Kickstopper

[mdqp]

Being a big producer means nothing, especially since with this kickstarter WB involvement isn't explicitly stated, so they don't even risk getting a bad reputation if anything goes wrong

Yeah, as if WB could just suddenly decide to deny giving Rob Thomas the money and the IP, and the Internet and it's Veronica Mars fandom would never figure out who was responsible for that.

All of the above reasons to be wary of this had nothing to do with my point, those are general concerns regarding anything to do with crowdfunding.

My point was that if I am the one paying the money, there is no reason why a third party should earn anything from it.

You must be new to this whole "entertainment industry" thing. Publishers earning money on artists' work is how it mainly functions, ever since the Statute of Monopolies in 1624 invented intellectual property, and granted it all to the book printers' guild.

Yes, Kickstarter didn't entirely end this, regarding the old IPs, that are already owned by such publishers. But at least it gives creators a fighting chance, to start new IPs independently from the publishers.

I wasn't thinking about the denying of the IP, it was more of a "if they would ever try to run a scam, it wouldn't be all that easy to tell the difference between an actual lack of funds and a deliberate attempt at syphoning money". I am not suggesting anyone would actually do it, but it's a possibility, and a big, costly project has a bigger chance of moving the money around. But again, this is more a possible worry with crowdfunding in general, than with big corporations deciding to step in, although I believe the size of a project might affect the possibility to obfuscate the way the budget is employed (at least, that's what I believe could happen).

As I wrote before, I wasn't referring to IPs already owned by companies (of course they will control what happens with them, and earn money for simply allowing the project. We might discuss the fact that I find the current copyright laws simply insane, but that's a completely different matter), but big companies might pressure directors and artists into doing this even for new IPs, while still getting their hands on them, which isn't a great thing in my opinion. Of course there is a good side to it (having less risks would allow them to work on less traditional ideas, without fearing a flop as much), but that's also true for other projects where there isn't a producer involved, so that would benefit them for no good reason.

There are a lot of reasons why a director might do what a producer asks (a promise for a future contract with a bigger budget and a bigger paycheck, for example, but even less "shady" things, it's not like there is a conspiracy behind every corner), even it doesn't benefit their current project or its backers (the crowdfunding guys), and the people funding these projects should probably ask themselves if it's really a good thing to do, should they appear.

It's not like I am saying "we are all doomed! The big fish is going to eat all the small fishes!!!", I am pointing out the fact that shifting the risk on the general public while retaining the same income isn't in the best interest of the consumers.

 

[Entitled]

I wasn't thinking about the denying of the IP, it was more of a "if they would ever try to run a scam, it wouldn't be all that easy to tell the difference between an actual lack of funds and a deliberate attempt at syphoning money". I am not suggesting anyone would actually do it, but it's a possibility, and a big, costly project has a bigger chance of moving the money around. But again, this is more a possible worry with crowdfunding in general, than with big corporations deciding to step in, although I believe the size of a project might affect the possibility to obfuscate the way the budget is employed (at least, that's what I believe could happen).

There are two possible ways the project could not be finished:

#1. Warner misled the production team, and they refuse to let them freely finish the movie from their collected budget. They either syphon away the backer money from them, cancel the whole project, or therwise meddle with the production so that it halts.

#2. Warner allows the team to do whatever they want in good faith, and they run out of money. Warner refuses to help them out with any extra support.

In case of #1, it would take one tweet from a high-level staff member claiming that this is the case, for a huge scandal to start. There is simply no way that any business could survive the reputation of directly taking away consumers' money en masse, and not returning anything for it. It would be treated exactly as if your bank would start refusing to give people back their money that they put in, or if an online store would stop shipping products to paying consumers.

Yes, it would be complicated to legally prove, but it wouldn't need to be proven to begin with. If Ebay would start syphoning away customer money en masse, they could try to deny it and blame it on their sellers, but the fact that people are not getting their deliveries, would make a big enough scandal to seriously harm Ebay.

Big businesses can be greedy, unfair, and generally as customer unfriendly as they can get away with, but simply failing to deliver a paid product would be on an entirely different level from these.

And in the case of #2, like you said, the concerns are the same as with any kikstarter. If anything, the big 1-10 million ones are more safe than the small ones, because people like Rob Thomas have a reputation to protect, and big projects can also beg for some extra investors (in this case support from Warner), while small projects can only silently go bankrupt.

We might discuss the fact that I find the current copyright laws simply insane

Right there with ya, buddy.

but big companies might pressure directors and artists into doing this even for new IPs, while still getting their hands on them, which isn't a great thing in my opinion.

"Pressure them" with what?

They could pressure them to gie up IPs until now, when the publishers were the only source of funding. But Kickstarter is the very reason why publishers can't do that any more.

They tried to do that with Obsidian, and they failed.

It's possible that they will eventually find some producers who are stupid enough to agree with it, but even then, they controlled EVERY IP until now anyways, so for them, the only difference would be that they would be payed earlier.

Kickstarter offers creators a chance to be more independent. just because there is a chance that SOME producers would reject this option, doesn't make it any less revolutionary.

It's not like I am saying "we are all doomed! The big fish is going to eat all the small fishes!!!", I am pointing out the fact that shifting the risk on the general public while retaining the same income isn't in the best interest of the consumers.

And I'm pointing out, that the risk is not just "shifted", but in large part, disappeared.

Neckbeards asking for $10k for a 8-bit platformer, are the "risky" projects.

Just like how before dotcom bubble, the risky online stores were the obscue no-name websites, with surprisingly low prices. After the dotcom bubble, online transactions were made more safe by Ebay, Amazon, and Paypal offering a system that was too big to be a scam.

It is exactly an institutionalized, professional, and large scale system that can make a new business model trustworthy. Corporations that are too big to be just a scam.

Maybe not as big as Warner, I don't think that such megacorporations have a place in the future, but at least big enough that technically they could have spent their own money on the projects, so they are not playing dice with every single project. That is in the interest in the consumers: more active feedback to what gets made, and the only new risk is that the results might suck more than you expected (that was always a risk anyways, when you buya cinema ticket you can't tell for sure whether you will end up liking the movie), not that your money just disappears.

 

[Hitchmeister]

This is not the first Kickstarter like this, where the real goal is not the actual money (because there's financial backing potentially available for that), but to demonstrate consumer interest in a project before a company is willing to invest. Current market research frequently seems wide of the mark. Either saying there's not enough interest in something people clamor for on the internet, or something (say a computer game) being released with controversial features that no one on the consumer side seems to have really wanted (despite the what the developers seem to have thought). So Kickstarter allows an alternative in giving people the opportunity to vote with their wallets about whether they actually want something produced. Now some people feel that this type of research is a misuse on the Kickstarter system because it potentially takes money away from needier projects, bit I think it would be more accepted if there was more transparency about the nature of various projects. Maybe a divide between Funding Kickstarters and Research Kickstarters.

 

[Reeve]

This Veronica Mars film is going to fucking suck. I guarantee it.

 

[mdqp]

Loads and loads of good points.

I believe you are right in most regards, but I still can't help feeling that big companies have proven themselves to be quite uncaring toward the public opinion (I always feel like people have a very short memory when it comes to this kind of scandals), and that they could succeed into twisting around the system. Crowdfunding has still a long way to go, and it still might be unusable for big budget projects (AAA video games titles are beyond the scope of the current crowdfunding system), and some people might be willing to agree being a headfigure for a producer, if it gave them the chance to work later on a bigger, "traditional" project.

Now that I think about it, the problem might be that I am just too paranoid... XD XD XD

Anyway, I am there with you in thinking that crowdfunding is generally a good thing for a lot of artists out there.

 

[Darmani]

Bob is just afraid of industry change. He is use to the studios making the huge decision and the consumers just hoping. What's wrong with consumers having more power over what gets produced?

There's a fine line between the consumer having more power, and the illusion of having power while you're really just getting jerked around.

He touched on that in the article.

Kickstarter is already dominated by crappy stories of exploitation and failure. Just WHERE is the Adventure game that brought this idea to the internet world.

Now imagine where you donate but have not investor rights, established studio holds and are dealing with the kind of people who can make millions vanish in days with no outcoming product. I mean 2 million, even if Bell and the cast took paycuts that would take some real guerilla film making. Moreover the control or satisfaction when you don't have to satisfy your customer, when every ticket is pure profit or their is no authority over the creative type because they got theirs? Nightmarish.

Sorry creative types I kinda view you like farm animals. critical, necessary, majestic, miraculous, and given to not produce to human standard and roll in self indulgent shit without an actual farm structure in place to make it so, milk to eggs or bacon. Yeah this leads to the issues of chicken bacteria but chickens wouldn't just jump healthy into our pots otherwise.

 

[DoctorM]

This Veronica Mars film is going to fucking suck. I guarantee it.

Thank you for your guarantee. I can relax now. (Seriously, that's less sarcastic than it sounds.)

 

[Darmani]

I don't really do kickstarters. But for Firefly... I would probably go, shut up and take my money!

Maybe you should stop and think. I seemed particularly immune to the firefly charm and haven't needed to follow everyone from the thing. Its the internet generation's John Lennanon, likely because that's, metaphorically what it was for piracy is social protest, camwhores are the new geisha, gender roles are dissolved in ability (at technical/electronic stuff) matters and we can be psychic and self aware.

Also post many "return from the dead" shows well I'm appreciative some things are of their time and place even if not objectively faulty. Faimly Guy is my goto. After both returns its humor felt out of step and then I realized why. It stood out and commented on things that were very VERY immediate and contemporary (the deluge of fwapping about Dawson's Creek when it was really sleazy and sensationalist, Just One Fox). A great example is Meg, you was an antithesis of the.. well thing Bob accuses Bell of being part of early 200s was girl power season. Britany, Buffy, Lizzy MacQuire, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and more. They were hot, sexy, pushy, and the world was unfolding for them in defiance of wisdom. Only that didn't last and so after FG's second ressurection Meg is just.. well this dumping hole for negativity as she doesn't have her mirror to parody against. And its not that the FG crew or cast lost their stuff its just Meg is a joke who was out of time and DIDn't like others get to transition to more robust ground.

Firefly is the same way it got to live forever in perfect undercut misunderstood genius cut by the man and we kept telling ourselves this story, ignoring the hundreds of other tv shows facing its restrictions that succeeded or failed and not accept it really REALLY was a shakey and flawed premise thing and Summer Glau and cast haven't gone to career superstardom. It even got a revival movie... was it really good because it sounds to me many a browncoat was.. well satisfied but not happy and it STILL failed.

 

[Darmani]

Why is this even an issue? These major film studios have been getting into bed with private equity firms for years now, in order to make movies. How is using Kickstarter to raise funds for a movie that different from getting private investors to help fund your movie?

At the end of the day, like any private investment, donating to a Kickstarter is as simple as reminding yourself "never put in more than you can lose". If you can afford to put $500,000 into a hedge fund which is used to finance movies then go for it. If you can afford to lay down $50 for a Kickstarter to make movie, then go for it. The only difference would be in the return you get out of the investment - with the hedge fund/private equity your reward is making money. With the Kickstarter your return is a movie you want to watch.

What happens, my worry, when the money is responsibly spent and no project emerges. How do the inveswtors get their cash back. And these AREN'T financial investments but internet crowd funders who may have pledged for certain things they'll never get because no product. Moreover I'm sure their is more law to project yanking money people don't have to pay out of Kickstarted project head than for masses of I preordered it in 1999 to get their money back. Or having to hire a lawyer to enforce any restitution or punishment.

 

[Naqel]

"Let's be honest, criminals will find a way to commit crimes anyway, so there's no real harm done there."

Taking things to irrational extremes is a poor way of making a point, assuming you had any.
Especially that you compare using an advertising platform to encourage pre-orders, to an act of forcibly taking it away from them.

Not exactly the same thing.

It's not like anyone has to participate in those campaigns, and if you're into something you might as well get your T-shirt to wear while you enjoy it the first time.

 

[Entitled]

I believe you are right in most regards, but I still can't help feeling that big companies have proven themselves to be quite uncaring toward the public opinion (I always feel like people have a very short memory when it comes to this kind of scandals)

Oh, they certainly are uncaring. I just don't think that your point of comparison is accurate for these kind of scandals.

As a rule of thumb, big publishers are not participation in outright scams. Sure, they will overprice everything as far as they can, they will dumb down stories, and put you in prison to protect their IP from your piracy, but these are all on an entirely different level from riding off into the sunset with their consumers' money without delivering any product.

And that's not even just a matter of legality, just as they can avoid accountability on Kickstarter by using a producer as a front, they could do the same in other businesses, collecting your money under a fake identity and then run away with it, but they can't.

Crowdfunding has still a long way to go, and it still might be unusable for big budget projects (AAA video games titles are beyond the scope of the current crowdfunding system)

I wouldn't be so sure about that, btw. Project Eternity got $4m, from 74k backers, by asking for $20-$25 and getting $54 on average.

And Kickstarter is still rapindly growing, Torment and Veronica Mars are both going to be past that. Now just triple the min. price point, quadraple the audience, and you have $60 games backed by 300k people, paying $90 on average, giving an end result of $27 million. That's more than the budget of Assassin's Creed 1, or Crysis 1.

And 300k potential backers is a conservative estimate, there are millions willing to pay full price eearly for normal preorders. The only difference between that and Kickstarter is a matter of trust, how sure you are that the game will get made.

 

[vid87]

I feel like between this and the awful things Jim Sterling has been describing about the gaming world that we as the consumer are starting to abandon our standards and become more complacent.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

"Let's be honest, criminals will find a way to commit crimes anyway, so there's no real harm done there."

Taking things to irrational extremes is a poor way of making a point, assuming you had any.
Especially that you compare using an advertising platform to encourage pre-orders, to an act of forcibly taking it away from them.

Not exactly the same thing.

What's irrational or extreme about it? Have you ever heard of analogy? That's what I'm using here. I'm not saying that Kickstarter is a criminal enterprise. What I'm saying is the logic that "we can't prevent all of 100% of (X) from happening, so why should we even bother thinking about any single act of (X)" is faulty logic.

Would it help it if I reworded it to more explicitly represent this context? "Let's be honest, some Kickstarter projects will find a way to scam their backers anyway, so there's no real harm done."

 

[Naqel]

Would it help it if I reworded it to more explicitly represent this context? "Let's be honest, some Kickstarter projects will find a way to scam their backers anyway, so there's no real harm done."

Except you're still making the same mistake.

What I say is: People will find a way to cut stuff anyway, so we might as well give them knifes.

What you try to make out of it is: Some people will use the knife wrong, so we should take the knife away from them.

While both statements are true, the one you try to put in my mouth is ridiculous considering nothing illegal or more morally questionable than the usual is going on. It's same old $#!@, just on a new platform.

 

[Entitled]

What's irrational or extreme about it? Have you ever heard of analogy? That's what I'm using here. I'm not saying that Kickstarter is a criminal enterprise. What I'm saying is the logic that "we can't prevent all of 100% of (X) from happening, so why should we even bother thinking about any single act of (X)" is faulty logic.

Your analogy only works on the presumption that the situation that what we have here is, just like crime, worse than the alternative.

Kickstarter is only harmful, if it increases the potential abilities of the industry to grab our money.

So far, in this thread, there was little proof that this is actually happening, just "bad feelings", and negatively worded descriptions of how unpleasant it feels that movies and games are "held at ransom" (in other words, made possible), or that they are too unoriginal (because they are what the fandoms want).

If the worst thing that you can say about it is that publishers are gonna reap the profits, then you haven't said anything that makes it WORSE than how thigs have been done until now.

I guess we should just give up on doing anything good, because it's inevitable that things will be corrupted.

Not anything good, but there are certain good ideals that you should just give up simply because they dont work in real life.

You can stop crime. You can stop scams. You can't stop human nature, or simple logic.

You can't stop the fact that in a free market system, corporations are going to be greedy. Because that's the real complaint here, not any specific harm that is being done, but the general feeling that this usiness model sounds unpleasant.

Well, so does business in general.

 

[Tropico1]

I find all this very patronizing, condescending even. The entire point of Kickstarter is that people are free to decide what to do with their own money. Nobody's forcing anybody to do anything. If a Kickstarter offers bad rewards that aren't worth it to the targeted fanbase, then guess what... people won't back that particular Kickstarter and it will fail. Wow, what a shocking realization.

A studio that is all ready to start production and tries to do a Kickstarter to get even more money before starting production isn't going to frickin CANCEL production because it fails - that is patently absurd, if a project is profitable it will get made regardless, and if it isn't, it won't. There is no "holding for ransom", the investors/publishers either believe the project will make money, or they don't. That's that.

On the consumer side of it, if I want to pay a THOUSAND dollars to see a movie get made, then pay a THOUSAND more dollars to see it in theatres, then pay a THOUSAND more to get the DVD and a THOUSAND more to get the digital download then guess what?? That's my right to decide to do that with my money, and neither Movie Bob nor anyone is anybody to tell me that I can't.

If I want to cash out my life savings and mail them to Time Warner in a big envelope for their execs to take out and rub their naked bodies with it while they laugh at the poor, again guess what - that's my decision to make. Not yours. You are not the savior or the guardian of other people's money, that role does not fall to you.

So in a nutshell.. stop worrying worrying so much about what other people might or might not do with their money... cause it is, in fact, their money, not yours.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

What I say is: People will find a way to cut stuff anyway, so we might as well give them knifes.

What you try to make out of it is: Some people will use the knife wrong, so we should take the knife away from them.

That's an absurd interpretation. What I would say is that we should watch out for the people who knives to stab other people, rather than those who use them to prepare dinner. The big media companies have a history of abusing their power, so, it might be a good idea to keep an eye on how they are using their knives.

Do you think that people who use knives to murder people should not have their knives confiscated and be locked up in prison? Do you think "Oh, they just murdered a few people, let them have their knives?"

 

[Aardvaarkman]

You can stop crime. You can stop scams. You can't stop human nature, or simple logic.

Pray tell, how do we stop 100% of crime and scams? People have been trying for millennia, with little success. If you have the solution to crime, why are you holding back? At the minimum, you would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The fact that you say you can stop those but can't stop human nature is rather weird, because crima and scams are pretty much a part of human nature.

You can't stop the fact that in a free market system, corporations are going to be greedy. Because that's the real complaint here, not any specific harm that is being done, but the general feeling that this usiness model sounds unpleasant.

Kickstarter is not a free market system. It is a system entirely controlled by one company. Kickstarter can arbitrarily ban projects on whatever grounds it feels like. If you think "the real complaint" has anything to do with free markets, then you are absolutely wrong.

Anyway, what's wrong with people complaining about business models that sound unpleasant? You were the one who brought up the idea of free markets - if you believe so much in the idea of free markets, then isn't it equally a part of the free market idea that people should have the right to reject, boycott or complain about businesses and business models they don't like?

 

[Entitled]

Pray tell, how do we stop 100% of crime and scams? People have been trying for millennia, with little success. If you have the solution to crime, why are you holding back? At the minimum, you would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The fact that you say you can stop those but can't stop human nature is rather weird, because crima and scams are pretty much a part of human nature.

Read your own analogy. You were claiming that we should do something about Kickstarters that you don't like, in the same way as we are doing something about crime with laws.

And that only makes sense, because laws ARE stopping crime. Not the general concept of crime, but at least individual acts of crime.

The same doesn't apply to corporate greed. You might try to boycott greedy corporations, but corporations are greedy by their very nature, so you can't stop corporations from being greedy.

The original sentence is true on it's own, and it doesn't mean that we should allow scams to happen, but that there is no point worrying over a business model just because it's "pulling money from people's pockets", before because that's what businesses do.

Kickstarter is not a free market system. It is a system entirely controlled by one company. Kickstarter can arbitrarily ban projects on whatever grounds it feels like. If you think "the real complaint" has anything to do with free markets, then you are absolutely wrong.

Kickstarter is not a market system period. It's a website owned by a company in a free market system. I was comparing Kickstarter to alternate options.

If there would be a perfectly user-friendly way of funding movies and games, that corporations can't ever use to increase their profits at the expense of the costumer, I would say sure, go ahead, let's ban and boycott and and complain about all other ones. If we would have other tools for cutting things, that can't cut people, then sure, let's ban knives.

But we don't.

Knives are not the worse alternative compared to something else, and that's why we can say that there is "no harm done" by allowing knives.

Anyway, what's wrong with people complaining about business models that sound unpleasant? You were the one who brought up the idea of free markets - if you believe so much in the idea of free markets, then isn't it equally a part of the free market idea that people should have the right to reject, boycott or complain about businesses and business models they don't like?

Yes and if you believe that we should boycott Snickers bars because they are making people fat, others will point out that "people will eat verious kinds of chocolate and candies anyways, so there is no real harm done".

That is, there is no real harm done by Snickers bars themselves, that you could stop with a boycott.

Just because you can imagine a perfect world where everyone is eating 100% healthy, doesn't mean that we should start getting there by boycotting random symptoms.

If you can imagine world where companies are not tryingto pull as much money from us as they can, good for you, but maybe you should be more worried about the worst examples of that, instead of the latest examples.

 

[I am Harbinger]

I can just see it: In a few years, EA will be putting up kickstarters for their games, then selling those games at full price, and even then they'll still be chocked full of always-online drm and in-game transactions, not to mention plenty of half-assed dlc and online passes for those dirty peasants who buy used. Oh, and they'll still have all the same server problems, even if those lovely kickstarters do manage to pony up enough to meet the mark EA said 'might' help them keep it from happening AGAIN.

The saddest part is, I was trying to be sarcastic there, but I honestly can see EA doing all of that...