Countdown/Contact Information

Questions/Comments/Suggestions/Complaints/Squabbles/Issues/Feedback of any kind? E-mail me HERE.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Crowd-funded Chaos

First of all, I want to come right out and say that the opinions stated on my blog are not the views of Ravenwood Radio, Pieces of 8 Radio, or any other official fansite. My opinions are solely mine, and while I help out occasionally in different roles in the community, these views are not to be taken as anything more than that. I speak for no one else on this blog, capiche?

In other news, Through the Eyes of a Privateer is soon to be no more, I think. It will be far easier to maintain if I incorporate the stuff over here. I have more readers here and it takes me less time to manage different aspects of stuff if it's all in one place. And as a college student, saving time is a great thing.  Now for the meat of the post.

KingsIsle has announced the launch of two bundles to herald the coming of their new game, Pirate101. Both bundles include a year subscription as well as exclusive goodies. One of the bundles, for $59.99, is called the Gandry Bundle and nets you a year subscription, 1 week head start, and a Scarakeet pet. The other, the Boochbeard Bundle (at a whopping $89.99), nets you everything from Gandry along with Castaway's Cove (House), a Ruby Slicer weapon, Dread Pirate Gear, and a Parrot Mount...oh, and Beta access for the remainder of Beta.

Fine, great, woohoo. Awesome stuff. I'd have loved to see similar bundled available for those who had planned to take the Crown method (rather than the year membership, provide 60,000 Crowns...they're worth the same amount on a sale as it is). That's not why I'm writing today, either, though.

KingsIsle has opted to allow players to "ask" (beg) family/friends to help fund a Boochbeard Bundle via Facebook. Yes, the social media giant has now stepped into crowd-funding. While I'm fine with crowd-funding in general (Kickstarter projects are GREAT!), asking for money from people to help one person get a perk is kind of irritating and a bit disgusting to me. Asking parents is one thing. Asking your friends from school to throw a few nickels your way just really rubs me the wrong way. And don't get me started should you choose to share your Facebook page via Twitter or other social platforms to ask complete strangers that you know in-game to help you pay for it.

Brilliant marketing move, KI. Really, the amount of people sharing pages will lead to a lot more exposure for them. Even those who don't help poor little Jimmy fund his bundle will still see news about the game.

What do you all think? Is Crowd-funding for an individual a direction we want to move in? How about if that individual is basically a stranger? Your thoughts, as usual, are welcome in the comments section and via email. Please make sure to ask an adult for permission, as always.

Your [Flabbergasted] Friend Always,
John Lifeglen

Monday, September 3, 2012

Some Food for Blogger-y Thought

Hey-o! Dropping in to let everyone know that I'm still alive. I've been playing with my Nexus 7 lately and haven't exactly been keeping up with posting (though there is an app for that). Anywho, on to business. It occurred to me earlier that all blogs have readers. And that, even though it's all one big community, not everyone reads all of the same people. A great way to share your favorite blogs is with a blogroll (which I have, along the right side and a bit under all of the announcement-y type stuff). Unfortunately, not everyone wants to go scrolling through a blogroll on a regular basis. I propose the following:

Write up a blog post about another blog (either a general "hey, go check this out!" to your readers, an interview with the other blog owner, whatever.) and post it. Do this as often as you like, and it's even better if it's mutual. Who doesn't like getting extra traffic, right? If you contact the person you're talking about, they might even be willing to post something about you and get YOU some extra traffic from their audience.

Hopefully this has inspired some of you to spread the community love and get extra traffic all around.

Your Friend Always,
John Lifeglen