[Scirra_Tom]

Does anyone else feel that Kickstarter has turned from helping cash strapped startups and individuals raise funds for interesting projects into a low-risk small business pre-order system?

I feel it's a shame people are spending $20,000+ to try and convince you to donate them money, I don't feel it was in the original spirit of Kickstarter earlier on.

[egypturnash]

It still functions perfectly for smaller things too. For instance I spent today starting to get all my ducks in a row to fulfill a comics KS I raised $15k for. (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/egypturnash/decrypting-...)

[its4tom]

The little guy can still succeed on Kickstarter/Indiegogo. We saw many bootstrapped campaigns do well (60% success rate), with videos made in-house or in the $1-$3k range. It's just that the amounts raised aren't as impressive, on average, $25k vs. the Millions attained by glossy campaigns with deeper pockets and expensive videos. Getting in the crowdfunding hall-of-fame has gotten harder, but crowdfunding is still an effective tool for small projects.