july-2013
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Crowdfund Bookie July 2013: Role-playing pays off
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. You could argue that July was a down month in terms of total money raised for video game projects through crowdfunding. While June saw $5,594,469 raised by 23 projects, July's 32 gaming projects earned $2,800,449. Of course, June also had two games in Hex and Massive Chalice that comprised over half of the month's earnings. Without those two games, June and July are much more comparable, as seen with some of the trends spotted in June that carried over to last month. Of the money raised by crowdfunders in July, 48.13 percent was over the combined goals for projects, a dip from June's 55.69 percent. This may be attributed to the extra crowdfunding week in the month of July (which included successfully funded projects tracked from June 30 through August 3). Without the final week, which accounted for a whopping 10 games, a four-week July would have seen an excess of 58.43 percent of its money raised. That fifth week of funding flattened the month out by ten percent. Whether the total amount raised would gradually decline to meet the combined goals of projects is unknown, but it's a trend we'll certainly keep an eye out for in August. Funders in July also averaged $44.52 per pledge, another significant dip from June's average of $57.11. With the drop-off in both money raised and mean average also came a decrease in the overall number of backers for July. Compared to June's 97,954 funders, July had 62,907. A large chunk were devoted to the 11 RPG projects that were funded last month, as 25,422 backers raised $1,056,158 for the genre. Lastly, the statistically-extreme group of players that backed three shooter games in June with an average of $94.72 per pledge returned in July to average $91.75 for the genre. It'll be interesting to see whether that trend holds up for August as well. You'll find the month's breakdown by genre after the break, as well as a list of July's top five projects.
WayForward smurfing the Smurfs 2 game for Ubismurf
Yes, there's another CG and live-action Smurfs movie coming out this July, and Ubisoft is publishing the official game adaptation.However, instead of the truly off-putting dance game released for the first movie, Ubisoft has smurfed WayForward into making a 2.5D, co-op platformer for Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and Wii U, and an "interactive storytelling book and collection of mini-games" for DS. All versions will march into stores this July.Each playable Smurf has unique special abilities: Papa Smurf can throw potions, Grouchy can stomp, and Vanity can ... pose to become a platform. We don't expect too much from a licensed Smurfs game, but WayForward has a particular talent for licensed games, with Aliens: Infestation and Adventure Time as recent examples.%Gallery-185246%%Gallery-185247%
