Kickstarter 2014: $1000 pledged every minute

Last year 3.3 million people from nearly every country on the Earth pledged over half a billion dollars (529 million to be exact) on Kickstarter. However the amount of fulfilled projects is not that mind-blowing: only 22,252.

There’s a number of pretty cool highlighted projects including a Hi-Fi portable music player from Neil Young (over $6 million pledged), an adventure game Thimbleweed Park from LucasArts veterans Ron Gilbert & Gary Winnick ($626k pledged) and (miraculously) a working hoverboard (510k pledged).

The most fruitful month for the Kickstarters was August 2014. Almost 2,300 projects were successfully funded on that day. January was the least successful as only 1,200 projects were supported. If you’re going to go on Kickstarter, try Wednesday as your “first night”. In 2014 this was the day of the week with the biggest amount of pledges.

“Games” category was among the most profitable. Over $89 million were pledged on interactive entertainment.

The most successful categories in 2014 were “Music” (4,000 projects) and “Film” (3,800 projects). Games were much less supported: less than 1,900 projects found the money. However “Games” category was among the most profitable: over $89 million were pledged on interactive entertainment, while “Film” got $66 million. This just goes to show you how expensive modern game development is. Most of the game project on Kickstarter can’t rely on crowdfunded money and usually turn to investors or publishers.

United States remains the country with the most generous backers. 2.2 million Americans pledged over $335 million dollars in total during 2014. Russia had only 8,700 backers, who contributed about $1.5 million.

Among the most backed projects of 2014 was a Kingdom Come: Deliverance – a medieval-themed game with 35,000 backers. This project managed to gather over 1 million pounds. And went on to gather over $2.2 million after the Kickstarter campaign. The game was presented on Kickstarter, when it was well into development and gamers really liked a full-fledged game with glorious visuals.

Overall Kickstarter was not that good for games. There are fewer projects and less money. This is only natural as new crowdfunding platforms begin to appear and developers try new innovative ways to gather donations from the public. Kickstarter may have lost its gaming vibe, but crowdfunding will continue to be a valuable source of money for game developers.

Source: Kickstarter