You Had Me, And You Lost Me: Why I don't read Megatokyo (2004)
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websnark.com
Sinfest is a sadder loss. You will never see a bigger difference between first and last comic strip. The first ever Sinfest strip is still best Sinfest.
Could you explain what you don't like about it?
http://badwebcomicswiki.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Sinfest
Tldr, he took the soul out of the comic and the characters to push an agenda, and devoted cycles to mocking his fans instead of keeping up the wholesome stuff.
This is like the one case where that isn't an exaggeration.
The patriarchy objects, as a patiriarchy does.
The Sisterhood http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-03
...Crim gets Lit http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-06
...'Nique gets woke http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-07
Patriarchy http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2011-10-17
Rad Fem http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2012-05-06
Peak Dudebro http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2013-09-06 http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2013-09-14
Woke Televisio http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2018-10-11
Though the early days had some highlights http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2009-03-15
People read sinfest for the humor. You can call it offensive or destructive humor, but it was humor nonetheless.
Then the comic switched away from humor to being moral lecturing.
It's not the same audience, so naturally you'll lose most of the old readership, and have to acquire your entirely new audience.
It's not so much a joke as screaming an on-the-nose message.
I used to read Order of the Stick, which is a brilliantly funny yet epic fantasy comic. There used to be fairly regular updates, then it dropped, came back, dropped again. At some point, he had a very successful Kickstarter, but somehow things became even more irregular after that. Eventually I sometimes had to wait more than a month to see how the story continued. And when there's no need to check for a month, eventually that turns into two months, and I think I haven't checked it out in more than a year. Years maybe? I should probably check, but chances are there's now an immense backlog and I don't know where I left off. Or there's still only a few. I don't know which is worse.
He understandably got caught out by the demand, the Kickstarter totaled up ~$1,200,000 vs $50,000 target and the webcomic really took a hit. And he sliced his thumb open filling orders which didn't help at all.
It would be lovely to know what his take is on the strategic success/failure of that with benefit of hindsight. A lot of money was involved; but he did suffer physically and the webcomic would have suffered an audience drop. $1.2 mil is a lot of money but it has been 6 years and I think there still might be a few outstanding items from that Kickstarter campaign.
A choice quote: "While there, you may also notice that it's the tenth wallpaper I've released, so that means the wallpaper reward is officially finished. One thing I saw when posting this last one, though, is that it's been so long since the first one that the screen resolutions I've been putting these out at are a little dated in some cases—especially with regard to phones. Is Windows Phone even a thing anymore? And I know the iPhone has completely different screen sizes now, right? So if you have a device that isn't represented with any of those resolutions, go ahead and comment on this post with what screen sizes you'd like to see, and I'll try to go back and add like 5 or 6 of the most popular for all ten wallpapers by the next time I send out an update."
Also be sure to check out the image of his "workometer", which he's been using to track his reward fulfillment progress since the very start. It's nearly all complete by now, but some of the remaining items are substantial.
If I had to guess at what his folly was, I'd say it was simply overpromising with the stretch goals for various milestones. Remember that this was in the early heyday of Kickstarter, and few people had any experience with what an absolute slog fulfillment would turn out to be. I commend him for sticking it out regardless when so many other projects have just defaulted.
The other thing is that the Patreon model did not exist in the early Kickstarter days, and a lot of things are better suited to the periodic small payments for an indefinite period of time than an up-front campaign.
Stretch goals always sound awesome, but people running a Kickstarter should be very conservative with them. The focus should be on the primary product, not the stretch goals, and stretch goals can get in the way of the primary product.
Reaper Miniatures had a spectacular Kickstarter with their Bones line, that was famous for the amazing value brought by the enormous number of stretch goals they met, but it worked for them, because their stretch goals were more of the same: more miniatures; and because clearly they did the math: every stretch goal they met was spaced further apart, and about half the stretch goals were not free stuff, but extra options to buy.
After this, everybody went nuts with the stretch goals, but many people messed up and ruined the main product with all the stretch goals.
If I did I'd just think "funny webcomic. It's a shame I'll never see another one of those".
Blogs aren't galleries or appropriate comic sites.
It's interesting that there's a different business model open to webcomics now, than there was back then, with Patreon (And similar sites).
I back a number of webcomics that way (Gunnerkrigg court, Questionable Content, Wilde Life, Girl Genius Online) but it only really suits webcomics that get regular updates, as you're generally paying by the month.
It'll never make them super-rich, I'd guess, but can provide a decent amount of monthly regular income.
1. the jokes got stale, or i grew out of the humor 2. the plotline moved too slowly 3. i grew out enjoying the "will-they get together / why won't-they get together" relationship arc(s). as a younger teenager the dorky and childish romance was relevant to my life, but i grew to find it very cringe inducing eventually.
i don't really miss reading it.
New comics are still weekly to monthly, if that. I've completely forgotten the origin of the current catgirl plot, but possibly Ping (or the catgirl she's based on?) will finally do something, maybe in the next couple years? Who knows.
The guy who drew "Sad girl in snow" isn't going to be one of your super productive Jack Kirbys, he muddles along as best he can, like a lot of us.
And Megatokyo was a major web comic back then, despite ever-slower updates. It was one of the successes of the first generation of people saying “hey what if I put my weird indy comics up on the World Wide Web”.
This all feels much more trivial thirteen years later. Megatokyo would probably be unnoticed if it started now. But this was a major, respected critical voice of that scene talking about the slow decline of one of the major fixtures of the medium.
I remember reading Megatokyo back then (fifteen years ago!) and stopped when it got too — excuzes le mot — cringey.
Long standing webcomics can change over time as the author(s) age and change. Some stay fairly constant (e.g., XKCD, The Perry Bible Fellowship), others change so much they alienate many of the readers (e.g., Sinfest).
And some just stay awesome (e.g., Oglaf (NSFW)).
>The new forum will be anti-pornography, anti-prostitution.
>It will favor the radical feminist perspective over a liberal or conservative one.
Radical feminism is a dude telling people what they can and can't do with their bodies, apparently.
I swear these people want to be puritans but it's too unfashionable where they live so they wrap it up with some token progressive buzzwords.
I find Oglaf intriguing in how its backdrop is essentially a mediaeval fantasy world, in which the authors (Trudy Cooper and Doug Bayne) manage to consistently present a world where diversity and sexual diverseness are a given, without coming across as forced or overtly political.
From skin colour ranging the whole gamut, to physical characteristics (boobs in different sizes including A-cups, hair styles both above and below the fold), to sexual attraction (gay, straight, dead, and everything else), it's all there, and yet it never really jars or gets in your face. I find that quite an achievement and inspiring.
But Oglaf seemed to go out of its way to make it difficult to find anything sane to buy. I own the Sithrak shirt, and almost bought the Derp Fox recently, but "I'm telling!" is a sufficiently unsubtle joke that I'd have to actually think about where I might wear it, and likewise "Steak and Bitches". These days they have a few more options I may buy one day, but definitely when I was last looking it was harder than it has any right to be, for a comic that is often much Safer For Work than it has any right to be.
Take last weekend's "Fog of War". You could make a shirt of that (not the entire comic but you get the idea). Most D&D players would laugh at the joke even without knowing what Oglaf is. But nope, there's more chance Trudy will decide to do a joke shirt about medieval architecture or something. Not complaining, they should do whatever they want, but it's weird is all.
https://topatoco.com/collections/oglaf/products/og-upright
I like it. Subtle, droll.