"Is Kickstarter a new way to cut game publishers out of the picture?"

[kane_magus]

Personally, I hope this new Kickstarter trend has the giant publishers like EA and Activision and such quaking in their boots. The beginning of the end for them, however? That's probably still a very long way off, sadly. Only when this starts becoming viable for all devs big and small, and not just the big guns like Tim Schafer and Brian Fargo (which it very well could, if the Kicking It Forward thing takes off), would I say that the need for big publishers, and all the heavy baggage that comes with them, has truly passed, sadly. But even so, I can always hope that day will come sooner rather than later.