Awesome Stuff: History Lessons
from the way-back-when dept
This week's awesome stuff post takes a break from gadgets to look at some crowdfunded content creators working in the vast field of history — because no matter what you do or what your interests are, there's always something to be learned (and a lot of fun to be had) studying the past.
Extra History
Some of you might be familiar with Extra Credits, a video series discussing a wide variety of topics related to videogame design and the game industry (it's excellent, if you're interested in that kind of thing). A while ago, thanks to a really cool sponsorship opportunity, they did a spinoff series called Extra History that brought their explanatory prowess to bear on the Second Punic War (of Hannibal-crossing-the-Alps fame) and it was similarly excellent. Now, with the help of crowdfunding through Patreon, they are bringing Extra History back as a regular twice-a-month feature:
The first episode, kicking off a series about WW1 is already out, and well worth watching. The show has been successfully funded on Patreon and hit the necessary goal to remove YouTube ads — and with a bit more support, it could hit the necessary funding level to become a weekly series.
Beep
While the video game experts are discussing history, a new documentary will be exploring them both, and specifically the sounds therein:
Beep: A Documentary History of Video Game Music & Sound looks well on the way to hitting its goal. The story should prove interesting, as it ties together the worlds of music and technology in a way that doesn't always get explored, with so much of the discussion around videogame tech focusing on graphics and physics these days (even though in the early days of games, things like the ability to play polyphonic sound were huge advancements).
Designers & Dragons
Before there were videogames, there were tabletop roleplaying games, and it's not as though the latter has done much waning in popularity. From the live games at PAX to the many games and accessories on Kickstarter, tabletop gaming is going strong — which might explain why this book about its history blasted past its funding goal:
Designers & Dragons is set to be a four-volume history, with each volume focusing on a decade from the '70s through the '00s. It's way, way beyond its goal, having raised $93,684 on a funding target of only $7,500. But although it doesn't really need your help anymore, there are still three days left to back the project and secure advance copies:
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Filed Under: awesome stuff, history
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Kickstarter vs Indiegogo
As many of these crowd-funding projects raise money and then seem to go nowhere, I'd be interested in learning how these featured-on-Techdirt projects are doing a year later. Did 'investors' get everything they were promised, or are they left with a long string of excuses ... or worse?
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Re: Kickstarter vs Indiegogo
As for why Indiegogo items don't show up as often in Awesome Stuff, for my part the reason is simple: Kickstarter has Kicktraq, which makes browsing through lots of projects really easy.
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Pinball/Arcade > Atari > NES > Soundblaster > Modern Systems.
Kind of like how most documentaries pretend that IBM was the only company to ever produce desktop computers back in the 80s.
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