I respect opinion of other people but can someone who voted “Year of the Independent Artists & Kickstarter” explain me such vote. Is this poll about facts or illusions? See this list http://aethercards.com/discourse/index.php?topic=522.0 and tell me how many INDEPENDENT/KICKSTARTER you can find in it. By the way - independent of… what?… money, government, USPCC, common sense, etc
And also I think it’ll be reasonable to point that this poll about USPCC poker size decks (at least for newcomers).
Voted. Sorry for my good mood in 2012
Well I didn't vote for this but I think I can help to explain it. "Independent/Kickstarter", well firstly independent of a big organization or team. Many of the people using Kickstarter weren't connected to Theory11, Ellusionist, Dan & Dave or one of the other big names. Also it wasn't a team of artists, instead it was often just one artist. Alex was the artist behind the Vortex, Russel behind the Americanas, Lance, behind the Actuators, Adam behind the Revision 1, etc...
It's those two elements that make them independent in a sense. On top of that they used Kickstarter, and I'm sure I don't need to explain that connection.
I think it was a big year for the "Independent/Kickstarter" movement because this year we really saw it grow in a huge way. You had multiple decks make big numbers on Kickstarter and because of this you saw many other people try their hand at it (successful or not). I think that Kickstarter really helped people like Alex accomplish what they have! I'm sure if kickstarter wasn't there that Alex and the other designers would have found a way around it, but with Kickstarter being there it has been a big year for both the website and those that use it.
Because of Kickstarter and the "Independent" artists we have seen many awesome decks and an awesome forum come to life. That's why I could see many people pick that as one of their top 3