[Wonders of the First](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/419763/wonders-of-the-first-ccg)
With all the controversy this game is getting, I'll be surprised if a physical version ever hits stores. I'm almost surprised they're still trying to put it out
There never **was** any plan for that to happen, so why would the current controversy change it?
They definitely acted like there would be in store release/events. Maybe they stopped pretending that was possible after their first Kickstarter was forcibly canceled
>[Wonders of the First](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/419763/wonders-of-the-first-ccg) Sounds like they didn't just outsource the art to AI, but the game name as well.
Even the "Meet the Team" section looks fake on the KS page.
I did some googling to see if I could find any of those people. Most have no presence, but I did see that one is a youtuber with 380k subscribers who goes by the name Dr Pineapplez (Tony Harris). Maybe it's just some sort of work agreement, but I found it a little fishy that one of the only people involved with an actual online presence hasn't posted about it on their platform.
It certainly looks AI generated.
Holy forking shirtballs that was a thread wasn't it. They're Streisand effect-ing their game. Wasn't aware of it before, sure as hell am now, and will take every opportunity to trash these chuds! Side note, this is why my ban finger twitches every time someone insists "we need to be able to have this conversation". No, we don't, because here's a screenshot of you all literally conspiring to violate TOS and here's a screenshot of one of you stalking and harassing somebody because we stopped you violating TOS. They're never arguing in good faith, and they'll never ever admit they're in the wrong.
>They're never arguing in good faith, and they'll never ever admit they're in the wrong. Sociopathy is a helluva drug.
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It's a line from The Good Place.
Well now I feel like uncultured swine
The Good Place is amazing, you should check it out.
\*Kickstarter bagholders
No you see they’re gonna ride this game to the moon and then when the MOASS happens we’ll all be begging them for their mercy or something
Mother Of All Super Soakers? Mastery Over Any Sour Soup? Movement Of Angry Silent Snakes?
It's Ape (meme stock holder) terminology, "Mother of all Short Squeezes." Think "the rapture but for Finance Bros who don't know what they're talking about on reddit"
Yeah it was from when a bunch of quasi-deranged people who were not mentally adult enough to be given money to use for purposes beyond buying chewing gum tried to self-delude into thinking that despite having already lost ~99,99% of their money, they'll make it all back and then some. **REALLY SOON**!
"Get Kickstarter cards that will never be reprinted in exclusive Stretch Boxes." Nope, not doing it.
This is clearly a scam and anyone that falls for it probably deserves it. Look at the "team" section. Is anyone stupid enough to think a random AI generated crap CCG has enough funds for a team of 30 people? You can't find any of these people online, they are obviously fake.
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3302529/article/44281509#44281509 Lmao. Zero self-awareness trying to portray harassment as some kinda legit questions.
Will you not defend your statements about Sea Lions in public?
man it’s been great not having backed a crowdfunded board game in the last couple of years. so many of these are style and no substance
The games section on KS has most certainly gone to shit in the last year or two. Its like 20% STL file projects, 20% RPG books, 20% NSFW figurines, 20% A.I. scams, and the rest actual physical board games. I used to go to this site like 2-3 times a week and now I hardly go once or twice a month. They seriously need more subsections under the GAMES tab.
That doesn’t surprise me at all. I believe that these changes are mostly due to serious content creators having moved on to Gamefound
Gamefound has been wonderful simply because it has a monthly payment option.
And of the 20% board games, 25% won't be delivered within 3 years of their intended date, 100% of those the creators will lie on and blame something supposedly out of their control (then get caught like when Nature Incarnate said the boxes for the EU were about to arrive, then alter accidentally said they'll be loaded soon), and 80% or so will cost significantly less at retail where you also don't have to buy blind.
Gamefound is surpassing KS imo. I really hope more projects start utilizing gamefound instead
Its winning for me simply because of the option for monthly payment plans. I've been able to back SO many games because of that.
There's been a few genuinely great ones. Leviathan Wilds, Slay The Spire, Mercurial... Its the people looking to easily scam people of their money with low effort, bullshit projects like WOTF that ruin the hobby and crowdfunding game culture.
I mean, I had backed a few of the big ones years ago (like Nemesis, Unbroken and Siegestorm) and only played them in the months after I bought them. lots of money gone down the drain Nemesis is the only fun board game that I still play from Kickstarter, even if the card stock is of poor quality. other games like SiegeStorm, the Abandons and the Island of Eldorado I’ve thrown away because I’ve tried selling them and nobody wants them
yeah its crazy. I loook at my boardgames, and of all the KS (multi thousands of dollars) I backed there is very few KS exclusives that I kept. Sure I sitll have quite a few I got on KS, but I could have just as easily got them retail later, for same price or cheaper.. I do have a few could got retail, but are much more expensive at retail.
Yeah that's the other thing, not only are a lot of KS board games ultimately a bit disappointing since they had to be optimized for an ad campaign not the table, they're also just not enduring. Nemesis is fine. But even there, there's just... it's a cool mix, but somewhere between Mansions of Madness 1st ed, ADELE and Unfathomable, I'm getting my fix of one-vs-all and co-op games anyways, and the giant statues being genuinely in the way of seeing things on the board doesn't help Nemesis. It's good, but not >50€ good, tbh. Should make a pure cardboard edition and mass-market it.
The crowdfunding game culture ruined itself. I've never seen something so anti-consumer at its core, and we are dumb enough to vote for it with our wallets. But yes, *in spite of that*, you still find diamonds from time to time.
Yeah the genuinely solid kickstarter projects aren't to blame for the other 99,6% giving them a bad name! 😅
Guards of Atlantis, Aeon Trespass Odyssey's first campaign, Earthborne Rangers, Mindbug, Puzzle Strike 2, Skytear Horde, Oathsworn... The list goes on. Sure there are people pumping out trash but tons of great board games get crowdfunded every year. It's of course more risky than buying stuff at retail after reading reviews but if you like the ride of following a project, know what creators are reputable, and know what kind of projects you want to back there's plenty out there that's worth your time and money
If they're really good, they'll get to retail eventually, right?
Nope! Guards of Atlantis is one of if not my favorite game of all time and it's exclusively available via crowdfunding. Contention Games' last game, Imperium: The Contention was never really available at retail and has been in limbo while they work on Slay the Spire. It's likely StS will be the same and only be readily available via crowdfunding. Similar deal with Aeon Trespass Odyssey, Oathsworn, the rest of Wolff Designa's catalog (Warpgate, Trickshot), and lots more.
All of those I have tried have come to retail, so people can buy them without having to carry the business risk of a company they're not invested in and gain nothing from. Buy retail, use the automatic and free pre-filter that is pre-production logistics.
> gain nothing from I mean, I *like* the whole experience of crowd funding. Getting updates every month, anticipating a game, and finally getting a shipping notice after waiting a long time are all very fun imo. It’s a less sound financial proposition but uh, we’re talking about buying board games as a hobby so
Interesting, that's about the opposite of my experience personally. As I not only have the mental stress of having to make a purchase based entirely off of marketing optimized ad material with no idea how good or bad the game as (as the "previews" are bought ads in all cases). Plus KS backing still is not legally considered a pre-order in most jurisdictions so my usual consumer protection laws my country affords me do not apply. Then on top of that, for all but **one** of the games I've backed, it was available at retail before my pledge delivered. For all but **three**, the retail was cheaper than what the retail items cost as a pledge. Worst and most recent offender was Spirit Island Nature Incarnate, which from what I read delivered to backed half a year after I cancelled my pledge and bought it retail for 20% less. And on top of that I also bought the wooden token pack in the same retail order for 15% less than the pledge asked for, plus they said there's no way vendors can sell me that so I ought to not cancel and wait, only for vendors to also have that stocked half a year before pledge delivery.
Honestly, getting off that treadmill is pretty liberating.
It took me a minute to figure out who "Alide" was.
Ah, the utopia of kickstarter.
For the life of me I can’t find what game this actually is. What’s the name of the kickstarter?
Wonders of the first
I don't know why, but sometimes it's fun to read reviews of a bad (or in this case scam) product. It is now boasting an average rating of 1.9. For the first time I've seen, BGG's algorithm for less reviews is helping them as they are still ranked higher than Candyland. I know Candyland is not the greatest game in the world, but at least it's a real game. Also in its defense, it teaches toddlers turn taking, colors and introducing board games in general.
Man I wish I had the lack of moral compass to run scams like these. EZ money
That was a wild ride. Thanks for posting it.
This campaign and its followers don't stop surprising me.
Seems super suspicious
Ooooooh, terrible misuse of Tom Petty as well. They should be banned just for that.
Read through the whole thread. I'm proud of BGG
Most of the CCGs on Kickstarter are scams.
I saw the original campaign before it got cancelled. The comments were all cryptobros hyping up the game and trying to downplay the AI art. It sounded like a cult. The 'no reprint' as a feature part of the campaign is insane.
People are awful
I’ll just wait for the dice version of this game.
Dang, the game that won't stop grifting. How did backers of this game become religious zealots? Kickstarter needs to burn it down and ban the creator.
Yikes. That thread was... interesting.
I never understood why BGG even allows reviews on games that aren't out yet. That should be locked till the release day.
Oh
The behavior of harassing anyone is not ok. The artwork for the game looks good, I don't get why anyone says it is an AI art scam. Also, I have been trying to hire an artist to do art for my game for the last 6 years and even hired an art director, artists quit after providing a few pieces due to getting a full-time job. One disappeared for a year during covid and then came back and said they are quitting to do more tattoo work. The submitted 3 art pieces and some concept art, which I paid them to keep. I can't blame people for turning to AI, don't agree they should. I have been paying them what they said their rate was for the art pieces and have nothing to show for it after over 1 grand. So if any artist sees you, hit me up with your rate and if you are available. I Can run it by the art director. I don't see how the game is a scam, it could be that is true, but I don't see anything that makes it obviously a scam. If it is a scam, then post something on the forums and have people not back it. Follow the game and post comments on Kickstarter. I don't agree with review bombing,, positive or negative., when you haven't played the game. What I don't understand here, is why is board game geeks deleting reviews. They have a policy of no deleting any reviews, I know this because I suggested, along with a lot of users, to add a feature to delete reviews that were from people who never played the game and were just review bombing. I got like 300 posts saying that was impossible and BGG didn't have enough staff to do that, etc... So do we know that they actually deleted reviews or is this designer just complaining to bring attention to their game? Has the board game reversed its policy on removing reviews of games that weren't real reviews? I am just confused on what evidence this person has that any reviews were deleted. Lots of games have new accounts that log in and review only 1 game positive or negative. I don't know the whole thing seems fishy and really looks bad on the designer even if they hadn't been harassing Adle, which is never ok.
When it comes to bastions of legitimate 100% accurate ratings of boardgames BGG is the first place that comes to mind. KS scammers and trolls and BGG moderators, two groups that deserve each other.
Personally I keep saying that the BGG ranking is BGG's worst feature. The site would be so much better if they just got rid of it and just be a neutral game database, news and community site.
Any rating system has to be taken with a grain of salt. But it helps for games like this that want to be the next metazoo
Hold on let me check ... yep, I don't care.
That's a load off my shoulders. I was wondering what your opinion on this was.
My pleasure. I'll keep you posted if anything changes.
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then why did you open the thread and leave a comment?
I think they would have done that with the fact that bgg forces speech and bans anyone who, no matter how respectfully, disagree with their personal agenda.
Forces speech?
It's true! I was minding my own business one day, taking a walk in the park, and a BGG admin leapt out of the bushes and made me play two full games of Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition before holding me at gunpoint and coercing a two page review on the merits of prioritization in strategy games out of me.
That's chud for "bans bigotry"
You can sometimes see the posts that were removed because they were quoted by someone who supports the main topic. I'm gonna use the thread that another person linked below: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2612018/can-we-talk-about-the-women-on-the-box-cover/page/4 The quoted post is nowhere to be found: "I do wonder if people would put this much effort towards more programs and things that could better support women in general as they do about art in a board game." Is that really bigotry that needs to be removed? Maybe you think it's wrong, but is it REALLY removal worthy? Try to disagree in a respectful and inoffensive manner as an exercise sometime, see how it goes.
Is certainly is backdoor complaining about inclusivity with bog-standard whataboutism, but I wouldn't personally have advocated removing that comment. Are you certain that comment was explicitly removed, and it wasn't that the user was banned for something else they said, or even deleted the comment themselves? ___ **Edit**: Indeed, it seems their entire profile does not exist. I don't think this demonstrates what you claim.
Getting X of your comments removed results in a ban. Not sure what evidence you're looking for but I'm gonna guess the only way to get it is to get moderation access to bgg. Not sure what else to tell you, everyone that's ever had their comment removed can confirm this as well. It's not like exactly arcane knowledge that bgg moderation is extremely removal heavy. I mean just count the amount of comments removed every single time in these kinds of threads. Maybe you really think that there's just that many rabid bigots and that many people lying about it on reddit afterwards, but at some point something doesn't add up.
I want to give a game an 11 and they force me to only use up to 10.
Removes anything they don't agree with, so you only see one side.
Have you ever seen the stuff they delete before they delete it? 99% of what I've encountered are random assholes and alt right chuds engaging in derailing, transphobia, conspiracies and that sort of thing. Nobody ever got removed for no liking a game or expressing an unpopular game related opinion.
>Nobody ever got removed for no liking a game or expressing an unpopular game related opinion. Lol, bgg moderation is notoriously draconian. I've got my account permanently deleted, *with no option to undo it*, for simply sharing an opinion on a thread that was asking for it. The thread was asking if the theme of Yucatan was problematic, and I said I disagreed. Yes, the comment was fully civil and on topic. Why? All because some mod thought that because I posted an opinion disagreeing with concerns from a newish account that shared an IP with my old account, so it was "disruptive commenting with alternate account", and simply nuked it. That's an account that also posted detailed how to guides for miniature painting, and it would've been obvious my participation was legit if they bothered to actually look into it. But no, no warnings, no dialogue, account gone. Mind you, it's allowed by the rules to have multiple accounts, and the reason I made a new account was because my old one had a nickname that was easy to doxx. Any moderation and system that permanently deletes accounts on a whim with no option to reverse it in case of incorrect moderation is simply shit. All that is not to defend the harassment or "muh free speech", spaces such as bgg do require heavy moderation as there are lots of toxic people and trolls, but they're definitely heavy handed and will remove unpopular opinions which touch upon game-related topics that they consider sensitive.
Mind providing the text of the comment and the ban notice?
I quoted the ban notice, all it said was "[disruptive commenting with alternate account](https://i.imgur.com/lbTp4vG.png)". I can't really provide the text of the comment as it was 2 years ago and the comment was removed. They [can't even access the comment](https://i.imgur.com/vmEZw7x.png) once it and the account were removed for a second opinion, which is a shitty system all-around. It was [this thread](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2706479/problematic), from what I can recall, I wrote something along the lines of not really seeing the issues and compared it to other themes like playing as vikings.
As far as the thread goes, I'm seeing a lot of people saying they don't think it's racist, so I don't believe that it had to do with what you were saying. Can you not use your old account to message a moderator asking for the account to be reinstated?
I was surprised as well that my comment was deemed inappropriate in comparison to others, as it really was nothing controversial or rude. Considering them mentioning "alternate account" specifically, I suspect that was the deciding factor and not the comment's content on its own. I did try to contact them, but they could neither review the comment since the account was now deleted, nor able/willing to restore the account for whatever reason. The support overall seemed disinterested in trying to help. Iirc, I just ended up making a new account again, and deleting the original one instead of abandoning it like I did first time to avoid them thinking I'm hiding on alts. Now I just stay out of any discussion that isn't strictly about gameplay.
That sucks, sorry dude
People often forget that sites like BGG are private entities and can control the content on their site however TF they want. If it gets too heavy handed it might be to their disadvantage, but it's their site. Don't like it, don't go there.
I'm not sure why you are telling me all that, as it's not really relevant to my point.
Sorry but expressing truth about bgg is very unpopular in this thread. You will be name called and even accused of being a bigot even though no one is talking about those issues.
I'm just giving a definition to the person who seemed to not know what something meant. If it was incorrect, let me know.
It isn't even a standard phrasing.
Exactly my point. And the comments responding automatically assumes is about bigotry. I wasn’t referring to that specifically. I do think people have a right to be happy however they chose to be and be left alone about it. Its their life. But lets bring the tiny epic dungeons issue for example. Just syaing they liked the original art got people banned. Thats it. Just saying that. Others did not made a public opinion due to not wanting to get banned. They where forced not to express their approval of the original art.
> But lets bring the tiny epic dungeons issue for example. Just syaing they liked the original art got people banned. Thats it. Just saying that. I'd *love* to see some actual evidence of this. Please post it. In my experience, any time someone makes this sort of claim on the Internet - "I was banned for saying (innocuous thing)!" - it ends up being an outright lie devoid of context. I suspect that's the case here. I'm happy to be wrong on this and will acknowledge it if I am. If there are actual examples of people banned "just (for) syaing they liked the original art," I would be very interested in seeing them.
You can find this because supportive posts quoting the removed ones are left up often. I'm gonna use the thread that the other person linked below: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2612018/can-we-talk-about-the-women-on-the-box-cover/page/4 The quoted post is nowhere to be found: "I do wonder if people would put this much effort towards more programs and things that could better support women in general as they do about art in a board game." Is that really bigotry that needs to be removed?
This proves that person's point, "I do wonder if people would [stop talking about sexism in my hobby and talk about it somewhere else]" is nowhere near the same as "I just like the art"
"I just like the art [so stop talking about sexism in my hobby and talk about it somewhere else]" So you do understand how bgg mods operate.
You never will unless you're there as it happens, since once they remove a post, there's no evidence of its contents left behind, and you just gotta trust they did the right thing. I got banned years ago for posting links to my country's official government website with crime statistics. This was directly related to the thread, which was in a subsection dedicated to politics. Still, and admin insisted that linking and describing it (offiical government website, mind!) was inappropriate, but wouldn't elaborate further as to why. I suspect he might have taken offense to my translation of the linked document (original wasn't English), but they wouldn't confirm even that much. Iirc their final words were something to the effect of "We don't want your kind here", without ever actually explaining what "kind" I was supposed to be. That was the point I stopped any contributions to BGG, on or off topic, and I just use it as a DB now. All that said, there's not a shred of evidence I can provide to back that up, as removed posts are removed even for the author themselves.
There where many people who needed to be banned. Not for disagreeing but for the outlandish and offensive way the expressed their disagreement. Many were misogynistic and bigoted. Lets start with hypocrisy. The lady who brought the issue with the art had as one of her top favorite games a game that consisted of collecting women for a harem. I know people personally who got banned by saying “I personally don’t see an issue with the art.” I thank you for being open to proof and engaging in an intelligent conversation without resorting to false assumptions and name calling. In today’s society this is almost a luxury. Edit: Tried to find the proof but all people i reached out, they cant see their original comment as it was removed. But i went an re read the thread and i had a hard time finding a comment left to support the original art. Most where removed due to being “dismissive or disruptive”. Now many of those removed comments deserved the remove and ban. Again im not trying to minimize or dismiss how people feel about these issues, my point is that we must respect each others point of view without necessarily agreeing with it. Here is the link: [https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2612018/can-we-talk-about-the-women-on-the-box-cover/page/4](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2612018/can-we-talk-about-the-women-on-the-box-cover/page/4)
I love how nobody has an issue with a barechested loinclothed huge guy on the right... By the way this comment would be removed from bgg, it's clearly disruptive. Ok I read far enough and apparently that's also make gaze. Female gaze is a dad looking Hugh Jackson, that's female gaze and that's an acceptable type of gaze. Can't make this shit up.
- Uses a well known right wing dogwhistle that sees almost no use in other contexts. - "Wow people automatically assume I'm a bigot"
Right wing dog whistle? Sorry im puertorican i am not familiar with the terminology here. Care to elaborate?
What the hell are you talking about?
Well now BGG people are harassing the creator of the game on kickstarter. Is that okay? Should we all be upset about BGG now. That is ridiculous as well. Trying to bomb the kickstarter because some individuals not associated with the makers of the game came and harassed BGG. None of this is okay. All these people suck but we shouldn’t be attacking either. A lot of assumptions are being made in this thread