Over the course of a year and a half, I've spent about $1200 on various Kickstarter projects - from gamepads to games to miniature figurines. Some were to be done after just a few months, others will take a few years.

And yet ... none have been a success so far. Here's some personal examples:

Bones Miniatures:
Part of it was supposed to be sent in September, the rest in March. Reality: we're June and they expect to send it all out by August instead, a whopping TEN month difference. Bad communication and a lack of updates makes a lot of backers grumbly (especially the store owners who bought large amounts).

iControlPad 2 for mobile phones:
To be released in November and they had a prototype ready so surely no problem, right? Wrong! At the last moment they decided to change the design by adding LEDs - LEDs which, turns out, are rather scarce right now. Lack of doing market research: CHECK! Result: 8 months overdue and they're STILL waiting for the LEDs to arrive and even they don't know when they will. Mind you: when they arrive, they still have to actually BUILD all the pads! Oh, and they said that if you wanted the most important part of the iControlPad 2 (the clamp which lets you attach you phone to it), you had to wait a further THREE MONTHS! For a piece you actually paid for!

Shadowrun Returns:
Despite getting almost 5 times the amount they were asking for, the devs basically said that:
- the game will be short
- no classes
- checkpoint saving
- no loot system
- no real inventory
- a fixed main character
etc.
Citing "limited funds" as the reason for this severely crippled game despite getting many times what they asked for, making people wondering whether they're not pocketing the large bulk of the money for another project.

Then there's more minor gripes like the Doublefine adventure not being to my liking visually - but the end result is that, so far, Kickstarter has been a huge disappointment. Delay after delay after delay for stuff I was supposed to get quite early and bad communication from most projects.

Am I the only one with bad Kickstarter experiences so far?

I think it's ten times more likely game development is more expensive than most of these people are estimating. And I expect this to be a common theme as kickstarters release.

Which is still the dev's fault. I don't mind longer release dates when the funding is way above target since it's obvious (with the exception of hardware which gets delayed for stupid mistakes and simple stuff they didn't think of) but imagine if they had barely gotten their target? What kind of game would the backers have gotten? A game in Flash that takes an hour to complete?

Because these are "public" projects, I think a lot of studios are going to hurt their reputation with the public if they can't come up with a decent game. I mean, they all chant "yay, no publishers! Finally complete freedom!" citing publishers being the cause of rocketing costs and stilted gameplay and then they can't even make a proper game with $2 million???
And I do worry that some of these studios take it too lightly since they already got the money and don't have a publisher whipping their asses.

I've only given to one Kickstarter and that was the Point and Click adventure game from Pheonix Online Cognition. I'm happy with it! But I guess I'm in the minority because like you've said its a gamble and I'm not much of a gambler especially when I can spend money on either a potentially good game? or a Humble Bundle

i regret not jumping in and backing FTL.

it was around the same time i was considering backing Star Commander (i would have wanted a PC version).

i spaced out on both.

would have been happy backing FTL (awesome game and it made it to GOG)(still would like the full soundtrack, maybe as a DLC or something)
would have been pissed backing Star Commander, which is still ipod only currently and a work-in-progress towards a PC release (sometime TBD time in the future).

Yeah... Wish I had backed FTL as well :D

I don't mind them making a game that isn't personally to my taste persé (which is why I called DoubleFine's game a minor problem - I don't like the art style AT ALL and as a result, my enjoyment of the game will be limited from the start) but what I do mind, is feeling when these companies don't take things seriously enough or make critical mistakes. An RPG without looting, now classes, no inventory, that is pretty linear with checkpoints and which is short? Seriously?

I hope I have better luck with the other games they're working on - I think Broken Sword will at least be great as always. I trust Revolution - their last two games were forced to contain action from the publishers so I hope the new one will focus on great puzzles.

Didn't mean to imply otherwise. I would guess a lot of corporate bloat bullshit is carried over into these developer's practices. My experience in corporate America is a lot of people hanging out at desks acting like they're working.

I somewhat regret the $5 I spent on a PDF of The Very Hungry Cthulhupillar, just because I don't like it when the product ends up cheaper than the Kickstarter price ($4 in this case). I do get a mention as a contributor, but still...

But really, I don't usually have strong regrets. There are cases where I'm disappointed, by the lack of progress or by some design decisions, but that still doesn't make me regret paying the money. Still, only a small minority of the projects I backed have produced a final result, and I'm not going to judge the overall Kickstarter experience until more of them do.

thats interesting. i have backed a bunch of games but have not kept up with them at all. i just assume one day they'll send me a download link. your concern with shadowrun returns spiked my interset, cause i backed that game as well. is it really going to be that... "limited"? well i guess i'll find out in a couple of weeks

I'm pretty happy with the projects I've backed so far:

Grim Dawn (Alpha is out already, it's great, and the devs fix issues quickly)

Planetary Annihilation (Alpha is out, I don't have access but from what I've seen it seems to be good. Looking forward to Beta.)

Project Eternity (appears to be progressing well)

Torment: Tides of Numenera (appears to be progressing well)

- - - - -

I wish I'd been able to back Wasteland 2, might preorder it sometime soon.

I'm kind of glad I didn't back Shadowrun Returns now.

I've backed a few projects for a total of around 600 bucks. One of them is Project Eternity (which was the greater part of my total funding) and although I won't be surprised if it gets delayed, I'm fully confident Obsidian will deliver a game I'll be more than happy with.

Other projects I only tossed in minimal amounts (enough to get the game when it's released). I didn't back for higher amounts because I'm willing to risk a little on projects that seem intriguing, but not a large amount - mainly because that way if they don't pan out I won't feel that disappointed.

That's actually happened in the past. I supported the Indie Underdog Bundle with $25 to support the development of six not overly complex games.

SkullReaction turned out to be a browser game that was taken down within a couple of months.

Koya Rift Enhanced never materialised.

Realm of the 9th Wizard never materialised.

Infernal Edge 2 never materialised.

Cinders apparently did materialise, although I never heard anything back. I'll have to get in touch with the developer to see what happened there.

The only one that really delivered was Rhys Andrews, who was good enough to email me with the choice of either a download of Caveman Craig 2 from the site or a Desura key. Which is why I now refuse to support Kickstarter and other alphafunding projects. There's too much incentive to take the money and run. There's a reason that creative projects have deadlines - people tend to get lazy or too slow for other reasons (creative indecision for one).

It's the entirely opposite problem of the mainstream industry, namely that deadlines tend to be unrealistically tight.

The RPG it's based on doesn't have classes, so that isn't that strange is it?
Than again I didn't really follow it since I can't donate to Kickstarters anyway.

I regret that I couldn't back the OC Remix FFVI album.