Still on my Kickstarter thing, and theres a couple really, really successful ones we need to take a look at: Zombicide and Ogre: Designers Edition.
A few high profile Kickstarters, travelling quickly via the modern web and fuelled by an overwhelming affection for our own pasts, funded several games and created a powerful narrative arc. Double Fine and 2 Player Productions functionally crafted a new paradigm along with their offer, bringing in $3,336,371 dollars which we can all agree is a lot, with an average pledge of $38.29. inXiles Wasteland followed that up $2,933,252, with a higher average pledge of $47.86.
In both cases, people were purchasing the idea of a game - but in the tabletop space, which is also hopping, you can develop, prototype, and even release rulesets people can play at home now. Zombicide, developed by what is by all accounts an all-star team comprised of actual all-stars, is fully funded at $275,371 with an average $142.26 dollars pledge. Ogre is at $387,762, but with a 150.53 average pledge. Clearly people who buy boardgames arent as sensitive about the price; plus, you only need one for a bunch of people to play. But I want to emphasize the extent to which these fundraisers were designed in such a way as to maximize individual donations. And it worked.
Oh God, did it ever work.
Youve seen Stretch Goals before, if youve ever watched one of these things succeed: mechanisms to maintain funding momentum after success, with whispered promises of more. These have that, but distilled down into some wicked barn liquor. Stretch goals not at fifty or a hunrded thousand, like Stoics Banner Saga, but every fifteen or twenty thousand. Goodies you can add a la carte, independent of your pledge level. Theyve essentially developed an RPG, where your money is the XP.
In these two cases, the stretch goals are of such a high quality that I think what were actually seeing is the entire development lifecycle of the offer laid bare: what would have been con exclusives or expansions or preorder bonuses are simply laid out, the living spine exposed. Thats not how this is supposed to work. And this, while we pick and choose winners like steam trays at Dim Sum. Its fucking unreal.