[cmckay]

Two points that indicate that the author doesn't really know what he's talking about:

1. "Estimating the number of failed projects is difficult because of these tactics, but most independent attempts to pinpoint the figure have landed at 50% or more."

Response: Kickstarter has a statistics page [1] that gives this information. It's not hard to find. And the failure rate is much higher than 50% in most categories.

2. "Retrovirus enjoyed a steady trickle of contributions towards its modest $75,000 goal."

Response: Actually looking at the statistics [2], 75,000 is on the high end for Kickstarter projects (more specifically, it's the 98th percentile for all projects, and the 99.4th percentile for successfully funded projects across all categories; if we look just at games, the percentiles are 93rd overall, and 96.8 for projects that actually made their goal), and carries with it a low funding rate (about 20% overall, slightly less than that for projects in the Games category)

So while it may be a "modest" goal as far as the costs of game development are concerned, it isn't modest for Kickstarter.

[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats [2] currently unpublished data scraped from kickstarter.com; I'm nearly finished writing up my analysis though.

[ahelwer]

The page you linked to gives statistics for successful funding, not successful delivery.

[cmckay]

Yes, because it's clear from the context of the article that's what the author meant:

"Kickstarter intentionally makes failure a hard thought to stumble on. Its website does not show failed projects unless they’re specifically asked for and the company directs search engine crawlers away from them."

This statement is only true if one interprets the word "failed" as Kickstarter does, that is, "failed to receive funding."

and

"And what about Kickstarters that succeed? Do they deliver, or is it just the beginning of a path full of challenges?"

This statement wouldn't make sense if the author meant "successful delivery" when he said "success."