The AGS Bake Sale --- $4191.98 Dollars Raised :D

[ddq]

re: everything - I disagree.

[Ponch]

re: everything - I disagree.

re: your post - Could you elaborate? 

[monkey0506]

re: ponch, he don't do that. keep messing with him and he'll dun goof you up.

[Ponch]

re: ponch, he don't do that. keep messing with him and he'll dun goof you up.

It'll be okay. ddq and I have Oceanspirit Dennised together back in the day. That makes us OSD brothers. And that's a sacred bond, baby.  8)

[Ilyich]

Here are my irrelevant, non-baker thoughts on the subject:

Bake Sale as a charity event is a wonderful, simple and graceful project. It represents everything what's great about the indie-development community in general and AGS forums in particular. And while I'm not in any way against the idea of those participating getting some money from it, it certainly seems like it would ruin some of the feel-good vibe of the whole thing.

It feels better as a community event, and not as an AGS Festival (although that sounds good too ).

As for supporting the developers - how about small money prizes for AGS-Awards? Although I feel that money can ruin anything.
Except for charity, of course.

[Ponch]

But then we might as well give all the prize money to Theo and Ben304.

As for the rest, I'm just doing my best to make everybody happy. I'm not having much luck, but I'm trying. 

[Wyz]

You know, if I think about the past year and what money exchanges there have been there are a few things an 'AGS fund' could come in handy for. Be it natural disasters (that might also have hurt members of the community) like floods in Australia, earthquakes in Japan; or members in acute financial difficulties (that has happened more then once); or maybe events like mittens for folks who really want to go but just don't have the money. I think there are all sorts of possibilities that benefit the community without creating tensions like prize money would give.

[m0ds]

Nice! Would certainly be good to stick with the donation for a bundle thing. It's about time a community fund happened, whether it pays for a server or not. Also good call if some of it goes to a charity. 'bout time AGS started saving the world Whatever happens, still great to see what's being done - being done 

[Ponch]

Thanks for the well wishes, guys! We're working very hard, I can assure you and it's nice to be appreciated. 

[LimpingFish]

I liked the original idea. It was simple. It had a point. It had a goal. More importantly, everybody was psyched about it, which is a rarity these days.

Instead of firing off ideas about what we're going to do with all the cash, which we don't actually have yet, let's just continue on, as someone said earlier, as if nothing has changed:

1. A bake sale is going to happen.
2. Monies will be raised.
3. Something good will be done with said monies.

Can we all at least agree on that? This is a generous thing these people have agreed to do, off their own backs, for the betterment of the community. Will it work? Who knows? Personally, I going to enjoy finding out. Adventure! Virgin territory!

Forge ahead!

[ddq]

Now, I'm going to be frank here. I can't say I approve of the direction this is going. The vision of the project must be totally reasserted. We don't know for sure exactly what this thing is supposed to be and are slowly mutating the original idea into something unrecognizable. Let me attempt to list the points that must be addressed.

1. Number of contributors
The initial "baker's dozen" has expanded from what was originally conceived as a small number of developers capable of delivering high-quality games in a short amount of time to an open group which anyone capable of making a game by the deadline can join. I'm not opposed to having more bakers, but we've got to step back and evaluate our current trajectory. Now I don't believe that the original authors were chosen because they are AGS's finest, or that they have a history of excellent games, otherwise, I would not be one of them. I do think that a certainly level of quality is expected, especially as this is a commercial bundle, and it would not be prudent to make it a simple open call. I've been in similar situations before, and in my experience, trying to be universally accommodating and focusing on not hurting anyone's feelings tends to lead to failure. In particular, I don't think icey should have one of his "games" in the bundle. They've consistently been utter crap littered with copyright violations. Further, monkey_05_06, I don't think you should be so offended that you weren't "chosen", but I definitely think you are capable of producing bundle-level quality. Finally on this point, the number of games in the bundle is not directly proportional to its total value. Once you start getting more than can be described as "several", the bundle is seen less as a focused collection of quality games and more as a big bargain bin of shit. Consequentially, the price the customers will be willing to pay for it decreases. So I think we need to establish an upper limit on the number of games.

2. Destination of donations
This is a big one. The whole bake sale was conceived as a means to help both CJ and the community by adding stability to the site by way of a new server. It is now known that such a purchase would not accomplish this goal. So we must decide whether to find an alternate means of pursuing the original goal, i.e. helping CJ and/or the community, or finding a new aim. Many destinations for the profits have been proposed, including charity, a server deputy, ports of the engine to other operating systems, further development of the engine and editor, the AGS Archives server, and the pockets of the bakers. This is one of the more complex issues, but I think it may be simpler than it seems. Namely, that it largely depends on...

3. Source of donations
Who is going to buy the bundle? The concept that's been bandied about is that this a by the community, for the community event, but I think that's hogwash. I feel it unlikely that just the AGS community will be able to raise any significant amount of money. Quite frankly, AGS is a community very much entrenched in the notion of freeware, from the editor to the engine to the games, and historically have been hesitant to release or purchase commercial games. The real money is out there on the Internet. It is a matter of scale that must be discussed. Do we want to limit the appeal of the bundle to the AGS community? In my opinion, no, and where the profits go determine the marketability of the bundle. The "several games for one cheap price" angle only goes so far; people care where their money is going. To be honest, I think that the majority of potential customers would be unwilling to donate to a cause that only benefits this community. Really, no matter how you look at it, the bundle is charity, it's just a matter of whether people are donating to a "charitable cause" or merely donating to some people who need/want the money. I am arguing in favor of the full-on charity approach. The sheer reach of such a bundle vastly exceeds one aimed at private profits. For one, people are much more willing to donate if they know their cash is going to a good cause they support, and are willing to donate more. Further, the advertising spreads much more virally. Gaming sites and blogs love writing stories about gamers who are producing or playing games for charity. Finally, I think that the charities themselves are far more worthy of the donations than either server admins or myself and the bakers. I'd love to see us raise money for Child's Play or the Red Cross or something. So we need to come to a consensus on out target audience and its size.

4. New/additional management
This issue of scale then raises the additional question of whether we've got sufficient resources and leadership to pull the bundle off at a higher level. Ponch, I think that if we're targeting the AGS community and its peripheral adventure gamers, you've definitely got what it takes to lead us to a successful and non-chaotic launch. However, if we do attempt to branch out to the Internet as a whole, I think you might need some assistance to keep from being overwhelmed. It would just be too much for one cow to handle. The whole bake sale was, of course, primarily your idea and you should retain a high level of creative control, but if we plan to blow this up, we'll need someone like Dave Gilbert for the high number of transactions and "dealing with the press". Since Dave has this sort of experience, I think he'd be an invaluable asset to a larger-scale bundle. Also remember that as release draws near, we'll want testing and after it begins, we'll need customer support. I can definitely see the huge number of complications that would be brought on by aiming for even 1/10th of the original Humble Indie Bundle's scale, not to mention possible legal issues, so I can totally understand wanting to keep it smaller, but it's something that should be decided sooner rather than later.

So in conclusion, this is just my over-complex analysis of the situation and my attempt to raise the points that we must address. Frankly, LimpingFish's assessment is really more practical and on-point, but I do think there are some complex issues here that need to be resolved before we continue.

[Ponch]

Okay. A lot of good points in that uber post / manifesto (I hope you're not writing that from a tar paper shack )

* I agree we need to firmly establish a new vision for the bake sale. Why are we baking? We're working as fast as we can on that and once we get the required information from Dave, CJ, and a few others, we'll have a good idea at what we're looking at and what we can and can't accomplish.

* We probably need to set a cap on the number people working. At one point, someone (Cat, maybe? I don't remember), suggested 24. I can support that. We don't want the bundle getting so big that it becomes impossible to manage. If you want to consider the "open call for bakers" to be at an end, I can certainly understand why you feel that way. If we have too many games a'bakin' then we can just bump the later joiners to a summer bake sale or something. I'm confident there are several way to resolve this.

* Dave is going to handle the money (at least, I think that's right. Dave? Am I off the mark here?). I have total faith in his ability to handle the money (somebody has to), ensuring that it goes where it's supposed to and not into a hotel room filled with hookers and coke. (Again, Dave? Am I off the mark here? )

*I can see where you're coming from with this place and our love of freeware. But I have more faith in the AGS community than that. We're not asking for a lot for the bundle. If a hundred people each pay ten bucks (I plan to may a lot more than that), that's still a thousand bucks. If two hundred do, then we've raised two thousand. I have faith that not everyone here is a cheapskate. If this is done for us, by us, then I think a lot of these nice people will step up and cough up a little cash to help us help them.

* I'm for giving a chunk to charity too. I prefer St. Judes, myself. But we're still working that out. I'm for giving a chunk to Peder and his archives. He pays for that out of his pocket, you know. I also support porting AGS to Mac or HTML5. We're still working on that and we've asked CJ to weigh in and tell us what he would like to do with the money since we were raising it for him originally. As soon as we hear from him, we'll have a much clearer view of things.

* I freely admit I'm being pulled to my limits. I have a day job and I volunteer several evenings a week. Ben, Darth, and Dave are all working hard to explore our options, look at the legal obligations, and get the word out to the interwebs. They're also helping to take a lot of the burden off me and keep everyone connected. None of us are getting paid to do this, ddq. And none of us expect to be. We're doing the best we can, man. Cut us just a little bit of slack, okay? We're working as fast as we can. 

Thank you for the feedback, ddq. I welcome your advice and remind you that there's always a seat for you in the bat cave.

- Ponch

[ddq]

Just as a sidenote, my father works for St. Jude in their finance department and I know that any amount we donate wouldn't be a drop in the bucket of corporate donations and insurance funds they get. So while no one loves St. Jude more than me, (my dad's also a cancer survivor himself), it may not be the best target of a  $500-5,000 donation, though I could ask him about it. Child's Play is one that I'm partial to mainly because it's well-known to gamers and a cause that's close to many of their hearts. But I'm totally up for other charitable organizations.

[Ponch]

Just as a sidenote, my father works for St. Jude in their finance department and I know that any amount we donate wouldn't be a drop in the bucket of corporate donations and insurance funds they get. So while no one loves St. Jude more than me, (my dad's also a cancer survivor himself), it may not be the best target of a  $500-5,000 donation, though I could ask him about it. Child's Play is one that I'm partial to mainly because it's well-known to gamers and a cause that's close to many of their hearts. But I'm totally up for other charitable organizations.

Actually, child's play is a good idea.

But are you telling me that the money I give to St Judes every year goes completely unnoticed? I has a sad.  :'(

[auriond]

I haven't read all of the thread very carefully, so forgive me if this has been addressed already but...

If the issue is that

1. the AGS Bake Sale was originally conceived to raise money for a new server
2. CJ says what we need is not a new server, but manpower to admin the server
3. no one here who has the expertise has the time to take on this job

then

4. why not use the money from the Bake Sale to hire a server admin?

I don't know how to admin a server, but I've had a server for about a decade. I pay a guy $80 a month to take care of it for me. If there's a reason why this wouldn't work out for AGS, please enlighten this ignoramus.

Also, yes, the bundle should be targeted at non-AGS members as well. There's a big public reading these here forums. They just want to play good games. We can give them that.

[Ishmael]

My intention here is not to insult anyone, but if me practicing my freedom of thought and speech is a problem to someone they can go fuck themselves.

I quite agree with ddq's notion here. The whole thing seems to be running out of control, so you people need to pull it together before all goes to pot. Of course this is from an outsider's point of view, but that can't be a good sign, no? This thing started out with many good merits and a promise to go far...

Ok, so, you thought we need a new server and started working on that enthusiactically, with a good group in good spirits and all hyped up about it keeping it under wraps. Then, you unveil it to have it all blow apart.

At the point of unveiling the whole thing another dozen of people hitch a ride on the wagon. Your dozen of good games for a low price is indeed becoming a bargain bin of shit, as ddq nicely phrased it, because the more people are in the less I, for one, trust in the quality of individual games in the pack. Partially because I have less faith in some developers' ability to produce high enough quality, and partially because the "I wasn't invited but I demand to be part of this!" attitude just does not sit with me at all. I believe there was a well thought out reasoning behind the original group of bakers being selected, and this free for all, I would assume, competely wrecks that reasoning. One down.

Then it turns out the very cause you're raising money for doesn't need the money, and nobody bothered to verify this beforehand, and no-one has a backup plan for such a case. Another down.

So, options are discussed, and everyone with a less than "I want money because money money money" obvious claim for the funds jumps in wanting a share. The discussion is good, but in my opinion direly misplaced; this should have been thought out beforehand, or there should be some sort of a solid ground to go from. "Let's do something for the good of the community" isn't such, especially with charity coming into the picture.

Let's say charity is picked, what then?

I'm not saying charity is a bad idea. There are so many charities and all over the world that you theoretically could give the money to, but what would be the point?

Of course there's the community vs. gamers all around aspect, depending on who is the final target audience of the sale, etc. But, I still think it should be something to do with the community. I don't think a very large percentage of us are cancer patients. And if we get on that, an evenly valid claim would be mine to donate it to the European Blind Union or some such affiliated party.

No. I think it should be something closer to the whole community. For example, I would guess there are a lot of young people around still, or a lot of people who know young people. How about a youth mental health charity for example? I can't throw any international names off the top of my head but I am sure you get the picture. Something the community more or less might even, by a far shot, benefit from in the end. And while at it, before anyone jumps on that I'm opposed to giving it to church or somesuch, handing out boring as hell fairy tale books to hungry kids in earthquake zones isn't helping much.

Sure, the idea is nice, but do keep it together to the end. There are people who can run this sort of an endeavour, and it'd indeed be for the good of us all if done right, but the direction it seems to be taking right now is not very promising in my opinion.

EDIT: Ofcourse, I am not opposed to the server admin/deputy guy idea, but raising money just for that seems a bit silly. I am indifferent about the porting, but I don't see why that can't be done without money, even if it does take some more time. But that is just me not having such passion towards the subject.

[Ponch]

I agree. I think we should pick a charity. 

[Armageddon]

Child's Play? The guys at Penny Arcade are doing great things with this.

[Ponch]

Child's Play? The guys at Penny Arcade are doing great things with this.

An awesome idea. 

[ddq]

Well said Tommi, and I send a preemptive "go fuck yourself" to anyone who thinks Penny Arcade's dickwolves joke was out of line. If anyone's qualified to make a rape joke, it's them.

Another gamer charity that donates to Child's Play is the very wonderful Desert Bus for Hope, which will be doing its 5th annual endless drive through the Mojave in 3 weeks, so be sure to check them out too!