I agree with what’s been said, the reputation of the person launching the Kickstarter is a more important concern than Kickstarter itself. In addition to seeing what if any campaigns they’ve launched I also look at their backing history to see if they also support others in the community. Not that reciprocation is necessarily expected, but it also shows a level of awareness of and involvement with the wider community.
And communication is key, both in terms of frequency of updates and in providing satisfactory responses to questions. All the brewers mentioned above are great about keeping in touch because they’re great people, and they know the value of maintaining their reputation and that of the community.
As for Mystic Searches, I missed the boat on backing Mystic Searches on Kickstarter but did manage to put in pre-orders for both Mystic Searches and Mystic Origins before they closed it on their website. I don’t get any updates there, so I have to either check the Kickstarter page for updates or send a direct email, and to his credit Joe is usually very quick to respond to emails. My concern though is that the last time I messaged him, I got a weird response. Earlier this year I noticed on the Kickstarter page that they were offering copies of Mystic Origins to people that didn’t want to wait for Mystic Searches. So I thought, cool maybe that means he’ll be fulfilling pre-orders for Mystic Origins soon after he’s taken care of anyone on Kickstarter that wanted to get a copy. I messaged Joe and said hey I saw you offering copies of Mystic Origins to backers, does that mean that you’ll be sending out copies to those who pre-ordered on your website soon too? And he responded that he made some extras, told me to keep watching, and pasted a link to the NESmaker Facebook group. This confused me for several reasons because I had said I ordered off the website so 1) why am I looking for a giveaway and 2) why didn’t you order enough to cover pre-orders you collected. I get that he’s busy and gets no end of crap from his Kickstarter backers, but his response made me feel not listened to. I checked my pre-order status and as far as I could tell no money was collected, so I cancelled the order for Mystic Origins (keeping in place my pre-order for Mystic Searches) and managed to find someone’s resold copy of Mystic Origins on eBay.