Kickstarter and publishing

The folks at the Opinionated Gamer visit several past themes on the value of Kickstarter to designers, publishers, and players.  It was interesting to me that most of these folks, who are designers, enthusiasts, and players themselves, were lukewarm on the idea of Kickstarter, and several said the equivalent of 'I'd never fund something there, of course.'  It makes me wonder who does.

One of the authors who did buy, Ted Alspach, said he'd been unimpressed with most of the games he'd gotten and specifically called out a couple of them, Carnival and Creatures, as disappointing. I explored on BoardgameGeek.com.  Creatures looked kind of like a card-only version of one of my designs, Galapagos, but with fewer body parts, and it only got a 5.8 on BGG's scale, which is a pretty low score for BGG.  Carnival, at a slightly-higher 6.3, looked interesting, but some reviewers (like Ted) said the gameplay was rough and sometimes boring.

Most of these guys agreed with the gist of what I and others have said here before, which is that Kickstarter is:

1. all good for publishers - their risk and investment is reduced
2. mostly all good for designers - there are more possible routes to publication, risk is reduced, and self-publishing is far easier, but there may be a temptation to rush to publish an inadequately-tested project.  N.B. I see this in myself, totally, in spades.
3. a mixed bag for customers/players - they get access to more variety of games, and may see designs that wouldn't get made any other way, but they have to invest before seeing the game and seeing it reviewed, so their money is at risk

The opinionated gamers wanted to add another perspective to this, which is "good for the industry" - I'm not sure anybody can really figure that one out, because you'd have to define what "good" meant.  Lots of little incompletely designed or tested games clamoring for attention and money sounds bad, but lots more people engaged in design, publishing, and investing in the industry sounds really good.

What are some takeaways?  Here are mine, from a various parts of the post:

• Graphic design sells Kickstarter projects
• Post your rules with your Kickstarter project so that people can see how the game plays
• There's significant fear on the part of Kickstarter funders that the game projects won't get made and their money will be lost, although that is rare to unheard-of so far.  Sounds like this might be worth addressing in the video or promotional materials for a Kickstarter project.
• These guys (admittedly a small sample of game enthusiasts) often buy based on a designer's reputation or past products, and are suspicious of unknown or unpublished designers.  This kind of attitude (while probably helpful to them) is a barrier I'll have to overcome, although it's the same old Catch-22 that exists in all kinds of endeavors - we only publish published authors, or we only hire people with experience. 
• Kickstarter has reduced the number of design submissions to traditional publishers
• As I suspected, self-publishers with basements full of unsold games are a real (and sad) thing, and there's apparently a lonely Hall of Failure somewhere at Essen populated by them.