

When Kickstarters Fail - enobrev
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/kickstarters-fail-feature/

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juan_juarez
The big example of a failed project was a tower defense game? These things are
a dime a dozen (when they're not free) - why would anyone throw their money
behind maybe getting a new one developed when half the would-be game designers
in the world are already writing them for free?

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lusr
“We reached our $15,000 goal in 3 days, and once you launch a project you
can’t cap it. You can only keep it or cancel it. It became a little
overwhelming.”

Is there a conflict of interest at work here?

For projects delivering physical goods, the more backers there are the more
revenue Kickstarter generates, but the greater the risk of the project not
meeting its targets (or goals).

While more orders may mean production discounts and economies of scale, it
also means more administrative, support, and other overhead costs that were
not factored into the original financial plan.

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jivatmanx
You can easily create limits on the # of people you allow on each reward tier.

You can also add extra tiers that are identical except for a later delivery
date.

Kickstarter should consider making use of # limits mandatory for non-media
projects (art, software, film music), or at least more strongly encourage
their use.

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savrajsingh
Yes, and you can even add limits to existing reward tiers while the
kickstarter is running, so you don't need to know things in advance.

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jared314
An additional resource is The Kickback Machine [0], which tracks successful
and unsuccessful projects, and CanHeKickIt [1], which graphs funding progress.

[0]: <http://www.thekickbackmachine.com/>

[1]: <http://canhekick.it/>

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wikwocket
See also KickTraq, for fun graphs and prokections. e.g.
[http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/trammel/the-official-
settle...](http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/trammel/the-official-settlers-of-
catan-gaming-board/)

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cmckay
Two points that indicate that the author doesn't really know what he's talking
about:

1\. "Estimating the number of failed projects is difficult because of these
tactics, but most independent attempts to pinpoint the figure have landed at
50% or more."

Response: Kickstarter has a statistics page [1] that gives this information.
It's not hard to find. And the failure rate is much higher than 50% in most
categories.

2\. "Retrovirus enjoyed a steady trickle of contributions towards its modest
$75,000 goal."

Response: Actually looking at the statistics [2], 75,000 is on the high end
for Kickstarter projects (more specifically, it's the 98th percentile for all
projects, and the 99.4th percentile for successfully funded projects across
all categories; if we look just at games, the percentiles are 93rd overall,
and 96.8 for projects that actually made their goal), and carries with it a
low funding rate (about 20% overall, slightly less than that for projects in
the Games category)

So while it may be a "modest" goal as far as the costs of game development are
concerned, it isn't modest for Kickstarter.

[1] <http://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats> [2] currently unpublished data
scraped from kickstarter.com; I'm nearly finished writing up my analysis
though.

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ahelwer
The page you linked to gives statistics for successful funding, not successful
delivery.

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cmckay
Yes, because it's clear from the context of the article that's what the author
meant:

"Kickstarter intentionally makes failure a hard thought to stumble on. Its
website does not show failed projects unless they’re specifically asked for
and the company directs search engine crawlers away from them."

This statement is only true if one interprets the word "failed" as Kickstarter
does, that is, "failed to receive funding."

and

"And what about Kickstarters that succeed? Do they deliver, or is it just the
beginning of a path full of challenges?"

This statement wouldn't make sense if the author meant "successful delivery"
when he said "success."

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gabemart
I found the wording of the title ambiguous. I assumed this would be about
projects that meet their funding goal but fail to materialize, rather than
projects that fail to meet their funding goal in the first place.

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jdlshore
Kickstarter has always used "success" and "failure" to refer to the
fundraising effort, not the deliverables. So the title was at least consistent
with that usage.

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batiudrami
It actually uses 'funded' or 'funding unsuccessful', not failure. To me,
failure says 'funding successful but failure to deliver product (by a set
time/at all).

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eslachance
Personally I'm more than a little annoyed at their journal-type "quotes",
especially because they put the quote directly under the paragraph they just
quoted, so you're basically just reading the exact same sentence twice, one
after the other. And they do this _9 times_. It's just... horrible.

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shloime
Where Kickstarters go when they succeed > <http://outgrow.me/>

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Samuel_Michon
TMA;DR (Too many ads, didn't read.)

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gonzo
One word: Pebble

