Reply To: [Kickstarter] Critical Role: The Legend of Vox Machina Animated Special

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They add ‘stretchgoals’ in order to keep momentum.

It often looks like backers go away if the campaign doesn’t update enough even though they may have achieved funding.

Every single time a project appears to be ‘lacking’ in stretchgoals there is a vocal minority screaming loudly that the project is dead or some equivalent.

I also am convinced that many campaigns set the goal too low and therefor need to achieve the real value as set by their top tier stretchgoals to actually succeed. Why ? Because they get that ‘funded in X hours’ moment that provides an extra boost to visibility.

In essence Kickstarters are X day marketing campaigns that are judged by the momentum they manage to keep during the entire process. It must be tricky to estimate how much time is needed to get funded and how much time is needed to promote the product itself. I kind of wish Kickstarter would allow campaigns to be declared successful before the end date, because the current concept and market forces the addition of needless stretchgoals in order to ‘add value’.

Anyways …

I agree that campaigns that over-fund can result in project failure because they’re not restricted by their initial budget and thus make costly mistakes and delays. I’d point to Star Citizen as the infamous example of this.

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I kind of wonder why they needed crowdfunding at all. Given the prestige this show appears to have and the backing by WoTC itself you’d think there’d be actual investors willing to help them.
OTOH … Kickstarters are glorified marketing campaigns as well.