
9 Year-Old Raising Money to Attend RPG Camp - triptych
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/susanwilson/9-year-old-building-an-rpg-to-prove-her-brothers-w
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joonix
Looks like a free advertising stunt for RPG Maker. I'm very weary of this.

This paragraph:

 _I play games on my computer, PS3 and KindleHD all the time and it's fun but
I REALLY WANT to create my own games to play. Ultimately I want to learn to
program really cool stuff, but since I'm 9 I'm starting with RPG Maker because
it lets me create something awesome without having to know how to actually
program everything. I'll learn to program more as I get older, but right now,
RPG Maker's drag & drop functionality makes it pretty easy for me to create
working RPG games quickly._

Kids don't talk like that. They don't announce their limitations and justify
them with their age (since I'm 9...). The rest of the paragraph is almost
insulting and straight out of a lame commercial. And there is a big RPG Maker
screenshot just below this.

Millions of middle-class suburban kids go to summer camps that cost $1,000+
every year and their parents don't petition the internet for the tuition. This
family doesn't seem poor. I think they could come up with it without posting
an ad on Kickstarter for RPG Maker.

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primigenus
Look at it like this: if the Kickstarter campaign gets attention in the media,
Mackenzie and her mom (or Susan and her daughter, depending on how you want to
look at it) have successfully brought positive attention to the case of
videogames and computer programming for girls. Something in me, perhaps a
naive, optimistic part, tells me that's a good thing. Regardless of whatever
their motives for doing this are.

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alaskamiller
The experienced cynical part of me thinks that not being skeptical about
things like this makes things worse.

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madsushi
I hate it when an adult writes content as if they were their child. It's
pretty obvious that this is being written and organized entirely by the mom,
and I'm guessing the kid has minimal involvement besides wanting to go to camp
and wanting to make a video game. It's great that the kid wants to make games,
but having the mom "pretending" to be the kid just rubs me the wrong way.

~~~
tjbiddle
I can see where you're coming from - it does sound weird. If it makes you feel
more comfortable you can think of it as if the daughter spoke of what she
wanted to say, and the Mom cleaned up the grammar.

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Smudge
While this project technically adheres to this policy:

> Everything on Kickstarter must be a project. A project has a clear goal,
> like making an album, a book, or a work of art. A project will eventually be
> completed, and something will be produced by it.

IMO, it veers far too close to this policy:

> Kickstarter does not allow charity, cause, or "fund my life" projects.

Of course, there is plenty of good to be found in causes like this, but in
this case I fear that Mackenzie (and kids like her) will learn the wrong
lesson.

I mean, she is essentially asking for a hand-out to pay for summer camp. And
probably a new laptop (based on the "where's the money going?" section). I
don't exactly see that as "proving her brothers wrong," and it kind of leaves
a bad taste in my mouth.

~~~
jgerman
You're correct. This project has a nominal goal and plan.

I'll be surprised if Kickstarter doesn't pull it.

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redact207
How is this a Kickstarter project? Not only is this not the writing of the 9
year old daughter as echoed by the comments here, but if your kid wants to go
do something like this then it's up to the parents to make it happen. And not
through handouts.

And if it comes down to affordability - there's plenty of resources on the
internet that will teach you this stuff anyway for free that someone who's
actually motivated would indulge in. You can build an RPG without the holiday,
which would ultimately be better anyway as self-guided learning is an
important skill for any developer.

So please don't abuse kickstarter. Do go out and make full use of Google and
the developer community who'll be more than happy to offer guidance for your
daughter.

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jgerman
I don't buy it at all.

The text was clearly written by the mother, a self described entrepreneur.

I find it very hard to believe that this woman:

<http://www.linkedin.com/in/susanawilson>

Didn't come up with this as a scheme to make money, or that she couldn't
afford to send her daughter to an $800 camp.

It smacks of a stunt to grab money. Anyone with any familiarity with
kickstarter knows damn well that it's a lottery where some projects get vastly
overfunded. What better way to make that happen than to make an emotional
appeal to get people to give their money away. This is begging plain and
simple.

~~~
joshdotsmith
Not only is she an entrepreneur, but was supposedly one of Fortune's "Most
Powerful Women Entrepreneurs." I'm guessing Kickstarter is definitely
superfluous here, and it's a PR stunt. Pretty sad to see when I initially got
really excited.

~~~
drharris
What better way to teach her daughter entrepreneurship than show her how to
beg for money?

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Fargren
How come her rogue has 16 int and a +5 modifier? This smells fishy. She also
added her whole ability score instead of her ability modifier to her saves. I
don't know if I can't trust her with my money if she can't fill a character
sheet properly.

(Mackenzie , if you read this, I'm just joking. But as your kickstarter shows,
you know exactly the best way to take a joke)

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Paul_S
She's not exactly a struggling mother who needs the money to make her child's
dream come true. She could probably stretch to a laptop or even a 100 of them.
Is this meant to be educational? For whom?

There are quite a few projects by people who do actually need the money to
have a chance for their dreams to come true.

~~~
Mahn
Well, some people just like money. I don't think you'll be able to find
another justification sadly. Not sure how come she raised 7k.

~~~
pstack
$20k.

And still no meaningful update: Re, a video proving these are real people and
not some guy in his basement using images he found on google. Also no
discussion whatsoever as to what they intend to do with the additional funding
(with physical goods, the funding would generally scale up with the cost while
in other projects, the greater funding generally allows for a scaled-up
project. I don't expect that's reasonable for a 9 year old who has never
programmed or designed a thing, so I'm really interested to find what will be
done with the extra $19k and how it will adhere to Kickstarter's policies).

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starpilot
_Don't sell them a product; sell them a story._

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Mahn
Mother doesn't need the money, kid doesn't need it either, text written by her
mother pretending to be her... This is a downright scam.

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draker
The point I find interesting is that FundHer.com (the mother's company/cause)
is the website on the campaign and not one specifically for Mackenzie's
project.

I looked at the website and the about page has the following, "Pioneering
entrepreneur scholarships, FundHer is raising $1 million via crowdfunding."

> <http://www.fundher.com/#!about/aboutPage>

~~~
joshdotsmith
Yeah, the mom is the founder of a company about crowdfunding for female
entrepreneurs. And she was one of Fortune's "Most Powerful Women
Entrepreneurs." Why does she need help buying her daughter a laptop?

Sorry to be so cynical, but this looks super sketchy.

~~~
chii
I have this reserved feeling about kickstarter - if only kickstarter can give
out equity in the venture, instead of just act like a pre-order system where
the customer takes on all the risks, but only get the merchandise, while the
owner of the business reaps the reward(profits) if the risks don't pan out,
but suffers nothing if the venture fails.

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Uncompetative
THE GAME (that's what she is calling it) already has a release date of July
2013 despite there being no evidence of her having written a game before...

Without appearing cynical, can I ask why there is a $10000 pledge band?

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princess3000
She's going to RPG camp and they finish the game during the camp session.

The 10k reward level seems more humorous than an actual attempt to get someone
to pledge 10k. I'm doing a kickstarter soon and we have the exact same thing,
a huge reward level with a somewhat comedic prize attached.

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alan_cx
Oh, thank the gods. I clicked to comment, thinking I was about to be a right
cynical git, and well, turns out, I'm not alone!!!!

Nice scam though. $7k already. I have to respect that, grudgingly.

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canibanoglu
I would love it if this were real but I have this nagging feeling in me that
tells me that this is just an attempt to exploit the romantics in us... I do
hope it really is a kid trying to raise money to create a game.

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baby
There's something very awkward about all this. People criticizing this here,
people who will criticize the game (expectations). The huge amount of money
raised for her age (she really shouldn't have got that much money). The text
written by her mother...

~~~
NZ_Matt
Also the very professional looking video.

I'm all for getting 9 year olds into coding but I would've liked to have seen
any funds raised above the target go towards paying for other kids to attend
the camp.

~~~
jgerman
Yes, there are certainly better ways to spend money if your goal is to educate
kids than to throw thousands at one kid.

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Jun8
This is absolutely _fantastic_. I don't know if she'll succeed in building the
game or not but just having the motivation at such an early age is awesome.

A question: "In case it's not already clear, I'm not a girlie girl." Assuming
mom did not put this in, it's sad, but of course very common, to see the
dichotomy "girlie girl"/"techie girl". And this has little to do with gender
either, we also have "nerd"/"jock". Why do people like Elle Woods exist only
in fiction?

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nicolethenerd
We totally exist in real life. My e-mail address as a kid was
programmingprincess. ^_^ I no longer wear so much pink, but I still happily
occupy both sides of the "girlie girl"/"techie girl" divide - and in fact,
I've found that most women in tech I know don't fall under the socially
awkward/fugly/geeky stereotype... if I sat a bunch of women from my office
down in a room and you had to pick out the developers from say, the designers,
QA, PMs, HR folk, etc - I'm not sure if you could. I think this dichotomy is
enforced more by the media than it is by real life.

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nicolethenerd
I'm all for girls learning how to program, but the negativity in this campaign
is rubbing me the wrong way. There's male-bashing - her brothers are "mean"
and "brats", and woman-shaming (the photos of the "gold diggers" - perhaps not
a life choice I would make, but if both parties are happy, who am I to judge?)
- if the point of this kickstarter is really to empower women (well, one
woman), do we really need to point judgy fingers at other women and bring them
down? There's a million amazing reasons for girls today to learn to code
besides "if you don't, you'll have to marry some old fart for his money." Why
couldn't they have highlighted some of those? ugh

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dhruvmittal
This was perhaps one of the most adorable and inspiring thing I've read. I'm
really happy it succeeded.

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ChuckMcM
So I'm guessing she's getting camp all summer and a new Retina Macbook Pro to
code on :-)

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hackernewbie
Dungeon's and Dragons. Who wants that for their child?

Plus this has all the gloss of pushy pushy parents.

~~~
NateDad
I really hope my daughter gets into D&D, thankyouverymuch.

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smoyer
I woke up this morning and it looks like Kensie's got summer camp, a laptop
and a reasonably nice used car.

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ivan_ah
No pressure. No pressure at all. There is now just the whole Internet watching
this little girl and layering creative interpretations.

I for one am for the interpretation that this is not a money scam, or a
publicity stunt, but a parent who wanted to do a fun activity with their kid
and it happens to be on kickstarter.

@jgerman said > This project has a nominal [...] I'll be surprised if
Kickstarter doesn't pull it.

I think the project goal is clear. Make an RPG game that a 6-10yr old will
understand. Think of it as a kickstarter summer of code project.

Perhaps the more interesting thing to notice here is that kids are orders of
magnitude smarter than we were at their age in terms of technology use. They
have vast amounts of information available to them. They are also exposed to a
lot of noise through this technology too. Will the signal win out leading to a
generation of superhackers? Or will the noise win leading to a generation of
real-world-anti-social beings forever stuck staring at the social pixels?

~~~
pstack
If they're so technologically advanced in 2013, why do they need mom to help
them get funding to go attend a camp where they are taught how to do something
that they can learn freely online? Kids with none of these resources learned
on their own against all sorts of adversity and lack of resources in the 80s
and 90s. If you really have a passion to do something -- do it. You don't need
a camp or an instructor or a mentor to guide you through it. You just do it,
because it becomes a constant obsession.

I don't think this kickstarter is a scam (though it is certainly presented
like one -- scammy projects usually don't have video of the people behind it
and keep promising things that are never delivered, which goes for this one
too since the mom keeps promising a video to show that they're real people and
not some guy in his basement using google images of some lady and little kid
for his scam).

I just think that it's a little unnecessary and is becoming really ridiculous
and I'm tired of seeing stuff from parents all over the place posting things
like "my kid wants to be a game developer, how do I get them started?". If
your kid REALLY wants to do something like that, they aren't going to come to
you and ask you to help them. They're going to get online and start googling,
reading forums, reading books, downloading free programs and learning to code
or design games on their own. If kids could do this in the 80s and 90s, they
can do it today.

As for a publicity stunt? I don't know. It sure smells like a stunt for her
mom's "give women money to do whatever" website. She'll go on from this
project to claim herself an expert in crowd-funding and women's issues. She'll
write a book. Become a consultant. Popularize her website. Give a few
interviews.

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ChuckMcM
Interesting that its over $20K today (Mar 23) which was the target of the
original Kickstarter the Mom did. That provides an interesting insight into
the motivations behind backers.

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nvr219
This is really cute and awesome and why does anybody care how a 9 year old's
mom wrote ad copy for her? It's still a 9 year old going to nerd camp which is
great.

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jkrems
In the light of the ugliness of the last 24 hours, this couldn't have come at
a better time.

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joezhou
F all the skepticisms, I'd rather take the chance. A 9 year old girl wants to
learn to code… you definitely have my support! Way to go!

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HiroProtaganist
awesome.

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escaped_hn
Now this is how you get girls interested in technology and programming. Not
posting pics on twitter.

~~~
xkcdfanboy
Getting huge amounts of money from an online campaign rather than working for
it via contract work? Seems like a way to spoil a child.

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bradhe
wait...wat?

