Graphics Horse
Member
Well this won't be any use to anyone but that's the first time I've seen a photo of him. I've just realised I had this guy mixed up with Adam Sessler the whole time.
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"Save Our SIFTD"
- Thread starter Gigarator
- Start date
Damn didn't even see that trash can until you pointed it out. God damn that looks so bad. He used to run GT so he a lot of video production experience but your right this set up looks so amateurish. Would be more understandable if they were doing it from a garage like Easy Allies but they have an office there's really no excuse.
Wireframe
Member
The circle jerk this turned into ragging on the guy is frankly embarrassing
I don't see anyone posting any lies. This guy wants $8000/month without providing explicit details. I think some scrutiny is well warranted.
HammerOfThor
Member
Wait I'm confused, do they have both the monthly OG plan AND patreon going on? Cause I got charged for the OG monthly on Monday. I assumed they'd cancel all the OG stuff if they are moving to a different payment plan. Or did I miss something?
I thought they were getting rid of the monthly?
Novel Mike
Member
I don't think you missed anything, I don't think even Shane knows exactly what hes doing right now.
All new users will go to the Patreon system, but those on the OG plan can choose to stay on the old system (or do both). You can cancel the OG plan in your dashboard.
https://siftd.net/#!/dashboard/account
If you have other issues you should discuss or message on SIFTD to get more useful response.
The monthly will still exist for those still signed up on the monthly sub. If you want to switch to patreon, cancel your SIFTD website sub. The sub on the site was left up for people who didn't want to switch to patreon (of which there were a fair number), but there is no way to make a new sub on the site now. All new subs will be patreon.
Existing subs are being auto-rebilled? Was this disclosed to the subscribers ahead of time? It doesn't appear to be mentioned anywhere on the Patreon. It's certainly relevant information for anyone considering a pledge, since these separate subs are not included in the public-facing amounts toward the stated Patreon goals:
The bolded section is misleading if you're maintaining existing subscriptions separate to the Patreon.
Look, if you're just running a website and offering content/services for $x straightforwardly, you don't have any responsibility to be transparent about it. People will just decide it's worth it and will pay for it or won't. No one is being misled or exploited, and it's all good regardless of how successful you end up being or where the money goes, since it has no bearing on the value proposition involved.
But if you're running a "PLEASE SAVE OUR SITE, LOYAL USERS" campaign with an ongoing fundraiser through Patreon, and asking your community to pledge at least $8000/month and upwards of $750/month each, indefinitely, to help keep SIFTD operational, this is no longer a straightforward transaction; it's an emotional plea to give as much to the "cause" as someone can, leveraging the idea of losing the platform they care about to extract more money per user than you were before.
You have a small contingent of loyal users, and I guarantee most of them aren't wealthy. There's an ethical responsibility now that you didn't have before, and you don't appear to be fulfilling it. Do better, or shut down and move on.
SIFTD Patreon Page said:
The bolded section is misleading if you're maintaining existing subscriptions separate to the Patreon.
Look, if you're just running a website and offering content/services for $x straightforwardly, you don't have any responsibility to be transparent about it. People will just decide it's worth it and will pay for it or won't. No one is being misled or exploited, and it's all good regardless of how successful you end up being or where the money goes, since it has no bearing on the value proposition involved.
But if you're running a "PLEASE SAVE OUR SITE, LOYAL USERS" campaign with an ongoing fundraiser through Patreon, and asking your community to pledge at least $8000/month and upwards of $750/month each, indefinitely, to help keep SIFTD operational, this is no longer a straightforward transaction; it's an emotional plea to give as much to the "cause" as someone can, leveraging the idea of losing the platform they care about to extract more money per user than you were before.
You have a small contingent of loyal users, and I guarantee most of them aren't wealthy. There's an ethical responsibility now that you didn't have before, and you don't appear to be fulfilling it. Do better, or shut down and move on.
HammerOfThor
Member
Yeah if it's not over using the word liquidation is super misleading.
cleveridea
Member
Soooooo...is it dead?
If not, and Shane is still hoping to round up supporters, then he should consider how this doesn't look great.
Shane mentioned in one of the weekly videos (Game Face) that he stored the shirts etc at his house and was taking up room so he decided to get rid of them.
Shane has already said that NeoGAF users are trying to make his site fail and that we're just "getting off" on trashing him. This will fall on deaf ears, he's the guy who knows what he is doing because he has been in the industry for 20 years or whatever. Maybe that savvy involves double dipping on his most loyal customers and being 2 or 3 years late to the Patreon party.
ClosingADoor
Member
Once you start blaming others for your business failures, it is already done. Yes, it can be annoying to deal with what he perceives as unfair criticism, but well, that comes with the territory. Better read it, maybe reflect on it, and either shrug it off or maybe improve on it.
I've been about three times in my life on Sifted, one of those shortly after the campaign started. There was a big banner warning to only switch your subscription to Patreon if you want to either pay more or less than before.
So, if even I knew that the subscription service continues despite the Patreon campagin, then I doubt that this was unclear to more than a small amount of their loyal users.
So, if even I knew that the subscription service continues despite the Patreon campagin, then I doubt that this was unclear to more than a small amount of their loyal users.
I just don't see the point of SIFTD right now. I've tried SIFTD for a month before and honestly almost everything that I was interested in was literally on the front page of GAF. Review threads put all the reviews in one place, OT's literally have all the news and information as it comes out and any major announcements or trailers are usually up within minutes of being announced and then you have sites like N4G that do a lot of the same stuff.
I'll give Shane credit I mean he did some cool stuff over at GT and honestly I think the site would be more successful if he scrapped the games curation stuff and focused more on video content like Kinda Funny, Easy Allies and Giant bomb are doing. Nowadays it's all about personalities, look at 1up, it wasn't successful for it's site really, it was all about the podcasts, the shows they put on, the personalities, the way it was all delivered and same can be said for Giant bomb.
SIFTD has Pachter Factor, Game Face and other content that is pretty good. Streaming is also another big thing and can literally be done from anywhere for a small cost and can be very entertaining, Easy Allies is a good example and same with Giant Bomb. If the current model isn't working then it probably needs to be reworked somewhere and as far as costs go there has got to be ways to scale it down a bit.
I'll give Shane credit I mean he did some cool stuff over at GT and honestly I think the site would be more successful if he scrapped the games curation stuff and focused more on video content like Kinda Funny, Easy Allies and Giant bomb are doing. Nowadays it's all about personalities, look at 1up, it wasn't successful for it's site really, it was all about the podcasts, the shows they put on, the personalities, the way it was all delivered and same can be said for Giant bomb.
SIFTD has Pachter Factor, Game Face and other content that is pretty good. Streaming is also another big thing and can literally be done from anywhere for a small cost and can be very entertaining, Easy Allies is a good example and same with Giant Bomb. If the current model isn't working then it probably needs to be reworked somewhere and as far as costs go there has got to be ways to scale it down a bit.
Niceguydan8
Member
To be fair I don't think the target market for SIFTD are GAF users. Like you said, it just doesn't make sense when you come here. That being said, GAF is pretty small in the scheme of the gaming population.
While true on some levels most of the people who aren't gaming enthusiasts probably aren't gonna go to SIFTD either and probably have no interest in that type of content, it's pretty specialized imo. Like I work with people who game but aren't invested in wanting to know everything or really follow gaming news and all that. They play the Maddens, COD and such and usually talk about sites like IGN when they wanna look something gaming up. They don't listen to podcasts or watch gaming shows/streams and if they do mention a gaming review again it's mostly sites like IGN. It just seems like SIFTD is in a strange position and I often wonder who it's for sometimes.
jonscrambler
Member
I want to support Pacher's show but don't care for the rest of SIFTD
ClosingADoor
Member
Problem is, the group that is willing to pay for gaming content is pretty small already. And I'm guessing those are mostly the core fans, the ones that do check forums like this and other sites. So the people who 1) are willing to pay for gaming content and 2) don't go around forums, have their own social media list, rss feed or sites they check is probably maxing out at a few thousand people. And then you have to convince them to actually pay up still and reach them.
HammerOfThor
Member
It was extremely unclear to me which is why I brought it up. It's the type of thing that should be emailed out to people. The only thing I pay attention to on their site is PF and it's the biggest reason why I support them.
I saw the video summaries in the patreon, and some of his video ideas seem interesting. I will watch them later to learn more.
I dont get why shane never enticed people to sub by showing examples of his shows on youtube. It should have been done from the get go, its so out of touch to realize this so late.
I dont get why shane never enticed people to sub by showing examples of his shows on youtube. It should have been done from the get go, its so out of touch to realize this so late.
Looking at those patreon goals they seem kinda off.
10K for more game reviews that gives you a unique aggregate? sure why not? but then 2k more for a single weekly video review?
Then 18K for a new studio and 25k for a full time employee? That can't be the right order to go about this.
I know they are just stretch goals but this whole thing seems unattainable and not worth the asking price
10K for more game reviews that gives you a unique aggregate? sure why not? but then 2k more for a single weekly video review?
Then 18K for a new studio and 25k for a full time employee? That can't be the right order to go about this.
I know they are just stretch goals but this whole thing seems unattainable and not worth the asking price
He's currently streaming a 24-hour Patreon pledge drive.
https://m.twitch.tv/siftdgames/profile
A shame that he didn't really advertise the stream in the high-visibility spaces (like this this thread). He just shared the stream info with his current user base on his site and in episodes of GameFace, which doesn't do a whole lot of getting new folks' attention.
Best of luck, but what a whimper SIFTD goes out on if today is indeed the last day it's alive.
https://m.twitch.tv/siftdgames/profile
A shame that he didn't really advertise the stream in the high-visibility spaces (like this this thread). He just shared the stream info with his current user base on his site and in episodes of GameFace, which doesn't do a whole lot of getting new folks' attention.
Best of luck, but what a whimper SIFTD goes out on if today is indeed the last day it's alive.
snail_maze
Member
Novel Mike
Member
http://siftd.net/#!/content/46583/siftd-patreon-drive-results
So going for another month but I'm concerned honestly.
He said 8k is the rock bottom he needs to continue... Yet he suddenly dropped it to 6k and I haven't seen a mention as to how exactly he accomplishes that if 8k is the rock bottom... I don't want to say hes lying I think thats a stretch but if the goal was that flexible why did he have such a high goal to begin with? If he made a big change like dropping the studio then good but has he said how he did that? I figured that would be something to advertise since I think the huge goal was a major turnoff to people but I can't see anything about it anywhere.
Also not sure how I feel about him asking the sites users to help curate content, I guess theres nothing wrong with people wanting to help keep their favorite site alive it just comes off as a bit questionable imo.
Yeah I completely missed him doing a 24 hour stream, only found about it after the fact when Brandon Jones retweeted the above link. Shane was streaming for 24 hours and I didn't see anyone really pick up on that, the guy has got to figure out how to market himself and his site better.
So going for another month but I'm concerned honestly.
He said 8k is the rock bottom he needs to continue... Yet he suddenly dropped it to 6k and I haven't seen a mention as to how exactly he accomplishes that if 8k is the rock bottom... I don't want to say hes lying I think thats a stretch but if the goal was that flexible why did he have such a high goal to begin with? If he made a big change like dropping the studio then good but has he said how he did that? I figured that would be something to advertise since I think the huge goal was a major turnoff to people but I can't see anything about it anywhere.
Also not sure how I feel about him asking the sites users to help curate content, I guess theres nothing wrong with people wanting to help keep their favorite site alive it just comes off as a bit questionable imo.
Yeah I completely missed him doing a 24 hour stream, only found about it after the fact when Brandon Jones retweeted the above link. Shane was streaming for 24 hours and I didn't see anyone really pick up on that, the guy has got to figure out how to market himself and his site better.
snail_maze
Member
I think thats fine, it's good that he recognises that doing both curation and the podcast/shows part of the site isnt a good way to go about it. I imagine that if he can't "outsource" the curation so to speak then that aspect will be dropped.
Well, at least he seems to be one step closer to calling the time of death. I feel bad for him but it's been painful seeing him publicly struggle with letting this thing go.
Yeah he said that but I find it hard to believe, not calling him a liar, but if current subscribers stayed on the older subscription model, who are the new ones on patreon? My guess is people are double dipping, which is a scary and dangerous model.
I'm not a suscriber but I watch the podcast live most of the time and it has 100 viewers at max watching it live, but is usually around 50, I watched a bit of Shane 24 hour live stream and the numbers weren't that much better. My point is, the numbers are very low, and probably 1/3 of the people watching are people like me which aren't subscribing that only care for the podcast and couldn't care less for the site aggregation, even for the people supporting Shane on patreon I would make a wild guess that the large majority don't care for the site aggregation, but Shane has this stance of all or nothing, I can understand that he invested time and money on the site but he's stubborn has hell and can't see that there aren't enough people interested on what he's offering for the budget he needs. Anyways not everything is worth saving, and I don't think SIFTD the site is worth saving, he should concentrate on doing a podcast with Mat (the co-host) if they still have the passion to do it from home or something, if not well I wish shane the best but I can't see this site surviving that much longer.
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