It’s hard to type with all this protective gear on, but I find it necessary. This article will be about a Kickstarter involving Leigh Alexander, Zoe Quinn, Maddy Myers, and Kathrine Cross.
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Is everyone done shouting now? Good, I’ll just take this helmet off.
Offworld is, or perhaps was is now a better descriptor, a game critiquing website for any outsider in the gaming world. Minorities, women, transgender, any writer who wanted to expand the scope of gaming culture. Hey, who threw that tomato?!
The team behind Offworld, Leigh Alexander and Laura Hudson have started The Offworld Collection, an anthology of articles from the site, at the end of their time there. It’s a collection of articles featured on the site in book and ebook form. Authors of the various articles will get paid, and they’ll get paid more the higher the contributions go over the initial funding goal.
Leigh Alexander and Laura Hudson are famous videogame critics, known for their offbeat coverage and focusing on topics not many talk about. This collection marks not only the end of their time at Offworld, but the final time they’ll be writing about videogames. It’s a big loss for game criticism and gaming as a whole, but there’ll doubtlessly be people celebrating their departure.
Articles featured in the collection will include “We are not colonists,” which was noted by Critical Distance as one of the best gaming articles of 2015. There are also several articles by noted black writers such as “How hip hop can teach you coding” and “Black Woman Are Already Superheroes” and I have to wonder how many people are still reading at this point.
The Offworld Collection looks like it’s already going to receive funding, less than $3,000 from its $30,000 goal. That money will be spent largely on printing copies of the book, but also all of Kickstarter’s various fees, taxes, rewards, admin costs, and paying the writers.
I’m going to go now, and never look at this comment section. I will say this though: it’s too bad Anita Sarkeesian didn’t write anything for the book.
Wow almost $30,000! That’s simply amazing given the reputation Leigh has developed over the years, guess she really does have a following.
It’s even more impressive considering how few people allegedly visited the Offworld website. Then again, books are coming back, this one looks pretty (also pretty expensive), and the stretch goals are great (more money for the authors).
There is something fishy going on with the pledges, though. Adding up the claimed rewards only gets me to USD 25,760, while the total currently sits at USD 30,431. I suspect there’s a bogus USD 5,000 pledge hidden in there. Not that it matters much, of course…