Quote from: Spinachcat;1063521I'd also like anyone's thoughts on how Goodman Games and Sine Nomine do their Kickstarters in comparison to others. I've been backers for both, but I'd like to see other peoples' experiences and comparisons.

My A-list KS standard is North Wind Adventures:  Jeff Talanian delivers the goods, in as risk-free a manner as possible to KS backers.

Quote from: EOTB;1063726If I have any question on a KS I'm willing to forego all the meaningless flair/fluff stretch goals and pay the extra $5-$10 risk avoidance fee that is retail, and wait to see if the dream does actually see print.

Agreed.  I'm doing this more and more with projects that interest me and I'm sure will successfully fund, unless there's a significant discount to buying into the KS vs. full retail later.  If the project looks interesting, but I'm unsure about the team's ability to pull it off, I'll save it, and go back to it later if/after it delivers and pick it up then if I'm still interested.  

Quote from: Chainsaw;1064157I think Kickstarter (and Indiegogo) has been great for RPGs (my delivery success rate's like 23/25 or better). Lots of times a high-quality, reliable small publisher doesn't have enough money to pay production costs up front for a product even where he knows there's good demand (much less something with uncertain demand). KS helps spread those up front costs to willing participants (like me). I don't see how this hurts the community or hobby or whatever in any way. For the people involved in these projects (like me), seems like it has been quite a good choice (because they wouldn't exist otherwise) and those that didn't participate can still buy it later (you're welcome). Plus, in no way does it prevent anyone with means from funding a project the old fashioned way if they want.

The ideal of leveraging KS to help to establish a company or a product line, to push the boundaries for a game project that might otherwise never happen, has faded into practical non-existence vs. the now-common model for KS as a pre-order platform regardless of company/project size/scope.  I don't mind sharing risk as a consumer (or even as a publisher, although I've not done a KS myself to date), but I do miss the days when experimental projects were pushed to the public by publishers taking a risk to see whether their concept/format/whatever would capture sufficient interest to be possible.  That feels more artistically pure, but I'm sure if I ever come up with a $250K+ KS, I'll be smiling all the way to the bank just like the rest of the big bucks gang

Quote from: Chainsaw;1064157Sure, some projects have failed, but over the years, I have bought plenty of material funded the old fashioned way (usually big corporate funded stuff) that turned out to be total garbage and a 100% loss on my money. /shrug

This is still one of my hang-ups:  what ideas/concepts do I have that merit/are worthy of a KS effort vs. just using it for whatever project I was going to do anyway.

Quote from: Chainsaw;1064157I genuinely think these crowdfunding platforms have helped free us from dependence on big corporate capital gatekeepers, opening the door for lots of projects from small folks that would never have seen the light of day otherwise.

Agreed completely!

Allan.

Flawed model or not PEG's most recent KS is already past 480K and they promise to deliver the PDF of the main book as soon as the KS money deposits. (Which is what they normally do)

Quote from: Apparition;1064292Over the past few years, I've been training new government auditors.  Starting four years ago, they aren't given any printed materials.  Everything is on the government Intranet, and as PDFs.  Trainee auditors can mark up the PDFs with annotations as they see fit.

People are going to be proficient with what they know (and how they are trained), but that doesn't mean a system is necessarily better. I can see how it may appear to be generational in your line of work, especially for those older than 50.

As you said, you use a second (I am assuming here a reasonably sized) monitor for handling intranet docs. Different devices have their own UI conventions, and sometimes those conventions are not optimized for speed or efficiency for every purpose, nor are the new document standards.

A PDF on a big screen is often a very different experience than a PDF on a phone or average sized tablet. Navigating PDFs on a big screen (ones that aren't bloated with non essentials and are well bookmarked and indexed) is a snap - but how often do your players have a full monitor screen available at the table?

Quote from: grodog;1064481The ideal of leveraging KS to help to establish a company or a product line, to push the boundaries for a game project that might otherwise never happen, has faded into practical non-existence vs. the now-common model for KS as a pre-order platform regardless of company/project size/scope.  I don't mind sharing risk as a consumer (or even as a publisher, although I've not done a KS myself to date), but I do miss the days when experimental projects were pushed to the public by publishers taking a risk to see whether their concept/format/whatever would capture sufficient interest to be possible.  That feels more artistically pure, but I'm sure if I ever come up with a $250K+ KS, I'll be smiling all the way to the bank just like the rest of the big bucks gang

My impression is that gamer interest in backing a KS that takes a risk to "establish a company or product line, to push the boundaries" is almost zero now (with a few outliers like maybe you?) after a number of high profile failures (pick one?) and likely failures (a few come to mind that are years late with no end in sight), but these same folks are happy to help provide working capital (pre-order) in exhange for a discounted item for reputable publishers. Sadly, I think it turns out there's just not much consumer interest in funding the "artistically pure" stuff because they've decided it's just too risky. /shrug

I think of it as a form of Pre-Order with customizable bonuses as a potential offer.

It's also something that can be quite nerve wracking, though, as you may REALLY REALLY WANT a stretch goal.

I'm foregoing stretch goals for my first Kickstarter. You can kill yourself with unrealistic stretch goals.

I can't even really justify using color vs. black and white interiors as a stretch goal since the print cost difference is relatively trivial (it's the cost for getting full color artwork that's a bigger factor) and I'm doing the art myself in a style that is in color by default so it's really just a couple thousand dollars difference in the final goal to just start with color.

My goal is to make the whole thing as risk free to the backers as possible. I'll have all the writing done and about a third of the art finished by the time I'm ready to run a Kickstarter so I can include a draft copy of the books to be sent out upon successful completion of the Kickstarter (i.e. get the game content immediately, get the professionally laid out book once the artwork and printing is done).

It's kinda frustrating in that I'd really benefit from trying to use Kickstarter for its true purpose (i.e. getting capital to get my game company and initial products off the ground), but because of how the RPG side of Kickstarter has matured (including the big notable failures), I'm basically having to do all the company and product building ahead of time on a shoestring (i.e. sinking several grand into infrastructure and art assets) while the Kickstarter is going to just have to be a marketing tool and guidepost for whether or not I can proceed or should cut my losses.

I think one important thing to understand about KS is that it is the first application of a concept that will still likely evolve over time. Later evolutions of the crowdfunding model will end up working differently, though I couldn't guess exactly how (if I could, I'd be getting investors for it).

There's a major issue with intellectual products, which is that we live in a reality that if people want to, they'll be able to get rulebooks for free (via filesharing). So front-loaded crowdfunding is likely to be the response to this problem. It's just that this is not how KS sold itself initially, and it's probably not the best way to accomplish this.

With modern encryption it should be possible to set up files that have a unique key each time they're copied.  The files would be free and you'd pay for the key.

Quote from: David Johansen;1064846With modern encryption it should be possible to set up files that have a unique key each time they're copied.  The files would be free and you'd pay for the key.

This would also inconvenience paying customers while pirates would enjoy a hassle free copy.

You never want the free version to be BETTER than the paid version. Watermarking pdfs with the owner's name is a hassle free way to deincentivise piracy. E-reader formats like Kindle could also be a way.
What you strive to do is make piracy hard enough that casual effort can't get around it, while not making life harder for paying customers.

One thing that would be nice is if you couldn't download RPG books for free via a quick google search. I would think that rather than every publisher having to police google themselves, a 3rd party watchdog could maintain a list and an algorithm to find/report such google links and get them DMCA'd. Actually, stores like DriveThru should be motivated to do this themselves since casual piracy does cut into sales.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1064828I think one important thing to understand about KS is that it is the first application of a concept that will still likely evolve over time. Later evolutions of the crowdfunding model will end up working differently, though I couldn't guess exactly how (if I could, I'd be getting investors for it).

There's a major issue with intellectual products, which is that we live in a reality that if people want to, they'll be able to get rulebooks for free (via filesharing). So front-loaded crowdfunding is likely to be the response to this problem. It's just that this is not how KS sold itself initially, and it's probably not the best way to accomplish this.

This is true, however it is important to remember that this only applies to products that can be pirated in this way. Many of the KS projects I have backed include physical components, or are simply objects in their own right.

Patreon will continue to grow, but we haven't had a rock star do it in the RPG world yet. Possibly Matt Colville could have been the first, but I imagine he is better off not being burdened by the requirement for regular output.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1064851This would also inconvenience paying customers while pirates would enjoy a hassle free copy.

You never want the free version to be BETTER than the paid version. Watermarking pdfs with the owner's name is a hassle free way to deincentivise piracy. E-reader formats like Kindle could also be a way.
What you strive to do is make piracy hard enough that casual effort can't get around it, while not making life harder for paying customers.

One thing that would be nice is if you couldn't download RPG books for free via a quick google search. I would think that rather than every publisher having to police google themselves, a 3rd party watchdog could maintain a list and an algorithm to find/report such google links and get them DMCA'd. Actually, stores like DriveThru should be motivated to do this themselves since casual piracy does cut into sales.

Google has been neatly complicit in piracy up until the removal of Chilling Effects from its search engine. But Chilling Effects is still around under a new hame, and still acting as a database containing links to cease-and-desist information including the actual URLs to remove. There are services that troll the internet looking for violations and then submit them to Google, but that is a significant ongoing cost of whack-a-mole, since nothing in DMCA stops sites from putting up new versions of the links later.

One consideration is a document serving site instead of PDF, that can cache portions or all of a book locally in an encrypted way. Users can join, pay a low monthly access rate, and get access to updates and the like.  They can use the same system to order a POD version of the book (or updates) at any time.

Quote from: Lynn;1065014One consideration is a document serving site instead of PDF, that can cache portions or all of a book locally in an encrypted way. Users can join, pay a low monthly access rate, and get access to updates and the like.  They can use the same system to order a POD version of the book (or updates) at any time.

Perhaps you aren't into digital services enough to know just how terribly something like that would perform. But that would be either extremely awful or extremely expensive and probably both.

No, the expectation set now is people having something like a PDF copy. You might be able to shift people over to e-reader formats which take a slight amount of effort to pirate (how many people steal Kindle books?). Any more hassle and some pirate's scanned copy of a POD is more useful than your paid service. It's similar to how younger generations will only stream new TV shows and will not watch them on cable with ads. A company either offers a way to do that or they receive no revenue from young people (both those who decide not to watch or pirate because of that factor are lost revenue).

What's funny is some RPGs are too niche for piracy. Piracy tends to require a paying customer giving out copies of what they paid for, for free. I can only guess as to the motivations of such people.

Quote from: David Johansen;1064846With modern encryption it should be possible to set up files that have a unique key each time they're copied.  The files would be free and you'd pay for the key.

Internet piracy of PDFs is just the tip of the iceberg. Our technology is moving to the level where it will end up being more practical to remake the basic system of economic exchange than trying to make countless stop-gap measures to try to hold off that development.

Also, it's not like patronage is some kind of radical untested idea. It was a basic function of all kinds of creative work for much of human history.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1065213Perhaps you aren't into digital services enough to know just how terribly something like that would perform. But that would be either extremely awful or extremely expensive and probably both.

The performance would all depend on traffic and a CMS that serve up the content in ways that would be palatable for type of display and integration with other services. If there are forms of print options then you will still run the risk of OCR. But then, having a service also means content can be updated in ways that can quickly obsolete OCR'd versions.

It wasn't that long ago that consumers would not have considered subscription based software. You can convert people to new paradigms if you add value in the way that makes them want it.

There are no RPGs too niche for piracy. Storage is negligible, and some people place no value on their own time. Some will even pirate no cost stuff.

Monthly subscription rates for almost anything seems to me to be an outdated economic model.