Ian Bogost sees Kickstarter projects as "dreams":
We're paying for the sensation of a hypothetical idea, not the experience of a realized product. For the pleasure of desiring it. For the experience of watching it succeed beyond expectations or to fail dramatically. Kickstarter is just another form of entertainment.
Felix Salmon is skeptical:
Over time, I think that fewer projects will be able to raise millions of dollars selling clever as-yet-nonexistent gizmos for $99 each. These projects nearly always tend to understate the risks involved, and especially the risk that the project will fail, and the funders won’t actually receive anything at all. That’s natural: the founders are in sales-pitch mode. But as consumers get wise to those risks, especially if one or two high-profie million-dollar Kickstarter successes end up producing nothing at all, then at that point we’ll realize that the funders weren’t just buying a dream after all. They really thought they were buying a product.
The Dish 