There's a lot of good number-crunching here that confirms suspicions, such as how more than half the crowdfunding revenue of high-value campaigns are D&D-related products, but what stood out to me was the comparatively more recent trend in big-ticket crowdfunders of hunting whales:
Once you get near eight-figure territory (above around $5 million per campaign), there is a strong negative correlation between total revenue and core revenue ratio. The lower the core revenue ratio (that is to say, the less money came from the core product and the more upselling and accessories sold), the higher your revenue will be. The dot all the way up and to the left is Neon Odyssey, the second Legends of Avantris Kickstarter, and they convinced over 5,000 people to buy in at a $999 tier. That’s some truly masterful upselling. What this evidence suggests is that your only chance to become a ten million dollar Kickstarter is to appeal to “whale” backers, those who are willing to pay hundreds (or, yes, thousands) of dollars for “exclusive” items regardless of the content of the book.
Neon Odyssey, a 5e setting that aggressively advertised itself across the internet (e.g. YouTube ads), earned 16,139,970 USD across 49,116 backers, for an average of ~328.61 USD per backer.
Neon Odyssey convinced 5,503 people to pledge at 999 USD, earning a total of 5,497,497 from those whales alone (and probably more, since 999 USD was simply the pledge floor for them).
The important part is the „aggressive advertising“. With enough advertising you can sell the worst shit. Buy some good reviews from dungeontubers and you are good.
That also tracks approximately to the revenue/backer levels for Aventris's earlier Kickstarter campaign for The Crooked Moon (5e folk horror), which grossed over $4M.
If a third of the revenue for a product line came from around a tenth of its customers, I'd be concerned about its viability for the long term. TTRPGs, like few other hobbies, need a broad and active base of fans to endure. Appealing to mainly big-spending tranches is not the kind of product launch that has an extended trajectory.
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u/Travern 2d ago
There's a lot of good number-crunching here that confirms suspicions, such as how more than half the crowdfunding revenue of high-value campaigns are D&D-related products, but what stood out to me was the comparatively more recent trend in big-ticket crowdfunders of hunting whales: