Peruse around the crowdfunding site Kickstarter and you might notice an increase in projects who are struggling to make their mark or have succeeded with a (relatively) low pledge amount. A consultant analyst company, ICO Partners ran the numbers and noticed that the amount of money pledged lower than the same time last year.
This bar graph taken from the site shows that the first half of 2016 showed a slight drop from the first and second half of 2015. While the amount did drop, it is still much higher than the amount of money pledged on projects in 2014. Further analysis showed some more interesting facts about the first half of 2016.
Despite not only having a lower amount of money pledged than previous years, there were less projects overall which could be a factor in why there wasn’t as much money pledged. What’s even more interesting is that as ascertained above, there has been a general increase in projects being successfully funded than previous years.
Alongside the fact there was less projects being released, there were a shortage of big Kickstarter projects. Last year saw multiple campaigns including Shenmue III and Bloodstained. These raised over $6 million and $5.5 million respectively. This number hasn’t been hit in the Video Games subcategory this year in Kickstarter and so there has been a deficit. There are even more interesting statistics shown on ICO Partners‘ rundown on the state of Crowdfunding.
Goes to show, Kickstarter isn’t necessarily slowing down, there’s just no major profile games being campaigned for the first half of 2016. So for now at the very least, it’s unjustifiable to blame a ‘loss in pledge money’ on projects that don’t quite hit their mark like Mighty No. 9.