[CM30]

Ah Kickstarter. I see why they tried the blockchain thing, but it probably wasn't the best decision for that particular company given their audience's utter disdain for crypto and web 3 in general.

As for this:

> The biggest problem for Kickstarter, though, may be that time has simply passed it by. “I feel like they just were left in the dust culturally"

I'm not sure that's really the whole story. The story (at least from what I can tell) is just that crowdfunding has developed a terrible reputation due to all the scams and failed promises from big name projects there, so people don't really take it seriously anymore. The rise in popularity for things like Patreon isn't a replacement for that, it's a move to a setup where creators are expected to show their work on a regular basis and provide an actual return on investment on a shorter timeframe than 'whenever it's ready'.

[gafferongames]

"The story (at least from what I can tell) is just that crowdfunding has developed a terrible reputation due to all the scams and failed promises from big name projects there, so people don't really take it seriously anymore."

Sounds like a great fit for crypto!

[jprete]

I agree with you!

I have some visibility into this space through the lens of "high-end" boardgaming (big boxes, frequently lots of minis, very high production value, and usually high time commitment to learn and play).

Crowdfunding's first use case was speculative investment in projects that might not ever succeed. I think this space has a big inherent trust deficit and Kickstarter can never solve it because Kickstarter will always have strong local incentives to not kick sketchy founders off of the platform, but Kickstarter is absorbing some of the loss of trust there because it's their platform.

There is another use case for crowdfunding - coordinating preorders of products that need enough orders to be worth a production run, but that are otherwise low-risk. This model works pretty well but Kickstarter also has competition from Backerkit in the space. I think Backerkit is also more focused on the safer use case of preorder coordination and less on the "speculative product" case.

[acaloiar]

> I think this space has a big inherent trust deficit and Kickstarter can never solve it because Kickstarter will always have strong local incentives to not kick sketchy founders off of the platform

I understand where you're coming from; I believe the premise is that because Kickstarter receive their fee whether projects deliver or not, that it's profitable to not remove any projects. That's of course true in the short term.

But the cumulative effect of that myopia is that the projects seeking funding on the platform has plateaued for years. The resulting lack of trust in the system has culminated in fewer projects using Kickstarter, because fewer users trust Kickstarter to adequately police projects. Robust project policing would lead to greater trust, a greater number of projects reaching funding goals, and ultimately more fees for the company. It's emphatically in their interest to remove unsavory projects, regardless of the immediate fee loss. The increase in trust is a multiplier that'll far exceed any immediate loss.

[lupire]

Incorrect. Crowdfunding's first use case was financing production of an invention.

The speculative investment stuff was the scam Kickstarter cultivated in the chase for infinite growth and VC returns. Crowdfunding from the general public for investment is generally illegal for exactly this rest.

[michaelt]

What counts as "first" depends on what you consider "crowdfunding"

Charities and political campaigns have been collecting $x per person from y million people to pay for z since time immemorial. The term 'crowdfunding' didn't exist when construction of the Sagrada Família started.

And if you define 'crowdfunding' as 'the thing that kickstarter does' then looking at their 2010 homepage [1] it seems to be mostly short films, art, and a baking contest. There's a one listing seeking $500 to make an open source synthesizer you can fit to your bicycle to create music from your speed and acceleration, but that's pretty much an art project IMHO.

Kickstarter certainly seems much more important and consequential if you ignore the $300 student films and focus on the multi-million-dollar campaigns.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20100623023917/https://www.kicks...

[jprete]

Thanks for the correction. I wasn't trying to imply an ordering, but I can easily see how my text indicated one.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Kickstarter did have a ton of scams, but my favorite "rise from the ashes" story was the ZPM Espresso machine. ZPM promised a revolutionary espresso machine that used a precisely controlled thermoblock (instead of a boiler) to control temperatures accurately.

I don't think ZPM was an intentional scam, but the founders got in way over their heads, and when the popularity of the product exploded, they then had to figure out all these volume manufacturing problems as opposed to just building some prototypes for a small number of backers (there is a cautionary tale about startups taking too much VC money in here somewhere...) Anyway, ZPM crashed and burned, and as far as I know none of the backers got their money back. Again, I don't think it was really a scam, all that money was just spent on things for the project. I don't think anyone got their machine, but maybe a few folks did, not sure.

Anyway, another company, Decent Espresso, came along and bought out ZPM's patents (note, backers still received nothing afaik), but now the Decent machine is an absolute marvel, with temperature and pressure profiling capabilities that are nuts. The machine is also not cheap (the original promise of ZPM), but it's still cool that in the world of so much BS where scammers produce nothing of value (cough Theranos cough), that at least in this case something really cool came of it.

[CM30]

That's a really cool story. Nice to see the ZPM Espresso machine actually got made.

And yeah, that's another good point there. At least half the time, the problem with these projects isn't that they're intentional scams. It's that they're run by people who've never had to launch a product/business before (especially not on a large scale) and severely underestimate the amount of work, time and money required to get it to market. Making say, $200K on a $50K campaign for a new indie game is great and all, except when you need to hire 20+ people to work on it, pay them salaries, pay for tools, potentially pay for office space, pay for certification for consoles/Steam, pay for the website and marketing and trailer production and voice acting and...

Suddenly, all that money lasts you maybe 3 months.

A lot of projects go that way.

[rsynnott]

I'm not sure they actually _had_ a critical problem, or at least didn't before the blockchain thing; it's just that it was a pretty limited market. AIUI they _were_ profitable, but they were never going to be a multi-billion dollar company. The blockchain thing did damage their reputation quite badly, while simultaneously showing that they weren't essential (big important creators were able to use something else.)

(It's _really_ weird that they gave up on attempting to compete with Patreon in a likely larger market, tho.)

[bcrosby95]

Crowdfunding is big in the table top rpg industry. Lots of small companies used it for new products and even reprints.

But for the past 6 months or so, they've been slowly moving to backerkit. Including a $4mil funding of one of them: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/mcdm-productions/mcdm-r...

[CM30]

It's interesting many people mention crowdfunding as working for tabletop games. Seems like the setup lends itself better to those than video games, consumer products or traditional forms of media.

Are there any reasons that may be the case?

[bcrosby95]

I think it's because these projects are usually 80-100% done, and the riskiest part that's left is the print run. Potential customers are given sample PDFs so they can see if they will like the final product, and there is significantly less risk compared to a video game or something with a more complex mechanical design.

It effectively acts as a pre-order system for many projects, letting them know how many to print. The more you print at once the cheaper things are - print on demand is very expensive even for books. Many of these projects do one print run to fulfill the kickstarter then toss the pdf over on drivethrurpg.

The project I linked is unique as far as projects I tend to back goes. It's an RPG system where they haven't even figured out advancement yet. There's going to be more inherit risk due to that, but it's being ran by a big name in the community with experience in delivering these projects.

Contrast this with Shadowdark: it had design, art, layout, etc. ready to go. All they needed to do was the print run. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shadowdarkrpg/shadowdar...

[rtkwe]

Pure anecdata but I've backed ~180 projects on KS and I've only had <6 that have completely failed to deliver or have had huge issues with the delivered products. There's a lot of long delayed ones on that list but only a few that have truly felt like I didn't eventually get what I paid for or reasonably close to it.

If you're a bit choosier about the things you back you can get pretty good results from the site.

[flir]

That's an insane number (to me). What do you consider to be your "best buy"?

[rtkwe]

A few I use every day; the Wyrmwood Modular Gaming table (dining room table with removable top leaves and a game vault), the Keyboardio Model 100 (wood ortholinear split keyboard that's been my daily driver for WFH since I got it), Sandsara, Radiant Urban Sling (been my daily bag for a few years now). Then there's some not every day uses I still enjoy a lot; a couple board games and TTRPG settings, Lancer, FANG, Root, Mind MGMT are the big ones I've had a lot of fun with friends playing.

[bmer]

Although, even Patreon has this issue, since there is no hard requirement to be showing your work regularly; just more of an expectation due to the design of the system.

Part of this seems to be due to the reality of creative work: you need to be willing to fund failures as much as successes, or you'll end up getting more-of-the-same rather than something new. E.g. existing creators with well-established patron bases can feel pressured to make more-of-the-same, rather than experimenting, leading to their burnout.

The other part of it seems to honestly be gullibility (on the part of backers) and lack of focus on realistic, achievable goals ("go small, then incrementally bigger") from those seeking funding. The normalization/glorification of advertising culture (e.g. "fake it till you make it") is a non-trivial contributor to this issue, ultimately making it difficult to distinguish between grifters and people who drank the kool-aid.

[michaelt]

> Although, even Patreon has this issue, since there is no hard requirement to be showing your work regularly

I'm sure different people use Patreon differently, but there's never really been a trust problem with Patreon for me because the sums are so small and I can stop paying whenever I like.

People on kickstarter are understandably salty when they pay $350 for a chair and it doesn't show up.

But if I pay someone $5/month for youtube videos and their output slows down or drops in quality, I can just stop paying, and keep getting the videos for free on youtube.

[CM30]

> lack of focus on realistic, achievable goals ("go small, then incrementally bigger")

This is basically the problem with stretch goals in a nutshell. Once you get a lot of money and interest, it's easy to add more and more promises to keep people adding money to the pot.

The problem is that each of these things requires more time and effort (sometimes even exponentially more), so you end up stuck in a quagmire of 'fulfil a huge laundry list of promised features before you run out of money'.

I suspect Patreon has some of this for similar reasons. The more money you make, the higher people's expectations are, and the more insane your own promises will get to try and justify the amount of money you're bringing in.

[nicwolff]

Most Patreons also offer per-episode payment, which zeroes out the risk that you'll pay a non-producing creator anything at all.

[bmer]

That also helps to zero out the probability you'll be paying someone who takes a "craftsperson's approach" to their work, versus a "production-line approach".

Neither is bad. The production-line approach is good at producing something defined by a fixed specification, reliably. Predictability in quantity produced and product quality are both important.

The craftsperson's approach is good at producing things where each thing is an incremental improvement over the last. Predictability in quantity produced is usually an anti-goal, as it is best left as another project (probably another craftperson's project). Predictability of quality produced is often sacrificed on purpose in order to get out of a local optima and better explore a larger landscape. So, while quality improves in the long term, it may not in the short term.

Patronage, historically, was aware of this. It did not demand, it trusted. It was intensely aware of the imperfection in humans, and it is questionable to what extent it considered genius as a truth, rather than merely a helpful myth (helpful only after the person was long dead, and not actually in the production of new creative works, but rather in keeping up the market value of previously created works, in order to help fund new ones).

Patreon, on the other hand, lacks such nuance.

[paxys]

While I'm sure some percentage of Kickstarters were outright scams, in general it is always a bad idea to push "investments" on people who cannot grasp the fact that 90%+ of them will fail despite the best efforts of the founders. That's just how any new venture works.

[manicennui]

Frankly, this is nonsense. Total funds going to projects has gone up over time. I support artists on Kickstarter frequently. What has likely happened is that Kickstarter's investors realized that it wasn't going to make them as much money as they'd like, nothing more.