I don't think that exclusives should really be the driving force behind any KS. A proper use of stretch goals and communication are far more important.
The incentive to pledge a game, for me, is not about getting stuff that no one else can get. It's about allowing the producers to see, before they start making committments to production, how much interest they can expect in the game, so that they can then make it as good a game as possible without going bankrupt. As opposed to the more traditional model, where they just have to make their best educated guess which will almost always involve cutting ideas in order to make absolutely certain that they don't sink too much money into it.
And it's about allowing the most interested customers, ie, the ones that are willing to show up to the riskier enterprise of Kickstarter rather than wait for retail, to provide some significant feedback to the designers. Maybe catch things they hadn't thought of or push them one way or another on an issue they were on the fence about.
Those two together, when done properly, ensure that the game everyone gets can have more great stuff, better quality components, and so on. Whereas, if no one was willing to bother with Kickstarter, sure, you might still be able to eventually buy the game at a store - but will it be as good a game as you could have had if there had been a successful kickstarter?
The incentive to pledge a game, for me, is not about getting stuff that no one else can get. It's about allowing the producers to see, before they start making committments to production, how much interest they can expect in the game, so that they can then make it as good a game as possible without going bankrupt. As opposed to the more traditional model, where they just have to make their best educated guess which will almost always involve cutting ideas in order to make absolutely certain that they don't sink too much money into it.
And it's about allowing the most interested customers, ie, the ones that are willing to show up to the riskier enterprise of Kickstarter rather than wait for retail, to provide some significant feedback to the designers. Maybe catch things they hadn't thought of or push them one way or another on an issue they were on the fence about.
Those two together, when done properly, ensure that the game everyone gets can have more great stuff, better quality components, and so on. Whereas, if no one was willing to bother with Kickstarter, sure, you might still be able to eventually buy the game at a store - but will it be as good a game as you could have had if there had been a successful kickstarter?