Game Kickstarters raise $43,000 on average

Last year saw a jump in the amount of money pledged to games on Kickstarter, but the cash was divided between fewer projects.

That’s courtesy of a new look into the crowdfunding platform from Ico Partners, which reports that $41.9 million was pledged last year versus $20.1 in 2014. However, the increased total was still short of the record $48.2 million raised in 2013.

Despite the money going up, more projects than ever failed to secure funding – 1,850, contrasted with 1,688 in 2014.

Just 373 video games successfully reached their target, compared to 421 the year before and 436 in 2013.

Compared to other categories under Kickstarter’s ‘Games’ umbrella, video games are among the most prosperous for creators.

The average amount raised by a funded video games project is $43,000 – more than quadruple the $9,700 generated on average by tabletop efforts such as board games.

This number is being boosted by a growing number of large-scale games that generate potentially millions in funding.

The number of projects that successfully raised more than $500,000 quadrupled to 16 from 4 in 2015. Although last year was notable for highly successfully campaigns for titles such as Bloodstained, Yooka-Laylee (pictured) and Shenmue 3, that’s still shy of the 20 and 21 $500,000-plus projects funded in 2012 and 2013, respectively.

There was also a growth in cheaper projects. 183 titles raised under $10,000 in 2015, versus 178 in 2014 and 169 in 2013.

The number of titles that gathered between $10,000 and $500,000 shrank, with totals of between $50,000 and $500,000 seeing the biggest drop-off year-on-year.

As Kickstarter continues to establish itself as a viable route to funding a game, there has understandably been a boom in unsuccessful efforts to bring titles to market.

A tenth of all video game Kickstarter projects last year raised $0 – but this is still below Kickstarter’s average ‘junk’ rate of one fifth.

Meanwhile, suspended campaigns peaked in 2015, multiplying by nearly five times to leap to 19 cancelled projects, versus just four in 2014.

“Despite seeing a larger amount of money being raised for video games, I would put 2015 at the same level as 2014,” observed Ico Partners CEO Thomas Bidaux.

“There has been a small decline in the total number of projects being funded – no bubble bursting here IMHO – and opening up to more European countries didn’t have any significant effect for video games.

“Overall, it seems crowdfunding for games [is getting] a bit more sophisticated, increasing the bar for funding, while still being a very beneficial process for the few projects perfectly fit for the model, such as Shenmue 3 and Bloodstained last year.”