Mixed concepts have the appeal that they seem new, like a further development of already existing and proven to be good genres. I had the impression I have read this alot lately but it may be wrong. One prominent example I can remember is "The Banner Saga" (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stoic/the-banner-saga) that collected 700k US-$. From the text: "A mature, story-driven, turn-based strategy game", "The Banner Saga is a role-playing game merged with turn-based strategy, wrapped into an adventure mini-series about vikings." - it's basically everything except a first person shooter or racing game. There are more.

The specific keywords are a bit random - I just selected what I would place, but let me cite from the Dreamfall example I gave above "With Dreamfall Chapters, we are combining the best parts of The Longest Journey and Dreamfall in order to create what we hope will be the greatest game in the saga so far; a game filled with mature dialogue and challenging puzzles, exciting exploration and intricate investigations, complex and fun characters, thrilling plot twists and a story designed to engage and move players." - Just a sequence of buzzing phrases - no information given. You cannot judge the game by this?!

I still don't know how it's going to end with video games. but with board games, I checked around a dozen kickstarter projects, and they were completed, people got their games, more copies avaible to sell (small quantities though, and usually no reprints), but the projects were delivered and the board games happened to be actually good.

So, have a little faith, people!

True, but why do you even expect people to use these for judging? The project page hints at the story, mentions the characters, tells about the world and shows images of both character and the world. The video shows some video snippets from the game.

People don't use meaningless buzzwords to judge, because as you say, they don't hold any information. That doesn't mean there is no information given.

However, one interesting little hiccup with physical product Kickstarters out of the US (and that's the vast majority of Kickstarted board games) is going to be that the US Postal Service just jacked their rates up. So all of those Kickstarters that charged a certain amount of money to cover shipping costs are now going to have to find a few thousand additional dollars.

It's true that the information usually only scratches the surface, but I think you underestimate the ability of people to make a good judgement based on little information. Take Double Fine Adventure for example, it had no information about the game. The video even honestly said that the game might be a failure. Here are things people could based their judgement on:

- Tim Schafer's track record
- Double Fine's track record
- The content and presentation of the video

Is that enough? For many people the answer is yes. Tim Schafer has created imaginative games that people enjoyed. He runs a company which produces interesting and enjoyable games and is reasonably successful. The Kickstarter video was well made in terms of both content and presentation.

This is enough to tell people that there's a good chance the game end up being produced successfully and will be enjoyable, and that the documentary will also be good.

These are not the only clues to how things will work out. How the creators communicate with the backers is a good indication of whether it's worth backing. People notice when the creator is evasive, for example.

I disagree with you about all your conclusions. I think they're based on cynicism rather than facts, on the assumption (which most cynics make) that people are: a) stupid, b) cheats. That is, in this case, that most project creators don't care about their product (just want the money) and/or are incapable of creating good ones, and that backers can't recognise this.

In the case of video games it's a little too early to tell, but so far I think that DFA backers are very happy with the documentary, and that Wasteland backers are pretty happy with the latest gameplay video, and backers of games which have already been finished (FTL, Giana Project, ...) are pretty happy with the results.

I think you overestimate this ability of the people. Sure there are always some small hints but I think not enough to really tell. With DoubleFine fans mostly went for the name and that might work out. But I guess than there isn't much difference between a big publisher and the crowd, especially with the crowd having not much advantages. Big publishers can easily copy this strategy and go for big names too. KS is important but maybe not that important how many people here think, because the amount of information involved is so low. Crowd intelligence not being able to work.

I am not sure that you can estimate a project success on the quality of the communication. I can easily imagine that the communication during the pledging phase is good and afterwards failure happens nevertheless.

Cynicism might be there, although very often the prediction of failure is called cynicism where it could be as well realism. Also I have the feeling critizising shallow presentations and requesting much more detailed information should be seen as something positive.

What's called "realism" by cynics is often not real. If statistics showed that indeed that was a problem, then that's realism. Statistics show that the majority of projects get delayed beyond the promised date, but I've seen no statistics which talk about project failing to deliver at all, so I don't feel that predicting such a failure is realistic.

As for criticising shallow presentations, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it feels to me that what you're criticising is the people who pledge to these projects, not the presentations themselves.

I am not mad at the people who give their money to KS, I do it myself and they can do whatever they want with their money. What I mostly aim is at relativizing the praise that video game projects on KS get and crowd funding/intelligence as such. I wanted to show that many of these projects resemble a lot traditional pre-order campaigns.

It's a resemblance is superficial though. There are more differences than similarities. The reason that Kickstarter is praised for what it does for video games is one major difference, that pledging is what allows a project to be created, unlike pre-ordering which assumes that the project already exists.

The fact that they resemble pre-order campaigns is deliberate. It's a sign of creators understanding what their donators want.

KS may not formally be an investment or pre-order platform per se, but it thrives on the perception that it is. Not forgetting KS goes to considerable lengths to emphasise to donators that the products or services promised MUST be delivered by the creator or the money must be returned. That's not patronage - that's investment. If projects were solely sponsored on the basis of artistic merit with no expectation of return, the failure rate on KS would far higher than it already is.

It doesn't matter what a Kickstarter is. It matters what a Kickstarter's 'financiers' consider it to be, and the bulk of its financiers invest in the project to get a game out of it. That is not patronage.

On the other hand, in most cases over half the money comes from people who pay more than they would have paid for the game at release. That is not a standard pre-order model.

Half the money is hardly representative though. What we're talking about is actual numbers of backers, and I don't see any projects where a majority of backers donated beyond the asking price of the game. 83% of backers donated $30 or less to the Double Fine Adventure KS, 84% donated $50 or less to Dreamfall Chapters. Those paying around $100 for projects get a Collector's Edition of a game with all the usual trinkets in the case of most projects, which is the usual asking price for limited edition collector's editions.

And I have no desire to waste valuable time doing the math, but I'd put a very big question mark over that claim about half the money anyway based on the projects I'm looking at now.

I'll grant you that 99% of the backers are in it because they want the game. In that sense it's similar to a pre-order. It would be interesting to see what happens when a project fails completely. Kickstarter says that the creators need to be accountable, but doesn't say that refund it the solution, and says "We hope that backers will consider using this provision only in cases where they feel that a creator has not made a good faith effort to complete the project and fulfill."

Seeing the result of a failed project may be a way to tell whether most people treat this as a pre-order or not. If people are willing to walk away without the product, then most likely they have accepted the risk up front.

This major difference is exaggerated. The success of traditional pre-orders can decide about the amount of content present and many of the KS projects are already in a advanced state, kind of existing. Even without KS they might find other ways to be realized. I would call them relatively early pre-orders and I see more similarities than differences. We could just agree, that we disagree.

The one distinct feature of KS that I see is that KS leaves out one middlemen and directly connects developers and customers. This is great for some projects, but for video game projects I would wait a bit longer with a judgement.
Some may, others may not. But surely many would feel pissed/in a bad mood about it.