RetroRomper wrote:lethargic wrote:I chalk this up as just another reason why Kickstarter is the worst thing that ever happened to the internet.
Would you mind outlining why Kickstarter is the worst thing that has happened to the Internet?
Besides the Veronica Mars and the countless editorials on why Kickstarter doesn't actually work, it has enabled quite a bit of industry analysis, discussion and products that wouldn't have existed otherwise.
Exactly. Those products didn't exist for a reason. Because they sucked and the people making them don't know what they're doing. So people donate their money to these morons and then they get some halfass shitty game that you can't save, a pretentious, amateur, film school art short or an Ouya.
It's bad enough when you buy a bad game or go to the theater and get disappointed by a bad movie. Why in the blue blazes would I want to donate money in hopes that the final project actually ends up being worthy of the money I donated? It's a complete gamble that is rarely, if ever, going to pay off because if these people had a good concept and the ability to make that concept a reality they wouldn't need me to pay for it.
But the real problem is that it's slowly and surely being taken out of the hands of the people who "need" it and being used, and abused, to bankroll projects that have no need for it.
When Tim Schafer did it I thought it was silly. Tim Schafer has absolutely no need to do this. I thought crowd funding was supposed to be for Joe Blow's who CAN'T get real games made? Schafer has released dozens of games. This was the first nail in the coffin of crowd funding.
And then when the Veronica Mars thing happened it was the most ridiculous thing ever. That anybody would believe that Warner Brothers couldn't have funded a 2 million dollar movie without crowd sourcing is ridiculous. There was absolutely no need for that. But it was a corporation suddenly realizing, hey, maybe we don't need to risk our own money? Here's this little tiny movie we can experiment with and see if these idiots are as gullible as they seem.
I railed against it then. I said it was opening doors to a potentially scary future where buying tickets was no longer enough, that we'd end having to bankroll any movie we wanted to see. I was, shockingly, called a moron. But yet I'm being proved right day after day.
One project after another is being announced. Either from a millionaire director or actor or some giant corporation. Crowd sourcing was supposed to be for the little guy, but now it's being taken over by the people it was supposed to be "against".
If a multi-millionaire like Spike Lee doesn't believe in his own project enough to fund it himself, why should I?
Unless something is done to stop this take over it's only going to continue and get worse. One day we're going to be seeing Kickstarters so Warner Bros can make a 300 million dollar Harry Potter remake.
Or even worse, Kickstarter will get to the point that the fans who donate will actually get power to help make the project. They will vote on scripts and casting. And the test screening/focus groups crap that ruins so many movies will have ruined the movies before they're even filmed.
I would never donate to anything, but the original idea of Kickstarter was fine. But like pretty much everything on the internet, the good ideas always get taken over by the assholes and ruined. The assholes are marching on Kickstarter right now and the future is very dim.
