Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3
Update... A last minute surge pushed this project's total over $525K, simultaneously clearing the next stretch goal (removal of all ads from the front page) and dictating that my prediction failure rate for this project settles at 100%. But it's all correct in spirit! It's the most bullshit way of being correct. In other news Mike Krahulik's follow up post (written 2 hours before the fact and thus also inaccurate!) pretty clearly demonstrates that he is not exactly using my writings as a guidebook! But he is suggesting they'll come at it again next year so that pleases me. And all critique aside my general attitude after the fact is congratulations, and good luck).
With 6 hours to go on their Kickstarter project and over $35K left to meet the next goal (that would render the front page ad-free), barring the late entry of a wealthy "angel" type donor I think I finally landed on a correct prediction on Penny Arcade's foray into crowd funding in the million-plus arena.
For the Penny Arcade business, the project is only just begun. Unfortunately I think the limited success of the project is likely to have some ongoing negative impacts. This isn't anything even approaching a business-sinking gaffe for Penny Arcade, and they may well leverage it into solid gains, but they have certainly cut out a piece of work for their not-quite-half-million.
Some of the work I think will be a straight up loss. Printing and distributing the "reward" recognition certificates - I have probably sufficiently expressed the poor value I think this effort represents. I doubt there will be much value in the stunt of Mike Krahulik being filmed shouting at a duck (which will probably need the services of a pet psychologist afterwards). What are these extraneous activities really going to do except remind people of how far the project fell short of its aspirations?
The biggest if for me from the amount of work perspective is the Reality Show "Strip Search". Since a 4th season of the Penny Arcade show seemed like a given it's questionable whether people will really interpret it as a success of the Kickstarter. Beyond that it seems the concept for the show most fraught with the peril of being an absolute train wreck. Then again, I was completely skeptical of the idea of a show at all and ended up watching most of the episodes over the last 3 seasons, though I feel like it hit a peak with the first season finale that it's never quite surpassed. Also, while it may have been something to do with the filming schedule more than editorial choices, I thought it disappointing that the series to date hasn't strayed outside the "fun hijinks in a very special office" and heartwarming scenes from PAX and Child's Play arena (the whole dickwolves controversy, which was reasonably active for the better part of 6 months, receives not a whisper, for example. Never happened).
Beyond all this it is demonstrably true that "reality" selection contests do a rotten job of finding the next big anything - the potential for this show being a real turd seems high. But like I say, I've been wrong before, and Penny Arcade might just break the mold by choosing contestants based on their raw talent rather than how good of television they're likely to produce. What that does for the show is a real poser, but I might end up with another webcomic I actually want to follow.
Here's a sticky question: is it a good idea for Penny Arcade to do any of the projects that it proposed but didn't hit the funding goal for? To do so suggests that the donation requests were unnecessary and to imply that you will get whatever you get whether you support it or not. Now if they don't repeat this experiment then that won't really matter. If they do it becomes an issue. With some items (say, the Twisp and Catsby children's book) this doesn't much matter. With others (a mobile App) there's an argument that this thing is long overdue and failing to make it is kind of a sign of falling behind the state of the art in online.
Despite all this I actually hope they try it again next year. I hope the project isn't just wrapped up with a bland cheer for having gotten well beyond the goal but that its shortfall and shortcomings are acknowledged and backed with a pledge to take it to the next level next year.
I hope that in this speculative next time they set the goal as the actual goal - a million dollars for an ad-free Penny Arcade. I hope they give it the support it deserves with a decent package of exclusive rewards that have values in a decent ballpark of their actual worth. Make a project that relies on the people and tames the high-dollar inside-baseball rewards to a reasonable level. I hope they take advantage of the basic low-hanging fruit: signing stuff, for example, is the ultimate low-effort value multiplier that was totally neglected in the campaign. I hope they rethink the stretch goals and keep the core-business content goals down in the lower tiers (what you really want to attain) and hold the fan service stuff for the real stretch (encourage the superfans to kick in extra to see the service).
Mostly I hope they think about the message and hone it to a fine point. Direct funding is a great idea, an awesome idea whose time has come but the the sad reality is that many people simply will not pay. They will sit through an ad, and the advertisers will pay for the chance to practice their unholy arts in the confidence that they can profitably manipulate some portion of the most self-centered, jaded audience of non-participants. You have to talk a percentage of the crowd into paying more than their fair share. I hope the next pitch video has more and more diverse humor but that it is the spice in a solid gumbo of showing the content and pitching the principle. I hope they convince me to pitch in more than 5 bucks.
And now I've seriously gone down the rabbit hole with Penny Arcade, enough I say! Enough. Next time: something else.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Penny Arcade sells short - part 3
Since looking askance at Penny Arcade's Kickstarter campaign shortly after its launch, I've talked about how I think they blew their pitch in their introductory video and the problems I saw in the underlying philosophy of the project from the start.
Here's the thing: I would like there to be room in Kickstarter (or the host of crowdfunding alternatives it would seem guaranteed to spawn in 3, 2, 1...) for an essentially philosophical pitch. The paradigm shift PA's Kickstarter suggested - the displacement of advertising by direct funding by the reader base - is something I'm absolutely on board with. That's why I threw them $5. And by the back of my envelope if they had convinced less than 10% of their putative 3.5 million readers to do the same they would be fully funded right now.
But if you want to execute an extraordinary idea you have to construct an extraordinary campaign. I think there were deep flaws in how Penny Arcade's campaign was constructed that prefigured it falling so thoroughly short of its highest aspirations.
My first issue was the primary goal. And I think this is the first of several arenas where the design of the campaign attempted to "customize" an observed phenomena of highly successful Kickstarter projects but got it wrong; the phenomenon in question here being the lowball price point. The obvious benefit of a low price point is it makes the goal seem less insurmountable to the potential funder, I suppose. But I think Penny Arcade's version got the narrative messed up: not to belabor this example (except I'm totally gonna because it's the one I've dwelt on the most after PA), but Double Fine's project started with a probably too-low price point and they acknowledged it was near the minimum they could turn around any sort of a game at all, let alone a full-fleshed adventure game. This is the scrappy underdog all over - we might only barely manage, but we'll deliver something that honors the spirit of what we've been talking about. By contrast Penny Arcade offered an incomplete project for it's low-ball bid. And here's the core of it: when the pitch is fundamentally philosophical (go ad free for a purer experience) an incomplete project is hardly better than no project at all. So you got rid of one ad: what's pure about that?
Right at the start of the pitch video PA business manager Robert Khoo informs the viewer what they need: a million dollars. They proceed to ask for... a quarter of that. Not because they think they can scrape by and achieve a philosophically honest version of the goal for that. At best they're offering what amounts to a token nod to the philosophy of the goal for that. So why? The unspoken but unavoidable message is that it's because the full million is too much. Too much to ask for, too much to expect. They put the idea right into the viewers mind.
I believe a huge part of pretty much every successful Kickstarter narrative is this basic idea: we can't do this without you. We can't do this unless you step up. You have to want the product, yes, but you also have to feel like you ought to help. Penny Arcade's low goal for an incomplete project spoils this story. The story it ended up with is "we're going to do our thing anyway but if you want to you can help us make a half-assed nod to doing it a better way". Is it much surprise almost 80,000 more funders were inspired by the story Double Fine spun
This leads right into my second complaint, which is the construction of the stretch goals track. Again I suspect the idea was to emulate a number of successful projects that have leveraged the enticement of stretch goals - bonus rewards or project enhancements that are triggered by reaching funding goals above the primary. I've been trying not to engage in this assessment in too much prognostication about the thinking that went into how to construct this project, since obviously I'm just guessing. But I'll justify this one by noting that site writer Jerry Holkins has discussed his fascination with the mechanics of stretch goals and runaway success in Kickstarter campaigns.
The problem here I think is that it appears to me that stretch goals in successful campaigns are something that have mostly developed organically - they are responsive to success. Penny Arcade's "treasure map" of "locked" stretch goals was an obviously prefabricated, contrived narrative. What it's actually trying to do is fix the broken pitch. Justify the actual ask. I think there is quite a bit wrong with many of the the goals themselves - too much fanservice, too little sensible connection between the putative goal (going ad-free) and the stretch "rewards" (mainly extra-comic content). In subsequent postings and updates Penny Arcade (primarily in the voice of Mike Krahulik - and it's a topic worthy of a post in itself that I'm not going to write that Krahulik has basically carried the weight of promoting this project outside of its Kickstarter page) an attempt was made to connect the narrative - the idea that freeing the creators from the work of advertising - primarily from the creativity-intensive Penny Arcade Presents projects that create original works about advertising properties - would open a space for all this new creative potential. But like so much of this project this meat was buried deep inside the increasingly convoluted narrative, and even then a lot of the connection was contrived. How is going ad-free supposed to make it more possible to create a reality "television" style show about America's Next Top Webcomic? The real story seems to be "come on, make the goal, we'll do a cool thing!"
Lastmost for this entry - and it's become clear to me that there's going to have to be a fourth one because I'm done with this for today - but much has been made of the projects rewards and they did surely suck. I pretty much said my piece about that in my initial foray. PA more or less acknowledged that they wanted to avoid committing to a lot of expenses and work in reward fulfillment. I think the goal could have been attained with a lot more generosity and style. The gag rewards were a mistake in my opinion: I just don't believe anyone's pledge hinged on getting to see Mike Krahulik yell at a duck and if not, then what you've done is make a not-insigificant amount of work to literally no benefit. The same goes for the "certificate". Could there be a stupider, more worthless reward? I'm trying not to repeat myself too much but seriously, what are you going to do with this thing? Stick it in a file or pin it to a board or throw it away. For a nominal additional cost they could have created an original, limited edition print. It needn't be top quality, it just needed to be SOMETHING. Instead they still have to negotiate a printing project and mailing out 5,000 pieces of paper that nobody wanted, nobody asked for, nobody pledged because of and most won't keep.
I think I (and many others) may have overestimated the impact of rewards on the project's limited success. But I do believe that a critical missing element was first a solid, low-tier (under $10) digital offering - a collection of wallpapers and icons, something, as long as it was new - and a solid, middle-tier tangible offering. A print, sticker, button... something tangible, produced only for the project, available only for funders, for $25 or less.
Last gripe about the rewards - too much high-dollar (over $1000), inside baseball, "patron" rewards. The result? The per-donor average is $60 to (again) Double Fine's $40. But Double Fine enticed almost 12 times as many to participate.
Last chapter I'm going to talk about how I think the partial success is actually going to be an albatross for the business for the whole next year, and how I'd do it different if I were them, which I'm not, and if they tried again, which I suspect they won't.
Here's the thing: I would like there to be room in Kickstarter (or the host of crowdfunding alternatives it would seem guaranteed to spawn in 3, 2, 1...) for an essentially philosophical pitch. The paradigm shift PA's Kickstarter suggested - the displacement of advertising by direct funding by the reader base - is something I'm absolutely on board with. That's why I threw them $5. And by the back of my envelope if they had convinced less than 10% of their putative 3.5 million readers to do the same they would be fully funded right now.
But if you want to execute an extraordinary idea you have to construct an extraordinary campaign. I think there were deep flaws in how Penny Arcade's campaign was constructed that prefigured it falling so thoroughly short of its highest aspirations.
My first issue was the primary goal. And I think this is the first of several arenas where the design of the campaign attempted to "customize" an observed phenomena of highly successful Kickstarter projects but got it wrong; the phenomenon in question here being the lowball price point. The obvious benefit of a low price point is it makes the goal seem less insurmountable to the potential funder, I suppose. But I think Penny Arcade's version got the narrative messed up: not to belabor this example (except I'm totally gonna because it's the one I've dwelt on the most after PA), but Double Fine's project started with a probably too-low price point and they acknowledged it was near the minimum they could turn around any sort of a game at all, let alone a full-fleshed adventure game. This is the scrappy underdog all over - we might only barely manage, but we'll deliver something that honors the spirit of what we've been talking about. By contrast Penny Arcade offered an incomplete project for it's low-ball bid. And here's the core of it: when the pitch is fundamentally philosophical (go ad free for a purer experience) an incomplete project is hardly better than no project at all. So you got rid of one ad: what's pure about that?
Right at the start of the pitch video PA business manager Robert Khoo informs the viewer what they need: a million dollars. They proceed to ask for... a quarter of that. Not because they think they can scrape by and achieve a philosophically honest version of the goal for that. At best they're offering what amounts to a token nod to the philosophy of the goal for that. So why? The unspoken but unavoidable message is that it's because the full million is too much. Too much to ask for, too much to expect. They put the idea right into the viewers mind.
I believe a huge part of pretty much every successful Kickstarter narrative is this basic idea: we can't do this without you. We can't do this unless you step up. You have to want the product, yes, but you also have to feel like you ought to help. Penny Arcade's low goal for an incomplete project spoils this story. The story it ended up with is "we're going to do our thing anyway but if you want to you can help us make a half-assed nod to doing it a better way". Is it much surprise almost 80,000 more funders were inspired by the story Double Fine spun
This leads right into my second complaint, which is the construction of the stretch goals track. Again I suspect the idea was to emulate a number of successful projects that have leveraged the enticement of stretch goals - bonus rewards or project enhancements that are triggered by reaching funding goals above the primary. I've been trying not to engage in this assessment in too much prognostication about the thinking that went into how to construct this project, since obviously I'm just guessing. But I'll justify this one by noting that site writer Jerry Holkins has discussed his fascination with the mechanics of stretch goals and runaway success in Kickstarter campaigns.
The problem here I think is that it appears to me that stretch goals in successful campaigns are something that have mostly developed organically - they are responsive to success. Penny Arcade's "treasure map" of "locked" stretch goals was an obviously prefabricated, contrived narrative. What it's actually trying to do is fix the broken pitch. Justify the actual ask. I think there is quite a bit wrong with many of the the goals themselves - too much fanservice, too little sensible connection between the putative goal (going ad-free) and the stretch "rewards" (mainly extra-comic content). In subsequent postings and updates Penny Arcade (primarily in the voice of Mike Krahulik - and it's a topic worthy of a post in itself that I'm not going to write that Krahulik has basically carried the weight of promoting this project outside of its Kickstarter page) an attempt was made to connect the narrative - the idea that freeing the creators from the work of advertising - primarily from the creativity-intensive Penny Arcade Presents projects that create original works about advertising properties - would open a space for all this new creative potential. But like so much of this project this meat was buried deep inside the increasingly convoluted narrative, and even then a lot of the connection was contrived. How is going ad-free supposed to make it more possible to create a reality "television" style show about America's Next Top Webcomic? The real story seems to be "come on, make the goal, we'll do a cool thing!"
Lastmost for this entry - and it's become clear to me that there's going to have to be a fourth one because I'm done with this for today - but much has been made of the projects rewards and they did surely suck. I pretty much said my piece about that in my initial foray. PA more or less acknowledged that they wanted to avoid committing to a lot of expenses and work in reward fulfillment. I think the goal could have been attained with a lot more generosity and style. The gag rewards were a mistake in my opinion: I just don't believe anyone's pledge hinged on getting to see Mike Krahulik yell at a duck and if not, then what you've done is make a not-insigificant amount of work to literally no benefit. The same goes for the "certificate". Could there be a stupider, more worthless reward? I'm trying not to repeat myself too much but seriously, what are you going to do with this thing? Stick it in a file or pin it to a board or throw it away. For a nominal additional cost they could have created an original, limited edition print. It needn't be top quality, it just needed to be SOMETHING. Instead they still have to negotiate a printing project and mailing out 5,000 pieces of paper that nobody wanted, nobody asked for, nobody pledged because of and most won't keep.
I think I (and many others) may have overestimated the impact of rewards on the project's limited success. But I do believe that a critical missing element was first a solid, low-tier (under $10) digital offering - a collection of wallpapers and icons, something, as long as it was new - and a solid, middle-tier tangible offering. A print, sticker, button... something tangible, produced only for the project, available only for funders, for $25 or less.
Last gripe about the rewards - too much high-dollar (over $1000), inside baseball, "patron" rewards. The result? The per-donor average is $60 to (again) Double Fine's $40. But Double Fine enticed almost 12 times as many to participate.
Last chapter I'm going to talk about how I think the partial success is actually going to be an albatross for the business for the whole next year, and how I'd do it different if I were them, which I'm not, and if they tried again, which I suspect they won't.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Penny Arcade sells short - part 2
In the previous installment I talked about the misbegotten pitch video for Penny Arcade's Kickstarter campaign. The most bizarre thing about this video was the way it spent by far the majority of its time essentially harping on how much it costs to run Penny Arcade. Intentionally or not this is what got communicated by the protracted "we hate our employees" sequence. The humor fell flat and in the end the message was hugely counterproductive: gosh, that price tag seems insanely large doesn't it?
I don't think any sufficient effort went into really figuring out what was being sold. Looking back at the pitch as summarized in the video - "no ads... a direct relationship with the reader... a return to a glorious golden age" - what is being sold is completely ideological. Again I have to go back to that question - what made the period when the comic was purely donation-funded a "golden age?" They don't have a non-ideological answer to that ("people don't like advertising almost as a general rule" is what they do come up with). On the Kickstarter page after the video a couple of screenshots are offered. These are the money shots of this whole pitch, the new world order if the plan succeeds, and I suspect this is really where the issue gets to be the perspective of inside baseball versus the perspective of the average viewer. I just sat for a couple minutes staring at those pictures, flipping between the two example images and the site as it exists now. I bet to the people who construct this site, who pore over it day after day as the primary offering and money-generator of the whole business, the differences are huge. They aren't to me. They are barely noticeable.
Notice how the primary goal (the one that actually triggers "success" of the project) is described: "Leaderboard on the homepage removed". The use of an industry term (leaderboard) that isn't in particularly common coinage is telling. Again, from the inside this is no doubt a huge change - writing off what is certainly one of the single most valuable pieces of real estate on the website. But to regular people "remove the leaderboard ad" doesn't mean anything, really, and visually it looks 95% the same. $250K for one little incremental change? Another $275K for a second little incremental change? The fact is I am naturally sympathetic to this pitch - I like the product, I respect the people who make it, and I believe in the ideology behind it. Even so at this point my eyes are starting to roll at this. You've got a successful business and it's clear you've both done pretty well by it. Now I'm supposed to dig into my spavined wallet so that you can make your front page more "pure?"
(I suspect there may be a bit of backlash to come from people who didn't bother to read the FAQs as well, namely the full explanation of the primary goal:
The leaderboard is the long, flat ad at the top of the page. Reaching $250k removes the leaderboard on the homepage. $525k gets rid of both ads on the homepage. Reaching $999,999 gets the ads removed on the rest of the PA pages, including the comic page.
It wasn't totally clear to me until I read it that only hitting the million dollar goal would actually get ads off the comic page - what some might reasonably consider the actual payload of a daily visit to the site. I wonder how clear it is to the general supporter).
I think it's likely that the lion's share of the failure of the project is there in a nutshell: an overly ideological justification for a goal that just doesn't make much of a real impact. They're frankly lucky they scraped half a million out of general goodwill and deep-pocketed patrons with a yen to play foosball in Seattle or whatever the hell.
I should add a couple of acknowledgments to this assessment. The first is that an acknowledged irony with people's indifference to the removal of PA's front page ads is that they've done an exceptionally good job with advertising. The look of the ads they display are almost always really well integrated visually with the site, and their principal of not taking ads for games they don't support and not pulling any editorial punches for advertisers is justly renowned. I appreciate this as an obstacle but its one they should have had a plan to overcome in advance. Like many aspects of this Kickstarter it feels to me like it was rushed and that they would have done well to have done some preliminary work previewing and presenting it and getting feedback to hone it before launch.
The second issues is that my summary - an ideological pitch for an unimpressive change - is pretty unfair as it ignores a lot of other justifications and incentives offered for the campaign - some debuted with the project, some added as it went along. This is absolutely true - fully parsed and considered as a whole the project is a whole lot more exciting. But here is the thing - you have to scroll down five pages to get to that meat. There is literally nothing about it in the pitch video and just a sentence about it int the project description prior to the stretch goals board. This is the definition of burying the lede.
But I'm anticipating myself now. In the next installment I'll get into how I think the mechanics of how this campaign was constructed ended up amplifying the difficulties of the pitch rather than overcoming them. In the fourth and final chapter I'll think about some negative consequences I think carrying the partly-successful project through will incur. Finally I'll talk about how I think they could actually make this pitch work if there's a next time - I'm sure Robert Khoo will be on the edge of his seat waiting for me to drop the wisdom.
I don't think any sufficient effort went into really figuring out what was being sold. Looking back at the pitch as summarized in the video - "no ads... a direct relationship with the reader... a return to a glorious golden age" - what is being sold is completely ideological. Again I have to go back to that question - what made the period when the comic was purely donation-funded a "golden age?" They don't have a non-ideological answer to that ("people don't like advertising almost as a general rule" is what they do come up with). On the Kickstarter page after the video a couple of screenshots are offered. These are the money shots of this whole pitch, the new world order if the plan succeeds, and I suspect this is really where the issue gets to be the perspective of inside baseball versus the perspective of the average viewer. I just sat for a couple minutes staring at those pictures, flipping between the two example images and the site as it exists now. I bet to the people who construct this site, who pore over it day after day as the primary offering and money-generator of the whole business, the differences are huge. They aren't to me. They are barely noticeable.
Notice how the primary goal (the one that actually triggers "success" of the project) is described: "Leaderboard on the homepage removed". The use of an industry term (leaderboard) that isn't in particularly common coinage is telling. Again, from the inside this is no doubt a huge change - writing off what is certainly one of the single most valuable pieces of real estate on the website. But to regular people "remove the leaderboard ad" doesn't mean anything, really, and visually it looks 95% the same. $250K for one little incremental change? Another $275K for a second little incremental change? The fact is I am naturally sympathetic to this pitch - I like the product, I respect the people who make it, and I believe in the ideology behind it. Even so at this point my eyes are starting to roll at this. You've got a successful business and it's clear you've both done pretty well by it. Now I'm supposed to dig into my spavined wallet so that you can make your front page more "pure?"
(I suspect there may be a bit of backlash to come from people who didn't bother to read the FAQs as well, namely the full explanation of the primary goal:
The leaderboard is the long, flat ad at the top of the page. Reaching $250k removes the leaderboard on the homepage. $525k gets rid of both ads on the homepage. Reaching $999,999 gets the ads removed on the rest of the PA pages, including the comic page.
It wasn't totally clear to me until I read it that only hitting the million dollar goal would actually get ads off the comic page - what some might reasonably consider the actual payload of a daily visit to the site. I wonder how clear it is to the general supporter).
I think it's likely that the lion's share of the failure of the project is there in a nutshell: an overly ideological justification for a goal that just doesn't make much of a real impact. They're frankly lucky they scraped half a million out of general goodwill and deep-pocketed patrons with a yen to play foosball in Seattle or whatever the hell.
I should add a couple of acknowledgments to this assessment. The first is that an acknowledged irony with people's indifference to the removal of PA's front page ads is that they've done an exceptionally good job with advertising. The look of the ads they display are almost always really well integrated visually with the site, and their principal of not taking ads for games they don't support and not pulling any editorial punches for advertisers is justly renowned. I appreciate this as an obstacle but its one they should have had a plan to overcome in advance. Like many aspects of this Kickstarter it feels to me like it was rushed and that they would have done well to have done some preliminary work previewing and presenting it and getting feedback to hone it before launch.
The second issues is that my summary - an ideological pitch for an unimpressive change - is pretty unfair as it ignores a lot of other justifications and incentives offered for the campaign - some debuted with the project, some added as it went along. This is absolutely true - fully parsed and considered as a whole the project is a whole lot more exciting. But here is the thing - you have to scroll down five pages to get to that meat. There is literally nothing about it in the pitch video and just a sentence about it int the project description prior to the stretch goals board. This is the definition of burying the lede.
But I'm anticipating myself now. In the next installment I'll get into how I think the mechanics of how this campaign was constructed ended up amplifying the difficulties of the pitch rather than overcoming them. In the fourth and final chapter I'll think about some negative consequences I think carrying the partly-successful project through will incur. Finally I'll talk about how I think they could actually make this pitch work if there's a next time - I'm sure Robert Khoo will be on the edge of his seat waiting for me to drop the wisdom.
Thursday, August 09, 2012
Penny Arcade sells short - part 1
So I was a little off in my predictions about Penny Arcade's Kickstarter project to replace their advertisement revenue with donations... With less than a week to go the project easily cleared its primary goal and looks on track to hit its fourth stretch goal at the $450K point.
It seems unlikely it will get as far as the $525K goal, what an honest person might call a real primary goal, the elimination of advertisement from the front page. Denigrating someone for raising a mere half million on Kickstarter might reasonably be construed as sour grapes. But I really believe there's no honest assessment that wouldn't call the project a substantial failure, with the better part of a million dollars' worth of aspirations left on the table and three quarters of the stretch goals unmet (with a full tier not even unlocked).
I've been thinking a lot about how the project stumbled. I just listened to this older Wired Game|Life Podcast (relevant discussion starts at 3135/4338) that took naysayers to task for calling Penny Arcade out for using Kickstarter when they are an established business. I don't think critics, dissenters or haters had much to do with it though: this sort of negativity can't really obstruct a project like this - in the proven capacity of negative press to drive attention it might actually help. No, the real enemy of a fundraising model like Kickstarter is not hate but indifference. Penny Arcade's Kickstarter failed to capture imagination. Most coverage of it was pretty much "well those guys are doing this thing". How did the paradigm-busting little business that could fail so thoroughly to sell this paradigm shift?
Problem #1: A truly poorly-executed initial pitch.
The introductory video to the Kickstarter is literally terrible. It is intrinsically poorly constructed and it also really showcases the fundamental weaknesses of the pitch. The first minute or so involves strip creators Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik ruminating about the early days when they ran the strip on donations. Holkins opines that this was the "best period" of Penny Arcade history. His only explanation for what made it best though is that it was "pure". I'll come back to that.
Suffice to say for now that what I think remarkable here is that the whole substance of the pitch is delivered at this point - no ads, run the site on donations, this will make it as it was before, which was the best time, because it was pure.
What follows is the real downfall of the video. The pair go to ask PA business mastermind Robert Khoo how much they need to raise to attain the add-free site. His answer is a million dollars. This leads into a grim, protracted schtick as the pair tear around the office ranting about the costs their employees incur by eating, owning personal mementos, etc. This goes on for 4 interminable, painfully un-funny minutes, running the joke into the ground in a manner that would make a Saturday Night Live writer proud. This is almost 2/3rds of the video's already overlong 6:46 runtime. During those four minutes literally nothing about the project is communicated. No argument is made for its value. It is literally just the one joke, a joke with scarcely any relevance to the narrative of the project (the only messaging with any value, basically that it costs a lot of money to run a business, has problems in itself that I'll get into later).
Through the entire video not one image from the comics is displayed: the pitch literally never shows you what you're supposed to be paying for. At the end it abruptly switches gears again to the ruminative Holkins and Krahulik. Holkins sums up the pitch once more: "no ads... a direct relationship with the reader... a return to a glorious golden age." "We should at least ask them if it's something they want to do," Krahulik suggests.
And here's the last funny thing about the video: they never ask. They never actually address the potential funder. Now you can say this is splitting hairs, that the ask is right there in the subsequent text but I think there is a significance to this.
Contrast this to the excellent pitch video for Double Fine Adventure. It's four minutes long, almost three minutes less than PA's. It is consistently funny with verbal and visual gags throughout - and yet it is conveying information and persuasion every minute. In the first minute there is the funny sight gag of Tim Schafer on the drums, followed by a very effective set-up, a funny but affectingly nostalgic appeal to the value of the point-and-click adventure genre, backed by concept art from games like Grim Fandango that simultaneously communicate nostalgia but also Schafer's solid cred as a game developer. The essence of the pitch is solidified by the quick schtick where a "random gamer" wants to give Schafer money for one of these games. One gamer's money isn't enough - but what if a whole bunch of gamers could do the same thing? The why of the Kickstarter thus presented is simple and direct. By midway Schafer has communicated two solid, unambiguous rewards - the game itself and a documentary that will provide a unique insight into game design. The potential funder is being invited to be involved in the development process in a real way. Other sight gags like the sequence where Schafer is irritated by an overly twitchy "point and click" interface trying to pick up his own cup reiterates what the pitch is about. It's about those great old games you're nostalgic about, warts and all.
Next I'll get into what I think is problematical about what Penny Arcade actually tried to sell with their Kickstarter; in a third chapter I'll discuss issues I saw in the mechanics of their project, and finally I'll talk about problems I see the partially successful project presenting them over the course of the year, and what might follow in years to come.
It seems unlikely it will get as far as the $525K goal, what an honest person might call a real primary goal, the elimination of advertisement from the front page. Denigrating someone for raising a mere half million on Kickstarter might reasonably be construed as sour grapes. But I really believe there's no honest assessment that wouldn't call the project a substantial failure, with the better part of a million dollars' worth of aspirations left on the table and three quarters of the stretch goals unmet (with a full tier not even unlocked).
I've been thinking a lot about how the project stumbled. I just listened to this older Wired Game|Life Podcast (relevant discussion starts at 3135/4338) that took naysayers to task for calling Penny Arcade out for using Kickstarter when they are an established business. I don't think critics, dissenters or haters had much to do with it though: this sort of negativity can't really obstruct a project like this - in the proven capacity of negative press to drive attention it might actually help. No, the real enemy of a fundraising model like Kickstarter is not hate but indifference. Penny Arcade's Kickstarter failed to capture imagination. Most coverage of it was pretty much "well those guys are doing this thing". How did the paradigm-busting little business that could fail so thoroughly to sell this paradigm shift?
Problem #1: A truly poorly-executed initial pitch.
The introductory video to the Kickstarter is literally terrible. It is intrinsically poorly constructed and it also really showcases the fundamental weaknesses of the pitch. The first minute or so involves strip creators Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik ruminating about the early days when they ran the strip on donations. Holkins opines that this was the "best period" of Penny Arcade history. His only explanation for what made it best though is that it was "pure". I'll come back to that.
Suffice to say for now that what I think remarkable here is that the whole substance of the pitch is delivered at this point - no ads, run the site on donations, this will make it as it was before, which was the best time, because it was pure.
What follows is the real downfall of the video. The pair go to ask PA business mastermind Robert Khoo how much they need to raise to attain the add-free site. His answer is a million dollars. This leads into a grim, protracted schtick as the pair tear around the office ranting about the costs their employees incur by eating, owning personal mementos, etc. This goes on for 4 interminable, painfully un-funny minutes, running the joke into the ground in a manner that would make a Saturday Night Live writer proud. This is almost 2/3rds of the video's already overlong 6:46 runtime. During those four minutes literally nothing about the project is communicated. No argument is made for its value. It is literally just the one joke, a joke with scarcely any relevance to the narrative of the project (the only messaging with any value, basically that it costs a lot of money to run a business, has problems in itself that I'll get into later).
Through the entire video not one image from the comics is displayed: the pitch literally never shows you what you're supposed to be paying for. At the end it abruptly switches gears again to the ruminative Holkins and Krahulik. Holkins sums up the pitch once more: "no ads... a direct relationship with the reader... a return to a glorious golden age." "We should at least ask them if it's something they want to do," Krahulik suggests.
And here's the last funny thing about the video: they never ask. They never actually address the potential funder. Now you can say this is splitting hairs, that the ask is right there in the subsequent text but I think there is a significance to this.
Contrast this to the excellent pitch video for Double Fine Adventure. It's four minutes long, almost three minutes less than PA's. It is consistently funny with verbal and visual gags throughout - and yet it is conveying information and persuasion every minute. In the first minute there is the funny sight gag of Tim Schafer on the drums, followed by a very effective set-up, a funny but affectingly nostalgic appeal to the value of the point-and-click adventure genre, backed by concept art from games like Grim Fandango that simultaneously communicate nostalgia but also Schafer's solid cred as a game developer. The essence of the pitch is solidified by the quick schtick where a "random gamer" wants to give Schafer money for one of these games. One gamer's money isn't enough - but what if a whole bunch of gamers could do the same thing? The why of the Kickstarter thus presented is simple and direct. By midway Schafer has communicated two solid, unambiguous rewards - the game itself and a documentary that will provide a unique insight into game design. The potential funder is being invited to be involved in the development process in a real way. Other sight gags like the sequence where Schafer is irritated by an overly twitchy "point and click" interface trying to pick up his own cup reiterates what the pitch is about. It's about those great old games you're nostalgic about, warts and all.
Next I'll get into what I think is problematical about what Penny Arcade actually tried to sell with their Kickstarter; in a third chapter I'll discuss issues I saw in the mechanics of their project, and finally I'll talk about problems I see the partially successful project presenting them over the course of the year, and what might follow in years to come.
Friday, August 03, 2012
I took a quick look at the seedy underbelly of internet marketeering and now I feel icky
One of the embarrassments of modern culture is the way that the websites of mainstream news franchises are framed in the worst sort of monetizing web-vomit, full-surround adver-frames, auto-playing videos with hard-to-find mute buttons, and pop-up rollovers. Much of it the worst sort of "astronaut mom discovered this weird trick to enhance cheekbones" sort of hack snake oil. Sometimes they even advertise group-ons though thankfully that whole business seems to be on the wane.
So I was reading a stupid crime story on CBS MN Local and noticed a new low. Two columns: the left-hand column reads "we recommend" and has a list of other stories on the CBS news site. The right-hand column, headed in the same font in the same color followed by a list of links in the same font in the same color says "more from around the web". So I look more closely at this thing because the links from "around the web" look a little fishy. The only designation is a little bitty bracketed link that says [what's this]. What "this" is is Outbrain, which professes to be in the business of "helping readers discover interesting content". However what would seem to me to be the more relevant statement is "
Click here to learn how some of the foremost experts in the world recommend you position yourself for the uncertain time ahead." Wanna hear the small print? "Nothing published by Money Morning should be considered personalized investment advice." Truer words, kids. Newsmax World's article seems to be hawking a book, and though the article is dated July 7, 2012 I swear I have been stumbling over this exact think for years. Predictably the Newsmax site is heavily garlanded with a variety of advertisements brought to you by being an old white guy and general conservative hysteria. It also has Sponsored Links from, you guessed it, "Around the Web". Different "around the web" though, several degrees of class below Outbrain. Representative example: "Wife Finds Her Husbands Cure for ED." Is it... sponsored links?
So I was reading a stupid crime story on CBS MN Local and noticed a new low. Two columns: the left-hand column reads "we recommend" and has a list of other stories on the CBS news site. The right-hand column, headed in the same font in the same color followed by a list of links in the same font in the same color says "more from around the web". So I look more closely at this thing because the links from "around the web" look a little fishy. The only designation is a little bitty bracketed link that says [what's this]. What "this" is is Outbrain, which professes to be in the business of "helping readers discover interesting content". However what would seem to me to be the more relevant statement is "
Click here to learn how some of the foremost experts in the world recommend you position yourself for the uncertain time ahead." Wanna hear the small print? "Nothing published by Money Morning should be considered personalized investment advice." Truer words, kids. Newsmax World's article seems to be hawking a book, and though the article is dated July 7, 2012 I swear I have been stumbling over this exact think for years. Predictably the Newsmax site is heavily garlanded with a variety of advertisements brought to you by being an old white guy and general conservative hysteria. It also has Sponsored Links from, you guessed it, "Around the Web". Different "around the web" though, several degrees of class below Outbrain. Representative example: "Wife Finds Her Husbands Cure for ED." Is it... sponsored links?
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