Yeah, I donated $91 to it. I'm syked.

From the Sherlock Holmes project (still hoping for a miracle there...):

"The kickstarter staff has sent an email mentioning that there is some donor confusion over the Kicking it Forward campaign and asked that we remove the badge from the site."

I know this is a tad off-topic, but ... what?

Edit: Here's the whole message:

"Hi, this is Cindy from Kickstarter. How's it going?
I'm writing today because I noticed that your project has joined the Kicking It Forward campaign. Cool!
While it's great that you're committing to support the Kickstarter community, the Kicking It Forward badge has led to some confusion with backers and other creators. We've been hearing from backers who are unsure what it means, and creators who feel pressured to include it without knowing much about it. People can't tell whether it's an official Kickstarter thing or not.
We don't want to stand in the way of a grassroots effort, but we're concerned this is causing more harm than good. So we're asking everyone who's participating to remove the badges from their projects. If you want to still participate in the campaign you are absolutely free to, however we're asking that this be done outside of Kickstarter itself. We appreciate it.
Thanks so much for being a member of our community, and for launching your project with us. Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks!
Cindy"

I can understand how it's confusing though, especially for non-gamer audiences. I'm just glad KS isn't outrightly putting a stop to this.

This looks hella awesome! It's called Nekro.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/343838885/nekro?ref=card

I'm totally pumped for some of these new Kickstarter games. Shadowrun and Wasteland 2 both sound awesome. Has someone already mentioned Guns of Icarus Online: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/musegames/guns-of-icarus-online?ref=live and The Banner Saga: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stoic/the-banner-saga?ref=live ?

About the removal of the Kicking It Forward badge.
Potential backers may get confused, especially if they don't hop over to the Kicking It Forward site to read what it's all about.
When it comes to creators though, somehow doubt they feel pressured to join without knowing much about it. In order to put the badge on your project's site, you'd have to visit the Kicking It Forward site where everything is explained in detail. And given that the creator or at least one of his team members are from the USA, understanding what it's all about shouldn't be that hard.

However, it crossed my mind that some creators might join the campaign just to get more funding, given that the community seems to highly approve of this movement.
Lets see if it'll make a difference now that it's less visible.

Anyway, I think that Kickstarter could make some changes/ improvements but it's my understanding that Amazon, as their only partner and handler of payments has a big say in how Kickstarter operates.

I'm rooting for this project too, it looks really good...it's a shame it hasn't been moving much.

I would look positively at a project that was involved in the kicking it forward initiative...

but a turd is still a turd.

This seems like a move that acknowledges how we're all a bunch of idiots who aren't capable of deciding for ourselves what to fund when a shiny "kicking it forward" button pops up in front of our eyes.

Now that I think about it, maybe Kickstarter got complaints from creators that don't want to join/ commit to this campaign and are thinking that by doing so, they lose pledges. Hmmm...

Has anyone noticed the anouncement D. Marsh put up about this? Is he really saying that he'll give away 5% of his campaign's funds to other Kickstarter projects?
Taliking about confusion...

For Adventure fans

Delaware St John 4: Asylum of the Lost
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1065983707/delaware-st-john-4-asylum-of-the-lost

Jane Jensen's Pinkerton Road: "A Year of Adventure
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1005365109/jane-jensens-pinkerton-road-2012-2013-csg

Leisure Suit Larry
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/leisuresuitlarry/make-leisure-suit-larry-come-again

I... really don't get what Jane Jensen is doing now. It seems too much Sookie Stackhouse and Zynga does bad things to you.

Case in point: see that young lady in the red dress and her mystical white-robed reflection?
I want to play that lady. Suppose there are two worlds, and what we're doing in one world affects another, both on the physical and on a more philosophical level, so we have to switch from one world to the other, from one incarnation to the other - and maybe the worlds somehow blend into one another at a point - wow, that would be...

Gotcha! No, we won't be playing her. She's dead, in fact. Instead, the main hero is some generic hawwwt dude catering to the filthy rich. No Gabriel Knight's likeable loserdom, no Indiana Jones' accessibility. You know what was awesome about Indiana Jones? That he was a college professor. Maybe your college professor. Study archaeology and be as cool as Indy! (And many people did, or so Skeptical Inquirer assures me.)

Next, Anglophile Adventure. The pic is pretty, the heroine (backers only) even more so, everything looks fine... wait...
> She disguises herself as a dowdy frump in order to keep the Viscountess’s notorious rake of a son at bay.
Wut? Yes, this dude is supposedly a "big problem" who "would surely eat [the young woman] alive". No, I really don't know how prevalent the rape of governesses was in 19th century England, but seriously, wtf? And it's mystery/romance so we know how it would end: the would-be rapist reforms into a 21-century enlightened feminist and marries the heroine while the evil noblewoman is frothing at the mouth in impotent rage (if she hasn't kicked the bucket).

Gray Matter 2 is Gray Matter 2, so even if having played 1 is not required, people will think it is. I want less Phantom-of-the-opera wannabe and more young lady with a ponytail, too.

I've been thinking about it all day, and only now realized what pisses me off. Neither of these concepts is original.

I have recommended After Sundown RPG in a TTRPG thread here on GOG. A highly idiotic reviewer complained about its supposed unoriginality on SA. But a TTRPG doesn't need to be "original" - it *can* be, but it doesn't need to. There are TTRPGs about flower gods and snowflake knights and that's fine, but After Sundown is a game about pop culture monsters and that's absolutely fine too - because you need to be able to say "I'm a weretiger" and have that mean the same thing to every other person in the group (who are a robot, a necromancer and an insect hivemind respectively).

But the premise of a work of art in a single-user medium needs to be more original than that. Something like: You're a nominally absolutist ruler of an evil techophobic magocracy located in an artificial world(??) in the 22nd century. Evade diabolical plots! Win sea battles! Cast epic spells! Launch ballistic rockets! Sentence your enemies to death - or don't! Fly hovercars! Implement the Dijkstra algorithm for max points! Save universes!

TL;DR: any game that can be made into a non-shitty movie is never going to be awesome.

Already been brought up and added.

The "Plan 9 from Outer Space" of Kickstarter projects: Island Visitors

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/willieshi/island-visitors

Verily. Given the diverse nature of KS projects, this shouldn't even be a problem, but I can imagine some backers who have been on the fence finally deciding against backing the project if the developer doesn't have this spirit of sharing.

I think Kicking It Forward is a nice initiative, but you're bound to have double standards with this sort of thing.
Yeah saw this a while back and went like WUHHHHHH.

If somebody was so much on the fence backing a project they probably shouldn't fund it anyway.

I'd need to almost desperately in love with a concept before I would fund it. So far I haven't seen a project like that. (although some have come close)

They could end up damaging themselves with this move, if kicking it forward becomes less obvious then it could mean the number of projects taking part could fall. So maybe there are a bunch of projects just abusing the initiative, but is it not better to have that than no kicking it forward at all or an extremely ineffective one?

A Cautionary Tail
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/513958374/a-cautionary-tail-0
Watch the trailer on their site and listen to the divine voice of Cate Blanchett.