Amazon has strict rules about sending yourself money through Amazon payments. Visa/Mastercard see it as an illegal cash advance, or money laundering. They could step into the gray area and pay someone cash to back their project, or promise to repay them later. If I were in this situation, I feel confident that I could call someone and ask for a $28 pledge. A post on Reddit or HN would have done the trick most likely.
I think the simple way around that mess is to give $28 to your friend, brother, aunt, uncle, girlfriend, or anyone else you know with a pulse that will follow through.
I'm a little confused as to why they wouldn't have done exactly that.
It's been pointed out in other comments that they were $828 down in the final seconds, and someone pledged $800. It could be that they did reach out to someone for that pledge. Though if that were the case, why didn't that person pledge $828?
This was a rare feat to come so close to the goal and fall short (http://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats). 81% of projects that reach 20% are ultimately successful, and only 0.005% of failed projects reach 81%-99% of their goal.
I think the real failure was not making a stronger final push in the last few days of the campaign instead of the last few seconds. They also should have timed the ending better. Saturday night is when people go out. Sunday evening people are online, and Monday morning after the first of the month is good because a lot of people will be online at work right after payday.
It is very lame. I take it as a sign that the people behind it would likely have mis-managed things. The failure to keep an eye on things, or find that last push that was needed, is a red flag.
The people behind it were pushing for investments at the last minute. Timing was bad -- there are tons of messages from people after the fact who said, "Sorry, if I'd only known in time!" -- and they did make up an $800 short-fall in the last seconds before it ended.
It's pretty harsh to judge a team you've never met by one external symptom that actually has nothing to do with their ability to create the product.
I think the guy himself was not too eager to continue the project. Looking at his statement, he seems a little too willing to give up. Perhaps he thought the response was too lukewarm to continue. Most likely he needs much more than $50 000 to make this worth-while and the kick starter campaign made him feel like he would not get many future sales.
He really did come across as disappointed, and as if he'd still be so even if the project just barely met the funding threshold. But I wouldn't go as far as saying he was not too eager to continue the project. He sounds like this is his passion and he still wants it to see the light of day. He was probably dreaming big dreams of overfunding when he started the campaign--and this was a blow too hard to take. When $50k actually isn't half bad for an indie game.
I guess many people tend to look only into Kickstarter's huge successes and assume it's the norm. Really it's a small part of successful projects. I can tell this guy didn't dig much deeper into the Kickstarter dynamics when he has walls of text explaining pledges where simple "plus all previous tiers" would do--and would mean the difference of him getting funded, maybe even generously overfunded.
I hate to be mean and kick them when they are down, but quite frankly this might speak to their ability to execute on their final product.
$28 dollars shy of an all-or-nothing $50,000 in free (relatively) seed money, and they let it slip through their fingers? Call your Grandmother and get her to kick in.
If I'm anywhere close to $50,000 from a kickstarter campaign, I'm busting my ass to make sure I hit the goal. There shouldn't be an excuse for this. It's unacceptable.
Bingo; or at least $828 short, and as they were frantically contacting people, no one was home.
Lots of apologies later, but that doesn't make a project happen. Bad timing.
There's a bit of discussion on the Colorado IGDA list, which is how I know. I also know Christopher, and he is absolutely serious about making the game.
He was disappointed that so many people from the first KickStarter bailed on the second, though; the first one made it to $100k+.
