Agreed. It is financial willy waving.
Agreed. I have no issue with good rewards for higher pledges- hey, that's how it works. I mean, while Kickstarter project leaders have a fiduciary responsibility to contributors to deliver on the project, they have no legal or financial responsibility to contributors.
It's not as if you're investing in a start-up with the expectation returns and dividends. You're helping somebody else do that (or attract that sort of investment), more or less out of the goodness of your heart, with a few (token) rewards to help entice you.
All the money dumped into a project like this could be used to help needy families, provide medicine for sick kids in the third world, or food for the hungry, Christmas presents for orphans or whatever. Which are all life-changing causes, indeed even life-saving. Those are the sorts of gifts are more meritorious, but only people that do it with the intention of looking good (rather than with the intention of doing good) actually trumpet such contributions. For a Kickstarter project for a video game, there is not really any good karma associated with contributing. It's a nice thing for Frontier Studios, and a nice thing for fans of the genre and the series, but I do not believe giving significant sums is inherently meritorious. At least, no more so than the poor university student who decided to pledge his pub money to Elite instead of having x number of pints for a month or two.
The fact that some people really want to help is great and cool. I certainly have pledged, because I'm a lifelong fan and want to see it happen. But remember that this is...only a game. One of the greatest games (I hope still), but only a game.
With that said, I'm tickled pink that we made the goal, and that would never have happened without all the Jontys out there, and we do owe them gratitude. Just remember that it's crowd-sourcing; it's all the thousands of 5 and 10 pound donors who ideally deliver the bulk of the funds.
