Technical prowess is just a starting point. Having the diligence and motivation to marry that craft to a nice playing game is the real trick - and it was sometimes very difficult/impossible to have that happen when you ran these projects commercially.
I think it's hilarious these days to see kickstarter punters start to learn a little of what it is like to "work" with games developers, especially the kinds of projects which are a bit of an experiment. It's not the full picture, nor the same context (ks is supposed to be a kind of pre-order, rather than a monetry investment/return, but there is something of an emotional/time/engagement investment on the part of someone who follows a project), but it certainly helps illuminate the kind of BS that publishers get themselves into when working in this field. Learning that ambition and reality rarely go in hand (smoothly), dealing with creep, projecting your wishes/understanding onto someone elses project, deadlines and promises, how to reign it all into something sensible and who you can ultimately trust with your cash - it's a really intriguing situation.
So, yeah I don't believe everything I've been told by these guys, I'm not sure there's as much game here as I'd like, but they still seem to have done a fantastic job, taken good advice/help whenever they could and honestly seem to have done a real good job with more honest love for what they do than most ... plus done it in a very reasonable time frame.
It is easy to be salty on the ng version, because it is kind of the other version for crazy people. BUT if you were on the dev team and this kind of thing was your area of interest there's no way you wouldn't like to do a ng version if you found you could - so yeah I think it's more an extra for them than you, but of course you can buy it if you'd like it.