Tue, May 01, 2012 | 20:13 BST

Over $20m pledged to game Kickstarters but only 25% reach funding goals

Gaming Kickstarters have accumulated $20 million in pledges, according to the New York Times, with Shadowrum Returns, Wasteland 2, and Double Fine Adventure the highest earners, respectively. Not all succeed as well as the aforementioned projects though, said a Kickstarter representative speaking to Kotaku, who said only 25% of game projects reach funding goals compared to 45% of all projects posted through Kickstarter. Game projects are in fourth place on the donation list behind film/video, music and design categories.

2 comments

Goffee
01/05/12, 9:21 pm

Here’s hoping the ace looking Starlight Inception (PC and PS Vita) gets its funding – http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/732317316/starlight-inceptiontm

freedoms_stain
01/05/12, 11:43 pm

Games are kind of a different kettle of fish to most of the other types of project on Kickstarter.

A lot of Kickstarters are for physical products that have already been designed and fully costed, at their funding goal it’s a matter of putting the chain together from suppliers to manufacturers to shipping a finished product to backers.

Music albums are usually written and rehearsed, the cash is usually for recording and mastering, there isn’t a huge amount of risk there that the artist is going to overrun their budget and no album will result, especially if we’re talking proven pro musicians who have a big enough fan base to attract enough funding on Kickstarter – these guys know what they’re doing in a recording studio.

Games on the other hand, anyone who follows the industry KNOWS that games are expensive, they get delayed, they get shit-canned all the time, and yes, sometimes Developers overrun their budget and go bust and their half finished games never see the light of day.

So yeah, not surprised gaming Kickstarters are below average on the success rate because I reckon they’re considerably higher risk on the chances of seeing no return on your investment. I’m still apprehensive about Serellan’s Takedown project – I only backed that one in the dying days because I really wanted to see what sort of game they’d produce if they got their funding (which they did).