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It's a fair point for sure, but there are lots of examples of things that wouldn't have come to life, and are awesome, without Kickstarter. Just a few from my own experience and that of my close gaming group:

- I backed for the Form 1 3D printer, and it's largely what enabled me to create my own product (the ModCube!) by doing frequent design iterations on a daily basis. They even gave original owners a coupon to upgrade to the Form 2, which has helped me create new designs (including the ModCube 2.0 )

- My gaming group's favorite casual game, Blood Rage, is from Kickstarter. At our next gathering we're playing Cthulhu Wars, also a KS product!

- I've just joined a group that is playing Dropfleet, which was of course also from KS (apologies to those still waiting on some Wave 2 accessories, though)

All that to say, I think the platform has been great, but because KS takes no responsibility, it forces consumers to be a lot more involved to determine if something is safe to back, and in the end you can't know for sure. I would love to see more accountability (and I say this both as a backer and a creator!) and think if they don't add some on their own, eventually laws will be passed to force them to.

But overall, I obviously really love it! I've backed... hmmm over 400 projects and I've actually only been disappointed in a handful. But if there's ever an issue I reach out to the creator directly, and if a campaign shows red flags while running I am willing to cancel. I feel bad for those who have had bad luck, though, as I've definitely dodged a few bullets along the way!

I started with wargaming at 16, and have collected wargames or miniature based board games now well into my 30s. My first kickstarter was zombicide season 1. I have pledged for many games on kickstarter, but have slowed down alot. I usually only pledge for cmon games related to zombicide now (I really enjoy that game), unless another great minis game arrives on scene.

I play all the games I still own (zombicides, b plague, bsieged, r&b, arcadia quest, conan, route 666, boss monster, etc). I sold a few (kingdom death, extra zombicides, robotech). I even now got into some I passed on (avp, ninja turtles). I also play batman, mumg, wwx, 40k, aos, every gw boxed game, etc. I learned that it is way more expensive to wait and buy it all later. If you Kickstart a good game, good theme, lower backer count, known company, you will always make money if selling later (at least I have).

I don't have time to play them all but enjoy variety, painting, collecting, modeling, displaying, etc. I will always Kickstart a game as I love exclusives and am a completionist. However I don't blindly back games, or just back because it's popular or fun... that's how one ends up like what the op posted. My collection is always slowly growing, but it isn't wasted cash in my opinion.

I also stay out of the comments of a kickstarter. I don't need social drama; dakka is enough for me lol.

I went nuts when KS first became "the thing" - not on the level of most of you guys.

But yeah - I generally regret all my KS purchases anymore - as I just have no time for them.

I still backed for KD 1.5 (despite not painting anything from the first one yet) and Relic Knights 2.0.

I need to sell most of it - but also I'm rather too lazy to do that :/

I regret very few of my Kickstarter pledges, but I also rarely go big. Bones minis and Shadows of Brimstone are very popular in my house now, and without kickstarter they wouldn't exist.

Are there two hobbies here?

1) Miniature wargaming where you buy, assemble paint and play with a collection of figures and terrain using rules that are (hopefully) fun.

2) Buying miniatures, books and terrain products and never using them.

I also think those in the 2nd hobby also have part of their hobby being convincing themselves they are really into the 1st hobby.

Would the hobby industry collapse if people only purchased what they might actually paint and play with? Is the vast majority of the revenue in the industry based on products that will never, ever be used?

Was Alan Merrit right when he described the hobby as the purchasing of GW miniatures?

I am still waiting for my raging heroes avatar not pledging anything new until i get the damn thing, and i usually buy kickstarter of other people, is cheaper

 Sqorgar wrote:
When Kickstarter was still going, I backed a few things. By the time the delivered a year or two later, I was already over them (and that's the ones that eventually did deliver).

That's pretty much what happened to me. I'd buy something because it was either too cheap to pass up (Reaper Bones 1) or had exclusive stuff. By the time Bones 1 turned up I'd moved onto completely different games and 95% of it was no use to me, so I sold it on. I did the same sort of thing with a few games systems and boxed games, decided I had no time to play them and sold them off. Had I had time to do much gaming (2 kids since Kickstarter began), I'd probably still be buying and playing with it, but I just don't have the time/money/space for $100+ board games that take hours to play.

I needed more justification to put money down early - usually smaller companies that I liked. Now I tend to wait to see how it turns out and buy it after retail launch (usually at 10-20% off RRP - So I need kickstarter to be at least 30% off RRP).

I've sworn off Kickstarter too. Its not a money thing (although the postage from the USA to the UK had become to get extremely offputting for US-based kickstarters), but rather the wait. As other have said before, the projects that seemed exciting when ordered, just seemed all too often to be rather stale and uninspiring by the time they arrived. Add in the impact of getting a giant box of miniatures arriving to add to the lead (or rather bendy plastic, more disappointingly) mountain was also just another buzzkill. Also, as other have mentioned, all to often (Wrath of Kings, Deadzone 2, Dreadball Xtreme, I am looking at you!) the post-kickstarter gaming environment just wasn't there, for various reasons, and I found while I may have wanted to play with my new toys, no-one else did!

So now I find I haven't joined in a kickstarter for almost a year. And I am finding my hobby enjoyment has improved because of it. Some unwanted kickstarters were ebayed off. Others have been stuffed in the attic as there may be a possibility I will use them. Others have been slowly absorbed into my gaming.

I seriously believe now I won't ever engage in another miniatures or boardgames kickstarter, even if it is for a game I already play and is really stable and therefore I am still likely to be playing it in a year's time when it delivers - such as Kings of War. The discount is just not worth the buzzkill. I'd rather pay a little bit more to buy stuff and have it arrive while I am still excited to paint it up, and there is a fighting chance it may see action.

I could conceivably join in a kickstarter for some "bling" item that I fancy (such as a set of mammoth-bone dice or something!), but I won't be buying any new boardgames or minis that way.

 Polonius wrote:
Thinking about this, while I'm sure the money smarts, the problem isn't the loss of cash. It's the fact that, regardless of price, few people have the time to really enjoy that many games.

I don't think I'm alone in this. Even for games that don't require painitng, like RPGs or board games, how can you really get the most out of them all?

You're not alone at all. I've still got a (smaller) pile of things to do, even after selling and so forth. It's no accident that I switched from miniatures wargaming to miniatures boardgaming - the ability to just play a quick game without so much prep was a better fit for my current circumstances. And the games that aren't quite what you want? Or just bad? That's also a problem that comes out.

But I'll still funnel money into Kingdom Death. That's worth it, IMO.

 Bi'ios wrote:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/739780.page

But you get points for posting some text from the article and discussing a bit, while the other OP just dropped it.

OT, addiction can take strange forms, but it's believable.

When I worked for Toys R Us there was a woman who would come in, place lots of high value merchandise on layaway, come back, cancel it (which costs a flat rate or percentage, depending on the value of the layaway), buy some of the things again, and make a new layaway. She would do this one or two times a week. She steadily maintained between 2-4 layaways at any given time. This is in addition to purchasing other merchandise outright frequently. This woman must have spent a thousand dollars a year just on cancellation fees.

After this had gone on for like 2 years, a pattern had been flagged by our corporate office, and our GM had to speak to the woman about her issue and basically ban her from the store. She worked at a business at the other end of the parking lot, so we were probably the one of the nearby readily accessible places to go, which explained the frequency of her visits to our store. I have no doubt that she also carried on with similar behavior at other retail locations.

Addiction (and mental illness) can be very costly indeed, and can express themselves in strange manners.

We have a guy that comes in to where we play occasionally who follows a similar addiction pattern. He comes in and admires everyone's nicely painted miniatures, and then at a later date he will come in with a huge amount of models he purchased on ebay and give them away to someone.

He is addicted to getting what he believes to be amazing deals on ebay, which then sit around in his house untouched, until his wife yells at him to stop spending all the money on stuff that clutters up the house, then orders him to get rid of it. It's really difficult to convince him to stop, because while the people who've been there a long time recognize him and tell him he needs to seek help/sell the things instead and try to dissuade him from continuing the pattern, he usually goes in and finds someone newer/who hasn't seen him before. And the first reaction of someone to a person randomly giving them expensive GW models is "oh, wow, thank you so much!" Which of course fuels the cycle of his addiction because he feels like what he did wasn't entirely wasted..

I back 3 kickstater project total. All were models no rules. I regret backing TGG2. I am super-happy about backing Heroines in sensible shoes and Heroines in sensible shoes 2.

I realised within a couple of KS that it was always better to try just pop $1 and wait for the PM, as most of the time by the time that happened I'd lost interest.

Kingdom Death is my worst one, I still want it even though my brain tells me I'll never play it.

I recently purged everything wargames wise that wasn't being used, in a way it's like a weight removed from my shoulders to see all this unused and largely abandoned stuff gone and now I focus purely on GW, because I can actually get games, and board games that are solo or that are likely to be played.

That's more or less where I am today. I put in $1 to get Updates if I'm on the fence, but I rarely convert them now. I'm pretty happy with Kingdom Death, which should be in my hands by end of year. Purging the deadweight is great, especially when you can get back some beer money for your time and trouble!

I don't think there are many people here who don't have massive piles of stuff waiting to be worked on, projects in various stages and boxes of things that seemed a bright idea for a moment but will now never be completed.
At one time, when you had to actually attend a show or local store to pick up a new project, then at least you had that physical barrier of loading up the bags and moving them home.
Now, everything is just a click away, and it's far, far too easy to go a bit mental and then be lying in bed later that night and start having second thoughts (I don't think I'm the only one who has experienced that!)
KS's I think are an extension of that, with the added draw of greater perceived value and the buzz you get from being involved in the community chat as some of the bigger KS's are going through the roof, and I think it's very easy to get carried away.

But, ultimately, I think there are far worse vices. Most of this stuff will probably end up on ebay or with charity shops and the likes so hopefully will go to someone who wants and will use it.
We know there are people on the forum who probably spend around about this much if not more (there was one guy in DCM, I don't see him comment in regular sections of the forum, who spends thousands of dollars every month) - no-one really bats an eyelid.

This thread motivated me to add up my KS pledges since 2012. 72 projects total. Waaay higher than I expected. I think the idea of pledging $1 to wait for the Pledge Manager is a great way to defeat the impulse, which apparently I'm awful at.

Time to open up ebay to absolve myself of some of these (unopened) games...

For the big companies using KS as a preorder, I tend to pledge a dollar, and often lose interest by the pledge manager date. However, for smaller projects that really need the funding, like the Last sword Elves or even Shieldwolf's new Sisters plastics, I'll put more up front to help demonstrate interest.

I have backed just three Kickstarters. A part of that is a lack of interest, and I am very picky anymore with what my money goes towards since I know I won't have time for everything. Two of the Reapers Bones Kickstarters, and then another for the Battletech PC game. The first two I intended on getting a bunch of cheap models that are fun to paint and would be good practice for my wife and kids when they want to try painting again. The Battletech one was strictly just to support the game, and I didn't throw enough at that one for the rewards.

I guess I'm the poor guy on this forum. While I have spent a lot on my wargaming hobby over the years, I haven't spent near as much, especially in the last two years.

Recently, I sat down and made a list of my dream projects and what I want to work on moving forward. I am limiting myself to about 3 to 5 projects at a time, so that gives me different things to work on as to avoid burnout. But outside of those? I'm not adding to them at all until I finish up another projects. Right now, that's working out. I save up my money for bundles or starter sets that have the models in them that I want, and I'm hitting second hand markets a lot more than before. Additionally, I'm finally selling off armies and models that have either never been used or will never be used again, to clear up space, get some money back, and to get those models to a good home where they might get some play time.

I mean, back at my parent's house, I have access to about an entire Space Marine Battle Company's worth of Space Marines, all on sprue. Add in the literally hundreds of other models from various manufacturers, and I have plenty to work on for a long while. Unless it is a holiday bundle or starter set or other type of bargain, I'm pretty much not buy new models anymore.