Kickstopper

[weirdee]

I suppose you'd also have to ask yourself whether or not you'd want to see something you really wanted but was deemed "financially unsustainable" languish in the vault for 10 or 20 or forever amount of years, as the old system pretty much delegated it to. Granted, perhaps they are ransoming these series for money, but can you really make the distinction between that and knowing they would let a property die alone in the basement? It'd be up to you to trade the viability of something you know you would want for a unproven project, rather than leave that decision of the corporation.

 

[Raioken18]

Man everyone talking about backing a Firefly kickstater is EXACTLY the kind of thing Bob was talking about here. Firefly (last I checked) is still owned by Fox, a company that is not exactly short on cash. They could easily put the show back on the air with money out of their own pockets, so why would you give them money to do something they can already afford to do?

Because Fox won't do it. They've never shown any inclination to put the show back on the air, much like the CW had zero interest in any projects relating to "Veronica Mars". Hence the Kickstarter campaign cutting them out of the process.

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

 

[LordMonty]

I'm scared by this and yet confused as to what will come of this... kickstarter is a powerful tool and I fear that power and how far it can and will reach... also what is this mars(life on mars was a good show on the BBC) thing? honestly no clue but hey that aside yay people get paid and people get what they paid for I guess.

 

[Infernal Lawyer]

This is just yet another case of the massive corporations refusing to try anything new until they know for certain it works. They looked over the shoulders of people who had nothing but innovation to support their ideas, and once again copied/manipulated it for their own uses. Because they know shareholders are an incredibly finicky lot who likely jump the boat at the slightest dip in profits, they won't try anything new useless they know it's almost certain to make them money.
This time round though, they're getting a fair amount of their sales up front. If the project fails, they still make a fair profit from a few T-Shirts and and a load of empty promises. Who's to say that they can't just pocket a few million donated dollars just because they 'needed' more than that?
I don't like it at all. Once again, the individual market is going to be pushed out of what little limelight they have by the bigger powers. There need to be measures in place so corporations don't abuse the system.

 

[DoctorM]

Thank you for putting words to what I was thinking.

While I'm happy Veronica Mars will be coming to theaters... I think it should be the first and last property to do this.

Kickstarter needs to outright ban companies above a certain level from even utilizing their service.

My fingers are crossed that WB will prove not to be asses and at the very least match the funds donated by the Kickstarterers.

 

[Agent_Dark]

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.

 

[irishda]

Gee, sounds like the results of fucking stupid people putting their money into unoriginal ideas, not corporations "infecting" the green idyllic pastures of crowd-funding. There's a reason corporations rarely put out original ideas and, surprise, it's not because executives are retarded. No, it's because, if there's ANYTHING kickstarter should teach you, it's that EVERYONE likes unoriginal sequels/prequels/spin-offs/etc.

I'll give you a great example:

"Gee, why isn't Hollywood more original? Why do they just churn out shitty sequels and stuff based on games or books?"
"ERMAHGERD, AVENGERS IS COMING! Let's give it all the money!"
"Game of Thrones and Walking Dead are back on TV? Fuck yeah!"
"Holy fuck, they might be making Half-life 3!"

 

[Draconalis]

Moreover, the $35 reward for this project is a digital copy of the movie - about the same price you'd pay for a Blu-Ray

Where the hell are you buying movies that cost 35 dollars retail? Seriously... most new releases cost like... 20... and only raise when they are a special edition or the like... and even then, I rarely see them get beyond 25 dollars. Any place that sells them for more needs to not be shopped at.

 

[Norix596]

This is not totally dissimilar to very early pre-order offers. For example, whatever they name of that new IP that Bungie is making now - we don't even know if it will be an MMO, a CoD-style PvP focused game with a separate story campaign or really anything about it, including whether it will even come to fruition... but it's still up for pre-order.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

Not only is there no way to prevent a fool from parting with their presumably hard-earned coin, but you don't have the right to second guess their decisions. This is a brand new frontier, but eventually it will settle down into the sort of equilibrium between industry and consumer.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Bob, while I completely agree with your article, I can't tolerate this:

The proof, now, is in the pudding...

The saying is actually "The proof of the pudding is in the eating" The proof is not in the pudding. The mere fact that a pudding exists does not demonstrate its quality or tastiness.

 

[Naqel]

Let's be honest, the industry/industries would find a way to pull the money from people's pockets anyway, so no real harm is done here.

Plus there's always the chance that at some point it backfires spectacularly and we'll all get a good show.

 

[Entitled]

My point was, that someone else is taking the risk, so that someone else should profit from this (the one doing the funding).

There is a good reason in this specific case for paying the producer (I believe they hold the rights to Veronica Mars), but as a general rule, if they give less to the projects than before, why should they earn as much as before?

And what new risk is it that the backers are taking?

That worry would make sense exactly with the small indie Kickstarters, where the backers are taking the risk that the developer can go bankrupt mid-production, or an entirely unproven new developer might not end up with what was promised.

But big businesses and old proven teams doing Kickstarter solves exactly that: We know that Veronica Mars is getting made, and we know that it will be written and acted by the old team that the fans loved.

The worst thing that could happen, would be if it would end up being badly executed, but even then, the backers are the kind of hardcore Veronica Mars fans who would be in the movie theatres on day one anyways, for the sake of watching the ending of the story that they followed for years, and not just reading reviews and contemplating whether it's worth their money.

So really, the only thing that you can bring up against this model is that it allows producers to make money more effectively, not that it takes away extra money from the audience.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Let's be honest, the industry/industries would find a way to pull the money from people's pockets anyway, so no real harm is done here..

That's some rather strange logic. Let's paraphrase: "Let's be honest, criminals will find a way to commit crimes anyway, so there's no real harm done there."

I guess we should just give up on doing anything good, because it's inevitable that things will be corrupted. There's no point in trying to stop any individual criminal act, because we can't possibly stop all crime.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

But big businesses and old proven teams doing Kickstarter solves exactly that: We know that Veronica Mars is getting made, and we know that it will be written and acted by the old team that the fans loved.

No, we don't actually know that.

It's just as likely that Warner Brothers will take the money and produce nothing. There's no obligation that Kickstarter projects actually succeed. If anything, the smaller ones probably have more incentive to succeed, because their personal reputation is on the line. Multi-billion dollar companies can easily brush off any damage to their supposed "reputation" because that means nothing to them.

 

[mdqp]

And what new risk is it that the backers are taking?

That worry would make sense exactly with the small indie Kickstarters, where the backers are taking the risk that the developer can go bankrupt mid-production, or an entirely unproven new developer might not end up with what was promised.

But big businesses and old proven teams doing Kickstarter solves exactly that: We know that Veronica Mars is getting made, and we know that it will be written and acted by the old team that the fans loved.

The worst thing that could happen, would be if it would end up being badly executed, but even then, the backers are the kind of hardcore Veronica Mars fans who would be in the movie theatres on day one anyways, for the sake of watching the ending of the story that they followed for years, and not just reading reviews and contemplating whether it's worth their money.

So really, the only thing that you can bring up against this model is that it allows producers to make money more effectively, not that it takes away extra money from the audience.

I am not worried.

They might take money, try to make the movie, make a terrible movie/or need more money/or CLAIM to need more money to finish it (Kickstarter isn't binding in many situations, for obvious reasons). 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 (and even the director/actors involved can safely claim all sorts of reasons as to why they need more money or they were unable to complete the movie).

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.

I might be okay giving all the profit to the people I am funding (if I wanted to), but there isn't exactly a good reason to pay the producer, if he doesn't shoulder any risk. As I stated before, it's of course all right if they own the IP, you gotta pay them, but outside of this a producer should be rewarded in proportion to their investment, rather than always taking the same cut.

If two producers were to theoretically fund the creation of a movie, you wouldn't certainly expect having only one of them to earn money from it, right? It doesn't matter if fans also get what they want (the movie), there isn't a good reason why someone makes an investement, and a third party gains from it offering barely nothing to the making of the product.

 

[Entitled]

makes sense what bob is saying. look at what happened with project eternity with obsidian. no publisher would fund what they wanted to make but the moment publishers heard they were going kickstarter they were approached by one. the deal they were offered? do the kick starter, fund and make the project, give almost all the profits to the publisher and in return they would get marketing and retail sales help oh and they had to turn over the IP rights as well.

it IS a system that will be abused by companies and consumers will lap it up

Obsidian had a choice, Rob Thomas didn't because Warner already owned the IP. Ang gaming Kickstarters were already pretty big by the time they tried to fund Eternity, so they had an audience of old-school RPG fans listening to their idea. Veronica Mars is the first $1m+ movie Kickstarter.

Like Dexter111 said above, if anything, this is a huge trojan horse for publishers.

Sure, with the IPs that they they already own, they can continue keeping all the benefits like they used to. But old IPs tend to eventually going to grow old, and they are replaced by new ones, that the publishers proceed to milk as well. But even if Rob Thomas didn't have a choice this time, he will have next time, with a fandom worshipping his every step, with a highly followed twitter account, with the e-mail address of 50.000+ Veronica Mars backers, and with the reputation of a man who can make a decent movie from $3 million, he won't have any obligation for starting new IPs under Warner, and neither will any of his equally famous collegues.

 

[Monsterfurby]

Kickstarter isn't about leveling the playing field. Rather, it's about charging more money to people who find more value from a project.

This is positively the single best description of Kickstarter I have ever read. This needs to be up on their homepage in 150-point-letters. Kudos do you, unpronunciable sir or madam.

 

[Entitled]

It's just as likely that Warner Brothers will take the money and produce nothing. There's no obligation that Kickstarter projects actually succeed.

You are wrong.

This [https://ksr-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/creator-responsibility.png] is in the Terms of Use that project creators have to sign before launching a project, and there is already legal precedent for creators losing a class action lawsuit for fraud after failing to meet it.

If anything, the smaller ones probably have more incentive to succeed, because their personal reputation is on the line. Multi-billion dollar companies can easily brush off any damage to their supposed "reputation" because that means nothing to them.

Yeah, that's why Amazon or Steam sometimes just keeps the money of tens of thousands of people instead of offering a game, or why airlines so commonly tend to keep passangers' money without offering a flight.

Wrong. Even if they could get away with it legally, no business could survive the reputation of not delivering a product or service at all for their consumers payment.

Small Kickstarters can be funded by random anonymous scammers, who don't have any reputation. The big ones have.

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.

 

[FoolKiller]

Just wait until Activision kickstarts $300 million to make the next COD.

I would love that. Either it would succeed or (hopefully) it would bomb and burn the franchises to ash.