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Penny Arcade Kickstarter

SHAZOOM said:
Cutting it close to get rid of ads on the Homepage. Doubt they'll reach the Lookouts/Catsby goals.

If they DON'T reach the all ads removed from the homepage, man that would just seem silly.
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Yes. This. The "perfect" way for this to end is for them to chuck $525k in the bank while continuing to have ads on the front page. "Thanks for the support, folks!" Haha.
 
Hero said:
So they missed the homepage ads removed by 2,000 dollars?

Gee, maybe if your high tier / high priced rewards weren't so fucking dumb and outrageously expensive for what you get maybe people would've backed at that level.
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No, there are still 8 minutes left to raise a couple grand. It looks like they'll make it.
 
Chris Remo said:
No, there are still 8 minutes left to raise a couple grand. It looks like they'll make it.
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You're right, within 2 minutes it's funded.

Damn. I wanted to see that crash and burn just for the Kickstarter hate from them.
 
border said:
13 hours to go, and they are about $40,000 away from removing all ads from the website. I don't follow Kickstarter enough to say whether it's possible to raise that much money in such a short time......but it does seem like a stretch. Like a lot of big huge TV charity marathons though, they may be having big donors hold off right up until the end.
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Nope, just the homepage. And it barely reached that goal. I think it's hilarious people paid for this.
 
Machine Messiah said:
If people want to give the money, I say let them. It's just that I wish they wouldn't, because Penny Arcade is a very profitable franchise by itself.

BTW, they said they're doing the Lookouts comic anyway: http://penny-arcade.com/2012/08/15/last-kickstarter-post I figured they might, because they really enjoy that & Automata (I'm not a big fan of either.)
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That's wonderful news. That was the only realistic stretch goal I was really looking forward. I would've loved if they had gotten to the level that brought back the DLC Podcast, but that wasn't going to happen.
 
So only ads removed from the homepage (what's that, like 2 ads?). Mhmm, this was a great idea... can't wait for next year's.
 
jett said:
Nope, just the homepage. And it barely reached that goal. I think it's hilarious people paid for this.
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Yeah, $999,999 was their number for making all of PA ad free, and they didn't get close to that.

inky said:
So only ads removed from the homepage (what's that, like 2 ads?). Mhmm, this was a great idea... can't wait for next year's.
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They will need to come up with much better rewards if they hope to equal or exceed the amount they raised this time when it was kind of novel.
 
9069 people have backed it and it's sitting at over half a million ($528,144 at the moment)
If you divide that per person, that's $58 per person. Of course some backers paid LOT more than that and lot less it seems.
Incredible.
 
Honestly, should have been a Kickstarter for Lookouts, then a different one for Automata. Grouping it all together is like some kind of pyramid scheme.
 
Refreshed Penny Arcade home, WTF, THESE ADS ARE STILL HERE RUINING MY EXPERIENCE, I WANT MY PLEDGE BACK!

Seriously though, while I question the idea of them using Kickstarter for this experiment, I'm pretty excited to see them do fairly well with it, even if they didn't quite reach a level where it could completely sustain them.

It was an experiment, and it works out well for them and for the readers, even if it's not a completely sustainable model. Yet.
 
Family Fry said:
9069 people have backed it and it's sitting at over half a million ($528,144 at the moment)
If you divide that per person, that's $58 per person. Of course some backers paid LOT more than that and lot less it seems.
Incredible.
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I think Notch paid for the lunch with Mike and Jerry tier. Sometimes I think Notch doesn't know what else to do with his cash.
 
LiK said:
I think everyone just wanted to hear Gabe yell out their name whole chasing a duck.
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That almost swayed me to give a dollar.


If they did something for just the DLC podcast, with some decent rewards, I'd consider it. I don't think they got the KS completely right, but there's something in the idea of fans paying for stuff.
 
So there we go, this is the first time Khoo has damaged the Penny Arcade brand since he made it into a business. Just managing to scrape enough money to take 2 ads off the homepage and only one comic project and with less than 10k backers shows just how the majority of Penny Arcade's fanbase reacted to this unpalatable Kickstarter.

Made all the more hilarious is that their initial plan was to now be doing this yearly. So not only have their fans essentially said "fuck you", they've (I assume) damaged their relationship with advertisers -- who is going to want to pay for 'Page 2' adspace when its just the front that really gets clicks and the artist has explicitly said he doesnt want to do it anymore? Since theyre all such good pals, pubs should just take that work away, wouldnt want to eat into precious personal project time now!

I'm going to assume Gabe is going to be "nice" and treat the fans to actually doing the Lookouts comic as thats the one he clearly wants to do. But even still, now that he's even started tracing google photo shit for the comic, the idea he's going to be more productive than ever with all this crowdfunding behind him is hilarious.

I am very pleased by the lukewarm result, and hotly anticipate all the forced smiles of "rome wasn't built in a day" "we thought we'd get $0 so this is all a surprise" and whatever other PR shitspin they used to lampoon 'The Industry' for serving up.

Edit: oh here we are, I knew it:

gabe twitter said:
if you didn't pledge becasue you figured we would not hit the Lookouts goal, we are doing Lookouts anyway! feel free to pledge away!
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SHAZOOM said:
That's.... actually kind of lame. So all these folks who donated have to wait until January to reap this "reward"?

SMH, man.
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To be fair, most Kickstarter rewards aren't delivered as soon as the Kickstarter ends. Then again those are things that need to be manufactured. I can see the reasoning behind making it a year start to year end thing though.

Reading the comments is a real head-scratcher. People are bizarrely pumped up about reaching the $525K goal. You gave PA half a million to remove two ads - yay? I admit I don't understand it at all, but whatever floats your boat.
 
If the one reward level was a lifetime membership and badge to every PAX event I probably would've donated. 5 years only though for 2000 dollars? Come on.
 
I'm pretty shocked they're willing to let $400k just go, I'm not seeing anything on the Kickstarter that will bring in that difference.

That is, if they haven't inflated what they're currently making from the ads.
 
Haunted said:
I'm pretty shocked they're willing to let $400k just go, I'm not seeing anything on the Kickstarter that will bring in that difference.

That is, if they haven't inflated what they're currently making from the ads.
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They're still keeping ads elsewhere (like the comic pages) and doing their work-for-hire stuff, which they said they wouldn't have to do if they hit their full goal.
 
SpinningBirdKick said:
Kickstarter has achieved what retail has been trying to perfect for years, Discriminatory Pricing. Each customer pays what the product/service is worth to them, rather than a blanket price that is set for all.

No longer do goods or services need to have broad pricing appeal. Just hike the prices so that die hard fans are punished and generate the best returns.

As long as you can get the word out about your product, this is like having a pool of hand picked idiots that will pay whatever it takes or what ever you tell them it takes to obtain your product or service.

What demographic could possibly be better to exploit than nerds with no relationships, poor social skills and relatively high disposable incomes?

There was no way this exercise in exploitation was ever going to fail.
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I don't think it's done that at all. Take myself for example, I really like Penny Arcade and have given them a dime. I would pay a few bucks for a decent iOS app archive of the comics and blog posts though. That was one of the Kickstarter stretch goals, but it's been clear that they weren't going to get funding high enough for it. If they were on the borderline of getting to that level of funding I probably would have thrown them a few bucks. Instead I'll enjoy the fewer ads and additional comics they're making for free.

I'd assume there's a lot of people in similar circumstances, say people who think Automata is cool but didn't bother to donate after that goal got unlocked because they weren't interested in anything else.

As it stands, I like Penny Arcade enough that I would definitely pay for it if I had to, but I don't, so while I understand that you're excited that you've finished your Econ 101 text and are eagerly looking for ways to apply the concepts you've learned, this experiment definitely wasn't some masterful form of price discrimination.

This thread is probably full of remarks like this at this point, but it does amaze me that people manage to get so worked up about this. "Exploitation" is a good word to describe things like child labor, prostitution, or the selling of illegal drugs. People willing spending money on something they think is worthwhile doesn't really fit under the "exploitation" umbrella.

I understand that you think it's a silly way to spend money, and I sure as hell didn't contribute anything, but PA have been pretty upfront that if this didn't work they'd continue producing the comic as usual, so I don't understand all the demonizing. In your post you say that you can "hike the prices" (which I don't understand anyway since, again, you can still consume PA if you didn't contribute to the Kickstarter) as long as you "get the word out about your product." Let's not forget that PA "got the word out" by offering the comic for free for over a decade.
 
Pie and Beans said:
So there we go, this is the first time Khoo has damaged the Penny Arcade brand since he made it into a business. Just managing to scrape enough money to take 2 ads off the homepage and only one comic project and with less than 10k backers shows just how the majority of Penny Arcade's fanbase reacted to this unpalatable Kickstarter.

Made all the more hilarious is that their initial plan was to now be doing this yearly. So not only have their fans essentially said "fuck you", they've (I assume) damaged their relationship with advertisers -- who is going to want to pay for 'Page 2' adspace when its just the front that really gets clicks and the artist has explicitly said he doesnt want to do it anymore? Since theyre all such good pals, pubs should just take that work away, wouldnt want to eat into precious personal project time now!

I'm going to assume Gabe is going to be "nice" and treat the fans to actually doing the Lookouts comic as thats the one he clearly wants to do. But even still, now that he's even started tracing google photo shit for the comic, the idea he's going to be more productive than ever with all this crowdfunding behind him is hilarious.

I am very pleased by the lukewarm result, and hotly anticipate all the forced smiles of "rome wasn't built in a day" "we thought we'd get $0 so this is all a surprise" and whatever other PR shitspin they used to lampoon 'The Industry' for serving up.
Click to expand...

OrsonWellesclapping.jpg
 
Grecco said:
In the end the people laughing are Gabe and Tycho who made 500k aka mad bank for something silly aka taking off a couple banner ads
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But they're not going to be getting the revenue from those same ads. It might be that they received more than 500k a year from selling that space on the homepage.
 
Chris Remo said:
They're still keeping ads elsewhere (like the comic pages) and doing their work-for-hire stuff, which they said they wouldn't have to do if they hit their full goal.
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Ah, I was talking about the 1 million PA ad-free stretch goal, should've mentioned that. >_>

Gabe said they were making roughly 1.4 million a year from the ads, so hitting that stretch goal would've meant 400k going missing, to be made up for with monetisation from the new projects.
 
Pie and Beans said:
So there we go, this is the first time Khoo has damaged the Penny Arcade brand since he made it into a business. Just managing to scrape enough money to take 2 ads off the homepage and only one comic project and with less than 10k backers shows just how the majority of Penny Arcade's fanbase reacted to this unpalatable Kickstarter.

Made all the more hilarious is that their initial plan was to now be doing this yearly. So not only have their fans essentially said "fuck you", they've (I assume) damaged their relationship with advertisers -- who is going to want to pay for 'Page 2' adspace when its just the front that really gets clicks and the artist has explicitly said he doesnt want to do it anymore? Since theyre all such good pals, pubs should just take that work away, wouldnt want to eat into precious personal project time now!

I'm going to assume Gabe is going to be "nice" and treat the fans to actually doing the Lookouts comic as thats the one he clearly wants to do. But even still, now that he's even started tracing google photo shit for the comic, the idea he's going to be more productive than ever with all this crowdfunding behind him is hilarious.

I am very pleased by the lukewarm result, and hotly anticipate all the forced smiles of "rome wasn't built in a day" "we thought we'd get $0 so this is all a surprise" and whatever other PR shitspin they used to lampoon 'The Industry' for serving up.

Edit: oh here we are, I knew it:
Click to expand...

Couldn't agree more, Khoo deserves one mistake in all the years of being great at turning a hobby into a business (set up ads, bring in someone to run it, set up merch, bring in someone to run it, then pax, then child's play) the guy has been fantastic.

For that first fuck up to not only be so public but the fact they damaged advertisers relationships in the bargain? $500k for very little is nice yes but they will never be ad free, as this shows so what's the point of even doing another?
 
Zombie James said:
Has Kickstarter commented or made a statement on using their service as an income replacement tool?
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PA had to get special permission or whatever from the start, so yes, Kickstarter have been in on it from day one. The cynical cracks in the company have long since been gleaming through: "A percentage of that 1 million dollars you're aiming for? Why, those must be our objectives and moral guidelines smashing through that window right this very instant, sirs!!"

SteveWD40 said:
$500k for very little is nice yes but they will never be ad free, as this shows so what's the point of even doing another?
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Oh they'll be back. They'll take the cries of their fans with frytakemymoney.jpg posts and have like a fucking calvacade of separate Kickstarters. Lookouts Kickstarter, Automata Kickstarter, Strip Search Season Two Kickstarter, iOS Penny Arcade App Kickstarter, Twisp & Catsby Kickstarter.

Its a year long race now between crowdsourcing enthusiasts getting down to having a groupthink about whether a company that already was doing more than fine (its employees not wanting for wages, completely established in luxurious office space with all the equipment they'll ever need) applying for 'fund-raising' from their gullible selves 4-5 times all in one instance is not completely outrageous just as this attempt was. When the busker returns the next day with 5 separate caps with a pre-written track request title card infront of each, how do pedestrians respond?

Its already going to be hilarious enough to see game studios coming back with sequels to their Kickstarter games, also applying for more Kickstarter funds again, a forever cycle. That PA were brazen enough to say they wanted to move to this model from now on, every year, still amazes me.
 
So the whole idea behind this was to free them from the tyranny of advertising, right? No more chasing down business, no more being beholden to advertisers, free to do whatever, whenever.

But now none of that has changed. They've just an extra half million for nothing. Nice work if you can get it.
 
Zombie James said:
Sweet. I've been out of work for a while, so I could start a Kickstarter for $xx/year to learn Android development. Donate $100 and get your name in the credits of whatever I make.
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But what's in it for kickstarter?
 
Pie and Beans said:
So there we go, this is the first time Khoo has damaged the Penny Arcade brand since he made it into a business. Just managing to scrape enough money to take 2 ads off the homepage and only one comic project and with less than 10k backers shows just how the majority of Penny Arcade's fanbase reacted to this unpalatable Kickstarter.

Made all the more hilarious is that their initial plan was to now be doing this yearly. So not only have their fans essentially said "fuck you", they've (I assume) damaged their relationship with advertisers -- who is going to want to pay for 'Page 2' adspace when its just the front that really gets clicks and the artist has explicitly said he doesnt want to do it anymore? Since theyre all such good pals, pubs should just take that work away, wouldnt want to eat into precious personal project time now!

I'm going to assume Gabe is going to be "nice" and treat the fans to actually doing the Lookouts comic as thats the one he clearly wants to do. But even still, now that he's even started tracing google photo shit for the comic, the idea he's going to be more productive than ever with all this crowdfunding behind him is hilarious.

I am very pleased by the lukewarm result, and hotly anticipate all the forced smiles of "rome wasn't built in a day" "we thought we'd get $0 so this is all a surprise" and whatever other PR shitspin they used to lampoon 'The Industry' for serving up.

Edit: oh here we are, I knew it:
Click to expand...

So which one ran over your dog? Mike or Jerry? OH WAIT. I think I worked it out... your name isn't Matthew Potter, is it?

I'm happy for them. They've got slightly more time to work on the real good projects (Lookouts was fantastic) and they're now less dependant on ad dollars, so it gives them more freedom in terms of content. It was never something I was going to seriously think about donating to (although the Lookouts comic tempted me) but you can't say it was a failure. Good on em, I say.
 
jcm said:
So the whole idea behind this was to free them from the tyranny of advertising, right? No more chasing down business, no more being beholden to advertisers, free to do whatever, whenever.

But now none of that has changed. They've just an extra half million for nothing. Nice work if you can get it.
Click to expand...

Could it be even harder for them to sell ads now because the prime location for ads (the front page) is not available?
 
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