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syntheticgerbil

Worst Kickstarter Ever

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I hadn't actually read the PA Kickstarter until after I posted… it is like they're crassly poking fun at Kickstarter itself. The tone is atrocious and insulting as fuck, but I don't disagree with their goal/approach otherwise. Maybe we need a different kind of marketplace to allow the grimy masses to just directly support cool people to avoid soiling Kickstarter with this sort of controversy.

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You also forgot the part where you the Thumbs will take you out for dinner at a certain tier, which doesn't seem that different from having lunch with Koo or even a tweet.

I have no stance the PA thing, so I am not making any statement, it's just strange to see.

Yeah but the Thumbs aren't charging you $5,000 for a behind-the-scenes-Thumb and $10k for the Thumbs themselves. :P

It's not necessarily the type of reward, it's the pricetag associated with it.

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I think practically speaking the all-or-nothing offered by Kickstarter does make sense here. If they let some users subscribe to "no ads," but have other users who don't do that, it will potentially unpredictably fuck with their circulation numbers, which will fuck with their ad rates.

That makes a lot of sense, thanks.

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It's not necessarily the type of reward, it's the pricetag associated with it.

This is going to get into a weird and sort of insulting discussion, but the penny arcade guys at this point are pretty well know celebrities, like it or not, and I've heard of stories where celebrities getting paid to attend events and private functions. So I don't see this as being completely outrageous.

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Yeah, there doesn't seem to be any reason not to just do a funding drive (preferably with Jimbo Wales' staring eyes at the top of every PA page until it gets funded) except that Kickstarter is the thing right now.

The rewards are simply baffling (and horrible). I feel like it's supposed to be a joke, but if so, the joke is mocking PA's supporters, so I'm not sure what that's supposed to accomplish.

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This is going to get into a weird and sort of insulting discussion, but the penny arcade guys at this point are pretty well know celebrities, like it or not, and I've heard of stories where celebrities getting paid to attend events and private functions. So I don't see this as being completely outrageous.

Sure, that stuff happens all the time, but it's stil... crass, at best.

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To be fair, Jerry and Mike make a living on being crass and occasionally insightful. Like you said, it's probably just because Kickstarter is a thing with a lot of press right now.

As for mocking PA's supporters... Don't visit their forums. Most of it, at least.

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As for mocking PA's supporters... Don't visit their forums. Most of it, at least.

Hey!

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Hey!

What, have they become not-a-cesspit since I was last there a couple years ago? :oldman:

(I'm mostly joking, but my time with PA people in EVE was marred with constant mild annoyance.)

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Or spend $0 and install an ad-blocking plugin!

Do one better and steal their wallet.

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The thing that worries me about the PA kickstarter is how it's essentially ditching the "project" requirement of Kickstarter—and Kickstarter approving it because they're getting a 5% slice of what's bound to be a big project.

Kickstarter is already in this weird place where they've cultivated the idea of it as a pre-order QVC, but without any of the protections you have when dealing with any other merchant. They've created this expectation at their peril, because eventually one of these projects is going to blow up and damage their reputation.

Now, on top of that, you have PA's venture which seems to skim by on being a project just by virtue of having an arbitrary end-point of 1 year (something that I imagine was added in their back-and-forth with Kickstarter to get it approved, along with some of the ancillary stuff). And while they're promising some additional content if several beyond-the-requirement funding figures are met, they're tacked-on and not the core concern of the project: removing ads.

A good way to ask yourself whether this qualifies as a "project" under the Kickstarter guidelines is to ask if anything would not be created if they didn't breach the number they're asking for; as PA admits themselves on the Kickstarter page, "things stay how they are now." And all the ancillary add-ons are ancillary: the clear thrust of the project is in simply removing ads— and an empty ad slot doesn't count under any conventional idea of something that's "created".

How big PA is or the snarky tone of the rewards are asinine—who would expect anything else from the creators of dickwolves?—but they're beside the point in that this is a proposal that should never have made it onto Kickstarter. This should have been handled on their own site or elsewhere, and I'm sure they would have still made plenty of money there.

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I kind of don't care about the Penny-Arcade ads, they are probably one of the only sites that I visit that I will randomly click on an ad from. I think it is kind of weird that they are doing this through kickstarter as they even mention in the video that they have done exactly something like this in the past and kind of know the finer details of making it work, hell they even have staff for it at this point.

What annoys me is that the higher the pledge the more of an insult some of the rewards are. Sure, there is the one that is the "play date" with everyone-- the next one is saying that you can spend an entire day working for them for just 50% more. It is almost like a bad movie about someone in high school trying to sell their popularity to make nerds more cool. I guess that means that the 1.4 million dollar unlock is probably, "we all learned an important lesson about ourselves" and some bullshit song plays.

Also, how has no one said anything about that video. It was kind of painful to watch. I don't mind PA the series, but this just seemed forced.

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Yeah but the Thumbs aren't charging you $5,000 for a behind-the-scenes-Thumb

I'll have dinner with you for the cost of one dinner!

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The only time I've been actively annoyed at the PA ads are right now with the World of Warcraft banners. There's this incredibly stupid goblin dancing on it and it's the most infuriating thing.

That said, I don't really understand why PA would want to ditch their ad-driven business model. As has been made very clear, they get to CHOOSE which ads they run. That makes them effectively their endorsements for a product, which is something they already do in the rants. What's the difference? An endorsement is an endorsement and it's not like they have to put up with stupid ads for products they wouldn't stand behind. As for the operating costs of maintaining ads, surely that's not a big deal for them. They have a lot of employees, the infrastructure is in place and companies are coming to them.

It's strange on a second level because PA have always been really close with their sponsored products, frequently providing spinoff comics for games or doing other ad stuff. Suddenly going all out to eradicate the ads on the site seems weird.

But ultimately, it does feel like an abuse of Kickstarter. It feels like an egregious joke.

(I wish PA would start focusing on making an actually funny comic strip again instead of all the surrounding stuff. PA hasn't been funny in about a good year now, going for cheap laughs and struggling to find something to work with. Maybe they've stretched it out too far? Maybe they should have quit at a high point some ways back? The Trenches is way more interesting than anything the original comic has produced in a long time. I get the feeling it's just there to maintain the overall structure, rather than a real source of inspiration and ambition.)

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(I still enjoy Penny Arcade The Comic, and while The Trenches is interesting, I think it more often falls flat than succeeds.)

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The humor in The Trenches is passable, if too drawn out, but it's the full concept that is really fun - especially the 'tales from the trenches' feature with real stories from abused testers. There's value there.

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Yeah I do like the stories. Some pretty amazing stuff in there.

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I hadn't actually read the PA Kickstarter until after I posted… it is like they're crassly poking fun at Kickstarter itself.

I was very curious about this myself, but if they are joking around, doing it on an actual Kickstarter with rewards they have to fulfill seems like a bad idea. Unlocking achievements on a chart through throwing money at them is even more obnoxious.

I just don't feel like Kickstarter as a site needs fluff projects like this when it is traditionally a site to get something off the ground. Why don't they just have a pledge drive every year like Maximum Fun or This American Life?

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PA doing this through Kickstarter annoys me on the same level as EA releasing an "indie bundle" on Steam. Everyone else has already made my points better than I would, though - this isn't the right sort of project for Kickstarter, PA has the means to go through other channels for this and should do so, the rewards make them sound incredibly full of themselves. Not in a funny, self-ironic way either; they just sound like pricks.

Here are some more of their reward tiers: http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/penny-arcade-kickstarter.php

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I'll have dinner with you for the cost of one dinner!

Sweet! I hope you like Wendy's. I'll get you a frosty. My treat.

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I have an adblocker; I just realised that I don't see those banners anyway. Even when I did, the site is well designed so that the ads aren't very distracting.

I've still given a couple of dollars because I'd like to see the Automata comic. And out of... curiosity I guess, but I wouldn't give more than that.

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I was thinking this could be an attempt to recoup adblocker losses. But I'm sure if that were even a reason it wouldn't justify completely changing their business modle. But it could be a nice side-effect, monetarily.

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I don't like to use adblockers in general, but there is a specific case: the huge flash ads some gaming and games industry news sites run spin the fans on my laptop right up. If I'm going to let my laptop shorten its life making that much heat, it's god damn going to be for something I enjoy.

The Kickstarter has been cruelly parodied by Something Awful:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/penny-arcade-kickstarter.php

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