Sycophancy

It's not often I post blogs. Even less do I blog about "what I'm feeling." Certainly not since escaping the teen years.

But no thing can maintain itself forever. Which is a shame.

My recent absence I will shamefully put down to my concentrating on 'proper writing,' which is a ridiculous excuse, I know, but such is my mind that it can, as yet, only focus on one of a type of thing at a time.

Something that has inadvertantly come about from a new found determination to finally get some shit done has been an almost sub-conscious thought experiment, an ethereal by-product that grows with every word I add in futility to what ever page I am unblanking. This is the worry of what to do with the results.

But I know the answer. Or, at least, I know of an ideal solution.

I may have mentioned this before but I habour an ever-expanding and unfathomable admiration for Penny Arcade and the empire that now hosts it. I imagine, to normal people, these efforts may not be all that extraordinary but I find myself struck down in awe by their progression from fledgling, Internet-based comic strip to a now fully fledged Goliath of Humour that is still based, primarily, on the Internet. This is something worthy of emulation.

But, a business is worth nothing if the "product" is worthless. Conveniently, this is not the case with the Penny Arcade strip. Now, while I appreciate the quality of artist Mike Krahulik's work in the strip, especially recently, I can't draw. I have no knowledge of drawing or the skills that go with it. I could as much tell you how Krahulik stacks up against other artists as I could rate a partiular ninja against other ninja. I confide myself in just acknowledging the ninjaship. He ninjas well. I think the analogy is beginning to fall apart.

(This is where the feeling-y bit starts. Brace yourselves.)

Being a writer, however (not the most prolific one, I grant you), I can comment fairly coherently on the wordsmith of the comic, Jerry Holkins. And I will. I will do so with much enthusiasm.

I love the man's writing. His abilities in pacing and structure can be masked by the very jokes they work to construct or the visual comedy from the art but, having spent as much time staring at his web page and gorging on the literary feasts in the news posts that accompany the strips, I could quite happily wax lyrical about the almost melodic quality in his sentence structure, the extensive and often gorgeous vocabulary like the ornamentals of one of Bach's fugues. And he does this talking about video games.

I don't really talk about inspirations. I think maybe my instinct is to be intimidated instead of inspired. That was certainly true with music. The bands I respected most scared me off as I believed I could never amount to that.

With writing, I don't seem to get that. Words are a much more intuitive concept for me. I can see almost straight away how the combination of letters and commas arranged in front of my works. There's a degree of intimidation but I can see the path up the mountain. Jerry's writing: his words, his measure, the images and insights he conjures; It's like Everest. But his writing is so well crafted, so graceful. It's hard to feel anything but inspired, to aim for that peak. Jerry hypnotises like a piper, leading the way up the mountain path.

I try to temper my enthusiasm as much as I can when it comes to literary idols of mine. I worry that I might end up simply mimicking their style rather than infusing it into my personal style. I always look over my writing and worry that it may as well be Terry Pratchett fan-fiction. I once considered writing a series of blogs regarding my thoughts on modern attempts at hedonistic living but discarded these as they looked like a sequel to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But the lust for language and description that Holkins exhudes in his writing is a state I am quite willing to live in solidly, at least for a little while. A shift in focus from the long arc of the story to the sensual immersion in the shorter moment might just be what I need to produce an improvement in how I write.

This relies, of course, on an improvement in frequency. I should probably work on that too.

Shut Up and Take My Money

The vast and unyielding demon of procrastination that is The Internet has always proven itself to be an almighty leveller. In an instant; the well respected and admired can be dragged down into disrepute through YouTube just as some loser, 12-year old Canadian with a dorky haircut gets catapulted into stardom on the next link over. Twitter has helped topple dictators and derailed legislation. The internet community has turned ruthless, unforgiving and does not take previous history into consideration.

And so, The Internet has made itself a remarkable example for meritocracy. For every person that is ostracised for a reprehensible act, there is an untapped talent drawing in a very devoted audience. The world of comics, for example, has changed dramatically with the works of Jerry Holkins, Mike Krahulik, Scott Kurtz, et al creating a huge online school of independent cartoonists with a huge following that has begun to rival the devotion to the physical side of comics, dominated by the Marvel and DC Universes. Holkins and Krahulik’s joint creation, Penny Arcade, has evolved into a powerful member of the industry as a whole, with their own convention, PAX, becoming comparable in popularity to the more prolific comic conventions like SDCC. Additionally, the internet has provided a platform for physical comics by independent creators to gain a higher platform through both cheaper and wider advertising mediums and pure word of mouth. By providing a window into every other part of the world, the internet has totally changed the playing field, let alone the goalposts, in terms of media distribution.

The improved influence of the internet has led to the advent of a potentially world-changing concept; crowd funding, the most prominent of these projects being Kickstarter. Since its birth in 2008, the Kickstarter project has been making headlines by showing just how far the rules have been altered. The delightfully reaffirming concept is this: Creators sign up to present a concept through Kickstarter in the hopes of raising money to fund the creation of their project, offering certain perks for various levels of donation. The general public can then peruse these projects and donate to the ones that seem most appealing/deserving. It has garnered overwhelming success. Up to April this year, the site had collectively raised over $170 million with over 20,000 successful projects. One project in particular really started to make people take notice, reaching some incredible landmarks along the way. It reached its set target in just nine hours, managed to raise over $1 million dollars in one day before eventually raising over $3 million by the end of its run. Of course, it may have had a helping hand from the fact that the man asking for the money was this guy called Tim Schafer.

Now, I have an awareness of Tim Schafer. I don’t have the extensive knowledge of his portfolio of work that those who generously donated would likely have but I’m slowly schooling myself to catch up with respected society. However, I have enough experience of his work to know the man is to be admired, having grown up on the Monkey Island games and then finally uncovering Psychonauts after seeing it for cheap on Steam (a common trait with Schafer’s games that has probably been the cause of his turning to Kickstarter). He started out as part of a highly prolific LucasArts games division until they gave up creativity to milk the Star Wars franchise for all it was worth, after which he went on to found Double Fine Productions, following Schafer’s tradition of creating unique concepts and ladling on heaps of absolutely surreal humour. A fantastic combination for enjoyable games, sadly it isn’t so much in terms of marketability. Double Fine’s most notable gaming offerings; Psychonauts and Brütal Legend, both failed to make much of an impact in terms of sales figures, leading to support for Schafer’s future projects becoming difficult to come by. The games have, however, gained a significant cult following. Smaller games have been produced since including the highly regarded Costume Quest and Stacking but these obviously were able to be produced with a much lower budget and were handled pretty much independently.

With this new project, Double Fine Adventure, Schafer is going back to his game-making roots with a point-and-click adventure game. By using Kickstarter, Schafer can raise the investment required without the ‘significant strings attached that can pull the game in the wrong directions or even cancel its production altogether,’ whilst letting the general public into some of the secrets of game production. A more democratic approach to games creation. The original target was a somewhat modest $400,000, at least in terms of the type of funding games usually require. The subsequent and overwhelming success of this fundraising, gaining over 85,000 backers to amass his highly impressive total, suggests he wields a significant audience that thinks Schafer is on to something good.

This presents an interesting question. What is the limit of Kickstarter fundraising? Another project, the E Paper Watch from Pebble, has recently broken the $10 million mark, 100 times more than the original goal set. Granted, the base price for the product and the various reward levels for Pebble were much higher than Double Fine’s and, thus, the average pledge was also much higher; $148 for Pebble, $38 for Double Fine. But this just means that if a good idea is presented attractively enough, people will put forward money for it to be made real. This isn’t too odd a concept, really. People always offer money for goods. Only, in this case, the money is paid first.

The only possibly surprising thing is the extent to which people have chosen to buy into the rewards above simply receiving the basic product, which require much higher contributions. Obviously, the lure of the additional perks plays a part in this but it is not a given; especially in current economic conditions. But, there is a precedent for this kind of generosity. When Radiohead released In Rainbows and gave buyers the option to name their price, including paying nothing, people still paid money, averaging roughly £4 per copy and taking more money than their previous album without including sales of the physical CD when it was released. If you give people the option to take something for free and nearly half still offer to pay money, it shows that there is clearly a strong belief in effort being rewarded.

So, what is to say we couldn’t see a major project, say a Hollywood quality film, finding at least the majority of its funding through a project like Kickstarter? Admittedly, a lot of hugely commercial projects, although that is certainly not the case for all (28 Days Later, for instance), require much, much more than the highest Kickstarter project so far but if the quantities raised continues to increase it would be interesting to see how much the level of project increases as well. Could the possibility of total creative freedom in their projects be an attractive enough prospect for someone like Terry Gilliam to take a punt and put their project on Kickstarter? And would it be successful? Online fundraising projects could, potentially, spark a new renaissance, unhindered by perceived marketability. In fact, it would be direct evidence of the true marketability of a project. If you can get people to pay for it before it’s even made, there is clearly demand for it. If they come anyway, then you should probably build it.