Discussion 47: Kickstarter
Kevin, Troll, CJ and Allegra sit down to chat about everyone’s favorite crowd funding site. Note: This is slightly dated as it was recorded in July, so the projects discussed have closed.
Relevant Links
- Kickstarter
- The Middle Man
- Amanda Palmer
- Numenera
- IndieGoGo
- GoFundMe
- Kickstarter Fee
- Wasteland Videogame
- Doublefine Adventure Game (Broken Age)
- Reaper Miniatures
- Torchbearer
- Humble Bundle
- Planetary Annihilation
- George RR Martin is not your bitch (neil gaiman post)
- Evil Hat
- Cory Doctorow
- Geek Love Book
Crunchy Bits!
- Intro and Outro music by
Podcast: |
Allegra, I think those big companies/projects on Kickstarter help drive a lot of traffic to Kickstarter, and because of that, I would guess they help the smaller projects more than hurt them.
Also in crowd-funding news, Star Citizen hit $19 million. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13266-Letter-From-The-Chairman-19-Million
I’m not totally convinced that fans are unreasonable to expect some degree of obligation from a creator if they back something on Kickstarter. It’s not just a donation – it’s funding, but it’s transactional in a way that plain donations aren’t. The podcast mentioned the patronage model… But in the patronage model, the artist is deeply beholden to the patron.
When someone puts up a Kickstarter, they make transactional promises – pay me this, and I will deliver that. Now, given the model, you sort of hope that people backing will understand the nature of development and that it may not stay exactly on track. On the other hand, there is no other field where the artist gets to take funding from someone and doesn’t need to then be obligated to the funder to some extent.
This is very different from people who are just rude to George RR Martin because he isn’t currently writing.
I’m with Troll. I don’t ask for frequent updates (in fact I ask that you refrain from spamming me), but please, please don’t assume everyone that backed your project has the time or inclination to track private forums. Sure, keep feedback threads and stuff there, that’s fine – Kickstarter’s just not built well for actual discussion – but when you make progress updates, update Kickstarter too. Or at least for significant milestones.
Heck, I backed a project called CultRL where the creator decided (after considerable time and very little communication) to call it quits, and where did he post this? not on Kickstarter! Well, not until weeks after the project forum, anyway. That’s straight up unacceptable (I’m not wild about the abandoning either, but at least frigging tell the people that gave you money. Jeez.)