Kickstarter can be a great way to learn about new and potential games if you are a player while also being an excellent source of capital for developers of special projects. Some projects distribute codes such as game item and casino promo codes to backers. Furthermore, some of the best recent games came though Kickstarter such as FTL, Shovel Knight, Superhot, Divinity: Original Sin, Darkest Dungeon, and even a game extremely popular here known as Adventure Quest 3D (AQ3D).
Some game projects are so loved that they exceed all goals. Of course, the best goal to reach is the total amount of funds raised. This happens due to donations being high on average and having thousands of backers. The most funded games as of this writing include the long awaited Shenmue 3, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, and Torment: Tides of Numenera. These are the top three in earning money for their project. The top three most backed games as of right now (in order) are Double Fine Adventure, the aforementioned Torment: Tides of Numenera, and Pillars of Eternity. Of course, there is a copy of Pillars of Eternity in the community shop. Also interesting is the fact that a lot of the games are RPGs.
Shenmue 3 has been on the radar of gamers ever since Shenmue 2 was launched on the Dreamcast many moons ago! Just kidding, the first two installments happened in 1999 and 2001 respectively. Since the game is scheduled to launch in August 2019, that will be at least 18 years between installments. That is particularly strange since the Dreamcast did not do well and was discontinued in the same year the second installment was launched. The first installment was the most expensive video game ever made at that point in time which did not obviously help the Sega Dreamcast survive for very long. Hopefully, the third installment, which will be available on the PC and the Playstation 4, will fare much better.
All told, Kickstarter continues to shine as a major project booster and a valuable asset to developers worldwide. Successful crowdfunding allows developers and entrepreneurs almost unlimited creativity for projects that include games, movies, technology, music, journalism, and many more. Since being founded in 2009, Kickstarter continues to lead the way with this vital creative platform by receiving close to $2 billion in pledges from over 9 million total backers! To date, the most money raised has been for a smartwatch known as Pebble Time.
There are many Kickstarter games that were funded successfully and games came out but there are cases where things didn’t go so well. One that i can recall is Yogventures! and things didn’t really turn great for it even though it was funded.
Certainly a good number of games have found success on Kickstarter, but what is often understated are the games that actually fail from a Kickstarter campaign. Kind of goes both ways, since game development can be unpredictable, and it’s important to caution yourself with what games you support through Kickstarter by looking at the game’s Kickstarter page to see if the description and goals are reasonable, to research the company’s past history with games (if any), to look at what previews (screenshots, artwork, trailers, etc.) the game has, etc.
Personally, Shovel Knight is my favorite from Kickstarter, because it revisits the classic retro-style of games which is a stark contrast to today’s era where games are moving to 3D. The campaign might not have been as big as Torment: Tides of Numernera or Pillars of Eternity, but I would call Shovel Knight a huge success.