CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar

[Smoked Salmon]

Sounds like the Ares Digital excuses are going to seriously undermine Peters when it comes to his loyal troops. There comes a point where even the most faithful can only keep hearing excuses.

Look, I'm not being funny, but the whole patch sending is one of the biggest farces about this whole affair to me. While small in of itself, the inability to deliver something so simple is symptomatic of how Peters does business and how unprofessional he is.

I mean, christ, I send whole bundles of documents out nearly every day I go to work and I don't need special software to do it. How long have they been promising these patches? A year? 18 months? How hard would it have been to print out the list of donors and posted 20 patches a day in a handwritten envelope? Is that so tough?

 

[RedForman]

It would be interesting to know whether this is a commonality among these sorts of sketchy productions (unfulfilled perks)......

 

[muCephi]

If two different IT people got excited to do a donor management system, and both ultimately retreated to "I will have to see when I can find time", it may be a sign that nothing they provide is good enough for their nonpaying client.

I suspect that they probably *could* send out most of the patches in a first pass, clean up the edge cases and build out the whole system gradually, but someone may be getting in the way of such a professional solution. Again.

Is it that an excess of features really is required? Is it that Axanar doesn't actually want to send the patches and drives away their IT people? Or is it that Axanar only engaged nonprofessionals? Who knows. But two cases is a different story from just one.

And I agree, trashing this task a second time is crash and burn time with the lower level donors. Maybe Axanar actually wants to drive these donors away at this point, and is hoping that no one will go the California AG over patches. The bigger donors are probably seeing it differently because their main perks are tied to the film.

Can't wait for the day when Propworx starts selling production-made patches. This whole thing is just absurd.

 

[Reilly]

Of course it's entirely possible that the new guy will, over time, manage to get Ares Digital to where it needs to be. Personally I question the logic of falling back on exactly the same thing that led to a mess the last time, and a disgruntled former employee ready to bury Alec at deposition and then sue him. I'd hope they're at least paying him this time to provide some sort of incentive, but if not (and it's entirely possible he's a well-meaning fan doing it for free) I have to question what he thinks he's going to get out of this, given Alec's proven desire to commercialise the platform.

As an IT guy myself there's not a chance in hell they'd get something like that out of me for free when I knew they were going to make money on it. And I sure as heck wouldn't accept any promises of payment in the future given their legal status.

Once the law suit hit the decent thing to do is just fulfill what you can. And the sensible move would've just been to use BackerKit, Excel or whatever to sort through the data and get the boxes out the door. Instead we get another example of Alec trying to show what an amazing businessman he is. Or that's how it comes across to me.

 

[muCephi]

Per the brief captain's log, he needs his IT person to format the labels better, and refine the queries to handle an edge case re some special orders. But they have to get their volunteer IT person to "find time". So any minute now they should be shipping. Any minute. Aaaand.. Now. ....... Now. Waaaaaaait for it....... N....... Now... ha, fooled yaNow. See the patch its in the envelope...

 

[jespah]

I am getting the nagging feeling that the issue is impossibility.

See, if you start with 1,000 patches (just to use a nice, round number) and 950 of them are to be given out as perks for early donations, but you sell 300 at conventions you kinda have a problem.

 

[RedForman]

I think it'd be easier to just say that by now, perks are DOA. Though on the flipside, the more LFIM or his sycophants bleat about them, the more incriminated they are.

 

[Professor Zoom]

I still don't understand why mail merge wouldn't work to make those labels.

 

[RedForman]

Pot, meet kettle.
*(sorry if this strays too far into the realm of the political, but the irony was too thick to ignore)

 

[Jedi_Master]

I am getting the nagging feeling that the issue is impossibility.

See, if you start with 1,000 patches (just to use a nice, round number) and 950 of them are to be given out as perks for early donations, but you sell 300 at conventions you kinda have a problem.

Exactly - the problem isn't "the system" it's the inventory.
Otherwise Prime Diana wouldn't have specified that for ANY patches to be sent out EVERY donor has to enter their shipping address FIRST. So if Donor #6,666 has already moved on to another project and doesn't care 'bout the flammable polyester disc - NOBODY gets their packages, and Alec is free to sell what's left of them on Injuction Junction or Donor Station or what have you.

 

[muCephi]

I thought they were clear about having sufficient inventory for the pledges. Thought I saw that cited a few times. Wrong?

 

[Jedi_Master]

I thought they were clear about having sufficient inventory for the pledges. Thought I saw that cited a few times. Wrong?

That's the claim, and perhaps there is some reason to believe that - but in light that CBS/P has alleged that documents given to them in the Discovery phase have confirmed that AP and Prime Diana/nuDiana have used donor funds for salaries and personal expenses, I find it hard to believe that the "missing" donor funds from the IndiGoGo campaign and other campaigns that were never referenced in the Financial "Report" went to buying a bunch of patches to stock the Donor Store.

 

[JD]

Exactly - the problem isn't "the system" it's the inventory.
Otherwise Prime Diana wouldn't have specified that for ANY patches to be sent out EVERY donor has to enter their shipping address FIRST. So if Donor #6,666 has already moved on to another project and doesn't care 'bout the flammable polyester disc - NOBODY gets their packages, and Alec is free to sell what's left of them on Injuction Junction or Donor Station or what have you.

Yeah, this sounds to me like a great way to get out of ever having to send anybody any patches.
Why do they say they require such a complicated system for sending out perks?
Thousands of Kickstarter project have been sending out perks to their backers for ages with no problems. I doubt every single one of them has had to develop a new method for keeping track of the donors' information.
Someone mentioned Exel in another post, have they given a specific reason why something like that wouldn't work for them?
This whole thing is really starting to sound to me like they are just making up excuses, or purposefully making things so complicated they can never actually be done.

 

[Reilly]

Previously they mentioned BackerKit causing them lots of problems with the Prelude perk fulfilment hence Ares Digital. At the time this seemed reasonable and certainly Ares v1 was nice to use to get my digital perks.

Apparently it's to do with the state of the data that gets exported from kickstarter/BackerKit and the degree of cleaning it needs to be usable. But I personally keep coming back to the successful projects I've backed that used these and worked fine.

Again, assuming the data that comes out *is* a mess, then it still points to a clear desire to create an ongoing revenue stream. Otherwise you'd just swallow the hassle of cleaning that data up and getting the perks out knowing it's a one-off problem.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Terry Mac is a self-serving individual, but I do believe him when he says that the various software designed for perk fulfillment were insufficient for AP's needs, and I believe him when he said he set out to make it easier and create a proprietary change to the whole system.
I think Ares Digital was a good project, but it ran into the same issue as every other good idea conceived in the service of Axanar - Alec's laziness, parsimony, and obstinacy.

 

[muCephi]

I think a lot of it may have to do with their Kickstarter-stated objective to build a "new way for fans to get just the content they want" and for Axanar Productions to be a "player in that arena". They seem to want a way to sell content via "donations" that in turn can be pitched to investors for a business rollout, and maybe patented as a business process.

 

[Noname Given]

I think a lot of it may have to do with their Kickstarter-stated objective to build a "new way for fans to get just the content they want" and for Axanar Productions to be a "player in that arena". They seem to want a way to sell content via "donations" that in turn can be pitched to investors for a business rollout.

I more took it they wanted to try the subscription/streaming online business. (You know, kind of like CBS All Access.)

 

[dmac]

When I use to do software games (like Duke nuk'em) Way back when they use to do promos. Fill out the card and send in a dollar for a 20"x30 poster, Sampler disk and a catalog and they come me and say Dave, you got a dollar apiece to work with but we have 5,000 of them. You should have heard me laugh.

 

[carlosp]

Maybe Axanar actually wants to drive these donors away at this point, and is hoping that no one will go the California AG over patches. The bigger donors are probably seeing it differently because their main perks are tied to the film.

Actually, the main perks also go to the lower-money donors. Take a look at the distribution of donors across the donation levels in the Kickstarter campaign. Most people went for the digital download and the DVD/Blu-ray; the patches are incidental, really, though they've become a symbol of the operation's inability to deliver.

 

[carlosp]

It would be interesting to know whether this is a commonality among these sorts of sketchy productions (unfulfilled perks)......

A study last year by the University of Pennsylvania found:

• 9 percent of Kickstarter projects fail to deliver their rewards. Film projects have a slightly higher rate of failure than other categories at around 11 percent.
• 8 percent of dollars pledged went to failed projects.
• 7 percent of backers failed to receive their chosen reward.

Professor Ethan Mollick, who led the study, concluded:

Project backers should expect a failure rate of around 1-in-10 projects, and to receive a refund 13% of the time. Since failure can happen to anyone, creators need to consider, and plan for, the ways in which they will work with backers in the event a project fails, keeping lines of communication open and explaining how the money was spent.​