Your lack of faith is disturbing, slimgrin. These are people who have been around in game development since way back when, and have proven many times that they are in it for creating games, not making money. Now, the kind of games they want to make, and the same kind of games a lot of fans still want to play, are unfortunately the kind of games no publishers of today want to invest in - not enough profit, they say. Now, with Kickstarter, these game developers can completely circumvent these soulless publishers, and ask their fans directly to help fund their projects; the developers are finally allowed to make a game they want to make and the fans will be able to play a game they want to play.
And trust me, no-one would give money to some unknown person such as yourself (no offence) who promised to create a game if people gave you one million dollars. The situation when people like Tim Schafer and Brian Fargo ask the same - complete with a vision statement and philosophy to back it up - is completely different. This sort of funding is not that different from how it looks when game developers are pitching a project to a publisher, in hopes they'll get the necessary funding to make the project reality. The only difference is that the fans become the "publisher" in a way, allowing the developer to get the money needed from the target audience directly, rather than trying to appeal to some corporate machine that wants to put "FPS" into every title, and which has nothing else on its mind than to maximize monetary profit.
