A new report from Tabletop Analytics has highlighted that funding for tabletop game projects on Kickstarter declined in 2023, making it the second year in a row we’ve seen a drop in the tabletop category.
According to the data, this means that individual tabletop creators earned an average 30% less for their campaigns compared to the pre-covid year of 2019.
Interestingly, Polygon has stated this is the first year in almost a decade where Kickstarter has refused to share its data publicly. Head of communications at Kickstarter, Nikki Kria, said in an email: “We’re not disclosing specifics around the total dollars raised at this time.
That’s why the source of this story is actually sourced by Polygon from Tabletop Analytics – a third party – which claims to draw from the crowdfunding company’s own publicly facing website. Kickstarter have unfortunately declined to verify the data, however Polygon have done their homework and the historical data from Tabletop Analytics seems to match up.
The data collected by Tabletop Analytics from 2023 (displayed above in the handy graph) shows Kickstarter actually earned $10.2 million less from tabletop projects than the previous year – that’s a 4.3% decline. However, the decline is less than the crowdfunding giant experienced in 2022, which added up to a whopping $33.6 million, or 12.4%, compared to 2021.
However, it’s not all bad news. In fact, the 2023 data from Tabletop Analytics shows that there’s actually been a pretty big increase in overall revenue going to Kickstarter tabletop campaigns of around $50 million – that’s a 28% increase from before the covid pandemic, and equates to roughly 900 more tabletop games being funded on the platform.
So, more money is going into the tabletop sector of the crowdfunding site (yay), but it just seems a shame that the average tabletop creator has seen their share of the revenue drop by around 31% – from $67,350 on average pre-covid, to just $45,982 in 2023 (boo).
Adam Poots, creator of Kingdom Death: Monster, the second-most-funded board game in Kickstarter history was quoted by Polygon saying:
If the data here is accurate, there are so many factors that could contribute to this. Crowd funding fatigue, multiple crowd funding platforms, people aren’t spending like they were during the first bit of the pandemic, etc. It seems more natural than alarming to me.
However, the creator also said the company’s permissive stance on artificial intelligence was worrying:
I would love to see Kickstarter slow down and focus on developing more much needed community management tools and draw an extreme hard line against the use of AI generative art in Kickstarter projects. To me, the trust of its users and potential users is more important than ensuring numbers only go up.
I can see where he’s coming from, and also the fact that there’s a hecka lot more competition for crowdfunding these days – backers are bombarded with a plethora of choices, so it only makes sense that the money there is to go around will be spread thinner.
Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games (Scythe, Wingspan, Apiary, Wyrmspan) backed up my thoughts on that one, it seemed:
More creators are either crowdfunding for the first time or returning to crowdfunding, providing backers with a wealth of choices. But the total funds backers are willing to pledge [aren’t] increasing. There’s a lot more competition for each backer’s attention. I think this is important data for creators to have as they plan for different funding scenarios, particularly for budgeting sunk-cost expenses like art, graphic design, and advertising and for estimating manufacturing minimum order quantities (if the output is some form of mass production).
Some very good points there, and something to bear in mind for creators going forward.
Although these are some really insightful, if not completely surprising stats, it would be interesting to get an idea of how many tabletop campaigns actually failed last year, and how many took more than one try to get successfully funded.
I was absolutely sure Geek Native founder and regular hero of tabletop Kickstarter promotions, Girdy, would have a few thoughts on this subject – and I was right!
This report will include board games, card games and roleplaying games. The report is likely to be right because so much of the financials are transparent but importantly not all details are (such as pledges that fail and the creator can’t collect the cash). Perhaps most importantly; revenue is not profit. PS. Geek Native tracks TTRPGs on Kickstarter.
Well, there we have it! I wonder if the stats for next year will follow a similar trend – guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
What’s your opinion on the latest stats about tabletop Kickstarters – is it just down to a natural broadening of Kickstarter’s market? Join in on the conversation below.
To get a better sense of what going on tabletop crowdfunign we have to consider that backerkit and gamefound have become significant platform for crowdfuning. An analysis of Kickstarter alone is now insufficient.
I mean, Gloomhaven Grandfestival and MCDM RPG alone cover the entire decline observed in the table above (-10.2M while these two raised 9.0M on backerkit in 2023).
True, but isn’t Kickstarter still dominant enough with market share to serve as a guide? If we think BackerKit and GameFound have taken so much market share from Kickstarter that they can grow, while KS shrinks, and grow enough to offset the difference then you’re right.
I would agree if Backerkit and Gamefound would also have seen declines but they are growing very fast instead so focusing only on Kickstarter would be misleading.