Tranquil.Suit: Not be too much of a DF apologist. But their budget fell in that zone. You know what I mean, not enough for AAA production value, but too much for indie. Especially to the average reader, they see 3.2mil and think that's an insane amount of money. Given how successful the kickstarter was, everyone (including themselves) expected high production value from them.
That said, Tim has had enough experience in this biz not to make such errors.
I think the issue might be about "proper" studios with salaried employees VS indie developers living at home and making the game on their computer, communicating with team-members via the net, and only taking enough money from Kickstarter funds to pay rent and survive. Pay-roll is the biggest expense in game development obviously, especially when you take into account the taxes and benefits legal businesses have to provide to employees.
Don't quote me, but I think the current Rise of the Triad remake up to preorder on GOG was made by devs working from home, not in an office studio.
Even the Wasteland 2 team (I've heard) have certain developers (artists mostly) working from home on occasion to keep costs down, while the core programming team is in office.
