Hi, I'm Sean! I'm one of the two guys who made Anodyne. It's neat that Anodyne's ehre and I'm glad that means more people can play it, though of course we'd love it if you bought the game! We're tryin' to get Greenlit on Steam so we'd really appreciate it if you and your friends gave us an upvote over at http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92921739.

Most importantly let us know what you think of the game and if you like it or if it fills you with burning rage! - we're on Twitter at @seagaia2 and @jonathankittaka.

"Yeah, piracy is inevitable so it's better to embrace it – plus, it gives lots of people who couldn't normally afford the game the opportunity to play it – and I think when you're a small group of developers (only my friend Jon and I made Anodyne), it's better to have lots of people able to experience your game," he wrote.

• Answer questions. As many as you can. Questions are not your enemy. We're all here because we all love video games.
• Don't be afraid to tease games that are coming in the far future. We love teases. And we won't even mind if those games get cancelled, as long as you don't lie or pretend they're not.
• Just talk to us. Explain the logic behind your decisions. Help us understand you. Help us relate. Help us empathize.

I continue to be overwhelmed by the positive feedback and enthusiasm from the support I have gotten from Kickstarter. The groundswell of people cheering us on and the evangelism - people spreading the word - is unlike anything I have experienced. In fact, I would say the last week was the high water mark of my career.

On the next day I get a short tweet from an individual that confesses he pirated Wasteland as a kid and was donating to help make up for it. I of course forgave not knowing he had donated $10,000 dollars. An incredible gesture... now if we could get every pirate of Wasteland 1 to donate we could really beat the Kickstarter all time record.

And just today I got an email along with a donation from a kid who lived down the street from me when he was a teenager. His note was as follows:

"This message is intended for Brian Fargo. Brian, I was your next door neighbor when you used to live in Laguna. I was a pesky 15 or 16 year old kid that would come around and ask you about games. You would sit down and take time to talk to me about games, and the industry, and I just wanted you to know how cool it was that you didn't blow me off. It meant a lot to me. Recently, I found out about your Kickstarter movement for Wasteland 2, and I contributed to it because I believe in you and your ability to resurrect the glory of the franchise. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors, and thank you again for creating some memorable memories for me during my teenage years. Take care!"

It shows that being nice creates goodwill 20 years later.

If people like you and like your work, they'll buy your games. If they like your work but don't like you, they'll pirate them.

• Entertainment spending as a function of income went up by 15% from 2000 to 2008
• Employment in the entertainment sector grew by 20% -- with indie artists seeing 43% growth.
• The overall entertainment industry grew 66% from 1998 to 2010.
• The amount of content being produced in music, movies, books and video games is growing at an incredible pace.

• For consumers, today is an age of absolute abundance in entertainment. More content is available in more ways than ever before. If we simply go by the terms of the US Constitution’s clause from which copyright came, it seems clear that the "progress of science and the useful arts" is being promoted -- even as copyright is often being ignored or foregone. There is just a tremendous amount of content, a tremendous variety of content, it's more accessible to more people than ever before.
• For content creators, it is an age of amazing new opportunity. Traditionally, to take part in the entertainment industry, you had no choice but to go through a gatekeeper, which served to keep the vast majority of people who wished to be content creators from ever making any money at all from content creation. Today, that is no longer true. More people are making more money from creating content than ever before -- with much of that coming via new tools that have allowed artists to use the internet to create, promote, distribute and monetize their works.
• For the traditional middlemen, the internet represents both a challenge and an opportunity. There is no doubt that the internet has eaten away at some traditional means by which these businesses made money. But, as the data shows, there is more money going into the overall market, more content being created, and many new ways to make money. That shows that there is a business model challenge -- and a marketing challenge -- but much more opportunity in the long run. The key challenge for business is in figuring out how to capture more of the greater revenue being generated by the wider entertainment industry. Legacy players certainly face a lot more competition (and fewer reasons that artists have to do deals with them) -- which can explain some of the public complaints about the "death" of various industries -- but overall, it's clear that by embracing new opportunities, there are plenty of ways to succeed.

So it's been about 12 days since the thing started and yesterday we hit the crazy number. One million dollars. That's a lot of money. Really too much money. I've never had a million dollars all of a sudden. and since we're all sharing this experience and since it's really your money, I wanted to let you know what I'm doing with it. People are paying attention to what's going on with this thing. So I guess I want to set an example of what you can do if you all of a sudden have a million dollars that people just gave to you directly because you told jokes.

• The Fistula Foundation
• The Pablove Foundation
• charity: water
• Kiva
• Green Chimneys

That leaves me with 220k for myself. Some of that will pay my rent and will care for my childen. The rest I will do terrible, horrible things with and none of that is any of your business. In any case, to me, 220k is enough out of a million.

I never viewed money as being "my money" I always saw it as "The money" It's a resource. if it pools up around me then it needs to be flushed back out into the system.

• Being polite and sounding human can be incredibly powerful. It's amazing how simple this seems, but so many things are first run through so many layers of PR people and publicists and the like that it's still pretty rare to see someone famous come across as being human. It's entirely possible that Louis is running all this through PR people and publicists before it's going live, but if so, they're doing a good job in making sure it really sounds like it's directly from Louis. If I had to guess, I'd say that's because it actually is directly from Louis. From everything I've seen, heard and read about him, this really does match his persona.
• Fans don't resent content creators for getting a ton of money. We keep hearing entertainment industry bigwigs and copyright maximalists insist that people claim that the reason they infringe is because content creators "have too much money already." But as we've seen with Louis, nearly everyone who's taken part in this is positively thrilled with his success. I haven't seen anyone complaining that he made too much money at all. Do some people complain about rich stars? Sure, but if you're polite, awesome and human, and actually connect with your fans, they want you to succeed.
• Having a charitable component is kinda cool. Yes, in this case it's after-the-fact, but it's still cool. We've shown in the past that pay-what-you-want works better with a charitable component, and I'd guess it's because it fits with the reasons that people are willing to buy in the first place.

It's been 4 days. A lot of people are asking me how it's going. I've been hesitant to share the actual figures, because there's power in exclusive ownership of information. What I didn't expect when I started this was that people would not only take part in this experiment, they would be invested in it and it would be important to them. It's been amazing to see people in large numbers advocating this idea. So I think it's only fair that you get to know the results. Also, it's just really cool and fun and I'm dying to tell everybody. I told my Mom, I told three friends, and that wasn't nearly enough. So here it is.

First of all, this was a premium video production, shot with six cameras over two performances at the Beacon Theater, which is a high-priced elite Manhattan venue. I directed this video myself and the production of the video cost around $170,000. (This was largely paid for by the tickets bought by the audiences at both shows). The material in the video was developed over months on the road and has never been seen on my show (LOUIE) or on any other special. The risks were thus: every new generation of material I create is my income, it's like a farmer's annual crop. The time and effort on my part was far more than if I'd done it with a big company. If I'd done it with a big company, I would have a guarantee of a sizable fee, as opposed to this way, where I'm actually investing my own money.

The development of the website, which needed to be a very robust, reliable and carefully constructed website, was around $32,000. We worked for a number of weeks poring over the site to make sure every detail would give buyers a simple, optimal and humane experience for buying the video. I edited the video around the clock for the weeks between the show and the launch.

The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we've sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

To those who might wish to "torrent" this video: look, I don't really get the whole "torrent" thing. I don't know enough about it to judge either way. But I'd just like you to consider this: I made this video extremely easy to use against well-informed advice. I was told that it would be easier to torrent the way I made it, but I chose to do it this way anyway, because I want it to be easy for people to watch and enjoy this video in any way they want without "corporate" restrictions.

Please bear in mind that I am not a company or a corporation. I'm just some guy. I paid for the production and posting of this video with my own money. I would like to be able to post more material to the fans in this way, which makes it cheaper for the buyer and more pleasant for me. So, please help me keep this being a good idea. I can't stop you from torrenting; all I can do is politely ask you to pay your five little dollars, enjoy the video, and let other people find it in the same way.

I don't know yet if I'll do it again. It hasn't run it's course. But I AM SO HAPPY I DID IT. Just so fun and it has been massively gratifying to share the positive of it with so many people who have written and expressed their feelings.

The day before I posted the video I went on pirate bay, which i had never visited and i read the guy's thign where he posts letters from media co's and artists and then his nasty and kind of hilariously chest beating responses. I thought "jesus. This guy is a piece of work. I would NEVER tangle assholes with this guy." and then I thought about it. What do I say to these people? To hope they don't make me regret putting it out there naked like this? So I wrote that little "to torrent" letter, just being a guy saying "dude. please?" it's the best I can do. If it doesn't work, well.