
Penny Arcade Sells Out - gilrain
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/575109064/penny-arcade-sells-out
======
_delirium
This is interesting territory for Kickstarter. They've been clear throughout
that they'd like to fund specific, time-limited projects, e.g. someone
producing a book, and _don't_ allow general fundraising to operate a business,
e.g. raising funds to pay a year of salaries and rent for an ongoing business.

There's a way you can squint and call this a specific project, a time-limited
"remove ads from PA for a year" experiment. But it sure looks like it's
getting close to that raise-general-funds line that Kickstarter claims to not
want to cross. In particular, the "costs" of the project that are being funded
are entirely notional opportunity costs (foregone revenue), not actual
expenses, whereas KS claims to be oriented towards raising funds for actual
expenses that are needed to complete projects.

I doubt they'll pull this particular one, even if they determine it does
violate their ToS, because PA is too high-profile (and, perhaps, because PA
has fans known for being somewhat vindictive). But it seems like they'll have
to either do something to prevent more of these kinds of Kickstarters going
forward, or else just drop that language in the ToS and agree that anyone can
use KS to raise a year of operating funds for their business.

~~~
repsilat
> I doubt they'll pull this particular one

As I understand the process, applications on Kickstarter go through a
screening period that can take weeks. You're right that this "project" is on
the borderline of the site's intended use, but I think if they didn't judge it
appropriate we'd never have even known it existed.

~~~
jdlshore
"Takes weeks" seems high. As a data point, my May Kickstarter submission was
approved after 27 hours.

But your point is true--Kickstarter almost certainly approved this project
before it launched.

------
ars
Looks like the arts patronage is back.

People often ask what there could be instead of copyright, and patronage is
one of the options.

Besides targeted donations like this, you could have a general fund
(restricted geographically, or worldwide), and pay a portion of it out based
on viewership.

Anyone who donated anything at all to the fund gets to go to the
performance/movie/play/circus, etc. They count how many viewers they had, then
they get a proportional amount.

In exchange they don't claim copyright, only moral rights.

To encourage donations people above certain funding levels get extras, like
backstage visits, lunches, public thanks, etc.

~~~
michaelt
So under the pay-proportional-to-viewship model, artist A runs an intimate
orchestral music performance and 10 people donate $100 each (because hey,
orchestras are expensive to run); and artist B runs a punk performance in a
warehouse where 1000 people pay £1 each. Under your model, the punk performers
would make $1980 and the classical performers would make $20 - right?

~~~
ars
Under this model yes, but no one said this was the only possible model. It's
an idea, not a fully fleshed out proposal.

First, people can give directed donations if they like.

There would be multiple funds, so presumably the funds would differentiate
based on genre. And people would sign up for the funds that have the type of
entertainment and art (or even lectures) they prefer.

Everything here is completely voluntary. The funds would act as agents, and
advertisers.

A fund would attract a performer based on how good a job the fund does on
getting that performer an audience. A performer would attract a fund based on
how happy people are with the performer. People would sign up with a fund
based on the quality of the performers.

So if a performer is not happy with his cut of the donations they would find a
different fund. If a fund is not happy with how many people are donating they
would try to find better performers. And if the donors are not happy with the
types of shows they would find a different fund.

So the incentives are all aligned properly. (As long as people are actually
willing to donate.)

It would probably require some fine tuning to get it right. In particular
there is a strong network effect, and positive feedback (the larger you are
the larger you get), so this will have to be toned down somehow.

This is sort of like a subscription model, but for live events. This could of
course be done while maintaining copyright, but the whole idea is to find an
alternative to that.

~~~
thalur
It seems to me that you have introduced an unnecessary third party to the
problem (the agent) that holds the same power and position as the current
problem party in the copyright arena (the publisher/label). The interesting
development in recent years has been the removal of this party from the
equation (self-pub ebooks, kickstarter etc.) so it would be a shame to bring
it back.

~~~
ars
I would solve that by either not allowing exclusive contracts (so a contract
is only for a specific performance) or by limiting all contracts to a maximum
of one year.

I would also legislate that all agents get the same percent of the donations
as fees. Not sure how much, but under %25. By not having to negotiate this
part of the contact agents would be motived to compete on quality - things
like how often they would advertise, how good the venues they could get, etc.

------
ChuckMcM
Interesting take on the crowd funding issue.

I expect to see more of these sorts of creative things. Advertising debt is
annoying. And sadly people like PA with their 2 ads get nailed because people
have been so massively inundated with ads all day that even one more is
painful.

Another experiment they haven't tried, but would be good to run, would be to
make the site subscriber only with the long tail free. So imagine a site where
if you subscribed it was ad free and every few days you got a new comic. There
is the 'free' site which is content that is a year old and has advertising on
it, and there is a totally free site which has the two years old or later and
its got no ads on it.

Of course its not as useful for topical content but its an interesting
experiment.

~~~
Zimahl
Unfortunately for PA, their content is probably 90% games/pop culture topical.
After a month it'd be completely stale and irrelevant (with exceptions of
course).

I think the better move would be to have pay users not have to see any ads.
Simple web re-design to remove that for pay users, otherwise free users still
have to look at the ads. There are a ton of sites that do this and are quite
successful.

~~~
Jach
What's a site that _only_ offers "no ads" as their paid-upgrade benefit? I
haven't seen one offer just that, it usually comes with a grab-bag of other
features that can't be replaced with a client-side script/extension.
(DeviantArt's premium account is the upgrade I thought of.
(<http://sta.sh/047k5sokcr2>) The two major client-side features of no ads and
more thumbnails are solved with NoScript and AutoPager respectively.)

~~~
Zimahl
Off the top of my head, Wowhead offers an ad-free version for premium
customers. I guess you also get custom forum avatars for being a premium
customer.

The point is, free site that is ad-supported but those go away with a
membership - whether you get extras or not.

------
vacri
What's wrong with the lwn model of subscription? Don't subscribe and you get
info a week old (lwn is a 'current affairs' site like PA is, hence time-
dependent), subscribe a small amount and get your benefits.

<https://lwn.net/subscribe/Info>

The kickstarter thing for a year's business costs are basically an old-
fashioned subscription drive - who wants to see brand-name websites doing this
every year? Welcome to a new form of spam.

------
Zimahl
I enjoy Penny Arcade. That said, it seems like an awful lot of money for an
ad-free website.

Aren't they making enough off of merchandise, their expo, their games, etc.,
to make the site ad free? From what I understand they are wildly successful
(monetarily as well as publicly) so why do they need the public to literally
give them money?

~~~
portmanteaufu
From the FAQ:

Advertising paid for rent, wages, health insurance, utilities, all the normal
stuff that you pay for when you have fourteen souls working together. That
money keeps the lights on while we do the things people expect from us: thrice
weekly content drops, two annual shows, the scholarships, Child's Play, etc.

~~~
Zimahl
> two annual shows, the scholarships, Child's Play

The shows make money, otherwise they wouldn't do them. By most accounts they
make _a lot_ of money. PAX Prime 2011 had 70k attendees (according to
Wikipedia) and at $65 a pop that's a hefty (~$4.5 million) in revenue not to
mention what exhibitors pay (which can't be cheap for the target audience).
They make more than enough money off of this to go ad free.

The scholarships are their problem, the comic reader gets nothing out of those
except warm fuzzies.

Child's Play should be able to maintain itself on low overhead and a non-
profit status. It should cost them a minimal amount of money and any it does
the company can directly write off.

~~~
gerts
Raise the price of a PAX ticket $15 to take a bite out of the scalpers, and
boom, $1 million.

------
wkdown
For $500, they will retweet one of your tweets "within reason".

Wow, put me down for TWO!

~~~
gfosco
The rewards are totally lame, and insanely priced. I love the comic, and
really it's not worth a dollar of mine to remove the ads I don't even look at.
The Kickstarter goal doesn't even remove the ad from the Comic page.

~~~
jerf
You aren't really paying to remove the ads.

There's a couple of comics I'd like to see on Kickstarter this way, because I
wouldn't mind tossing them some bucks, but all they have are merchandise
(which I've already bought) and PayPal links. Sorry, no, no PayPal. I wouldn't
really care about the rewards, I've already received them.

~~~
girasquid
I'm curious: why no PayPal? Unless I'm misreading your tone it sounds like
you're pretty adamant about NOT supporting a comic through PayPal. Why?

~~~
jerf
I'm not interested in using PayPal again, and my desire to support the comics
does not rise past that threshold. Wouldn't call myself "adamant" about
either, but I definitely do not wish to use PayPal.

~~~
girasquid
Fair enough - I appreciate the explanation. Thanks.

------
kalleboo
I really _really_ wish the flattr model would take off for stuff like this.
Each and every site having a huge fundraiser once a year like this seems
unsustainable.

~~~
stephengillie
It works for public television.

~~~
mortenjorck
It works because you have only one public television organization in your
town.

~~~
mchanson
There are many listener supported radio stations in single markets. e.g. WBUR,
WGBH, and WBAI in Boston.

------
drucken
How is this a "project"? This sounds like crowdfunding on-going business
costs.

------
lnanek2
Weird, I never minded the ads on PennyArcade. They were usually cool games or
at least gaming related merch. It was clear they didn't let just anything on
there...

------
thatusertwo
An internet without ads would be amazing.

~~~
adventureful
A $45 billion kickstarter for 2013 should do the trick for the US market.

~~~
ben0x539
I'll link you to adblock for $44 billion and 50 cent.

In fact, let me write up a kickstarter proposal.

~~~
eupharis
I lol'ed ;)

But in seriousness, an internet without ads is about way more than just not
seeing banner ads. Penny Arcade puts it very well:

"Not having ads would create a chain reaction that would lead to a bunch of
other interesting stuff. Without the almighty 'pageview' to consider, why not
populate the RSS with full comics and posts? Why not enable and even encourage
apps, first and third party, for people to read it however they damn well
please?"

~~~
ben0x539
I recognize that and I think it's an interesting question (and translates well
to all the "twitter is screwing its app ecosystem again" drama), but the way
Penny Arcade are going at it is a kickstarter project where they're
effectively selling the privilege of not seeing ads for $250k a year. There is
competition for that niche, and I think PA would have done well to actually
over a product for what they're asking.

~~~
intended
The penny arcade guys aren't exactly here as business men. Hack when they
finally got someone on board to mange their site he was shocked that they
nearly got bought twice, and that they still barely had an idea of how their
income worked.

I think they are appealing to their community, and people who find stuff like
child's play, pax and the rest to be great.

------
zachinglis
Honestly, those I know who read PA don't find it annoying. Those who do, have
an AdBlocker.

(While I am anti-AdBlocking software, that is a conversation for another
time.)

------
javert
Somebody really needs to make a startup where, when you visit a page, you can
either view ads, or opt out by paying a really teeny tiny amount of money.
(And where you can set it to "always opt out and just pay for my damned
content.")

Problem? You can't really charge people tiny fractions of a cent effectively.
Solution? Bit... wait for it... coin.

~~~
oinksoft
Does that then make somebody with an ad blocker a thief? Because I don't like
the sound of that at all.

~~~
alttab
These days you could simply cover the right side of your monitor with a small
piece of cardboard and never see ads again. OR - simply don't look. A part of
me thinks non-adword based advertising is going to implode because we are
creating a generation of internet users that have been trained through high-
use to simply ignore ads.

~~~
kaybe
A solution (e.g. used in newspapers) is to make the ads like normal content
(just saying "ad" above in fine print).

(On the other hand, I have trouble reading the webpage of a big electronics
store because their whole site looks like an obnoxious ad and is filtered by
my brain.. )

------
lifeguard
I love PA. I hate kickstarter because it is operated in a disorganized manner
so I feel like I have been bait & switched.

See comment by "Joseph P. - PLEDGE THIS. "

Penny Arcade's violations of Kickstarter guidelines:

1) This is for an open-ended project 2) The funding covers business expenses
3) The rewards are not produced by the creators

------
orenmazor
is that the Penny Arcade mailchimp.com password on the whiteboard at 3:10?

~~~
isnotchicago
Maybe it once was, but it is not the current password (tried a moment ago).

~~~
orenmazor
I'm not surprised. if I noticed it while snickering, I'm sure they noticed it
before posting and changed it back then. easier to do that than refilm.

~~~
lparry
I tried to log in with it too and got a "too many bad signins" error. I'd
assume people all over the place will be trying, even if it's not their
password they've effectively locked themselves out of that account for a while
from the stream of people trying. Should have refilmed or blurred it

------
Oxryly
Can anyone describe the types of people who bid+pay 5 and 10 thousand dollars
for these projects? I can't imagine devoting that much money to a playdate at
PAHQ or to hang out for the day with the designer of the OUYA. It doesn't seem
like real money at that point but I know these peoples' credit cards will be
charged. I don't get it...

~~~
runevault
Well one of the OUYA ones is Notch who's famous for liking to help projects he
finds interesting thanks to his own success from minecraft, so for him 10
grand to help something he likes isn't as crazy as for some of us.

And I'd assume anyone doing it for PA are hardcore fans who've loved the site
for years and have serious disposable income to hand.

------
el_don_almighty
I don't understand what is wrong with advertisement?

Nobody pays attention to them anyway, so WTF?

~~~
Semiapies
It takes time and effort _for them_ to keep on top of, as they _don't_ just
push any random ads. They'd rather use that time and effort on other things.

------
dunstenmoss
I already get it ad free - thanks to AdBlock.

~~~
jobu
Their site is one of the few where I disable AdBlock. First, it supports a
comic and a site which I love, and second I actually like their ads. They have
stated they play every game that is shown in an ad, and don't allow terrible
games or terrible ads for a game at any price.

~~~
morsch
Seems like the exact opposite of the standard practice in old-school
journalism of strictly separating editorial and advertising staff in order
minimize conflicts of interest.

The fact that they are seem eager to get rid of ads makes it seem like
worrying about these kinds of thing are at least a constant nuisance.

~~~
Woost
It read to me more like it was annoying for them. They want to get rid of ads
so they can quit spending time writing reports for advertisers/vetting ads,
and spend that time working on new content instead.

------
thechut
Uhhhh....Ad Block Plus anyone??

------
DanielOcean
I guess the people funding this project haven't heard of a free browser
extension called AdBlock Plus?

