Ian Bogost: I Kickstarted Your Project And I Didn't Even Get The Lousy T-Shirt

(Kirschenbaum) Please welcome Ian Bogost.

(applause)

I'm gonna, do I have to pay extra to get
the text I'm gonna use on my monitor?

(laughter)

Like and up-sell opportunity.

I'm really happy to be here.
We've been talking about,

I've been talking to Matt and others
about coming for about a year and

now finding I'm here, so I can't,
I don't know if, I made this a point that

after a year's worth of anticipation,
but I'm excited to talk to you today

because this is a little bit of a
different subject for me,

I'm gonna show you some stuff that I
haven't shown anybody, at least in public

before but don't get your hopes up,
it's not that exciting, but it's maybe

maybe vaguely interesting, at least novel

And I'm thinking through some questions
that I'm gonna try to think through

in front of you, as I was just
invited to do, which means that

this is gonna be a little more meandering
than my typical talk, and hopefully

that will make it even more entertaining.

So, I wanna start by talking about
Kickstarter, and Kickstarter if anyone

does not know is a website crowd funding
platform, where you can go and you can

create a project. You want to macramé
a set of owls for your family and

you can post that with a video
and put a bunch of details about

what you're doing and why and you can
ask for contributions and anyone

in the world can contribute to your
project and you have to set a goal

a financial goal. If it reaches that goal
in a month's time, then you receive the

money minus a set of fees taken out by
Kickstarter by Amazon Payments and

after a 120 days of waiting and etc. etc.
you'll get this pile of money,

which you can then use to execute your
macramé project or your video game

or whatever it is that you're making.
And as of just this week,

this website is four years old, so
it's been around for long enough

that we have some sense of what it is
and what it might be doing,

what it might mean, if you
want to put it that way.

When I first ran into Kickstarter.
When I first started using it--

I guess I should say, it was already into
real serious money that was being raised.

The first project on Kickstarter,
I think asked for like twenty dollars

to someone that wanted to make
some sort of personal art project

and they got thirty five dollar instead.
But then strange things started happening.

You know, people were asking for $2500
to make interesting machined metal

pen cases and got, you know, $300,000.
And so the stakes rose pretty quickly.

This is already two years ago almost,
that this Pen Type-A was funded.

Note, now this thing is interesting, and
it's interesting to me personally

because I bought one although
I didn't fund the Kickstarter.

I found the Kickstarter just as it was
ending and I was able to go to their

website and buy one of these pens
and what it is it's a stainless steel

enclosure for this particular,
highly sought after, pen, gel pen

filler from Japan, which if you're into
this sort of thing, which I wasn't

I was just very curious. This is apparently
you know, a difficult kind of insert to

find a nice pen for. You know, and it
raised a hundred times its goal.

And I funded it, you know, immediately
after I placed my order and then I waited

a very long time. And by May of 2012,
about a year ago, I received my

Pen Type-A, which I was totally
disenchanted with. I mean, it was

it was, I had forgotten about it, for one
thing. It was like a hundred dollars.

So it was not an unsubstantial investment.
You know, a hundred dollars a year later

It was the opposite of
found money-- lost money.

(laughter)

And it just was an unremarkable
designed object, I mean it seemed

like it would be cool, I mean, doesn't
it look nice? Has a ruler on it, but

it just kinda didn't work.
It wasn't enjoyable to hold.

Something about it was just
sort of useless and pointless

and it sat on my desk until, I mean I
used it a couple times just to try it, but

I never used it in earnest, as a pen.
And it sat on my desk until last week

when I discovered that I inadvertently
had thrown it away while I was cleaning up

So this shows you kind of how invested I
ended up being in this Pen Type-A project

Now, what's interesting about this example
is that I think it's actually the norm,

rather than the exception. It's just
that we'd like to think that the norm is

me realizing the brilliant and incredible
design of an object like this.

How providing a small amount of seed
capital, to an aggregator that allows

creators to realize their dreams and then,
to take delivery of this miraculous object

and incorporate it into my
life with great glee, but

something different seems to happen.
Now, things got very very high stakes

very quickly over the past couple years
on Kickstarter. And we even saw

products that were really ambitious in
their nature, like the big Ouya,

open-sourced Android-based game console.
Not only exceed their funding targets

enormously but also kind of used the
Kickstarter platform as a way of

announcing themselves, as a way of
launching a much much bigger project

so you know, this is an interesting hybrid
product that not only got crowd funding

an enormous amount of money, but
also is backed by venture capital now

they're actually gonna release this system
all sorts of promises were made here,

but one of the things that remains
the case is that what makes this an

appealing project is not
so much the product, but

something more than the product. The idea
of an open, accessible television connected

video game system. That's an idea that
people like. You get your XBOX or you get

your Playstation and you enjoy playing
games on the TV, but there's a limitation

as to what kind of games you can access
or what kind of games people can deploy on

those systems because of the way the
platform owners got control content and

in this promise of letting anyone make a
game like you could make a game for your

Android phone that you could
play on your computer

is enormously appealing to people.
And of course you know, there's

other kind of, what you might call,
mass culture, traditional culture...

Kickstarter successes. This is the most
successful project, not in terms of

capital raised, but in terms of number of
total contributors, which is greater than

90,000, like 91,000 backers for the
Veronica Mars Movie Project.

And you know, again-- what you see here is
on the one hand, yeah sure, I mean--

You like Veronica Mars,
the television show from [inaudible]

Ten years ago?

It'd be great to have a movie, right?
I mean we've been talking about this

for a long time and sure, if you know,
there were a movie I would go see it.

But at the same time, there's something
more than just a promise of a movie

there's also the idea of being a part of
the Veronica Mars Movie Project,

which this idea of becoming a patron
of sorts, even a micro-patron allows.

And then, you know, there have been
weirder and less, I don't know--

promotionally successful endeavors,
Amanda Palmer, the recording artist

got a lot of flack for raising over
a million dollars on Kickstarter,

going on tour, then offering her fans
the opportunity to perform at her shows

for free, and you know, then she did a
Ted Talk this year about it, so you know,

so there's also this sense in which this
is like a kind of publicity platform or

kind of platform on which to get in
trouble, to talk about things,

to introduce ideas, to do something much
greater than just raising money.

And even when you do raise enormous
amounts of money for ideas that may or

may not be any good, but at least capture
people's attention, then ten million dollars

for this e-ink watch thing called Pebble
got a tremendous amount of press

when it first launched, and of course it
raised all these contributions, and now

here, I just pulled this off the internet
today. So this was May 18th.

That's about a year ago. And here we are
waiting for the opportunity to get our

Pebble watches, right? So there's an
interesting disconnect between the

real world and the Kickstarter world.

Now, I want you to suspend
your disbelief about this.

Don't read between the lines, I'm not
saying that this is a failure, that Pebble

now owes us something, there are
many who've levied these critiques

against Kickstarter including some
attempted lawsuits for projects that

weren't realized, but just that there's
something greater going on here than

just the funding of a product,
the pre-order of a product,

the patronage to a particular
artistic project or a design project.

Here's another recent example
that shows you kind of how weird

that these projects can get.
A mother on her daughter's behalf

launched a Kickstarter project to send her
daughter to a RPG camp over the summer

she wanted to raise $800, and you know
this is one of these things that just

kind of latches on to the public
imagination, right? You know,

a little girl who wants to proto
computer games and wants to

go to a camp to do it, and there's a
whole story about her brothers

making fun of her and it got actually
very strange, so one of the things

you can do is offer these, there are
these different reward tiers, you know

you could contribute a dollar, ten dollars
and you get different things, sometimes

t-shirts, and one of the high level reward
tiers here was like a hand-written apology

from her brothers, actually kind of
quite perverse interaction in their

family dynamics, wasn't exactly comforting
but anyway, Susan Wilson raised not $800,

but $24,000 and then everyone started
trying to dig into her past and figure out

if there was something not above board
going on and they accused her of being

a millionaire and having, there was this
photo of the mother with, what's his name?

The billionaire, Warren Buffet.
She reportedly had these start-ups

and had all this money, and then
there were a number of kind of

anti-women's rights trolls who decided
they would use this as a platform to

talk about how you shouldn't
criticize boys for programming.

Whatever they had in mind to express.
It's the internet and they're gonna

express it. So, these scams were later
revealed to be false or at least

apparently false, you know, in the sense
that she wasn't trying to dupe anyone

she was out of work, she was donating
all of the excess monies to stem

education sources for girls,

but none of that was clear when
this Kickstarter was launched.

So in retrospect, you can look back on it
if you go research it today you'll see

all of the kind of debriefing, right?
Boing Boing has a good one.

Explaining how everyone is insane, and
here's exactly what it looked like, but

when this first went off, it was not clear
at all what was going on, it very well

could have been someone trolling or
someone doing publicity because

those are activities that are supported
by Kickstarter certainly. Now Kickstarter

when they approve these projects, does a
kind of very cursory look at them, they don't

necessarily block projects from proceeding
so long as they have a concrete outcome.

So once again we have here, like this
example of a Kickstarter project being

something more than just the thing that
it's raising money for. It's doing much more,

in fact arguably, that part of the project
is even bigger than the purported goal

which is just sending a girl to camp. Now,
these are old numbers from 2012, but

when you look at the statistics on
Kickstarter projects, you'll see that

actually the ones that do succeed, are
not in the minority, but by no means do

all of these projects succeed, and it's
interesting thinking about what success

means. When you think about having
a project succeed, all sorts of things

may enter your mind. You know,
it sold well, you realized its potential,

that you completed it, but in this case
what success means is that the

Kickstarter was successful. So, you know,
thirty days went by, the minimum amount

of money that was requested was raised
and sometimes much much more than that

that's what these numbers track as success.

Now there are other ways of
looking at success as well.

This is a CNN Money survey of ship-times
for the top fifty Kickstarter projects

and I can't remember what top means
for them, I don't know if it means by money

or by contributors, but we'll just take it
at its word and say these seem to be

some of the largest, we see the Pebble
watch there at the bottom, and we see

some of the other projects, we see a
hand stylus, which is a pen for tablets.

Now, some minority of them
actually shipped on time.

What does that mean, on time? Well,
it means the people who created

the project said, "hey, we're gonna get
you these t-shirts in anticipation of those

bumper stickers in anticipation of the
concept art, which eventually we may

put into a video game, which then we will
give," right which is supposedly what

you were funding is this video game.
A vast majority of them were late and

some of them were very very late indeed.
You again see some of these are just

maybe never gonna happen. The ZPM Espresso
Machine, which I don't have a screenshot of

is an interesting example in a sense that
the Kickstarter success actually reduced

its potential for success because
the quantities they had to make

were so enormous that they couldn't
go about it in the kind of hand-built way

they had planned and so in a lot of cases
and in the case of the pen, the Type-A Pen

exactly the same. If you want to do a
small metal milling project you could

maybe kind of make that work on a $2500
budget make a few of them, but when you're

becoming a manufacturer then
things are much more complicated.

This is another personal example for me
that I think kind of draws things together

this is a clever idea, it's a little
miniSD holder that you put in the

SD card slot of your MacBook or your
MacBook Air that can add up to 64GB

of flash storage which you'd use
as a hard disk and you could use

for backups or whatever, I thought this
was really great and I had had not only a

hard drive failure, but also a
time machine failure and I was

quite worried about the state of my data
at this moment when this started to arrive

and so I bought one of these and again,
here what I was thinking about was

not really the product, so much as my own
anxiety about my data and then, let's see

it reached its goal on August 2 of 2012,
sometime about a month ago, I finally

got my mini drive and I got this new 11"
MacBook Air in the meantime which

doesn't have an SD card slot, so
they're literally just sitting on my desk

in their packaging, and like a year will
go by and I'll probably throw them away

like the pen or I'll give them away to
somebody, right? So again,

my participation in this project isn't
something that I feel cheated from

exactly, but it's something bigger,
weirder than just me buying a product

on a website or me funding
somebody to do something that

seems like it might be an exciting idea.
Now, you know, many of these projects

are successful, for various degrees of
success, we can see here how Ouya is

still on Amazon and it's about to ship
and they've been sending out dev kits

and I've got a dev kit, you know,
this is like a going concern,

that wasn't at all obvious back when
the project launched but we can look at it

in retrospect and say oh, well
they managed to pull it off

I don't think we can know whether they
pulled it off because of, in spite of,

irrespective of the Kickstarter campaign.
But nevertheless it's an example of a

Kickstarter project that's
gonna become a reality.

But the important thing to me is to
recognize that this thing, the machine

the product, is different, this is gonna
sound really obvious when I say it, but

bear with me here,
this is different from this. Right?

So when you go to this webpage,
is bigger than this thing. Okay?

When you buy this, and someone will go
and buy it from Amazon or from GameStop

or wherever they sell it, and they will
have a completely different experience

as well as a common experience, right,
but a completely different experience

than someone who got this, so when you
buy Ouya by funding their Kickstarter,

you're buying something different than
when you buy Ouya when you go to the

GameStop. What this says to me is that...

the experience, the Kickstarter
experience itself

is worthy of consideration, and
in fact, maybe the most interesting

thing about Kickstarter as a platform
is not the crowdfunding features,

which is one of the things that's
celebrated about it, not the idea that

a bunch of people can get together and
make something happen, we want an open

an open source, television connectable
Android-based game system,

let's make it happen. That's kind of the
rhetoric of the internet, right?

Everybody gets together and then miracles
happen and we all get what we want.

No, the most interesting thing is that
the people are participating in a kind of

activity that they weren't participating in
before, at least something is different

about the way they were participating
in that activity and the closest thing

I can think of to compare to the
Kickstarter experience is maybe QVC

where, you know, you buy stuff, and
you really are buying it at some level,

you get it, it comes in the mail eventually
maybe, but the experience that you're

participating in is much larger and very
different from walking into the store and

buying whatever the Shania Twain
best hits or here's another QVC example,

A lot of the things we buy, we also
don't intend to use as products,

so I like this screenshot because not only
does it have QVC, but also it has these

excercise kits, right? You know, that
you're gonna go out and excercise,

actually, the vast majority of excercise
gear and equipment and health and

diet related stuff, you buy it in order
that you can promise yourself something

and then you use it once, or you get the
Bowflex or you got the Ab ripper or

whatever the latest gimmick is, and you
have it and by buying it you got something

Right? What you got is a sort of sense of
yourself, about a promise to yourself

an idea of what you might be,
and that was real whether or not

you did anything about it. And it's
easy to say, well I mean, you're just

buying random crap on QVC, but then you
kind of go back and you look at this stuff

and I mean, what's the difference between
buying random crap on the internet and

buying random crap on QVC, and you know,
the big difference is one of class maybe,

one of the different kinds of communities
who participate in these activities,

but I do think that the QVC viewer is
more aware of their relationship to

television sales than the Kickstarter
backer is to their relationship to

whatever it is that Kickstarter is doing.
Right? They know what's going on.

And we started to see this kind of
bleed out into the Kickstarter campaigns

themselves of all the discussion
around them and you see this is from

the Veronica Mars Kickstarter further
down the page, and you know, it's got the

kind of voice of the character
here too, but these are the updates,

part of the updates that were running
on this site, we really wanted to do

these things, we wanted to be the fastest
Kickstarter project to reach a million dollars

in funding, we wanted to have the
largest number of backers. Why?

What does this have to do with making
movies? Well, it has nothing to do with me

well, I suppose you could say with
the more people backing your movie

then the kind of the greater success you
might have, but actually if we zoom out

and you can read about this, the
Kickstarter for Veronica Mars was

less about funding the movie than it was
about proving something about the

hypothetical movie to the studio that was
gonna do the really expensive work of

marketing and distributing, right?
Making a Veronica Mars film

doesn't cost nothing, but it costs
much less than making a successful

Hollywood production does. And so,
and whether or not this is apocryphal,

we'll never know, but according to the
film-makers, and they made this very

clear in the Kickstarter by the way,
the who is it-- Warner Brothers or...

whatever the network is that owns
this property, you can make a film

talking about it as one of these cult
classics, the fans want a film, etc. etc.

you've got to prove to us that there's
a market. Part of this is just like the

Hollywood gimmick, you know, the
executive made you go run through loops,

just show me something. Make it blue.
So then, this Kickstarter said

you need to show us, you need to commit
and then we'll be able to get this project

green lit. Now my guess is that it was
green lit already and that this was a

marketing gimmick in the way of presenting
the idea of participation because when you

have a cult film or a cult TV series
like this, what do the fans really want?

Well they want to be a part of it and they
want to feel as connected to it as possible.

They go to conventions. In the case of
Veronica Mars, they're not necessarily

doing cosplay or fan-fiction,
but I'm sure there's some of that

out there you could find and so these
selling points were less about the

financial aspects of the project,
especially since if they wanted to

the stars and the producers could fund it
themselves and they've got the resources

to do it, it's rather about creating
a kind of mythos, a sense that you're

participating in this project. And they
give you stickers, t-shirts, all sorts of

other paraphernalia that you could
only get if you back the Kickstarter

and then they wouldn't be offered again.
So, one way to think about Kickstarter is

that it is a form of entertainment.
In the way that QVC is a form of

entertainment. Or if you don't like
the word entertainment, it's a form of

distraction, it's a kind of leisure
activity in the same way that Facebook

is a kind of leisure activity. Even though
it's also a communication platform.

Or the way that Twitter is a kind of
leisure activity, even though it's also

some kind of communication platform.
And that you can sit there online

like many of you might be doing right now
and just sort of look at stuff, right?

Oh there's these things happening, and
I'm just kind of taking in the things

that are going on and that's what happens
when we watch television, when we flip

through the channels and so when you have
this kind of very competitive, interesting,

nail-biting in some cases, experience of
watching a Kickstarter play out,

is it gonna make its funding targets,
and then they add stretch goals,

you know if we reach additional money
then these new things that will unlock

and everyone will benefit from them.
Watching that process play out,

is its own kind of entertainment, its own
kind of experience. And this is something

that is very difficult for us to understand.
So just yesterday, or two days ago,

a friend of mine in the game development
community named Scott Jon Siegel posted a

blog post about this new game
Kickstarter called Road Redemption.

I don't actually know anything
about the game but Scott called it

everything wrong with Kickstarter game
development condensed into a single

Kickstarter campaign and he went through
and delineated all of the different things

that he thought were troublesome
and then he's right about all of them.

It's things like the creators had said,
we're gonna launch on all of these

platforms simultaneously and we're
a bunch of guys who maybe know

how to make games, I don't know.
We're not gonna tell you much about that.

We want to raise $160,000 and
we're gonna use $90,000 of that

for salaries and there's nine of us. Okay,
well how's that work out? I don't know

but they don't provide any detail, so
Scott went and he showed how all of the

kind of risk and anxiety and even some of
the design problems associated with games

are kind of being reproduced in these
Kickstarters which have now become

like lottery tickets. Maybe if you have
the right Kickstarter and you really

manage it well, then you get a bunch more
money than you asked for and it's unclear

whether this will be the case, but these
guys are only well, two-thirds of the way

through and they already have
half of their goal. So this is right,

in some sense. Scott is right that maybe
this is a stupid game, and maybe it's a

terrible way of going about justifying
your project to a public who will then

have something like an investment in it,
but that also doesn't matter maybe.

And when I talk to people who
back Kickstarters, a lot of the reason

they do it is just, they just don't know.
They just like it. It's like QVC, I dunno.

I don't know why I'm buying these things.
I wanted to have a connection with it.

I wanted to have a moment. In some
cases they know the creators.

A lot of these projects are funded by
trust networks. Oh, I'm familiar with their

previous work. I don't have it in here,
but if you think about the...

Tim Schafer's Double Fine Adventurer
project, which was I think the

second highest grossing after Veronica
Mars now, a lot of the reason to contribute

to that has nothing to do with your desire
to receive and or play the game that they

are promising to make, but rather you
remember playing Tim's adventure games

for Lucas Arts and enjoyed those games
and you kind of want to have a memory

of that moment and if that costs you
a dollar or five dollars or fifty dollars,

okay. It was worth it. Now, I think
some of this attitude is starting to be

reincorporated into creators' sort of
sense of what they are doing with their

Kickstarter projects, and what I mean
by that is that we've developed a little

bit of self-awareness that something is
greater than just the funding regime

that's at work in these projects, this
just launched today. Sissy Fight 2000.

A common trope for these Kickstarter
projects a re-release of an old game

or movie or something that's being remade
or revamped. In this case it was a kind of

early, ahead of its time, multi-player
game made by Eric Zimmerman and

some other folks and it's been
offline for some time and

they wanna bring it back and they have a
small goal that they're trying to reach

and they want to release it
out into the wild again

and Naomi Clark who worked on this game
originally is also part of the new Kickstarter

when she announced it this morning.
She had these like immediate

clarifications, right? So, she tweeted
the link and not a moment later.

If anybody's interested, it's for a free
playable online version and we're

gonna release all the source code.
So we're kind of already presenting

evidence that this is not a scam.
We're anticipating someone is like

Oh my God, another one of these game
remake projects! I've had enough of this.

No no, there's something different there.
So, I was already aware of that.

And then, this isn't a profit-making
Kickstarter for pre-ordering products

we're trying to restore a lost game,
so we're recasting the project

as almost like an archival effort, right?
Eric also [inaudible] effort.

And this is really interesting because
first it shows me that some of this

self-awareness is already kind of bleeding
through back into the computer space.

But also it seems to provide evidence that
there's some truth to the lottery ticket

reality of Kickstarter. In other words,
maybe the default assumption

we have now is that when you make a
Kickstarter, really what you want to do is

win the lottery. You say, aw,
only twenty thousand dollars.

and then two million dollars comes
your way and then yeah, you kind of

do some minimal amount of work
to make your game or whatever it is

that you're making work, and then maybe
you can just bank some of that money away.

It's a way of taking advantage of
the trend. I don't mean to sound

cynical about it necessarily, it's just
kind of how the world works these days

right? You find a trend on the upswing
and then you try to get your foot in the

door and do something. I think
a lot of people are going about

their business that way. At least to the
degree that now it seems necessary.

Or at least recommended, or at least
beneficial to hedge and say no, no, really

I'm a goodie. I'm not trying to take
advantage of you. I'm just doing this

in order to strike it rich on Kickstarter.
Now, the problem here, is that this is

boring. Right? Like whenever you
think about Sissy Fight, the moment

oh, ok. You're just doing an archival
thing? Okay. That's cool, good for you.

It seems like a worthwhile project.
I guess I'll see ya around. Right?

I mean, it's just not the kind of thing
that makes you as excited as a

project that you can
experience as entertainment,

but the weird thing is that this is
kind of exactly what Kickstarter was

made for actually. Was allowing people
to get things done in a kind of modest way

that they wouldn't have been able to do
otherwise. Jason Rohrer made a game

a few years ago for the NintendoDS called
Diamond Trust of London and he had

a very complex and troubled relationship
with a series of publishers trying to get it

out on that platform and without going
into enormous detail, there's a grave

complexity to publishing a game on a
platform like the Nintendo DS

because you can't just do it yourself.
You've got to meet Nintendo's requirements

you've got to order a certain number of
units. They've got to do all the manufacture

it's very complicated. So, Jason hadn't
released this game, but he had it made

and it was made specifically for the DS
and it didn't make sense to just

release it on the PC and so he made a
Kickstarter and he calculated and

Jason being the kind of very intricate
mathematical mind that he is,

he did a budget. He had everything laid
out in enormous detail. Shipping and the

manufacture, the cartridges. All he was
looking to do was to get this game out

to people who wanted to buy it. He made
some special editions and so forth.

This is kind of a perfect Kickstarter,
right? He asked for, I mean, look:

$78,715, right? He knew exactly what he
wanted. He got that and a little bit more

you could say is gravy and maybe he'll,
he already lives on a shoestring budget

so who cares about contributing
a little extra to Jason Rohrer?

It's not like he raised two million dollars
for a game he'd already made.

Again, this is kind of a perfect
Kickstarter, just like the Sissy Fight

one is. At the same time, it doesn't
provide us with that same experience.

So we have this kind of weird situation
which is a cognitive dissonance between

the way that Kickstarter seems to
want to work. The thing that it

thinks it's doing. Or the thing that we
think it's doing. And the thing that it

really does best. There's a space or a
gap between them and Kickstarter

has really not been very helpful at
helping us think through this with them.

This is one of the founders Kickstarter
Yancy Strick(ler) talking to FastComany

I think earlier this year. And the context
for this quote. It was a story about these

big budget Kickstarters like
the Veronica Mars thing.

"I would never want to scare the girl who
wants to do a $500 lithography project

'cause that's why we started this thing.
We think we have a moral obligation to her."

And, you know. I mean, that sounds good,
but then the projects that are making

the most money and of course they take
a cut, not to mention the most that are

getting the most attention are
in fact, exactly the opposite

of this kind of project. So, I mean
you might have a moral obligation

to someone which you can fulfill. I guess
that could be the meaning of this quote,

we have a moral obligation and really
my moral obligation is telling you,

the press, that I have a moral obligation
and now we're done with that.

And again, I don't mean to be cynical,
I just mean to point out that the rhetoric

of this kind of conversation, it does not
match the reality of what takes place

on the site and at the same time
when we look at projects that are

effectively a $500 lithography project,
which Diamond Trust of London isn't

a $500 project, but it's essentially that.
None of this money is going into

anybody's pockets except all of these
distributors and manufacturers.

It's just a way to get something in the
world that wouldn't be possible otherwise

that's kind of exactly this kind of
project. But at the same time,

that's kind of not where the site is the
most successful. So, thinking about this,

I've realized, well maybe this isn't
unique to Kickstarter at all.

Maybe it's just happening the most on
Kickstarter, maybe Kickstarter is a signal

for other kinds of activities like this.
And indeed, if you look around

you'll see all sorts of this kind of
Kickstarter-like pre-product

entertainment content. This is a game
that's currently being produced and

they've raised a million dollars for it
and the game may or may not ever

exist, but it's a kind of activity that
you can participate in whether or not

you participate in the game. This is off
of Kickstarter and there's many other

crowd-sourcing venues too. Or even just
do pre-sales and if you build enough

sort of momentum for yourself, then that
seems to work. The best example of this is

probably Minecraft, which was just a...
I remember when I first heard about

Minecraft and I tried it, and I was like,
"this isn't going anywhere," and now

they make hundreds of millions of dollars
a year on Minecraft by pre-selling it and

building, so, you know, there's an idea
that this has worked in the past,

so maybe it'll work for me, but the
mistake is that that's gonna be the

lottery win, like one in a million of
these will succeed at that scale and

what the rest of them are really providing
is this kind of experience, kind of

entertainment experience. Or even just
like Steam, this is just one of the many

sites that tracks price changes on Steam
and other digital download services.

And you can see like 50-75% off these
games on Steam so what most people do

when they buy games on Steam is
they'll go and they'll wait and

a new game will come out, okay, I'll wait
until it goes on sale, and it goes on sale

for like 70% off, costs a couple dollars
now, and you buy the game and you

end up with this enormous Steam library
and you don't play any of the games.

And you know that's kind of okay. Like
how many books on my shelf

have I not read? More than I'm willing to
admit. I know I buy them because

I want them in my life or I really do
intend to read them, or I want to be

the person who will have read them.
You know, and it's okay.

It's not a problem, you know, they say
something about me, I can display them,

you know, Steam's library is a little bit
like a bookshelf in that regard,

you can't necessarily share it as well,
but it's a place where you store

the stuff that might be important to you.
You don't know yet, because you haven't

played any of them. So from the creator's
perspective, what would we rather have?

Would you rather sell fewer of your games
to more people who will play them,

or your films or whatever, or sell
more of them to people who,

they probably won't play
or watch them,

but maybe they wouldn't
have done so anyway.

Maybe a kind of honesty in this, at some
perverse level, but no matter the case,

the point is that this kind of activity is
taking place more and more.

And one of the reasons it's taking place
more and more is that anything that we

get digitally is cheap if not nearly free.
What I mean is not necessarily that it is

free to make or free to create or
manufacture or distribute,

but the digital version of it, the idea
of it, the distribution in the case of a

Steam game or the rendering of the
Kickstarter page-- that is essentially

essentially free. In fact, you can go
watch the Kickstarter campaign without

paying a cent. So it's like free
entertainment, like television.

Liz Losh has this argument in her work on
digital rhetoric about the kind of public

function of different digital projects and
this has been really important to me

over the years because it's exactly the
opposite of what I was doing for so long

and I had to face the harsh reality of her
kind of critique of some of my ideas of

what digital rhetoric meant or how it
worked and the example I always use

to describe this is a game we made at my
studio a number of years ago called

Fat World about the politics of nutrition
very complicated simulation game

funded by the ITVS and distributed as this
kind of documentary game about the

inner relation between food politics and
health. And this was a miserable failure

at all sorts of levels, which I'm
not going to talk about, but

we can talk about it later if you want.
But it had a really strong argument.

Procedural argument that connected
some of the dynamics of politics and

corporate interest to general health in
America, and if you compare this

example of a procedural argument with this
other kind of digital argument, the kind that

Liz talks about, this is the other one:

The White House's Apps for Healthy
Kids Contest. You can see the difference

immediately. What this is is a contest the
White House put on for people to make apps

about exactly the same topic, about
nutrition and obesity and that's it.

And they'll give away some money
and this is one of the winners,

which proportedly allows children to
become empowered by choosing between

carrots and cake. You know, the kind of
standard nonsense to be seen with

entertainment. So the thing about the Apps
for Healthy Kids Project is that from a

rhetorical perspective, it didn't really
have to do anything other than exist.

And so the White House in particular,
the [inaudible], it's got these kind of

big form fields, and happy web 2.0
looking stuff on the internet it says,

we're tech savvy. It allows the White
House to communicate a sense of

engagement with current trends in, not
necessarily crowd sourcing in this case,

but in contests, and like the X Prize
and so forth. Makes them look hip

whether or not any of the products
that are created for it are any good,

it doesn't matter. In fact, it's maybe
better if they're not any good because

if they were it would just detract from
the real rhetorical project, which is

making the administration appear a certain
way. Now, so Liz Losh's argument about this

is that this is a kind of digital rhetoric
this way of making arguments public.

You know, when you say we're investing in
a video game to train soldiers about

cultural differences in the Middle East,
you don't even have to make the game.

It doesn't matter if anybody plays
the game, but you've told a story

about what you're doing or what you
could do with a piece of digital media,

which is itself kind of the result.
So, this has been happening

for a while now, and I kind of realized
now that it's a part of everything.

And here I'm gonna shift gears a little
bit, but I promise it'll come back around.

So, I think a lot about computer platforms
and I've done research on computer

platforms, I'm interested in the history
of computer platforms and I've got this

series of books called platform studies,
where people can write about computer

platforms, so when I saw a project like
the Ouya, it really piqued my interest

not just in the perspective of 'what does
this tell us about Kickstarter,' but

What does this tell us about the creation
and development of computer platforms

more broadly speaking. It made me realize
that actually, this trend of using a platform

development project as a way of talking
about or performing a set of identities

and practices that are bigger than
what we might do with the system.

This is actually not new at all, in fact
we've seen this happening long before

Kickstarter with many of these hardware
prototyping platforms like Arduino.

So I started taking a deeper look into
these systems as a part of some

research that we're doing at Georgia Tech
in conjunction with the Intel Science and

Technology Center for Social Computing.

So over the past few-- I'll come back to
Arduino-- the Kickstarter-like example

from the past year or so, is this small-
scale computer called Raspberry Pi.

And the interesting thing about Raspberry
Pi is, well there's lots of interesting things

but to me the interesting thing is that
it's really just a bare bones Linux system

that you couldn't buy and you couldn't buy
it because they couldn't manufacture it

quickly enough because they
didn't anticipate demand, and so

right before Christmas, this broke out of
the kind of populous community and

hacker community and kind of "maker"
community into the general population

a little bit. In fact I had what my wife
was asking me and about half of

friends of hers had heard about it,
and so what the Raspberry Pi became

was the kind of Tickle Me Elmo of last
year and this is the thing you want but

can't get and the reason you want it
is not really even because you know

what it is, right? I mean, what is
that for any random person?

It looks computery, but what does it do?
Who knows? Just like you don't know

what the Tickle Me Elmo is.

(laughter)

Or why you would want it
anyway. I guess I want it because

it's an Elmo, right? So, you know, these
things kind of overtake the reality

and they become bigger than what we
really were participating in when we were

participating in the Raspberry Pi craze
was the idea that we might be the kind of

individual or family or whatever for
whom this would be an important

part of our lives, right? This is
something... or, just like when you

buy the Tickle Me Elmo, what you're really
doing is saying something about yourself

as a parent, right? This is what I've
done to get you this Christmas present

that you wanted. Now, turns out there are
examples of these kinds of hardware

development projects on Kickstarter
itself. This is one called Twine, which is

a so called "internet of things" system
that allows you, it has sensors built in,

it connects to a wifi network, and it can
provide signaling you can use to send

text messages or other things. I'll come
back and talk about this in more detail.

You can see that they were actually
successful in their Kickstarter.

And here's another one called blink(1),
which is a light that you plug into your

USB port and it can change colors and
you can program it to do different things.

Now, the guy who is behind Thing M
actually, also backs Kickstarters,

and I talked to him when I first started
researching this idea of what

Kickstarters are and even before he
launched his project, he was very aware

of this dynamic and said, you know,
"I back projects I want to see exist,

even if I never get anything back
in return." And so I think he had

the sense, and this is kind of a savvy
business sense to have, that maybe

what I want to do is present an idea
that's simple and compelling enough

that people want the idea of it, whether
or not they want the product, right?

He also told me that even if he doesn't
need it, or even if it's too expensive,

or even if it's just, you know, there's
too much stuff in my world already,

I don't need another gadget, maybe I'll
back it just because this is a thing that

I want to endorse, like clicking the
'like' button, right? But you can do it

with your wallet. So, thinking about these
kinds of dynamics with Kickstarter, with

this kind of idea of participating
in the entertainment or leisure

of the idea of things, one of my PhD
students, Tom Jenkins and I started

taking a look at as many of these hardware
prototyping platforms like Arduino and

Raspberry Pi as we could get our hands on.
And we tried to look at the functions.

The stated functions. The purposes
to which these would be put and we

found some patterns, not surprisingly.
Many are educational apparatuses, or

they aspire to teach students basic
electronics skills, and there's some

argument that all of them are like this,
all of them are kind of educational

platforms, but some of these systems
have framed themselves explicitly.

This is the Propeller Board, which is,
you know, explicitly talks about being

conceived to educate users on the
uses of a particular pattern of a

microprocessor, right? The Raspberry Pi
is another example. It's creators see

it as an educational apparatus
and describe it as this tiny, cheap,

computer for kids, about $35 to buy one,
and in fact, they have a kind of back-story

about students at the University of
Cambridge who arrived in the 1990s

and exhibited more of the traits of low-
level hobbyist programmers than those

who arrived a decade later and they're
trying to recuperate some of that kind of

natural inborn capacity with, not
necessarily with electronics, but just

even with programming or being able to
operate a machine like a computer on a

lower level, so you know, education
is certainly one of these goals.

Other platforms seem to be intended as
kind of toys, as recreational apparatuses,

as hobbies, and it's sometimes difficult
to separate the toy use or the fun use

from the educational use, it's that kind
of chocolate covered broccoli business.

So this is littleBits, which is really
meant for play, but it's also

an educational electronics system, you can
connect these different components together

This is called the MaKey MaKey, which is
essentially a kind of fun electronic

interface creator where you can wire it up
with, you know, bananas or like Play-Doh

and paper to control a video game.
So, you know, it tries to make

experimentation interesting and fun
and rewarding. And another use is

art and design and certainly, a lot of
these platforms were conceived as a

way for artists and designers who
don't have a deep electrical engineering

or computer science background to
make things, especially physical hardware

apparatuses with computers. It starts with
the wiring system, which was an open-source

electronics prototyping kit that was
influenced by the processing software

environments, you could kind of do the
same creative coding with hardware

you could do with visual design and
processing, which had been itself

influenced by John Maeda's Design by
Numbers project, so this idea of

[inaudible] creativity. And you know,
Arduino and its related forms and shields

and all of the extensions to it also
rise out of the wiring project,

from 2000 onwards and these things are
emerging along with new programs that

inner-mesh art and culture at
universities at NYU, at USC,

at Carnegie Mellon, at Georgia Tech and
other institutions. And these things found

homes very quickly in these programs.
It's almost like running a textbook.

Nobody reads it except you get in the
course and to some extent these devices

have served that niche. And another common
usage for these systems is monitoring.

Systems that intend to provide event
notification for different conditions.

Here we can return to the Twine.
One of the example uses of this device...

This is from the website, kind of
from their marketing, you know...

if the temperature is over 27 degrees,
and the Twine is facing up then send a

message to Eric that John is at the lake,
and this is a ridiculous example, but

it gives you a sense of what you could
do with it as a temperature sensor

and a moisture sensor, so, you know,
if your basement is going to flood,

you could put the moisture sensor down
there and it would send you a text message.

The blink(1), it kind of has the same
features, right? A notification from Skype

or something like that, so all of these
functions are interesting, but, but...

if you kind of back up and think about it,
all of these devices sort of suffer...

or benefit, depending on your perspective
from the same issues that Kickstarter does.

In a sense that what does one really--
are you really gonna do this with your

Twine, you spend like 150 bucks on this
thing, you throw it down in your basement

with the moisture sensor and you kind of
forget about it? Is this a use that

corresponds with the real world, or just
with people who like the idea of using

these hardware tinkering platforms?
And same for the blink(1) or even for

the Arduino. In Raspberry Pi, you can see
all the people talking about getting one

I already used that example, and in some
sense if we have to draw one thread

all the way through all these systems, one
commonality, it's a kind of vagueness that

a general purpose computer has a clear
set of possible uses: for communication,

for work, for advertising, whatever, but
the materials and supporting devices for

Arduino and Fidgets and Twine, they
don't explain much about them, right?

There's a kind of measure of circular
reasoning in this platform space.

On the one hand, they are supposed to
offer simpler, easier, more accessible

entry into hardware development, but
on the other hand, they don't provide

much scaffolding to do that, actually.
And they don't really give you many

examples of valid viable uses, you're just
supposed to discover them, apparently.

So, the abstract values of being engaged
with play or education or experimentation

or comfort or empowerment, that's really
the function that these are serving, right?

I mean, you might adopt one as a
way of feeling a certain way and

maybe carrying out that feeling, right?
But primarily by kind of performing a

certain identity, right? So, one of the
things that we've been interested in

in my lab, Tom and I have been recasting,
re-framing these particular platforms

as what we call tinkering platforms and
trying to kind of reclaim some of the

lost opportunity, so, you know, the idea
that you would spend several hundred

dollars on a Twine device and sensors
in order that you could then, again, like

throw it into your basement so that
it could tell you if it was flooding,

this seems like a less viable kind of
direction for the actual use of this system

than something else that we might be able
to invent, and the same is true for Arduino

and Raspberry Pi. It's almost
like the, they're in-viable actually,

as real products, and so we should treat
them for what they are, which is these

kinds of aspirational products, but that
doesn't stop us from imagining what

real versions of products like this might
look like, and for Tom and I, we've been

exploring a kind of return to the hardware
store mentality as an alternative.

So, you kind of go in to the hardware
store or the RadioShack and you

rummage through some bins and you find
some components that cost a few dollars

and you solve a little problem in your
world and nobody needs to know

about it even. So we've been designing
systems that use the PIC microprocessor.

And one of the reasons you choose an
8-bit microprocessor with 16 bytes of

memory is because it's cheap, usually
twenty cents. They have to be programmed

in assembly that's relatively straight-
forward and so again, the context of this

this ISTC we started building little
computers that are very modest

and don't aspire to much,
but they only cost a couple bucks,

we're trying to get it down to a dollar,
and a few sensors for input and output,

here's a light that's blinking,
we milled some boards,

and we've been kind of experimenting
with methods of development for this.

And one of the things we've been doing is
just going and talking to people who are

in the community about really random
specific needs that they have and to

see if we can solve them. So Concrete
Jungle is a local organization in Atlanta

that reclaims neglected produce from
public spaces, so we've been working

with them as an example of this kind of,
to keep us honest, something we don't have

necessarily have a strong commitment in,
but we would like to be able to solve,

on fruit ripeness detection, so we built
some prototypes and so [inaudible]

when we do this, we use these laminate
bags and so forth, and then we can kind of

build these small apparatuses that
allow us to detect fruit ripeness.

This is one very stupid example of how
you might use this, but it's kind of like the

more stupid examples I have, the better.
This is really what I'm going for.

So, to close out and kind of to return to
Kickstarter, I think if you think of

Kickstarter less as a funding platform and
more as an entertainment platform, then

you have the right start, but
actually what you need to do is

take that even further and think of
Kickstarter as primarily an entertainment

platform in the same way that like
Facebook has become more of an

entertainment platform than a
communications platform. And so,

while it's true that the Pen Type-A is
more than that $100 metal pen that

never gets used, it is indeed this kind of
memento of my excitement and interest

in the design project itself and the
students who were pursuing it.

There's also a sense that it would be nice
if there were an alternative world in which

it were also a pen, in which we can
also get pens. At least occasionally.

And I actually think what's happened is
that making things like pens is actually

much much harder now than making ideas
about pens or about games or about films

or about computers or about whatever.
And part of that is because of the

incredible surplus of targets for our
attention. All of the different things

that we could possibly be looking at
at any given time, but I think it's also

partly because our idea of what a real
pen or a real game or a real film or

a real computer or whatever, that it has
become too grandiose. That there's really

no reason why this needs to exist in the
form that it does. It was actually just fine

to have the pen, and so when I reflect
on kind of the philosophy that we've been

using and thinking about tinkering
platforms, one of the ideas is that

maybe what we want when we make things
these days are more modest goals,

rather than more ambitious ones, to find
those kind of small pockets where we can

actually affect just little tiny change
in our own individual personal lives

and then we can kind of recast the
experiences that we have with these

entertainment projects in a different way.
To be aware of what they are in the

same way that we want to be aware that
QVC is more than just a place to buy things.

So, that's it. Thanks.