I do find myself thinking it odd that people are justifying that Obsidian needs the dollars where Garriot doesn't. Neither of them need the money - they can both get backers elsewhere. You know who could use the money? Haiti. But Haiti doesn't make video games for us do they?
I do find myself thinking it odd that people cast discussing this - the effects on planning/execution that might be seen with the primary need for the kickstarter being for generating visibility and excitement vs. raw money to fund a project -as justifying one project while labeling the other as undeserving.
There is a difference in the reason the two companies went on kickstarter. Yes there are some who conflate their different reasons for being on kickstarter with one deserving to be there and the other not. Disagreeing with the judgment of their motivations being different in terms of one being more or less justifiable does not require pretending they're exactly the same things. Lord British doesn't need your money to make the game, but I'm sure it helps. Obsidian doesn't really need the engaged and active community of people who've already given them their money, but I'm sure they don't mind having it. They just needed different things to achieve their goals.
Obsidian's goal is an infinity engine style RPG in an original setting free from publisher-friendly established IPs, metacritic-tied bonuses, and the reluctance of those other sorts of backers to put non-trivial kinds of money on something that doesn't sound like a AAA blockbuster or provide opportunities for monetization such as microtransactions. To happen that needs the money from a massive kickstarter first and foremost.
Lord British's goal - more of a longer term vision - is a thriving and engaged player base which grows out of a successor to the best of the classic Ultimas to provide opportunities for the kinds of online social RPG experiences that Richard Garriot has consistently described as being the thing that keeps him interested in making games. The game itself as a deliverable - he's got the money for that and he's been pretty up-front about funding not being a problem. But he also needs the kind of engaged, emotionally invested community that comes with a massively succesful kickstarter for that game - amazing or not - to the volume and staying power to create the social experience he's interested in. He also needs the excitement and publicity these kickstarters generate since even though I think he's absolutely serious about delivering a game that the most die hard ultima 7 fans will love, he also is going to need to attract a larger player base because I think too many of us might not be interested enough in the online parts to create a thriving and long-lived social RPG he'd like to see.
And why it matters? Well I think that because he was more interested in getting that kickstarter community and the visibility, they may have neglected how driving fast moving funding totals high and and doing so early plays into the visibility part. To that extent I think that because they weren't particularly worried that they wouldn't get enough money, they didn't spend enough time worrying about how to structure things like pledges to drive the headline-grabbing totals that help get the free publicity and they didn't offer low-enough priced unlimited tiers to drive the numbers of backers Garriot might end up wanting to ensure there's enough of us giving the social part he really wants to be loved a chance.
I lament the missed opportunity that represents. I really think that with maybe a little more planning in terms of competitive pledge tier structuring compared to projects with an overlapping audience, they could have at least come a lot closer to records. Even the way the helped make up some of the last 50k they had to their goal - by adding more 10k and new 3.5k slots instead of ones that would attract thousands more ordinary backers - seems like maybe there was a more effective strategy. I am confident he intends to put out a game that even those with no interest in the multiplayer will thoroughly enjoy. I also kind of think that if it doesn't get the headlines and publicity and large diverse backer community and post launch sales needed to keep a thriving online presence past 6 months after launch, it might crush him to if it looks like the thing he's really excited for and has been talking about in one way or another since ultima online is the part the fans weren't interested in.