It's an investment bubble. Any project who got in early gets the money, because they can promise the Earth. When delivery happens and the very small budgets and limited experience of the teams show, future money will not be forthcoming.

But it's a term on its own. Crowfunding itself don't give the money back.

well, all those projects need some time and it only really started last year with all those games.

"ftl: faster than light" was on kickstarter and is already released but that was only on kickstarter to raise some extra money.

It seems to work best when used to supplement a project, not fund it in its entirety (FTL anyone?). Regardless, it's still a relatively new approach to funding for developers. I'm sure we'll see some successes and failures in the near future.

It's not a term it's a brand, Kickstarter is a company that provides a crowd funding platform. Indie Go Go their largest competitor also supports fixed funding (refunding pledges if the project doesn't reach it's funding goal by the deadline) they just don't require it.

It's meaningful to those who fund it.

It's crowd sourcing and it allows niche products to be made for niche markets. Products that may not have otherwise be funded. 

Didn't know that...

Today I made my fist pledge ever, this one: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonaskaerlev/a-hat-in-time-3d-collect-a-thon-platformer

I did it because I see a lot of potential in the game, and I love collect-a-thons like Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie. I also love the artstyle. And I imagine a lot of gamers did the same. Indie games are becoming more popular, so we are starting to see bigger projects (like Shadow of the Eternals), but never expect something that will match a AAA game in terms of fanbase.

But to answer your question: so far no, Double Fine adventure (Broken Age) will be the first "big" game that will come out from a Kickstarter campaign. There's also the Ouya, but I don't think many people are really excited about it. 

Oh there is also the Oculus rift the dev kitts are shipping out now and a lot of the dev community is pretty exited about that. Could be pretty big.

You mean "future money" as in revenue from game sales when the game is actually released?

Yes, that's interesting. I think a lot of the KS games will release without anybody expect the backers knowing about it.

The guy who is making that new Wing Commander game (forgot the name), Chris Roberts, said he believes the sales potential of games typically is 20 times the number of KS backers. I think that's highly unrealistic, even for the big budget games.