Aren't most kickstarter games pretty small and aimed at a niche crowd, I think it's a great way to get the game you really wanted but can't because it's not casual or mass marketable enough. If they start doing this shit with big franchises or franchises that they kill by turning it to shit and forcing people to pay to get it revived I would understand the point of the OP

Note that Kickstarter does have one advantage over publishers, in that they ask the people directly for money. This means a few things - for one, they won't end up funding any failures, because we know for a fact they're creating the type of game that people want to play. The game isn't guaranteed to be a hit, as the quality is in question, but the money is going to the right place, in terms of what job the game fills.

Secondly, there's less people to be paid.  These games tend to be small, so I'm not sure if there's really a better way to make some of these games. Theoretically a publisher should have created games for the most successful of the Kickstarted games, but for the ones that were closer to breaking even, would it have been worth it for them? Leads to the third advantage, how some people end up blowing thousands of dollars on some of these things, who knows... would the game have been covered if all these people only paid for a single retail copy?

I guess Kickstarter being popular just goes to show how desperately some niches want their needs fulfilled.

So far, most successful Kickstarters (with few exceptions) were either classic Adventure games or cRPGs - all pitched by industry veterans that are considered one of the best in the industry. Their reason for going Kickstarter route is publisher's lack of interest in those genres or publishers wanting too much control (thus interfering with quality of game).

Specially in the case of inXile (Wasteland 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera) and Obsidian (Project Eternity), which are filled with people from late Black Isle, arguably the most prominent cRPG devs beside Bioware (both were under Interplay, whose founder is also founder of inXile), Kickstarter proved to be great way to revitalize genre, without having to worry for mass market appeal...and by the amount of money they managed to get, I'd say there's more than enough interest for them to go that way in the future too.

BTW, cRPG fans, Torment is near 3mils, if they reach 3.5mils Chris is joining them...:D

And another one that calls people stupid for supporting stuff they don't like. Not THAT's what I call stupid.

PS: Kickstarter is not for me, but such people who claim their shit is right and the others one is wrong drive me nuts.

whats stopping anyone from pitching an idea on kickstarter, then running off with the money? its an evil idea, but how do we know it wont happen?

Because I want http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/redthread/dreamfall-chapters-the-longest-journey ?

Two reasons, mostly. The second reason is explained in some detail above. But this post hints towards the first reason. Simply put, when you fund a kickstarter game you are an investor, not a consumer. You are putting money down towards a product that does not, and conceivably may not ever, exist. In exchange, you get the (likely) possibility of acquiring a license to use one copy of the title some time down the road, when the game is completed. In other words, even though you are an investor, you get the same reward the consumer does, with maybe a few dollars shaved off for your troubles.

You do not, however, get to enjoy any of the things that nearly every other investor does: you have a 0% ownership stake in the product, and you get zero say in how the product is produced, published, marketed, distributed, etc. I hesitate to say that you've given the developer a "gift," because that's not completely accurate, but you certainly aren't going to get treated like the investor you are. That does not sit well with me; not to sound hyperbolic, but it feels like desperate consumers are being exploited by a system that seems so fundamentally broken that the only way consumers can get titles they want is to cede ownership of their investment to someone else.

As long as people want to see some things they like being made, and expecting nothing but a good product delivered, I'd say there will be more than enough interest in this sort of crowdfunding.

For those who do look for more than that, other than pure satisfaction of playing actual game they funded, there's solutions like Gambitous that are aimed at more business oriented folks.

I personally just want to see some of great dev names of this industry (namely ex Interplay folks and people like Tim Schafer and Ragnar Tornquist) revisiting old genres that became niche and are not lucrative enough for mainstream publishers, and give us more of their magic they are so good in making.

The games kick started are pretty niche. I don't really see major companies supporting some of these ideas, so you got kickstarter for the funding. It's not just games being kick started either, there are tons of things from the veronica mars movie to various board games. It's more of a gamble though since the final product might be terrible.