I am not a huge user of Kickstarter. Many people who promise to create the game of your dreams are either downright frauds, or they are kidding themselves on the complexity of such a project. Good game designers are quite frequently bad project managers, because those two skills require very different mindsets. So I tend to stay away from video game Kickstarter projects. After all, if the game succeeds, I can still buy it later.

The same isn't necessarily true with projects that involve physical objects. Last year I backed two projects: Tinker Gearcoins and Rollable 4-sided dice. As both of these are small private initiatives, it isn't obvious that one could buy these products later, at least not easily. Being a backer is sometimes even the only way to ever get that product.

Nevertheless the problem of project management doesn't go away if you deal in plastic instead of bits and bytes. The dice were funded in May last year, and had an estimated delivery date of September. The coins were funded in August, with an estimated delivery date of November. Guess what? I haven't received either yet. But the updates suggest that both projects are still advancing, they are just late, not stopped.

The real test will be whether the products, once they arrive, will be as good as promised. I'll keep you up to date on that when it happens.