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Hmm. They needed to make some sort of move, but banning simulations and renderings (Really?) seems to be terrible overkill. If anything, this move makes it mu

Hmm. They needed to make some sort of move, but banning simulations and renderings (Really?) seems to be terrible overkill. If anything, this move makes it much more a store. You can only put up products that exist. There's no funding of development. Not sure this is a good solution on their part. EDIT: Fully in support of the "Risks and Challenges" section. Makes it like an investment prospectus.

nettdata 14y ago
I agree. I think a good compromise would be to ensure that anything that was a simulation or rendering was very obviously labeled as such, so that there would be absolutely no doubt in the viewer's mind.
guelo 14y ago
The problems is skilled designers are starting to pull off big time scams fooling people for hundreds of thousands of dollars. People see realistic renderings of a hoverboard or whatever and they immediately open their wallets without realizing that their is very little chance that they will be able to pull it off. If people see a skateboard with some glued-on fans they will be much more skeptical.
- sharkweek 14y ago
  I asked this a while back and the answer was pretty much "no" -- but I'm curious if that's changed. Have there recently been any high profile examples of fraud through crowdfunding sites?
- jonnathanson 14y ago
  Can we actually prove fraud in any of these cases, though? I'm not saying it can't happen, or that it hasn't happened. But we should never attribute to malice what can be more readily attributed to stupidity. I'm more inclined to believe that a bunch of people got in over their heads than that a bunch of people intentionally scammed backers. I may be wrong. But can someone point to some concrete examples? Fraud is a pretty heavy charge to level against Kickstarter projects, and it's also an indirect accusation that Kickstarter is a hotbed of such activity.
  - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    Fraud is too strong of a word. However, unrealistic renders are at least dishonest, and even if not maliciously so, the effects are much the same.
    - corin_ 14y ago
      Misleading rather than dishonest, dishonest implies intent, even if not malicious intent.
    - saraid216 14y ago
      Yeah, this seems to be something of a gray area. Not quite fraud, but heading very pointedly in that direction. Perhaps someone more familiar with relevant law knows of a term? Or maybe we should start thinking about inventing one.
  - adgar 14y ago
    > Can we actually prove fraud in any of these cases, though? Is this the standard we want? If you used an investment service which said "we require proof beyond all reasonable doubt of criminal endeavors before taking down [some UGC]," how much would you trust those investments? What if the standard for takedowns was a bit higher?
    - Kerrick 14y ago
      > Is this the standard we want? I'd say so, yes. Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocent_until_proven_guilty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocent_until_proven_guilty
      - adgar 14y ago
        > I'd say so, yes. Proof beyond all reasonable doubt is a lovely standard for a criminal justice system. Note that it is not used in civil suits in America - only criminal cases. We're not talking about taking away people's freedom here. We're talking about an investment website.
- Angostura 14y ago
  A pragmatic approach would be to enforce the inclusion of a 'This is only a rendered mock-up' -type standard badges on the images.
- AJ007 14y ago
  Do you have links for Kickstarter projects you think are outright scams?
  - neilk 14y ago
    A game called 'Mythic' is a notorious example. http://betabeat.com/2012/04/this-is-what-a-kickstarter-scam-looks-like/ http://betabeat.com/2012/04/this-is-what-a-kickstarter-scam-...
    - flyinRyan 14y ago
      I would consider this a poor example. This idiot threw away his career for $4k (which he didn't even get?).
  - makomk 14y ago
    The famous example of a highly-funded hardware project that's almost certainly a scam is ZionEyez: http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2012/08/20/the-truth-about-kickstarter-and-zioneyez/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2012/08/20/the-truth-a...
siganakis 14y ago
There is a world of difference between a physical working prototype and product that you can deliver in commercial quantities. I guess Kickstarter is aiming to fund physical projects that already have a working prototype and require funding to deliver in large quantities. It seems fair to me, as the person requesting funding should be required to have put in a fair amount of effort beyond a flashy 3 minute video promising the world. A working prototype seems to be a fair bar.
- ghshephard 14y ago
  I think that Kickstarter is happiest with the things like ElevationDock - a fully functional prototype, that they just had to figure out how to manufacture in large quantities. They certainly had their challenges - but would have had no chance without a big group of people ordering up front.
- samspot 14y ago
  I don't think it says anywhere that the prototype has to work. I'm reading this in a way that says I have to show what I've already accomplished. It is ok if the prototype doesn't work yet, and I think it is ok to expect the project creators to do some of the work before they create a kickstarter project.
  - shasta 14y ago
    This is a prototype of my perpetual motion machine. The batteries will not be required in the production version.
    - tesseract 14y ago
      That's kind of the point. The fact that you have to show the prototype allows potential backers to make a judgement about whether they think you are likely to succeed or not.
ghshephard 14y ago
The problem with Renderings/simulations is that people believe that things like: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/lifx-the-light-bulb-reinvented?ref=live http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/lifx-the-light... actually exist, when they are just concepts right now.
- mcphilip 14y ago
  Cynically, I wonder if this policy change was not prompted by Kickstarter's own doubts about the lifx team being able to deliver. After all, this is the same team that couldn't meet demand for their custom cardboard box project. I wonder if in the future there will be a requirement to limit the number of backers on every project. Logically there seems to be a point where additional money from backers over what was asked for leads to difficulty delivering at all. For instance, say I could make 10 custom widgets a month at $100 a piece. I might decide to launch a Kickstarter project asking for $1200 to gauge if at least 10 other people are interested in my fancy innovative widget. What happens if I end up raising $12000? My target of 20% profit on each widget is no longer possible unless the backers are willing to wait up to 10 months for me to deliver. The only other option is to invest money into producing widgets in larger volume to meet this initial demand. That investment would only make sense if there were some reasonable expectation that demand would stay at the same level after the Kickstarter project ended. So back to my original cynicism, maybe Kickstarter sees signs that some very good marketers are having enormous success with Kickstarter projects whilst being in completely over their heads...
  - ghshephard 14y ago
    Your suggestion that there be a "limit to the number of backers on a project" would have probably saved the elevation dock guys some grief. On the other hand, I want the Planetary Annihilation guys (Digital Product) to have HUGE oversubscription - we got funding for Metal Worlds, Water Worlds, Galactic War, and an Orchestra Score through extra funding!
    - omni 14y ago
      Good point. This restriction should only apply to products with a marginal cost to produce / ship / what have you.
Lerc 14y ago
I agree that they needed to do something. That something is totally not this. This feels like they want to do whatever is the least amount of work. Kickstarter is supposed to be a service, for a share of the income they are supposed to facilitate the connection between creators and audience. Rubber stamping an increasingly bureaucratic set of rules is not the way to do this. A better solution would have been to add the ability for prospective supporters to voice queries and concerns where they could be seen prominently on the page. Right now it seems the creators receive questions and pick the ones they want to answer and place an update answering the questions. Even better would be to have Kickstarter assess the creators claims on their ability to deliver and assess queries raised by prospective supporters. That would be a real service offering real value, it would also cost real money. Right now Kickstarter's revenue comes from the fact that Kickstarter is popular. The thing that makes creators choose Kickstarter over another platform is almost entirely due to prominence. That cannot be sustained. Eventually it will have to rest on quality of service. The current set of changes do not increase the quality of service.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  Even better would be to have Kickstarter assess the creators claims on their ability to deliver and assess queries raised by prospective supporters. I can't imagine that will ever happen. If they vetted projects or teams, it would probably put some liability on their shoulders. They are going to do everything they can to prevent that.
Tsagadai 14y ago
Something must be done or their (kickstarter's) business may collapse. Banning renderings will probably cut down a bit on expectations not matching delivery, which presently is a problem. Quite a few projects seem to have underestimated the difficulties of quality control and mass production. However, it is still pretty easy to get a nice milled or extruded aluminium block and call it a prototype so I don't think it will completely eliminate unscrupulous frauds.
- AJ007 14y ago
  Yeah but that "prototype" may not look nearly as amazing as a flashy 3D animation. Is what kickstarter asking that unreasonable? (other than their lawyers probably told them do this now or suffer consequences that could mean no more business.) If someone can't produce a physical prototype of an item, do they really deserve hundreds of thousands or a million dollars?
frankdenbow 14y ago
Its only for product design and hardware projects, which seems reasonable for physical items.
andrewflnr 14y ago
If the problem is that people who see realistic renderings feel that the product already exists, a hand-drawn (but still accurate) rendering would allow people to see that the owner sort of knows what they're doing without getting their hopes up. Maybe the same would apply to detailed plans, or other obviously-not-the-product visual design documentation.
lambda 14y ago
> You can only put up products that exist. That's not true. You can demonstrate prototypes. What you can't do is just whip something up in Blender, do a nice rendering, and then start selling it with with the rewards being "1 widget, 2 widgets, 5 widgets, 10 widgets, 20 widgets", with no indication that you've actually done your homework to say if this is even possible. They want people to actually have some sort of prototype, something to show for their work, rather than just a slick graphical presentation and reward system that implies that it's far closer to completion than it actually is.
robomartin 14y ago
I think they are right in being careful. It's about time. I use Solidworks for mechanical design and Modo for photorealistic rendering. I assure you that, with enough skill and effort, one can make photorealistic renderings that, to the uninformed, look like the product is ready to go and that the funding is a mere formality. No, Kickstarter did the right thing here. That said, I am hoping that they will allow 3D renderings and animations as added illustrations if and ONLY if one shows actual realized versions of the proposed hardware in the project. The reason I say this is that 3D renderings and animations are extremely useful tools for the communication of function and some ideas that might be hard or impossible to convey using actual hardware. A good example is a cross-sectional cut showing moving parts.
mtgx 14y ago
I tend to agree with you. They just need to stop the project guys asking for "pre-order" types of donations. Or make them not send the product to the backers for that they're paying. It should be 100% clear that it's just a donation, whether it's $10, $100 or $1000. But you're not getting any product for that donation, until the product launches, when you can go and buy it.
diminoten 14y ago
Use your words instead of a cool Photoshop to describe what you intend on making.
ja2ke 14y ago
I think we're just going to see a rise in more "architectural" styled development renderings, over fully polished marketing-style imagery. I welcome that.

nettdata 14y ago

I agree. I think a good compromise would be to ensure that anything that was a simulation or rendering was very obviously labeled as such, so that there would be absolutely no doubt in the viewer's mind.

guelo 14y ago

The problems is skilled designers are starting to pull off big time scams fooling people for hundreds of thousands of dollars. People see realistic renderings of a hoverboard or whatever and they immediately open their wallets without realizing that their is very little chance that they will be able to pull it off. If people see a skateboard with some glued-on fans they will be much more skeptical.

sharkweek 14y ago
I asked this a while back and the answer was pretty much "no" -- but I'm curious if that's changed. Have there recently been any high profile examples of fraud through crowdfunding sites?
jonnathanson 14y ago
Can we actually prove fraud in any of these cases, though? I'm not saying it can't happen, or that it hasn't happened. But we should never attribute to malice what can be more readily attributed to stupidity. I'm more inclined to believe that a bunch of people got in over their heads than that a bunch of people intentionally scammed backers. I may be wrong. But can someone point to some concrete examples? Fraud is a pretty heavy charge to level against Kickstarter projects, and it's also an indirect accusation that Kickstarter is a hotbed of such activity.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  Fraud is too strong of a word. However, unrealistic renders are at least dishonest, and even if not maliciously so, the effects are much the same.
  - corin_ 14y ago
    Misleading rather than dishonest, dishonest implies intent, even if not malicious intent.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    Yeah, this seems to be something of a gray area. Not quite fraud, but heading very pointedly in that direction. Perhaps someone more familiar with relevant law knows of a term? Or maybe we should start thinking about inventing one.
- adgar 14y ago
  > Can we actually prove fraud in any of these cases, though? Is this the standard we want? If you used an investment service which said "we require proof beyond all reasonable doubt of criminal endeavors before taking down [some UGC]," how much would you trust those investments? What if the standard for takedowns was a bit higher?
  - Kerrick 14y ago
    > Is this the standard we want? I'd say so, yes. Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocent_until_proven_guilty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocent_until_proven_guilty
    - adgar 14y ago
      > I'd say so, yes. Proof beyond all reasonable doubt is a lovely standard for a criminal justice system. Note that it is not used in civil suits in America - only criminal cases. We're not talking about taking away people's freedom here. We're talking about an investment website.
Angostura 14y ago
A pragmatic approach would be to enforce the inclusion of a 'This is only a rendered mock-up' -type standard badges on the images.
AJ007 14y ago
Do you have links for Kickstarter projects you think are outright scams?
- neilk 14y ago
  A game called 'Mythic' is a notorious example. http://betabeat.com/2012/04/this-is-what-a-kickstarter-scam-looks-like/ http://betabeat.com/2012/04/this-is-what-a-kickstarter-scam-...
  - flyinRyan 14y ago
    I would consider this a poor example. This idiot threw away his career for $4k (which he didn't even get?).
- makomk 14y ago
  The famous example of a highly-funded hardware project that's almost certainly a scam is ZionEyez: http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2012/08/20/the-truth-about-kickstarter-and-zioneyez/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2012/08/20/the-truth-a...

siganakis 14y ago

There is a world of difference between a physical working prototype and product that you can deliver in commercial quantities. I guess Kickstarter is aiming to fund physical projects that already have a working prototype and require funding to deliver in large quantities. It seems fair to me, as the person requesting funding should be required to have put in a fair amount of effort beyond a flashy 3 minute video promising the world. A working prototype seems to be a fair bar.

ghshephard 14y ago
I think that Kickstarter is happiest with the things like ElevationDock - a fully functional prototype, that they just had to figure out how to manufacture in large quantities. They certainly had their challenges - but would have had no chance without a big group of people ordering up front.
samspot 14y ago
I don't think it says anywhere that the prototype has to work. I'm reading this in a way that says I have to show what I've already accomplished. It is ok if the prototype doesn't work yet, and I think it is ok to expect the project creators to do some of the work before they create a kickstarter project.
- shasta 14y ago
  This is a prototype of my perpetual motion machine. The batteries will not be required in the production version.
  - tesseract 14y ago
    That's kind of the point. The fact that you have to show the prototype allows potential backers to make a judgement about whether they think you are likely to succeed or not.

ghshephard 14y ago

The problem with Renderings/simulations is that people believe that things like: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/lifx-the-light-bulb-reinvented?ref=live http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/lifx-the-light... actually exist, when they are just concepts right now.

mcphilip 14y ago
Cynically, I wonder if this policy change was not prompted by Kickstarter's own doubts about the lifx team being able to deliver. After all, this is the same team that couldn't meet demand for their custom cardboard box project. I wonder if in the future there will be a requirement to limit the number of backers on every project. Logically there seems to be a point where additional money from backers over what was asked for leads to difficulty delivering at all. For instance, say I could make 10 custom widgets a month at $100 a piece. I might decide to launch a Kickstarter project asking for $1200 to gauge if at least 10 other people are interested in my fancy innovative widget. What happens if I end up raising $12000? My target of 20% profit on each widget is no longer possible unless the backers are willing to wait up to 10 months for me to deliver. The only other option is to invest money into producing widgets in larger volume to meet this initial demand. That investment would only make sense if there were some reasonable expectation that demand would stay at the same level after the Kickstarter project ended. So back to my original cynicism, maybe Kickstarter sees signs that some very good marketers are having enormous success with Kickstarter projects whilst being in completely over their heads...
- ghshephard 14y ago
  Your suggestion that there be a "limit to the number of backers on a project" would have probably saved the elevation dock guys some grief. On the other hand, I want the Planetary Annihilation guys (Digital Product) to have HUGE oversubscription - we got funding for Metal Worlds, Water Worlds, Galactic War, and an Orchestra Score through extra funding!
  - omni 14y ago
    Good point. This restriction should only apply to products with a marginal cost to produce / ship / what have you.

Lerc 14y ago

I agree that they needed to do something. That something is totally not this. This feels like they want to do whatever is the least amount of work. Kickstarter is supposed to be a service, for a share of the income they are supposed to facilitate the connection between creators and audience. Rubber stamping an increasingly bureaucratic set of rules is not the way to do this. A better solution would have been to add the ability for prospective supporters to voice queries and concerns where they could be seen prominently on the page. Right now it seems the creators receive questions and pick the ones they want to answer and place an update answering the questions. Even better would be to have Kickstarter assess the creators claims on their ability to deliver and assess queries raised by prospective supporters. That would be a real service offering real value, it would also cost real money. Right now Kickstarter's revenue comes from the fact that Kickstarter is popular. The thing that makes creators choose Kickstarter over another platform is almost entirely due to prominence. That cannot be sustained. Eventually it will have to rest on quality of service. The current set of changes do not increase the quality of service.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago
Even better would be to have Kickstarter assess the creators claims on their ability to deliver and assess queries raised by prospective supporters. I can't imagine that will ever happen. If they vetted projects or teams, it would probably put some liability on their shoulders. They are going to do everything they can to prevent that.

Tsagadai 14y ago

Something must be done or their (kickstarter's) business may collapse. Banning renderings will probably cut down a bit on expectations not matching delivery, which presently is a problem. Quite a few projects seem to have underestimated the difficulties of quality control and mass production. However, it is still pretty easy to get a nice milled or extruded aluminium block and call it a prototype so I don't think it will completely eliminate unscrupulous frauds.

AJ007 14y ago
Yeah but that "prototype" may not look nearly as amazing as a flashy 3D animation. Is what kickstarter asking that unreasonable? (other than their lawyers probably told them do this now or suffer consequences that could mean no more business.) If someone can't produce a physical prototype of an item, do they really deserve hundreds of thousands or a million dollars?

frankdenbow 14y ago

Its only for product design and hardware projects, which seems reasonable for physical items.

andrewflnr 14y ago

If the problem is that people who see realistic renderings feel that the product already exists, a hand-drawn (but still accurate) rendering would allow people to see that the owner sort of knows what they're doing without getting their hopes up. Maybe the same would apply to detailed plans, or other obviously-not-the-product visual design documentation.

lambda 14y ago

> You can only put up products that exist. That's not true. You can demonstrate prototypes. What you can't do is just whip something up in Blender, do a nice rendering, and then start selling it with with the rewards being "1 widget, 2 widgets, 5 widgets, 10 widgets, 20 widgets", with no indication that you've actually done your homework to say if this is even possible. They want people to actually have some sort of prototype, something to show for their work, rather than just a slick graphical presentation and reward system that implies that it's far closer to completion than it actually is.

robomartin 14y ago

I think they are right in being careful. It's about time. I use Solidworks for mechanical design and Modo for photorealistic rendering. I assure you that, with enough skill and effort, one can make photorealistic renderings that, to the uninformed, look like the product is ready to go and that the funding is a mere formality. No, Kickstarter did the right thing here. That said, I am hoping that they will allow 3D renderings and animations as added illustrations if and ONLY if one shows actual realized versions of the proposed hardware in the project. The reason I say this is that 3D renderings and animations are extremely useful tools for the communication of function and some ideas that might be hard or impossible to convey using actual hardware. A good example is a cross-sectional cut showing moving parts.

mtgx 14y ago

I tend to agree with you. They just need to stop the project guys asking for "pre-order" types of donations. Or make them not send the product to the backers for that they're paying. It should be 100% clear that it's just a donation, whether it's $10, $100 or $1000. But you're not getting any product for that donation, until the product launches, when you can go and buy it.

diminoten 14y ago

Use your words instead of a cool Photoshop to describe what you intend on making.

ja2ke 14y ago

I think we're just going to see a rise in more "architectural" styled development renderings, over fully polished marketing-style imagery. I welcome that.