They would have certainly passed 4.16 million or whatever even without Kickstarter, it would take them only slightly longer. They would also get similar press coverage. I do believe that in an alternate history without Kickstarter, we would still be looking at ~$180 million pledged right now, maybe minus a handful of $ million. Vast majority of this money was pledged long after the Kickstarter thing was done and forgotten. I just dont see what is so significant about Kickstarter and as far as I remember, it was just a way to enable pledging for the minority of those who could not or did not want to use the official site and was always of secondary importance even during the initial crowdfunding campaign, much less later. Of course all this alternate history stuff is pure speculation and if you want to believe otherwise, be my guest, I can correct some factual errors here and there but cant really positively prove you wrong, lol
I think Kickstarter is significant in another way too, it's significant in that it represents a shift in Chris Robert's thinking.
The original pitch was about raising money to secure additional money from interested investors. When Roberts started making a ton of money, he forgot about investors (presumably) and just thought about all the money he wasn't getting. He went on kickstarter despite saying previously that he wouldn't. And then they opened up funding even after the campaign finished.
So Kickstarter is also significant in that it was at the forefront of a shift in Robert's apparent thinking where, the campaign wasn't raising money to impress investors, but instead just raising all the money from everyone that it could. And then instead of having 2 million + investors and a limited scope, the scope was suddenly unlimited and years later- still no finished game.
