Penny Arcade Sells Out
If you’re a fan of Penny Arcade, hate advertising, or both, you may be interested to know that Mike Krahulik, Jerry Holkins, and the rest of the Penny Arcade crew are trying to make the site completely ad-free through Kickstarter–although it’s going to be a bit harder than Jerry and Mike originally thought.
As they mention in the video, Mike and Jerry want to go back to the “Golden Age” of Penny Arcade when the site was funded solely by begging crowdfunding. They’ve grown considerably since then, though, so it’s going to take a lot more money than it did years ago.
To compensate for that, they’ve set up a series of stretch goals for the Kickstarter. As of this article, they’re only about $27,500 away from their first goal of $250,000, which will get the leaderboard ad (the horizontal ad at the very top of the page) removed for one year. Some of the stretch goals remove more ads–for instance, at $525,000 all of the ads on the front page will disappear–and some stretch goals will introduce new projects–like a six page Automata strip at $325,000. Some of the stretch goals have yet to be revealed.
For rewards, the guys have set up some that are very awesome and/or silly. For donating $1, for example, it is claimed that Gabe will shout your name while he chases a duck, while donating $15 will get Gabe to think about you during sex. (My assumption is that this refers to Gabe the comic strip character, but the Kickstarter page doesn’t specify that it isn’t Gabe the real-life alter-ego of Mike. Either way, though, why would you not give $15 for that?)
Other rewards include digital versions of the Penny Arcade books, an exclusive t-shirt, becoming a beta tester for On the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness 4, and even pizza and games with the Penny Arcade crew. (Who says money can’t buy friends?)
With about 33 days left to go and only about 3,300 backers as of now, things are looking pretty good for this Kickstarter.
“This is an amazing experiment in our opinion,” it says on the Kickstarter home page. “If it doesn’t work Penny Arcade will be fine. We’ll keep going just like before with no interruption in service and nothing will change. But if it did work, I mean, wow. That would be something.”
To be honest, I’m pretty excited to see how far this Kickstarter goes, too.
Would a Kickstarter project for Nukezilla finally shut John up?…oh wait, John’s no longer here. He left to join the circus.
@Adushan: Touché
Who you calling a douche?…oh sorry, misread that XD
But why have a Kickstarter? So they can remove ads for a year, then bring them back? So…not changing a thing then? Meh, mo money mo problems.
Lol
My assumption is that they’ll either start a new Kickstarter next year or use this ad-free year to acquire the funds for an ad-free next year. Either way, I’m sure they’re planning to cross that bridge when they get there.
Yeah but either way it’s not ushering in a new dawn for Penny Arcade. They’re not using the money for cancer research or more absorbant toilet paper so it’s not really necessary. Especially since their ads aren’t obtrusive.
I believe the idea is this will be a yearly thing. Once people stop funding it, all ads come back.
Seems a bit… eh. Especially when the basic target, which is quite a hefty sum, doens’t get rid of all ads. It also seems a bit odd to have a certain portion of people pay to make the site ad-free while I’m sure many others won’t have donated and will of course enjoy the same benefit.
I expect they’ll get this year funded but then next year people will be more apathetic and they’ll bring back the ads. Of course then people will complain about them putting ads on the site.
Personally, I really like subscriptions to remove ads on a per-user basis. I don’t think a site can have a much better system than that. No ads for people who want to pay, ads for people who don’t. Kickstarter or otherwise (boy am I getting sick of the ‘k’ word), I’m just not a fan of such a sweeping plan as this.
Ace, I couldn’t agree with you more even if we were joined at the hip…hehe…
So here’s what I wanna know: Does Google (or the other advert providers) allow a site to turn ads on and off as needed? It seems a little shifty that. Because that like saying we don’t need you because people don’t like ads, but we’ll come back when we need you.
You can’t have your cake and eat it Penny Arcade!!
We kind of did this for NZ, only there was one backer; me.
We’re only keeping the ads on the site currently in the interest of keeping our ad company happy, they don’t make money. If we plan to grow, however, we have a really good contract with them and it’s best not to burn bridges when needed :) It’s why the ads stop popping up once you’ve loaded a few pages.
@John – You’re like a poet with words…
But I think one of NZ’s greatest downfalls is not having obtrusive ads. Yeah, I typed that. NOT having obtrusive ads.
It’s highly annoying for some to wade through ads, but it keeps the money rolling in. And the business of running a website is a business.
This Penny Arcade announcement seems like a shifty way to get back at those nasty ad companies, whilst making a huge amount of money.
Naa, obtrusive ads wouldn’t cover the price of how pissed off they make me, not by a long shot.