Heck, I can't confirm it, but I bet super high profile, overfunded projects like this end up pulling in money to other projects as well. Once you've already dropped $100 on a game, $5 here or there doesn't seem so bad. So how is it a bad Kickstarter project exactly?
I don't think I agree with that assessment. Donating to your favorite game =/= donating to other games in smaller amounts. Fan loyalty drives these projects but I don't think that automatically includes a trickledown effect to things they're not fans of. I've seen at least 4 other games on Kickstarter I might have donated to, but my $125 backing of Shadowrun didn't make me go "Oh I've spent money. Now let me spend some more!"
To put it another way, yes after I bought my first game I on Steam I bought many more. But I didn't do that based on the fact it was on Steam. I did it based on the fact it was a game I wanted to play. So I don't think donating to Kickstarter means you'll donate to Kickstarter because it's donating to Kickstarter.
Who exactly do you think generally pays for the cost of manufacturing?
If the cost of manufacturing was $100,000 for x runs, and you've made 5 times that off your customer base, then you have essentially passed off all costs to them and are now dealing in pure profit. There's zero cost to the producer, even assumed cost at that point.
Which should be turned around into more content (which it has in Ogre's case.) But if manufacturing is completely paid for already, they can effectively charge whatever they want on the product because there's no risk on their end. They don't have to manage a price point beyond customer willingness to buy. They could plot another z runs at y cost out to the point where they're no longer making profit. Or they just reduce the number of runs they make, and collect all the rest as profit. So while you could have a $10 game and do 1 million runs of it.....you instead end up with a $60 game at 200,000 runs.
If everyone is happy, then everyone is happy. I just think it's setting a bad precedent where investors become consumers without ever actually being part of the profit sharing. People throw money at Kickstarters like they're buying stock, but really they're just paying up front (sometimes with proper incentives, sometimes not) for a product and all the "extra" just turns into someone's else's profit. In an ideal world, profit margins would be reasonable and excess would be funneled directly back into the product. But when the fan base goes insane and loads Kickstarters up with money...it'd take an incredibly moral businessperson to not exploit that for all its worth.