[egypturnash]

Yeah, I'm mostly worrying about what happens if some of these million-dollar projects fail horribly. Especially if some HOT GADGET turns out to be a scam and they just vanish with the funds. Games, I don't think that's a possibility - you have to have a giant reputation to raise the money to make one happen.

I'm also pretty hopeful this is just paranoia talking, and that folks quickly realize they need to do a sanity check. Maybe Kickstarter will end up with a tighter TOS and will send lawyers after a huge scam if one happens, I dunno.

While people are definitely paying for my own personal awesomeness rather than Kickstarter's awesomeness, I think the fact that people know and somewhat trust the model and te middleman is helping. Break the trust and it doesn't work.

And thanks for the well wishes, the comic leapt from 80% to 121% around the time you sent them!

[Impossible]

There are quite a few game projects on Kickstarter that will never ship, or a boarding on scams that have been successfully funded by developers that are mostly unknown. Dead Linger and Takedown are both (imo) promising way more for the $150K and $210K they raised. They are also both relying on later funding or sales to raise more money. Starcommand has already publicly acknowledged that they've burned through most of their money and are $50K in debt. I played the game briefly at PAX East, and although it has potential it's nowhere near ready to ship by their promised date (August).

Some of these games will deliver something, but that something will disappoint most of the backers. I think in many cases, even if you deliver a good product, it will never live up to the game the backer imagined when you first pitched it. All games have this problem to some extent, even wildly successful ones like Minecraft or Elderscrolls, but I think it will be exasperated by the fact that people are selling game ideas, not actual games, with a few exceptions (FTL had a playable pre-alpha during their campaign).

[pre]

Game projects come in many years late and millions over budget all the time. I ain't been in the industry for more than a decade but more games I watched being developed failed to get finished than actually shipped. I doubt it's changed much.

I'd guess a game will be one of the first big abandoned projects myself.