To be honest, I’d much rather read through 10 articles of Tom vs. Bruce, than 10 articles of Tom vs. Bruce vs. some dude. No offense to you, of course (or me, or anyone else who might like to pay extra for that).
Tom vs. Bruce vs. You is the pilot they’re pitching to Nickelodeon if this takes off.
I finally got to see Shadofax!
Tom - You’re as clean shaven as I imagined. Bruce looked younger than I imagined a republican of his demeanor should.
Great news!
I thought the video was well done. I think mixing it up with a video every now and then would be great.
Are you planning on posting old TvB episodes?
EDIT: I see you have a link to old episodes in the kickstarter.
Loved the articles from back in the day, so I chipped in!
Kickstart Shoot Club next :)
Chris, Otagan, and Kilo, the commentary tracks and replays are the sorts of things we’ve wanted to play with in the past. Doing articles for the web will make it much easier for us to fold in that kind of bonus stuff, and we’ve definitely talked about it.
Also, I’m only clean shaven when I have to record a video. I have my full-on scraggly salt-and-pepper Ozark facial hair going right now. TMI?
-Tom
I knew I wanted that shirt.
It’s funny that the only gaming related kickstarters I’m willing to support don’t involve making games (this, and the Idle Thumbs one).
Bleh, I’m in.
I backed, and it’s clear that you won’t have any problems meeting your goal, but I have to say I think your rewards seem a little anemic.
If you look at the Idle Thumbs Kickstarter, for example, they were able to partner with a couple of artists and Brendon Chung to deliver some really appealing and unique stuff. I would have backed those guys anyway, but I felt like I was buying cool stuff and supporting them as a bonus.
With what you are doing, it feels more like a donation. The t-shirt is certainly something, but it’s $100 and you aren’t explicit about the designer. You guys know enough independent games people that it seems like you could work out some cross-promotional stuff.
Maybe fund the first round (as you clearly will) and line up some of this stuff for round 2.
in…
In! Good luck guys!
OK, I like 1) the continually-changing background items in the video (including SMAC + AC – very funny), and 2) CAT!!!1!!1!
It seems like what could potentially trip up a lot of Kickstarted projects is promising way too many elaborate prizes that turn into an albatross around the necks of the creators. They spend too much time and money delivering the incentives and not enough working on the main project.
One tale of woe: Star Command Kickstarter - $10,000 spent on tiered reward system | VG247
Content = meat
Reward = sauce
While sauce is totally delicious, its the meat that gets people in the door.
In…
Yeah, that has been a common theme. That is partly why I pointed to Idle Thumbs specifically – their more appealing rewards, the art and game, are being provided by third parties. They have mentioned on the progresscasts that the amount of work required to fulfill the 7", t-shirts, and postcards significantly exceeded their expectations.
And I don’t disagree with the meat/sauce comment, either. I said as much myself. But if Tom and Bruce want to experiment with expansions to the formula and want money to do so (rather than the same base per-article pay they would have received 5 years ago), then I think they should consider plans for a beefier Kickstarter for season 2. That’s plenty of time to figure out how much it would really cost to get a run of 500 hard bound Tom vs Bruce collections printed…
I get what you’re saying, JPR, and we went back and forth over a lot of stuff like that. And we totally intended to offer bound volumes as one of the tier rewards. But part of the advice we got from other people was to be careful about getting too wrapped up in tier rewards. Ultimately, we figured we’re in the business of writing, and folks either want that or they don’t want that. So we tried to keep it pretty simple.
But, yeah, I wish we could have done stuff as epic as the Idle Thumbs guys. Bruce and I have been talking about doing this for a while and the Idle Thumbs campaign was simultaneously encouraging and thoroughly demoralizing. :)
-Tom
Backed. So tempted to spend a grand and make Bruce play Stalin vs Martians.
Sure, I know you guys aren’t dumb, and it’s better to err on the side of a more conservative product that you are confident you can deliver. I just encourage you to re-evaluate after dealing with the fallout from this promotion and taking another 6 months to further build your brand.
Backed. At a dollar an article, anybody who is a fan of the old articles can easily afford to chip in.
Heh, the reaction in GAF is pretty funny…
I think that, in the end, some people don’t consider gaming journalism (playing games, writing about them) a REAL JOB.