Crowdfund Bookie June 2013: $3.1 million in gravy
The Crowdfund Bookie crunches data from select successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns that ended during the week and produces pretty charts for you to look at.
If June's numbers are to be believed, backers of game projects on Kickstarter and Indiegogo are more than happy to keep donating long after initial goals are met. For the month of June in crowdfunding, 23 video game projects raised a total of $5,594,469, thanks to the contributions of 97,954 people; 55.69 percent ($3,115,579) of that money was beyond the combined goals of those 23 projects. This helped games like Armikrog reach stretch goals for things such as a Wii U port.
A case can be made that reaching stretch goals for additional content and platforms is important to funders, and may also explain the month's higher average pledge amount of $57.11. The average backer in June spent nearly enough on crowdfunding as if they'd bought a brand-new retail console game. In some cases, it guaranteed players bonus content or DRM-free versions of the games they helped fund, which isn't as common with regular retail purchases. This sets the foundation for an argument that crowdfunding a game's development could be of better value to the end consumer.
Breaking down the 23 projects into general genre-based categories, we find that strategy games were the kings of crowdfunding in June. Six strategy games earned $3,610,381 thanks to 50,513 funders. That's due mostly to Hex and Double Fine's Massive Chalice, which combined for 97.14 percent of the genre ($3,507,270).
Meanwhile, three games in the shooter genre saw 1,353 combined funders average $94.72 per pledge, the highest average of all the genre catagories in June. Obviously, this smaller group of funders embodied the "tip of the bell curve," a statistically-extreme group that were willing to lay down much higher pledge amounts for shooter game projects. RPGs were on the opposite end of the spectrum, as four projects in the genre combined for an average of $24.75 per pledge.
Below is the month's breakdown by genre, as well as a list of June's top five projects.
Action: $155,595 (777.94%) by 6,049 people ($25.72 mean average)
Adventure: $1,020,823 (109.32%) by 20,011 people ($51.01 mean average)
Fighting: $21,607 (432.14%) by 417 people ($51.82 mean average)
Platformer: $405,310 (311.78%) by 11,425 people ($35.48 mean average)
Racing: $95,692 (152.34%) by 1,847 people ($51.81 mean average)
RPG: $156,910 (152.34%) by 6,339 people ($24.75 mean average)
Shooter: $128,151 (120.90%) by 1,353 people ($94.72 mean average)
Strategy: $3,610,381 (322.86%) by 50,513 people ($71.47 mean average)
Hex by Cryptozoic Entertainment ($2,278,255)
Massive Chalice by Double Fine ($1,229,015)
Armikrog by Pencil Test Studios ($974,578)
A Hat in Time by Gears for Breakfast ($296,360
The Stomping Land by Alex Fundora ($114,060)
