Although Kickstarter users seem a little burned out on donating to projects — many of which ultimately fail or leave donors hanging — Kickstarter still reported that the crowdfunding site took in 64 percent more in pledged dollars in 2015 than the previous year.
The crowdfunding site reports that more than 978,000 people pledged over $144.4 million to gaming projects alone, for both video and tabletop games. It was a card game that took the title of most-funded project ever on the site: Exploding Kittens, which raised over $8 million from 219,000 backers.
However, there's a trend seen by Kickstarter's report: people aren't donating to small projects as much and are saving their dollars for those projects they not only believe in, but trust to provide follow-through. Less risky projects, such as Shenmue III, Bloodstained and Battletech took in a lot of money through the site: those are all projects headed up by trusted developers.
Board games also scored big on the site.
"Early in the year the board game Conan climbed atop the skulls of its enemies to overtake Zombicide: Season 3's 2014 record as the most funded board game, with 16,000 backers pledging $3.3 million," wrote Kickstarter on its site. "But the zombie horde bit back hard during the summer with Zombicide: Black Plague, to which more than 20,500 backers pledged nearly $4.1 million — making it the current reigning king in board games."
In 2015, Kickstarter had over two million pledges for campaigns, as well as over 2,000 successfully-launched projects. That gives the site a success rate of 30 percent, which still seems rather low, considering the number of projects that get listed for crowdfunding there.
Although Kickstarter also helps raise funds for other projects, including movies, music, books and technology, it seems that games are what most donors mostly want to back, considering the amount of revenue generated by the site for gaming projects in 2015.
"Tabletop games are definitely experiencing a major cultural moment, reflected in the breadth of innovative projects in that arena, but video games creators raised many a triumphant banner in 2015," wrote Kickstarter. "Bloodstained whirled into the fray with $5.5 million in pledges, beheading Torment: Tides of Numenera's 2013 record total of $4.2 million — and then along came Shenmue III to knock Bloodstained off the hill, raising $6.3 million from a roaring crowd of more than 69,000 backers."
