Oculus Rift

[Regular_John]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

And that is why I would never donate anything to a kickstarter project. You're basically donating money to someone who hopes to eventually turn that money into a profit for themselves. Why would I help fund someone else's investment?

Yeah this whole thing really highlights flaws in the current kick starter model that I've been worried about for a little while. Just because some one has a great idea, that doesn't mean they'll make a good entrepreneur, and allowing them to generating 2-3-4 times the amount they were seeking really changes their business's trajectory in a very short amount of time.

It takes some one who's maybe ready to release a small production run and puts them in charge a large enterprise, without giving them the time to scale their business operations day to day. Or even the standard oversight required by VC investors.

So it's not shocking when some of these entrepreneurs make questionable/poor decisions when they find themselves sitting on a pile of money & have others banging on the doors to get a piece of it.

Don't get me wrong, I think the basic premise of crowdfunding small scale projects is great, I just think there is room for checks & balances, including a hard cap on how much a single campaign can exceed it's funding request by. Just because some one is ready to produce 100 widgets, doesn't mean they can instantly scale their business up to produce 100,000 of em.

[nik-]

I don't blame them either. If I was offered 2 billion, I'd take it. There's a lot of talk that they could have got a lot more, but I mean how much do you need? 2 billion dollars! After 100 million it's all just a stamp collection anyway.

[PsYcNeT]

Whatever it takes to get rid of the "screen door" effect.

Hopefully the full release 2560 rez headsets are enough.

[Hack&Lube]

The problem is that one of kickstarter's selling points is that it's supposed to be a grassroots sort of fundraising for people to fund their ideas outside of the traditional commercial or investment capital streams.

It's supposed to stay grassroots, down to earth, have an indie sort of feel to appeal to people who genuinely want to help a project they believe in get off the ground.

Now this definitely sets one of the bigger precedents for people who have this mindset to think twice about kickstarter. It's clear from the beginning that you are not an investor. You don't get any stock. You are not an angel investor. People don't see it that way though. Not "selling out" is a big deal to a lot of kickstarter backers.

[Azure]

It is an easy fix.

Allow people to buy shares of the 'project' through Kickstarter. Contribute $1000, you get 5% of the company. Or whatever fair value is. Then when they sell it down the road, the people that funded it through Kickstarter or other crowdfunding sites have the ability to make some money.

[jdso]

Originally Posted by Azure

It is an easy fix.

Allow people to buy shares of the 'project' through Kickstarter. Contribute $1000, you get 5% of the company. Or whatever fair value is. Then when they sell it down the road, the people that funded it through Kickstarter or other crowdfunding sites have the ability to make some money.

Not that easy since they would now have to follow securities legislation and regulations.

[MickMcGeough]

Until this thread - I had no idea how many people didn't understand crowdfunding.

[atb]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

And those people all received dev kits, and the Oculus Rift is still going to come out. In fact, it will likely come out faster now.

The nerd rage baffles me.

I agree, there's a lot of unfounded rage from people who don't understand the concept of Kickstarter. I also think a lot of people are disappointed how different this is from the idea Oculus presented to consumers who helped build the brand on their behalf. It would similar to Cloud Imperium Games (Star Citizen) being bought by EA. While people who funded the game will still get the items they purchased, you would have to think a fair amount of people would be heavily disappointed in the idea of EA overseeing the future development and launch of the game.

While the upside of this is that it may help bring VR into wide adoption, the downside is that Facebook will try to generate a return on it's investment by controlling and possibly restricting the platform which you use the Rift. Even if it's not necessarily branded by Facebook (ie. requiring a Facebook account), it's highly likely they will leverage this platform to gather more information about about users to help drive their core business, which is advertising. Substantially, all of Facebook's revenue is generated through ads, so any of the large acquisitions they have made (Instagram, Whatsapp, Oculus) will be leveraged (data mined) to increase their ad revenue. This is a pretty different future for Oculus than was envisioned by a lot of people who contributed to the Kickstarter, bought Dev Kits, and helped build the brand of the company.

I really doubt he reaction would have been as negative if Microsoft had bought the company, or it might have been positive if Valve had bought out Oculus.

[Kjesse]

Kickstarter has always been about allowing you to be a consumer in advance. it has never been about equity investment.

[PsYcNeT]

Kickstarter is more like pre-ordering a product before said product is even a working proof of concept, and you have literally no guarantee that you will ever even get your product, or that it will work in the expected manner if/when you receive it.

But boy, you sure are entitled to complain to strangers on the internet about it.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

Until this thread - I had no idea how many people didn't understand crowdfunding.

I think people understand crowdfunding but a lot of kickstarter campaigns imply a certain level of intimacy/connection/independence that people have subconsciously applied to all campaigns.
For a crowd-funding campaign to appeal to the pathos and then "sell out" is what is ticking people off.

The bigger problem is Facebook. It's Facebook that is driving the vitriol. Even if the Oculus Rift wasn't crowd-funding/sourced, people would be raging anyway.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

The bigger problem is Facebook. It's Facebook that is driving the vitriol. Even if the Oculus Rift wasn't crowd-funding/sourced, people would be raging anyway.

Because to nerds, there is no greater injustice in life than someone messing with their vidya games.

[nik-]

Maybe people just don't see a need for every tech product to be tied to social media everything.

[The Yen Man]

It seems like Facebook is overpaying for everything, and seem a bit desperate to acquire the next big innovation. I guess they are trying mimic Google's business model.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by jdso

Not that easy since they would now have to follow securities legislation and regulations.

Obviously it would take some extra work, but I would be way more likely to 'invest' in certain companies if I could actually buy shares instead of just pre-ordering the product they are offering.

Other projects I'm fine with just pre-ordering. I have done it before and it works well. Supporting innovative ideas is pretty valuable.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by nik-

Maybe people just don't see a need for every tech product to be tied to social media everything.

At this point, it's pretty much ado about nothing. There hasn't even been a consumer release yet.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

Because to nerds, there is no greater injustice in life than someone messing with their vidya games.

It's true.

It's crazy to me how so many nerds are missing the big picture here though. Giving Carmack & Luckey a 2 billion dollar infusion of capital just kicked VR innovation into a whole new gear.

ETA: Whoops - it's actually a 400 million dollar infusion of capital. Still...

[nik-]

People are mad because it's kicking it into a direction that's different from the one they preached. A direction different than they used to leverage the kickstarter donations.

It was developers and gaming, now it's Zuckerberg and social social social. You may call them angry nerds, but they have a legitimate reason to be annoyed. That's really all I'm saying. No they have no equity stake, no they have no votes in the direction of the company, no there is no legal recourse, but yes, they have a legit reason to be miffed at this.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by nik-

It was developers and gaming, now it's Zuckerberg and social social social.

It's still way too early to know that. Zuckerberg said Instagram and WhatsApp would operate independently of Facebook - and they do (nearly 2 years now for Instagram). They're saying the same thing about Oculus - maybe it's all lies but I see no advantage for Facebook or Oculus to immediately marry the two technologies.

Carmack left id last year because Zenimax wouldn't let him focus on VR gaming. Why would he leave the gaming company he built just to not work on gaming somewhere else?

Although I'll say this - if Carmack leaves Oculus there's definitely trouble.

[Azure]

Not to mention that Instagram is doing quite well as a part of Facebook.

There is a huge social aspect when it comes to gaming. If Facebook plays their cards right this could work out very well for them.