Kickstarter and other crowdfunding

User avatar
sei
Posts: 1074
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:29 pm

Re: Kickstarter

Postby sei » Fri Oct 09, 2015 4:23 pm

zaratustra wrote:support this you knobs

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pl ... escription
Game looks like it could be interesting if after funding, it runs at 60fps instead of...15(?).

Back this other game with a brown protagonist. (I fear Indivisible is never going to make that goal. I don't know why they went for 1.5MM. Too ambitious.)
Image

User avatar
Classic
Posts: 1025
Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2014 6:53 am

Re: Kickstarter

Postby Classic » Fri Oct 09, 2015 5:00 pm

Probably because that's what these things cost when they're not being massively subsidized by starving and overworking the developers.
Really want to see them both succeed though.

User avatar
Büge
Posts: 5440
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:56 pm

Re: Kickstarter

Postby Büge » Tue Dec 01, 2015 12:28 am

Woobots: wooden toy vehicles that transform into robots!
Image

User avatar
sei
Posts: 1074
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:29 pm

Re: Kickstarter

Postby sei » Tue Dec 01, 2015 4:25 am

Classic wrote:Probably because that's what these things cost when they're not being massively subsidized by starving and overworking the developers.
Really want to see them both succeed though.



Mike Z talks about the cost at great length in the video above. I don't think the cost is unjustified. The issue is more than because it's hard to drum up 1.5MM during the crowdfunding phase, whether it'd make more sense to limit scope go episodic, making it easier to hit the initial funding point.

There are 4 days left, and it's looking like Indivisible will be squeaking by its 1.5MM mark, but I really didn't like how white-knuckle of a ride its ability to hit its funding goal felt. (It would have failed without deadline extension.)
Image

User avatar
zaratustra
Posts: 1665
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:45 pm

Re: Kickstarter

Postby zaratustra » Tue Dec 01, 2015 6:59 am

Classic wrote:Probably because that's what these things cost when they're not being massively subsidized by starving and overworking the developers.


It's really REALLY hard to answer the question "how much does a game cost anyway"

I mean Undertale's main kickstarter went for $50 thousand, but you can't just put Toby Fox in charge of, say, Shenmue 3 and expect the whole project to suddenly cost 10 times less.

User avatar
sei
Posts: 1074
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:29 pm

Re: Kickstarter

Postby sei » Tue Dec 01, 2015 4:45 pm

games cost $1.99 on the app store duh
Image

User avatar
sei
Posts: 1074
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:29 pm

Re: Kickstarter

Postby sei » Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:56 am

Image

User avatar
zaratustra
Posts: 1665
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:45 pm

Re: Kickstarter

Postby zaratustra » Fri Dec 04, 2015 6:42 am

psychonauts 2
psychonauts 2

psy

chonauts

2

https://www.fig.co/campaigns/psychonauts-2

User avatar
Thad
Posts: 13165
Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2014 10:05 am
Location: 1611 Uranus Avenue
Contact:

Re: Kickstarter

Postby Thad » Tue Mar 08, 2016 9:52 pm

Alex Winter (Bill S Preston, Esquire) is seeking to raise $500,000 to fund a documentary, Who the Fuck is Frank Zappa?, and to preserve the recordings in the Vault.

And if you've got $9 million kicking around, you can buy Zappa's house on eBay.

I may have to take my Frank Zappa tag out of mothballs.

User avatar
Thad
Posts: 13165
Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2014 10:05 am
Location: 1611 Uranus Avenue
Contact:

Re: Kickstarter

Postby Thad » Wed Mar 30, 2016 12:10 pm

Thad wrote:So I think I have a job now. Time to go set my resume on CareerBuilder to private, maybe pledge a couple Kickstarters I've been waiting on.


I wound up pledging the Zappa Kickstarter and also the latest Ditko Kickstarter. I was planning on backing the Rifftrax Kickstarter but I'm not sure I will; they've passed their goal and the rewards aren't really a screamin' deal; the downloads they're offering cost about what they would if I just bought them a la carte off the Rifftrax site. (And if I bought them on sale and chose the SD versions of the live shows, it would actually cost less to buy them off the site.) Plus I'm already in for $13 a ticket if I go see the live shows; I understand that it's logistically impossible for them to offer tickets to the live shows as a Kickstarter, but it's hard for me to get behind funding the shows and then still having to buy tickets to go see them.

The CBLDF has a new Kickstarter for a book called She Changed Comics, which, as its title implies, is about the history of women in comics. It looks great but since it's already funded that's another one I might hold off on and just buy the book when it's out.

User avatar
Thad
Posts: 13165
Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2014 10:05 am
Location: 1611 Uranus Avenue
Contact:

Re: Kickstarter

Postby Thad » Thu Mar 31, 2016 3:15 pm

Winter's changed the breakdown of the Zappa fundraiser. By popular demand, he's putting all the first million toward preserving the Zappa Vault. He won't put any of the Kickstarter money toward his documentary until and unless it passes $1M.

His reasoning is sound: unless the KS passes $2M (unlikely at this point), he'll still need to seek additional external funding. And he figures that the Kickstarter can attract investor attention anyway, in and of itself, just by showing fan interest, especially if it gets up to $1M and sets the record for biggest crowdfunded documentary project. (Which is possible. It requires money to start ramping up again in the closing days, but that's likely, and if the past couple of days are any indication it may have already started.)

And really, I believe (and most fans seem to agree) that preserving the Vault is the highest priority right now. There's a time limit hanging over it; a lot of that stuff is degrading and could become irretrievable, so the more money put toward it and the sooner it is, the more will be recoverable.

(Of course, there's a time limit hanging over the documentary, too, but it's a little less predictable; it's the lifespans of the people Winter's going to want to interview. That's morbid to say but of course it's true; Frank died young, Gail passed away last year, we lost George Duke back in '13, etc. So I can still see a certain sense of urgency about getting the doc made sooner rather than later, but it's not as immediate as the degradation of film and tape.)

I really should crank out a blog post or three about this thing. I'll probably do that shortly.

(Man, I've always wanted a Zappa for President T-shirt, but $35 is a little steep...)

User avatar
Thad
Posts: 13165
Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2014 10:05 am
Location: 1611 Uranus Avenue
Contact:

Re: Kickstarter

Postby Thad » Wed Apr 06, 2016 12:52 am

The Zappa Kickstarter's in its last four days; today was a big jump ($46.5K, compared to $28K yesterday). Unless there's some kind of inexplicable dropoff, tomorrow it'll pass The Bill Nye Film as the #1 documentary Kickstarter of all time (in dollars; it's only got about a third as many backers as Nye).

I think it'll probably hit a million. If the final three days just tied today's amount that'd bring it to $964K.

I'm pretty excited about the whole thing. Winter's been putting out some great content for backers; the most exciting thing so far (IMO) is a recording of Zappa hanging out and chatting with Clapton, followed by the two of them getting out guitars and jamming for awhile.

I pledged at $35. I'm debating whether to up it to $50; I'm ambivalent about the Kickstarter tee (like I said, I'm much more interested in the Zappa for President tee), but if the campaign gets to $1M then every backer $50 and up gets a poncho, and I must admit the thought of a real Zappa poncho is tempting.

I'll probably buy some of the add-on rewards once I get my first full paycheck, too, but that's not until the 22nd. Presumably the add-on store will stay open after the Kickstarter, though; the MST3K add-on store is still open, and the Zappa add-on store is clearly taking its cues from the MST3K one (the FAQ page is even copy-and-pasted from the MST3K one; for awhile there it still said "mst3k.com" in one spot instead of "zappamovie.com", though that's been corrected).

There's some truly fantastic stuff already coming out of this. I'm really looking forward to seeing and hearing more -- and not just in the documentary, but with the years and years' worth of material they'll be restoring with the money they've raised.

User avatar
Büge
Posts: 5440
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:56 pm

Re: Kickstarter

Postby Büge » Wed Aug 03, 2016 2:48 pm

Image

User avatar
Mongrel
Posts: 21290
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line

Re: Kickstarter

Postby Mongrel » Wed Aug 03, 2016 5:40 pm

Speaking of which: This is NOT FINE

Holy shit KC Green is the best.
Image

User avatar
Mongrel
Posts: 21290
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line

Re: Kickstarter

Postby Mongrel » Wed Aug 24, 2016 7:04 pm

This is probably one of the dumber Kickstarters I've ever seen, and I'm not sure if the backers or the maker are dumber.

Beyond it probably not working as advertised (a plug-in GPU box.... really. *sniggering*), I know fuck all about laptops and even I know that by the time this gets to production newer laptops will have surpassed it in power anyway.
Image

User avatar
Grath
Posts: 2387
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:34 pm

Re: Kickstarter

Postby Grath » Wed Aug 24, 2016 10:39 pm

Mongrel wrote:This is probably one of the dumber Kickstarters I've ever seen, and I'm not sure if the backers or the maker are dumber.

Beyond it probably not working as advertised (a plug-in GPU box.... really. *sniggering*), I know fuck all about laptops and even I know that by the time this gets to production newer laptops will have surpassed it in power anyway.

A plug-in GPU box? It's more likely than you think. Albeit that one is for Windows and you don't get as much performance as a desktop but no "plug a GPU in via thunderbolt" is actually 100% legit.

(Edit to add: Also that kickstarter's got a "build your own with your own GPU" kit they're selling which, that'll stay competitive because you can presumably swap out the GPU.)

User avatar
Mongrel
Posts: 21290
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line

Re: Kickstarter

Postby Mongrel » Wed Aug 24, 2016 11:20 pm

Alright fair enough. Instead, here's something even dumber! (not a KS though - it's already real and for sale)

A bottle opener which plugs into your seatbelt buckle (to prevent the "seatbelt undone" alarm)
Image

User avatar
Thad
Posts: 13165
Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2014 10:05 am
Location: 1611 Uranus Avenue
Contact:

Re: Kickstarter

Postby Thad » Mon Sep 26, 2016 12:01 pm

Unbound has a crowdfunding page for The Tyrant and the Squire (potentially NSFW*), the third in Terry Jones's trilogy of children's books.

I don't see an actual dollar amount listed like on Kickstarter, but it says it's currently 46% funded.

Given the sad news about Jones's health, it'd be a lovely gesture to see the campaign succeed. And given that, from the sound of it, he won't be writing anything anymore, that's reason enough to pursue any unpublished Terry Jones work we can get.



* Top of page shows painting of Terry Jones at piano wearing nothing but a necktie, and if you play the video it pans down to show his buttcrack.

User avatar
Thad
Posts: 13165
Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2014 10:05 am
Location: 1611 Uranus Avenue
Contact:

Re: Kickstarter

Postby Thad » Fri Dec 30, 2016 10:22 am

Snyder and Ditko are back on Kickstarter with the fiftieth anniversary of Mr. A. I like the look of the $55 tier, where you get the comic plus $50 worth of other items of your choosing (see available stock at ditko.blogspot.com -- damn, they're out of Static (no, not the Milestone Static)). I've had my eye on Avenging World for awhile now, and I missed a few of his single issues when I was unemployed and did not have Kickstarter money.

I don't know if anybody else is interested in this stuff, but if anybody wants any recommendations for Ditko things to get, I'll do my best to help.

User avatar
Thad
Posts: 13165
Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2014 10:05 am
Location: 1611 Uranus Avenue
Contact:

Re: Kickstarter

Postby Thad » Tue Jan 10, 2017 1:17 am

Pledge Music: Dweezil Zappa and the Others of Intention: For the Rights to My Name

He's raising funds to oppose the Zappa Family Trust's trademark application for the Zappa name.

What a revolting situation. And yeah, it probably won't surprise you to know I'm with Dweezil; the very idea of abusing trademark law to try to prevent a guy from using his own name is madness. Dweezil's clearly in the right here, and has been for the past year this has been going on. The ZFT's relying on classic bully tactics here -- Dweezil's in the right legally but has neither the money nor the inclination to fight them in court, so he's backed off using both the Zappa Plays Zappa mark (which he probably has a legitimate claim to as the only person who's ever actually used it) and the Frank Zappa name (which is descriptive; it is not a trademark violation to say that you are performing the music of Frank Zappa if you are performing the music of Frank Zappa). Now that they're trying to prevent him from using his own name, they've basically forced his hand; he has to fight back now, and he's raising the funds to do it.

Aside from the fundamental rightness of what Dweezil's raising money for, the guy's a great damn guitar player, and I like his original work well enough that I'm happy to spend $15 to get a FLAC download of his latest album.

Though I'm sure hoping this all blows over and he gets to start comercially releasing his covers of his father's work again. I picked up the ZPZ DVD set on eBay recently and it really is fantastic.

I'd like to see him prevail in court and, hopefully, to get a ruling that knocks some sense into his siblings. I think they're basically decent people but I think they've gotten some bad advice from some lawyers who don't have their best interests at heart. And even if I believe the worst of them and that they really are Only In It for the Money, they're not doing a very good job of working in their own financial interest; alienating the only family member who's got the chops to actually go out there and play Frank's music is not a sound moneymaking strategy.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests