I imagine one person will run up in a Captain Falcon mask yell "THIS IS FOR BRAWL!!!!!! FALCON PUNCH!!!!!!!!!!!!" the run of and brag about it in his Nintendo chatroom.
Meet Yahtzee at PAX, Get Stuff
- Thread starter Susan Arendt
- Start date
That being the case, I commend you for the suggestion and thank you for the answer. It does seem as if your present use of the site was not a result of Extra Credits' initiative, but, rather, both came from a common cause.Archon said:
All that being said, the success of Extra Credits' initiative is ultimately not tied to any given platform. (Indeed, it might have been higher if it was somewhere other than RocketHub; I seem to recall a fair few people wishing that RocketHub accepted PayPal, as they didn't have credit cards but wanted to donate.) The only reason I asked about the platform issue was to clarify cause and effect in this matter.
Are you seriously suggesting that any given action you take is somehow acceptable simply because, as an alternative, you could have always thrown yourself an office party with bacardi and strippers?Archon said:
Also, are you seriously suggesting that sending Yahtzee to PAX will cost you $20,000? What if you only get $10,000 - what will you do then?
EDIT: Actually, it seems Susan Arendt just answered that last question [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/7.303212.12133799] while I was typing. It seems like a fair enough answer.
Anyway, as for your actual false dichotomy / strawman, you would certainly be free to sell posters for $50 without making any promises to send anyone anywhere, and would be free to take the profits as usually happens whenever merchandise is sold. All I can say is: good luck selling those $50 posters.
Okay, I think there has been some bad terminology used.
Basically what "The Escapist" is doing is a "meet a celebrity" promotion. Similar to how differant products will give you the oppertunity to meet a musician or actor or whatever if you buy their product. In this case it's like a raffle as I understand things, where your donating money for the chance to meet Yahtzee in person if you happen to be going to PAX.
While some of the terms here imply that this is a charity, the overall context makes it clear that it's not, The Escapist is simply pimping one of it's assets to make some extra money.
I find nothing paticularly wrong with the basic idea, the value is entirely dependant on whether you plan to go to PAX and/or how big a fan of Ben you are.
I see no direct connection between this and the Extra Credits drive, the timing is uncanny, but really there is no way to tell if they had planned this for PAX ahead of time or not.
Basically, I think your being a little too hard on The Escapist. I ride The Escapist on a lot of things once in a while, but I see nothing terribly wrong with this, even though I definatly won't be donating. In my case it's not just not having the money for the trip, but also that I simply don't find the idea of meeting Yahtzee all that exciting, I mean he does an amusing video every week, but he's not someone I'd go out of my way to see.
Basically what "The Escapist" is doing is a "meet a celebrity" promotion. Similar to how differant products will give you the oppertunity to meet a musician or actor or whatever if you buy their product. In this case it's like a raffle as I understand things, where your donating money for the chance to meet Yahtzee in person if you happen to be going to PAX.
While some of the terms here imply that this is a charity, the overall context makes it clear that it's not, The Escapist is simply pimping one of it's assets to make some extra money.
I find nothing paticularly wrong with the basic idea, the value is entirely dependant on whether you plan to go to PAX and/or how big a fan of Ben you are.
I see no direct connection between this and the Extra Credits drive, the timing is uncanny, but really there is no way to tell if they had planned this for PAX ahead of time or not.
Basically, I think your being a little too hard on The Escapist. I ride The Escapist on a lot of things once in a while, but I see nothing terribly wrong with this, even though I definatly won't be donating. In my case it's not just not having the money for the trip, but also that I simply don't find the idea of meeting Yahtzee all that exciting, I mean he does an amusing video every week, but he's not someone I'd go out of my way to see.
So it sounded like the escapist want to go to pax but they want the fans to fit the bill.Because is that not the major selling point for sites to go to pax is to advertise and sell merchandise as this should cover the costs.
If as i think your trying to say is we want to do a cool escapist party at pax say you want to do a cool party and need some funds.This whole gives us money so we can fly Yahtzee to Pax seemed to confuse alot of people.You must be able to see where we got the wrong end of the stick and reacted like we did your a professional website you must have read this before putting it up.
Also what happens if you dont get the amount you wanted have we just paid you to go to pax while we get nothing extra than you lot being at pax
If as i think your trying to say is we want to do a cool escapist party at pax say you want to do a cool party and need some funds.This whole gives us money so we can fly Yahtzee to Pax seemed to confuse alot of people.You must be able to see where we got the wrong end of the stick and reacted like we did your a professional website you must have read this before putting it up.
Also what happens if you dont get the amount you wanted have we just paid you to go to pax while we get nothing extra than you lot being at pax
No, the position is this: if The Escapist wants to sell stuff, it should say so and not try to disguise it (in good or bad faith) as a fund rally.Archon said:
If you want to go to PAX and meet your fans you should simply say:"Hey! We're going to PAX, meet you there!".
If you plan on monetizing Yahtzee's attendance to pay for his flight or your general expenses, or simply to organize the best party ever, you should say so.
If you plan to sell posters to finance Yahtzee's visit or to simply make a buck you should say so.
What you SHOULDN'T do, in my humble opinion, is set up a Rockethub page with a 20,000 dollar goal with the objective of bringing Yahtzee to PAX. Rockethub is a service to kickstart projects. Is that your project? Taking a man to a convention? Will it really cost you 20 thousand dollars? Is it a coincidence you started a Rockethub page mere weeks after the Extra Credits guys did the same?
As you have no doubt seen from the other posts, this can raise a few questions about your integrity, and your knee-jerk reaction certainly didn't help.
Look, maybe all this was just bad communication: you wanted to organize a big party with all your fans and you needed the money to make it really memorable for everyone and to bring a "celebrity" that some people may want to meet.
If that's the case, for the love of god, just say so and drop the goddamned Rockethub page.
Your fans deserve better than this.
James (of Extra Credits) had looked into to doing it on Kickstarter, but Kickstarter refused to do it because they thought it was just a charity. We also looked at doing it via the same method we use for Publisher's Club, but the infrastructure of RocketHub was far better for their purposes.Estelindis said:
No, I'm suggesting that the action of selling something in exchange for the item PLUS promising to do an event* is actually nicer than just selling something, which is what we usually do.
In order to have Yahtzee present, we have to pay for his time away from his other business projects. He doesn't actually work for free. We also need to send out a pair of marketing folks and not just two journalists like we normally do. As a business, when we send our employees to travel, we have to cover their food, lodging, and flights - that's simply good business practice.
A round-trip ticket from Australia is usually around $2,000. If we want to fly him business class, so that he's not exhausted and sick when he arrives, the cost jumps to close to $10,000.
The posters have a cost of production of about $5 to $10 and a shipping & handling charge via the fulfillment house of about $5 US and $8 - $12 international, maybe more if it's in a really distant destination.
Finally, we then have to pay for a great fan meet-up with food and drinks in a good venue. Have you ever hosted a corporate event? An event for 50 will easily cost thousands of dollars if you open up the bar. When we hosted E3 parties in LA and GDC parties in SF, the price is close to $50 per person or more. All of this very rapidly adds up.
If we only get $10,000 then... We don't get any money at all. And then we won't produce the posters or fly Yahtzee out. We'll do what we usually we do, which is send a small bare-bones contingent to provide coverage.
I mean... if all you're saying is "I don't think getting a poster at PAX is worth $20" or "meeting Yahtzee isn't worth X" or whatever, well, OK. Um...then you shouldn't participate. I personally think women's shoes are overpriced, but I don't get morally outraged at the idea that some women's shoes are $500.
Not to worry, then.FalloutJack said:
Regarding some way to lessen the intrusion of ads, I honestly don't see what's wrong with the Publisher's Club. For those who pay, revenue goes directly to the Escapist. For those who don't, ad revenue is generated by their traffic and, presumably, given to the Escapist. If the figures quoted by Archon are accurate (and I see no reason to think otherwise), then it would cost $250,000 per month to run this site ad-free, and I honestly don't see fans donating that much directly every month, particularly given our feelings on being asked to give $20,000. That said, I don't see the big attraction of eliminating ads anyway. They're a fundamental part of the internet economy and they seem to work just fine.
I still think this PA comic is pretty much how I feel about this.
I know, the Escapist needs money. But there is just something very unappealing about this particular marketing strategy.
I know, the Escapist needs money. But there is just something very unappealing about this particular marketing strategy.
Right!AverageGreg said:
How do we get the money to fly out Yahtzee and do the event without RocketHub? We're using it for the same reason we recommend Extra Credits to use it - it has a great infrastructure for raising money from crowds, which we don't have.
Now, Yahtzee is a huge star for us. Obviously we'd benefit tremendously if we could have him at every event because he brings fans in and helps our brand. But in fact we have him at practically no events. Why? Now that's either because (a) we're stupid and don't do things that would benefit us or (b) we can't afford it. We can't afford it. But we'd like to do it. So we decided to sell posters and other stuff and use the profits to fly him out. Which is a change from our usual strategy of selling posters and stuff and not flying him out.
I'm seriously at a loss as to the moral outrage.
So...what are we arguing out?
Thank you for the courtesy of your reply. I'll try to keep this brief.
RocketHub first came to my attention to collect contributions for Alison's medical expenses. Without digging into the site further, I incorrectly assumed that RocketHub was charity gateway. I don't think I'm alone in having made this incorrect assumption.
Further, the initial wording of the announcement used words like, "Help," and, "Donate," lending support to the charity meme. (This has since been corrected.)
So what I think you're seeing here is the result of that misconception.
The trouble is that many took it at first glance as, "Help fund poor reclusive Yahtzee's trip to Seattle."
Okay, so we seem to have an unhappy collision of conflicting assumed semantics. (I can't believe I just wrote that.)Archon said:
RocketHub first came to my attention to collect contributions for Alison's medical expenses. Without digging into the site further, I incorrectly assumed that RocketHub was charity gateway. I don't think I'm alone in having made this incorrect assumption.
Further, the initial wording of the announcement used words like, "Help," and, "Donate," lending support to the charity meme. (This has since been corrected.)
So what I think you're seeing here is the result of that misconception.
That's straightforward commerce. Either it makes economic sense for you or it doesn't, and I ascribe no value judgment either way. It looks (to me) like what you're actually doing is pre-selling merch and swag, as a way of asking the question, "Does it make economic sense for us to have a significant presence at PAX?" Had it been framed that way, I think you would have seen far fewer negative initial reactions.
The trouble is that many took it at first glance as, "Help fund poor reclusive Yahtzee's trip to Seattle."
The vocabulary in that sentence alone has made this entire thread worthwhile!ewhac said:
I concur. Sadly, I don't think any of us here at The Escapist realized that our audience thought RocketHub was a charity site.
That's correct - we are pre-selling merch and swag and if we hit a minimum threshold we'll make a big presence at PAX. If we don't, the orders will get cancelled and we'll have a minimal presence at PAX.
I have to say, I admire you guys for facing and answering all the criticism this seems to have immediately generated. I don't think I've seen the escapist staff this active in a discussion with members on the website, so thanks for that, I appreciate it.Archon said:
As far as what RocketHub is "actually for," I would contend that I have only ever seen these sorts of donation sites and/or events used to raise money for a couple of things:
1). Charity
2). Independent Projects that have difficulty achieving traditional funding.
I have donated to non-Charity independent projects on Rockethub, Kickstarter, etc---for things like independent games and amateur documentaries. But I've yet to see an organization that shouldn't have trouble funding a project turn to a donation option to try and fund it. That is why, I think, you guys are getting heat for it. I wouldn't, for instance, donate to help EA raise $500,000 to advertise for ME3, even if they did offer me exclusive swank in exchange for my donation.
To be honest, and I say this with absolutely no malice or sarcasm or ill-will in my heart, it just seems kind of lazy to me, as a customer. That is my feedback.
EDIT: Edited out some stuff I decided I didn't really need to say.
The reason for the outrage is that the perception, at least from what I gathered from the responses, is that you can or should be able to afford it. If you can't then that's that.Archon said:
I'm not sure you can fault your customer base for presuming you to be fabulously well to do.
There are a few problems with the event that has caused rage amongst the community.Archon said:
The first is the unfortunate timing and structure of this so close to the Extra Credits campaign. People smell dirty capitalist ways and get riled up. We've always been against money making schemes here, that's just who we are. I'm not saying it is a scheme, it clearly isn't, it was just bad timing.
The other is that it's REALLY overpriced, considering most of us are either unemployed/students/kids. We'd all like to go, but to get to PAX, it would cost a bombshell.
PAX have already stopped selling tickets, so anyone wanting to get in on this can't unless they've already secured a place.
Another is that, well, The Escapist is broad...like really broad. I keep hearing replies from people in Sweden, Germany, Norway, I'm currently UK based, many are Australian too. It's very hard for us to get to an event and we'd all like to go (well most of us) but we just can't. So that's probably where some more rage is coming from, this one chance to meet this fabled guy and we can't get there...bummer really, we may as well go to Australia and check out the mana bar, more chance of success there.
I think the main problem though is unfortunate timing overall...that and envy...
There's a reasoning behind this. Check it out.Estelindis said:
There are people like me who don't want to pay to be on the Pub Club and don't like it when said club decides to shamelessly pimp the organization as sort of a "Wink wink, nudge nudge" sort of thing. It's irritating. Ergo, we don't like at least some of the ads (or like the use of Meebo which I led a successful revolution against) and we don't want to bother with the club either. Also, there's this problem of - because the Escapist gets revenue from ads - even mentioning a thing that would basically prevent them from getting money.
All I did was take a look at what I thought the Escapist - or at least some Escapists - would be able to tolerate and offer a suggestion to the boys in charge. It's reasonable to want the site to run without irritation, which many people conclude is the ads or whatever that is tied in with the Escapist revenue. It occurred to me that if there was an extra option to maybe handle the situation, then it might yield some positive results. The risk-factor was small, namely it's a bucket that people decided to or not to put money into, and that's it. No coersion, no nudging, no implications or anything. Harmless, but maybe useful.
I'm not really concerned with the logistics and the Escapist was not making me privy to them. They didn't take my idea, so I take no responsibility here.
pPThanks!Uszi said:
Point taken!
This was actually genuine. I would do a RocketHub project to make The Escapist ad-free if our audience would support it.
RocketHub is not supposed to be for charity, nor is Kickstarter. The vast majority of successful projects I've seen have been to pre-sell things that have a fixed upfront cost. For instance, I'm personally using Kickstarter to pre-fund the printing of a D&D book.
Using it to fund a live event is certainly not common, but there's nothing wrong with doing it.
Herein, I think, lies the issue. EA is a global powerhouse with a market capitalization of $10 billion dollars. The Escapist is a privately held company with one investor whose CEO doesn't even have a 401(k) plan. For every $1 The Escapist makes, EA earns more than $2000. Put another way, some classmates of mine from Harvard Law School have salaries higher than our entire annual revenue. So, while I appreciate that we seem put-together and well-off, we're not in the same ballpark, city, state, or country as EA or anything like it.
Thanks for the feedback, sincerely.
http://us.christianlouboutin.com/shoes/platforms/bianca-botta-calf.htmlArchon said:
Worth. Every. Penny.
Also more than my rent. Sigh...
Sorry to interrupt the moral outrage.
Well, you can blame me for that. I thought "Here's your chance to make Yahtzee dance like a monkey" was more fun than "Pay to meet Yahtzee at PAX and/or pre-order exclusive merch." Had I known it would create this much confusion and ill feelings, obviously I'd have played it more straight.ewhac said: