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The $100M Deal for Kickstarter to use Blockchain

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Re: The $100M Deal for Kickstarter to use Blockchain

#51

Post by baud147258 »

nottorp wrote: post #24
drdrek wrote: post #18

Years ago I backed two computer games. They both took about 5 years to be made and by the time they were ready I have already forgotten buying them. (They were good tho) Never felt the need to do that again. Its a niche idea, unsuitable for VC money. On the other hand, non financial goals for companies almost always end badly. When you have more than one goal there is always an excuse for management to do what ever t…

> They both took about 5 years to be made and by the time they were ready I have already forgotten buying them. (They were good tho) Never felt the need to do that again. What's wrong with that? I've backed more than two games. Some were good, some were bad, some failed completely. But I knew that from the beginning. And I just prepaid for the games at a discount, I didn't buy $5000 packages or anything like that. I…

> Is it because game makers don't crowdfund any more, or because the press only covers AAAs now?

I took part in one campaign for a video game last year, but it's a niche game in a niche genre, so I don't think it's been covered anywhere. Though two video game projects I backed in 2020 & 2021 have likely been covered, though I haven't kept up with the news. And I agree that the gaming press have stopped covering crowdfunding, mostly I guess because all the failed projects and scams, not helped by the long delays.

Re: The $100M Deal for Kickstarter to use Blockchain

#52

Post by paulgerhardt »

Kickstarter was and will always be beholden to their credit card processors and a painful lesson in picking one’s payment provider carefully. It’s your payment processors fraud risk department which dictates which products and services you offer not your own team. This decision is a 100% dictated by pigeonholing themselves here and losing out to gofundme.

After Philips caused a stink about LifX[1], it was the threat of losing their payment partners that caused Kickstarter to ban all sales of hardware [2]. They would later walk back that decision but not before we launched our own open source competitor that went on to do $100m, including Bitcoin support in 2012 [3].

Which is to say decentralized payment systems solve a lot of problems for crowdfunding platforms. Specifically Kickstarter missed out on the explosive growth that GoFundMe captured because Kickstarters payment processor said “no” and GoFundMe’s said “yes”.

But switching to Celo or some other platform in 2021+ feels too little too late for a platform whose culture has ossified.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2012/09/03/16...

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2012/10/07/the-story-of-lockitron-cro...

[3] https://github.com/apigy/selfstarter/pull/22

Re: The $100M Deal for Kickstarter to use Blockchain

#53

Post by nottorp »

aeturnum wrote: post #41
Goronmon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with that? For me it comes down to numbers. I don't want for games to play. I already lack the time to play all the games I am interested in. And that's for games that have been released that are a relatively known result. What advantage is there for me to throw money at hypothetical games that in the future may result in something I am interested in playing? Especially when there is a decent chance noth…

I totally agree that, if you can't think of why you might want to support one particular future game over another, then kickstarter is not for you. However, lots of people like the work of particular creators, or like particular genres, or are looking for particular gameplay approaches. Those people may all think about funding certain games in development over others. Just in general you might prefer to support some…

I for one like a surprise now and then.

I've backed titles that sounded unusual just because they sounded unusual:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/476090608/the-good-life

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1698219403/stygian-a-lo...

The first I haven't played yet, the second was a nice surprise.

I've also backed niche games that are out of fashion:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/674951857/kaptain-brawe...

This one failed to get enough backers. I've backed more adventure games that didn't fail and enjoyed some of them.

Yes, every single project I backed was late. So what?

And yes, I have a games backlog that I won't finish in my lifetime. Thank 90% off sales :)

Re: The $100M Deal for Kickstarter to use Blockchain

#54

Post by michaelt »

lupire wrote: post #32
jprete wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Kickstar…

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.

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.kicks...

Re: The $100M Deal for Kickstarter to use Blockchain

#55

Post by snakeyjake »

hanniabu wrote: post #44
rsynnott wrote: post #5

> The blockchain plan seemed impossible—and that would soon prove to be the case. As is tradition. (Did any company _ever_ launch anything borderline successful with The Almighty Blockchain(TM) that wasn't just some sort of token?)

Farcaster

[dead]

Re: The $100M Deal for Kickstarter to use Blockchain

#56

Post by rsynnott »

HideousKojima wrote: post #42
rsynnott wrote: post #5

> The blockchain plan seemed impossible—and that would soon prove to be the case. As is tradition. (Did any company _ever_ launch anything borderline successful with The Almighty Blockchain(TM) that wasn't just some sort of token?)

Silk Road? But as far as legal things go I'm drawing a blank.

That's more using cryptocurrency. It didn't run on a blockchain or anything.

Re: The $100M Deal for Kickstarter to use Blockchain

#57

Post by rsynnott »

hanniabu wrote: post #44
rsynnott wrote: post #5

> The blockchain plan seemed impossible—and that would soon prove to be the case. As is tradition. (Did any company _ever_ launch anything borderline successful with The Almighty Blockchain(TM) that wasn't just some sort of token?)

Farcaster

Does anyone... use this? Is there even a clear description of what it _is_ anywhere? It looks like it's probably an alternative to ActivityPub or that Bluesky thing, but the descriptions all seem very... hype-y.

In any event, I'm not sure that I'd call this successful, precisely. Might be in the future, who knows, can't on a cursory look find anything concrete about usership. But isn't now.

(Also, personally I would not have named a social network thingy over a fake transport system run by evil computers, but that's just me.)

Re: The $100M Deal for Kickstarter to use Blockchain

#58

Post by lostmsu »

the__alchemist wrote: post #14
lostmsu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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.

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.

Re: The $100M Deal for Kickstarter to use Blockchain

#59

Post by jprete »

lupire wrote: post #32
jprete wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Kickstar…

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.

Thanks for the correction. I wasn't trying to imply an ordering, but I can easily see how my text indicated one.

Re: The $100M Deal for Kickstarter to use Blockchain

#60

Post by CM30 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #38
CM30 wrote: post #6

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 disdain for crypto and web 3 in general. As for this: > The biggest problem for Kickstarter, though, may be that time has simply passed it by. “I feel like they just were left in the dust culturally" I'm not sure that's really the whole story. The story (at least…

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 figur…

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.

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