Our Kickstarter will be closing here in just about two hours. As I type this we are nearing the $500k level. We’ve managed to raise a half million dollars towards the goal of an ad free Penny Arcade. That’s just incredible and I want to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who pledged. We got very close to all ads removed from the front page of the site. As it stands we’ve raised enough to remove the top banner advertisement next year. We will also be creating a new Automata comic. Tycho will be dressed as the Fruit Fucker at PAX and we will start filming the Strip Search web show this fall!
It doesn’t look like we’ll hit the Lookouts goal. The idea was that if we raised enough money we could replace projects for advertisers with our own stuff. Right now if I’m not drawing Penny Arcade I’m drawing something for an advertiser. That’s why if we do the CTS or Automata, it takes the place of the normal PA comic. We’ve decided that this Daughters of the Eyrewood story is too cool not to make though. So even though we didn’t fund it, we will be producing the Daughters comic and It will take the place of a PA presents project. That means it will be a stand alone project that will run alongside the normal PA comic rather than instead of it.
As for some of the other projects on the list, we will see what we can do. We might be able to get advertisers to pay for some of them. Maybe we can record the DLC podcast from inside the surprisingly spacious trunk of a Chevy Volt?
Advertising isn’t the end of the world. We’ve managed to make it work and we’ve tried to do it in a way that doesn’t insult you. As of right now I consider the Kickstarter to have succeeded in creating a sort of hybrid rather than replacing ads all together. It’s something we will keep thinking about and you might see us approach the same goal in a new way next year.
-Gabe out
