2019 Was a Record Year for Games on Kickstarter
2019 was another successful year for gaming projects on Kickstarter. Unfortunately, by this we mean mainly tabletop games, which completely dominated the category and their successes are the reason for the growth.
Gamasutra published an interesting analysis of last year's results on Kickstarter in the games category. The Group recorded a solid growth, but this was mainly due to board and tabletop games.
In 2019, Kickstarter users donated $208.3 million to successful game fundraisers. This compares to 192.6 million in 2018 and 163.5 million in 2017,so you can see a constant upward trend.
In the past year, 3,731 games reached the minimum target, while the campaigns of 3,312 games failed. This was the first time that the number of crowdfunding successes was greater than failures.
Last year's biggest hit on Kickstarter in the games category was the board game Etherfields by the Polish company Awaken Realms, which raised 3.8 million punds, or more than $5 million. The release is scheduled for March this year.
2019 at Kickstarter:
Category: | Amount raised by successful campaigns: | Number of successful campaigns: | Number of projects that failed: |
Board games | $176.3 million | 2 712 | 1 332 |
Video games | $16.3 million | 380 | 1 048 |
Board games
Out of the 208.3 million dollars donated by users, as much as 176.3 million were spent on board and tabletop games, an increase of about 11 million dollars compared to the previous year.
2,712 collections were successful and 1,332 projects failed. The first group recorded an increase of 376 games compared to 2018, while the second group recorded a decrease of 24. In total, 67% of collections in the board games category were successful last year.
Interestingly, the number of funded productions is growing faster than the total number of crowdfunding actions launched on the site, which bodes well for the future of Kickstarter.
Video games
Last year, users of the site donated $16.3 million to successful video game collections, less than a million more than in 2018. The minimum target was exceeded by 380 campaigns, while 1048 projects failed.
It's clear that it's harder for video game developers to achieve success on Kickstarter than for board game developers. What is interesting is the fact that the share of projects settled in euros and Canadian dollars has increased.
In this category, the greatest success of last year was the PC game Subverse, a hybrid of shooter and turn-based strategy with strong erotic elements. During the collection, the title raised 1.67 million punds, or about $2.2 million.
