Thursday, July 19, 2012

SGC Kickstarter

SGC 2010 was the public debut of The Game OverThinker and my first con as a professional, so you'd better believe I'm psyched at the idea of it possibly coming back. ScrewAttack is aiming to make that happen via Kickstarter; because that's what the cool kids are doin' these days:

Check it out HERE.

17 comments:

Sabre said...

I'm not sure about this. I've seen Anime conventions take place at leisure centres, I attend a regular board and card game meet in a church hall. Why have such a big con now, instead of scaling back a bit and growing over a few years?

While I'm all for people doing what they want with their money, I do question how useful this will be. Their stretch goals don't seem to add up. For example, $900,000 they make a game, $1000,000 they go on a world tour, but if they are making a game, how can they hold 10 conventions for $100,000?

Anonymous said...

Kickstarter?

Oh boy, here we go again.

PadMasher said...

erYet another waste of time and money? Thought you guys were better than this...

Anonymous said...

$100,000? FOR A WEBSITE CONVENTION?

NO.

You want to hold SGC you act like adults and get a loan from the bank and learn to budget, rent negotiate, see a finance manager/accountant to give you pointers on your budget.

Sitting back and begging for money for your own little party shows you don't care enough to take a real risk and the money raised is all for yourself and not the community.

What. A. Fucking. Ripoff.

PadMasher said...

@Anon 8:09 PM

Welcome to Kickstarter. Seriously, people are abusing the shit out of this. Maybe I should start a Kickstarter to pay off my student loans. If you donate x amount of dollars, you get the pleasure of knowing I'll have a Bachelor's in Computer Science. Why take any risk when people online can take the risk for me. :P

Sabre said...

PadMasher- I disagree to an extent. There are people abusing the system, like the Feminist Frequency videos. Most have really dumb stretch goals, (like the screw attack here) that make it feel as if they didn't do their research. The 'official bad dudes sequel' is much the same. It has the feeling of people who didn't budget or know the realities of what they are getting into.

That said, it's up to people to throw money at it. I doubt Screw Attack would take the money and run. If people want to throw money at dumb crap, they are more than free to do that.

That's also part of the reason I disagreed with Tentacle Bento getting banned, because it got approved, and met it's goal, but people who were never going to buy it anyway took offence and demanded it be banned.

A more recent example, I like the Ouya, I want one and would pay money. Alot of people think I'm stupid for wanting that, but they don't get to dictate how I spend my money.

Omorka said...

Not that I'm going to complain all that much, because I live here, but - inviting people from the other two coasts to Texas in the summer? Could be a bit of a tough sell just climate-wise.

PadMasher said...

@Sabre

I'm sort of half with you on that. I like the fact that struggling inventors can have their projects funded by people who want to see it come to life. Like you said, if you want something like Ouya, you're free to support it.

My problem is that it seems like most people using Kickstarter either don't know what they're getting into or are outright asking for money they don't need. Also, the fact that Tentacle Bento was banned because people were "offended" shows how weak the Kickstarter system is.

From what I can tell, Kickstarter is becoming the network for e-begging. You don't need $6'000 to make Youtube videos and you sure as hell shouldn't be asking for money to throw a party. The point of Kickstarter is getting lost in this shit.

Not only that but, I wanted to start a Kickstarter and run off with the money afterwards, I could. That's some truly shady shit there.

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of the time Yathzee of the Escapist set up some silly fundraiser in order to get him to PAX in the US. Though it failed, if Kickstarter existed back then, who knows.

Anonymous said...

http://www.torontostandard.com/technology/gamers-against-bigotry-hacked-by-people-who-think-its-ok-to-support-rape

Sabre said...

Anon- Whatever your opinion on radical feminism (I disagree with it myself) the article you link to shot itself in the foot with the last paragraph
"However, we need legal intervention, large-scale social support and increased consequence such as total communication banning to prevent these efforts from being for naught."
No matter how you try and spin it. That's censorship. They really believe making it illegal to say certain words is a good thing?

Anonymous said...

Oh hey, yet another group jumping on the Kickstarter bandwagon. Get in while the fad's hot, kids!

Seriously. One game gets money raised through kickstarter, it gets publicity, and now everyone and their dog is all up on the e-begging train. It's getting disgusting.

Would you stand out on a corner with a sign and a cup that says "Please donate money to my con?" Because that's exactly what Kickstarter is these days.

Anonymous said...

And people here are still hating on the Feminist Frequency videos even though movie bob/game overthinker already stated his opinion on it.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/5950-Tropes-vs-MovieBob

That's... odd.

Sabre said...

People are still "hating on" Feminist Frequency for a number of reasons. Bobs video you link to doesn't address any of them. Instead, it goes against 1 common argument that I think is dumb, but also Bobs response is equally dumb. Saying that one hot female character objectifies women, but one hot male character doesn't objectify men is a double standard and completely irrelevant to the issue being discussed.

There are various videos on the subject of the feminist frequency videos that explain the problems people have with the project itself. Here are 2 of the best
http://youtu.be/LpFk5F-S_hI
and
http://youtu.be/igXz_hXKUcE

Brian Lee said...

Hey. I actually addressed the SGC Kickstarter on my show. You should check it out.

It's an honest discussion about the purpose of this Kickstarter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZFID5KqsyI

cdstephens said...

If people want to spend their money this way, that's fine with me. It's basically just an advertised version of a donate button.

That being said, I think a lot of people don't really understand the purpose of kickstarter. It's not a way of buying a product early; it's way of pitching in to help develop a product. It's the difference between a pre-order and an investment, primarily in that you are not guaranteed a return when you make an investment.

Because of this, it's likely at some point that a high-profile project will get funded by kickstarter and will fail to meet expectations one reason or another, causing donors to get pissy that they didn't get their "promised" product. If or when this happens, I foresee a ton of disillusionment in kickstarter.

As for the whole Tentacle Bento thing that people bring up: groups that are offended by it should not affect whether it's made or not. I think the product is fine because not only is it fiction, it involves people that don't exist. The people who would be interested in this type of product understand that rape in real life is wrong. I think the sheer ridiculousness of it (a card game about tentacle rape) downplays any chance of the product contributing to rape incidents.

If it was marketed towards children or if it featured pictures of real women actually getting raped, then I would agree with those groups. Otherwise, it's more or less innocuous in my eyes. As far as I know, there isn't a scientific consensus that pornography contributes to immoral behavior.

evilcorgi said...

Maybe I'm just hating kickstarter because that's the cool thing to do, but why don't they just use their Ad-revanew, money?