The reason I use the lemon market analogy is that it is not always clear to the buyer what the level of risk is. Sure there are certain signals which indicate lower risk but I don't think there is yet enough data on completed projects to confirm this absolutely.
Some buyers are also savvier than others, for example is it riskier to fund an indie platformer or an arduino replacement? A HN reader might be able to guess but the general consumer might well have no idea.
There are also other factors, like might this fail because there isn't enough funding? or might this fail because it is just an outright scam?
So basically what we have is information asymmetry which will lead a lot of people to assume some mean level of risk in funding a project so the required value payoff will be higher than something bought off the shelf, what the "value coffecient" will be will take time to discover though.
The point is valid though that for example a game which I would love but would never be funded by a game studio might be worth $200 for me.
This is the problem. If people are thinking of themselves as consumers, rather than investors, then yes, you have a problem. This is why Kickstarter changed their rules on physical products, to not allow people to buy multiple quantities of something, in order to discourage people from treating it like a pre-order system.
Yeah, there's a certain amount of information asymmetry. I'm not sure you can ever do away with that, without killing the idea of crowdfunding entirely. If you require legal filings and financial disclosures and the like, all of a sudden you can't do it for small projects, you need to hire lawyers and accountants and things like that.
The best way to solve this is to convince people only to crowdfund people that they really trust. Don't look at an idea and say "hey, that's cool, I'll buy one of those." Look at the creator and say "this person can deliver, I'll give them some money to do so."
Some buyers are also savvier than others, for example is it riskier to fund an indie platformer or an arduino replacement? A HN reader might be able to guess but the general consumer might well have no idea.
There are also other factors, like might this fail because there isn't enough funding? or might this fail because it is just an outright scam?
So basically what we have is information asymmetry which will lead a lot of people to assume some mean level of risk in funding a project so the required value payoff will be higher than something bought off the shelf, what the "value coffecient" will be will take time to discover though.
The point is valid though that for example a game which I would love but would never be funded by a game studio might be worth $200 for me.