Editing Kickstarter (section)

==Explain?==
What's to explain?

If you can picture it, you can advertise it and someone will fund it.

...And sometimes that's [[Skub|sorta the problem]].

For every Kickstarter success story, there's at least a handful (if not more) of [[FAIL|prolific failures]]. Not in the "nowhere near its stretch goal" sense of the word, that's just unfortunate if anything.

No, when most people think of Kickstarter failures, they thing of the big projects that gave its backers an expensive ride upon the [[hype]] train, as they usually meet their goal a few times over - and before long, mismanagement, delays, and excuses set in for one reason or another. Insights into the project management's ethics (or lack thereof), a changing of hands, the fact most self-publishers don't have the connections to get the best of materials for their products, and other various factors combine to kill the previously built hype, and the end result is at least one of the following: A) the product never gets released and [[RAGE|the backers start demanding refunds]], or B) the product makes it out against all odds, but it ultimately becomes a shadow of its former self and a testament to its wasted potential... [[RAGE|and the backers start demanding refunds]].

Now, it's important to understand that, while the accusation of "scam" is pretty commonplace, more frequently a failed kickstarter project can be chalked up to a few different factors:
* The project was overly ambitious for the skill level or size of the production team
* The team badly underestimated the budget or amount of work for the product
* The team suffers from frequent infighting due to clashing ideas or a lack of defined hierarchical responsibility

In theory, a project creator would alleviate these issues by providing a very thorough presentation outlining exactly what they plan to do and even have a working prototype to show off. In other words, most of the work is already done; they just need the money to create the final product and pay for manufacturing/distribution. For example, a kickstarter to print books, especially if said book already exists in digital form, is a great way to raise money since it allows the creator to gauge demand for such a product. If the demand exists, the product will sell. And if the demand doesn't exist, no one will have wasted their money by printing an excess number of books.

In practice, many kickstarter creators launch campaigns much earlier in the creative process, before a prototype is even available. Even veteran creators (one infamous example being legendary games designer Tim Schafer) can cause massive disappointment when they don't have a bunch of angry investors with teams of lawyers to keep them honest, and instead can use nostalgia or other easily manipulated emotions to ask for more money from backers. The end result is that instead of pre-ordering a product that's ready to be printed/distributed/shipped, you effectively paying charity to a bunch of dudes of questionable business sense or integrity, on promise that '''maybe''' you'll get something for your money '''someday.''' The only kind of project with any real kind of stability is campaigns to fund the physical printing of a work that already exists. Such campaigns tend to be few and far between however.