Kickstarter

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Around a month ago, mainly while browsing the gamedev subreddit, I notice a lot of posters linking to a Kickstarter page, wanting funds for their 'awesome-and-unique' indie game. It might be going over my head, but before the existence (/boom in popularity) of Kickstarter, bedroom coders didn't care whether they had any money to create a game, they coded it in their spare time because they liked it. The percentage of an indie game actually getting completed is probably < 1%, from my experience this is just due to lack of motivation. I'm sure the incentive of money, say someone offering me £2,000 if I finish would definitely be an opportunity to finish. I wouldn't enjoy it, and the game would be awful compared to what my original intentions were. But with 2k in my pocket, I couldn't care less.

However, Kickstarter does not provide that incentive. The money is given at the start. If someone gave me £2k to attempt to complete a game, yet regardless of completing it I can still keep the money -- what would be the point in finishing it if I've lost my drive? I'm not sure on what Kickstarter's policies are, but they definitely don't have the man power to monitor if each Kickstarter project gets completed. So surely the donaters just get ripped off.

To me, Kickstarter just seems like a way to make easy money (provided you have a good design). It's a shame that the gamedev community is losing its spirit and turning into a f2p mmo with players begging for money and free stuff.

Another thing which irks me, is a lot of Kickstarter projects have small rewards for high donations:

£25 - nothing
£50 - a direct download of the game on release (we will be selling it for £15)
£100 - game and a t-shirt
£1500 - your name in credits
£5000 - your own npc
£10000 - meet the creators of the game (accommodation and flights NOT provided)

I just feel that Kickstarter is going against the fun of indie game dev. It's useful half way through a GOOD project, where the creators need money to work full-time on the game and quit their jobs - Minecraft (though Notch did his own advertising but it would be interchangeable with a KS project).

I may be getting unneccessarily annoyed at KS projects, but when every third link clicked in the subreddit forwards you to a KS page wanting £10k for a (crap) unstarted game, it starts to get annoying. If KS ceased to exist, the gamedev community would be a much better place.

This doesn't just apply to gamedev, lots of independent people in the media industry are using it - that doesn't annoy me as much since I'm not involved in those communities (films, music etc) but if I was, I'd copy and paste this post and use a find and replace on 'game'.

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