Kickstarter still sucks...

And this article sums up nicely why it sucks for creators as well, though the focus is more on general projects than any sort of gaming: An Ambitious Plan For Putting Kickstarter Out of Business

The thing though is that in the context of games, people are dumb sheep and now that "kickstarter" is hot, people want to be a part of "this kickstarter thing" and won't take alternatives that do the same thing as seriously.

Hunh... didn't know all that- coudn't be arsed about this whole kickstarter business to tell the truth, but this is a good article. Me likey.

Log, fire, &c.

a.wholelottanothing.org/2012/01/lessons-...-on-kickstarter.html

Certainly food for thought, but I would say John Clowdus might be in the best position to provide insight as to why he chose to use Kickstarter to fun a second printing of Omens after publishing several games through his company. What the exact advantage of Kickstarter is for a designer.

I like the concept of Kickstarter, but if they don't find a way to police their site, Kickstarter will eventually end up with a bad reputation and most potential backers will hang on to their money. Right now, it seems all to easy for somebody to take the money and run.

There's no technical magic in what Kickstarter is doing. But there's social magic in it. They're bringing people with capital to a central location to fund startup projects.

I'd be on Kickstarter right now if I was starting a new product just because of the cachet. It's all about exposure when you're getting off the ground and that's the truly valuable part of the Kickstarter package. The rest is just nickels and dimes.

Kickstarter lets you assemble a customer list quickly. It lets you establish a relationship. That's incredibly valuable to small companies.

Facebook or eBay could put Kickstarter out of business in 12 hours. They haven't, so for the moment Kickstarter is a good place to be even if it costs.

S.

Could be worse. The banner ads on here for the "unfolding CCG" point to IndieGogo instead of Kickstarter. At a guess, it is more non-US friendly.

Instead of the 5%, they ask 4%, plus you have to pay CC transaction fees (3%), and you can do partial funding, in which case you pay 9%.

That sounds like highway robbery.

fuck kickstarter.

Both those links hang Safari and I give up. Are they taking ages to load for anyone else?

The quick summary of the first article is that Kickstarter doesn't give you much and is vastly overpriced.

I disagree (and I may be wrong here) as what it gives you is something to handle the money side of things, by charging lots of people for you and giving you the money in one big lump sum. This saves a hell of a lot of admin work, and allows you to focus on getting the damn thing made.

I don't think that it should be necessary for more than 3-5 projects for each person/company though. At that point you should have enough track record and capital to run a p500 style list for yourself. Thus I am surprised that established companies like Small Box Games have used it, when they should have 90% of the infrastructure already and thus can save that 5% fee.