Bicycle Ancient Machines - LIVE on Kickstarter

[CBJ]

LINK:  www.kickstarter.com/projects/2104052526/bicycle-ancient-machine-playing-cards
























Jay

[Fess]

Another deck I don't understand from CPC at a goal that's sure to fund, $2,500. Nevermind the name of the deck, the background they use on these is just not good. The Pips look like a cross between a minimalist design and tron, not in a good way. Maybe they remind me a bit of buttons. I really don't much care for the background at all, I don't know what it's supposed to represent. Courts I don't get either. If this is supposed to be a take on steampunk, I think it's a different interpretation called steamjunk. They look terrible, King of clubs looks like it has an oven for a chest. They all have sprockets high up on their backs, as if they're there to do absolutely nothing what so ever. Just makes no sense at all. I'm not even going to touch the queens. I'll say I don't care for their design at all either and leave it at that.

I really do like the Font they chose for the indices. That font looks great. I think it would be very sharp if it wasn't stuck on that muckity do background that distracts so heavily. The Font is crispy, nice, unique K, lots of good there. Would be easy to see too, if it wasn't on the background. I can't say it enough, that background doesn't work for me at all. What is it? ugh. The Font, good stuff. I like it a lot on the number cards as well. The 10 is beefy but not overly so, the 5 I see looks nice.

This is what they say about the card back "The back card is a symbol of the deck. It’s as if it were a flag for the future of warfare." I'm taking their word for it because I don't see it, at all. To me it looks like a rushed back with a bad background tossed together to be thrown at the printer. If they pulled the background the deck would look a lot better. Would be able to see the dark glow around the courts too, not that the dark glow would help too much.

Great font choice, poor design and execution. I'm going to go ahead and say this is a pass for me. I may yank my pledge on the red dot deck as well. I'm showing support to that deck because CPC reigned it in from left field. Seems kind of pointless thing to do since, hey look it's left field again. I'd rather have that 808 perspective deck, that say's a lot.

[Encarded Inc.]

As a designer, I think they (and many others...yes Madison I'm looking at you) need to slow the heck down. The designs are becoming more sloppy in general and they are absolutely flooding the market they are trying to profit from.

Collectors are already becoming tired and starting to fall away, I've seen it clearly in the last year amongst even my most loyal fans, and this continual torrent of projects is not going to help grow or improve the market, it's going to destroy it. Take a moment to breathe and spend some quality time designing something really impressive folks, don't scare off the collectors that you depend on.

[52plusjoker]

As a designer, I think they (and many others...yes Madison I'm looking at you) need to slow the heck down. The designs are becoming more sloppy in general and they are absolutely flooding the market they are trying to profit from.

Collectors are already becoming tired and starting to fall away, I've seen it clearly in the last year amongst even my most loyal fans, and this continual torrent of projects is not going to help grow or improve the market, it's going to destroy it. Take a moment to breathe and spend some quality time designing something really impressive folks, don't scare off the collectors that you depend on.

I come from a different era and a different collecting perspective and I think what Encarded is saying makes eminent sense. Flooding the market with poor quality will soon turn off collectors - the very best will always profit but the good, the fair and the poor will suffer - as will the hobby. There is way too much junk being presented - we need fewer 'new' issues and better work.

[HolyJJ]

I'm in total agreement with both Paul and Tom.

Innovation in playing card manufacture and playing card design are what will keep the ball rolling... but mediocre stuff like this doesn't really do anything.

Ideally, every new release should be something really special... but clearly, that's not the case. Whilst good stuff does indeed pop up fairly regularly, the number of mediocre projects far outnumber the good ones.

This particular deck appears to have nothing more than the Bicycle branding in its favour. I do appreciate that whichever CPC designer worked on the deck must have put in time and effort... but at the end of the day, it appears that he or she simply wanted to put "a design" out there, rather than create something that was going to be really great.

[PurpleIce]

I have so much to say, but i'll keep it short.

Low funding goal the is almost a definite fund = people will pledge knowing they will get the deck.

Flooding the market + destroying the hobby = they probably don't give half a f**k as long as they are making money.
Should the day come and this hobby takes a nosedive, they definitely will suffer while good designers will survive. But hardly anyone looks into the future when there is money to be made now.

As much as people are saying about CPC, some responsibility should also fall on USPC for having no QC on their Bicycle brand. The "bicycle" brand now is becoming "cheaper" and "cheaper". Sure, USPC wants to earn, and they can always allow people to print using their printers, but not with the bicycle brand. While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I'm sure a good team of designers can tell a good design from a lackluster, rushed out design.
Previously the Bicycle brand meant something, to me at least. It meant quality of a certain standard, not only in the card stock and finishing, but also in the design they put on their cards. Now i see bicycle branded cards and they really mean nothing. I really hope the other printers don't follow suit if they are creating the own brand identity.

[Don Boyer]

First of all, I love that someone (Fes!) finally coined the term "steamjunk!"  There have been so MANY decks in recent months that fall under that description!

BTW, Fes: that font you like?  It's a slight modification of the USPC standard design font!  That interesting K is just the USPC index K flipped on a horizontal axis!  Minor tweaks here and there - a teeny serif mark on the "1" in the "10" and a slight shaving of the end of the line for the "5", etc.

I recall writing about this exact situation elsewhere...oh, yeah - I wrote about it here.

We have some people bringing just plain crap on paper to the market.  We have some people churning out deck after deck after deck after deck, ad nauseum.  We have USPC willing to stamp "Bicycle" on pretty much anything if the price is right.  And we have collectors that are getting tired of all of it, every last bit, from artist and designer to producer to printer to distributor to retailer.

I have not one good thing to say about this deck, period.  It's so utterly derivative and devoid of soul.  Take Bicycle Galvanic, slap a steamjunk theme on it, make the background look like metal recycling and voila - this steaming pile is born.  I could almost "design" a better deck by making lists of random variables and letting RANDOM.ORG choose the theme for me!!

USPC has allowed the Bicycle brand to become so diluted and polluted with all the utter garbage they've permitted people to put out in its name, it's been rendered worthless.  Who cares about yet-another craptacular Bicycle deck from some guy I've never heard of before and will probably never hear about again - unless he gets a job at CPC, naturally...  CPC is making Bill Merz's Bicycle decks look good, and to me, that's an incredible feat previously thought impossible.

USPC is facilitating this trash.  Why the hell would I want to buy USPC decks again?  Over 125 years in the business and they have yet to master proper registration between faces, backs and the cutting die, despite getting a state-of-the-art facility only five years ago!  Their new motto might as well be "Good enough for government work!"  Bicycle has become the "government cheese" of the playing card industry!

Wow, I've been in such a rant-y mood lately...

If you want to continue discussion of the Bicycle Ancient Machines deck, please do so here.  If you prefer to discuss what the hell is wrong with this industry and how certain elements are sending it to hell in a handbasket at ever-accelerating speeds, use this topic that I referenced earlier in this post.

[Fess]

I felt like maybe I had an improper rant on this deck yesterday. So being thoroughly cooled off I decided to give them a peek and see if my opinion changed at all. I really don't like being so negative. It's not how I roll and surely I can find something nice to say about a deck beyond just the font choice, right?

I'm sorry, I can't. This deck upsets me it is steamjunk.

CPC sells a lot of custom decks. They have a great reputation of customer service too. Their retail store is good and functions quite well. To CPC, their retail store I say, Good Things. I cannot say the same of these decks and I won't.

-Rest of post has been moved to the thread Don pointed out.-

[Rob Wright]

I have one good thing to say about these.

With the money I save from not buying these steaming heaps, I'll be able to buy toilet paper to wipe my screen off.

[Don Boyer]

I have one good thing to say about these.

With the money I save from not buying these steaming heaps, I'll be able to buy toilet paper to wipe my screen off.

...and you need to wipe off the screen because...? 

[Rob Wright]

I have one good thing to say about these.

With the money I save from not buying these steaming heaps, I'll be able to buy toilet paper to wipe my screen off.

...and you need to wipe off the screen because...? 

I tried wiping this crap of my screen, but it didn't work. 

[Fess]

I have one good thing to say about these.

With the money I save from not buying these steaming heaps, I'll be able to buy toilet paper to wipe my screen off.

...and you need to wipe off the screen because...? 

I tried wiping this crap of my screen, but it didn't work. 

haha, that cracked me up. Good stuff.

[Don Boyer]

I have one good thing to say about these.

With the money I save from not buying these steaming heaps, I'll be able to buy toilet paper to wipe my screen off.

...and you need to wipe off the screen because...? 

I tried wiping this crap of my screen, but it didn't work. 

haha, that cracked me up. Good stuff.

He needs to get the DOG to do it for him! 

OK, we've had a few giggles, but let's steer this back to the topic at hand - this deck that isn't receiving much love from around here.

[Rose]

Is "Ancient Machines" another word for weird steampunk?

[Don Boyer]

Is "Ancient Machines" another word for weird steampunk?

Only if you consider the Victorian era to be "ancient."  Steampunk stories are generally set in the latter half of the 19th century, mostly from the American Civil War to about 1900 (the year Queen Victoria died).  I imagine some writers take it a little closer to the present (World War I, the Roaring '20s, etc.), but some refer to such stories by other terms, such as "gearpunk" or "dieselpunk".  Talk to a hardcore devotee to these genres and it can make your head spin...but I do like the stories!

They're all loosely based off the popular 1980s sci-fi genre called "cyberpunk," which was set in a fictional near-future time, often depicting how incredibly powerful devices like computers and their "offspring" find new, unique and sometimes deadly uses when the tech is unleashed in the wild.  The funny thing is that a lot of cyberpunk themes are coming true today - it's why William Gibson's writing takes place more in the present day these days.

Gibson was arguably the most prominent writer of the genre - I just picked up an autographed copy of his latest book, "The Peripheral."  He was describing stories with a global, powerful network nearly two decades before the Internet graduated from a novelty used by universities and the military and became what it is today.  Well, his depiction was a bit different - you interfaced with it by direct neural link and the net itself was depicted as a three-dimensional space one could "virtually" travel through.  Gives a whole new meaning to hacking!  He also created the term "cyberspace", using it in a collection of short stories printed in 1982.