Please Don't Die, Kickstarter

Why does everything I love collapse and die?

I think Kickstarter, and its crowdfunding allies (indiegogo, Patreon, and so on), are incredible. I love that someone thought them up. I love how they're used. Mostly. I love, basically, the whole idea of crowdfunded and crowdsourced work.

Personally, I love it from an artsy perspective, because everything I learn about every creative industry makes me hate it more. Seriously, don't bother going after a creative career unless you're willing to either put in all the work yourself or compromise every artist value you have. I am getting closer and closer to a sincere belief that dealing with the established media is like making pacts with every evil entity from every religion and superstition man has ever dreamed up.

Or maybe it's not all that bad and I'm just upset. But my exaggerations come from a legitimate foundation.

Crowdfunding, to me, seemed like a way around all of that. It was a way of letting people choose what they wanted to consume, rather than being forced to drink the generic toilet-water Simon Cowell expects us to accept as 'art'.

I adored everything about it. Immediately. I followed Amanda Palmer's Kickstarter adventure religiously. I've backed loads of projects on Kickstarter - music, films, games - and even when I can only offer a few pounds, I like how much more involved backers are made to feel. For instance, creators will send regular email updates on projects that have more meaning that just to sell you more crap. They write in such informal, friendly tones that you really feel their gratitude. The distance between artist and consumer, when broadened by the industry middle man, only looks wider when you've got the communal feeling of a crowdfunded project to compare.

And then I backed a project called The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, a PC game based on an H. P. Lovecraft story. It was a high-profile project that get over 100,000 views in the first couple of days, not to mention shares on FaceBook and Twitter by all kinds of people. By rights, it should have done insanely well. It should have hit its goal with no trouble at all.

Instead, it got fewer than 2000 backers. Which is pitiful.

The makers of the game sent regular progress updates to everyone who pledged, thanking them for their involvement and generosity and letting them know how things were going.

On 30th October 2014, they sent their final update. It thanked everyone who had been willing to help, and regretfully informed us that the project had fallen through. It explained how they had gone about their Kickstarter campaign in huge amounts of detail - there was practically no way they could have generated more interest in their game. They tried to fathom where it had all gone wrong.

They seemed forced to conclude "Kickstarter is dying".

This is definitely something I did not want to believe, but they offered some really good statistics to back their arguments. They did everything right, but crowdfunding had failed.

And this breaks my heart.

As someone who, one day, would like to make a living doing something creative, and who thinks our arts industry is horrifically broken, I was really excited about crowdfunding.

I am well aware that it had its problems, its kinks that needed fixing. There are plenty of 'crowdfunding gone wrong' stories floating around. There are plenty of people ready to use honest crowdfunding platforms to abuse the generosity of others.

But, at its core, it is a beautiful thing.

And even the slightest suggestion that people have already given up on it disappoints the hell out of me.

The New Contender in the Energy Market: Air.

Evironmentally, you really can't win. Statistically, I am kind of winning; my life is quite environmentally friendly - I am frugal with electricity, I walk most places and get the bus to all other places, I have a Friends of the Earth hoodie - but that it because I am a poor student and I live in expensive London and Tim Minchin was at the Friends of the Earth gig, so I don't really have much of a choice in these matters. For people who can afford choice, you're pretty much damned if you do and damned if you don't. Using technology is necessary, but bad. Driving a normal is bad, but driving an electric car makes you a pretentious prick. Also, electricity is bad. And electric cars are ugly as fuck.

But this could be about to change. The G-Wiz will still be hideous and you will still look like a douche if you even consider getting into one. But it won't be your only option.

Because of these dudes. These wonderful nerds - and I do love nerds - at Air Fuel Synthesis are making fuel out of air.

Out. Of. Air.

Earlier on in October 2012, they revealed the first successful demonstration of their techniques, showing how carbon, hydrogen and oxygen can be taken from carbon dioxide and water in the air to be converted first into methanol and then into petrol.

They didn't even have to go into any more detail to blow my mind. The idea has been around since the oil crisis of the 1970s, but it still feels a bit like science fiction to me. So they offer this helpful graphic to explain to nerd-groupies like me who have no real nerd credentials aside from enthusiam:

The problem with it at the moment is the energy efficiency of the process. Obviously, it would not be environmentally beneficial if more energy was put into it than is created by it, and this is still being smoothed out, but that makes it no less cool.

With funding, it will get there. Eventually. There are huge plans for the technology which could revolutionise the way that energy is created. The maths for its development on a much larger scale is already sorted out and, once it has some firmer backing from governments, it is hoped that it will be a contender against oil in the energy market.

Hopefully it won't make the same mistake as some of the other companies that have tried to save the world and will offer us some technology that isn't too ugly to touch.