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[Askot Bokbondeler]

i see you're a firm believer in capitalism...

[Draco18s]

i see you're a firm believer in capitalism...

Which, if the news has taught us anything, doesn't work when corporations act in their own self interest for the short term.  Afterall, if we put that money in a Safe Place (say, by paying our employees (read: executives) dump trucks full of money) and then the company collapses and goes through bankruptcy, no one can take that money.  Everyone wins!

Except, of course, the common man.

[GlyphGryph]

Capitalism =/= The Free Market, and his beliefs here seem to be more in line with the second.

Do you have any reasonable belief a free market approach here wouldn't result in the best situation, or a better alternative? I mean, this situation doesn't seem to hit on any of the major free market failure points.

I mean, most solutions seem like they'd be worse than the problem.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   I think that it doesn't need to be "fixed" or changed as it does well enough already. Whether you get scammed on Kickstarter or because you thought a prince would actually even know your email address people get scammed. Its not something you fix, instead you work under the knowledge that it will happen and try to avoid it yourself. Stores don't actually believe they will ever completely remove shoplifting, they have instead tidied it away into a corner with the nice name of shrinkage and try to keep it to a minimum. The same needs to go for scams on Kickstarter, push them into a corner and make them wear a funny cap so everyone can spot them if they look. Of the potential scams I have seen there most of them don't even end up near their mark and a few have even been point out here, one I know of that failed so hard at making a convincing scam they ended up closing shop even before the end date.

Edit: Traveller 5...
Do not know if want. I love the Traveller system and the screens of their planet creation stuff made me drool a little but compared to some of the other kickstarters where the creators where coming back and trying to do their best this one feels a little hollow. I don't know why but it does.

[nenjin]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/12/tech/innovation/mashable-kickstarter-projects-fail/index.html?hpt=hp_bn5

Some data on Kickstarer projects. (Sample 45,000+ projects.)

Key points-

Shorter Kickstarter campaigns tend to do better, with the average successful project lasting 38 days, compared to failed projects which averaged 43 days. Meanwhile, successful projects typically average $5,487 compared to failed projects which, on average, ask for $16,365.

Certain Kickstarter categories do better than others. Topping the list of successfully-funded projects are those in the following categories: dance (75%), theater (71%), music (68%), art (57%) and comics (54%). About 39% of tech projects are successful.

[MrWiggles]

looks like bunky's forums (unsurprisingly) died.

[Lord Dullard]

Someone messaged me on Kickstarter today. They said that they were waiting for approval of their project, and had seen Cult while browsing other games. They asked for comments and advice on their project...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1766204091/1587310059?token=1b501669

Yeah... I don't really know what to tell them. Other than 'go back to the drawing board'. But I feel somehow that such advice doesn't stand much of a chance of being considered.

(I feel kind of bad even putting this here, but if somebody can think of a kind way for me to dissuade this person from making a fool of themselves, I will try.)

[Aklyon]

Tell him to rethink his donation tiers. The lowest pledge is $16, yet it only gives you a spot in the credits.

[Skyrunner]

Why's Gamma at the bottom? o_O?

Uh... sure, lots of ideas, but ... how would it be sustainable? If that place that started with a D sank, what do the players who signed up after that do? 

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   There should be a nice way of saying they should go back to the drawing board or at least failing that then passing the buck of telling them to do so onto someone else. Then again if your a cruel person you could always mumble something about how they should seek advice through their future costumer by using their kickstarter so you can watch the train wreck from a front row seat.

[Aklyon]

Why's Gamma at the bottom? o_O?

Uh... sure, lots of ideas, but ... how would it be sustainable? If that place that started with a D sank, what do the players who signed up after that do? 

Reading through the whole thing, it seems more like someone turned railroading into a multiplayer game. If you don't get the stuff done in time, you get tossed back to square one, if you aren't there for five days you get tossed back to square two or so (or if you get voted out), clan membership is required to progress (no soloing) and you can't go back to the previous area because it sank if you manage to avoid all of those. Also, you have to learn how to telepath before you can even access the chat, so good luck if you get confused before then!

[Servant Corps]

Okay, so, uh, there are two "newly found" successfully funded projects that didn't produce anything at all, both brought to my attention by SomethingAwful user "the black husserl".
1) There's a website called "Venus Patrol" that had a kickstarter in October 2011 to fund development. This Kickstarter raised $100,000. No content other than a video and a link to the successful kickstarter.

2) Kentucky Route Zero: A Magical Realist Adventure Game, made by Jake Elliott, raised over $8,000 in February 2011. The game was supposed to come out in Fall 2011, except it didn't, but Jake Elliott received no punishment to his reputation.

I am beginning to reconsider my original position that "products that doesn't deliver anything at all" are different inherently from "scams". They both lead to the same outcome: someone gets rich and somebody else get poorer.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   If the person in question produced nothing then it was a scam. If on the other hand they have shown they worked on it or are still working on it then its not quite a scam. For instance the Kentucky thing might get their game out they just may have been stalled from something or most likely they did not know how to estimate when it would be done.

[penguinofhonor]

Of course, given that there doesn't seem to be any comment or update from the developer for over a year, I'm thinking that they're either dead or rolling around in their scambucks.

[MrWiggles]

I dont think the metric for a scam, is if they produce something.

For any venture there loads of different roadblocks that can prevent your goal from being either delayed, or stalled into cancellation, or things might have happen where they discover that their estimated budget was far to small to get the goal done.

Shit happens.

This is the liability of crowd sourcing funding, and one of its major detriments. Since only the creative folks, or creative business folks are in sole control of their goal, they lack outside voices giving direction and grounding. Sometime, you need a manager, or supervisor, or corporate jerkoff to keep you on the path to release.