I really really wish the flattr model would take off for stuff like this. Each and every site having a huge fundraiser once a year like this seems unsustainable.
It works for public television.
Penny Arcade Sells Out
41–50 of 104 posts
Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the risk of sounding like Scrooge: I would assume most people think of Penny Arcade as the thrice weekly "content drops" (while viewing the rest as peripheral) and it certainly doesn't take 14 people to draw a comic. Asking the community for $1 million every single year to draw a comic seems a bit steep. I'm not saying it's not worth it. I probably will contribute, but it feels like a lot of for a small thing.
>At the risk of sounding like Scrooge: I would assume most people think of Penny Arcade as the thrice weekly "content drops" (while viewing the rest as peripheral) and it certainly doesn't take 14 people to draw a comic. I get the feeling that they want to change this perception, especially with the recent hire of Ben Kuchera to write full time news and commentary for the Penny Arcade Reports site.
Crap. I don't know if I'm just blind or lazy or both, but I don't think I noticed the top navigation bar that has the PA Report until now (it's really subtle).
Anyway, I think you're probably right.
Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out
#43Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out
#44Interesting take on the crowd funding issue. I expect to see more of these sorts of creative things. Advertising debt is annoying. And sadly people like PA with their 2 ads get nailed because people have been so massively inundated with ads all day that even one more is painful. Another experiment they haven't tried, but would be good to run, would be to make the site subscriber only with the long tail free. So imagi…
Unfortunately for PA, their content is probably 90% games/pop culture topical. After a month it'd be completely stale and irrelevant (with exceptions of course). I think the better move would be to have pay users not have to see any ads. Simple web re-design to remove that for pay users, otherwise free users still have to look at the ads. There are a ton of sites that do this and are quite successful.
What's a site that only offers "no ads" as their paid-upgrade benefit? I haven't seen one offer just that, it usually comes with a grab-bag of other features that can't be replaced with a client-side script/extension. (DeviantArt's premium account is the upgrade I thought of. (http://sta.sh/047k5sokcr2) The two major client-side features of no ads and more thumbnails are solved with NoScript and AutoPager respectively.)
Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out
#45Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out
#46How is this a "project"? This sounds like crowdfunding on-going business costs.
Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out
#47This is interesting territory for Kickstarter. They've been clear throughout that they'd like to fund specific, time-limited projects, e.g. someone producing a book, and don't allow general fundraising to operate a business, e.g. raising funds to pay a year of salaries and rent for an ongoing business. There's a way you can squint and call this a specific project, a time-limited "remove ads from PA for a year" experi…
If you need costs to justify it, they need to pay the salaries of their employees and all the other costs involved in running a business. Only real difference I can see between this and, say, the Double Fine Adventure, is that Penny Arcade is a pre-existing product and the Double Fine Adventure isn't.
Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out
#48This is interesting territory for Kickstarter. They've been clear throughout that they'd like to fund specific, time-limited projects, e.g. someone producing a book, and don't allow general fundraising to operate a business, e.g. raising funds to pay a year of salaries and rent for an ongoing business. There's a way you can squint and call this a specific project, a time-limited "remove ads from PA for a year" experi…
If you need costs to justify it, they need to pay the salaries of their employees and all the other costs involved in running a business. Only real difference I can see between this and, say, the Double Fine Adventure, is that Penny Arcade is a pre-existing product and the Double Fine Adventure isn't.
That's precisely the distinction that Kickstarter claims to be making, though: they'll fund new projects, but not ongoing business expenses.
Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you need costs to justify it, they need to pay the salaries of their employees and all the other costs involved in running a business. Only real difference I can see between this and, say, the Double Fine Adventure, is that Penny Arcade is a pre-existing product and the Double Fine Adventure isn't.
That's precisely the distinction that Kickstarter claims to be making, though: they'll fund new projects, but not ongoing business expenses.
They said they won't fund life expenses. That's a bit different. Though it is a somewhat fuzzy distinction to be making.
Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out
#50I already get it ad free - thanks to AdBlock.
Their site is one of the few where I disable AdBlock. First, it supports a comic and a site which I love, and second I actually like their ads. They have stated they play every game that is shown in an ad, and don't allow terrible games or terrible ads for a game at any price.