Hi Allen. Thanks for your reply--I really appreciate your honest feedback. I see this project through my own lens, from deep inside of it, and it's hard to know sometimes how it might strike people on the outside--so again, thank you. I'll do my best to address your concerns, while being as honest as you've been.
It seems like we might be able to split up those concerns into 3 separate but related parts:
- 1. The concern that I might squander money.
- 2. The concern that it's not worth sponsoring someone to travel and make games.
- 3. The concern that it's not worth sponsoring ME to travel and make games.
All perfectly reasonable.
Addressing the first concern, I want to let you know that my travel philosophy (which I tried to outline on the site) is to go as cheaply and as close to the land as possible. I go via backpack, and camp, and hitchhike, and stay in hostels, and eat ramen noodles. So I hope you're not picturing me laying back in a limo somewhere, or in a 5-star resort, with the money I raise

.
I know myself, but you don't know me, and so this concern is perfectly valid. I would like to set up an open budget, so that people can see exactly what the money is going towards, and how much is being spent for living expenses every day, to see that the money isn't being wasted.
Addressing the second concern, it's true that the money will be going towards "living expenses," which seems kind of wrong, in a way, right? Like, "why am I paying for this guy to
live?" But when you think about it, the money from most Kickstarter projects, or anything of their kind, is generally going towards "living expenses," in that you are paying for the person to be able to live while they produce whatever you're paying for them to produce. Sometimes there are material costs for the production itself, but oftentimes these are relatively trivial, and in any case are always in addition to living expenses (if the person who is being sponsored is working on the project full time). Really, it's just an advantage of video games that they essentially don't have material cost to produce.
Anyway, now we're away from the realm of "is the money being wasted on expensive x?" to the realm of whether people should be sponsored to travel and make video games... whether there's any potential value there. The same basic question that's been asked regarding sponsoring "Art" for the last few hundred years (not to compare my work to great art, or to say that my project is an "Art" project, but there are some similarities, at least).
Frankly, I don't pretend to have a universal answer to this question. I think everyone's got to answer it for themselves, and fortunately everybody can. Personally, I see creativity, art, imagination, as incredibly important aspects of human culture that I really cherish, and want to see prosper, and to me this fits into that. But that's me.
Then beyond generalities, we have the third concern: even if it might be worthwhile to sponsor someone to travel and make video games, and even if I'm not wasting money frivolously, you have the question of whether it's worthwhile to sponsor ME to travel and make video games. How many games will I make, and how good will they be?
In terms of actual quantity and such, I should probably do a better job clarifying what my goals are there (beyond the estimates that I have on my site); but I hope you appreciate that it's rather hard, when you're talking about making things that really do vary a lot in their scope and breadth. As far as the quality, well, all I have to offer is
my current portfolio, which may or may not impress. In your case, it sounds like it doesn't--which is fine.
Looking over your post again, maybe there's a fourth concern: That I could make games about places in "the world" just as well from a cell in Wyoming as I could by visiting the places themselves. I don't know what to say to this, except that inside me somewhere I know it isn't true. Maybe I failed to express that in the games themselves, but from my side I could never have made them as I did--could never have felt the things I did while making them--if it hadn't been for actually living in Korea.
This concern is rather mitigated though, regardless, if we go back to the first point, and one is able to travel (with backpack, on foot) as cheaply as one could otherwise live while staying put--and I think one can; at least almost.
So anyway, what am I trying to say? That I don't blame you for having any of these concerns; that I think it's totally reasonable for you to find this project "silly" based on your knowledge of me, my work, and your own complex belief systems. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't find it slightly disheartening, but like I said--I appreciate the honesty.
Frankly, these are all questions that I've wrestled with myself--should I feel guilty for this goal, this idea? Ultimately, I rest in the knowledge that there's no force involved here: that people will sponsor me if they believe in the idea, and not otherwise.
I had this dream, and I had to pursue it. Maybe it will come to fruition, maybe it won't. But I had to pursue it.
Sorry if that was way, WAY too long
