Monthly fee definitely. It’s detailed in the Kickstarter link above.
Yeah I dunno, I’d way rather have MST3K on Netflix than their own platform. Pitching crowdfunding for a new streaming platform for something I’m currently getting on something I already pay for is basically asking me to give them money so that I can give them more money. Which is a bold strategy.
Yeah, the tiers are basically just pre-purchasing X months of Gizmoplex access + whatever cheap branded items they wanna toss into that tier that won’t be too tough for the team to produce.
I like MST3K a lot, but probably not enough to pay a separate monthly sub for it, unfortunately. Definitely would be a “sub for a month to binge a season” kinda service for me. Of course, the way the KS describes, it sounds like the episodes available on the Gizmoplex service might rotate month to month? I’d at least hope the new season (and onward, if they make more after this) would be permanently available. And no idea if VODs of the live events would be preserved for those who missed them day-of, though hopefully.
Strong agree.
Hey now, Richard Garriot bilked how many millions of dollars for his doomed UO spiritual sequel vaporware title? There’s a business model to running these things, at least ;-)
For my personal convenience, i.e. not having multiple places to go to view stuff plus yet another subscription fee, I agree with that. But I can see this from their point of view, and not wanting to have to be at the mercy of the platform holder’s whims whether they get to continue making stuff makes sense to me. I wouldn’t do it for everything - hell, I’m not even doing it for Star Trek. But I’ll do it for MST3K.
Well, the Netflix seasons are definitely my favorite of the whole show, so I’m hoping they can bring this whole crew back, however they do it. If it’s a separate app, so be it.
My feeling on this is that if they want to crowdfund to do more content and then shop around to see who wants to host it, I’m down. If it’s not Netflix there’s a decent chance I’d follow them to something that’s not just MST3K, at least off and on. I do not want them beholden to the executive decisions of X streaming platform. But I’m not going to give them money for a platform I’d have to subscribe to separately, and I’m probably not going to pay a meaningful amount of money for something that’s just MST3K. or even just them, Rifftrax, Cinematic Titanic, etc.
I mean, so would I, but they cancelled it. Am I willing to pay for more MST3K? Yes. How much am I willing to pay? Not sure yet. Even with the description on the KS page it’s far from clear to me how/if old episodes are being handled. There’s worrying mentions of on-demand, which sounds more like PPV than a free-once-you-subscribe model.
Well, I’m in because MST3K is one cultural project I have 100% goodwill towards. That said, they conspicuously haven’t said anything about the cast yet (that I saw). Jonah was in the promo video, and some of their kickstarter artwork has Patton Oswalt and Felicia Day. But who is actually going to be involved? And who is going to host? In the last live show, Joel handed off the hosting duties to a woman named Emily Marsh… but maybe that was just for live shows?
I predict a high likelihood of some angry backers when months from now they announce a cast that is virtually unknown (but will probably nevertheless do a great job) and they all say, “You promised me Felicia Day!”
I’m not sure moving MST3K off Netflix (or some equivalent broad-audience streaming outlet) is really in the show’s best interest, and have to wonder if they’re thought this through. You don’t get much in the way of new eyeballs on the show if it’s on a paid platform by itself.
Netflix chose not to renew it, they didn’t leave. Seems they are trying to be self sufficient.
Ah, understood. Well, yes, I can understand wanting self-sufficiency. Probably worth their while to try to at least get older episodes out somewhere with a broader audience, though, so as to bring in new viewers.
They have a great Twitch channel that just plays old episodes (and a few documentaries) over and over (with ads, though not that many). It’s where my monthly free Twitch Prime subscription goes.
After the Netflix experiment, though, I’m not too sure we really need even more MST3K. I found most of that material pretty dull.
This interview indicates that Jonah, Patton nd Felicia are involved -
Also, Kalan tweeted about it here.
Doesn’t confirm his involvement, but I’ll be keeping an eye on the thread in case he replies to the questions.
What a weird thing to do.
Basically making a new twitch style service for live events. They must be borrowing from some service’s code.
It sounds like they want to do a lot more live events than just episodes though. Is it sustainable to do all of this stuff on their own gated off service? Maybe? Who knows how many backers will translate into continuing subs though.
I love the twitch channel, and I think that is a great way to watch mst3k, but this feels like they are going to start a patreon without patreon taking a cut.
So odd. I suppose that Rifftrax has their own site and portal for streaming, and that has worked out well for them.
Not jazzed about a reward being “x months” of subscription rather than drm free files to put on my plex server.
They say they’re using the same people (and implicitly either the same code or something very similar) as do the Alamo Drafthouse’s live streaming stuff.
Yeah, I just read that in the AV club article.
Such a weird thing to do though, to gate themselves off from other stuff. I guess it worked for Rifftrax though, like I said, and you can get those in lots of other places too, as well as a twitch channel.
I think somewhere around the $150 level you final get some mp4s to call your own.
Yeah, I supported the previous kickstarter at like the 100 dollar level because it included downloads as well as lots of downloads of classic episodes.
Unless this kickstarter does something similar for 100 bucks or lower, probably not going to support it. Might subscribe when it is up and running, but not going to early adopt unless there are some better rewards.
Edit: It appears you get downloads at the 100 dollar level, but no extras.
The $2 million tier was reached in under 24 hours, looks like we’re getting the GizmoPlex and at least three new episodes.