There are tons of things I would like to do, that I could afford to do, but that I still won't do if I have to bear the whole financial risk myself. I'm sure that's true for a lot of people.

If I had to bear your financial risk, I would expect a return: if I'm an investor give me shares, if I'm loaning you money give me interest. Why do I not deserve the same rewards as any other investor? I find the entire proposition offensive.

Giving $25 is not bearing financial risk! It's an optimistic pre-order, it's a statement of support, it's a donation to The Arts, it's patronage. And it's less money than it costs out for dinner in San Francisco.

It offends and infuriates me that you don't see any value in the creation of new technology other than "give me interest". Your species of cynical profiteering is the reason we have freewheeling boom and bust cycles with no significant social benefit.

It's none of these things. We're talking about financing a commercial enterprise by people far wealthier than myself. What we have here are rich people trying to set up a system where they are rewarded for their part of the investment, but the little guys are not. That is cynical profiteering. I'm saving my $25 donation for a worthy non-profit cause, thank you very much.

Given Mr Stephenson's extremely solid knowledge of the foundations of capitalism (e.g. the System of the World trilogy) it seems especially rich. Or maybe he learned a thing or two while writing that.

The reward is a successful project. Would you chip in $50 bucks to help someone build some interesting widget that otherwise wouldn't get built?

That question is not germane to this kickstarter. Considering their level of funding and the large amount of time and money that they have already sunk into the project, it's patently obvious that it's going to get made anyway. They're just trying to collect some free money from suckers because hey, why not?

Kickstarter is being used a lot for preorders rather than fundraising. There are a lot of obvious reasons someone might want to do this despite technically not needing financing.

Stephenson is no doubt an extremely successful writer, but that doesn't confer the type of resources that being an extremely successful entrepreneur does. And game development doesn't come cheap either, especially not innovative game development.

He already has wealthy game entrepreneurs on board. Did you notice the big guy smithing a crowbar? That's Gabe Newell, with a personal net worth of 1.5 billion dollars. His company, Valve, is thanked on the Kickstarter page, as well as Bungie.

These people already have the resources and industry support to do what they want to do (the exquisitely produced videos are themselves a testament to their resources!), but for some reason, they're asking the man on the street to carry a share of the financial risk in exchange for no share of the returns.

As interesting as the idea is, if you contribute to this Kickstarter you're a chump.

I thought it might be to gauge demand. Why spend a million dollars on an unannounced project only to find out no-one wants it? And if people really want it, they'll put up a few dollars, perhaps.

Especially as the future development of decent controllers will mean players paying out for specialised hardware.

Looks like a PR stunt to me. Not that that's a bad thing.

The production alone on that video

$$$

It also helps to establish your market and discover what the audience really wants. It's great market research where you can have your potential customers give you feedback throughout the process.

Interesting how Kickstarter can be used both for PR and actual fundraising.

I always thought PR was a component of fund-raising.

Sounds like they're not looking to bootstrap a business that would produce a return on investment. Instead of making a commercially viable game, they're talking about founding a platform and cultivating a market for sword fighting games.