Swinks: Thanks for all the information on the pro's and con's of MDF vs Plywood. I wanted to use plywood originally to give the cabinets that "classic" feel but was advised there were too many headaches involved. This "laser ply" sounds perfect. I'll bring it up with ArcadeWorX tomorrow and see where we can go. If I can get quality plywood we will certainly go that route.
Re: Kickstarter. Currently you need to be a US/UK or Canadian citizen to use it - you need a the equivalent of a tax file number and a local bank account. There are ways around it (setting on a US shell company) which works great if you are a software project, or a small piece of hardware - anything that can easily be shipped worldwide as every reward needs to be available to US/UK/Canada and you can restrict from there.
They also have restrictions on the campaign itself - it needs to be a set project with a beginning and end, rewards need to be the result of the project and you can't raise funds to "start up" your business, only the product itself.
Given we are aiming at the Australian and NZ market, and offering merch as rewards (perks) it meant we couldn't use KickStarter even if it was available to Aussie right now.
I got an email on Friday morning letting me know KS is coming to Australia, I think it said November.
The fantastic news (and an official update is going out later tonight) is we have secured private funding to build our "to spec" prototypes, so we start building this week. The IndieGoGo is now more advertising, Google Ranking, and private pre-orders....the project is going ahead no matter what as we have an agency interested in renting the cabinets for their events!
Pro Pinball WILL be pre-installed (if it's ready on time, otherwise we will send out keys when it is) and we find out later in the week if we will be doing some co-branded cabinets. Fingers crossed!!
HomePin: That's rather pessimistic of you ;) It's rather rare than a KS/IndieGoGo makes it's target and then doesn't deliver. It certainly happens from time to time, but given you put your name and reputation on the line when you do this, you'd be pretty stupid to try and cut and run!
