The Great Kingdom – Silence Is Annoying

I prefer to focus on the positive, and have put all my support behind The Dreams In Gary’s Basement. A movie that exists and now has a Kickstarter for editing. It funded in 12 hours and is now on to stretch goals for extras that are full interviews instead of being chopped up in the documentary.

Keep reading if you want to know more about The Great Kingdom mess.

Investigation

The lawsuit was settled out of court and all court orders lifted as you can see here.

I sent this email on June 30:

From: Larry Hamilton via Kickstarter
Subject: New message about The Great Kingdom
Date: June 30, 2018 at 5:31:35 PM EDT

Will an update be forthcoming? It’s been two months since the case was settled. What does this mean for backers?

I received this reply on July 30:

On Monday, July 30, 2018, 10:36:20 AM EDT, TheMostEpicGame wrote:

hi larry –

thanks for reaching out. we are still working things out with kickstarter to gain access to our kickstarter page in order to make announcements. we’re excited about moving forward, so stay tuned.

andrew pascal

Out of Sight

I was reminded of this whole mess and dug in after I drafted my post announcing the Kickstarter to wrap up The Dream In Gary’s Basement. I sent an email to both the filmmakers and Kickstarter.

I sent this email on October 14:

On Oct 14, 2018, at 6:21 PM, Larry Hamilton wrote:

Andrew, Et. Al,

It is now over two months since your reply. You replied to my email instead of my Kickstarter message so I lost track of it.

I am working on a follow up article on my blog, Follow Me, And Die! and lack of communication is darkening my opinion of the whole thing.

If you can respond to my email from July, perhaps you can respond to this one from October.

I won’t starve over $50, but I’d rather have a movie than my money.

All of us want to know what is going on.

Larry Hamilton

I received a reply two hours later. (An encouraging sign.)

On Sunday, October 14, 2018, 10:35:18 PM EDT, TheMostEpicGame wrote:

hi larry –

we appreciate you reaching out. however, we are still under some tight restrictions, though that should be ending soon [emphasis mine. what is this?] and we will have an announcement on the kickstarter page (we’re hoping by the november). we will let everyone know what the status is and what our plans are to move forward. can’t say too much more than that, but know that we’re excited.

for now, and i know it sounds like a broken record, but thanks for being patient.

andrew

Waiting & Wondering

So there is still some sort of restrictions, that we have no idea what they are. Is it just the Kickstarter process to re-enable a Kickstarter that has been frozen for years? We have no way of knowing without someone in the know making it public.

Frustration

In my frustration over this whole thing, I sent a message to Kickstarter about this before I sent the email to Andrew & company. I must say the Kickstarter method of attempting to contact them is designed to prevent all but the most determined from getting through.

Message to Kickstarter:

I backed this Kickstarter, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/720223857/the-great-kingdom, and it was made unavailable due to a lawsuit.

If you check here, https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/DocumentList?docketId=yrhRL9H9/SZtgTonUcRyZg==&PageNum=2&narrow=
you will see that the court orders to suspend it was lifted as they settled out of court.

What can you tell me about the status of this Kickstarter?

Is Kickstarter holding onto this money?

Have they released it to the creators?

If Kickstarter has the money, when can we expect to get it back?

If Kickstarter released the money, why is the Kickstarter page still suspended?

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

Lawrence M. Hamilton, Jr.

Reply from Kickstarter

I was surprised to have a reply from Kickstarter the next day. From what I have read about others attempting to get answers out of Kickstarter, this was fast.

Kisktarter’s Reply

On Monday, October 15, 2018, 5:59:58 PM EDT, Support <support@kickstarter.com> wrote:

##- Please type your reply above this line -##

Your request has been updated. You can add a comment by replying to this email.

Support (Kickstarter)Oct 15, 5:59 PM EDTHi Larry,

Thanks for reaching out, and for being part of this community. We appreciate your interest, but it’s our policy not to comment on any actions taken by our Integrity team. Apologies for any inconvenience this causes.

If you have any questions about the status of the project, you’ll want to contact the project creator. To do so, make sure you’re logged into your account used to pledge, visit the project page, and click on the creator’s profile image. This will open up their bio page where you can then click the blue “Contact me” button.

Best,
Raúl

Still Waiting

I know some things take time, but not being a lawyer, or having any hint of what is going on just adds to frustration. I’m sure they spend a lot of time fielding emails like mine. At some point we’ll have answers and be able to define “soon.”

The Other One

The first documentary to fund on Kickstarter, Dungeons & Dragons: A Documentary, is still viewable online. There is no update since 2016. However, the comments are active asking for an update, as they can tell that the creators have logged on. If you look, Andrew Pascal, who signed the email answers to me, has his name in the URL of the first Kickstarter under Westpaw Films. He launched the second film effort, for whatever reason.

The same is true of their Facebook page, no activity since 2016.

Does the silence mean that they are trying to combine their efforts and are working with Kickstarter to merge? I doubt Kickstarter would do that.

More likely they have some sort of agreement when they settled to either pool resources and work together on one film, or one will fold and refund all backers, or one will wait for the other to complete and release their film first. I think the first two options are most likely.

Until they tell us what’s going on, hurry up and wait. . . .

In the meantime, if you want to back a D&D documentary that has a rough cut and is raising funds for final editing and production, see yesterday’s article. NOTE: It hit the funding goal of $25,000 in the first 12 hours and has reached the second stretch goal. As one stretch goal is met, a new one is revealed.

Follow Me And Die!