Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Wounded Cyc△d on July 28, 2012 at 4:43pm

Fuck no

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by George Knight on July 28, 2012 at 10:13pm

Get out of here with your viral marketing.

Kickstarter is disgusting.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Cambo on July 29, 2012 at 8:03am

I can feel the butt hurt across the internet....

Please take a deep breath and think before you write. Afterwards you can read what you wrote and then think it over atleast one more time before posting something that is hopefully logical.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Naxxax on July 29, 2012 at 8:16am

nah im cool, im just saying kick starter is great for people who have great ideas for inventions

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by George Knight on July 29, 2012 at 9:13pm

Alright, I'll try again.

"Get out of here with your viral marketing!

Kickstarter is a disgusting cancer that, while a good idea in theory, stifles creativity in the long run and puts money in the hands of people who market themselves well instead of in the hands of people who need/deserve it. (Which is even worse when you consider their awful overfunding policy.)"

There, I think that's more accurate.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Lab Rat on July 29, 2012 at 10:00pm

Wouldn't it be expected that a marketing tool like Kickstarter be used more proficiently by those who market themselves well? It's putting money in their hands because that's exactly what it's made to do. And I'm not sure how it stifles creativity. Is it sorta like the way scholarships stifle academic pursuits or business grants stifle commerce?

 

 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by George Knight on August 1, 2012 at 2:11pm

It's somewhat hard for me to articulate my feelings about Kickstarter in a clear and concise way that avoids being tldr;, but I'll try my best to explain how I view it.

Admittedly, my time I spend browsing places like /v/ makes me a bit jaded and biased about the subject.

Kickstarter is really cool on paper. You have an ambitious project that you need funding, Kickstarter helps you get it out there, and people donate to your project. I fine idea really, until Tim Schafer came along anyway.

Now, I mean no ill-will towards Schafer. It's cool that he got his fans to help fund a project that the major studios wouldn't. However, I think Tim's success story has really opened Pandora's Box and that it's had a negative effect on many artists and filmmakers on the internet. Their passion projects or fun little hobbies have been warped and transformed by the dollar signs in their eyes. Now instead of doing something their passionate about because they love doing it or because they're doing something extremely personal to them, they're many people in the mindset of "I have and idea, and if I get XXX amount of dollars I'll do it." instead of just doing it.

I could go more indepth on this, but I understand that this part is more of an opinion based thing. Other people have different views on artistic integrity. Personally, I don't like how Kickstarter has turned the things that people used to do for fun or passion into a giant "Gold Rush"-esque cashgrab.

I want to stress that this doesn't apply to every Kickstarter project, just a large quantity of them.

This is not the main issue with Kickstarter though. This could be fixed by putting up stricter quality control measures, putting more focus showcasing both the credentials/portfolio of the artist working on a Kickstarter project and where exactly the money being donated to is going. (More often than not, this is not very clear. More often than not, it seems many people have all of the tools necessary to do what they want to do and are just asking for money just for the hell of it.)

On the issue of quality control, I recommend you take a look at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1465600975/echoes-of-eternia-a-...

This kid basically went to DeviantArt and had someone draw a few pictures for him, and he got almost 50,000 dollars to make a game in RPG MAKER. I don't know if you're familiar with that game or not, but it's essentially a drag and drop program that lets you make barebones JRPGs. As someone who's actually programmed a few games myself and understands the amount of work that goes into it, I have no problem with games being funded on Kickstarter. The fact that this got funded is just plain nauseating though.

This biggest problem is people exploiting Kickstarter purely for profit (More like scam artists than entrepreneurs, ironic as it is to say after seeing the Onion parody posted below.) and retarded way that Kickstarter handles overfunding.

The overfunding thing most certainly won't be fixed anytime soon, as it's beneficial to Kickstarter. They skim a percentage off the top after all. There should still be a limit to how much a project can make. There's a point where you have question the validity of a project that, let's say, accepts $150,000 dollars to make a series of youtube videos. (Especially when the filmmaker in question already has a set, camera, lighting equipment, and video editing software already.)

More than once, this system has been blatantly abused. I can post a few links to projects like these if you'd like, but I figure I'll go right to big kahuna herself.

I hate to bring back the Anita Sarkeesian nonsense again, but she's a prime and relevant example of one of these Kickstarter Scammers. I could go on and on about her (I already have actually), so I'll save you the trouble and post an analysis some chap on /v/ made that examines her controversy. You can skip to the end of part two if you'd like, as that is when he actually goes into the subject was talking about. The videos are still quite interesting if you feel like investing the time to watch both in their entirety though.

Essentially, what she did was create a fake controversy to generate a profit. She purposely challenged a group (video game nerds on the internet) that she KNEW would overreact and bring her attention/support from white knights across the internet. It is evident from her previous work that she doesn't give two fucks about the quality of her work, yet she marketed herself so perfectly that she made $150,000 dollars to make videos on Youtube that she was already being payed to make. You may say this is a coincidence, but if you look at her blog posts and the way she moderates her Youtube channel it's jawdroppingly obvious. I mean, she didn't outright steal from these people and I'm sure she'll put out her shitty, biased little rants eventually, but the entire fiasco and her ability to manipulate people into paying her to do what she already gets paid to do is just plain fascinating to me.

Well, that was longer than I intended it to be. Even then, I'm terrible at putting this kind of thing down in words and I doubt I even got my point across properly. (More of a talking/improvised speech kind of guy.) Long story short is that I think Kickstarter is a victim of it's own success that needs to have better policies for overfunding and quality control, and that many people corrupt the system for personal gain. That's my opinion.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Lab Rat on August 2, 2012 at 3:28am

It is evident from her previous work that she doesn't give two fucks about the quality of her work, yet she marketed herself so perfectly that she made $150,000 dollars to make videos on Youtube that she was already being payed to make.

Exactly.

Kickstarter is a tool and she, as well as others, are going to use it to their own end. While bending the system might not be fair play to you how does this amount to stealing from anyone? She said, "give me money to make videos" and thousands of people obliged - even beyond the point of her funding requirement. If it turns out she doesn't make them, whatever the quality of the content, she is then at fault.

Allowing yourself to be manipulated into backing a cause is not the fault of the promoter. *cough -KONY- cough* And focusing and redirecting the backlash to increase the net yield is clever of her to do as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure something like this is going to throw more greedy people into the fray, but it will also create a new range of 'smart shoppers' when it comes to funding projects. Also, there are alternative crowd funding sites out there. If the issues with overfunding and whatever else people want to have a whinge about become a albatross for Kickstarter, I'm sure the others would be more than happy to re-tool themselves to meet market demand and pick up the slack.

Think about this: people have to go to the site to contribute. If they make it there, read the funding allocations (if there are any), check out the prizes (if that's their motivation), and finally decide to drop a wad of their hard earned who's really at fault? To me it's like complaining about what other people buy from TV shopping networks. I don't go to the site often, and I've laughed off a lot more than I've contributed to, but I can't tell anyone else how to spend their dough. Crowdfunding's a thing now. You don't have too buy into it, but if a bunch of kids called you a fatty boomba would you knock back 650 grand that somebody Indigogoed for you to make it all better (even if it went overr it's funding target)?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Pencil Mage on July 29, 2012 at 9:45pm

Really? I thought everyone agreed that the "Are you bad enough dudes to save the president" jokes are stupid and we all agreed to stop telling them.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by LordFunkyFist on July 31, 2012 at 1:52pm

Art looks good but it's hard to decide if something is worth investing in when there's not much to show at the moment, but maybe I'm letting my personal bias of not being a huge fan of the original game get in the way.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Sgtcrispy on July 31, 2012 at 2:55pm

• ▶ Reply