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[gimli]

Hehe. Perhaps he is banned from the official forum?

He was banned from the forum in October 2015, along with one other.

Oh...heh.  If things won't change, we can expect to have a new post on his blog in a couple of months I guess. 

Anyway...
I will never spend any money on 1-2 men KS projects, since they have the biggest chance to fail [The lead dev/coder gets bored of the development/real life issues/death etc.]...but again, not everyone thinks like me thankfully! If everyone would think this way, we wouldn't have gems like Rimworld.
...as for KDG & TWS: I have one problem with them, and that is their way of "communication". It's kinda funny that the devs have been active for a good period, and then...this...would it be hard to post 2 lines on the KS site that "Ok dudes there are some serious problems with the code, no gameplay videos & beta 'til it is fixed, but we will keep you updated on a monthly basis" or "the development is on hold because of X" etc. You got the picture.

[StupidElves]

Really, I think that this is partly due to my personality, but I tend to not care how long it takes for a game to come out, so long as it comes out and turns out well. Like, I get it that backers want it to come out, but they reached the stretch goals. The stretch goals kinda added to the workflow, and that causes more delays. So, ya know, just sit back and relax and wait on this to come out. It'll happen, sooner or later. Preferably the one which includes it being playable.

[Puzzlemaker]

It is a gamble.  It's like buying stock in a startup, sometimes you get dividends, sometimes the company folds. 

[ndkid]

It is a gamble.  It's like buying stock in a startup, sometimes you get dividends, sometimes the company folds.

The SEC mandates that startups provide updates to investors quarterly. Also, using investor funds for non-company activities is illegal. Kickstart has no mandated communication rates and no enforcement arm, so I'm not sure the comparison is that apropos.

[Zangi]

Half of em is probably funding a few guys in a garage.  Technically, living expenses and sanity refreshments are part of the wages a company would pay out to its people anyways.

And sure its a fine example.  You just have to just accept the fact that most of the people panhandling their ideas ain't gonna be professional, this is more like the wild west version of investing.  You throw money at em in hopes of increasing their chance of succeeding, but it can still fail anyways and maybe you'll have some recourse.  But its like bankruptcy, you ain't likely to get anything if they have to do that in the first place.

Stay out if you ain't into that.  Simple as that.

[jhxmt]

It is a gamble.  It's like buying stock in a startup, sometimes you get dividends, sometimes the company folds.

The SEC mandates that startups provide updates to investors quarterly. Also, using investor funds for non-company activities is illegal. Kickstart has no mandated communication rates and no enforcement arm, so I'm not sure the comparison is that apropos.

Well, yeah.  That's just means it's unregulated, which makes it more of a gamble.  Honestly, if you were looking at Kickstarter as an investment platform and were looking for some sort of return, it's towards the extreme end of the risk/reward spectrum (for very small one- or two-person outfits, at least).

But of course, most people aren't looking at it as an investment opportunity with associated risk/reward.  They're looking at it as a prepurchase (or somewhere between the two).  Which is where the difference in outlooks arises, I guess, as it'll vary massively depending on how you view the transaction.

[Cruxador]

In defense of Kickstarter, this is only a consistent problem with videogames, which suffer a whole lot of developer culture irregularities due to newness of the medium. I've heard of a grand total of one* dismal failure when it comes to funded traditional and tabletop games and many many successes, in games of varying ambitions. Although I don't follow this so much, there's also a pretty good return in other areas – there are certainly lots of cool art and video projects that were funded and appropriately delivered. Video games, meanwhile, trade the "rushed corporate garbage" paradigm for a lack of deadlines and a situation where people don't apparently realize that some basic business acumen is necessary. Successful vidya kickstarters are almost always the result of people who are already successful in the field (Obsidian, Brian Fargo, Koji Igarashi) while the failures and flops are the result of inexperienced teenagers with big ideas (and Tim Schafer) who drum up a lot of money but don't really know what to do with it.

*Axes and Anvils. Due to mismanagement, the guy behind it went bankrupt and lost his home. The game is still going to get to backers eventually, according to him, but it's been years now.

[lordcooper]

There's way more than one physical KS that went tits up after funding.

Ever since about December, I've been harassed by a voice that is claiming to be the sun, and its been attacking me and harassing me almost every hour of the day.  Thats probably the most spectacular of them.  The rabbit hole goes deep.

[Puzzlemaker]

There's way more than one physical KS that went tits up after funding.

Ever since about December, I've been harassed by a voice that is claiming to be the sun, and its been attacking me and harassing me almost every hour of the day.  Thats probably the most spectacular of them.  The rabbit hole goes deep.

Wow, that's... I feel sorry for her.

[Hanzoku]

holy... yeah, you start to read some of the updates after that one....

Hope she manages to get the help she needs.

[Cruxador]

There's way more than one physical KS that went tits up after funding.

I didn't claim it to be perfect, I only had that one example handy off the top of my head since it's the only one I backed. But the rate of failure is much better, comparable to traditional forms of funding despite generally being for projects which would not be funded except out of pocket, whereas with video games even projects that look like something an indie publisher might spring for will often end up disappointing at best. You can list more than one failure in any medium, but it's hard to list enough successes in video games to fill a single hand.

Ever since about December, I've been harassed by a voice that is claiming to be the sun, and its been attacking me and harassing me almost every hour of the day.  Thats probably the most spectacular of them.  The rabbit hole goes deep.

Oh yeah, I've heard this story before. This is definitely an exception to general trends though, most people in any group are a lot saner than her.

[nenjin]

...that is an amazing combination of clarity and totally bat shit crazy.

[Neonivek]

Uhhh you ever think to check the funders to make sure Helios wasn't one of them?

[TempAcc]

Eh, KS is actualy full of nutjobs and people who are completely oblivious to the fact their projects make no sense/look terrible. That one girl prob just ran against a wall and is now trying to feign lunacy so the backers dont ask for refunds en masse. The only exceptional thing about her is that her project actualy got funded, somehow.

[Cruxador]

Eh, KS is actualy full of nutjobs and people who are completely oblivious to the fact their projects make no sense/look terrible. That one girl prob just ran against a wall and is now trying to feign lunacy so the backers dont ask for refunds en masse. The only exceptional thing about her is that her project actualy got funded, somehow.

She apparently completed her project and some people got it but she hit problems funding the shipping, so I think actual mental health issues are at play here. If nothing else, it's kind of crazy to pretend you're crazy just because you ran out of money, especially if you're not even trying to pretend you didn't. Getting disability for mental health issues is also a pretty solid indicator that they're real, most governments don't like giving out money without first making absolute sure you need it (despite Norway finding that it's substantially cheaper to do so) and the US isn't known for being generous even to the folks that really do need it.