Some of you might know the Order of the Stick. It is a webcomic based on D&D, hilarious, entertaining and sometimes even thrilling.
It is done by an American guy called Rich Burlew, aka Giant in the Playground. http://www.giantitp.com/
So far, he made a living by selling some of the comics in printed form, games and merchandising stuff.
But surely he didn’t earn much from that, because most of the books were frequently out of print and he obviously lacked the money to pay the reprint in advance.
So he decided to launch kickstarter project (kickstarter is a website to support crowdfunding http://www.kickstarter.com/
) to raise some 60 k dollars to reprint one book.
Well, when the project time ran out after a month, he had raised a sum of over
1.250.000 $$ :eek::eek::eek:
This is the thirdmost money ever raised so far by a kickstarter project.
Amazing. He had grossly underestimated the size of his fanbase and their will to give money for something they had gotten practically for free for a long time.
OTOH, most of the people didn’t give money for nothing. Like myself, they just spent it in advance to get the printed comics, games and stuff. I have to wait for my package until June probably, but that is no problem because I love OOTS – it is the first bookmark I check on my second breakfast – and I want it to live on.
I know that MEPBM has a lot less followers, but nevertheless it might be enough to raise enough for a project to transfer the game on a new technological platform, etc. I am sure Clint & co. will come up with enough ideas. And the pledges wouldn’t have to be for free, I am thinking of free turns, free playing time, or even lifetime accounts, depending on the sum pledged. What do others think? Could this work out?
They actually did something like this when Clint & co. bought the rights to ME. Bunch of us gave advance payments to help out. Was credited to our accounts going forward (though I still think we should have gotten a discount :))
So would I. In fact, I was just discussing with one of the GMs the other day about the possibility of running a game on an entirely new map, and what would be involved setting that up.
Whatever - let’s get something going. This game needs more new players, and to bring back some old ones that have left.
I would love to invest money to help/improve MEPBM, but for what specific purpose? There would need to be a preexisting business plan, associated budget, etc. I have to wonder at the prospects of a fundraising campaign to throw money at a game, which is really a dinosaur among games, with no plan. Saying it is a dinosaur isn’t meant to be criticism at all; in fact it really is a compliment. The fact its life span is measured in decades instead of years is a testament to how good it really was, and still is. I loved it when I first played 15+ years ago, and I still do.
Just from what I’ve picked up here and there, it appears Clint has basically moved on to other gaming opportunities, and left the MEPBM business in place as his cash cow. Once again, no criticism, just an observation. A cash cow, in classic finance or investor lingo, is a business segment that requires little or no capital investment, no entrepreneurial time, has already amortized most of its fixed costs, and throws off a goodly amount of cash flow to fund new or different business segments of the same company. MEPBM sounds suspiciously like that to me. So the question becomes, does it make sense, from a business point of view, to monkey around with that arrangement? How much new investment, both capital and management time, would it take to transform MEPBM into something that would survive and be even more profitable than it is now? More importantly, would that investment be better served in other areas, such as his The One Ring app on facebook, where he has over 3,500 group members when I just now looked?
I think we all should face the fact that MEPBM is on a long decline curve (just be glad it seems to be a long curve), and at some point it will no longer be commercially feasible to operate. Maybe at that point, some of us can kickstart a fund to buy the rights to the game code and everything that goes with it, and we can get our chance to monkey with it ourselves.
If Drew’s assumptions about the company policy are correct, then of course his conclusions are correct, too. We won’t know until MEgames comments this.
And Brad, no offense meant, but surely Drew won’t call you, which is a good thing because all things you two have been involved together so far have ended in chaos
I think the person he would have called first has passed away
Lets hope this game lives on until some of you guys are retired and can spend some time on it
And if I recall correctly, didn’t we win that Kin Strife test game…?