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Just curious as to the average gamer's thoughts regarding kickstarter.

I think they are great. I've pledged on several projects that I probably never would have heard of without kickstarter (annd people posting them in N and R). They give smaller companies or even individuals the ability to put out projects and products to a wide audience and secure funding up front.

Sure, there are larger, more established companies who can blot out smaller ones, and some people/companies who clearly have no idea what they are doing, but on the whole it gets more product on the market.

I think it's annoying that every estabilished company starts a Kickstarter project just to squeeze some more money out of the customer.

yeah,
I think they are great. they take up a lot of space on the new and rumors these days!
I think once a project has completed it should move to discussion.

I'm excited by projects like the Gamesand Gears battleboard because you can tell its actual gamers wanting to get a product out there.
People making Something you know that they themselves get excited by and want to buy themselves.
I felt the same about the moongoose Dredd kickstarter.

They enable fledgling and small companies to put something out that is beyond their finacnial capabilities.
Like
Sedation wars by studio mcVey
Zombiecide by guillitine games

Although I'm starting to get worried with middleweight companies like mantic using it as a preorder platform for a game they were making anyway, like they did with dreadball

Panic...

I voted other, because there wasn't a "has potential" option.
I think it's a good idea that will help expand the hobby as a whole in the future.

It's good for the hobby and allows small companies to get a foot in the door

It might (eventually) give FLGS problems if all the potential buyers have bought everything they want from a project

(but at the moment even something as big as Bones only touched a tiny portion of the potential customers out there, so the only shops that will suffer are those silly enough to refuse to stock KS lines)

Dredd was awesome, Kickstarter is awesome. Done.

There was no "vaguely positive", Orlando put it pretty well.

I like Kick-starters, but tbh there are so many now it's hard to decide in what to invest in.

There are so many of them it's difficult to actually about them. Although, a kick starter getting Rackham miniatures back off the ground would rustle my Jimmies a little.

I think kickstarters are bad, too many companies use them just to flash their more than often mediocre products at us.

Not a fan.

Love the site. Brings out all the creative juices (and into one place). And it's dirt cheap too, which is always a boon to an industry working low margins.

I wish I could unload my old 40K stuff for a 5% fee on Kickstarter instead of paying 10%+ on eBay.

My opinion is it is great for wargaming but horrible for my wallet.

There website stinks, half the time I can't get the search option to work.

I put neutral opinion as it is great for small companies to start projects, but I feel it may also cause an excessive amount of games to hit the market and it will get a little bloated.

So it's good for competition, it's bad for trying to find people to play a particular game

I think it's great overall as it allows people to help get products that they want onto the market.

Larger companies doing it however start to get annoying, they should be reinvesting their profits into this not asking the consumer to fund them in my view.

If I am going to directly fund someone's company then I want a share of their profits. I, as the investor, have a right to a return on my investment. The Stock Market does the exact same thing as Kickstarter, as far as free funding goes, but puts ALL the weight of the product on the company with real consequences if they do not follow through.

That being said, I have help fund one Kickstarter project, but only because I thought the models were really nice and I felt that I was receiving a proportionally large amount of product for the pledge amount. I.e. I rationalized it as preordered models on as a large discount.

Overall, I do not support Kickstarter the way it currently working.
However, if someone made a pledge level that was essentially a bond note then I would be more inclined to invest. Something like, ‘$1,000 – Takes Money to Make Money: Bond note that pays 5-10% after 3 years.’ That way, the company has real incentive to not fail.

I think it's folly to compare Kickstarter to the Stock market. First of all, if you invested in GW, you wouldn't expect them to send you codexes or models - if you wanted that you'd have to turn around and use the dividend to buy them (at no discount to boot).

Second, stocks can fail and you can lose money for your investment. At least with Kickstarter, if the funding fails, they don't take your money.

Overall, I think Kickstarter has been great, but like anything else, you've got to pick and choose what's worth sinking your money into.

Uh yeah......you aren't investing in a company. They are taking pre-orders in order to buy tooling/pay wages. You are getting 40%, 50%, 60%, and even 70% off on many of these projects.

That's your reward, not a share in the profits. If they wanted a loan, they'd go to a bank

I've participated in several kickstarters so far, as well as a handful of indiegogo projects. I haven't received anything from any of them yet. That's not to say that things may not be in the mail as we type, but currently, my received record is 0.

That includes:
Kickstarter:
Mobile Frame Zero - Lego Mech Wargame rules
Dice Rings
Bombshell Babes

Indiegogo:
Chaos Bloodbowl Team
Amazon Bloodbowl Team
Lizardmen Bloodbowl Team
Freebooter Miniatures special edition
Goblin Pirates

I currently put in a bad for wargaming answer. If I ever see anything from any of these projects, I may revise my answer.

My hearts full of neutrality......

It's a great way to support new ideas, and gives people a chance to succeed where they wouldn't have had the opportunity before. My major concern with KS though, is that too many established companies like Mantic are using it as a tool to make money and get free publicity. This, in itself, isn't what troubles me, what is, is the amount of money they're taking away from other projects, the one's that KS was set up to help in the first place. If it wasn't for they're total avoidance of customer feedback, I'd wager Games Workshop would also be on KS by now...

 Alkasyn wrote:
I think it's annoying that every estabilished company starts a Kickstarter project just to squeeze some more money out of the customer.

Yep.. Thats the worst thing about kickstarters..

I've just scanned the site, but some of the ones I have seen have been really impressive models

I think it's great. It seems like it gives the average person the opportunity to do something big!

 StyleXHobby wrote:
I think it's great. It seems like it gives the average person the opportunity to do something big!

The guys doing these things are far from average, some of them have skills and deserve to be successful for it.

VERY interesting poll results.

On the one hand, I thought that they should come out like this, but on the other, I'm still surprised that they did!

 Alpharius wrote:
VERY interesting poll results.

On the one hand, I thought that they should come out like this, but on the other, I'm still surprised that they did!

Same here! I'm glad they did, though. In the end, I think it will have been a real positive for wargaming

I like it because it's given me the opportunity to help fund several cool model terrain ideas i probably never would have heard of. I don't like the wait though, Its been almost a year since pledging and still have recieved nothing but every time a thread pops up i get excited and remember it.