Kickstarter: Professional E-Begging & Questionable Fundraisers
Ever since Double Fine Productions’ astounding success with Broken Age (formerly known as Double Fine Adventure) a year ago, Kickstarter has become somewhat of a poster child for crowd-funding on the Internet. And while the idea of an ‘Online Darwinism’ platform where only the strongest and most innovative ideas get to see the light of day via a direct financial support from the consumers does sound enticing on paper, the actual execution of it leaves much to be desired.
We’ve all heard countless success stories from aspiring filmmakers, game developers and musicians who got to make their dream projects a reality. But what about the myriad of terrible projects that still make at least three times their desired goal thanks to the naïveté of the Kickstarter user base? What about all the outrageous scams that were seconds away from pilfering the dishonestly received money and vanishing into thin air? And let’s not forget about all the cases of unceremonious e-begging by Hollywood celebrities who should already have sufficient funds and/or connections to launch their projects without the need of Kickstarter but still decided to exploit it.
Kickstarter represents a worthy cause, and we here at Cheshire Cat Studios are totally behind it. That said, they really need to start screening whom they grant permission to open up a campaign on their site lest they want to end up in danger of losing their credibility.