Popular crowdfunding website Kickstarter has revealed numbers for 2015 which specially specify the numbers raised through games (video games and tabletops). According to the company, the website drew close to a million backers pledging $144 million on 7,466 projects out which 2,259 were successful, which is disappointing with a 30.3 per cent overall success rate.
Of $144 million raised, tabletop games had a major share of pie with $88.91 million coming through more than 500,000 backers. Elan Lee, Shane Small, and Matthew Inman’s Exploding Kittens was the star of this section which became the most backed project in Kickstarter history and also the most funded games project ever with $8.8 million from 219,000 backers.
Video games though have played a second fiddle to tabletop games, it is still a sizeable amount that video games have managed to earn, a whopping $46.17 million. Backed by 480,000 people with 374 fully funded projects indicating that 2015 was significantly better than 2014.
Leading the way was Shenmue III which raised more than $6.3 million from 69,000 backers. Castlevania developer Koji Igarashi’s Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was the second biggest Kickstarter video game project of the year with $5.5 million pledged to it.
Although, Kickstarter is one of the biggest platforms to crowdfund games, it’s not the only platform for crowdfunding. Platforms like Indiegogo, Fig, Gambitious and 8-bit Funding are different ways via which potential games can be funded.