Of course it's marketing, it's grassroots marketing. You're cutting out all of the middleman bullshit and forcing the audience to put its money where its mouth is. It's simply always going to get a better result. Pre-internet the issue would be visibility, and even still it is: there will be people that want the product that don't even know it's out there, that's a lot easier with a marketing campaign and a publisher and all of that jazz, but still the ease with which high profile kickstarters spread word of mouth these days is sufficient to reach most of the necessary audience for sure. It helps that gamers in general, at least the kind that would fund a game still in development, are a tech oriented group and are going to have high visibility for these projects.
I think a few people here think I'm like 'exposing' kickstarters trying to make them sound bad, that couldn't be any further from the truth. It's just interesting to watch the psychology of it all and exciting as a consumer to be around for this exciting period. Pillars and Wasteland represent my absolute favorite genre of all time, so believe me I'm super into all of this.
