9 Year-Old Raising Money to Attend RPG Camp | Hacker News Reader

9 Year-Old Raising Money to Attend RPG Camp

kickstarter.com

90 pointstriptych50 comments

Looks like a free advertising stunt for RPG Maker. I'm very weary of this.

This paragraph:

I play games on my computer, PS3 and KindleHD all the time and it's fun but I REALLY WANT to create my own games to play. Ultimately I want to learn to program really cool stuff, but since I'm 9 I'm starting with RPG Maker because it lets me create something awesome without having to know how to actually program everything. I'll learn to program more as I get older, but right now, RPG Maker's drag & drop functionality makes it pretty easy for me to create working RPG games quickly.

Kids don't talk like that. They don't announce their limitations and justify them with their age (since I'm 9...). The rest of the paragraph is almost insulting and straight out of a lame commercial. And there is a big RPG Maker screenshot just below this.

Millions of middle-class suburban kids go to summer camps that cost $1,000+ every year and their parents don't petition the internet for the tuition. This family doesn't seem poor. I think they could come up with it without posting an ad on Kickstarter for RPG Maker.

I assume the text on the Kickstarter page is written by her mother - she used the first-person viewpoint to enhance the narrative. You can read the same paragraph with a 3rd person viewpoint and it makes more sense ("since she's 9 she's starting with RPG maker...").

Regarding your second point: It would be a great move by the parents to donate most of the pledges to a charity for kids'/women's/STEM education. I don't know what Kickstarter's stance on this would be though.

Look at it like this: if the Kickstarter campaign gets attention in the media, Mackenzie and her mom (or Susan and her daughter, depending on how you want to look at it) have successfully brought positive attention to the case of videogames and computer programming for girls. Something in me, perhaps a naive, optimistic part, tells me that's a good thing. Regardless of whatever their motives for doing this are.

The experienced cynical part of me thinks that not being skeptical about things like this makes things worse.

I didn't see that angle but if you look at it thas way, there's also Adobe that came in with some nice corporate sponsorship.

I hate it when an adult writes content as if they were their child. It's pretty obvious that this is being written and organized entirely by the mom, and I'm guessing the kid has minimal involvement besides wanting to go to camp and wanting to make a video game. It's great that the kid wants to make games, but having the mom "pretending" to be the kid just rubs me the wrong way.

I can see where you're coming from - it does sound weird. If it makes you feel more comfortable you can think of it as if the daughter spoke of what she wanted to say, and the Mom cleaned up the grammar.

Hate is a strong word.

I can't see anything bad coming out of this for the child in question. She's being inspired and supported.

Successful adults tend to have had a shit ton of support as children. There are exceptions, but they're rare.

Kickstarter is really not the place for these things. The mother should just chock it up and pay for the camp, no need to create a campaign -- it looks like the camp was already paid for in the first place. I don't like people asking for charity when they don't need it. The girls already got a kindle and a mac, more than I had, a shitty 386 and 14.4kb modem when I started out.

While this project technically adheres to this policy:

> Everything on Kickstarter must be a project. A project has a clear goal, like making an album, a book, or a work of art. A project will eventually be completed, and something will be produced by it.

IMO, it veers far too close to this policy:

> Kickstarter does not allow charity, cause, or "fund my life" projects.

Of course, there is plenty of good to be found in causes like this, but in this case I fear that Mackenzie (and kids like her) will learn the wrong lesson.

I mean, she is essentially asking for a hand-out to pay for summer camp. And probably a new laptop (based on the "where's the money going?" section). I don't exactly see that as "proving her brothers wrong," and it kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

You're correct. This project has a nominal goal and plan.

I'll be surprised if Kickstarter doesn't pull it.

How is this a Kickstarter project? Not only is this not the writing of the 9 year old daughter as echoed by the comments here, but if your kid wants to go do something like this then it's up to the parents to make it happen. And not through handouts.

And if it comes down to affordability - there's plenty of resources on the internet that will teach you this stuff anyway for free that someone who's actually motivated would indulge in. You can build an RPG without the holiday, which would ultimately be better anyway as self-guided learning is an important skill for any developer.

So please don't abuse kickstarter. Do go out and make full use of Google and the developer community who'll be more than happy to offer guidance for your daughter.

I don't buy it at all.

The text was clearly written by the mother, a self described entrepreneur.

I find it very hard to believe that this woman:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/susanawilson

Didn't come up with this as a scheme to make money, or that she couldn't afford to send her daughter to an $800 camp.

It smacks of a stunt to grab money. Anyone with any familiarity with kickstarter knows damn well that it's a lottery where some projects get vastly overfunded. What better way to make that happen than to make an emotional appeal to get people to give their money away. This is begging plain and simple.

I'm actually shocked no one has reported it.

Not only is she an entrepreneur, but was supposedly one of Fortune's "Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs." I'm guessing Kickstarter is definitely superfluous here, and it's a PR stunt. Pretty sad to see when I initially got really excited.

What better way to teach her daughter entrepreneurship than show her how to beg for money?

How come her rogue has 16 int and a +5 modifier? This smells fishy. She also added her whole ability score instead of her ability modifier to her saves. I don't know if I can't trust her with my money if she can't fill a character sheet properly.

(Mackenzie , if you read this, I'm just joking. But as your kickstarter shows, you know exactly the best way to take a joke)

She's not exactly a struggling mother who needs the money to make her child's dream come true. She could probably stretch to a laptop or even a 100 of them. Is this meant to be educational? For whom?

There are quite a few projects by people who do actually need the money to have a chance for their dreams to come true.

Well, some people just like money. I don't think you'll be able to find another justification sadly. Not sure how come she raised 7k.

$20k.

And still no meaningful update: Re, a video proving these are real people and not some guy in his basement using images he found on google. Also no discussion whatsoever as to what they intend to do with the additional funding (with physical goods, the funding would generally scale up with the cost while in other projects, the greater funding generally allows for a scaled-up project. I don't expect that's reasonable for a 9 year old who has never programmed or designed a thing, so I'm really interested to find what will be done with the extra $19k and how it will adhere to Kickstarter's policies).

Don't sell them a product; sell them a story.

Mother doesn't need the money, kid doesn't need it either, text written by her mother pretending to be her... This is a downright scam.

The point I find interesting is that FundHer.com (the mother's company/cause) is the website on the campaign and not one specifically for Mackenzie's project.

I looked at the website and the about page has the following, "Pioneering entrepreneur scholarships, FundHer is raising $1 million via crowdfunding."

> http://www.fundher.com/#!about/aboutPage

Yeah, the mom is the founder of a company about crowdfunding for female entrepreneurs. And she was one of Fortune's "Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs." Why does she need help buying her daughter a laptop?

Sorry to be so cynical, but this looks super sketchy.

I have this reserved feeling about kickstarter - if only kickstarter can give out equity in the venture, instead of just act like a pre-order system where the customer takes on all the risks, but only get the merchandise, while the owner of the business reaps the reward(profits) if the risks don't pan out, but suffers nothing if the venture fails.

THE GAME (that's what she is calling it) already has a release date of July 2013 despite there being no evidence of her having written a game before...

Without appearing cynical, can I ask why there is a $10000 pledge band?

She's going to RPG camp and they finish the game during the camp session.

The 10k reward level seems more humorous than an actual attempt to get someone to pledge 10k. I'm doing a kickstarter soon and we have the exact same thing, a huge reward level with a somewhat comedic prize attached.

Oh, thank the gods. I clicked to comment, thinking I was about to be a right cynical git, and well, turns out, I'm not alone!!!!

Nice scam though. $7k already. I have to respect that, grudgingly.

I would love it if this were real but I have this nagging feeling in me that tells me that this is just an attempt to exploit the romantics in us... I do hope it really is a kid trying to raise money to create a game.

There's something very awkward about all this. People criticizing this here, people who will criticize the game (expectations). The huge amount of money raised for her age (she really shouldn't have got that much money). The text written by her mother...

Also the very professional looking video.

I'm all for getting 9 year olds into coding but I would've liked to have seen any funds raised above the target go towards paying for other kids to attend the camp.

Yes, there are certainly better ways to spend money if your goal is to educate kids than to throw thousands at one kid.

This is absolutely fantastic. I don't know if she'll succeed in building the game or not but just having the motivation at such an early age is awesome.

A question: "In case it's not already clear, I'm not a girlie girl." Assuming mom did not put this in, it's sad, but of course very common, to see the dichotomy "girlie girl"/"techie girl". And this has little to do with gender either, we also have "nerd"/"jock". Why do people like Elle Woods exist only in fiction?

We totally exist in real life. My e-mail address as a kid was programmingprincess. ^_^ I no longer wear so much pink, but I still happily occupy both sides of the "girlie girl"/"techie girl" divide - and in fact, I've found that most women in tech I know don't fall under the socially awkward/fugly/geeky stereotype... if I sat a bunch of women from my office down in a room and you had to pick out the developers from say, the designers, QA, PMs, HR folk, etc - I'm not sure if you could. I think this dichotomy is enforced more by the media than it is by real life.

I'm all for girls learning how to program, but the negativity in this campaign is rubbing me the wrong way. There's male-bashing - her brothers are "mean" and "brats", and woman-shaming (the photos of the "gold diggers" - perhaps not a life choice I would make, but if both parties are happy, who am I to judge?) - if the point of this kickstarter is really to empower women (well, one woman), do we really need to point judgy fingers at other women and bring them down? There's a million amazing reasons for girls today to learn to code besides "if you don't, you'll have to marry some old fart for his money." Why couldn't they have highlighted some of those? ugh

This was perhaps one of the most adorable and inspiring thing I've read. I'm really happy it succeeded.

So I'm guessing she's getting camp all summer and a new Retina Macbook Pro to code on :-)

Dungeon's and Dragons. Who wants that for their child?

Plus this has all the gloss of pushy pushy parents.

I really hope my daughter gets into D&D, thankyouverymuch.

I woke up this morning and it looks like Kensie's got summer camp, a laptop and a reasonably nice used car.

No pressure. No pressure at all. There is now just the whole Internet watching this little girl and layering creative interpretations.

I for one am for the interpretation that this is not a money scam, or a publicity stunt, but a parent who wanted to do a fun activity with their kid and it happens to be on kickstarter.

@jgerman said > This project has a nominal [...] I'll be surprised if Kickstarter doesn't pull it.

I think the project goal is clear. Make an RPG game that a 6-10yr old will understand. Think of it as a kickstarter summer of code project.

Perhaps the more interesting thing to notice here is that kids are orders of magnitude smarter than we were at their age in terms of technology use. They have vast amounts of information available to them. They are also exposed to a lot of noise through this technology too. Will the signal win out leading to a generation of superhackers? Or will the noise win leading to a generation of real-world-anti-social beings forever stuck staring at the social pixels?

If they're so technologically advanced in 2013, why do they need mom to help them get funding to go attend a camp where they are taught how to do something that they can learn freely online? Kids with none of these resources learned on their own against all sorts of adversity and lack of resources in the 80s and 90s. If you really have a passion to do something -- do it. You don't need a camp or an instructor or a mentor to guide you through it. You just do it, because it becomes a constant obsession.

I don't think this kickstarter is a scam (though it is certainly presented like one -- scammy projects usually don't have video of the people behind it and keep promising things that are never delivered, which goes for this one too since the mom keeps promising a video to show that they're real people and not some guy in his basement using google images of some lady and little kid for his scam).

I just think that it's a little unnecessary and is becoming really ridiculous and I'm tired of seeing stuff from parents all over the place posting things like "my kid wants to be a game developer, how do I get them started?". If your kid REALLY wants to do something like that, they aren't going to come to you and ask you to help them. They're going to get online and start googling, reading forums, reading books, downloading free programs and learning to code or design games on their own. If kids could do this in the 80s and 90s, they can do it today.

As for a publicity stunt? I don't know. It sure smells like a stunt for her mom's "give women money to do whatever" website. She'll go on from this project to claim herself an expert in crowd-funding and women's issues. She'll write a book. Become a consultant. Popularize her website. Give a few interviews.

Interesting that its over $20K today (Mar 23) which was the target of the original Kickstarter the Mom did. That provides an interesting insight into the motivations behind backers.

This is really cute and awesome and why does anybody care how a 9 year old's mom wrote ad copy for her? It's still a 9 year old going to nerd camp which is great.

In the light of the ugliness of the last 24 hours, this couldn't have come at a better time.

F all the skepticisms, I'd rather take the chance. A 9 year old girl wants to learn to code… you definitely have my support! Way to go!

awesome.

Now this is how you get girls interested in technology and programming. Not posting pics on twitter.

Getting huge amounts of money from an online campaign rather than working for it via contract work? Seems like a way to spoil a child.

wait...wat?

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