4 ms·

Ah Kickstarter. I see why they tried the blockchain thing, but it probably wasn't the best decision for that particular company given their audience's utter dis

• gafferongames 3y ago
  "The story (at least from what I can tell) is just that crowdfunding has developed a terrible reputation due to all the scams and failed promises from big name projects there, so people don't really take it seriously anymore." Sounds like a great fit for crypto!
  • lostmsu 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • the__alchemist 3y ago
      There are historically many scams associated with both, so it's a fair analogy. My recollection was that Kickstarter was a mix, and Indiegogo was 90%+ scams.
      • lostmsu 3y ago
        There's a different level of association though. It is nearly impossible to see if Kickstarter project will flop or not and if you will see your money back ever. In crypto you can at least make reasonable judgement based on technology merits. All good projects are 100% transparent and developed in the open.
        • the__alchemist 3y ago
          Your currency could evaporate because the price of the asset was fine, but your broker ran away with the money. Or, the hardware wallets etc are the best/safest alternative, assuming, of course, you never make a mistake when doing X, Y, Z...
        • antifa 3y ago
          Kickstarter had a reputation for fun creative projects that people wanted to exist. And many failed due to poor management, planning, etc.. "Crypto" has a reputation for recreating things nobody wanted but "on the blockchain", projects that costs hundreds or thousands of dollars for almost no value proposition beyond "it's a great investment! Trust me!" The few that weren't rugpulls were still asset flips or ponzi schemes or otherwise still negative-value-added over their non-blochain competitors.
    • mritchie712 3y ago
      some blockchains (e.g. bitcoin) have been reliable, but you'd have to be joking to say "crypto" (as an industry) has been reliable.
      • k33n 3y ago
        As a generator of wealth, it has been very reliable.
        • ceejayoz 3y ago
          Sure, just like cocaine.
        • digging 3y ago
          Not at all, it's largely grift-based wealth which by definition means there are more losers than winners
        • allannienhuis 3y ago
          I think it's worse than that - as far as I can see it's only moves wealth from one pocket to another. Usually many pockets to few pockets. I've not heard of how it's increasing labor efficiency or enabling completely new capabilities for anyone, with maybe a few minor exceptions. So its really a pretty successful parasite.
          • k33n 3y ago
            Bitcoin has produced nothing but returns for long-term holders.
            • allannienhuis 3y ago
              yes, that's exactly my point. it's moving money from newer gamblers to previous gamblers. it's not actually enabling much new economic value.
        • throw4847285 3y ago
          Generator of wealth for whom?
    • malfist 3y ago
      Rug pulls and ponzi schemes not withstanding.
      • the_sleaze9 3y ago
        I agree with this interpretation - after all ponzis, scams, vapor ware, and rug pulls existed long before trust-less distributed ledger software.
    • CPLX 3y ago
      Poe's Law strikes again.
• rsynnott 3y ago
  I'm not sure they actually _had_ a critical problem, or at least didn't before the blockchain thing; it's just that it was a pretty limited market. AIUI they _were_ profitable, but they were never going to be a multi-billion dollar company. The blockchain thing did damage their reputation quite badly, while simultaneously showing that they weren't essential (big important creators were able to use something else.) (It's _really_ weird that they gave up on attempting to compete with Patreon in a likely larger market, tho.)
• jprete 3y ago
  I agree with you! I have some visibility into this space through the lens of "high-end" boardgaming (big boxes, frequently lots of minis, very high production value, and usually high time commitment to learn and play). Crowdfunding's first use case was speculative investment in projects that might not ever succeed. I think this space has a big inherent trust deficit and Kickstarter can never solve it because Kickstarter will always have strong local incentives to not kick sketchy founders off of the platform, but Kickstarter is absorbing some of the loss of trust there because it's their platform. There is another use case for crowdfunding - coordinating preorders of products that need enough orders to be worth a production run, but that are otherwise low-risk. This model works pretty well but Kickstarter also has competition from Backerkit in the space. I think Backerkit is also more focused on the safer use case of preorder coordination and less on the "speculative product" case.
  • lupire 3y ago
    Incorrect. Crowdfunding's first use case was financing production of an invention. The speculative investment stuff was the scam Kickstarter cultivated in the chase for infinite growth and VC returns. Crowdfunding from the general public for investment is generally illegal for exactly this rest.
    • michaelt 3y ago
      What counts as "first" depends on what you consider "crowdfunding" Charities and political campaigns have been collecting $x per person from y million people to pay for z since time immemorial. The term 'crowdfunding' didn't exist when construction of the Sagrada Família started. And if you define 'crowdfunding' as 'the thing that kickstarter does' then looking at their 2010 homepage [1] it seems to be mostly short films, art, and a baking contest. There's a one listing seeking $500 to make an open source synthesizer you can fit to your bicycle to create music from your speed and acceleration, but that's pretty much an art project IMHO. Kickstarter certainly seems much more important and consequential if you ignore the $300 student films and focus on the multi-million-dollar campaigns. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20100623023917/https://www.kickstarter.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20100623023917/https://www.kicks...
• bmer 3y ago
  Although, even Patreon has this issue, since there is no hard requirement to be showing your work regularly; just more of an expectation due to the design of the system. Part of this seems to be due to the reality of creative work: you need to be willing to fund failures as much as successes, or you'll end up getting more-of-the-same rather than something new. E.g. existing creators with well-established patron bases can feel pressured to make more-of-the-same, rather than experimenting, leading to their burnout. The other part of it seems to honestly be gullibility (on the part of backers) and lack of focus on realistic, achievable goals ("go small, then incrementally bigger") from those seeking funding. The normalization/glorification of advertising culture (e.g. "fake it till you make it") is a non-trivial contributor to this issue, ultimately making it difficult to distinguish between grifters and people who drank the kool-aid.
  • michaelt 3y ago
    > Although, even Patreon has this issue, since there is no hard requirement to be showing your work regularly I'm sure different people use Patreon differently, but there's never really been a trust problem with Patreon for me because the sums are so small and I can stop paying whenever I like. People on kickstarter are understandably salty when they pay $350 for a chair and it doesn't show up. But if I pay someone $5/month for youtube videos and their output slows down or drops in quality, I can just stop paying, and keep getting the videos for free on youtube.
  • nicwolff 3y ago
    Most Patreons also offer per-episode payment, which zeroes out the risk that you'll pay a non-producing creator anything at all.
    • bmer 3y ago
      That also helps to zero out the probability you'll be paying someone who takes a "craftsperson's approach" to their work, versus a "production-line approach". Neither is bad. The production-line approach is good at producing something defined by a fixed specification, reliably. Predictability in quantity produced and product quality are both important. The craftsperson's approach is good at producing things where each thing is an incremental improvement over the last. Predictability in quantity produced is usually an anti-goal, as it is best left as another project (probably another craftperson's project). Predictability of quality produced is often sacrificed on purpose in order to get out of a local optima and better explore a larger landscape. So, while quality improves in the long term, it may not in the short term. Patronage, historically, was aware of this. It did not demand, it trusted. It was intensely aware of the imperfection in humans, and it is questionable to what extent it considered genius as a truth, rather than merely a helpful myth (helpful only after the person was long dead, and not actually in the production of new creative works, but rather in keeping up the market value of previously created works, in order to help fund new ones). Patreon, on the other hand, lacks such nuance.
• bcrosby95 3y ago
  Crowdfunding is big in the table top rpg industry. Lots of small companies used it for new products and even reprints. But for the past 6 months or so, they've been slowly moving to backerkit. Including a $4mil funding of one of them: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/mcdm-productions/mcdm-rpg/ https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/mcdm-productions/mcdm-r...
  • CM30 3y ago
    It's interesting many people mention crowdfunding as working for tabletop games. Seems like the setup lends itself better to those than video games, consumer products or traditional forms of media. Are there any reasons that may be the case?
    • bcrosby95 3y ago
      I think it's because these projects are usually 80-100% done, and the riskiest part that's left is the print run. Potential customers are given sample PDFs so they can see if they will like the final product, and there is significantly less risk compared to a video game or something with a more complex mechanical design. It effectively acts as a pre-order system for many projects, letting them know how many to print. The more you print at once the cheaper things are - print on demand is very expensive even for books. Many of these projects do one print run to fulfill the kickstarter then toss the pdf over on drivethrurpg. The project I linked is unique as far as projects I tend to back goes. It's an RPG system where they haven't even figured out advancement yet. There's going to be more inherit risk due to that, but it's being ran by a big name in the community with experience in delivering these projects. Contrast this with Shadowdark: it had design, art, layout, etc. ready to go. All they needed to do was the print run. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shadowdarkrpg/shadowdark-rpg-old-school-gaming-modernized https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shadowdarkrpg/shadowdar...
• rtkwe 3y ago
  Pure anecdata but I've backed ~180 projects on KS and I've only had <6 that have completely failed to deliver or have had huge issues with the delivered products. There's a lot of long delayed ones on that list but only a few that have truly felt like I didn't eventually get what I paid for or reasonably close to it. If you're a bit choosier about the things you back you can get pretty good results from the site.
  • flir 3y ago
    That's an insane number (to me). What do you consider to be your "best buy"?
    • rtkwe 3y ago
      A few I use every day; the Wyrmwood Modular Gaming table (dining room table with removable top leaves and a game vault), the Keyboardio Model 100 (wood ortholinear split keyboard that's been my daily driver for WFH since I got it), Sandsara, Radiant Urban Sling (been my daily bag for a few years now). Then there's some not every day uses I still enjoy a lot; a couple board games and TTRPG settings, Lancer, FANG, Root, Mind MGMT are the big ones I've had a lot of fun with friends playing.
• manicennui 3y ago
  Frankly, this is nonsense. Total funds going to projects has gone up over time. I support artists on Kickstarter frequently. What has likely happened is that Kickstarter's investors realized that it wasn't going to make them as much money as they'd like, nothing more.
• hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Kickstarter did have a ton of scams, but my favorite "rise from the ashes" story was the ZPM Espresso machine. ZPM promised a revolutionary espresso machine that used a precisely controlled thermoblock (instead of a boiler) to control temperatures accurately. I don't think ZPM was an intentional scam, but the founders got in way over their heads, and when the popularity of the product exploded, they then had to figure out all these volume manufacturing problems as opposed to just building some prototypes for a small number of backers (there is a cautionary tale about startups taking too much VC money in here somewhere...) Anyway, ZPM crashed and burned, and as far as I know none of the backers got their money back. Again, I don't think it was really a scam, all that money was just spent on things for the project. I don't think anyone got their machine, but maybe a few folks did, not sure. Anyway, another company, Decent Espresso, came along and bought out ZPM's patents (note, backers still received nothing afaik), but now the Decent machine is an absolute marvel, with temperature and pressure profiling capabilities that are nuts. The machine is also not cheap (the original promise of ZPM), but it's still cool that in the world of so much BS where scammers produce nothing of value (cough Theranos cough), that at least in this case something really cool came of it.
  • CM30 3y ago
    That's a really cool story. Nice to see the ZPM Espresso machine actually got made. And yeah, that's another good point there. At least half the time, the problem with these projects isn't that they're intentional scams. It's that they're run by people who've never had to launch a product/business before (especially not on a large scale) and severely underestimate the amount of work, time and money required to get it to market. Making say, $200K on a $50K campaign for a new indie game is great and all, except when you need to hire 20+ people to work on it, pay them salaries, pay for tools, potentially pay for office space, pay for certification for consoles/Steam, pay for the website and marketing and trailer production and voice acting and... Suddenly, all that money lasts you maybe 3 months. A lot of projects go that way.
• paxys 3y ago
  While I'm sure some percentage of Kickstarters were outright scams, in general it is always a bad idea to push "investments" on people who cannot grasp the fact that 90%+ of them will fail despite the best efforts of the founders. That's just how any new venture works.