The Game Designer - Kickstarter and Feature Creep.
I have supported Kickstarter projects in the past, and I have never had
an expectation that the scope of a project would increase if the funding
exceeded expectations (unless this is explicitly specified with stretch
goals). For me personally, I wouldn't have gotten mad if Double Fine had
simply delivered what they promised and "pocketed" the extra money. If they
are getting paid accordingly to do what they love, without having to work
for a big evil publisher, they will almost certainly make more games. So any
"extra" money is just going into those future products.
My logic on this is that the crowd-funding paradigm looks to me an awful
like the "pre-ordering" paradigm. You pay ahead of time for a product, in
exchange for some positive benefit. In software, this benefit might be a
lower price or a bonus game level, or even just the assurance that you will
get the game on launch day instead of having to waiting in line. This is the
customer/publisher relationship. If a traditional game publisher has more
pre-orders than planned, they don't expand their scope accordingly. In fact,
the very idea is silly. If EA projects that Madden pre-sales will be 250K
and they hit 300K, the development team doesn't run back to the studio and
try to squeeze in an extra feature before launch.