New Production Sample
over 5 years ago – Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 05:26:36 PM

Hello Ascendants!

We received and went over everything in the new production sample and I have to say we are very happy with the new changes! The new lid insert is so very nice. I love it! With this new lid, all the pieces stay where they are intended, even after you put the gemstones in all of the compartments and move/shake the box around!! This is exactly what I wanted and could not be happier about that.

Here is an image of the new lid insert:

 They fixed the firewalls! YES! This is so nice and I'm super happy about that!

Here are new images below of the NEW firewalls (very nice!):

Here is an image of the old firewalls below, you can see a very big difference:

I also love the new debossed text and logos on the card/gem insert trays, this looks very nice. Here are images of those below, I hope you guys like them!

 All the pieces were there, and the correct amount of gems were counted out. A big plus.

This image below shows everything in the box (under the new lid insert). I put all the gems on one side, but you would normally split the gems between the two trays. I did this for reasons you will see later when I cover some of the issues:

 Now onto some of the remaining issues. First of all, it turns out that we are not going to be able to have the gold metallics at all because, apparently, the manufacturer cannot produce them at a level of quality that we can accept. I do feel that this is very unfortunate, but it is out of my control at this point. They said they simply cannot make them at the print quality we are looking for. So, the regular prints without metallics are very close now, but still seem a bit too dark. This has been a concern of mine for some time and I hope in the final fixes that this will be finally resolved. 

 Here are the final issues:

1. The character mats are printed a bit too dark as I said. It is not so bad that it would be unacceptable, however, if they can make this just right it will be nicer.

2. They sent the production sample with a quad-fold board, again. This is incorrect. They don't fit properly this way. There should not be and can not be quad fold boards. They need to all be BIFOLD boards and were always supposed to be bifold boards. We have reiterated this many times. They are going to have to fix this. Here is an image below of what it looked like when I opened the box.

It is supposed to look like the image below (with it not being a quad-fold board obviously):

3. The new card/gem trays are made of a much weaker plastic or foam or something. The bottom of the container slots are very fragile. The first thing that happened when we were looking at these is that one of us poked our finger straight through the bottom of one of the containers. It is almost like tissue paper the containers are so weak. This is unacceptable because it completely defeats the purpose of the containers. These containers will be used over and over and over repeatedly during the entire game. The gems that go in here are repeatedly removed out of, and placed back into, these containers over and over by every player the entire game. This means that the strength of this material MUST stand up to repeated use of fingers being pushed down into the containers to rake out gemstones. (NOTE: the original card/gem trays that were sent to us were not made of this weaker material; something had changed in quality here and must be addressed)

Here are images of that below:

 4. There is also an issue with the new card/gem trays in that a "foreign extrusion" has appeared in the "U shape" you can see below. I also posted an image of what the original looks like which did not have this problem. So they need to fix this as well.

Here is the new problem tray below:

 Below is an image of the originals (that had other problems) but the U shape was correct:

 So, aside from these few issues that need to be fixed, we are happy and very excited that we are getting much closer! I hope we are able to move through and finalize these issues soon. 

Thank you guys for your patience and sticking with us through all this! I will update you again with new information as soon as possible! Thank you so much for your support!

Best Regards,

Jason M. Allen

Manufacturer Update / Ray Dillon Issue
over 5 years ago – Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 05:09:30 AM

Hello Ascendants!  

First, allow me to thank you all for being patient with us as we have continued to sort out the issues with the manufacturer. I know that it has been a while since our last update, but I have some new information that shows we are still moving forward. So without further ado, this is where we are with the project.

As some of you may already be aware (from chatting with you guys in the comments sections), there has been some continued delays with the manufacturer over the past several months. This is probably an understatement but the best explanation that we have gotten from our liaison is that, well, that they don’t really understand why the manufacturer has been taking so long. As I mentioned in the last update, we have been working directly with one of the owners of the intermediary company, Lisa. Well, in June I received a response from Lisa’s husband, Charles. This is what he had to say:

“I have been partners with (the Chinese manufacturer) for almost 15 years. Not once have we ever had a circumstance like this.  

It is inexplicable and embarrassing and I am very sorry.  

I am told by (the Chinese manufacturer) that we will be receiving production samples the first week of July, I am holding my breath until I have a tracking number for you. He also told me, without letting us know prior, that hard copy proofs were not being done and that he was bypassing them to go directly to production samples. We were led to believe by him that hard copy proofs were being sent, but then finally he told us they were not going to be useful because foil printing would not be on them.  

I will keep you posted.”  

Ok, so while sort of explains the delays, it also informed us that they would be going straight to production samples because of the metallic printing (he said foil, a similar term).

Well we had waited through July and there was some uncomfortable radio silence. After we had not heard from the manufacturer again over this time I continued to blast them with emails until finally the Chinese manufacturer contacted both Charles and I directly saying (this is a direct quote from the Chinese so the English is a bit choppy but gets the point across):

“Yes Charles is right, all production is made by us and too many issue, all fault is from us because we tested so many times, colour could not match for your foil quality we are still testing it every day almost and try to match  

I already completed all components since last year, only printing did not finish  

I will resolve ASAP and send 2 samples each to you and charles ASAP”

OK, so this helps assure me that some form of progress is still being made. I can’t make any judgments as to the absolute nature of the complications, however, until I have the production sample in my hands.  

Now fast forward to today.

I have finally received some images of the updated “tray lid” addition to the box!! YES! Progress that I can actually see! Here is an image of the lid design physically in the box!  NOTE: It will not be red in the final production, it will be the same color as the rest of the trays.

 So, the last image still shows the quad-fold board in the box, but this will be the correct bifold board in the production samples. I’m really excited to see everything finally packaged correctly and the issue of loose pieces in the box will be forever behind us.  

I will keep you guys updated the moment I have the tracking number for the production samples shipment! Thank you for your continued patience! I appreciate you all so much!

###

In other update news, I have to inform you that we have an issue with the illustrious Ray Dillon, the artist behind finalizing the Graphic Novel; well, "he who was supposed to be" finalizing the Graphic Novel, to be more precise.

I am trying to determine how best to explain this very long story in the shortest and most informative way possible. Perhaps a list would be best?

• September 17, 2015, Ray Dillion and Renae De Liz (Ray & Renae) signed a Graphic Novel Artwork Agreement with us to deliver ten full color graphic novel illustration pages by December 31, 2015. These were the “pitch” pages, and these EVENTUALLY were delivered (but not according to the deadline). These 10 pages have been seen by you in the online previews.
• October 15, 2015, Ray & Renae signed a Graphic Novel Artwork Agreement with us to deliver 42 more of full color graphic novel illustration pages by June 30, 2016.
  
• August 23, 2016, Ray & Renae entered an oral agreement with us to deliver the final 8 full color graphic novel illustration pages by October 15, 2016. This would be the final pages to complete the full 60 pages.
  
• Contrary to the terms of the all 3 agreements, and despite being paid in full, Ray and Renae failed to deliver the all the completed pages on or before the respective deadlines.
  
• At the time that Ray and Renae entered into the Agreements they had breached contracts to provide stories, artwork, inking, coloring, and lettering for graphic novels and comic books, and had also breached numerous contracts for commissioned artwork.
  
• At the time Ray and Renae entered into all 3 of these agreements they were also under contract with DC Comics to produce a graphic novel called Legend of Wonder Woman.
  
• Ray & Renae never informed us at Incarnate Games that they had breached contracts to provide stories, artwork, inking, coloring, and lettering for graphic novels and comic books, and never informed us that they owed commissions and other work product to numerous different clients. Specifically, by September 2015 Ray and Renae’s backlog of commission work dated to 2008. Further, Ray & Renae had yet to fulfill obligations owed pursuant to a successful 2012 Kickstarter campaign to write, color and publish a graphic novel called Peter Pan.
  
• Ray & Renae’s inability and/or unwillingness to honor their contractual commitments is discussed in detail in a blog post titled “The Ballad of Ray Dillon and Renae De Liz” posted on the website Bleeding Cool at https://www.bleedingcool.com/2016/12/19/the-ballad-of-ray-dillon-and-renae-de-liz/. We did not become aware of Ray & Renae’s sordid history until after we entered into the Third Agreement.
  
• Incarnate Games has repeatedly demanded that Ray & Renae complete the work required by the Agreement, Second Agreement, and Third Agreement. Each time, Ray & Renae have promised to provide the required work product. Each time, Ray & Renae have failed to do so.
  

While the facts remain, Ray has repeatedly informed Incarnate Games that the responsibility for the remaining work rests solely upon Ray’s shoulders, and his wife Renae has completed her portion of the contracts in full and that Renae has nothing to do with the reality that the final pages have continued to not be delivered.

Current Status of Graphic Novel

As of this last weekend, after repeatedly (ad infinitum) requesting the final files since the final deadlines, Ray Dillon has uploaded all of the files that he has for the project to us in their current state. HOWEVER, these files are incomplete in that there are copious edits that are still required to be completed before the final graphic novel can be compiled and finalized for printing.

Now, having all that said, one of the most recent email exchanges between Ray Dillon and I is as follows:

<From Jason Allen to Ray Dillon>  

“Ray,  

I see that you have uploaded the files, it looks like this is probably all the files that you have, I'll double check. I appreciate you doing that.  

SO then, the million dollar question is...  

Are you going to actually finish this or do I need to find someone else to finish this?  

This is really the most important thing I need to know because I have to tell my Kickstarter backers what is going on. Please let me know your answer, thanks.”

<Response from Ray Dillon to Jason Allen>

"I would really love to, but I’m afraid of taking too long to get on it and get through it with everything going on in our lives. I don’t want to keep you waiting any longer. It’s bad enough that I’ve caused this much of a delay. So it’s a good idea to hire someone else to revise and whatnot . :(  

It’s pretty close so someone with more time could probably wrap it up in a week or less. Especially if they're young and hungry.”  

Mega Update - a summary of trials
almost 6 years ago – Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 08:11:25 PM

Hello Ascendants!

This update is quite long. As I have been informing you guys of the delays, my hope was that we could get over the hurdles with the manufacturer sooner rather than later. I had a plan for what the updates were going to be like, and ever since Christmas I had been really pushing the manufacturer to produce the results I was looking for to fit into that plan. While I would have liked to continue handling the updates with kid gloves, I am going to enjoy your guys’ company down here in the trenches! Prepare to become battle-hardened update survivors!

Maybe those idioms are a bit extreme? Ha ha! Well, I’m going to like sharing all this information with you all anyway. As I said it may be a bit long so I organized it into sections that way if you are looking for something specific you may find the information quickly.

WARNING: This is essentially a compilation of all the troubles we have had up to this point, this update may not be enjoyable if you prefer not to hear about our struggles. Please know that even while some of this will sound like a bummer at times, all of these issues are being worked to make the final product into what we all expect in the end.

NOTICE: the purpose of releasing such a large amount of information at this point is to give you all an understanding of everything that led up to where we are now and demonstrate how the issues came to be and why they still exist if applicable.

That moment you realize the battle has begun.

After we completed the campaign at the beginning of August last year, we immediately were off to Gen Con 50. We had meticulously planned beforehand to make the surprise as awesome as possible. We were already working with the manufacturer since before the Kickstarter campaign had begun, and we were able to put in a small print run order specifically for our backers and supporters during the show. I was happy to tell you all that we were going to be able to give out the final games to our backers literally during the convention! I was super excited.

That excitement was tempered after we arrived in Indianapolis (Gen Con). The schedule was tight because the manufacturer was trying to work out some final issues. (Those issues will become more obvious later in the update, but the main issue that they were trying to resolve was the Gold Metallic Effects (Gold FX) on the printed materials. I will also explain more about what Gold FX are later).

Enter Jane. Jane is not her real name but this is what we will call her as I am not one to throw people under the bus. Jane was our point of contact for the company/manufacturer we are working with. She was going to meet with me to discuss the project and our shipment of games for the show.

As we were setting up our booth the day before the show, Jane calls me to announce that the shipment was stopped at customs. She regretfully informed me that she had forgotten to have us fill out certain paperwork that was required at the destination. Not off to a great start. She had me fill out the paperwork and she swore that the shipment would be there in time for the show in the morning.

Next day. Show starts. No games. Still stopped at customs. We weren’t pleased about this but we made the best of it. We had the prototypes there and all the tables at our booth were filled with people the whole day, we got a lot of praise from everyone that decided to play. This was very encouraging. Later that day during the show Jane informs me she had a final delivery time, 10 AM the next day. Any of our backers who visited us wanting to pick up their games were informed of the delay and asked to come back the next day.

Around 1 PM the next day we get the games. A large pallet that the people at Gen Con were kind enough to have set just outside one of the exit doors near our booth. I tear into the first case and see the first actual manufactured copies of my game. While this was a great feeling it was short lived as soon as I opened one of the game boxes.

That moment you realize this battle is a war.

I rip off the shrink wrap to the first game. "Disaster" strikes. Metaphorically now is when I also rip off the kid gloves for this update. There is no delicate way to put this. The pieces were everywhere. The really nice insert that was supposed to keep all the pieces in place might as well not even been in the box. Miniatures scattered everywhere, some were even severely misshapen because of the nature of when things are rattling around in a box. The golden rounds (crowns), bloodstones and Omega Stones were strewn about. Printed materials all staggered inside like papers scattered across the desk of an old detective movie. What was this I’m looking at?!

I open another game. This one was worse than the last. I open another, same problem. I rush out into the convention hall and back to our booth. After signaling to my business partner to come see, we go back to look and discuss the problem. Thanks to my business partner, cooler heads prevailed.

We bring out about 75 games to our booth and stack them up on our back table. It was decided that we do only what could be done given the situation. We had to inform everyone interested in picking up their pledge or people that wanted to purchase the game that there were some serious issues with the packaging of the product. We still did okay given the circumstance, and we took the name and address information from anyone that got a game in order to correct the problems for them at a later date. This would be a good time to mention that of all the Kickstarter backers that came to our booth to get their game, all of them elected to wait until the corrected versions were created to get their copy. In my opinion, this was the best option for any backer given the numerous problems.

The list of all the original problems.

Despite our best efforts, the optimistic possibility of fulfilling pledges only weeks after our campaign completed was out of the question given the number of problems with the games from the Gen Con shipment. These games were unworthy of the Incarnate Games standard, and as you can imagine I was more than somewhat disappointed.

So aside from the scattered components everywhere inside the box, what made the game unworthy of our standard? I met with Jane on the 3rd day of Gen Con to thoroughly go through those issues. Following is the master list of problems/issues which were discussed with Jane:

1. There are 2 card/gem trays. Both were missing the logo debossing. Also, the one on the right was missing the card dividers completely. The manufacturer decided to make it different because they felt that the bag of gems needed to occupy that space. I will avoid going on a rant here, it was not only incorrect but also unnecessary (the bag of gems fits fine inside the tray with card dividers).  

2. The insert for the miniatures wasn’t molded correctly to accommodate the shapes of all of the miniatures (this is called the T shaped insert; you will see it later in the update).  

3. The manufacturer made the box much larger. Although I pushed back hard on this, the fact was it had to be bigger to accommodate the presentation of the Limited Collector’s Edition. Well, given that the box was larger, the T shaped insert was now no longer flush with the inside top of the box lid. This directly resulted in all components scattering inside the box. This had to be addressed and corrected (solution shown later).  

4. There were no Gold Metallic Effects (Gold FX) on anything. The Gold FX are essentially one of the most distinguishing features of the Limited Edition. Gold FX are metallic ink that makes gold on the printed materials look like actual gold that shines and reflects light and looks really cool. Gold FX continues to be a point of confusion for some reason with the manufacturer. The issue is being corrected.  

5. The Fire Walls graphics were printed transparently! (You could see through the fire, which was incorrect) This was disappointing as it made it very hard to see the fire on the board which is a major feature of the game. The manufacturer misunderstood despite very clear instructions, images, and even VIDEOS of me showing them exactly what it was supposed to be based on existing prototypes we had made. This is being corrected.  

6. Again on the Fire Walls, there was an issue with some of them where the plastic protective film that can be peeled away from the Fire Walls was the actual surface that was printed on (quality control issue). What this meant is that some of the Fire Walls graphics could just be peeled right off. This is being corrected.  

7. Furthermore, on quality control, they need to be sure they are accurately counting all the dice, gems, and ensuring that the pieces are not irregular. We noticed that there was a slight shortage of Dire Gems on one of the games.  

8. They printed the game board as a quad-fold board. This was a mistake. The board was expressly specified to be a bifold board, the graphics on the outside of the board are designed for it to be this way. This was a bewildering mistake that they made. It has since been corrected.  

9. Finally, an aesthetic defect was color matching on the character mats. I clearly noticed this as I am a very detail oriented person, although the color would be less noticeable to other people who haven’t seen the proper way the character mats were supposed to look. However, everyone did seem to notice that it appeared too dark. I stand by my artists on this one; this was not an art, or psd/ai file issue. The reason I know this is because we had 2 different places create prototypes for us before going to manufacture. It just so happens that both of these places that we had the prototypes made (Virtual Packaging and BGM) printed the character mats perfectly. So this was a manufacturer mistake.

I sent Jane home with 2 more sets of prototypes to send to China seeing as they needed to physically be clarified on the issues.

Why updates were delayed.

I had thought that the manufacturer would have been able to get to and address these issues more rapidly. However, as of today, we still have not gotten any physical production samples since the time of Gen Con 50. I wanted to reveal that the box size was being increased with the cool solution that is still underway for the box inserts.

Well, the manufacturer has delayed far too long at this point for me to justify presenting things to you in that way. SO here is an image showing you guys what the inside of the box looks like from the Gen Con edition printing. Please realize that the final solution to fixing the issue of all the components flying around in the box is currently underway and will be discussed further in the 'new addition to the box' section.

An unexpected contact replacement.

After returning from Gen Con, emails were sent to Jane. She told me she sent the prototypes to China. Weeks pass. More emails sent. Nothing. Then I get a message about mid-September (nearly a month after Gen Con) from a new person named Lisa (this is the new person’s real name). She tells me that Jane is no longer with the company.

...

Lisa was Jane’s supervisor. She apologized for the many mistakes that resulted during the time Jane was my point of contact for this project. She informed me that Jane had been let go.  

…

Now, I am not going to assume that Jane was fired because of our ordeal; she deserves the benefit of the doubt, but it wouldn’t be a far stretch to imagine that the mistakes which were made under her watch were a major contributing factor.

OK, so Lisa is my new point of contact. Great, a much more experienced person that will get us the results we all are hoping and paying for. However, this also meant that everything that I had to go over with Jane up to this point and beyond would have to be related again now to Lisa. Many compilations of emails and phone conversations later, and we were on the same page.

The new addition to the box.

From mid-September to mid-October: Of the list of issues, one which required more design work was the insert revisions. My idea was to raise the height of the miniature portion of the inserts to become flush with the top of the box lid. This was actually already part of the original design (that China didn’t do) only modified further (it’s a long story).

Enter Andrew Martin! This is our miniature sculptor artist. Thank God for Andrew! He had the genius idea of creating a clear lid that went over the top of the already existing tray designs. I was so happy with this idea that I decided to have him design the clear lid and we discussed with Lisa who also agreed this was a good solution.

Here are some images of that.

Manufacture’s miscalculation

At the end of October, I learn that the manufacturer had already printed and manufactured all the components for the entire print run. All that had to be done was finish, assemble, and package everything. This meant everything that was wrong with our small print run now already preexisted at the factory for the full order! I was floored, hospitalized actually (although that might be a bit dramatic to say, I believe it was just a coincidence my appendix ruptured around this time).

This is where we come to a full and complete stop. This was astonishing news. This level of complete failure is impossible to fully explain without sharing all correspondence between Lisa, their graphic designers, the factory themselves, and me. Suffice it to say that it all came down to a major failure of their chain of communication which was easy enough for me to point out by going through previous emails and showing them their huge mistake.

Here was the mistake they made explained in a very general way: They never sent us a final production sample before sending the small print run for Gen Con, which they said would instead serve as our production samples, however, they in actuality printed all the components for the full print run anyway.

Needless to say, this was a time for a reckoning. I sent back to Lisa an email fully proving to them how this was in no way Incarnate Games doing. I was in the hospital for a week. Another week or two later after that, Lisa confirmed that they were going to reprint everything due to the mistakes.

Holidays to the present.

NOVEMBER 2017

I had received a new sample of the character mats in November, which still had color matching and printing issues which they are currently correcting. They also sent me samples of the colors of the Gold FX which I approved.

Seeing that we were still having printing issues at this point, I knew there was no way they were going to get the final production sample to me before Chinese New Year.  

DECEMBER 2017  

At the beginning of December, they sent images of the corrected card/gem trays which I have approved. Here are some images of that. Very nice!

They also sent an image of a plastic lid that they made for the trays, which was nothing like our design. While it would function to keep all the components inside, it would not accommodate the printed materials on the top as our design intended. So I did not approve these as they need to make the lid correctly. Here is an image of that.

JANUARY 2018  

From mid-December to mid-January was a quiet time, holidays slowed things down. Then, of course, this means we start to approach Chinese New Year which factories close for about three working weeks, which also contributed to a lack of updates during that time.

FEBRUARY 2018 

The China manufacturer returned on or around February 27th, where I spoke with Lisa who informed me updates were incoming. 

MARCH 2018 

On March 8th I finally got confirmation that the manufacturer was running tests on the new lid to ensure that it will function as we intend while keeping a good thick quality. 

On March 19th another update from Lisa informed that China was working on the matte finishing of the boards which was detracting from our vibrant artwork.  

APRIL 2018 & CURRENT STATUS

From then into April, there has been some slight frustration because I feel that there has been a lack of progress actually seen. I had not received anything physical from them or any new images since December, so I sent them an email reiterating everything and asking 3 very straightforward questions to them on April 10th .

1) Are there any updates regarding the lid and/or any updates regarding all other production issues?

Their reply was that:  

• They fixed the plastic card/gem trays (which I knew already).  
• They addressed the misprinting of the firewall component and is being fixed.  
• The gold metallics are being added to the components  
• They are still seeing what we can be done to make sure the character mats match our prototypes, and  
• They are still working on the plastic lid.

2) What is the estimated time to complete and send out the new production sample? All of our Kickstarter backers sure would like to know.  

Their reply was that:  

• The factory still seems to be stuck on the plastic lid and successfully putting raises in the lids, and  
• Until they get that component figured out, they won’t have a timeline of when they can produce the production samples.

3) What is it that you (the manufacturer) propose is going to be done about the games that we cannot sell that are just sitting in our warehouse?  

There reply was that:  

• They will replace them when final production takes place.
  

Currently, there still seems to be some confusion about Gold FX going on the boxes (the game boxes and the tuck boxes). During the time things were being clarified, back at Gen Con with Jane, this was an issue that was assured to us would be included in the final production.

Finally, I would like to say that perhaps the main reason that all of these issues haven’t been expressed in prior updates, or up to this point I should say, frankly is because the manufacturer’s performance does not reflect the methods or workflow of Incarnate Games or its contractors. You all deserve to know this information though, of course! It's just that… at the end of all this information, I wanted to be able to say that none of the problems mattered because we were currently getting your games ready to ship. Unfortunately, we have to wait a bit longer to be able to say that.

I will keep everyone apprised of any and all information as it becomes available; hopefully, from now on we only get good news!

Thank you all for your patience and understanding as the manufacturer gets this sorted out.

Best Regards,  

Jason M. Allen