Tentpole is made by Tentpole LLC, a Missouri limited liability company. For questions or partnership opportunities, contact jesse@tentpolegame.com.
Terms of play
It's a game. Every film Tentpole produces is fiction: the title, the synopsis, the review quote, the box office, the critic score, the verdict — all of it. None of it reports, predicts, or reflects the real work or prospects of any actor, director, studio, or publication.
The writing is generated by software — a language model working from the picks you make. It can be wrong, odd, or say something nobody intended. If a picture has crossed a line, tell us and we'll take it down.
Real names are used to identify real things. Films, people, studios, ratings, and review outlets appear here for identification and commentary. Nobody named on this site is affiliated with Tentpole, endorses it, or had anything to do with the film it invented. Poster art and film metadata come from OMDb and belong to their rights holders.
Your picture is yours to share. Post the card, send the link, print it. We only ask that you don't pass it off as a real film or a real review.
Play it by hand. Don't scrape the site, drive it with bots, hammer the API, or try to break it. The game costs us money every time it runs.
It's provided as is. We don't promise it will be available, correct, or the same tomorrow. We may change the game, the scoring, the writing, or retire it, at any time.
Liability. To the extent the law allows, Tentpole LLC isn't liable for anything arising from playing the game or from a picture it produced, and our total liability to you is limited to what you've paid us — which is nothing, unless you tipped, in which case it's the tip.
Tips are gifts. They're voluntary, non-refundable, and buy nothing: no feature, no removal, no promise. They keep the writer paid, literally. Payment is handled by Stripe; we never see your card.
Law. These terms are governed by the laws of Missouri, United States. If any part of them can't be enforced, the rest still stands.
Changes. If these terms change, the new ones go here, with the date at the top. Playing after that is agreeing to them.
Privacy
No account needed. You can play without one. Signing in is optional; it's what keeps a list of your films.
In your browser: the first time you play, the page makes two random IDs — one that lasts the session and one that lasts until you clear site data. They tell one player's games from another's. They aren't linked to you, and we can't link them. It also keeps a list of the films it made, so one you reopen yourself isn't counted as a share; that list never leaves your browser.
What we log: for each film you greenlight, the picks, the numbers, the writing, and the time, tied to those IDs. We don't log your IP address, your location, or your browser or device.
Shares: when a film's card or link is shared, or a shared link is opened, we log that it happened, how, and when, against the film. No IDs go with it, only whether the browser doing it made the film.
Analytics:Plausible, which is cookieless and collects no personal data — page views and game events, in aggregate.
Tips: handled by Stripe on Stripe's own page, under Stripe's own privacy policy. We see your name, your email, and the amount, and nothing else.
Share links: every film you greenlight gets a page at tentpolegame.com/m/… that anyone holding the link can see, indefinitely. Nothing on it identifies you.
Your Studio: if you're signed in, the page at tentpolegame.com/history lists the films made in every browser you've signed in from, including the ones made there before you signed in. Only you see it. Until you sign in, we keep that list against your browser's random ID. Signing out clears it from that browser; sign in again and your films come back. You can take a film off the list; its link keeps working.
If you sign in: we keep your email address; with Google or Apple, the account ID they give us and your name if they share it (with Apple's Hide My Email, we only see a relay address); the random IDs of the browsers you've signed in from, so your films follow you; and the films you've starred. We don't get your password or anything else from Google or Apple.
Cookies: signing in sets two cookies of our own: one that keeps you signed in for a year (renewed when you come back), and one the page reads to know you're signed in. No advertising or third-party cookies.
Email: sign-in codes are sent through Resend. Beyond those, we email you only if the box asking for it was ticked when you signed in. In most countries, the US among them, that box starts ticked, so untick it if you'd rather not hear from us; where the law asks you to tick it yourself (the EU, the UK, Canada and Australia among them), it starts unticked. We go by the country your connection comes from, and don't keep it. Every such email has a link to stop them, and you can also say no from your account menu at any time. The mailing list is kept with Resend, and we keep a record of when you said yes and whether the box started ticked.
Deleting your account: from “Your Studio,” open your account menu and choose “Delete my account.” Your email, your sign-in, your favorites, your history and your place on the mailing list are removed. Links to films you shared still open, and our logbook keeps the plays as the anonymous rows they were before you signed in.
Where it lives: the site and accounts run on Netlify; the logbook is kept on Google Cloud; email goes through Resend; the movie posters on the reel load straight from Amazon's image servers, which see your IP address the way any site does when your browser fetches an image from it. Nothing is sold, no ads are shown, and nothing is shared beyond the services named here.
Kids: Tentpole isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect anything from them — we collect almost nothing from anyone.
Starting over: clear site data for tentpolegame.com and you're a new player. If you'd signed in, signing in again brings your films back.