I love video games, I love the escapism, I love nerd culture. People willing to pay $1000 for a virtual spaceship are people I care about, and they deserve better.
Being a bad investor is not an illness. Just because we don't die easily anymore does not mean that our environment isn't hostile, that natural selection does not exist.
Some people want to have fulfilling lives that make the world a better place and become doctors, and nurses, and teachers, and cops, and firefighters, ... and work long hours, with little holiday, for little pay.
Others want to enjoy their every moment on earth, learn to exploit their environment for profit, and this is how it looks like nowadays. There are always people that are smarter than you, and there are always people that aren't.
Crowdfunding is great because it gives you access to thousands of non-professional investors that have too much money and don't know what they are doing. People who want a game go and buy a game, but these people made an investment. If that's bad, it is IMO their own fault.
Investment implies monetary return. so if the thing you're investing in is financially successful, you actually make more money than you put in. that doesn't describe kickstarter/indigogo style crowdfunding.
A campaign that says "give us x money and we will give you y reward with an intended time scale of z" (which is most kickstarters) is clearly (IMO) a sale.
You are a customer, paying money for a product.
There are crowd-funded investment platforms, which have different, more stringent, requirements, but Kickstarter is not one of them.
A $10 ticket to Avengers:Endgame is a downright bargain, so is $15 a month for HBO.
I give $60+ dollars on the regular to companies like Rockstar and From Software with a huge smile on my face and then line up to do it again.
It is very possible to be successful and not rely on predatory practices. I think part of the problem is that as a society it is our responsibility collectively to punish the true predators. We seem to be getting worse and worse at this and the predators seem to be getting hungrier and hungrier...