Some of the big differences are that A) You only pay Kickstarter that 5% ($50k+ for a mega-success) if you're funded so you're reducing your risk (Tim Schafer honestly seemed to be aware of the possibility that he wouldn't be able raise the requested amount) and B) Kickstarter offers some degree of discovery and promotion (not so much that you can throw a project on there and walk away expecting people to just find it, of course, but a project like Pixel Sand[1] likely only got funded because it was on Kickstarter [also it benefited from serendipitous timing]).

Louis CK had reasons to expect his project would be successful and widely promoted and so increasing his up-front expenditures instead of going with a Kickstarter makes sense in his case (setting aside whether he could have gotten the same custom-built website for less cash).

[1] http://www.androidrundown.com/blog/kickstarter-spotlight-pix...