Kickstarter and games in 2017

Leading Kickstarter Game Categories

Compared to 2016, the changes are significant. Games represent 26% of all the money collected in 2017 and 15% of all funded projects.



Two very important aspects are worth noting here.

Firstly, the total amount of money collected by game projects in 2017 increased significantly. Secondly, the total number of games that tried their luck on this platform remained approximately the same: in total, less than 7,000 campaigns were organized, but compared to the previous year, more of them reached their financial goals.

We can assume that the platform has reached a higher stage of growing up - projects seeking funding better understand what they need to achieve their financial goals. Compared to 2016, in 2017 more than 15% of game projects were funded.



More money was raised at all project levels. Of course, the top division, projects with a goal of $ 500k and more, represent a large share of the money raised: these projects alone raised $ 70m. But the number of successful projects seeking support in the amount of $ 100k to $ 500K has also increased compared to the previous year and makes up almost a third of all the money raised in 2017.

The number of projects in the top division has not changed compared to 2016 - in 2017, more than $ 500k collected 38 game projects, the same number as last year. A small proportion of large projects raised significant amounts. Noteworthy is the Kingdom Death Monster 1.5 , which was the No. 1 project in the games category, collecting $ 12.4m, and The 7th Continentwho raised alone $ 7m. Together, these two campaigns represent more than 12% of all money received in the 2017 games category. Not surprisingly, both of them are board game projects, and both are sequels / reprints of already successful projects with Kickstarter.



If you look at the subcategories, the number of sponsored video game projects has fallen slightly since 2016. There are much fewer card projects and general game projects. But, more importantly, the number of board game projects has increased significantly, by 18% compared to 2016.

And of course, almost the entire increase in the total amount of money collected by game projects is associated with a subcategory of board games.

Take a look at the small subcategories

• Games is a general category that includes all projects that are not covered by existing tags. In 2017, its size doubled, both in the total number of sponsored projects and in the amount of money collected. It is still relatively small, because it contains only those strange projects that are difficult to attribute to something specific, but it was worth mentioning. So that you understand what type of projects are included here, I will present the best two projects of 2017. Both are golf related: Chip-Down: Golf for the Non-Golfer and Beer Pong Golf: Golf Spieth Can't Master
• Gaming Hardware - in 2017, more projects for gaming equipment were funded, but not one of them became a megahit. But still it’s worth noting that more projects than the previous year (five in 2017, and only one in 2016) crossed the $ 100k bar. And if you're interested, the Dreamcade Replay retro console has become the largest project in the category .
• Live Games is a niche subcategory, its performance in 2017 decreased slightly, for the first time after the time it was added. For the first time in this subcategory, one project overcame the $ 100k barrier. However, he is a little out of the general series of projects presented here, and probably closer to the two above-mentioned golf projects in the Games subcategory. Take a look at CHIPPO: The New Golf Game for Beach, Backyard & Tailgate .
• Mobile Games - I usually recommend that people don’t raise funds for mobile games with crowdfunding, so I’m pretty biased when analyzing this category. In 2017, a total of more than $ 500k was collected in it. I think this is roughly the same as Supercell’s Clash of Clans marketing budget. Nevertheless, 37 projects were funded in this category, that is, approximately 10% of all submitted projects, much lower than the average for game projects. One project raised more than $ 100k, this is the Epic Digital Card Game , but it turned out to be the port of a very successful board game.
• Playing Cards is the third largest subcategory. In 2017, there was some growth in it, both in the total amount of money collected (+ 21%) and in the number of successfully sponsored projects (+ 19%). It is worth noting that this year the project from the Playing Cards category appeared for the first time, raising more than $ 500k - The Name of the Wind Art Deck scored $ 630k.
• Puzzles is the smallest of all game subcategories, in 2016 it funded 17 projects, and in 2017 - 18 projects. The total amount of money received is less than half the amount of 2016, but with such a small number of projects, large fluctuations can be expected.

Now let's look at two large subcategories.

Video Game Stable Year

There was a slight increase in the total amount of money received, along with a slight decrease in the total number of sponsored projects, so 2017 was not an exception for video games on Kickstarter.

However, it is worth noting a few points:

• The total number of video game projects published on Kickstarter is growing faster than the decrease in the number of funded projects. This means that the proportion of funded projects is growing.
• This year, for the first time, we saw a decrease in the number of sponsored projects in the interval “Less than $ 10,000 raised”. Another interval in which the decline appeared was the interval from $ 50k to $ 100k. That is, in 2017, noticeable changes occurred with small hobby projects, as well as with projects raising from $ 50,000 to $ 100,000. At all other levels, the number of funded projects in 2016 and 2017 remained approximately the same.

My theory is that the reason for reducing the number in the lower range is that fewer creators are trying to crowdfunding their projects, and this directly affects this interval more than the rest. Kickstarter is not as often mentioned in the media as it used to be, and is no longer considered a platform viable for small projects.



2017 has generally been a more successful year for video games issued for US dollars (USD) and Canadian dollars (CAD). A larger share of projects in these currencies is sponsored than in euros (EUR) and pounds (GBP).

It seemed interesting to me that they found funding for 12 video game projects launched from Mexico, even though they received a small amount as a result. Also noteworthy is the lack of projects launched through the Japanese version of the portal, especially when you consider that some of the most sponsored video games are developed in Japan. Kickstarter's entry into the Japanese market in September 2017 looks like a failure so far, and the video games category is the best illustration of this.

Board Games: Kickstarter Overlords

These two graphs tell the most important history of 2017 indicators.

The Tabletop Games category has been growing steadily over the past few years, both in terms of the total amount collected and the number of funded projects. After a record 2016, this subcategory in 2017 grew again by 36%. The number of sponsored projects increased by 20%.

However, this growth raises questions. Is this subcategory stabilizing? Will it crash? Will she continue to grow?

There is no indication that the upward movement will slow in the near future, even if the record-breaking campaigns find it much harder to match the total amounts collected this year.

Now all the indicators in this subcategory look really healthy.



Growth was observed in all ranges of amounts. For me, this is a very important indicator of how healthy the environment is in this subcategory. If the results were good only for large, large-scale campaigns, then this would be a bad sign; but the growth of projects in all ranges shows that the ecosystem is not built on a pair of metaphorical "black swans", introducing inaccuracies in the interpretation of the picture.



Projects financed in different currencies also succeed. Despite the fact that projects in USD demonstrate a wide range of raised funds and the number of sponsored projects, projects in EUR and GBP also feel good and occupy more than 25% of the total number of projects that raised money.

It is especially interesting to watch campaigns that know that they will succeed when launched in USD, regardless of their geographical location. For example, the project of the 7th Continent of a Paris company was launched in USD, not in EUR.

To summarize

I recently made a presentation at PC Connects in London on the status of crowdfunding in video games. One of my conclusions was that Early Access became a much more serious competitor to Kickstarter than all other platforms. One of the reasons is that over the past year the optimal window for launching a crowdfunding video game campaign has moved closer and closer to the release of the game. This is how it manifested:


It is very interesting that for desktop games this window also moved. To receive funding, projects must become more and more polished, but the moment of physical production means that the optimal window cannot continue to move to the right.

Another important difference between video games and board games is that for the latest Kickstarter, in most projects it turns out to be the ultimate distribution method. While for video games, the ultimate selling method is Steam; Kickstarter helps a bit, but developers still need to go on Steam.

So if your game in alpha or beta version is already beautiful and replayable, and there are chances that it is already suitable for demonstration on Kickstarter, then it is suitable for launching in early access. Early access requires much less hassle, because you just need to decide on the ultimate platform for selling the game. However, early access does not provide many of the benefits provided by crowdfunding - creating a community around the game, the opportunity to test your publisher skills and raising awareness about the game; but I suspect that for most studios this is secondary, or they underestimate such aspects.

This is also true, and this is a strong trend that many Kickstarter video game projects are games that by their nature do not have a lot of replayability (like Point-and-Click adventure games) or instant accessibility and appeal to the audience, which makes impossible for them the path of early access.

Methodology Note

As in previous posts on this topic, we used the data on the Kickstarter pages themselves (using Potion of Wit ) and the method of collecting them has its own problems. It is worth considering the indicated values ​​as estimates.