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Hey Where's the auto-link?! Donate to my awesome project!

I received the Tell 'em Stevedave podcast on vinyl a few weeks back: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1507616740/tell-em-steve-dave-vinyl-cast

Here is my friends project. Super smart bunch of people. If the kickstarter bubble bursts (through a sullied reputation or scamming or whatever), another one will come along to replace it that learns from the mistakes of the past. It's a clearly good idea. Allowing small niche markets to find and fund engineering and creative talent is something that will always be desirable.

that I know of. It's called Diaspora. It's a piece of social networking software with distributed servers, and the goal is for people to be able to share without having all of their data owned perpetually by some corporation. Their site has been running the software for a while now, and I was running a node too. It's open-sourced, so those people and companies who invested are free to continue the project if they wish. I suppose that's a bit different than just funding a game, because with Diaspora, the benefits are for everyone, and don't depend on some unknown release date. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr

The Order of The Stick reprint drive.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/599092525/the-order-of-the-stick-reprint-drive/posts

This may also be the first instance of the project developer (Rich Burlew) being so completely involved with the supporters as the project exceeded the initial goal.

Flip through the updates notifications to see what he added as enticements to get to each new level. And what his progress has been on delivering on those commitments.

100% transparency and thousands of fans eagerly awaiting delivery.

About the only thing I can see is someone else coming along to steal Kickstarter's thunder, but the idea behind Kickstarter isn't going anywhere in the foreseeable future.

I hope it doesn't go anywhere because it is a great idea.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/847271320/ogre-designers-edition

Kickstarter allows the developer to get in direct contact with the people who are willing to commit to his/her project. Which is GREAT in cases like the above example. Things that were abandoned long ago can be revived without having to secure millions of dollars of investment cash.

Kickstarter would never lie to us.

No, they don't. See Who is responsible for fulfilling the promises of a project? on their FAQ. Spoiler: They don't claim to verify anything other than that the project idea itself is ok for Kickstarter.

You can always support Amanda Palmer directly here for the new album. No middleman. There is even a option to get the digital album for 1 dollar. She has posted several albums to bandcamp with pay-what you want.

They're reviving it as a Kickstarter project.

Nobody would say that Manos, Hands of Fate is of equal value to say, The Dark Knight. Well, nobody except the entertainment industry...

Late last year, somebody found an original 16mm Ektachrome workprint of Manos, and Manos: The Restoration raised $48000 - well over the $10000 goal.

Sometimes the only way to preserve the long tail is to bypass the industry entirely. It's not worth it for the entertainment industry to resurrect Manos, but it is worth it to people who watch movies.

well now, when some persons on the internet can claim to produce a video game for $7500 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1071240958/rx-a-tale-of-electronegativity well it just makes sense to me that publishers simply have gone crazy, become greedy and stupid. kickstarter is where the talented small group can simultaneously find money to buy things with while getting to do amazing creative acts. it doesn't take fancy graphics to make a good game it's just that people finally got fed up with this game must push faster hardware on unwilling users. and i know phones and tablets lead to cheaper games with simple engines and easy to stop in the middle of using it cause an important call is coming in.

So the difference is insignificant. The 'conventional' farming is destroying the land and wasting fossil fuel. I can raise livestock on pasture far more efficiently than a factory farm. I use virtually zero electricity, propane, gasoline or diesel. I guy no grain. The animals are out on pasture. Conventional hog farmers are losing money many years and in the best years only make about five to ten bucks a pig. I make 25 to 50 times more profit per pig than they do. At the end of the year, conventional farms only exist because they're subsidized by the tax payer. I get no subsidies yet I'm profitable and sustainable.

By the way, check out our on-farm butcher shop project.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sugarmtnfarm/building-a-butcher-shop-on-sugarmountainfarm

Cheers,

-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butchershop

Perhaps this would be the book you need? http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nickblack/the-finest-machine :D

I have prior art that predates the Professor by more than a decade. Case over. The troll needs to go back under his bridge.

Cheers,

-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butchershop

Check out our Kickstarting the Butcher Shop project at:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sugarmtnfarm/building-a-butcher-shop-on-sugarmountainfarm

Just a clarification -- There is no precedent for attempting an open movie at this scale and complexity outside the Blender Foundation, and pledges are only earned once a project's official funding goal is met at Kickstarter. We set a conservative target, cautiously optimistic that community support can exceed that figure and supply the production with full funding.

For more info check out the Tube campaign's main page and update tabs.
Tube has an ongoing production blog at URCHN

Thanks for your solidarity and support!

Fateh Slavitskaya
Producer - Tube Open Movie

Then have a look at this: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure

RE: http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/machinekuntrecords According to Rachel, all of the people who didn't get a hardcopy were refunded.

I'm not buying into it either.

First, there's this claim on her page:

This guy has been after me for over a decade and is hiding in his basement to avoid being served with various restraining orders

That's total BS. First, you can't "hide in your basement" for 10 years to avoid being personally served with a restraining order. Hire a better process server.

Second, the police do take it seriously, especially if you have any information that can identify the person. It's how one of my cyber-stalkers ended up getting fired, despite being thousands of miles away.

So, she knows the guy - and has a bit of history with him. So I'm not convinced. Not when she's lied about other stuff (like claiming her past project was booted when it was actually funded).

Then there's her complaint about Facebook.

I am no longer allowed to go by my copyrighted pseudonym and thousands of people are now aware of my full first and last name.

In other words, she created a fake Facebook profile and when she couldn't prove it was hers, they locked her out of it. If she's not happy with Facebooks' policies, there's a simple solution - don't use it. If your business depends on Facebook, you have bigger problems than some random cyber-stalker.

As for Kickstarter, here's the way I see it. If they allow individuals to delete comments in a comment submission queue, then complaints will never be brought to the administrators' attention. So that's not going to work.

But judging by this comment (and following the provided link verifies it on kickstarter), since she's lying about her past project being banned by kickstarter whe it was actually funded, what else is she lying about?

Bottom line - a liar, a publicity hound and a drama queen, with a co-dependency problem with her stalker (she needs the publicity as much as he needs to stalk), call the wambulance.

What you linked to was a profile page, and the only project created (that's visible) is "Sanity is Slavery", not the "Extreme Futurist Fest". What's strange is that even when projects are forcibly cancelled, normally the page stays cancelled, not deleted. I'd assume, for the benefit of the backers. I'd be peeved if I backed a project and then the project page just disappeared.

For example, this project (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/606787527/the-tech-sync-power-system) raised almost 28k by the time someone figured out it was possibly a scam and got enough attention for kickstarter to contact the project owner, the project got cancelled, but it's still visible.

Strangely enough, when I started digging, I found this: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/machinekuntrecords/extreme-futurist-fest-2011 which is a project page, but is blank. This is the first time I've seen an actual blank page like this (and I've followed a lot of projects.)

OK so there's some speculation she might be a con artist. The project she claims was banned :

"My client Rachel Marone ran a Kickstarter project called “Extreme Futurist Fest” in April 2011. She was banned because her cyberstalker posted 300 spam comments to her account. "

did go through apparently :

"Extreme Futurist Festival 2011 aims to unite the most radical thinkers around the globe in the fields of science, medicine, transhumanism, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, hacking, philosophy, and the arts."

So there's that.

And people in the comments are complaining about being stiffed :

"Apparently this is going on (http://rachelmarone.com/banned-from-kickstarter-for-being-a-stalking-victim.html), but there's no mention of this Kickstarter at all. I highly doubt we'll see anything soon."

You can go on more than faith. If you have access to Kickstarter.com you have access to a stalker's paradise of tools to find out how legit a project is.

Do your research:

1) Does the process pass the sniff test. Is it too good to be true? Does the money-side seem legit? Does it violate any physical laws, or laws of common sense? A surprising number will fail here.

2) Look at the project docs. Do they have a real thing to produce? If it's for an object do they have an actual working one or do they have just sketches and a nice rendering. Do they know how to mass-produce something? Do they know how to deliver all of their rewards?

A project can't over-communicate. Do they update and answer questions with good answers? Or are they evasive?

3) Google the crap out of the project team. What have they done. Have they done something like this? Have they done anything at all besides come up with a couple hundred words and a video? If they're scam artists it will show. If they're simply in over their head it'll show too.

4) Beware of the ones who are in over their head. There are a lot of them. Tons. Looking at the rewards vs the reward prices is a good place to start. Is there enough left after producing the physical reward to produce the project? People show up with a good idea and think "how hard can it be?" and then they drop a decimal when pricing rewards and end up in the hole $3 for each T-shirt they have to get out, and didn't include shipping, so could you add another $12 to your pledge, oh, and I had no idea that it cost that much to duplicate a DVD/tool a factory/rent a sound studio ... and the whole project collapses.

One of my biggest gripes about Kickstarter's setup is that you can't ask question on the project page unless you've ponied up the dough. That leads to a number of projects that are snake-oil getting funded.

I've back 2 and evaded many more. The two I backed delivered. One took 2x as long as anticipated, but they were in new territory, but they had a working model and I had personally talked to the team and they knew what they were doing. The second knew exactly every step to execute on it. And did.

You can go on more than faith. If you have access to Kickstarter.com you have access to a stalker's paradise of tools to find out how legit a project is.

Do your research:

1) Does the process pass the sniff test. Is it too good to be true? Does the money-side seem legit? Does it violate any physical laws, or laws of common sense? A surprising number will fail here.

2) Look at the project docs. Do they have a real thing to produce? If it's for an object do they have an actual working one or do they have just sketches and a nice rendering. Do they know how to mass-produce something? Do they know how to deliver all of their rewards?

A project can't over-communicate. Do they update and answer questions with good answers? Or are they evasive?

3) Google the crap out of the project team. What have they done. Have they done something like this? Have they done anything at all besides come up with a couple hundred words and a video? If they're scam artists it will show. If they're simply in over their head it'll show too.

4) Beware of the ones who are in over their head. There are a lot of them. Tons. Looking at the rewards vs the reward prices is a good place to start. Is there enough left after producing the physical reward to produce the project? People show up with a good idea and think "how hard can it be?" and then they drop a decimal when pricing rewards and end up in the hole $3 for each T-shirt they have to get out, and didn't include shipping, so could you add another $12 to your pledge, oh, and I had no idea that it cost that much to duplicate a DVD/tool a factory/rent a sound studio ... and the whole project collapses.

One of my biggest gripes about Kickstarter's setup is that you can't ask question on the project page unless you've ponied up the dough. That leads to a number of projects that are snake-oil getting funded.

I've back 2 and evaded many more. The two I backed delivered. One took 2x as long as anticipated, but they were in new territory, but they had a working model and I had personally talked to the team and they knew what they were doing. The second knew exactly every step to execute on it. And did.

There seems to be a lot of confusion here about what Kickstarter is.

Kickstarter is not about charity.

Kickstart is not about investment.

What Kickstart is about is getting projects off the ground to the point of producing a product that is generally the reward.

Backers make a pledge and in turn return a reward. Generally that reward consists of the product produced by the project. Sometimes the lower tiers of the rewards are simply a Thank You or swag goodies such as a T-shirt. The mid tiers tend to be the actual product and then the higher tiers are sometimes honorary things in addition to the product. So, the backer is spending money to get a product. It's a market place.

But Kickstarter is about a market place for creating the system of making the product. This is different than Amazon or eBay where it is a market place for an already existing product.

I'll give you an example:

Our family raises pastured pigs and sells our all naturally raised pork on our weekly delivery route year round. Right now we have to drive seven hours every week to take our pigs to a distant slaughterhouse and bring back the meat so we can make deliveries to stores, restaurants and individuals.

It would be more humane for the animals, use less fuel, save time, cost us less and give our customers better quality if we could do the meat processing on-farm. What a great idea! So, we're building an on-farm USDA inspected slaughterhouse, butcher shop and smokehouse. The first step is the butcher shop (meat cutting & sausage making).

We're about 90% done with the construction and when the weather warms up enough this spring (we're in the north country and it is still snowing here) we will begin construction again so that we can open our butcher shop this summer.

We've funded our project with our own savings, cash flow from the farm, loans customer & friends, loans from local merchants and CSA Pre-Buys that will be delivered when we start processing on-farm.

We are doing a Kickstarting the Butcher Shop at Sugar Mountain Farm project in order to raise some additional funds. Go see it here as an example of a product based Kickstarter project:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sugarmtnfarm/building-a-butcher-shop-on-sugarmountainfarm

This is not a charity - we are providing product in exchange for backer's dollars.

This is not an investment - we're not selling ownership or stock in our farm.

This is not a loan - there is not interest or payback of the funds.

This is a purchase of product.

In the lowest tiers we say thank you.

In the low tiers you get some cool Goodies which range from T-shirts to other things from our farm.

In the middle tiers it gets into sample packages of meat from our farm ranging from three pounds to 20 lbs shipped to your home.

In the higher tiers there are subscriptions where you can get the meat shipped to you many times a year for up to a decade.

We're offering product in the future, once our facility is up and running with the necessary USDA license so we can ship interstate, in exchange for payment now - the pledge made by backers.

So how do you know we won't just take the money and run as you're worried about with that other project. Well, first I will simply tell you that we are trustworthy and we will do the right thing. Not enough, well, start reading our project, look at the video, see all the work we have already put into this project, see the hundreds of pigs out in the fields, read the testimonials by our existing customers on their letter head and listen to them talk in the video, look at our web site that dates back to 2005, study my web presence. You look at all of that and decide if you feel comfortable. Then you decide what you would like to buy and pledge the amount you are comfortable. It's that simple. The higher a pledge you're going to make the more I would e

obligatory link.

So, funding fusion projects on kickstarter has been done before. The lack of meaningful rewards for supporters means that it's unlikely to ever be a great funding method.

I've funded a grand total of one kickstarter ("FTL"):

- it had an actual vision
- it actually had a partially-complete product which they'd demo'd at conventions
- has a well-controlled scope (it's not an extremely complex game, nor one with a huge amount of art or other expenses)
- I only put as much money into it as needed to get a copy of the game, essentially treating it as a pre-order

Then you come across Kickstarters like Starlight Inception which:
- has no vision ("it's a space game! You do space game things!" Half the page is just covered in testimonials. For a non-existent product. What the hell?)
- has no product or prototypes
- has an uncontrolled, massive scope (gritty, realistic graphics; launch-day DLC; a Vita port in addition to the PC version)

I think kickstarter is a great idea for some projects. Projects where you get physical goods in hand. Because with most physical goods, the cost is reduced greatly if you can get 5000 people pledging to buy your product. However I'm seeing a lot of kickstarter projects for intangible items (Just the first example I thought of). This seems odd to me. If there are no physical goods, then what start-up costs do they have, other than the time spent on the creative part. Which personally, I think the old model works just fine. Produce something, and then if it's good, I'll buy it. Most of the good kickstarter projects I've seen have a working model, they just need a bunch of money so they can buy materials in bulk and ship them out. Asking for a bunch of money to write a book, up front, is not the kind of thing I picture as something that needs to be funded on places like kickstarter.

Well that's certainly a cynical point of view, but I can understand why, and at least you adhere to it yourself. How is Project X coming along anyway? To a cynic, that 'donate' button doesn't look all that tempting.

On the other hand, just because it seems implausible doesn't mean it's impossible. Sometimes the exposure from e.g. KickStarter is exactly what you needed - whether that is because you didn't put in enough effort before you went that route or whether that's because outside investors only get convinced after seeing the KickStarter project is moot.

Here's one such example, and I readily accept that it may be a full-on fraud as it has nothing to show except for updates that I could've written just as well, and a photo of the guy in a mountain range (vacationing off backers' money, or genuinely a business trip?):
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1116966310/multi-touch-keyboard-and-mouse/

In that project's latest update, they actually admit that the funding they got through KickStarter ended up not being enough, but that the tech company (who showed interest after seeing the KickStarter project) they mentioned in an update prior will be covering the expenses and honor the KickStarter pledges.

So, and I'll stick with your cynical view, if that is all true, then it would be a clear case where the KickStarter project was substantial in the process of getting noticed by the right people. I doubt the project creator would have found that tech company by themselves (being in another continent entirely), and how would that tech company have found him if he was just trying to pitch the idea to banks, private investors and the-usual-suspect VCs?

And if you think KickStarter is 'bad', check out Quirky. Quirky has people pitch in ideas that are completely whack most of the time - but VCs and product design industries do keep an eye on them just in case there's that lone gem in there that they can work with; and Quirky itself is a part of that process, offering their services, contacts, expertise to help make things happen.

I "invested" in ZionEyez, since it sounded like an interesting project, and something that I'd be pleased to see come to market. I use "invested" liberally here, since I don't for a second think that this gave me ownership in the project, or anything like that. Perhaps "gambling" would be a better term.

I gave my money to help a project get sufficient funding to go ahead. The "reward" level I paid for was listed as "You will receive the Eyez by ZionEyez HD video recording glasses with clear and shaded removable lenses" but I read this as being dependent on the project succeeding — if I don't receive the glasses, I'll be disappointed, but I wouldn't consider it a breach of contract. I expected the project to give it its best shot, and to put effort into attempting to succeed, rather than taking the money with no intention of creating the project, but it's inevitable that some projects will fail.

Whilst I'm disappointed that the project has been delayed quite considerably, and I'm mindful of the fact that I may never see the glasses, to me, this was an "investment" which did not materialise the way I had hoped rather than buying a product which was not delivered.

I feel particularly sorry for some of the feedback posted to the creator of the Hanfree project too...

I've got one Kickstarter backing under my belt. It's the HexBright project that was featured here on /. and is yet to show a result in terms of a product shipped to me.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/527051507/hexbright-an-open-source-light

The reason I post is the difficulty I had paying the backing money. My bank repeatedly refused to allow the payment to go through (via Amazon) due to prior complaints. They have the Kickstarter payment account blacklisted. This is a mid tier Australian bank and I ended up having to ring them and explain what the payment was for, why I was making it, and to absolve them of all and any responsibility if it went wrong. The matter went though several levels of responsibility within the bank until it reached someone who could authorize the payment.

The same bank doesn't bat an eyelid if I order things direct over the internet straight out of China. But not with Kickstarter.

Hear hear. From Kickstarter's own FAQ (oddly, no-one's quoted this yet):

Who is responsible for fulfilling the promises of a project?

It is the responsibility of the project creator to fulfill the promises of their project. Kickstarter reviews projects to ensure they do not violate the Project Guidelines, however Kickstarter does not investigate a creator's ability to complete their project.

Creators are encouraged to share links to any websites that show work related to the project, or past projects. It's up to them to make the case for their project and their ability to complete it. Because projects are usually funded by the friends, fans, and communities around its creator, there are powerful social forces that keep creators accountable.

The web is an excellent resource for learning about someone’s prior experience. If someone has no demonstrable prior history of doing something like their project, or is unwilling to share information, backers should consider that when weighing a pledge. If something sounds too good to be true, it very well may be.

So there you have it - caveat emptor. If you throw money at a stranger, based on a promise, it's down to you. Most of the Kickstarter projects I've seen have been 'hey fans, you love our website, help us make a book' kind of things, which would certainly bite the owner in the ass if they let you down.

Crowdfunding works only together with reputation. If you simply give money to any unknown person who starts a project, then it's your own fault if they run away with it. Reputation means that creators seeking funding need to do their first few projects for free until there are enough fans who believe that the creator will really deliver and who like the quality of the previous products.

Exactly. I donated through Kickstarter to Musopen which was also prominently featured here on slashdot because they were already a registered non-profit and had done quite a bit of work to produce and distribute free music before, not to mention they had a semi-tangible goal. Good thing too, because this was in September 2010 and they didn't get to recording until this January with the Prague Symphony Orchestra - it's now in editing and still not released yet. I'd not give money to any random dude who said he'd do the same and I wouldn't trust them to deliver almost two years down the road.

Of course you still don't have a real guarantee, I don't have a contract, I can't get a refund. But you have to consider the value proposition, for example if a person has worked long and hard on an open source project and asks for Kickstarter funding to work full time on some features. If he goes AWOL then that project is scorched earth, he can't use it as reference anywhere because it'll be full of stories about how he took the money and ran. Same with anyone pursuing any kind of career who'd use it in their portfolio. But people with no proven commitment wanting money up front? No way.

Alright, to start, full disclaimer is that I don't see anyway how I will get around mentioning projects I've kickstarted so I'll try to stick to ones that are done and no longer able to hit.

But the simple answer to me is "What do these people have to lose if they meet their goal and don't deliver? And would it be worth 'cashing' out all of your good faith with the community at that price?" I've never kickstarted something that costs more than a million dollars and if I kickstarted something over a hundred dollars, it had a company's name and site associated with it that was already in the business and would be smeared with mud if they decided to fleece a bunch of people trying to help them out. Using this guidance, I haven't had many poor experiences -- although a lot of my experiences are funding musicians to record albums or video. That's something that's pretty hard to fail at although, they're musicians, so I'm still waiting on a movie that was started filming over a year or more ago ("Flood Tide"). I kickstarted a book on programming ("The Nature of Code Book") and this dude has been sending me links to PDFs left and right and I'll probably review the book here on Slashdot when he has it finalized. So far we're talking $25 donations to each of these projects. But I did dump a couple hundred into the NASA space MMO and I sort of expect to be waiting 2-3 years on that one because it's a team of 20 developers making an MMO and I want them to make a nice product. But also, they have a reputation at stake and I know they'll put out something.

Anyway, keep your donations at levels you can afford to lose -- don't ever think you're "buying" something on kickstarter. And look at the reputation of the individuals involved with your project. Also keep in mind it takes a long time to go through all stages of development and you'll find projects at all stages. It looks like ZionEyez started at concept. Do you know how long it takes to go from concept to hardware product? Large companies with massive budgets who are in those businesses take a longtime, I would imagine smaller teams would take even longer. You might get your ZionEyez in 4-5 years and, like a lot of vaporware, maybe never. ZionEyez looks like they were offering you $50 off MSRP to kickstart them and you got some "limited edition" run of them. So ... I'd pretty much pass on this one and just buy them when they're out.

As for criticism, if this is a scam, they're sure committed to it with updates from yesterday. Hell, their site looks like it would cost 10-20k to develop so they're spending their money somewhere. These guys sound like they'll probably come through, they just don't understand FCC testing, engineering problems, etc. So I'd expect your ZionEyez 4 years from now when some Chinese manufacturer already has some knockoff out there. But it's a bad idea to kickstart a lot of money to these guys as I don't see them at risk of losing any reputation, just losing a really good idea (people are obsessed with putting their boring personal status updates online, think about them putting their mundane day-to-day video up).

Between this and the above it might signal the end of the road for this form of funding. Lots more people are probably going to get burned. I backed the MARIE music robots after reading about them on Slashdot. It gave me a good feeling plus the promise of stuff sent to me in the post was a nice thing to have. I eventually got the stuff out of the blue, over a year later, and was very pleased to receive it having pretty much given up on it. When kickstarter works - it works well as in this case. One thing that projects should do is at least try to keep their backers in the loop. However we can only hope that the JOBS act isn't going to give this type of investment/funding a bad name.

Three words: The Banner Saga. Three people who, while industry veterans, are relative unknowns among names like Sid Meyer and Tim Schaffer, making a new property that people are donating to because it looks amazing.

As far as donator recourse... there is none. Kickstarter has a slight vetting process to weed out the obvious cranks, but you're pre-ordering something several months in advance based on a pitch, and you shouldn't pretend it's anything more. Personally, I did not give money to Tim Schaffer because a) "some adventure game" is way too vague for me and b) though I may get crucified for saying this, he's never made a game I liked. But I have given money to The Banner Saga, Wasteland 2, and Shadowrun Returns because Hell Yes on all three counts.

As far as the developers pocketing half the money? I hope they do. They deserve payment for the work they're doing. Like, with The Banner Saga, if they pocket half the $440,000 that's pledged so far and split it three ways, that's about $70,000 each, which is hardly an unreasonable salary. Sure, Tim Schaffer's Kickstarter got $3 million, but $1.5 million split 50 ways (or however many people are going to be working on the game) is still probably a reasonable salary. And if Tim Schaffer personally pocketed $1.5 million, he'd never be able to sell another game again because of the fan backlash; he wouldn't be, "Tim Schaffer, the mind behind Psychonauts and Grim Fandango," he'd be, "Tim Schaffer, that douche bag who ripped us off on Kickstarter."

I mean, The Escapist a while back had a Rocket Hub thing for "Send Yahtzee to PAX" which created enough controversy that they had to shut it down and give an official apology because people thought they were soliciting donations to send Yahtzee to PAX, when really they were pretty open about it being "Buy enough merch and we can afford to send Yahtzee to PAX."

Generally speaking, a crowdsourced vetting process is more skeptical than most, since people are naturally suspicious of strangers trying to sell them things that don't exist yet.

Three words: The Banner Saga. Three people who, while industry veterans, are relative unknowns among names like Sid Meyer and Tim Schaffer, making a new property that people are donating to because it looks amazing.

As far as donator recourse... there is none. Kickstarter has a slight vetting process to weed out the obvious cranks, but you're pre-ordering something several months in advance based on a pitch, and you shouldn't pretend it's anything more. Personally, I did not give money to Tim Schaffer because a) "some adventure game" is way too vague for me and b) though I may get crucified for saying this, he's never made a game I liked. But I have given money to The Banner Saga, Wasteland 2, and Shadowrun Returns because Hell Yes on all three counts.

As far as the developers pocketing half the money? I hope they do. They deserve payment for the work they're doing. Like, with The Banner Saga, if they pocket half the $440,000 that's pledged so far and split it three ways, that's about $70,000 each, which is hardly an unreasonable salary. Sure, Tim Schaffer's Kickstarter got $3 million, but $1.5 million split 50 ways (or however many people are going to be working on the game) is still probably a reasonable salary. And if Tim Schaffer personally pocketed $1.5 million, he'd never be able to sell another game again because of the fan backlash; he wouldn't be, "Tim Schaffer, the mind behind Psychonauts and Grim Fandango," he'd be, "Tim Schaffer, that douche bag who ripped us off on Kickstarter."

I mean, The Escapist a while back had a Rocket Hub thing for "Send Yahtzee to PAX" which created enough controversy that they had to shut it down and give an official apology because people thought they were soliciting donations to send Yahtzee to PAX, when really they were pretty open about it being "Buy enough merch and we can afford to send Yahtzee to PAX."

Generally speaking, a crowdsourced vetting process is more skeptical than most, since people are naturally suspicious of strangers trying to sell them things that don't exist yet.

Also you can see an old school BOARD GAME. Check out. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/49100723/expedite-a-fast-paced-route-building-game-of-world

So then you can always take it back to the board and Kickstarter has a project that does that. check out http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/49100723/expedite-a-fast-paced-route-building-game-of-world

Take a look at another project that is also on Kickstarter called Expedite. A 2-4 player game based on strategy and skill utilizing the world map. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/49100723/expedite-a-fast-paced-route-building-game-of-world Feedback is always welcome.

...and no one wanted it. Seriously:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pieco/kapsule-lightstand-kindle-accessory

I guess if it's built-in and "free", people will want a reading light. Otherwise, not so much.

Let's wait until a single good game has been released under this model.

Plenty of projects have already been successfully funded, and if you are talking about good games, let me point to this one (just because I funded it myself and already have the game to play).

In short, there are already a number of success stories in terms of final products, so... yeah.

Let's wait until a single good game has been released under this model.

Plenty of projects have already been successfully funded, and if you are talking about good games, let me point to this one (just because I funded it myself and already have the game to play).

In short, there are already a number of success stories in terms of final products, so... yeah.

I should mention the Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/22092473/the-dream-quest-of-unknown-kadath-and-other-storie?ref=live as being an unexpectedly well produced book. I'm a big HPL fan, so I wanted to sponsor it, but I was surprised at just how well made/written/drawn it is.

Kikstarter lets people who already have a name get funding for their pet project.

Tell that to the oh-so-well-known game developers Justin Ma and Matthew Davis (not the actor), who run the Faster Than Light Kickstarter project.

No, it's not. They have levels that you can buy into for each of the different products. For example Diaspora promised everyone that donated $5 "Once the software is released as open source, we will send you a CD with diaspora all set up and ready to go, with a note from our team!". I don't think anyone has gotten that.

It's even worse on the hardware side of things. So far I've backed 4 things in the last year and physically have 1 of them. Anywhere from "Sorry guys my supplier changed all my quotes" to "I just wanted to add ONE more feature." The one that I got actually showed up a week after the kickstarter ended. I got the Oblique wine bottle holder. The guy had a manufacturer (in the US) already set up. He had prototypes done and I wouldn't be surprised if the second he saw another order he had another 2 made. This guy actually knew what he was doing.

Look at the HexBright. I really debated getting it and just going with the prime because as the description says I conceived the HexBright Flex but I was tapped out of cash to actually make one. Kickstarter became an obvious solution. To raise capital I am offering reproductions of my original and first-made HexBright Prime for just $35. As that's worded you get something that's already been made. As far as I can tell no one has gotten anything yet.

If you want this to be a donation to fund further development. Flat out say that. There are projects that do that. But all the projects I've bought into have been pitched as "Guys I've been working really hard on this and I'm ready to show it to the world taking pre orders so I can get 5000 from China." And then all this money shows up and he decides continue engineering.

I'm starting to see why MBAs are needed. Everyone that has a project on there is an engineer of some sort and unless everything is 110% perfect they push the release date.

No, it's not. They have levels that you can buy into for each of the different products. For example Diaspora promised everyone that donated $5 "Once the software is released as open source, we will send you a CD with diaspora all set up and ready to go, with a note from our team!". I don't think anyone has gotten that.

It's even worse on the hardware side of things. So far I've backed 4 things in the last year and physically have 1 of them. Anywhere from "Sorry guys my supplier changed all my quotes" to "I just wanted to add ONE more feature." The one that I got actually showed up a week after the kickstarter ended. I got the Oblique wine bottle holder. The guy had a manufacturer (in the US) already set up. He had prototypes done and I wouldn't be surprised if the second he saw another order he had another 2 made. This guy actually knew what he was doing.

Look at the HexBright. I really debated getting it and just going with the prime because as the description says I conceived the HexBright Flex but I was tapped out of cash to actually make one. Kickstarter became an obvious solution. To raise capital I am offering reproductions of my original and first-made HexBright Prime for just $35. As that's worded you get something that's already been made. As far as I can tell no one has gotten anything yet.

If you want this to be a donation to fund further development. Flat out say that. There are projects that do that. But all the projects I've bought into have been pitched as "Guys I've been working really hard on this and I'm ready to show it to the world taking pre orders so I can get 5000 from China." And then all this money shows up and he decides continue engineering.

I'm starting to see why MBAs are needed. Everyone that has a project on there is an engineer of some sort and unless everything is 110% perfect they push the release date.

No, it's not. They have levels that you can buy into for each of the different products. For example Diaspora promised everyone that donated $5 "Once the software is released as open source, we will send you a CD with diaspora all set up and ready to go, with a note from our team!". I don't think anyone has gotten that.

It's even worse on the hardware side of things. So far I've backed 4 things in the last year and physically have 1 of them. Anywhere from "Sorry guys my supplier changed all my quotes" to "I just wanted to add ONE more feature." The one that I got actually showed up a week after the kickstarter ended. I got the Oblique wine bottle holder. The guy had a manufacturer (in the US) already set up. He had prototypes done and I wouldn't be surprised if the second he saw another order he had another 2 made. This guy actually knew what he was doing.

Look at the HexBright. I really debated getting it and just going with the prime because as the description says I conceived the HexBright Flex but I was tapped out of cash to actually make one. Kickstarter became an obvious solution. To raise capital I am offering reproductions of my original and first-made HexBright Prime for just $35. As that's worded you get something that's already been made. As far as I can tell no one has gotten anything yet.

If you want this to be a donation to fund further development. Flat out say that. There are projects that do that. But all the projects I've bought into have been pitched as "Guys I've been working really hard on this and I'm ready to show it to the world taking pre orders so I can get 5000 from China." And then all this money shows up and he decides continue engineering.

I'm starting to see why MBAs are needed. Everyone that has a project on there is an engineer of some sort and unless everything is 110% perfect they push the release date.

Depends on what one means by "renaissance". Will Kickstarter see a large boost for unknowns making new games for the first time? Maybe, it will help get some ideas done that otherwise never would have seen the day, (see Diaspora), but I doubt it will cause a huge increase in such. What I think we will be, and are, seeing is a large influx of established games and designers creating new work that otherwise wouldn't have ever seen the light of day. With the one and a quarter of a million that The Order of the Stick Reprint Drive made, I think we are already seeing this in the table top gaming community. Now other games companies are pulling out old favorites and using Kickstarter to judge interest and essentially get pre-sales for a product. We are seeing the same thing with the Shadowrun Returns game by the original designers. I'm hearing the same sort of things from friends who are comic book fans about new and old comic book projects. For what are essentially cottage industries with fans, I think it will help a great deal as one can essentially take a lot of risk out of guessing if something will sale enough to make the money back.

Personally, I'm beginning to really get into Kickstarter. New creative projects that I can not only look at getting, but if I really like it could even pay more for extras or even for things like getting myself added as a character in the video game. Some of the projects are small endevors that I want, but the larger demand just isn't there for. If I had to rely on brick and mortar stores or even the internet for such products to get produced, I'd probably never get them. With Kickstarter, a project can get the funding for it to fill what demand there is even if it's not enough to be sustainable for wide distribution.

Depends on what one means by "renaissance". Will Kickstarter see a large boost for unknowns making new games for the first time? Maybe, it will help get some ideas done that otherwise never would have seen the day, (see Diaspora), but I doubt it will cause a huge increase in such. What I think we will be, and are, seeing is a large influx of established games and designers creating new work that otherwise wouldn't have ever seen the light of day. With the one and a quarter of a million that The Order of the Stick Reprint Drive made, I think we are already seeing this in the table top gaming community. Now other games companies are pulling out old favorites and using Kickstarter to judge interest and essentially get pre-sales for a product. We are seeing the same thing with the Shadowrun Returns game by the original designers. I'm hearing the same sort of things from friends who are comic book fans about new and old comic book projects. For what are essentially cottage industries with fans, I think it will help a great deal as one can essentially take a lot of risk out of guessing if something will sale enough to make the money back.

Personally, I'm beginning to really get into Kickstarter. New creative projects that I can not only look at getting, but if I really like it could even pay more for extras or even for things like getting myself added as a character in the video game. Some of the projects are small endevors that I want, but the larger demand just isn't there for. If I had to rely on brick and mortar stores or even the internet for such products to get produced, I'd probably never get them. With Kickstarter, a project can get the funding for it to fill what demand there is even if it's not enough to be sustainable for wide distribution.

Depends on what one means by "renaissance". Will Kickstarter see a large boost for unknowns making new games for the first time? Maybe, it will help get some ideas done that otherwise never would have seen the day, (see Diaspora), but I doubt it will cause a huge increase in such. What I think we will be, and are, seeing is a large influx of established games and designers creating new work that otherwise wouldn't have ever seen the light of day. With the one and a quarter of a million that The Order of the Stick Reprint Drive made, I think we are already seeing this in the table top gaming community. Now other games companies are pulling out old favorites and using Kickstarter to judge interest and essentially get pre-sales for a product. We are seeing the same thing with the Shadowrun Returns game by the original designers. I'm hearing the same sort of things from friends who are comic book fans about new and old comic book projects. For what are essentially cottage industries with fans, I think it will help a great deal as one can essentially take a lot of risk out of guessing if something will sale enough to make the money back.

Personally, I'm beginning to really get into Kickstarter. New creative projects that I can not only look at getting, but if I really like it could even pay more for extras or even for things like getting myself added as a character in the video game. Some of the projects are small endevors that I want, but the larger demand just isn't there for. If I had to rely on brick and mortar stores or even the internet for such products to get produced, I'd probably never get them. With Kickstarter, a project can get the funding for it to fill what demand there is even if it's not enough to be sustainable for wide distribution.

I surely hope so..... at least i backed 4 projects in two weeks :-)

P.S. I recommend a look here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mercenary-games/vigrior-maneuver-warfare