Extremely interesting article by the PA Report, does not only covers Kickstarter but also has a nice quick dive on development process and funding.
Love this quote from the article: “Most novice developers don’t understand the enormity of game development, and the act of creating a good game is herculean, no matter the size of your team or the scope of your game.”
Hmm, i backed a number of projects, not kickstarter only, or bought alphas and betas of several games and tools and beside of a very tiny minority i always got a completed project and those which are still open look promising as either there are experienced devs behind or i just have a good feeling.
Projects which kind of get on my nerves, as for games it’s Desktop Dungeons as i have the feeling that they don’t focus and instead of releasing a simple but focused great game blow up a balloon and add tons of features which i don’t need and meanwhile development goes on and on. As for tools, well, let’s just say i don’t like bugs and empty promises.
But for the majority, i’m quite happy, hey, maybe i’m a natural! :O)
One bad thing about funding games in advance is that it somehow takes out the fun of instantly buying and playing a game. You know like boom there it is, enjoy it! This is some magic which gets lost with buying a game a year before its release date, being involved in the dev process, reading tons of previews and so on. Saying so, after Legend of Grimrock, tomorrow it’s time for Botanicula and then there will be Torchlight 2 with a few tiny things in between and so on and so on. As i said before, there exists a excess supply even of very good games these days. I’m buying more games than i can play&enjoy anymore.
So coming back to kickstarter, i only back those i’m really interested in and with those i’m fine.
I don’t know why anyone would pledge their money to a franchise type dev studio. If they can’t get their game made based on the strength of their franchise then why would I support it? That’s pretty sad, a franchise studio coming to you or me and not Sequoia to fund their work? That tells you this is as much about advertising and being cool as it is about fund-rasing.
As far as the rest go, seeing as most of the app stores’ apps are free, $0.99, or In-App-Purchase supported games then Kickstarter shouldn’t be viewed as a means to get any ‘easy’ $30,000 or $40,000 for your great game, but as means of determining pricing in the app stores by setting $1, $2, $3, $4, $5 pledge points and seeing what the pledges tell you about how to price your game once released.
Or you can go read 100 different articles with 100 different opinions about price setting and game promotion on those paid Flashad promo sites. You know the ones, the ones regurgitating all the cookies you ate.
As far a goal, set it to something reasonable, say the price of a Unity Pro license, or a the set of Pro licenses, $1,000 - $5000 is plenty. The reward for the pledge is the game.
You saw you can surpass your goal, so you can setup the pledges for game posters and what-not at ridiculous pledge amounts for those posters and t-shirts.
At any rate, currently, I see Kickstarter as better exposure for a game than the Flashad paid promo websites, especially if you meet your funding and your Kickstarter pages look good.
The best idea is to ask however much you will need to finish your game. If you ask less and then run out of funds while developing it’s going to be really painful. I’d say even worse than not getting funded at all.
Because if you can’t reach your goal, maybe your game isn’t all that good in the first place?
Anybody in these forums is more than likely a student or a moonlighter/hobbiest. That’s the audience I’m addressing, the Leisure Suit Larry crowd should take another approach.
This could apply to gamers aswell 
But it’s harder to blame a gamer than a dev on this subject, indeed.
Or you can start busking like these indies…
If you’re like me and enjoy developing games and Jamming but also need food this could be an option.
Finishing up third game and still not bold enough to shake a cup at people and ask for spare change. Maybe if I had a larger and reliable team and wanted the artist to work full time I would ask for help.