@horus500 yeah it does, doesn’t it ?
I realised I was backing too many projects without even thinking if I had any real use for them and why I was throwing money at them after they had achieved their funding goal when I didn’t really like the subject matter so much that I needed to have a ‘pre order’ or the ‘exclusive’ bits on offer.

I also developed an intense dislike for all the kickstarter ‘exclusive’ crap that gets added, because there is no reason to deny anyone access to those things if they are a good addition to the game/experience.

@zoidpinhead without access to the financials of the company it is hard to judge what part of a kickstarter funding is used to fill gaps in the budget of existing project. Companies that do that tend to die (as happened to NinjaDivision … ). Such things tend to hit a brick wall eventually. I see no sign of that with Mythic. Besides they did say they were re-evaluating how they would use Kickstarter as a platform in the future. They have been pretty honest and open about their plans to use crowdfunding as a fancy webshop for generating hype and pre-orders …

Estimating production time is hard. Even for experienced people who have to make estimates for similar projects get it wrong.
Anyone claiming they can be accurate in planning when they have dependencies on 3rd parties is delusional at best and a scam artist at worst.

If anything Covid has proven how fragile the hobby industry really is and how dependent as a world we are on the production facilities of a single country. It is something anyone could have seen coming, but few realised it could happen at all because 99 times out of 100 no real problems were caused as the buffers used in planning were big enough to handle most delays.

The problem with most kickstarters isn’t so much in crowdfunding as a concept, but in how much research the backers themselves do before throwing money at a new shiny thing. Look at how much is shown and what is missing from a project when you back.

STL-files can be a ‘safe’ bet, because any model shown during the kickstart effectively means that they are 90% complete on that part.

If you see a barely functional prototype or if a lot of stretchgoals get unlocked then you know there is a ton of work that still needs to be done.

Nobody can do the risk assesment of a kickstarter for you.
This isn’t about trust, because I seriously doubt companies blatantly lie about their estimates …
This is about understanding that estimates are exactly that … estimates based on the available information and promises/arrangements made ahead of time.

It’s been said often enough that you shouldn’t buy into a kickstarter if you couldn’t afford to pick a match and burn the money you are about to invest. You need a similar approach to any deadlines and dates mentioned during the kickstarter from start to finish. You’re getting the best possible answer based on available data.

Every time a kickstarter team held back any information it was because they weren’t sure if it was accurate enough.
I’ve seen countless of idiots trying to scream ‘scammer’ when the initial post clearly indicated that there was a margin for error/uncertainty and the deadline passed and the team had to post that a deadline had been missed.

It can be pretty damn tricky to decide when to post about a possible delivery when it is ‘next week’ .. only to have to tell people that it wasn’t going to happen because a 3rd party dropped the ball. The only teams that ever are accurate are the ones that have full control over the process from start to finish and that’s only if and only if the proces itself is something they have done before.