The number of projects to go through also dropped by close to 30 percent since last year, a total of under 350 expected

Oct 2, 2014 13:28 GMT  ·  By

Apparently, Kickstarter projects initiated this year made on average around half of what they did last year.

Industry analysis firm ICO Partners released some interesting data pertaining to Kickstarter and the evolution of the ecosystem during the past year, revealing the most recent trajectory that projects submitted to the go-to crowdfunding platform for indie devs take.

In addition to this, this year, the total number of funded projects to go through Kickstarter has been forecast at around 350, a figure significantly lower than last year's, when 446 projects managed to meet or exceed their stated goal.

Kickstarter is seeing some fatigue after last year's surge

The data, of course, includes a lot of projections, as it only takes into account information from the first half of 2014, but it should paint a pretty accurate picture of recent trends.

Additionally, if last year we saw an incredible number of 21 projects reach $500k / €395k in funding or over, this year only three managed to go over the same amount, in the first six months of the year.

Granted, last year was also one where a large number of high-profile projects were vetted by the gaming community, including inXile Entertainment's Torment: Tides of Numenera, Keiji Inafune's Mighty Number 9, Elite: Dangerous, Camelot Unchained, Dreamfall, Richard Garriott's Shroud of the Avatar, and many others.

This year, we've only seen Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Harmonix's Amplitude, and Playdek's Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians rise to impressing crowdfunding figures.

One of the reasons cited for the decline of goodwill on the popular crowdfunding platform is the amount of both low- and high-profile failures registered over the past months, with Yogscast, The Stomping Land, Clang and other similar projects making prospective donors wary of pledging any more money before reaping the fruits of their past investments.

Steam Early Access is a strong alternative for crowdfunding

Another significant factor in Kickstarter's decline is the advent of Steam's Early Access program. As most of the projects on Kickstarter are PC-oriented, a lot of developers take advantage of the ease of publishing to the platform and forgo Kickstarter completely.

Granted, having your project on Kickstarter may bring you more funds, but the effects of the Kickstarter month on small independent development studios are notorious, with many game-makers opting to channel the resources required to create a proper crowdfunding pitch into the actual development process.

In addition to this, when you launch your client on Early Access, the funding doesn't stop after a month, and you don't lose everything you worked for if you don't meet your initial goal. Furthermore, as Early Acces games are playable in some form or another, there is also the question of increased backer trust, since nobody is risking anything on concept art and ideas.

Being able to access a demo of the game when players put their money down also means that work on the game is underway for some time, and that the developers have the necessary technical skills to deliver the product they advertise, which is not always the case with Kickstarter campaign creators.