With mainstream entertainment in shambles, the crowdfunding of independent studios, be it comics, video games, TTRPGs, or board games, has become essential. A few of the best examples are The Rippaverse from Eric July and his all-star ensemble of writers and artists, the recent success of Palworld that has the entire gaming industry on notice, the ongoing success of works coming out of ComicsGate, chief among those being Cyberfrog by Ethan Van Sciver, to name a few. However, one game is causing fans to headscratch at its Kickstarter success, and that’s Rap Godz.
Some remember the situation in which Zoe Quinn raised $85,448 through crowdfunding to develop an ero-game based on Chuck Tingle’s writings. However, the product never materialized, and it was revealed that she allegedly took some of that money to fund a trip to Japan. As of this writing, the project has yet to be fulfilled.
In the last week, Fandom Pulse has received information from BowtiedBoardGamer on Twitter centering on two board game projects called Rap Godz in 2020, and Hoop Godz in 2023, both made one Omari Akil through his company, Colorway Games Lab. Rap Godz and Hoop Godz have raised through crowdfunding $26,011 and $47,484, respectively, totaling $73,495. In regards to Akil’s sudden success in the last four years, BowtiedBoardGamer commented:
“To summarize it, a few years ago he came onto the scene trying to be a “black designer” because the usual story about too many white people in the industry.
He knew the right people, mainly the Seattle group, and they propped up via media and blog posts.
One thing to keep in mind that this particular group is behind many of the issues with the board game industry. They were the same group that are still friends with Matt Fantastic, the guy who assaulted TheQuartering.
He designed a game called Rap Godz, a rather mediocre board game but since “black game designer”, people were skirting around the issue of being a bad game.
in fact, he had such an overstock because no one was buying it, that he made a charity attempt to donate to “BLM” to get rid of it, probably avoiding warehouse storage fees.
He worked on a few games, including an expansion to Adventure Tactics, and several WizKids games. The WizKids games all bombed, stating their mediocre design again
He started a 2nd kickstarter called Hoop Godz several years ago. It was funded, but it was never delivered. It’s been years since the last update, and he disappeared without a trace
Even the company’s twitter account hasn’t had a post since 2022.”
In short, Omar Akil has been courting far-left influencers on the independent board game scene and utilizing race hustling to promote his crowdfunding campaigns like Rap Godz and deflect any criticism. However, this has not shielded him from demands from his backers to even provide an update on fulfillment. Some of them even suspected that this was a scam. One Rap Godz backer, Cappa, commented on Board Game Geek:
“I dont know if its a scam, but we were definitely scammed. Guy stopped updating everyone on his KS after at one point going off on his backers and blaming them for God knows what….
Unfortunate really”
In another thread on Board Game Geek, there were also comments dating as far back as September of last year such as:
“I sure hope this game gets produced and sent to all of us who backed it on Kickstarter. Sure would be nice if the publisher/creator would give us an update.”
“I didn’t Kickstart Hoop Godz but I did preorder his reprint of Rap Godz… that’s been over 2yrs now. To anyone coming here looking for opinions, I do not recommend preordering or ordering until you start seeing these 2 products in retail. I consider it a donation at this point.”
“I’m worried you’ve been scammed.”
But the most damning accusation came in the form of a post on Reddit on February 5:
“TL:DR I preordered what was supposed to be a fun game from a studio I had heard good things about and they just took my money.
Almost two and half years ago, I preordered a restock of Colorway Games Lab’s Rap Godz. I had heard it was fun, and I wanted to support minority game designers in the hobby. The game was due to be in stock at the end of the year, Dec 2022, I placed my order and put a reminder in my phone to start looking for fulfillment emails.
I placed my order in January and didn’t get any email updates about my game. No big deal, it’s just a restock so i’m not expecting KS updates. December 2022 rolls around, and I don’t get any notification about shipping. I don’t get any notification at all. I give it the entire month of December. Not a peep.
January 2023 comes. I reach out to colorway’s contact us form. I don’t hear back. I contact the email address provided for my preorder. I don’t hear back. I PM their instagram. I don’t hear back. I post a public comment on their most recent instagram post and tag both Colorway and Omari (which is from PAX unplugged 2022), Instagram gives me a notification that a comment was made on my post but I go to check it and it was deleted, no idea what it says.
I decide to comment on Omari’s most recent instagram post. I don’t get a response. I just checked, he’s made another instagram post 7 days ago, he’s not a big enough celeb to not notice my comment, he is actively ignoring me. So I take to reddit to warn others.
At this point I just want a refund and i’m probably not going to get it. The Colorway website is still taking preorders for both Hoop Godz and Rap Godz BTW, the verbiage hasn’t been updated for a new fulfillment date.
An update from March 2023 said they would open pledge manager of April of that same year. Its now February 2024 and complete radio silence from them, also the guy is pretty pretentious and has been very negative to supporters and backers who have been more than patient with him throught all of this. Guy took the money and ran with it, probably funding his lame music videos.”
As of this writing, as alluded to by BowtiedBoardGamer, Colorway Games Lab’s Twitter page hasn’t been updated since August of 2022, around the time that year’s edition of GenCon was held. Furthermore, Omari Akil’s twitter account has been locked. This suggests that Omari Akil was constantly questioned by his backers on the status of both of these games.
As mentioned earlier, many far-left-leaning developers in the independent board gaming scene backed Omari Akil’s crowdfunding, most likely based on his race and not his talent or skill. BowtiedBoardGamer states:
“What makes this sadder is big designers like Eric Lang praised him, many media sites try to cater to him, and he even had a small article stating that board games with “heavy decisions” was white privilege or lack of randomness was a white thing
In short, he’s a bit of a joke
He is one out of a long list of weirdos in the space.”
What can be summarized is that this incident is the latest of many crowdfunding grifts and schemes of the far-left clique led by Eric Lang in the independent board gaming scene. Once again, BowtiedBoardGamer shared several screen captures of Lang and others praising Omari Akil not for his merits but because of the color of his skin:
Once again, this shows you that caveat emptor applies when donating to whichever crowdfunding project you wish to back, especially if the project has the backing of a group of notorious so-called developers who carry themselves more like activists, the same kind of activists that continue to plague the culture.
What do you think of the board game Rap Godz by Omari Akil? Leave a comment and let us know.
NEXT: #DungeonDrama: How The Woke Has Dragged The TTRPG Industry Into Hell
WTF is up with their art? Game is called Rap Godz, but all of the characters in the cover art are no darker than an Asian.
Guess they know that real Gs don’t play board games, unless you count Dominos.