I’m planning to launch a Kickstarter for Monster Zoo in the coming months and have been in research mode trying to learn as much as I can about successful Kickstarter projects.
Using the data Kickstarter provides for the Games Category (note this includes Video Games as well since Kickstarter does not break out stats by Video Games and Tabletop), I did some analysis to better understand what projects succeed and what were some of the key metrics I would need to keep track of for my future campaign.
I built these charts using Kickstarter data available on April 9th, 2013.
A little more than 30% of all projects are successful. If you look at just the finished projects, the rate for success increases a little.
This brings up the success rate to almost 35%. That said, there is still a huge chance for most projects to not succeed. The ones that do succeed generally have funding levels that are under $10,000.
There are just as many projects that fund in the $10K-100K range as there are in the sub $10K range. Based on the data, I think the sweet spot is under $20K, with over 60% of all funded projects in the Games category ending in that funding range.
For unsuccessful projects, the major hump is still getting past the 20% funded range. More than 80% of failed projects do not reach beyond 20% funding. Once a project reaches 40% funding, there’s only about 8% chance that it won’t fund.
My takeaways from the data:
- Set a realistic funding goal – under $20K is a good goal
- Really push for the 40% funding goal early to improve chances for success
You might want to take a more indepth study of how tabletop games (board games, card games and,miniature games) do on Kickstarter. I think you’ll find your statistics will vary significantly. I was surprised to see so many unsuccessful projects until I realized you were including all games, not just focusing on physical board/card/miniature games. While I’ve never seen researched numbers, the general word among a wide range board game makers seems to be that Kickstarter is a great way to go.
That being said, I feel your take aways are valid.
I’d love do a more indepth study but Kickstarter is not exposing that type of data. Any idea where I can get the data?
Sadly I do not. I’m not even sure how you got the data you did. I do know that the Kickstarter website will sub-divide the gaming category into tabletop and video games if you force it to list all the projects, so the projects must somehow be easily divided/categorized.
You might look at the Kicktraq.com website, which provides tracking and statistics on all the Kickstarter projects past and present. It might have tools to help you aggregate all the data, or contacting them might yield some new ways to get samples.
If you do find a useful way to collect this data, it would be awesome if you shared it.
Nojh – I got my data for the article here: http://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats.
Nice article! although Id agree that computer games and tabletop games are actually VERY different beasts.
I’m also interested in whether there has been a trend, at least for tabletop games, for more games to fail more and more overfund wildly, with less being average.
I’ve heard this mentioned before and i think I’ve noticed it anecdotally too.
Also wondering whether the average fund level for table top games that do succeed has increased over the past 2 years and what its trajectory is.