This shit kept me up half the night. Well, maybe not half the night, but I lost a good 20 minutes of sleep wondering "why did James put out umteen Indiegogo Projects at one time?"
The answer is quite simple: James Raggi does as James Raggi does. James thinks large. Its a gift and a curse. I suspect this time, its a curse.
19 Crowd funded project running consecutively. Each with a goal of $6000 to be raised. A print + PDF copy starts at $20 bucks or 300 supporters.
19 Projects - I felt that needed to be repeated. Some by big names (Monte Cook!) and some by no-names and a bunch from folks known in the OSR.
The hook is if you kick in $160 (if you are a member of the Gardening Society) you get a copy of every project that is funded.
Monte's project is sitting at $620 with 19 days to go. Just over 10% of goal.
Jeff Reint's is at $2,725 - almost 50%
Vince Baker is at $1780 - almost 30%
I think everything else is less than the above projects. 19 days to go.
If a project isn't funded, it goes bye bye. So, raising 5k each on 4 projects is the same as raising Zero. Money returned to sender.
Ambitious goal stretched way too thin. There are a handful of projects I'm interested in, but not enough to risk $160. Maybe $10 for a PDF 2 or 3 times.
Maybe.
If there were half the number of projects, I suspect one or more might have been funded already, but the numbers get confusing, and $160 on a project hoping at least 7 others fund seems like a fool's gamble.
The LotFP Weird Fantasy funded at just over $16k.
For the $160 pledge to be worth it's while, $48k in successful pledges would have to take place over a total of 8 separate successfully funded projects at $6k+ each.
It would need to be 3x as successful as James' last project.
I don't see it happening.
The Brigands of Bristleback Burrow
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By Brynjar Mar PalssonSelf PublishedShadowdarkLevels 1-3 No amount of coin
is worth crossing paths with the Bristlebacks; they’ll rob you of more than
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2 hours ago
I want this to work for Raggi, I really do. But surely this could have been done better. Maybe with some of the 'lesser' names contributing their adventures as stretch goals as the big names get funded? Or something like that? Whatever the flaws of alternative plans, they can't be much crazier than what he *is* doing.
ReplyDeleteBut if he does pull it off (or anything off)... what an achievement!
But there are other indiegogo campaigns and the like competing for my money. There is the Advanced Fighting Fantasy Blacksand book. There is the imminent OpenQuest 2/Deluxe campaign. And then there is RuneQuest 6 AND Magic World...
With Indiegogo (unlike Kickstarter) doesn't he get to keep all the money even if none of the 19 get fully funded? Sounds like he can't lose.
ReplyDeleteJames posted this July 8 on his blog:
ReplyDeleteClearing Up One Thing with the Adventures Campaign
I've seen this in a few places now, just a few minutes ago as a comment in the previous post. To make it clear:
If a project does not fund, IndieGoGo will automatically refund all contributions. I don't receive any money unless a project funds.
IndieGoGo does have the option to allow someone to keep all money earned regardless of whether the funding goal is met (they just charge a higher fee), but I have not chosen that option for these campaigns.
Good to know.
ReplyDeleteIt is a substantial financial investment for a lot of authors I'm not really interested in. If Raggi had scaled it down, I may have been interested but $100+ was too much. His last crowdsourcing fundraiser wasn't a great success with only the Ken Hite adventure funded as an extra. I think James may need to rethink his methodolgy because something's not quite clicking with the OSR fans & his recent efforts. Perhaps he should take a look at how the Appendix N toolkit was organised & marketed.
ReplyDeleteMonte's project is sitting at $620 with 19 days to go. Just over 10% of goal.
ReplyDeleteJeff Reint's is at $2,725 - almost 50%
Vince Baker is at $1780 - almost 30%
I think everything else is less than the above projects.
You missed a few:
Kevin Crawford's "The House of Bone and Amber" -- $740
Michael Curtis' "Of Unknown Provenance" -- $930
Anna Kreider's "We Who Are Lost" -- $1,306
So things are going a bit better than you thought.