"Big Names" Aren't Drying Up the Kickstarter Pool

[Giftmacher]

I agree with Entitled's assessment.

Sure an individual's money is finite, who could argue? That being the case what's the best way to get more money? Find more people.

Maybe big projects do force a few choices to be made, but they also pull in crowds. How many people came to Kickstarter because a big project pulled them in? I've thrown cash at all kinds of mini-projects since I joined recently (to fund Elite), I don't imagine I'm unusual.

Come for the big stuff, stay for the esoteric!

On a tangent, I'm kind of reassured that some projects I assumed would be small get lots of cash. Jeremy Soule's symphony* for example and "Sir, You Are Being Hunted" or "Limit theory" etc.

*Gamers like art, who knew right?

 

[Zen Toombs]

That's good to know. I'd wait a touch before assuming the title is true though - wait to see what happens when more big studios try a Kickstarter, like they did with Veronica Mars or whatever.

Spoiler: CaptCha

Strike a match
Yup, I'm totally starting a flame war by suggesting we wait and see. Good catch there.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[small]

RIP Vault 101
She was a great gal.​

[/small]

 

[Something Amyss]

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I feel significantly more cynical about random artist with a handycam asking for $10.000 and promising the sky, than about proven developer team asking for $2.000.000 with the chance of fraud being practically nill, the chance of bankrupcy unlikely, and the chance of bad quality end result no worse than with prorders.

And if you were in any way the average Kickstarter investor, I'd imagine that significant.

 

[Monsterfurby]

But that's not what this article is about!

There is a finite amount of money in the world, and some things get more of it than others. That's not even a question.

The problem is when people claim that big Kickstarter projects get disproportionally more than the small ones, that they are "drying up" the market for the others.

If this would be the case, we wouldn't need individual use-cases to understand how this happens, we would already see that every time there is a big project, small projects get poorer. And growth has nothing to do with this, since growth could also be concentrated around a few big projects, but evidently it isn't.

How exactly is that different from what I wrote?

The basic idea is that big-name projects draw partially upon people who are not yet part of the "pool". That's the growth factor. Due to this, small projects don't "get poorer" - the shift within Kickstarter is cancelled out by the increased awareness of the medium itself.

However, there is a point of saturation, and some methodical questions in the entire thesis. Some people will fund one project they like and then leave. They are unaffected by the popularity of projects within Kickstarter, only by mainstream appeal. Are they part of "the pool"? As for saturation, what happens when big-name projects are unable to popularize Kickstarter any further? That won't be any time soon, sure, but that is the point where small projects WILL 'get poorer' because they cannot compete with powerful brands and highly financed Kickstarter marketing campaigns (a good Kickstarter campaign does not come cheap).

 

[Entitled]

How exactly is that different from what I wrote?

The basic idea is that big-name projects draw partially upon people who are not yet part of the "pool". That's the growth factor. Due to this, small projects don't "get poorer" - the shift within Kickstarter is cancelled out by the increased awareness of the medium itself.

Because you are getting it completely backwards. There is no sign of any "shift within Kickstarter" that is cancelled out by growth, to begin with. If there would be a shift, there is no reason why the growth would cancel it out, as opposed to encouraging it.

However, there is a point of saturation, and some methodical questions in the entire thesis. Some people will fund one project they like and then leave. They are unaffected by the popularity of projects within Kickstarter, only by mainstream appeal. Are they part of "the pool"? As for saturation, what happens when big-name projects are unable to popularize Kickstarter any further? That won't be any time soon, sure, but that is the point where small projects WILL 'get poorer' because they cannot compete with powerful brands and highly financed Kickstarter marketing campaigns (a good Kickstarter campaign does not come cheap).

If big projects would have any ability to drive people away from small projects towards powerful brands, we wouldn't have to wait for that until the growth stops, because even now, both newcomers and smaller project followers alike would flock towards the biggest projects. Just because a market is growing, doesn't mean that it's number of competitors must be increasing.

There are a few types of markets in the economy, where only a handful of the strongest brands can support themselves, so they inevitably form oligopolies. E.g.: airlines, game console manufacturers, wireless providers, etc. In those cases, [/i]you don't actually have to wait for the market to stop growing[/i], because even in earlier stages, you can see that the biggest competitors quickly kill all smaller competitors, and upcoming newer ones can't get anywhere either, as all market growth goes directly to the biggest corporations.

There is nothing to indicate that entertainment software is one of these markets. Sure, big projects get more money than small ones. But there is no spiraling trend that leads more and more people away from small projects, so there is no reason why after the growth stops, small projects would start getting a smaller portion of all fundings than they do now.

 

[Monsterfurby]

Because you are getting it completely backwards. There is no sign of any "shift within Kickstarter" that is cancelled out by growth, to begin with. If there would be a shift, there is no reason why the growth would cancel it out, as opposed to encouraging it.

There is no sign of it because there is no data, which is what I stated in my first post.

All we have are numbers presented by Kickstarter themselves. We really lack the data to argue that things "are" one way or another.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

Big names aren't drying up Kickstarter
Inundation is drying up Kickstarter

**looks at the four projects I'm currently supporting**

**notes that the new Torment is currently approaching 3 million and not slowing down**

**notes that another favorite project is about to hit double its original funding goal**

....

Um? Why do people think Kickstarter is drying up? Looks pretty... wet? ...to me. fluid?

I think my metaphor just broke.

 

[Entitled]

There is no sign of it because there is no data, which is what I stated in my first post.

All we have are numbers presented by Kickstarter themselves. We really lack the data to argue that things "are" one way or another.

If you make up a theory about how in the future, people's behavior will change, the burden of proof is you, you can't just say "well, you can't really argue that I'm wrong".


Let's look at a specific game example:

Just two weeks ago, "Dreamfall Chapters" closed with $1.5m from 22k people.
Meanwhile, "Enemy" closed with $18k from 1k people.

If you want to make a claim, that in the future, a game with Dreamfall's financial support and brand image would suck away more money from a game similar to "Enemy's" financial support and brand image than it does now, then you need to explain how that would happen.


So far, your only explanation for these, was that it is only "because of the growth" that games like Enemy could get funded until now.

You say, that eventually small projects will lose, because "a good Kickstarter campaign does not come cheap". But a good Kickstarter campaign didn't not come cheap until now either! You provide no explanation for why right now backers are willing to spend money small projects along with big ones, but as soon as their numbers stop increasing, they will suddenly stop that, and only focus on big projects.

Even if Kickstarter's growth would stop right now, there would still be 23k people there willing to support "Dreamfall", and "Enemy" combined. So why would they get divided differently than they were now?

Just because until now, the website's size was increasing, those two games were also competing for attention anyways.

If you want to claim that this will change, and the competition will get more fierce, you need to give a justification for that.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

I should have said: Kickstarter Pool. As in the people who pay to support them will be tapped out. It's not so prevalent now, but I remember during the spring of '12 it seemed like there was a new Kickstarter campaign every other day 0_o. And now that's been demonstrated that Kickstarter can be used as a risk free alternative to investing their own capital (see Veronica Mars) I'm a little worried we could also be looking at projects with higher and higher goals that can't be reached.

Actually, one of the projects (currently approaching the double funding mark) is a retry of a KS that failed twice before. They were holding the most wanted item back as a stretch goal and had a overly optimistic base funding about, so they kept coming up short.

So, learning from previous mistakes, they reduced their starting goal from 45k to 10k, pushed everything they were offering up front into stretch goals, and put that most wanted item (a Kracken miniature) up front as the first (and originally only) item available.

And it worked. So, while you might be correct about companies asking for larger and larger KS, I think KS campaigns that don't deliver what the people want will fail - and those companies will have to adjust and retry based on what their customers want if they mean to get off the ground. And isn't that exactly how these things are supposed to work?

That said, I do share your fear about companies that don't actually need the money using it as a loyalty test.

 

[Monsterfurby]

If you want to claim that this will change, and the competition will get more fierce, you need to give a justification for that.

I did not claim that at any point. I have repeatedly stated that "this would be interesting to look at". Everything I have written is based on possibility. There's no need for me to substantiate anything because my POINT is that we don't know enough to argue either side. Figures produced by Kickstarter themselves are NOT sufficient.

 

[Entitled]

If you want to claim that this will change, and the competition will get more fierce, you need to give a justification for that.

I did not claim that at any point.

Yes, you did.

The field is growing still. Eventually it will however hit a ceiling, and that's when the competition will get fierce. At that point, big names and people who have resources to pour into a successful Kickstarter marketing campaign will take the cake and leave everyone else in the dust.

As for saturation, what happens when big-name projects are unable to popularize Kickstarter any further? That won't be any time soon, sure, but that is the point where small projects WILL 'get poorer' because they cannot compete with powerful brands and highly financed Kickstarter marketing campaigns.

Even if you would have consistently noted that this is just one possibility, that wouldn't have helped much. Sure, it's "possible" that this will happen, but it's entirely counterfactual based on the behaviors that we have observed so far.

It's also "possible" that as soon as the growth stops, all backers will suddenly abandon Kickstarter. Or that as it stops, they will sell all their possessions to fund more projects than before. Or that they will all start uniformly backing projects that cost $12.936.

These are all "possible" theories, they are just not worthy of any more recognition than yours, since neither of them provides a logical justification.

This is not a matter of "data". We have enough data to know that right now, small projects are growing and multiplying proportionally to big ones. There is no data that could justify your theory, because already know what numbers are happening right now, you are basically making an arbitary speculation about how people will suddenly change their behavior in the future.

 

[Monsterfurby]

These are all "possible" theories, they are just not worthy of any more recognition than yours, since neither of them provides a logical justification.

Yup, exactly. Hence it's speculation.

Look, this is not getting us anywhere, so let's just leave it at that.