What do you think of crowdfunding nowadays? (incl. a small giveaway and a 2nd giveaway)

Don't care enough to "invest" in any crowd funded project, as nothing has really caught my attention except for extreme bullshit.
Wasn't even tempted to pledge for Shenmue III and i'd love to play that and would pay a 60$/€ once its out that is.
If it was meant to be, it will get there anyway... > only a 1/3 of a video game kickstarters fully deliver.

I don't have really money to spare so i am not interested in crowdfunding. though i have seen many nice crowdfounded games, i have seen many times that developer just run with the money, it isnt enough etc and you never get a working product. I think we need more laws protecting the crowdfounders, otherwise the whole thing will soon be nothing more than a big cashgrab by greedy asholes who try squeezing money out off peoples dreams.

I would not crowdfund something because the idea of spending money without receiving the complete product is too similar to pre-ordering and Steam early access. Does not mean I will not try to help a project, but the person(s) behind the project really needs to convince me the project will be successful.

Tl;dr - depends

i prefer to wait and see if there is really a product in the end.
there's no garanties that people will really get the product and with paypal backing off from protecting the invester makes it a lot worse.

bump

Bump

Bamf

If somebody clearly has a good concept or idea and they've actually showed progress on it,and they wouldn't be able to progress without crowdfunding,then sure,but for somebody who isn't putting in any effort or already has quite the bit of cash already,fuck em.

The idea in general is good, and the results in general are good.

Crowdfunding is risky, and if you're risk averse you shouldn't invest in it. On the flip side crowdfunding provides opportunity to develop new products that would have otherwise had a hard time reaching the market.

The bottom line is, as with everything, you need to decide how much value a project has to you, weigh in the risk, and decide how much (if anything) you want to pay.

Bump

Well crowdfunding is just a way to ask for money to me.
No need to blame teams that need support, but those teams should really understand the responsibilities of receiving that back-off.

There are plenty of good crowd-funded products, but now that they are so popular and proven to make money, crowdfunding is being exploited, just like any market. It's up to the consumers to not fall prey to the "bad" crowdfunding projects now, meaning that you can't just give money to some random project that looks cool, you actually have to research to see if it's really something that you want to invest money in.

Just remember to always be a responsible consumer everyone!

The only kick starters I've backed are visual novels. Two of them. 1. Will never be on steam because it's a >_> research game. Though honestly BL needs to come to steam just as much as we need more GL on steam 2. The other is ongoing so it depends.

crowdfunding is a great thing to support ideas but it can be risky , especialy games.
developers have the general problem that they aren't very good with money so they tend to take too much time and spend too much money .(that's almost the only reason besides PR marketing and distribution for the existence of publishers) because they want to make the greatest possible game they can make ,which gets them lost in the process.
and there surely are a lot of scammers that want to get crowdfunded too.

Depends for the reasons above written but I think, nowadays, that depends is mostly a "no"

Crowdfunding done right: Pillars of Eternity
Crowdfunding done wrong: Godus

To be honest, crowdfunding is a perfect example of why investment regulations exist. The average person doesn't have the knowledge or resources to know whether a project is likely to be successful, or whether the promoters are capable of delivering, and there's too much of a chance that the people buying in are going to get fleeced.

Bump. Besides, I just realised that I didn't hear about any cool game on Kickstarter for months now. Last thing I was truely excited about was Battletech from the guys behind late Shadowrun series (not the Chronicles one - that was someone's else) and upcoming Necropolis.

Bump

Bump and meow. I think by using crowdfunding companies are getting people excited about their upcoming products, and they hope those people will tell others about them. This is cheap - maybe even free - advertising.

It's better than Steam Greenlight ....

Crowdfunding is too filled with incompetent entrepreneurs and competent scammers for me to get into it, but it has made some great products possible. But it's more used to advertise upcoming products then actually support their development, and I'm not willing to preorder a prototype that I'm not guaranteed to get.

I'm against crowdfunding since day one, never supported any of the projects nor would I ask people for money in that way. Whats more I'm making a small platform game in my spare time and I never even thought of doing crowdfunding for it because I hate it and consider it a fraud even if the game you're supporting gets released and it ends up being perfect, because they basically put you in a place of investor who takes the risk, but you don't get share of the profits, you only get your "thank you package" or lose everything.

Bump

If it's something due out THIS year, and already has working prototypes up, and you will get it cheaper by KS funding than you would buying it post-launch, and you 100% know you're going to buy it, and you can afford to lose the money and get nothing if it falls apart, then ok maybe. Otherwise, just buy it post-launch. I only KS things like card games, because you can't really screw that up. Games? Electronics? Never. Hell, even metal dice usually never actually ship the results.