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All Tomorrow's Parties - Keeping Kickstarter Indie
- Andi Lennon
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Despite what I or anyone else thinks of it, Kickstarter has been a pretty amazing development in the democratisation of the creative commons. The crowdfunding model has empowered both individuals and small groups to realise their visions on a larger scale than previously thought possible, providing them with a platform and an audience hungry for the unique, the niche and the passionate. It’s wild success has seen it embraced by both independent operators and established businesses to the point where it has become near ubiquitous, towering over the hobby scene like a pulsating colossus and acting as the almost de-facto promotional and pre-order portal for all your shameful carboard and plastic fetish needs.
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- Michael Barnes
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- Mountebank
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- HYPOCRITE
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Giving an independent female creator $10 for a 30 page punk AF self published RPG zine with a title like You Got a Job on the Garbage Barge makes a hell of a lot more fucking sense than giving a Kickstarter mill like CMON one single god damned penny for Marvel United. Or paying whoever it is doing Wolfenstein $100 extra to assemble the miniatures. Or watching Cephalofair rake in millions and millions of dollars during a fucking world health crisis.
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- Andi Lennon
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That Mork Borg zine looks rad and it's so cool that they're embracing and empowering the community contributors like that. I'm on board with that one. I recently grabbed the hardback and even on first skim it left me swimming with campaign and character ideas. Those zany swedes and their HM2 pedals!
Other recent efforts I've scattered pennies for include Kingdoms: a Zine of Generational Proportions, Dungeon Breakout, Trust Me, I'm a Doctor - A Game of Medical Malpractice, The Ratcatcher, Storymasters Tales and Cryptic Explorers. There's seriously no shortage of good shit out there without having to drink from the well of Cosmosodomistic Enterprises.
PS- Have you checked out 'Lurker Zine'? Issue one was cool as hell, and issue two which i have on the way features the new Nate Hayden solitaire game which I hope to do a write up on here shortly. It has that degenerate vibe that calls me.
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Actually, they and many other companies I suspect NEED KS to keep kiting checks to fund their poorly planned overhead expenditures. I was surprised to learn that KS only accounts for approx 30% of CMON's revenues - the rest are done via retail. But the recent delisting of their stock shows and audit flags mentioning concern over future viability are a potential canary in the coal mine IMO. In some ways I think the smaller outfits are smaller risks in that they haven't over expanded, yet in times of financial uncertainty people are going to gravitate towards known entities - the CMONs, Awaken Realms etc. I think its gonna be a combo of some consolidation as well as even the bigger guys seeing lower levels of funding from what they used to see. The 35% drop in overall KS revenue is gonna be a best case scenario for the next 6-12 months I think; I could see it dropping even further.
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- Andi Lennon
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It is interesting to see what kind of monstrosities success begets sometimes. What starts out as indie and well intentioned inevitably seems to lurch towards the sinister after companies reach a certain threshold. At a certain point they need to hire 'experts' to assist with the sheer logistical burdens, who, unshackled from any real passion for the hobby seem to go about instigating the worst tenets of predatory capitalism.
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Andi Lennon wrote: Good point. Do you think perhaps it has the faint whiff of a Ponzi scheme about it?
It is interesting to see what kind of monstrosities success begets sometimes. What starts out as indie and well intentioned inevitably seems to lurch towards the sinister after companies reach a certain threshold. At a certain point they need to hire 'experts' to assist with the sheer logistical burdens, who, unshackled from any real passion for the hobby seem to go about instigating the worst tenets of predatory capitalism.
CMON spent $2 MILLION on consultants regarding changing stock exchanges last fall. Is that expert enough for you? Fuck yeah it’s a Ponzi scheme. Might not have started that way but it sure appears that way now.
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- Andi Lennon
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- Andi Lennon
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True facts.
C'mon man, put these spices up your dick hole. CMON!
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There's basically two possibilities regarding the ponzi-ness of it. Either they're incompetent and willing to keep digging into the plastic mines in an attempt to get out of financial ruin, or it's a lie to drum up sympathy for their multi-million dollar 0% interest loan racket. It's unclear as to which is true. What we do know is that this business model is extremely volatile, or supremely scummy, or both.
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I just launched a very small and very peculiar Kickstarter myself:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/jacktorranc...s?ref=project_build#
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- Andi Lennon
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