Yea, no. I'm positive that is not the case, PA is tame as fuck and will continue to be even if this happens, it's just another poor attempt at justifying this
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Penny Arcade Kickstarter
- Thread starter LiK
- Start date
Yea, no. I'm positive that is not the case, PA is tame as fuck and will continue to be even if this happens, it's just another poor attempt at justifying this
notworksafe
Member
Because it's normal to want to debate and criticize things perceived to be morally and ethically wrong?
notworksafe
Member
Because its fucked up?
No offense really but you don't consider $500 for a retweet insulting?
Interficium
Banned
Bullshit. PA have way more leverage then any of their advertisers could hope to dream of, and that's not even including the power the hold with PAX quickly starting to overtake E3. No company wants to be Avenger Controller'd.
Insulting? No. Worthless for me personally? Yeah.
They have around ~100,000 followers on Twitter. $500 for a retweet to ~100,000 is pretty cheap compared to what it costs to advertise on Twitter.
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
POWERSPHERE
Member
Yep. This kind of money shucking should be banned from Kickstarter, but they make money off it, and people are dumb enough, so why not... Drives me crazy, personally.
Reaching so hard, to each their own.
How is this reaching?
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
Are you a corporation? I know they're people now so I have to make sure.
I didn't realize the extent to which neoGAF was entrenched in The Way Things Are. I thought that there was a general consensus that "gaming journalist" was an oxymoron, and that advertisers were too far embedded into game criticism for there to be a significant independent voice. Here's an instance where those ties are being explicitly broken on the largest scale possible, and this is the result? Grody dudes
Attempting to justify a retweet for $500. This isn't a Twitter advertising payment, this is a kick starter reward. For $300 you can be my XBL friend. For $200 I will update you once a week on my dogs cancer treatment. For $100 I will tell you how good of a poster you are, once every 3 months for 1 year. Sorry this whole thing is a joke sorry you can't see that.
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
The rewards are supposed to be a joke. I find it funny that people find it insulting.
Reward tiers on every kickstarter above the cost of the thing the Kickstarter is supporting are always pretty worthless, except to the massive fans with boatloads of cash who think it would be cool. Or in this case, the genuine reasons someone might have to want to buy a retweet.
If $500 for a retweet is insulting, then what is $10,000 for lunch with the hosts? Is that also insulting? Because practically every Kickstarter ever has that as an option, including Double Fine Adventure, Idle Thumbs (at $5000), and many others.
MickeyKnox
Member
What a shitheel thing to do.
Wow, just wow. Justification for these rewards, thisisneogaf.gif.
I am familar with reward tiers, but this takes the cake. Obviously people donate because they like the cause, not for rewards. It's a side bonus. But these rewards literally read as if they put 60 seconds of effort into them.
This isn't even about the rewards in the end though, its a bullshit campaign , I can't make anyone change their opinions this is just mine.
I am familar with reward tiers, but this takes the cake. Obviously people donate because they like the cause, not for rewards. It's a side bonus. But these rewards literally read as if they put 60 seconds of effort into them.
This isn't even about the rewards in the end though, its a bullshit campaign , I can't make anyone change their opinions this is just mine.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
My problem with this is a question of inefficiency:
They're an organization that has proven they know how to handle donations, and a large amount of them. They're an organization that has been very succesfully charitable, and are responsible for raising a lot of money.
Which is why I don't understand why they'd voluntarily introduce an independent third party to act as middle-man at a cost, especially a third party that is best known for giving unknowns and hungry-types a leg up to see whether their ideas are viable.
Beyond the fact Penny Arcade is already proven viable, and has over a decade of success on its own - why go outside yourself to use this service when you could replicate that service in-house without introducing the perception that you're inappropriately using a service best known for giving the little guys a shot at an even playing field?
As was said earlier in the thread, if they want to see what the site might look like without ads for a year, and they want to see if their fans will fund that for them, they don't need to go outside of Penny Arcade AT ALL. They don't.
They're an organization that has proven they know how to handle donations, and a large amount of them. They're an organization that has been very succesfully charitable, and are responsible for raising a lot of money.
Which is why I don't understand why they'd voluntarily introduce an independent third party to act as middle-man at a cost, especially a third party that is best known for giving unknowns and hungry-types a leg up to see whether their ideas are viable.
Beyond the fact Penny Arcade is already proven viable, and has over a decade of success on its own - why go outside yourself to use this service when you could replicate that service in-house without introducing the perception that you're inappropriately using a service best known for giving the little guys a shot at an even playing field?
As was said earlier in the thread, if they want to see what the site might look like without ads for a year, and they want to see if their fans will fund that for them, they don't need to go outside of Penny Arcade AT ALL. They don't.
At least most top tier rewards cover travel and hotel. Not sure on doublefine, most I've seen cover your costs though.
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
Don't get me wrong. I also think it's a stupid campaign. Their ads are well designed into the site so that they're not obnoxious. I actually check some of them out because at one time I knew that they had to approve/play them before they went up. Not sure if they still do that.
The rewards just seem to go along with their brand of humor. I don't take any of them seriously.
They already are a viable business, they run PAX, they have their own video game. Their site does really well so they must of assumed this would be some what controversial, you'd think they could of tried harder on the reward side of things. But it really doesn't matter, the entire thing is just the opposite of what kickstarter is about to begin with. So who cares about the rewards I guess, just add's insult to injury in my view.
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
They're a viable business because of their ad revenue. I have no clue how they do with PAX. I'm actually interested if that's a profitable thing that they do there or if they're happy to break even.
SuperDowns
Banned
Who cares? I'm not going to contribute but that isn't because I stand on some moral high ground.
It is an interesting experiment and if enough people want Penny Arcade sans ads for the rest of us, more power to them.
They make me laugh time to time, I hope this works out for them.
It is an interesting experiment and if enough people want Penny Arcade sans ads for the rest of us, more power to them.
They make me laugh time to time, I hope this works out for them.
I'm pretty sure most if not all of their PAX revenue (after the costs of hosting it) goes to Child's Play. I don't think the site actually makes any money off of it.
MacGurcules
Member
It does seem kind of shady that this project is more or less to cover day-to-day operations of a company (which is apparently in violation of the Kickstarter guidelines) until you realize that Kickstarter projects already do this all the time.
It's not like the people making DoubleFine Adventure or Shadowrun or Wasteland 2 are coming to the Internet and saying, "Hey guys, we've got this killer game nearly finished up and now we just need a little money to hire a QA firm to clean it up for release." Or, "We've spent the last three years working on this and now we need funding to find a publisher and buy ad space so we can finally launch it."
No, those people are coming to you and saying, "We need your help to keep the lights on and to feed our families while we work on this cool idea we have." They're asking you to pay them to run their company. What's more, they're asking for money to run a company so they can turn further profit from selling their product. In Penny Arcade's case, the funders are actually paying for the direct result, since the product they're funding is just going to be given away.
I do agree that if what they're really looking for is a million dollars, they should just ask for a million dollars, though.
It's not like the people making DoubleFine Adventure or Shadowrun or Wasteland 2 are coming to the Internet and saying, "Hey guys, we've got this killer game nearly finished up and now we just need a little money to hire a QA firm to clean it up for release." Or, "We've spent the last three years working on this and now we need funding to find a publisher and buy ad space so we can finally launch it."
No, those people are coming to you and saying, "We need your help to keep the lights on and to feed our families while we work on this cool idea we have." They're asking you to pay them to run their company. What's more, they're asking for money to run a company so they can turn further profit from selling their product. In Penny Arcade's case, the funders are actually paying for the direct result, since the product they're funding is just going to be given away.
I do agree that if what they're really looking for is a million dollars, they should just ask for a million dollars, though.
No but seriously, that's stretching it a lot now. The important bit in Riggs post was that PA is a viable business, not what they do with their money. Even the rewards are not that important; they're only symptomatic of the total absence of a valid reason for PA to be pulling this. It has nothing to do on Kickstarter to begin with.
NoirVisage
Banned
It is a parody operanting within the structure of a broken system that has no controls in place to prevent things of this nature from existing. the money will be donated to charity or re-imbursed when its all over.
It's already been mentioned that PA has way too much leverage for that. Besides, PA doesn't review games.
Dacvak
No one shall be brought before our LORD David Bowie without the true and secret knowledge of the Photoshop. For in that time, so shall He appear.
I can't believe this is real. This is not what Kickstarter is meant for.
That being said, if people want to pay for this, more power to them. I've still lost a bit of respect for PA, though.
That being said, if people want to pay for this, more power to them. I've still lost a bit of respect for PA, though.
MickeyKnox
Member
To the people who feel strongly that this goes against the spirit of Kickstarter, there's a handy little report button at the bottom of the page itself.
Let them know.
Let them know.
corporate cheerleader
Member
(I imagine this discussion turning Mel Gibson mad, haha)
Seconded, if you paid in the thousands then other companies definitely compensated you in some way.
Where do you draw the line?
Double Fine's day-to-day operations were to make games with funding from publishers; now they're making a different game with funding from Kickstarter.
Penny Arcade's day-to-day operations were to make comics with funding from advertisers. Now they're hoping to make different comics with funding from Kickstarter.
I've said before I do have a problem with the specific goal they've laid out, to be fair; defining *how* the site would be different with the funding (beyond 'no ads') would show promise, and I do take issue with their 'hidden stretch goals to 1M' approach (although I note they've clarified some of those as an Automata strip and a Lookouts strip). On the other hand, though, it also strikes me that they *can't* really offer piecemeal progressive rewards
This is something that's struck me earlier with Kickstarter with stretch goals of varying levels of cost; the inability to voice an interest in one over another. There've been a few projects where there was a stretch goal I wanted at a high amount which wasn't met, when a smaller stretch goal I didn't very much care for was made. One thing I'd like to see - but fear it would overcomplicate the site - is for a single Kickstarter project to fund *multiple* things, and you could select how you wished to apportion the money (with overspill being automatically spread even between portions you didn't wish to fund). It should be possible to construct an algorithm to do so and calculate current overall funding for the project on the fly.
...but I can already look at Penny Arcade ad-free with a few nifty Chrome plugins.
And really all I care about is Tycho's initial post every Monday/Wednesday/Friday and the strip. The ads don't interfere with me enjoying that. I probably sound like an asshole, but why would I donate to this when I'm fine with things the way they are?
And really all I care about is Tycho's initial post every Monday/Wednesday/Friday and the strip. The ads don't interfere with me enjoying that. I probably sound like an asshole, but why would I donate to this when I'm fine with things the way they are?
You wouldn't, and that's okay. This is an experiment to find out if enough people care passionately enough to do so; nothing more, nothing less. Some people do care passionately enough, and that's okay too.
Don't tell me what's OK.
It's okay to tell people what's okay
That is telling me what's OK. Are you OK?