Kudos to Kickstarter for a great year and great overview!

I think this demonstrates the power of telling a story (vs just giving the numbers). This review evoked a positive emotional response where most companies' "Year in Review" posts evoke a staid statistical response.

Well said. I rarely make it all the way through slide shows like this, let alone reach the end wanting more.

Rarely does a company enable so many interesting cultural events. They had a lot of great stuff to show off.

I really like kickstarter but let's balance out all this awesome news with a quick reminder that there are plenty of vanity projects and outright curiosities on kickstarter - like that rich businesswoman collecting money to buy her daughter a laptop. Though I can see it must be really hard for them to decide where to draw the line - even if only because of the sheer number of projects.

I don't blame them for crappy projects, they have genuinely changed the world and I hope they keep doing this into 2014 and further.

referenced link?

check this :

http://www.wired.com/design/2013/03/computer-camp-kickstarte...

thanks

I have to admit that I was surprised at the dollars per person: $480 million/3 million people = $160 per person. Perhaps that because each person pledges to multiple campaigns? It seems like only 80K backed more than 10 projects though. The dollar values per pledge that I've seen are much lower than $160 per person. Perhaps a couple outliers pull up the mean well past my personal observations, if not the median?

I found the slideshow of successful projects to be very inspiring.

There's also a (minority to be sure) group of projects that get close to their goal and pitch in money to make it happen - for example, your goal is $200,000, and you're at $190,000 with 24 hours left.

Now, if you don't get $10,000 in backers in the next 24 hours, you get nothing.

If you can, then you'll get the $200,000.

Do you let that happen organically? Or do you do a last ditch pledge to a friend or family to charge $10K to their credit card, with the promise you'll give it back as soon as your funding clears, and attempt to make do with $190,000, rather than see that plan come so close, only to fade away?

For certain types of projects (like hardware projects), some of the mid-tier rewards are essentially pre-sales. For example, with Pebble, the most popular tier was the $115 watch. People interested in the product, I suspect, are more likely to contribute to the lowest-price deliverable tier rather than the lowest-tier.

Of course, for other projects, there are some high-tier rewards that garner significant interest and skew the average. For example, the Veronica Mars kickstarter had a speaking role as the highest-tier reward.

The median contribution, from what I've seen, sits somewhere in the 50-250 range

I backed 11 projects in 2013 (and one that didn't end up funding) and hope I find at least that many things to support this year. I've really enjoyed being part of these groups' journeys and getting boxes of random goodies throughout the year is really fun. I wouldn't have thought it a couple of years ago when I started on there but it's been one of my favorite success stories in the recent web era.

I've backed the better part of 1,000 crowd-funded projects in the last couple of years and it has been a very mixed experience.

I've stuck primarily to video game content and, of those, many are extremely late. Many have simply stopped responding to or updating backers despite great delays.

Some have simply said "sorry, even though we asked for $5k and raised $40k, this is too hard and we quit". There have been more than one of those. There have been some that tried, but majorly screwed up. Like the guys who were making a game, but the engineers wrote it in Google's GO. Then the engineers left and they couldn't find anyone who knew how to make games in GO.

Some have been delivered and are either quite broken and/or just completely awful (Takedown: Red Sabre from industry veterans that received a metacritic score of 20/100 comes to mind).

There have been a few that have been quite good and many remaining to be completed that look like they could be great.

However, I think I am largely done with the crowd-funding experiment and will only be dropping a few bucks here and there for things I truly must see created by people with a reputation. I'm tired of the finished products that are total let downs and, more, I'm tired of the people who just say "oh well, sorry" and don't even finish making the thing they were paid (usually far more than they were asking for) to do.

Sure, they are obligated by terms of service to fulfill or refund all rewards for pledges (which means you are obligated to provide your game, if your game was one of the pledge rewards). But in reality, what is anyone going to do to enforce it? Kickstarter sure doesn't give a fuck (hell, they don't even adhere to their own policies, letting people double-dip by running additional crowd-funding sessions for already expired-and-unfulfilled previously funded projects and so on...

As much as I delight in the idea of crowd-funding, I think we are headed for a major landslide. Primarily, due to a total lack of enforcement (or vetting) by the crowd-funding platforms. When your entire model is based on trust and reliability and you do little or nothing to protect it, then . . . well, you have nothing.

Well, Ouya was a disaster, they should probably not include it in third place. I did not backed them, I can predict how projects will go very soon, probably because of my professional experience.

I backed some very interesting problems not mentioned that I am very happy with(more than 100 projects backed so far!!). Why? Just because they raised more money.

Kickstarter needs to include some feedback from customers, so they know which ones went better overall, not just how they started.

Sometimes, it seems like most of the people declaring the Ouya a disaster have never touched one. My son and I play it more than Xbox 360 and Wii U combined. It's a perfect little party console for quirky indie titles.

Ouya has worked great for me and my friends, who play it pretty much anytime there are more than 2 of us hanging around.

Why a disaster?

The company is bleeding money (their sales ranking on Amazon, for example, is typically right below a video cable compatible with the N64), has hardly attracted any quality devs, and the product had many hardware issues(faulty controllers, overheating). I believe there are still early kickstarter backers that haven't received consoles despite the claims of the Ouya company.

Then we can consider their PR (see: "redtube," "GET SOME" in the context of cancer, and their poorly thought out commercial that they quickly tried to disavow). Then their customer service: nonexistent, you basically have to complain publicly and badmouth them in order to get any response.

And really, we live in a world where everyone owns a computer and there is no shortage of free quirky indie PC games (most or all of which will be of higher quality than what you'll find on the Ouya store).

FYI the Start button doesn't seem to be working for me with Adblock turned on.

Same here; Chrome@Mavericks.

If you check the JS console log, you'll see that this is most probably caused by calling the Mixpanel (analytics/tracking script) track method in slideshow.js (line 12), which triggers an error because Mixpanel is not loaded.

Here's the error: 'Uncaught ReferenceError: mixpanel is not defined'.

The chrome extension from getadblock.com? It worked for me on Windows 7 and Chrome 31.0.1650.63 m. My Adblock version is 2.6.

Probably an issue with Mixpanel being on a filter list you don't have. The issue happened for me with the same version.

How can they list ouya as a success story with a straight face is beyond me.

You can buy one today. It went from concept/prototype to full production with the help of kickstarter.

Whether it's any good or not is a separate problem.

Well they don't call it "Kickstarter" for nothing. The point is to bring ideas to reality, not create smashing commercial successes every time.

They got money for it.

I haven't used one, but I was wondering why it had to be blurred and in the corner of the video.

"That was beautifully done. wow."

(Back. Back.... Back. BackBackBackBackBackBackBack...)

Kickstarter is a fun risk. I've enjoyed the process of backing a few projects myself, most of which went without a hitch.

If you don't have discretionary income to spend or expect perfection then don't use this service. It is not a guaranteed success, most projects are late, some finish poorly and on rare occasion fail to finish at all.

I love it because it funds many businesses that would have never grown otherwise.

Great slideshow, it looks like 2013 was a great year for KS.

Oculus Rift and the Aerovelo Atlas are personal favorites among the ones listed.

Websites that play video sound should have either a play button to start it, or an option to turn it off before playing it.

IMO, browsers should require pages to secure permission (with the user having a per-page option to grant permission one time or permanently on a per-origin basis) before playing sound.

Alternatively, it could be designed such that you would expect sound. Probably quiet at first, rather than SUDDENLY NOISE. Surprised me, Kickstarter has been a master of ambient video.

Super weird, I didn't get any sound in the slideshow at all, except when playing the Veronica Mars trailer and Werner Herzog video, which required user action to play. I went through the entire thing, not sure what I'm missing. What browser/OS are you using?

Latest Firefox on Windows 7. Happens on the launch satellites into space slide.

http://www.kickstarter.com/year/2013#26-ardusat

I wonder why they didn't list Anita Sarkeesian in the list. Oh wait.

They did list Goldieblox, who are now more known for pissing off Beastie Boys.

it didn't even mention double fine, wasteland, or torment... Old gamers gotta love this.

None of those are finished yet I think? DFA has its backer release next week, Torment seems to be a long ways away. Dunno about Wasteland as I didn't back that one.

Everything on the list is in past tense; this happened, this got made, this won awards. These are things that HAPPENED because of Kickstarter, not things that are still on their way to happening.

shadowrun returns got released, and wasteland got released as a early access beta. At least they could have tried to profile the year a bit more, having one gaming session, one innovation session etc.

kickstarter in more than that crappy ouya console.

Kickstarter's staff is full of self-embracing hipster narcissists. They don't deserve the success they've had with old school video games. I personally know some of the people involved in these million-dollar campaigns, and Kickstarter has treated them with indifference at best. Real world Karma doesn't come from clicking a DOM element, but real world Karma will be visiting Kickstarter soon. It's already showing in the rise of competitors that would not have stood a chance if a this self-satisfied narcissistic bunch was not in charge of Kickstarter. The trouble with competitors is they don't understand the internal, gamified elements of the backer-base.

u mad

Go back to 4Chan, please. "u mad" contributes nothing to any discussion.

yeah that ad hominem he put up was real valuable.

You down vote the trolls. You ignore trolls if you do not have enough karma to down vote.

Meta conversation should make some kind of attempt at politeness and helpfulness. Referencing other communities often attracts down otes.

>Referencing other communities often attracts down otes.

Why, because we're "Team HN"? That's silly.

Because it's counterproductive, pointless, and against the guidelines.

>counterproductive

Unless it encourages someone to change poor behavior.

>pointless

See above.

>against the guidelines

Perhaps. Perhaps the guidelines should be rethought.

You asked for an explanation of the downvotes.

You have been given an explanation of the downvotes.

What you chose to do with that information is up to you.

I thought the explanation was poor, so I chose to explain why. Thanks for the useless comment.

No, because we're not team hn.

Saying "go back to 4chan" is exactly the kind of team hn behaviour that people don't like.

It's not a team thing, it's a "let's keep useless content away from here" sort of thing.

Downvote it. Ignore it. Say "HN will down vote useless content" if you like. But mentioning another community will attract downvotes. You are insulting users of those other communities and there are often overlaps between users of them and HN.

By mentioning another community you are turning it into a "Team HN" thing. And that's something that you suggested was bad.

OK. The team thing is fair. I was attempting to contrast the sort of content I usually see here with 4Chan-type content (and I don't really care if that is insulting, if it is true), but you're right. I would downvote the post if I was able to. Alas, I suppose I'll ignore it.

You know what they say about two wrongs...

Downvote me all you like. That says more about the state of HN than any one post in particular.

Dear Kickstarter,

Please stop turning the process of starting a company into a charity.

Thanks, Me