I was not aware that DF-9 had been kickstarted. In fact, I looked it up and can't find anything about that - the only games that Double Fine used kickstarter for was Broken Age and Massive Chalice.

What I seem to find is that the first two weeks of sale on Early Access sales paid for the investment [1], which may be what you are thinking about.

Anyway, I agree with your final point - in this model sales must pay for the salary of the team working on the project plus additional development costs, and that's much easier when you are a single indie developer. Double Fine seems to be too big for that.

I still maintain my position that, if you're paying to get in the alpha of a game, you should be prepared if it develops to be of a different genre of what you are expecting, if it focuses on different things, if it's cancelled, or if it's simply bad. You can get frustrated, sure, but not surprised.

[1] http://indie-fund.com/2013/11/spacebase-df-9-recoups-investm...