Every week, I comb Kicktraq for interesting projects. (I use Kicktraq because I find Kickstarter's interface highly inconvenient, and also because it's easier to see a project's funding prospects.) And every week, I find a number of failing projects that contribute to the following highly annoying trends.

1. People who don't promote their projects at all. Zero pledges is just inexcusable, especially for people claiming to be established artists.

2. "I published my vampire sex book on Amazon Kindle, please fund the printed vanity edition." They're asking for vanity publishing rates and failing. No, screw you. Go put it on Lulu. If your book was worth publishing in bulk at all, you could've used the profits from digital sales.

3. "We recorded an album and we're currently selling it digitally and we need a stupid amount of money to get it pressed." No, screw you. Recording and editing an album takes time/money, pressing a CD is chump change.
(Now, I understand that Kickstarter may be a good way to promote a project regardless of its funding source - I am only annoyed by projects that are simultaneously coy and failing. There's nothing wrong with "I am pressing my album, who wants a copy?")

4. "Please help me finish my book that I've been working on for 10 years." SCAM ALERT. Yes, I realize professional artists can finish their projects faster than people who have day jobs, but if you weren't able to complete a project in 10 years, you won't be able to complete it in $500(goal) / $7 (average US minimum wage) / 8 (hours per day) = 9 days. Go get a job, scammer.

5. [Pic unrelated.] Failing projects that have an unrelated (hopefully) royalty-free image in their headers.

Find of the week
Here, ladies and gentlemen, we have a Master in Accountancy trying to teach people about earning mad money (enough to buy a private jet!) by establishing a dot.company, with 689 listed facebook friends, who couldn't get a single pledge. Runner-up: a woman selling trash and "sexy pics" trying to reach a $60 goal (currently failing).

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BONUS to offset the "negativity": an actually awesome project that reached its goal and is ending soon.

I think Kickstarter was always more or less like this, it's just that suddenly the gaming audience found out about it and they think they discovered America.

Dunno, as long as such projects are (deservedly) failing, I'd take them as the foreseeable downside of Kickstarter's modus operandi. Kickstarter makes it extremely easy to start a project, which is a good thing. Naturally, this will also attract scammers, lunatics, and dreamers. Perhaps the site you're using could use a rating system (Kickstarter itself might not want to implement one on their own page).

Actually, I think your conclusion is correct, but your reasoning isn't. You'd be surprised how often it takes a decade to finish a book. There's always honing that needs to be done and words to tweak.

But yes, $500 isn't going to do the job, you'd need to be working at it hours a day. And honestly, unless one has young children finding an hour or three a day if you're really that committed is probably not that hard to do.

Now, money for a proper editor, that's a different story, Moby Dick would have been that much more brilliant without constantly cutting to the facts about whales, and don't get me started on JRR Tolkien, more like JRR's token editor. I see some fairly promising games failing or cutting it close. I think the big problem is when indie developers fail to provide a demo and just show a video. You can get away with that if you're a huge name with a huge following, but I think indie developers need the demo, if for no other reason than to show that it's more than just a scam marketing video.

Better than what you're likely to find at Indiegogo.

I don't see why it's annoying. It's a reflection of what people do in the real world, but filtered for the better. Sure you may be annoyed that people start failing businesses in real life, too, but just take a deep breath, relax and try to stop scanning Kickstarter for projects. Will save you time, and it's good for the pocket, too. :)

And I think next year will be the judgement time for Kickstarter and the gaming/geek world. I think if enough of the projects that are packed make it to a retail release and are of good quality all will go well - especially for many niche market games which often have trouble getting publisher backing because they want a mass market profit game not a niche market.

However if many slip into never ending deadlines or outright fail the process could backlash against itself. Remember these aren't pre-orders they are investments - so they can fail without people getting anything at all. This hard fact might well cause a bad backlash if too many fail to reach their targets.

It might just spell a bad time for Kickstarter itself or it could scupper the whole process in general. One good side is it might force Kickstarted to put more criteria and standards upon pitches before they'll host them on their site (at the moment it seems incredibly easy to just make a pitch about anything - even ebay takes steps to ensure that sales between parties are legitimate - even tough ebay is only providing the medium for both parties to interact).

... I loved the whale facts parts of Moby Dick. Maybe I'm just strange.

The facts weren't so much the problem as their placement in the book. They'd take me out of the immersion in the whaling expedition to spend a chapter or two talking about the whales themselves. It was interesting stuff, but it really broke the plot and made what should be a straightforward read harder to follow.

Yeah, it was interesting, but the way it was handled needed a proper editor to get it worked in better without stopping the plot each time. They aren't investments, you're buying whatever the items at your pledge level are. And that's going to be potentially problematic as some of the projects are giving away too much and underestimating the cost of the money.

People seem to be confused about Kickstarter and either see it as a fancy pre-order or a purchase which you pre-pay, but the truth is a bit different.

Most of these funded projects have been funded with hundred thousands and millions of dollars, simply on the promises their developers gave to the public. Pretty much not one (I could be mistaken) of the developers who were funded with millions had a raw, alpha version of the game they wanted to make that they "sold" to people (i.e. made it immediately available for download) and promised to develop further for a commercial release with the money they gathered - hell, almost none of them had readied even a sketch or a screenshot before starting their campaign.

You can't "buy" something that is not formally released. At this point, people who have pledged do not own anything of the game, have little say on the game, and have just given their money to Schafer, Fargo etc, based on their promises.

The first Kickstarter duds will be a sight to behold. It will also be a way for consumers (that's us) to step in the shoes of publishers for once, facing developers who only promises and deadlines that are never met.

There is a reason why Scams like the Arkh Project are on Indiegogo and not on Kickstarter

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stainlessgames/carmageddon-reincarnation :p

I'm not aware of a kickstarter court case, but I bet we see one soon if we haven't already.

I think the issue is the promise of the rewards. It is a promise of goods for cash. Every tier I back comes with the promise of the finished game. While this is slighly different from a flat sale, I do still think there is an obligation and a sort of binding contract in place.

If Schafer decided he'd rather go to Kentucky and retire with the money instead of make a game... well, he might not get away with that ;)

No, no he wouldn't. And I doubt he or Fargo will do it. They will release something, but they may release with a few months' delay, or may not be what people wanted it to be. And they could get away with that.

What I am saying is that pledging in a Kickstarter is by no means a purchase - it's a promise from the other side that in a few months, you'll be served something you absolutely crave. But it's still just a promise.

Court cases will indeed be interesting if they come around - however the fact that the kickstarters are backed by multiple interested parties could both work for and against court challenging.

On the one hand multiple people can spread the cost of a court case - making it more viable to support one.

On the downside when those backers are separated by country and in significant number the organisation of any joint court case being brought to the fore could be very difficult from a logistics point of view.

Where it will get really interesting is if someone pulls a con but actually releases something. For example, but not the best one... someone says, I'm the creator of pac-man and I'd like to release a new puzzle based game. People donate 3 million dollars and they ship out 'ball-in-a-cup'.

As for not shipping anything.... I'm guessing everyone would scramble to be the one named in the class-action suite, since they typically get the most money and everyone else gets $1.76 ;)

I also imagine those blessed enough to back a project for 10k would have something to say... as well as the means to say it properly.