Crowdfund Bookie Quarterly Report: Looks can be deceiving
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.
Crowdfunding platforms like Indiegogo and Kickstarter are golden tickets to over $100,000. At least, that's what one might surmise when looking at the results from projects tracked during the months of June through August. A total of $11,371,468 funded 84 projects during the quarter, and while that averages out to $135,375 earned per project, the numbers are painting a skewed picture, one more positive than the truth.
As discussed in August's report, there are times in which extreme samples from top earners like Hex and Massive Chalice can skew the resulting numbers, affecting our perception of how evenly spread these monthly totals are. The mean average of funding for projects in the last quarter is $135,375, but the median, or middle data point in the set, is $27,753. Analyzing both the mean and median averages indicates that the data is positively skewed, being severely affected by a few projects that made millions of dollars. It tells us that crowdfunded projects may truly earn less on average than at first glance. It might also tell future project creators that aiming for the mean average as a funding goal may be projecting their earnings too high, based on recent history.
This translates to the average pledge per person as well. The mean average pledge per person in the quarter's projects is $50.59, while the median is $32.35. This indicates that your average crowdfunding backer probably spent closer to $32 than $50 on any given project.
Millions of dollars didn't just fund 84 games in this quarter of the year either, as $6,046,567 of that money was beyond the combined crowdfunding goals of the projects. That means 53.17 percent of money pledged to successful crowdfunding initiatives between June and August was in excess, funding additional content and reaching stretch goals for additional platform support. Still, crowdfunders looking to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars from their video game project should be better prepared to earn closer to $20,000, and would be wise to adjust their goals accordingly.
This is just our first quarter of tracking crowdfunding trends, so expect more analysis as the year continues. Head past the break to see the quarter's top ten projects, its breakdown by genre and pretty charts with the results from the last three months.
Action (13) - $375,261 (167.76%) by 12,890 people ($29.11 mean average)
Adventure (22) - $1,854,992 (146.24%) by 42,588 people ($43.56 mean average)
Fighting (3) - $141,572 (191.31%) by 4,042 people ($35.03 mean average)
Platformer (5) - $538,085 (210.60%) by 14,728 people ($36.53 mean average)
Puzzle (1) - $6,110 (101.83%) by 114 people ($53.60 mean average)
Racing (1) - $95,692 (152.34%) by 1,847 people ($51.81 mean average)
RPG (17) - $1,278,455 (240.05%) by 33,567 people ($38.09 mean average)
Shooter (7) - $924,089 (172.08%) by 18,409 people ($50.20 mean average)
Simulation (6) - $227,081 (160.40%) by 9,489 people ($23.93 mean average)
Strategy (9) - $5,930,131 (266.73%) by 87,106 people ($68.08 mean average)
Hex by Cryptozoic Entertainment - $2,278,255
Warmachine: Tactics by Privateer Press - $1,578,950
Massive Chalice by Double Fine - $1,229,015
Armikrog by Pencil Test Studios - $974,578
Satellite Reign by 5 Lives Studio - $705,194
Tobuscus Adventures by Toby Turner - $642,779
7 Days to Die by The Fun Pimps - $507,612
Megatokyo by Fred Gallagher - $299,184
A Hat in Time by Gears for Breakfast - $296,360
H-Hour: World's Elite by David Sears - $252,662
