Help Us Cover the Game Manufacturers Trade Show and Reap the Benefits
I need the help of the greater gaming community for a worthy project. The 2011 Game Manufacturers Trade Show (aka GTS) is the first opportunity for retailers to see the latest
I want to report from the show, as I have done for the past two years, but I need your help. Livingdice gets good traffic and makes enough to cover hosting fees and the occasional improvement, but does not generate enough to cover a trip to GTS. For the past two years we (myself and my collaborator Stuart) travelled to the show at our own expense.
This year I am asking the greater gaming community for its help in financing our expedition to GTS. Why should you part with your hard earned dollars to support this endeavor? Excellent question. The simple answer is we cover GTS with greater depth and fairness than any other gaming news outlet. This is not a boast, just a fact. We have over 100 entries on every company at the show, regardless of size and the best list of vendor site links on the web.. No other news outlet provided this level of detail or fairness. Look around at the usual news outlets, you will find plenty of coverage on the big name publishers, but little or nothing on the small and medium companies. We cover everyone.
To finance our GTS 2011 trip, we have a patronage project listed on Kickstarter and hope you will join the effort as a supporter. The Kickstarter site allows you to post a project, set a goal and then provide rewards to people that contribute. As a supporter, you pledge an amount and if the project reaches it’s goal, your money is collected. If the project fails to reach the “funding” level nothing happens and no money changes hands. My goal is $500, which is actually less than the total cost of the trip, but it does bring it down to an affordable level.
Since this is a patronage project, contributors receive rewards. The rewards depend on how much you contribute to the project and the rewards start at $1.00! Now on to how your reap the benefits as a project backer. Here is the list of rewards:
Access to the Kickstarter-only GTS 2011 liveblog . We will update this with images and content as we move through the vendor areas and play demos in real-time. Be a fly on the wall as we walk the floor!
All rewards above, plus access to our live blog of the Wizards of the Coast Release Seminar
All rewards above and the ability to comment on the GTS liveblog and WOTC seminar. Let your voice be heard!
All rewards above and early access to all content on Livingdice.com 24 hours before it goes public. Liveblogs are great, but this content is when we sit down and actually write about the show and vendors in detail.
All rewards above-We become your hands and eyes. Supporters at this level have a special email address that they can contact us with a specific question about their favorite product and we will do our level best to get an answer/image directly from the publisher. Answers not guaranteed, but we promise to ask in your name!
Business Sponsor Level–We will place two banners (IAB standard 486×60) in all of our posts (in the top and middle of the posts) related to GTS 2011 for your site. You will also receive all rewards listed above. No “adult” or gambling sites will be accepted. If you are not sure, please ask before pledging.
In these lean economic times and post-holidays, I expect most backers will choose the $1.00 option and that is fine. If you want one of the better rewards, by all means please pledge as much as you desire. As an alternative, if you do not want to become a backer, please consider supporting the project by putting a link to the Kickstarter page on your site, Facebook or on Twitter. You can use the link below or the shortened URL.
Support Livingdice.com’s Coverage of the 2011 GAMA Trade Show
For those that are truly energized, here is the link to embed my project pitch video or project status widget on your site.
There is a status box for the project on the right-hand side of the Livingdice.com homepage and I encourage you to check back and see how we are doing.
Thank you for your support and please contact me if you have any questions.
Trask, The Last Tyromancer
