Friendship and Reputation in Social Funding Sites
Kickstarter is a torrent of money these days. Though the Amazon river springs to mind as all that cash washes by me, I think that the everglades might be a better example of the complexities in that system. Not only does it fit in terms of describing each project as it’s own little biome (project), interacting with it’s neighbors in weak and sometimes hard to define ways – it’s also very messy. I don’t mean messy as in underhanded, as a recent article discussed. I mean it is hard to find what you want to find, or track what needs to be tracked.
I’ve discussed my problems with their search engine in the past, and I won’t belabor the point here. If you want to find out what I mean, you’ll just have to keep reading.
The Wardenclyffe Horror – Font Poll
Greetings backers, below is the poll for which font you find to be most readable, and a sample of Twain’s handwriting, so you can see that matching it might not be the best policy for readability reasons. Please take a moment to look, and then choose the one that you find to be the most aesthetically pleasing/readable.
Thank you for your participation!
Crowdfunders Gone Wild!
Stop me if you heard this one, but today I came across Star Citizen. It’s been out for about a week now, and is another mega project/classic game with a twist: it’s crowdfunding without any of the crowdfunding sites. Crazy, right? No Kickstarter… No Indiegogo… nothing.
This game handily fits into the nostalgia genre currently sweeping the internet; it has enough star power and built-in fan base that it just might pull it off. Just as Wasteland 2 and Project Eternity are irresistible to any fan of old school isometric games, this game is built for lovers of scifi, with a particular emphasis on fans of the Wing Commander franchise. This is hardly a nostalgia fest though. The graphics and game play are cutting edge in their promotional material, and guaranteed to woo new fans from modern sci fans just as easily.
Interested? Read on!
I’m a Backer: The Keep
Welcome to another Wednesday, where we discuss projects so good I just had to give them my money, and tell you why you should too! This week we’ll give you the bad news first: Blackspace ended today, falling far short of it’s funding goal of $300,000; I was really looking forward to playing this game, so needless to say I am pretty disappointed. On the bright side, Fargoal 2, pulled it out, raising more than $10,000 funding in the last 24 hours thanks to a certain Kickathon, and funded less than 5 minutes from the closing bell. The best part of all that? Watching the reactions of everyone on the Kickathon at the time!
Today, in “I’m a Backer,” we transition from video games, back to board games – specifically, board game accessories – with the incredibly ambitious project, “The Keep.” This project doesn’t aim to create a game about defending a castle – it aims to create a modular storage solution for carrying board games when you are off to play at a friends or at the FLGS. Not only do I love this product – I actually need this product, something I can rarely say about my purchases on Kickstarter.
Now let’s dig into the specifics.
New High Score!
(Another Update: With one minute to go, it appears that Project Eternity will fall just short of it’s four million dollar goal officially, though when you add in additional Paypal funds it easily surpasses it. Great job Obsidian and great job to the 70,000+ other backers who traveled this long road with me!)
(Update: Currently our favorite project has gotten $3,841,055, with 2 hours left to go! Lets push our favorite project over the top!)
Earlier this month, I wrote about Project Eternity, and their roaring success – achieving over a million dollars in funding in a single day. Last night they performed another nigh impossible feat – they beat Doublefine’s previous record, in a total nerd eclipse that the entire Kickstarter gaming community no doubt enjoyed watching.
So what does this mean? Tune in and I’ll pretend I have those answers for you!
Tesla and Twain
I’ve always been fascinated by Nikola Tesla. I’ve read the legitimate biographies on him, and the conspiracy theories; everything from his days in working under Edison and with Westinghouse, to his days on the Philidelphia experiment. Over the course of this project, I’ve even gotten fairly familiar with Mr Samuel Clemens. Did you know he was the first Author to submit a typed manuscript? Though he didn’t type it himself, he dictated Life on the Mississippi in 1883.
I guess after immersing yourself in these facts long enough, you start to believe that everyone else knows them too.
It turns out that isn’t the case. The other day I was asked why we chose to these two characters, and whether or not they were contemporaneous in history by a reasonably smart and learn-ed fellow, so I can see I have some work to do in this area.
When Good Kickstarters Go Bad
Why hello there. My name is Joe Kelly, and I write a silly blog called DavidGaames. But for every bit that it is silly, it is also somewhat serious. It’s about video games, with a focus on Kickstarter projects – mostly bad ones. You could consider it a “what not to do” guide for creating a video game Kickstarter. Having a focus on Kickstarter himself, David found my blog and generously offered me a guest post on his (far more established and professional) blog. So while I’ll be a little more professional here, my own blog is not for the faint of heart. With that said, here’s an idea of what to expect from it.
This story begins with my fourth post, about a little game called Project Lodus. Normally, what I do is follow a project that I find particularly offensive in its absurdity, and wait for the moment it runs out of time, not having reached its goal. I screen capture that moment, and write about what I feel they did wrong – which is usually everything. I was all set for this routine with Project Lodus, but as I watched it during its last day, something happened: the project succeeded in reaching its funding goal.
Guest Posting
Starting this week, I am going to try to feature a guest post most every Sunday. This isn’t just because I have too much going on right now because of our ongoing Kickstarting project (I do) or that I’m getting tired of talking to you (I’m not). The main reason is I would like to bring in more points of view really. Any guests that do appear will be Kickstarter or comic book related and represent a valuable viewpoint that I think we could all benefit from.
What do you do if you want to do a guestpost? Send an email to Caffeineforge@gmail.com and we can discuss the matter!
TGFO – Thank Goodness Friday is Over
Normally I have nice, well prepared posts to greet my loyal readers, but as you might suspect I’ve been a little busy the last two days. Yesterday we talked about all the ground work that led up to the launch of The Wardenclyffe Horror. Today I wanted to provide a little post launch coverage, the advertising I started, and talk about tonight’s Kickathon briefly before drifting off to bed.
Tomorrow’s post will begin the return to normalcy, and variety, with only the occasional discussion of our project.
Houston we have Lift Off!
As most of you know. Yesterday was a great day. We didn’t put a man on the moon, or cure cancer, but it was almost as good; yesterday we launched a project on Kickstarter that Chris and I have been passionate about for a very long time. Though I have a good feeling about the whole thing, and think that our trend is looking excellent, I would consider just getting this point a victory – in its own way.
When we decided to do this project on Kickstarter, we knew there was going to be a lot of work involved. We severely underestimated it though Today’s post is not so much about how great it is to see those engines flaring during take-off, but about all the work it took to make those engines in the first place.
Caffeineforge 