[quote name='guardian_owl']To some extent I agree with Wombat, kickstarter should be used by people who legitimately have few if any options to raise funding for their project(s). A large % of the cash raised is likely from Double Fine fans who specifically went onto kickstarter to fund the project, but I am sure some portion of the cash is money from regular kickstarter visitors which was not spent on one of the other projects whose sole option for funding is kickstarter.
The extreme metaphor would be a person who makes a decent living, but periodically dresses up in ratty clothes and goes down to the soup kitchen for a free meal. Leave the free meal to those who need it.[/QUOTE]
No, that would be extremely flawed metaphor. This project raised a tremendous amount of cash in 24 hours, which means it was completely demand driven. It is not like people wake up each morning, turn on their computers and then try to figure what kickstart project they are going to fund today. You might as well say amazon or starbucks or the red cross are also starving other kickstarter projects as well, since people spend money at those places....money that could be spent on kickstarter projects.
It seems like alot of the griping about this sounds like 'oh, double fine isn't indy enough' to be using kickstarter, which just strikes me as petty bullshit. It isn't like EA is doing this to fund Madden kergillion. If anything, this thing probably introduced the kickstarter concept to whole lot more people, which likely means more backers and more projects in the future.
Wombat seemed to focus on the 'easy money' aspect, but the key thing in my mind is less the access to capital but rather the clear indication of demand for the product, which is an ADVENTURE GAME. No publisher is going to touch an adventure game in this day and age (I believe Telltale self-publishes their own works), and given Double Fine's past problems with publishers on Psychonauts and Brutal Legend, it isn't surprising they might want see if there were other options out there. And while they probably could get the capital to finance it via more traditional ways, this route clearly shows they have an audience for the product right out of the gate....it may not be a massive audience (they have about 40K+ backers at the moment) but it is sufficiently motivated audience to put their money into the product ahead of time. At a basic level, this isn't really too far removed from gamestop taking a pre order on something, outside of the fact that it cuts out all the middlemen between the producer and the end consumer and that it didn't cost Double Fine a penny in marketing costs.