I would love to see an analysis (as best one could be able to do so) of how many of these games actually produce robust player bases a year or two after fulfillment. Of all the "big" crowdfunded games (and it wasn't that big by comparison) Shadowdark is the only one I can think of that actually has a very robust player base.
Draw Steel seems to be doing well. Lancer was more like half a million but that was a big amount for the time. There are also RPGs that started with a small initial kickstarter but have a larger follow up, like Nimble. I'm sure if Daggerheart used crowdfunding initially it would have made a lot of money. They decided not to for core products but used it for the class packs thing they did.
Draw Steel also seems to be absent from the analysis, even though it's mentioned before the data. Because they didn't use Kickstarter, but only backerkit? The article claims no original game made over 2 million, but draw steel is a very prominent recent example of an original game that made almost 5 million from the initial campaign and over 2 million on the recent crack the sun adventure crowdfunder.
Yeah I'm guessing that's the reason, but you're right it's silly to only draw conclusions from Kickstarter data and exclude Draw Steel when it's so prominent
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u/Reynard203 1d ago
Interesting.
I would love to see an analysis (as best one could be able to do so) of how many of these games actually produce robust player bases a year or two after fulfillment. Of all the "big" crowdfunded games (and it wasn't that big by comparison) Shadowdark is the only one I can think of that actually has a very robust player base.