Survey Regarding the Potential of a New Video Game Grader in the Market

[OptOut | 8,892]

12 minutes ago, FenrirZero said:

There are those who would buy @OptOut's shit if it was both preserved and the right vlogger hyped it up. The rest would abandon it if he gave them a shitty response to anything they said.

Shitty responses are LITERALLY my brand. Any customer expecting anything else from me is a fucking idiot, eat my shit! 

[OptOut | 8,892]

6 minutes ago, FenrirZero said:

Scene 1, Act 100.

@fcgamer (Ryan Reynold's stunt double) is wandering through a convention all looking for both OptOut (Dwayne Johnson) and @Jeevan (John Cena). Instead he is encountered by two people that have cult-like looks on their faces. They ask if he heard the good word, and started babbling about how they started a grading company that grades graded games. He never got a chance to reply, and instead gives them the following response (as reenacted by Ryan Reynold's stunt double):

End scene.

May I please have your INDIGOOG details. I'd like to make a substantial contribution towards your goal!

[GPX | 1,373]

31 minutes ago, FenrirZero said:

Lets start with the following statement you made: "Sorry but I don’t necessarily believe this to be true regarding “quotas of grade conditions”. This actually wouldn’t make much business sense in the long run."

This is what I actually said: "Sadly, the bigger problem is that the more successful grading companies are putting quotas before accuracy. It is why you will sometimes find a product that looks like an 80 or 80+ be graded a 85. Or find that your 85 was regraded as a 90."

As for your concerns... Lets just say you gave me no chance to care. And leave it at that. Because in the end you acted in a way that I am literally question why I am here. Not just this topic, but also the forum as a whole. 

But when it comes to others... There are those who would buy @OptOut's shit if it was both preserved and the right vlogger hyped it up. The rest would abandon it if he gave them a shitty response to anything they said.

Because 'Business Rule #1' is this: "Always remember that the product, not the buyer, can be replaced."

In other words: Inconsistencies can be fixed, those who allow it can be replaced, and life goes on. But if somebody says you did something wrong, and you talked them the way you did with me? That is a business killer at any level.

With all due respect, I’m only giving out my opinions from a background of over a decades worth of collecting. I’m not trying to shut you down, but merely to make a counterpoint and from my own personal eyewitness account. I think you’re being overly defensive to be honest, as I’m not the type to look down on anyone’s opinions. In fact, I actually enjoy reading on others’ perspectives which is my main reason of being a member on here. 

I also think we’re off on a tangent, because this shouldn’t be a thread to attack or defend VGA/WATA. That can be debated on another time on another thread topic. 

[GPX | 1,373]

1 hour ago, OptOut said:

I would DEFINITELY front another 7 bucks for someone turning this thread into a feature film!

It could tell a story on how VGG joined forces with Wang’s to overcome the empire that is WATA/VGA. The final scene being an epic battle with one another in a HA auction fest! 6 and 7 digits flying left and right!

[YOURTURN | 1,257]

16 minutes ago, GPX said:

With all due respect, I’m only giving out my opinions from a background of over a decades worth of collecting. I’m not trying to shut you down, but merely to make a counterpoint and from my own personal eyewitness account. I think you’re being overly defensive to be honest, as I’m not the type to look down on anyone’s opinions. In fact, I actually enjoy reading on others’ perspectives which is my main reason of being a member on here. 

I also think we’re off on a tangent, because this shouldn’t be a thread to attack or defend VGA/WATA. That can be debated on another time on another thread topic. 

Here's the thing. I respect what everybody has to say. But have a major issue when people sound like their beliefs, etc. are more important than those they are talking to. Just not mine since my social skills are stuck at level 1. But again, the past 9 years I wasted around $10,000 both trying, and failing, to meet my long-term grading collection goals. So yeah.

As for attacking and defending... I am using CAS for the time being. In 2017 this post was made by a member of a community I regret being a part of. In the end Ross Barr's professional attitude has been the excuse I needed to find anything I can get graded. So attacking or defending the other two are not for me.

Plus... I was trying to think of helpful ideas here. But in the end I am trying to start a business that sells t-shirts and t-shirt accessories. Which ends up feeling like me asking my cousin, who used to be part of the video game industry after she left the movie industry, advice on non-video game related business stuff. Which is also based on a true story.

[spacepup | 2,412]

Alrighty folks, there is a LOT of trolling, derailment, and discussions completely unrelated to the OP's questions and his survey in here.  If you want to discuss his survey or related concepts, that's fine.  If you want to ask him questions (without baseless ridicule), that's fine.  But let us please try to avoid the off-topic conversations, arguments with each other, and more importantly the random trolling and derailments.

[OptOut | 8,892]

10 minutes ago, spacepup said:

Alrighty folks, there is a LOT of trolling, derailment, and discussions completely unrelated to the OP's questions and his survey in here.  If you want to discuss his survey or related concepts, that's fine.  If you want to ask him questions (without baseless ridicule), that's fine.  But let us please try to avoid the off-topic conversations, arguments with each other, and more importantly the random trolling and derailments.

I'm not going to disagree with you, you are right. BUT, what I will say, is that the discussion overall has led to a lot of positive, constructive feedback for the OP, as well as sating a great deal of the initial curiosity, confusion and scepticism from members here. Certainly we may have swung quite wildly through a whole gamut of different emotional reactions and responses in here, but I feel like we've arrived at a pretty good place right now.

Let's face it, it's an incredibly high bar to jump over when you aim to impress a tight-knit group of grizzled hobby veterans with a brand new service from a complete unknown, especially when that business is entirely predicated on your superior knowledge, skill and expertise. We have given similar scrutiny in previous threads to others entering the hobby with unknown intentions, and in many cases such people have rightly been exposed for their selfish and/or exploitive intentions. That is to mention nothing of asking for cash in advance in exchange for nothing upfront, without so much as a proven concept.

However, in this case, I feel that the process has actually reflected rather well upon the OP, all things considered. His ability to retain his composure and stand up for himself in the face of overwhelming hostility IMO shows that there is more to this than just a guy looking to score some get-rich-quick cash.

Hell, it meant enough to me that I myself have stowed my own hostility also, and gotten on board, I'm rooting for 'em now! I mean... I AM officially the FIRST contributor to his Indigogo after all! 

 

So yeah, fair cop dude... BUT, I hope you can see the benefits of this rather long journey we've travelled along in this thread too!

[spacepup | 2,412]

I'm not looking to stifle conversations and some amount of varying is completely fine and can always lead to interesting new thoughts that benefit everyone.

Scrutiny is fine.  Honesty is fine.  Protecting the community is fine.  Not everything in here is bad, by any means.  But, there are a few people who go a bit overboard or completely off-topic, and I'm just asking to try to keep it somewhat relevant and in check.  That is all.

[fcgamer | 4,753]

7 minutes ago, spacepup said:

I'm not looking to stifle conversations and some amount of varying is completely fine and can always lead to interesting new thoughts that benefit everyone.

Scrutiny is fine.  Honesty is fine.  Protecting the community is fine.  Not everything in here is bad, by any means.  But, there are a few people who go a bit overboard or completely off-topic, and I'm just asking to try to keep it somewhat relevant and in check.  That is all.

Hopefully you are not referring to me and my grading company. I'm just a 2021 renaissance man, pisce can't help that one bro, don't feel jealous yo.

[Murray | 2,449]

Thank goodness he’s drawn attention away from my shirt. 

 

Edited March 16, 2021 by Murray

[fcgamer | 4,753]

@Redrobin57 Bit late to the party, bud. 

[GPX | 1,373]

I think the thread appears somewhat “derailed” might be because there is only so much suggestions we can make. A little bit of banter might be what’s helped to keep the interest of this thread going, perhaps?

@VideoGameGradersLLC, wish you best of luck with the progress of your startup concepts! It’s a tough battle for sure, but as long as you keep yourself grounded and have realistic expectations, I think it’s a commendable effort of what I’ve seen so far. Cheers! 

[T-Pac | 7,588]

On 3/15/2021 at 9:31 PM, final fight cd said:

Who is the third besides VGA and WATA?

The CasualCart Grading Authority, where my turnaround times are as prompt as my replies...

-CasualCart

 

 

[VideoGameGradersLLC | 82]

I'm guessing that most of you thought I went back into a hole and cried.  Perhaps some thought I was hard at work on moving forward.  It's both.  Just to keep you updated (at the risk of awakening the fury of "input") we are looking at launching the real website in just a few weeks and should be taking orders by the end of June (yes, 2021)!!!  And we've been finalizing some testing with our finally ready production cases.  And look for a video coming soon highlighting our industry leading UV protection.  

In all seriousness I do appreciate the feedback I received a few months back when I originally posted - your input has had an impact on our final product/service.  So thank you.  Most of you

 

 

[VideoGameGradersLLC | 82]

A few more photos that didn't upload to the last post....

[SNESNESCUBE64 | 553]

So for the constructive feedback:

So are you weighting the scale? The zelda one in particular the numbers don't add up.

Why the "1/2" just make it a whole number and call it good. Will people care about a 63 vs a 63.5?

Are you going to let products in which there are errors on the label (like the one you showed with a cut off half in the star) go out? Seems kinda unprofessional to be using it as promo on a site where you already got an overwhelming amount of negative feedback.

 

Now for the red flags that are screaming at me:

You made an indie gogo to try to gain $94,000 and recieved no money from investors. This sounds like you were just trying to take folks money/offload the cost of making a business where you gain to profit off of people with less risks involved in the process. Even if you had the best of intentions with this, wouldn't that be a red flag that nobody wants this to be a thing?

You still haven't really gone too far in-depth about who your team is and what makes you qualified. And to make matters worse, you have a shell of a site with no real info other than sign up to have your stuff sent to you and whether or not I want to decline your tracking cookies.

I'm trying to be fair here because even if I don't like a product, I don't want to wish ill will on anyone. I honestly want people to succeed at their dreams of making their passion projects come to life. But based on what you've shown me, this looks like genuine snake oil at this point.

[VideoGameGradersLLC | 82]

6 minutes ago, SNESNESCUBE64 said:

So for the constructive feedback:

So are you weighting the scale? The zelda one in particular the numbers don't add up.

60% box 20% cart 20% manual

more specifically a point system: 120 box, 40 cart, 40 manual. 200 total points divided by 2 for 100 point scale grade. 

6 minutes ago, SNESNESCUBE64 said:

Why the "1/2" just make it a whole number and call it good. Will people care about a 63 vs a 63.5?

When video games are bought and sold at scale like cards, yes 

6 minutes ago, SNESNESCUBE64 said:

Are you going to let products in which there are errors on the label (like the one you showed with a cut off half in the star) go out? Seems kinda unprofessional to be using it as promo on a site where you already got an overwhelming amount of negative feedback.

 

this was testing so no. Not a promo just sharing some updates as we continue to progress. 

6 minutes ago, SNESNESCUBE64 said:

Now for the red flags that are screaming at me:

You made an indie gogo to try to gain $94,000 and recieved no money from investors. This sounds like you were just trying to take folks money/offload the cost of making a business where you gain to profit off of people with less risks involved in the process. Even if you had the best of intentions with this, wouldn't that be a red flag that nobody wants this to be a thing?

I received $7. But No.  We changed our initial startup plan to adjust to less funding and I invested more of my money than would have been necessary with help from Indiegogo.  It didn’t happen we adjusted and are moving forward. Nearly all levels of the Indiegogo campaign provided value for the contribution so not at all a money grab   

 

6 minutes ago, SNESNESCUBE64 said:

You still haven't really gone too far in-depth about who your team is and what makes you qualified. And to make matters worse, you have a shell of a site with no real info other than sign up to have your stuff sent to you and whether or not I want to decline your tracking cookies.

as stated the new site is launching soon and I believe I have covered qualifications to a level most will be happy with. In the end the quality and consistency of our work is absolutely the most important factor. 

6 minutes ago, SNESNESCUBE64 said:

I'm trying to be fair here because even if I don't like a product, I don't want to wish ill will on anyone. I honestly want people to succeed at their dreams of making their passion projects come to life. But based on what you've shown me, this looks like genuine snake oil at this point.

Fortunately others disagree. And in one sentence saying you don’t wish ill will then calling this genuine (better than fake I guess) snake oil doesn’t seem to jive. 

[AdamW | 713]

1 hour ago, VideoGameGradersLLC said:

I'm guessing that most of you thought I went back into a hole and cried.  Perhaps some thought I was hard at work on moving forward.  It's both.

Isn't it hard to work while crying in a hole, though?

[AdamW | 713]

but seriously: I agree with @SNESNESCUBE64 on the half points. Whether people will care or not, do you seriously think you're going to be able to draw a consistent distinction between "this is what a 63 box looks like" and "this is what a 63.5 box looks like" at a scale of thousands of games across multiple systems, and be consistent with that? It just seems implausible and hence tends to detract from "trustability". I believe that it's at least theoretically possible for WATA to consistently distinguish between what's a 9.0 and what's a 9.2, even if they don't always get it right. If they had 9.0, 9.05, 9.1, 9.15, 9.2...I mean...I'm not sure I believe that it's realistically possible to grade that finely with any kind of value. Let alone down in the 6-7 range.

For print codes, rather than writing "USA Code" or whatever (like WATA does), I would prefer if you just wrote the exact, actual code. For e.g., Pokemon Red has manuals DMG-APAE-USA, U/DMG-APAE-USA, DMG-APAE-USA-1, and U/DMG-APAE-USA-1. If you just write "USA Code", what does that mean? Just write down what the actual code is. It's much less likely to be ambiguous or cause confusion.

Ditto for the packins. On the SMB3 box you wrote "Now You're Playing With Power poster" - there are several different posters that use that tagline (just put "Now You're Playing With power poster" in a Google image search and see). Just from that description it is not clear which one is in the box. Please include the actual print code from the poster.

Thanks for following up!

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

I like the case design, but prefer to see something about the grading on the side. 
 

Is there any built in tamper evidence features?

 

And I know you said its a demo, but the label is very boring. I think there should be more info on the front, or do something to make it more flashy. It looks like it was made in a word document, so I am curious to see what the final version looks like. 

[VideoGameGradersLLC | 82]

23 minutes ago, AdamW said:

Isn't it hard to work while crying in a hole, though?

Probably why we shaved the edge off the 1/2 on Zelda. 

[VideoGameGradersLLC | 82]

15 minutes ago, AdamW said:

but seriously: I agree with @SNESNESCUBE64 on the half points. Whether people will care or not, do you seriously think you're going to be able to draw a consistent distinction between "this is what a 63 box looks like" and "this is what a 63.5 box looks like" at a scale of thousands of games across multiple systems, and be consistent with that? It just seems implausible and hence tends to detract from "trustability". I believe that it's at least theoretically possible for WATA to consistently distinguish between what's a 9.0 and what's a 9.2, even if they don't always get it right. If they had 9.0, 9.05, 9.1, 9.15, 9.2...I mean...I'm not sure I believe that it's realistically possible to grade that finely with any kind of value. Let alone down in the 6-7 range.

Fair points, part of it is the math is the math.  If it comes out to a half it comes out that way, do we round up or down? We use a scoring system not an arbitrary number we decided fits.  And in the 90s it might matter. 

 

15 minutes ago, AdamW said:

For print codes, rather than writing "USA Code" or whatever (like WATA does), I would prefer if you just wrote the exact, actual code. For e.g., Pokemon Red has manuals DMG-APAE-USA, U/DMG-APAE-USA, DMG-APAE-USA-1, and U/DMG-APAE-USA-1. If you just write "USA Code", what does that mean? Just write down what the actual code is. It's much less likely to be ambiguous or cause confusion.

Back and forth on that. Limited space. We were using full codes initially, will work on getting back to it. 

15 minutes ago, AdamW said:

Ditto for the packins. On the SMB3 box you wrote "Now You're Playing With Power poster" - there are several different posters that use that tagline (just put "Now You're Playing With power poster" in a Google image search and see). Just from that description it is not clear which one is in the box. Please include the actual print code from the poster.

good feedback. Thanks. 

15 minutes ago, AdamW said:

Thanks for following up!

 

[VideoGameGradersLLC | 82]

17 minutes ago, MrWunderful said:

I like the case design, but prefer to see something about the grading on the side. 

 

Can you clarify what you’d like to see in more detail? 

 

 

17 minutes ago, MrWunderful said:

Is there any built in tamper evidence features?

 

Yes. Case will be sealed pretty tightly and tough to open without it being obvious. Additionally a small custom printed security sticker will go over the seal at the top, impossible to open the case without clear evidence of tampering with the seal. 

17 minutes ago, MrWunderful said:

And I know you said its a demo, but the label is very boring. I think there should be more info on the front, or do something to make it more flashy. It looks like it was made in a word document, so I am curious to see what the final version looks like. 

What’s wrong with Word?

it is a bit boring but part of our effort is to keep the focus on the game not the label. 

[Gloves | 11,830]

2 minutes ago, VideoGameGradersLLC said:

it is a bit boring but part of our effort is to keep the focus on the game not the label. 

People are gonna wanna show them off.

[Strange | 1,701]

31 minutes ago, MrWunderful said:

And I know you said its a demo, but the label is very boring. I think there should be more info on the front, or do something to make it more flashy. It looks like it was made in a word document, so I am curious to see what the final version looks like. 

Yeah, I was initially hesitant to say anything but you asked for feedback and I’m not meaning this in an antagonistic way. But this is what stuck out to me as a casual viewer, that the label was bland. I’m not a sealed or graded collector, so you could disregard my opinion entirely. But I think there’s also something to be said for appealing to those outside of your market and maybe compelling them to give your service a shot.