[MoreMoschops]

It's a training course that the people building the product need to go on (which, in this case, is a single person). Some kickstarters might send two of their people on a 3D animation course. Some might buy an expensive set of textbooks and other such training material. This one sends someone on a residential RPG course. Some kickstarters might need to buy some expensive hardware that she could not otherwise afford. That's exactly what this one is doing.

I could not disagree more that it counts as "fund my life". "Fund my life" would be paying for things that she was going to have to do anyway, such as paying the rent and bills (which she probably doesn't, being 8 or however old she is, but that kind of thing is "fund my life").

[Smudge]

I'm not saying it's a clear-cut case of policy violation. But in my opinion, asking for money to go to something as normal as summer camp (by "normal" I mean very common for kids her age) -- and then using additional funds to buy something as standard as a laptop -- veers way too close to the policy I called out, even if there are ways of explaining around it.

Regardless of whether it violates policies, I'm more worried that it sends the wrong message. Call it "training" all you like, It's ultimately just a week-long class for children who want to learn RPG Maker. And don't get me wrong -- I'm a huge fan of that particular piece of software. (I taught myself to use RPG Maker 2000 back when I was 11 years old.) But let's call it what it is -- at best, an impromptu scholarship for this girl, and at worst, a hand-out.

Again, I'm hoping that the girl and her mother can use the overwhelming success of the funding to turn this into something great -- something far bigger in scope than the original proposal. But until I see that happen I'll continue to be skeptical.

[waterlesscloud]

So I could do a Kickstarter to fund a long European vacation?

[EliRivers]

No, you've missed the point completely. In English, "vacation" and "training course" do not have the same meaning; don't be fooled by the fact that they both involve living away from home.

The Kickstarter policies are clearly listed on their page, but the point is that you have to be making something; producing a product. If you'd checked, you'd have seen that vacation is explicitly listed as forbidden.

For example, you could be making a book about European art, and to do this, you need to go to Europe.

In this case, one could argue that she's getting money for tuition, which is against the rules, but it's part of the disallowed "fund my life", which implies that it's things that are already part of her life. Without the kickstarter, she's not going on the training course; it's not part of her life. It's an essential part of producing the product at the end of the kickstarter.

[waterlesscloud]

No, I get the point.

It's just that it opens such a blatant loophole that the rules might as well not exist.

[Metapony]

Perhaps you have a small child, preferably a girl, who needs training on how to shoot better pictures? You could probably write the kickstarter from your child's POV, too. If enough people want to see the resulting snapshots, they'll probably kick in enough to cover a new camera as well as the plane ticket you've already bought!