Oh, wow, the Kickstarter page wasn't live when I first posted the Kotaku link. But yeah, those are some pretty wimpy "support" rewards for folks who can only spare a few bucks.
Woot, an email? Kickstarter sends you free automatic emails anyway whenever the group who set up the Kickstarter sends out an update.
I'm not gonna complain about the $59 option for a physical-only copy of the game - that's fine by me. Not a big fan of downloading games, and $59 for any sort of game that comes with some goodies is a pretty good deal. I mean, I paid $80 for Catherine's pizza box and boxer shorts (that I will never be able to wear even if I wanted to). And they do say that the game is approximately $49 with $10 shipping. Which sounds a bit steep to me, but hey, it happens.
To add on to the Kickstarter queries:
- you don't get charged until both the campaign is over and the project has reached its goal amount (I've sponsored a few less successful art kickstarters and was never charged when the campaign ended)
- you're always welcome to go back and change your pledge amount (and reward separately) if the campaign hasn't ended yet
- after pledging an amount, you'll get emails from the Kickstarter group regarding any sort of changes to the rewards or other updates
But yes, I agree that $500,000 is a bit much. It'd be one thing if they wanted to get the game out (as that is usually the case with videogame Kickstarters), but the whole thing smells a little pretentious whether they intended that or not. I mean, Double Fine only wanted $400,000 but you could get the game and give input on its production for as little as $15.