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And it's only paying for a year of ad removal. After a year they'll do another Kickstarter...
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Jul 10, 2012 17:55
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Occupation posted:I don't think it's a troll. That's the worst part; to me, how I read it, they're completely and utterly serious. Based on all of their previous posts about how much they dislike Kickstarter, and the "no-work-necessary other than disabling an ad spot on their style sheets" goal of the project, I think it is absolutely a troll.
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Jul 10, 2012 17:55
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Don't they make a lot of their money off of ads? Wouldn't this end up costing them more money than they would make, or am I wrong? (It's probably a joke though)
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Jul 10, 2012 17:56
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Beanpants posted:Based on all of their previous posts about how much they dislike Kickstarter, and the "no-work-necessary other than disabling an ad spot on their style sheets" goal of the project, I think it is absolutely a troll. The tiers seem just sort of close to being kind of reasonable whilst at the same time completely overexpensive, and this seems like a lot of work put into a joke, with stretch goals and the video. Especially since, if it IS a joke, they're literally doing the same joke twice.
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Jul 10, 2012 17:57
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AlternatePFG posted:Don't they make a lot of their money off of ads? Wouldn't this end up costing them more money than they would make, or am I wrong? Yes, that's why they're waiting on a million loving dollars and their actual goal only removes a single ad. That's it. That's the whole loving thing. This is legit one of the scummiest things I've ever seen them do that wasn't related to dickwolves or women in general.
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Jul 10, 2012 17:57
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Beanpants posted:$7500 dollars to be an intern for a day. That's not too unusual in some industries, as sad as it sounds. That said, don't they make enough money off their rape apologism shirts as-is?
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Jul 10, 2012 17:57
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Beanpants posted:Based on all of their previous posts about how much they dislike Kickstarter, and the "no-work-necessary other than disabling an ad spot on their style sheets" goal of the project, I think it is absolutely a troll. When you put it like that, an attempt to discredit and undermine crowdfunding only to have the venture be wildly successful is all kinds of aggravating.
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Jul 10, 2012 17:58
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Kyrosiris posted:
I said somewhere else that I'd back the project if a tier was forcing Gabe to publicly apologize for being a misogynist piece of poo poo all the time and vowing never to mention women in any context ever again. Either way I guess it's terrible; either it's serious and holy poo poo you guys have become everything you claim to despise or it's a joke and this is a really rear end in a top hat thing to do to waste KS' time on a glorified joke that you're already done before.
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Jul 10, 2012 18:00
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StevenM posted:When you put it like that, an attempt to discredit and undermine crowdfunding only to have the venture be wildly successful is all kinds of aggravating. They aren't that disconnected, they know it's going to be successful. So either they're going to refuse all funding in the end and just have it be a kick in the nuts to KickStarter, or, I dunno, they somehow secretly pissed off all of their advertisers and need a boost. Maybe Gabe went on a spending binge of epic proportions that they need to cover up? Or maybe they really think this is legitimate. Who knows?
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Jul 10, 2012 18:01
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Dicking around kickstarter would only make them look bad, not kickstarter though.
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Jul 10, 2012 18:03
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Guys, the cycle is complete! You can now fund the It's got some reasonably nice specs:
Saoshyant fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Jul 10, 2012 |
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Jul 10, 2012 18:05
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StevenM posted:When you put it like that, an attempt to discredit and undermine crowdfunding only to have the venture be wildly successful is all kinds of aggravating. It'll only be successful because their fans paid for it, though. There's nothing about this that holds any value for anyone else. They're taking advantage of their own fans for the punchline. It's gross.
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Jul 10, 2012 18:06
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NINbuntu 64 posted:I didn't even look at the reward tiers. Holy poo poo, people have claimed this? What the gently caress is the point of this? People unironically buy facebook friends too.. I'm bit disappointed on Retrovirus, I was expecting more after Sol Survivor.
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Jul 10, 2012 18:06
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NINbuntu 64 posted:Dicking around kickstarter would only make them look bad, not kickstarter though. Precisely. Kickstarter projects get canceled or fall through all the time. Trying to put any kind of negative spin on Kickstarter's involvement would be obviously disingenuous.
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Jul 10, 2012 18:11
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Reminder, it takes a million dollars just to remove the ads from the content (the comics themselves). Who in the world cares if the blog posts are ad free. You don't even have to see it if you just go to the newest comic's weblink. I'd love to see where the money is going exactly, but with Crowdfunding/Donations, you don't get to have that luxury when you bankroll an entire operation. All they have to do in return* is provide you with no ads. *Not legally obligated.
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Jul 10, 2012 18:14
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Harlock posted:Reminder, it takes a million dollars just to remove the ads from the content (the comics themselves). Who in the world cares if the blog posts are ad free. You don't even have to see it if you just go to the newest comic's weblink. Yeah my user experience is seriously not degraded enough to pay money for this, and I have a hard time believing that any long-term resident of the internet just seriously RAGES at the concept of banner ads on their favorite sites. I can't see this as anything but an exercise in exploiting their fans.
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Jul 10, 2012 18:18
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Saoshyant posted:Guys, the cycle is complete! You can now fund the I can't wait to play all of my favorite Android games on my big screen TV! Games like Angry Birds and Wordfeud and Google Maps!
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Jul 10, 2012 18:22
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Who doesn't use adblock in this day and age? Why would you pay for no-adds for a site, especially one managed by people who are rich enough to hold conventions.
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Jul 10, 2012 18:26
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I somehow don't think the Phantom will do well at Google Maps navigation. It will probably do well with accelerometer games though.
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Jul 10, 2012 18:27
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It's a bit unfair to compare this to the Phantom for a lot of reasons. It's far more targeted and isn't going "PLAY PC GAMES YOU DOWNLOAD FROM US" in an era where broadband penetration wasn't the best thing ever.
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Jul 10, 2012 18:30
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Davincie posted:Who doesn't use adblock in this day and age? Why would you pay for no-adds for a site, especially one managed by people who are rich enough to hold conventions. It's really ridiculous when you think about it, and the tiers could've included digital rewards that consist of all of their products (pdfs of their books, downloads of patv, codes for the paa games, etc), which would've cost them literally nothing to provide and would have at the very least made the ks more useful.
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Jul 10, 2012 18:30
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Occupation posted:It's really ridiculous when you think about it, and the tiers could've included digital rewards that consist of all of their products (pdfs of their books, downloads of patv, codes for the paa games, etc), which would've cost them literally nothing to provide and would have at the very least made the ks more useful. The $100 tier is just even more laughable. Book 2 also MSRP at the same price with Book 1, only now you're paying 4x the original cost of buying hard copies of said items. They virtually don't have to provide much of anything. What you're paying for when you donate is just to pay them directly. I don't know how this doesn't fall under Kickstarter's policy of 'funding my life.'
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Jul 10, 2012 18:40
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I am really curious as to why they are using Kickstarter for what is a donation drive. I mean, more power to them if they want to fund their operations purely from reader donations again, but Kickstarter really isn't the place for collecting donations. People tend to expect a product out of you.
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Jul 10, 2012 18:47
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Really I expect that, like what happens routinely in eBay jokes, PA has goaded fans into pledging huge sums of money that they never intend to collect. That's the best case scenario, at least. It's not even a particularly funny prank, especially not stretched out over a month. The punchline is... What, you can make a lot of money off of an ill-conceived project? That's like repeating a joke after it is just been made by several other people in quick succession. It's not clever, in fact it's probably been done by several people already who just didn't have the massive fan base to force the bad joke into the spotlight.
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Jul 10, 2012 18:50
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Well, the Ouya is already at $500,000. I'll admit that I bit at the offer. It's a neat concept, and the idea that it's open to hacking gets me excited. Maybe it'll be like the good ol' days of the X-Box Media Center. Automata 10 Pack fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Jul 10, 2012 |
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Jul 10, 2012 19:00
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thepopstalinist posted:Really I expect that, like what happens routinely in eBay jokes, PA has goaded fans into pledging huge sums of money that they never intend to collect. That's the best case scenario, at least. It's not even a particularly funny prank, especially not stretched out over a month. The punchline is... What, you can make a lot of money off of an ill-conceived project? That's like repeating a joke after it is just been made by several other people in quick succession. It's not clever, in fact it's probably been done by several people already who just didn't have the massive fan base to force the bad joke into the spotlight. That was my initial assumption as well. However, as NINbuntu pointed out, if it does turn out to be a prank it's going to make them look bad -- not Kickstarter. A huge number of their fans are going to donate out of goodwill and then not collecting would just be a huge "gently caress YOU" to all of them. Like, "look at you dumbasses who were willing to give us your money! That was our joke!" I'm pretty sure they plan to collect, I'm just not sure how they justify that as anything other than pure exploitation.
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Jul 10, 2012 19:01
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Rorus Raz posted:I am really curious as to why they are using Kickstarter for what is a donation drive. I mean, more power to them if they want to fund their operations purely from reader donations again, but Kickstarter really isn't the place for collecting donations. People tend to expect a product out of you. I'm not sure there's really a line between 'donation' and 'pledge' drives as Kickstarter is concerned. The promise of physical rewards and tie-ins is something that's developed since launch (overdeveloped, in the case of some) and isn't necessarily relevant to half their categories like 'dance' or 'food.' Regardless, it's pretty clear this falls outside of KS's project guidelines.
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Jul 10, 2012 19:11
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I mean I wouldn't put it past them necessarily, but it seems like a whole other level of shithead, like you'd think they would have a moment of self-reflection and realize what a bad idea this is On the other hand, they did theme a yearly convention after themselves.
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Jul 10, 2012 19:13
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thepopstalinist posted:I mean I wouldn't put it past them necessarily, but it seems like a whole other level of shithead, like you'd think they would have a moment of self-reflection and realize what a bad idea this is It's not really themed after themselves and it filled a pretty specific niche. There weren't a lot of public oriented gaming conventions and PAX attached a huge name to the idea.
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Jul 10, 2012 19:14
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I kind of want to donate a dollar to poo poo up their comments section like people did with Your World.
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Jul 10, 2012 19:18
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Is it really that unlikely that it would cost a million dollars to run their site for a year? This is not a rhetorical question, I actually don't know that much about hosting costs. Does that sound about right?
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Jul 10, 2012 19:19
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Hosting costs? Hardly. Income from those ads? That's a more interesting question. An even bigger question might be why they'd even joke about poisoning their relationship with their advertisers. Someone may have actually decided to look at the content their ads are riding on.
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Jul 10, 2012 19:23
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XboxPants posted:Is it really that unlikely that it would cost a million dollars to run their site for a year? This is not a rhetorical question, I actually don't know that much about hosting costs. Does that sound about right?
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Jul 10, 2012 19:24
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Bieeardo posted:Hosting costs? Hardly. Income from those ads? That's a more interesting question. That's my second-highest conspiracy theory -- they did something to piss off one or more of their major advertisers and this is partially out of necessity.
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Jul 10, 2012 19:24
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octoroon posted:That's my second-highest conspiracy theory -- they did something to piss off one or more of their major advertisers and this is partially out of necessity. Hanlon's razor. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
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Jul 10, 2012 19:25
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Saoshyant posted:Guys, the cycle is complete! You can now fund the Hahahaha, how much of that initial rush of money is just them funneling in funds they already had through different sources? Wow back in the 90s you had to be relatively rich and privileged to have the opportunity to get hoodwinked by marketing and throw your money away on the Phantom. Thank god in 2012 even the little man can have his cash stolen in poor investments.
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Jul 10, 2012 19:29
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NINbuntu 64 posted:Hanlon's razor. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Yeah, my rational mind realizes that the idea of a conspiracy is pretty far-fetched. But the stupidity is astounding enough that I don't rule it out entirely. e: Besides which, nothing about Penny Arcade's history leads me to believe that they would downplay the issue if there was some drama to be had. If an advertiser was threatening to leave, I'm sure everyone would know all the gory details by now. How else would the Penny Arcade attack drones know who to harass? speng31b fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jul 10, 2012 |
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Jul 10, 2012 19:31
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I remember a front-page article from years ago, where Lowtax eventually told an ad drone to gently caress off over an off-colour article written from years before, so that sort of thing is always close to mind. I've also noticed that other advertisers have started to lower the boom on objectionable content, like Google reading the riot act to TVTropes over their rapipedia entries, and I heard about some fic site that was forced to remove all references to real life celebrities or face blacklisting.
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Jul 10, 2012 19:31
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NINbuntu 64 posted:Holy poo poo, if ever there was a candidate for the Awful Kickstarters thread, this is it. I'd really like to know how this is a better solution to just leaving the ads there. Taking money from people who view your website rather than from faceless ad serving companies? Who really gets that bothered by well placed ads anyway that they'd pay money to get them removed (and isn't already blocking them)?? I'm so loving confused. There has to be some other reason behind this. I'm guessing that a million is more than they make from ad revenue in a year and they're trying to increase profits under the guise of "helping" their readerbase. There's just no logic behind it otherwise. Keep in mind that Penny Arcade no doubt brings in money from many more sources than just ad revenue, too. They're a business, not some independant website struggling to get by just barely from what they make off ads.
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Jul 10, 2012 19:32
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Meme Emulator posted:Hahahaha, how much of that initial rush of money is just them funneling in funds they already had through different sources? $560,536 divided by 4,454 backers is about $125 per backer, on average. That's just a bit higher than the amount of money you need to get one of the consoles from the reward tier. Basic math skills point to this likely not being a scam.
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Jul 10, 2012 19:32
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