News You Can Bruise for 2014 August 2

Permalink [Comments] (4) Sat Aug 02 2014 12:37 Month of Crowdfunding 2014!:

After taking a break last year because I didn't have a steady paycheck, Month of Crowdfunding (né Month of Kickstarter) has returned! (2011) (2012) Here's how it works: every day in August I will pledge to some crowdfunding project or another. Yes, that's pretty much it.

Unlike previous years, I will not be doing writeups of each project I back, because I am in the middle of novel revisions. I will just edit this post every day with a brief update. I will also not be trawling the crowdfunding sites every day looking for quirky, offbeat projects. That worked in 2011 when Kickstarter was very small, and it worked in 2012 because I created special software tools for making it work. This year, I will rely heavily on a revolutionary new concept I call crowdnepotism.

Here's how it works. If your friend has a crowdfunding project or Patreon that you want me to support, or you've backed a project and you'd like me to back it as well, please let me know through a comment on this post, a message to @leonardr on Twitter, or an email to leonardr@segfault.org. Please do not tell me about your own project. Tell me about anyone's project but your own. The true meaning of Month of Crowdfunding is found in focusing on other people. That's the only limitation. If you say it's okay, I'll mention you as the person who suggested the project to me in the list below.

Speaking of which, the list below. The projects backed so far:

  1. The Ashville Blade - Supporting the journalism of a friend of Sumana's.
  2. "A History of Mobile Games: 1998-2008" - Just seems like a cool book.
  3. Dj CUTMAN, creator of a chiptune podcast that I listen to at work.
  4. "An Alphabet of Embers", an anthology edited by Shweta and suggested by Zack.
  5. Designers and Dragons, a "comprehensive, four-volume history of the roleplaying game industry." (Found via @CrowdBoardGames and unknowingly ratified by Jim Henley.)
  6. Ninja Pizza Girl, "a serious game about bullying, emotional resilience – and pizza delivering ninjas", suggested by Nathaniel.
  7. Andrea Phillips's writing
  8. Epanalepsis, a graphical adventure game.
  9. Ben Briggs' chiptunes.
  10. Jenny LeClue, another graphical adventure, suggested by Andy Baio.
  11. Mia S-N's illustrations, suggested by Sumana.
  12. Accessing the Future, an SF anthology.
  13. Stretching the notion of "crowdfunding", I sent some money to Saladin Ahmed, who just had his basement flood.
  14. The games of Anna Anthropy.
  15. The games of Avery Mcaldno.
  16. Tree Climbing for Climate Change Research
  17. Why the long face? Functional morphology of a unique fossil porpoise
  18. #OperationHelpOrHush
  19. Legends of Beforia, a card game prototype by #botALLY Patrick Rodriguez.
  20. Kris's comics, yay. (Not suggested by Kris.)
  21. African Skies: Establishing an Observatory for Students in Ghana
  22. I think the name of this project is too corny to say. It's a butter knife that works like a cheese grater.
  24. [Yeah, having troubles keeping this up to date, sorry.]
  25. Noisebridge reboot
  26. Critical Distance
  27. Dawn of the Algorithm (suggested by Mike Mongo)
  28. MS treatment for Paul Jessup, suggested by Saladin Ahmed, paying it forward.

As with the previous two Months, my daily budget is $25 or whatever it takes to get a cool reward. That corresponds to a $2 monthly Patreon pledge. And don't forget, crowdnepotism is a registered trademark of... what, now there's paperwork for registering trademarks? Screw that.

Final update: As you can tell this was a bit of a disaster, consistency-wise. I would frequently leave MoC for days at a time and have to go back and backfill, and near the end I gave up. So I think I'm done with the MoC "tradition". Not because there's not cool stuff on crowdfunding sites (there's a ton of it) but because I'm busy with other stuff now, and "back a project every day for a month" is no longer the interesting experiment it was in 2011. Even going through the science crowdfunding sites and funding science experiments became a bit of a chore given all the other stuff I have going.

I've also discovered that backing a bunch of projects gets me stuff, and I've already got more stuff in my life than I'd like. So I'm going to keep on with my rest-of-the-year strategy of using crowdfunding sites like a normal person.

Month of Kickstarter

Comments:

Posted by Zack at Sat Aug 02 2014 22:17

An Alphabet of Embers: anthology of "unclassifiables – lyrical, surreal, magical, experimental pieces that straddle the border between poetry and prose". Edited by my old friend Shweta (whom you may also remember) and Rose Lemberg. Already funded, but cool stretch goals are within reach. Act now, only 3 days remaining.

Posted by Nathaniel at Mon Aug 04 2014 17:49

Err, Alphabet of Embers is edited by Rose, not Shweta. Shweta helped with some of the behind the scenes stuff and one of the stretch goals is an issue of Stone Telling, which is edited by both Shweta and Rose, but the editor on Alphabet of Embers is just Rose.

I still recommend it :-)

I'm also hoping that Ninja Pizza Girl makes it. I have no idea if it's a game I'll want to play, but it seems like the sort of thing that there should exist more of. (Platformer about teen girl experience of social ostracism, stretch goals things like "add control schemes for people with mobility, vision, and cognitive difficulties".)

Posted by Zack at Tue Aug 05 2014 18:05

Dargh, how did I get the impression that Shweta was editing An Alphabet of Editors? The Kickstarter page is quite clear, now I look at it again.

Posted by Zack at Tue Aug 05 2014 18:06

s/Editors/Embers/

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