Two great Kickstarter examples

I've seen two really inspiring Kickstarter crowdfunding examples recently, both of which raided over one million dollars.  It's extraordinary (& inspiring) to think that so much money can be raised for what are essentially fun projects.

The first is Double Fine Adventure, a plan for a gaming studio to make a new game.  They're going through Kickstarter as an alternative to venture capital.  You can see why - they get the money, but don't need to give so much of the company back.  Plus, the Kickstarter investors can get involved in the creative process.  So far $2,214,778 has been raised from 65,000 backers.

The second is The Order of the Stick Reprint Drive.  The Order of the Stick is an out of print comic; the money raised will fund a reprint or one or more of the books.  Funding has now finished, and $1,254,120 was raised, from 15,000 backers.

What was very creative about both was the rewards for the different levels of investment - for example Order.. has multiple levels, going up by as little as one dollar, giving a bit more each time.

There's a great comment about how this is working on Metafilter:

"It's interesting that Kickstarter is turning into a preorder system for traditional forms of media, with the funding goals set so low that it will almost surely get funded.
Interesting because it gives us real data about how much money these media really need in order to exist.
Interesting once creators see that this is a solution to all the angst about piracy and copyright. If you can make the money you need up front, you can forget about DRM and just give your product away for free, let it be advertising for your next Kickstarter."