Competition Codexian Wasteland 2 Location + Statue Fund-Raising Drive

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Ah, that's a damn shame.

I seriously hope kickstarter revises its fee schedule and tries to move to a payment processor that doesn't jew so much. 10% is just way too much of a cut when we're getting into multi-million dollar campaigns. 5 figure fees are just absurd as hell.

Well, Kickstarter ain't a charity. They're in it to make money. Wish I would have thought of it $$$$$$$$$$

Yeah, it's not a charity, but the fees add up to absurd amounts when we get into multi-million dollar kickstarters. I don't know if they ever thought the figures would reach what we see today.

$50,000 from $1,000,000 is ridiculous. Then another $50,000 from Amazon payments.

At the very least Kickstarter needs to reduce their take with very high campaigns. They should look into having their own payment processor with lower/no extra fee; eliminate the Amazon middle man.

The reality is, if they do not adjust their rates to something that people consider more reasonable (on the bigger projects), there will almost certainly be a competitor or other campaign that will arise to undercut those fees and take a large amount of what they would otherwise earn in the longer term. They don't want that to happen.

I'm not so sure about that Excommunicator. Word on the street is that Kickstarter wants to file a number of patents. Probably to discourage competition and continue on their way to become a monopoly. They tried to get an existing patent invalidated last year, probably with the plan in mind to file a similar one themselves

And even if that plan falls through (which it probably will), the thing about Kickstarter is that they got PR momentum going for them right now and had some high profile projects in the past on their site.
If you were to start a project today, would you choose Kickstarter with a high exposure rate and 10% fees (Site + money transaction) or one of the competitors like Indiegogo where it's "only" 4% for the site + paypal fees / credit card processing fees (which are quite high as well. Depending on the country and currency conversion fees you are looking at 3 to 4 percent average), but with a much lower number of people that might potentially stumble upon your project and give you moneyz?

I think quantity outweighs percentage fees at the moment and probably will continue to do so further down the line. You'll always have to put up with the processing fees and even if other sites were to introduce a tiered fee like "we only take 10k if your project raises over X amount of money, 20k for X amount of money etc." at the end of the day it's all about which site can attract more potential customers. What I could see working are more specialized platforms like ArtistShare that focus on a niche of products instead of the broad approach of Kickstarter. Like for example crowdfunding platforms that focus exclusively on one topic such as comics, videogames, clothing design etc. because the exposure there would be relatively higher when every single visitor is actually a potential buyer. Unlike Kickstarter or Indiegogo who focus on a variety of products.

And of course Kickstarter should be opening up to residents outside of the US soonish, or they'll have to face that same thing Facebook had to with local copycats, you know? One leading social networking site per region/country. Which have to be bought up slowly one by one

A 10% cut for virtually no work - and amazon doesn't even pay taxes or its workers and they still demand a 15$ fee to ship outside of North America - it's simply not acceptable and won't last.
I very much doubt they'll manage to keep competition down via patent monopoly. People have already mentioned the possibility of doing the whole thing in a non-profit way, and given the already communistic ideals behind the whole concept that may be a real threat. KS'll take the cut as long as they have the monopoly and as soon as competition arises they'll have to adapt to more sensible cuts.
But perhaps that's just my hate for bankers and amazon clouding my judgement...

I remember reading on the DFA kickstarter that Amazon only takes 2-3%, but the fees are still pretty high when you put them all together. At least the donations shouldn't be taxed.

Exactly. The game-backer audience they have recently attracted has only one shared trait: large companies have been ignoring their opinions and refusing to deliver to them what they want. There is just no way that these people will hang around with Kickstarter if they are offered a more cost-efficient alternative. On top of that, the real publicity spikes come from the developers making the projects, not Kickstarter itself.

Kickstarter is already being undercut for pocket money by inXile through them setting up the Paypal account which they even link to on their Kickstarter page. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Paypal makes an attempt on this market eventually. With the size they are already, they would crush Kickstarter.

Right now alternatives that cost less already do exist. For example by going with indiegogo, which I mentioned in my earlier post, a project could save up to 30% (they charge 7% fees all-in-all if you were start your project there, consisting of 4% - which is the site's take - plus 3% flat for processing fees). They even accept Paypal and you can opt for a fund raiser that pays out even if the funding goal isn't met (even though the site's fee increases significantly if decide to go with this option).
Despite cheaper alternatives and more features, the more ambitious game projects decided to "follow the leader" and go with Kickstarter, basically forsaking 30% of their potential funding money. Why do you think this is the case?

Another example from another line of business: Why do people keep using ebay when other websites offer cheaper fees?

True. But who in the gaming world has heard of and knows that Kickstarter exists by now? And how many heard of indiegogo?
To keep the ebay thing going: have you heard of ebay? If you did, what about WeBidz or AuctionFire?

Once someone settled in, it is becoming harder and harder for someone else to take over or even get a decent cut. This point has not been reached yet in this relatively new crowdfunding business, but Kickstarter certainly is on a good way.

I would say very few people know much of either. This whole situation is barely a few months old. Although I understand the point you are trying to make, it is a bad example. Ebay vs. Kickstarter. I'm not going to go into an analysis of how different these things are, you can work that out for yourself.

You are following a different line of logic anyway and it isn't actually relevant this early on. Backers don't choose the platform, the project starters do. There have been only 4 or so 1 mil+ projects and they have all occurred within the past 2 or so months. Everything is driven by the original hype still. Looking for alternative rates was probably not even a consideration. Let us not pretend that those who have participated in these high-flying kickstarts expected the successes they have had. Many probably had significant reservations about even reaching their targets.

Even with all of that aside, you are also assuming that "alternative" means only something that has lower rates, when it doesn't. No one said that there aren't any places which have lower rates, but they also don't have the same exposure yet, which is something that becomes a risk for the projects to take on when there is no proven market (again, barely a few months old). Eventually that uncertainty will be replaced with understandings about the size of the crowd-funded audiences and more healthy predictions of success, and when they act on that knowledge, they will make decisions that consider the economics better. It really isn't something they have the luxury of considering this early on.

If I didn't knew better I'd get the impression you're talking down to me

You don't have to go into an in-depth analysis of how Ebay and Kickstarter are different, because the lines were used to make a different point; or rather an analogy if you will. Which you seem to have at least partly grasped.

We might be looking at the rise of a whole new market and in my humble opinion there are no fitting comparisons possible as of yet.

Ebay started with an innovative idea and quickly became the best known and renown website in their field, a household name almost. After savvy business people realized you could actually earn big moneyz with this idea and idealists thought you shouldn't have to pay for such services at all, over time many copycats arose.
Yet by the time this happened it was already too late, the big evil guy owned the lionshare. Thanks to early exposure and clever marketing techniques, he later on could basically dictate above average fees while the consumers didn't bother to look at alternatives too closely. This happened and still happens for a broad variety of reasons such as being familiar with the site and don't wanting to leave familiar grounds to open up an account someplace else, don't knowing about the better fees/prices on other sites, ebay is the biggest and most renown, therefore I can trust them while you I don't know much about the copycats etc. and so forth.

While not all of this can be adapted to the Kickstarter model, there are quite the number of similarities I can spot. So I don't think ebay is the worst of all examples. But one could easily replace ebay with other business models, such as Amazon or Google. The point is more that there's a new (or in some other cases also reborn) business model introduced and during the initial gold rush phase a couple smaller dogs face one big mofo of a dog in a contest to come out top dog.

People already go to Kickstarter and look for interesting projects that deserve their money out of their own initiative. Many of the users (and also project starters) don't go to Kickstarter with the sole intend to specifically support one single project because they got lead there from somewhere else.
While this is true for most categories on the site, the Games category is somewhat standing out, thanks to the latest high roller projects where people actually heard for the first time about Kickstarter and became exposed to the concept for the first time. But the situation is slowly normalising and even the Developers seem to have recognized the general MO of most users before the influx of newblood, as you can see for example by the "Kicking it Forward" initiative which has been created by inXile (in case you haven't heard about this: participating projects promise to kick back 5% of their profits to other Kickstarter projects). In an effort to "give back", or as a marketing guy would see it to bond with the indigenous population of multi-project supporting Kickstarter inhabitants.

This are all troubling developments in my eyes because it cements Kickstarter's position on the market as top dog.

I've been involved with Kickstarter a bit before the super projects entered the circus. Perhaps that's why my line of logic differs from yours, still I'm not convinced mine's the wrong one.
The big projects with a lot of fans and PR momentum can choose the platform freely, yes. But a large portion of the Kickstarter Backers actually chose Kickstarter to be their platform of choice. And after the hype phase is over, the backers will be a much larger part in the equation which platform to choose for project starters. In turn limiting viable options to project starters. Can you see where I'm going with this?

If for example the Wasteland 2 project would have been posted on another funding site, I have no doubts whatsoever that it would have reached it's funding goal without problems as well. Yet the project appeared on Kickstarter. As did The Banner Saga and that ominous Hardcore Tactical Shooter.

Do you think with what is at stake the Developers did not took a minute before posting their projects to take a look at alternative routes? They probably were aware that there are other crowdfunding sites out there, yet they were so hyped by that single success story that they blindly jumped on the bandwagon, blissfully ignorant about other options open to them yelling "LETS JUST FUCKING DO IT, YEHAW!". Or perhaps it was a planed calculated risk move.

Doesn't really matter in the end, just time forward a couple months: There's so many projects out there (successful and non successful), it does not generate any significant media buzz as the first "pioneers" like Double Fine and Inxile did. Only the fanboys care at this point plus you got the occasional convert from news articles. Now you are facing even bigger problems.
You are a project starter. What do you think does it take to change your opinion on starting your project on Kickstarter?
When every high budget project so far went to Kickstarter and was successful, why start my project somewhere else? Wow, they charge 4% fees less. Yet I would probably get less exposure than on Kickstarter. Is it really worth it? Their userbase seems significantly bigger than crowdfunding site X. In the end I'll probably receive more than 4% higher funding on Kickstarter.

If the Kickstarter trend does not stop in the foreseeable future, further down the line there won't be a possibility to pose a realistic challenge to them. Kickstarter will just be the "go to solution" without any second looks at alternatives, for different reasons than in the initial hype phase you outline, but still with the same outcome.

The market is in the making right now, and Kickstarter is shaping up to become the ultimate "go to solution".
I took up the rate aspect specifically because it was mentioned by you. The exposure is another factor, which I took into account and actually tried to vocalize as well by using the Ebay/WeBidz analogy which as it seems, unfortunately has been misinterpreted by you. If the crowdsourcing business continues the way it seems to be heading right now, Kickstarter will become equivalent of what ebay is to the online auction market, or Amazon to the online retailer market, or Google to the search engine market (and I'm comparing positions on the market here, not business models).

The proper response would be to fling insults and vitriol my way. Instead you opted to cast wall of text on me to show me what-for

I don't really disagree with what you are saying, and I do agree that the tendency of these situations is to favour the "top dog" until it eventually becomes a monopoly. I just don't approve of that happening. I want this to become a valuable part of the industry for smaller-mid budget games and I want people to take steps now to prevent the monopoly from developing. I want other interested companies out there to see this opportunity and jump in early so we don't have to deal with the controlling power-monger types who are going to emerge to replace their like-minded publisher counterparts. The more influence they end up with, the more likely they will be to start putting their greedy hands on projects. Competition is what is needed, and I want to see that start with lower rates on bigger projects.

Sounds like a good plan, count me in and let's agree to agree

And now ITZ hugging time!

See kids? This is what happens when two diplomacy characters meet on the battlefield. Yep that's right: gay hugging action. How very disappointing for the viewers. Tune in next week when we pit a poetic emo kid with low self esteem and a short-tempered Internet warrior against one another!

Still requires "train tickets, bitch!"..., for the "hugging".

Has our prestigious donation been submitted yet? I keep wondering if I should mentally add 10K to the total displayed on kickstarter.

Waiting eagerly for our donation and Fargo's response

I have to admit that it's kind of disappointing to think that the grandest fund drive in Codex history will only scratch a dent on the total figure. Like, total amount goes from $1,580,000 to $1,590,000, somewhat insignificant in big picture and we go all smug about it.

You have to consider that most codexers have already given money through kickstarter and not everyone cares about the statue etc.
If the Codex fund drive was the only way for us to give money, it would have been significantly higher. Still, around 0,6% of the current world total, for a secondary bonus, is not that bad. Especially if you also take into account that most codexers don't happen to be the CEO of Razer or something.

Watchwitz has its own fund drive? LOL Codex-wannabes. How much did they raise?

$323 of coke and hookers, yeah!

That must have felt good. :brofists: to all!