9-Year-Old Girl Raises $15,000 to Make Video Game | Hacker News Reader

9-Year-Old Girl Raises $15,000 to Make Video Game

mashable.com

15 pointsedtechdev21 comments

I feel like this was a con, and yet I also feel strong social pressure to not share this opinion with my friends and co-workers.

1) Did the 9 year old write any of that appeal? I don't think so. Sure, her mom may have written it with her prompting - but the entire appeal feels too well-constructed to pull at heartstrings. There's something... gimmicky about it, something that makes me feel like the appeal isn't genuine.

2) Was this kickstarter really about making a game? No, she's going to a camp to learn about making games - which is cool in theory, if there actually is a little girl and she actually is going to that camp. But it does also mean that the whole premise of the kickstarter's title is misleading at best.

3) The sudden stretch goal bonuses (where'd all this merch come from?) seemed highly questionable as well, and counter to the goal - if she just needs money to go to some camp, why even HAVE stretch goals? This feels like someone who played the system, creating a false situation to gain profit from people. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that there isn't actually a kid at all - that it's not even a parent who got greedy, but someone who just flat-out lied to get a good chunk of change.

A lot of people I know seem to believe it unquestioningly, which makes me wonder whether I'm being paranoid. But my gut tells me that if I heard a story like this while walking down the street, I wouldn't give them a dollar (and I frequently give people on the street asking for money a dollar). Especially if they started pulling out merch in exchange for additional donations.

I also love that this article vilifies people who appropriately point out the skeptical parts of this whole situation. I love a feel-good story as much as anyone else when it's real... but this situation throws up more red flags than a well-bribed soccer referee.

Look at her (Susan Wilson's) other Kickstarter [1], her husband, the ex-marine sewing super hero capes, goal $20,000 raised $400. Clearly Susan is getting better at understanding the Kickstarter user mentality. And that is what she is training her kids to understand.

[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/susanwilson/the-cape-pro...

One weird thing is at the end of the video seemingly out of no where comes this whole thing about not becoming a girl who needs a man to make money for her. The production value is pretty high, so maybe the family could have afforded the 800 dollar camp, and not needed a kickstarter. It seems like a ploy for money, and not about someone making a game, and who is going to play a game made by a 9 year old. It will most likely be done in RPG Maker or Game maker with minimal original content, and a average plot. Doesn't seem like something to kickstart or even put on kickstarter

>I feel like this was a con, and yet I also feel strong social pressure to not share this opinion with my friends and co-workers.

Thank you. I feel the same way. I think that "feminism" like this - where a girl and her mom show how she's better than her stupid older brothers - is divisive, plays on peoples' emotions, and really makes things worse for all of us. It's not pushing equality, it's responding to "boys are better" with "no, girls are better." Yet if I were to say this openly, I'd be called a misogynist.

This violates kickstarter guidelines against "fund my life" campaigns (http://www.kickstarter.com/help/guidelines). I've used the Report button to bring this to their attention.

Yes, I know it's a feel-good story, but encouraging this will bring a flood of me-too campaigns. That's what guidelines are for; Mom can pay for camp the way the rest of us do.

In this case, one could argue that she's getting money for tuition, which is against the rules, but it's part of the disallowed "fund my life", which implies that it's things that are already part of her life. Without the kickstarter, she's not going on the training course, so it's not part of her life.

College student asking for money to pay university fees - that's tuition, that's "funding my life". Training course for the people producing the product, that they would not go on without the kickstarter and is essential to the production of the product at the end of the kickstarter? That's not "funding my life", that's kickstarter.

I'm pretty sure "buying a product" wasn't how it was presented when I first looked at it... in any case, it's clearly an attempt to get around the rules; nobody is seriously interested in buying a My First RPG Maker Game on its merit.

Tuition is a good example; this is exactly like "pay my Full Sail tuition and I'll give you copies of the games I make there," on a smaller scale.

No, you're not buying a product. You're funding the creation of a product. If the kickstarter in question chooses to give people that product, that's lovely, but it's not what you're paying for.

" this is exactly like "pay my Full Sail tuition and I'll give you copies of the games I make there," on a smaller scale."

No, it is not. What's the product there? What product am I paying money to fund the creation of? What do I read about on the kickstarter page that the course is a necessary part of creating? No product.

So you can fund literally anything.

I could fund a car as long as I produced a book about buying and owning the car.

You cannot fund literally anything. Check the rules. "We allow creative projects in the worlds of Art, Comics, Dance, Design, Fashion, Film, Food, Games, Music, Photography, Publishing, Technology, and Theater. 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."

If you're writing a book about a car that falls into the above, and you put on your kickstarter page that you need to buy the car in order to write the book, that's within the rules. Many, many, MANY kickstarters make it clear that they will be buying physical goods in order to create the product. If you want to do this, by all means go for it. I wouldn't be surprised if people decided not to fund it because they think you're trying to get a free car out of them, but purchase of goods (and services) with the kickstarter funds to help make the product is pretty much the whole point of kickstarter. In your case, I wouldn't be surprised if kickstarter themselves decided to squelch your project on the heavy suspicion that you don't really have a passion for a creating a book about the car, but that's up to them.

Or you can fund trips and clothing and just take photos.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/annafischer/the-wild-pla...

But what if the person isn't a college student yet? Same difference, right? So what if someone in high school who wants to go to college made a similar appeal for funding of tuition? I think we're talking about two sides of the same coin.

Now, if there were another site that was strictly oriented to donations or even micro-loans toward such purposes, this kind of appeal would feel right there. But as it stands, I tend to stand on the side of "this wasn't a valid kickstarter."

I disagree on the same grounds as before. What's the product? What piece or Art, or Lit, or Technology are they building, that can then be churned out or reprinted or duplicated etc?

Send me to college to learn things? There's no product, so it's not valid.

I'm making this product and I need this training course; there is a product.

This doesn't seem to apply - she is creating a game and the rewards include copies of that game. There are plenty of other games that are funded on Kickstarter. The method of producing the game (going to a camp) seems irrelevant, and clearly not what the guidelines are supposed to prevent.

Thank you for you contribution to the betterment of humanity, internet police guy!

Did anyone else catch "as a business person, my mom says she feels like she's held hostage by developers". That seems... excessively hostile? It's a cute campaign, but I think it actually reflects poorly on her mum.

Of course, her mom wrote every quote.

The title of this story should be "9-Year-Old's Wealthy Entrepreneur Mom Raises $14,000 More Than She Needed To Send Daughter To Camp".

I wonder what impact that has on her life. Of course it's amazing (and somewhat lucky), but making this much money on such age... If she makes anything else in the next decade and it's not going to exceed everything previously, she might consider it a failure. Not exceeding what you did at 9 years old is pretty depressing I imagine.

The extra money's not going directly to the daughter.

I'd like to know why people support that kind of project ? it doesnt seem like this little girl really need money. it's just a question.

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