Mr. Abel says he is still stinging from an especially harsh beat-down at the hands of "some 12-year-old girls from Japan" in a giant-robot game called Chromehounds.
"It's about getting feedback from players before it's even finished and getting players really excited about it throughout the process, " said Jim Rossignol, co-founder of indie game studio Big Robot, which used Kickstarter to get funds to finish a game called Sir, You Are Being Hunted.