I’ve gone and done it: Kickstarter has made me use the fuck word. At Christmastime, no less.

It likely won’t surprise anyone out there that I am a Kickstarter “Superbacker” and have supported dozens and dozens, hundreds even, of Kickstarters big and small. Hell, I’ve backed a ton of ZineQuest campaigns alone. I’ve written dozens of articles either on ZineQuest itself or reviews of ZineQuest books, and I’ve done several posts on books I’ve acquired through Kickstarter campaign rewards. I have many more such reviews or bits sitting unpublished in varying shades of completion. I’ve given to campaigns looking for just a few hundred dollars and I’ve given to campaigns that end up making a million dollars or more. I don’t just give to RPG products either; I also contribute to products in several other arenas on a semi-regular basis, when ideas pique my interest. I have been “burned” (not that I really see it that way at all) a few times and I’ve been ecstatic like 95% of the time when the fulfillment comes through, and either way I keep backing new things and excitedly talking about them.

The point is, I’m Kickstarter’s target user. And they’re fucking up pretty badly, because I and other users like myself are ready to abandon them completely.

If you’re not aware, Kickstarter management announced a fundamental shift in the site, where it will transition to “using the blockchain” in a pretty grotesque courtship of techbro money. In so doing, they’re committing to further gaps in transparency, further avoidance of responsibility, further avoidable environmental impacts, and further legitimization (even if it’s tangential) of categorically nonsensical digital pyramid schemes. They are signaling that they’re disinterested in customer/user feedback, that they’re willing to let generally-celebrated employees exit rather than listen to them, and they’re showing that they’re more than happy to contribute to the continued exploitation of the ecology of the planet if it entices wealthy investors to enrich them further. It’s awful in every way.

Many of us, consumers/backers and creators alike, are disgusted by this direction. This has been readily apparent in articles and on social media, where the backlash has been immediate and justifiably vitriolic.

It also puts a lot of creators in a very, very difficult spot. Many work a day job and play and create on the side for fun or for a small portion of income, but not all. For many others, creating things is their primary income. Some have been enabled by the rise of platforms like Patreon and Ko-Fi and, yes, Kickstarter; these creators are lucky that they have found an audience whose generosity and enthusiasm allows them to work at their chosen field to provide for their ways of life. Kickstarter’s visibility, its front page and recommendation algorithms, its marketing budget – all of these things are incredibly important to these independent creators who largely rely on Kickstarter to fund their projects and pay their bills. This number includes many people I care about, respect highly, and whose work I am lucky to consume and talk about and play with and share. It includes many more whose work I have yet to discover, but who nonetheless are looking forward to their projects launching and the fulfillment that comes with creating things and following their dreams.

To put a fine point on it: many of these people, both those I know and those I don’t, will have a hard time buying groceries and Copic markers; paying rent or their internet bill; or providing clothes for their kids – because of this monumentally dimwitted cock-up by Kickstarter.

To a much lesser extent, it puts dorks like me (and maybe you) in a tough spot too. I hate the direction Kickstarter is taking. I also hate the way Patreon is courting NFTs. I do not want to support them financially at all should they continue to follow this ruinous route; it would not be the first time I have made conscious, substantial decisions about where my money goes out of principle. However, I also do not want creators to suffer. I want to support them, I want to give them my money for their work and I want to share their work far and wide for everyone who may be interested to see. These things are at odds with each other. You may be in the same boat.

Do I just withhold my money from Kickstarter until they learn the error of their ways, or does that just hurt creators? Do I support projects with a knot in my stomach and a proverbial clothespin on my nose, or does that just incentivize these pig-headed ideas? Do I advertise and share campaigns to help indie artists and authors reach ever greater exposure or am I just propagating environmental harm and enriching those who, at the end of the line, profit from it?

I wager Kickstarter is aware of this, and is knowingly holding these creators hostage in a sense.

I don’t have the answer.

There’s chatter all over Twitter and Instagram and the like, creators discussing ships to jump to. Itchfunding, for example, or Gamefound, or IndieGoGo, or this, or that. Moving from Patreon to Ko-Fi or various other options. I’ve even seen people suggesting OnlyFans! Many of these are imperfect solutions, losing this functionality or that option; e.g. abandoning Kickstarter loses the front page visibility and the “Projects We Love” stickers and so on. Concerns arise about fragmenting the user bases and seeing the potential slices of the pie get narrower, or worries about consumer confidence in new platforms slowing adoption and so on. It’s largely nervous and grim assessments, and smart people have tweeted threads with generally unpleasant assessments. Some have even preemptively announced the slow, but inexorable, death of their small businesses.

It really saddens me. But, more usefully, it also really angers me to be put in such a position and to see people I admire and people I’ve never met before struggle with these things. It makes me want to help out any way I can.

I don’t have the answer, or answers. But I have a tiny little platform, a website I spend a few hundred bucks on each year whether I blog or not, and I want to use it in whatever tiny way I can to spread whatever answer or answers we come to. We’ve been so lucky to see technologies coalesce in such a way as to allow and even encourage such an explosion of terrific DIY content. Not just games, either; comics, objects, movies, and more. I want to do what I can ensure there are many more years of such unbelievably rich and successful and fertile creative content made with, by, and for people of many backgrounds and interests.

So what I know is this:

1. I am listening. I am actively seeking answers and I want to be made aware of opinions. Tell me what you, a creator, are going to use. Tell me what you, a nerd/fan/customer, are going to use.
2. I am looking for alternatives, and I will share the ones that I find.
3. I am absolutely willing to change how I buy products or support creators at the drop of a hat.
4. I want to reduce any harm I do to the efforts and finances of creators. If this means supporting their efforts on a crappy platform, I’m open to it, for now at least.
5. I won’t begrudge anyone who also doesn’t have the answers yet, who has to launch a Kickstarter anyway or wants to support people who do.

I don’t know what will happen yet. I don’t know what answers are yet to come in the aftermath of crypto-bullshit and techbro Web3 scams. But I have hope that, just like we couldn’t have imagined Kickstarter helping to enable so many creatives before it came along, we don’t yet see that the best is still to come.

This is really important to me. I hope it is to you, too, and I hope you’ll talk to me about it. I’m all ears. Whether you get a hold of me in the comments below, by the Summon The Possums email/contact field thing, on Twitter, or on Instagram, I hope you do reach out and tell me what you’re considering, planning, doing. This is going to take a lot of conversation and people helping people to make sure we get to a better answer.