In general I have to admit I'm kind of ashamed of the GB community for how incredibly poor they are reacting to this Kickstarter. If you want to react to this as a "they want $1 Million for Adblock?" Go right ahead, but you're missing the point entirely. They're asking their fans, actually the Internet at large, if they'd like to support 14 hard working friends in they're insane quest to provide a comic and other fun stuff to... the Internet. At $250k they get to remove the most sought after ad space on thier site and get to free up the corporate workload by the man hours that that single ad space requires (which ends up being more than a typical site because of their vetting process) and those hours get spent on other projects they want to do. If and hopefully when they reach $1 Million it means that they don't need to concentrate any time on making sure that they're bring the right ads to the table. That means more content. More Lookouts (which is awesome BTW, it's why the Lookouts symbol is my avatar). More Automata. Hell, if they reach the $1.4 million stretch goal I wouldn't be surprised if they undertake another PAX, or attempt to remove adverts from PAX all together. That's the project they're undertaking. Trying to change their site to something that is entirely dedicated to creating content for the sake of creating content, not for the sake of selling an ad.
Imagine what would happen to Giant Bomb if they were given $1.4 million to run the site for a year? Endurance Runs seem suddenly less daunting. Dave would be able to work on the site and not worry about making advertisements work. You be able to show your friends an ad free site and TNT would be available to everyone. They wouldn't have to answer to CBS. (Hell they answer to CBS so they don't have to spend man hours on advertising deals.) Bombast around the world. Ect. This also shows why their rewards aren't really rewards, if the project is funded what they would produce with the money is the main reward for, but since Kickstarter is Kickstarter they have rewards that won't spend the money they'd receive. Double Fine spent $300,000 on making and sending out the T-Shirts from their Kickstarter, Penny Arcade wants to avoid that. When it comes to the $500 retweets and $300 following they're leveraging the pull that they have on twitter. What happens now if PA tweets about a Kickstarter or an indie game? People look at it and pay attention. That's worth something.
In the end if you like PA the way it is, or just don't care about them, you don't need to donate, but please pause and think about what they're really trying to do before dumping on it and immediately dismiss it as a money grab. They know that Kickstarter is the newest fountain spam on the Internet and have said as much in the comic, but it came to the point where they felt obligated to see if it'd work. To ask the fans if they'd be willing to sign them on for a 1 year contract to make their comic and more. How different would Giant Bomb be, for all of us, if Jeff and the crew thought that premium memberships wouldn't have worked?
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