All Tomorrow's Parties - Keeping Kickstarter Indie

But of late I’ve started to notice a disturbing trend...

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OSR really marked a shift for me in regard to Kickstarter. I went from backing one project (Glory to Rome) to over 25 in the space of about 3 months. I just put in for the new Deep Carbon Observatory, the Mork Borg zine, and I have a flood of Zinequest 2 material already showing up. I’ll back just about anything for Mothership. I went all in for Free League’s Forbidden Lands campaign and I’m glad I did.

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.

Amen Michael.

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.

"You can’t tell me that the likes of CMON need Kickstarter"

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.

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.

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.

Well there you have it. Another feather in capitalism's cap.

"CMON" sounds exactly like somebody loudly nagging you to do something stupid so they can laugh at you.

Hahahahahaha
True facts.
C'mon man, put these spices up your dick hole. CMON!

I remember when Monolith released their financial info on a FB post. It outlined how they lost money on Conan and were using Batman, among other at-the-time unannounced campaigns, to pay for it. CMON's likely doing similar.

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.

And for something completely different...
I just launched a very small and very peculiar Kickstarter myself:

www.kickstarter.com/projects/jacktorranc...s?ref=project_build#

Pimp away. Perhaps if i could still drink...