Majority of that money must have come from the 1 person in the $900 or more catagory.
I'll be amazed if this project gets anywhere near the $150k goal. So far their team consists of a kid with Autodesk software and his/her friend, neither of which had the time to run spelling and grammar checks on the project presentation. If they showed previous work, like a mod to someone else's game or smaller scale games they have made in the past, I might believe they could get half way through before calling it quits.
Oh right, I forgot that the pledge amount doesn't necessarily have to be right on the pledge level. :facepalm
I'm surprised to see that this guy is 28. I was doing better work when I was only 16 (I still have it all around), and yet he's older than I am now. Also, it looks like this is the second time he's run this project on Kickstarter. The previous attempt was canceled with only $1355.
It's apparent from the images and description that this is someone who has never actually made a finished game, or even a complete and textured 3D model. All of the sketches are very simple, and the few sketches that look alright were done by other people.
And there are no shots of completed models, just a few screenshots of basic boxy models in progress that would only take a day or two to finish from scratch, and yet he couldn't even complete a single simple test object to demonstrate the ability to create a game. That dragon thingy is an amateur blob. Even with $150k this game wouldn't happen. You need someone in charge who knows what they're doing, with experience. Playing and liking games isn't enough.
I'm a 3D modeler, and I'm making a game in the same programming language as a hobby, so I know the work involved even just to make a demo of a simple platformer, let alone a fully completed RPG with a huge number of assets. It's something a lot of people can't really appreciate until you've tried it yourself, and you don't make a quality game (or even a complete game) first try.
Didn't mean to ramble there! I absolutely love that Kickstarter allows anyone (well, anyone in the US/UK) to fund their ideas on a level playing field, but I worry that too many people like this might get their projects funded, and hurt the Kickstarter model for others.
opcorn
