Kickstarter just had its best year for gaming yet, with Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes leading the pack as the website’s most-funded video game project this year. This comes in spite of the global COVID-19 pandemic that has forced many people to stay home and many game projects to be delayed. The surge of homebound gamers has led to many records being set this year, such as Among Us breaking half a billion active players this last month alone.
Kickstarter has been seeing some of this success as well, particularly with tabletop games. Gloomhaven, the critically acclaimed campaign-based tabletop game, launched its crowdfunding campaign for sequel Frosthaven earlier this year and quickly became the most-funded game project on the platform, with nearly $13 million raised. Eiyuden Chronicle also launched its crowdfunding campaign earlier this year and raised $4.6 million, over nine times its original funding goal. The game is a spiritual successor to Suikoden, with the story and dialogue helmed by Yoshitaka Murayama - the same writer responsible for the scripts in both Suikoden and Suikoden II.
These projects are just a couple that contributed to Kickstarter’s massive success this year, Polygon reports. In 2020 alone, backers contributed more than $22 million to video game projects, up from 2019’s $16.3 million. Among the most-funded projects were Eiyuden Chronicle at $4.6 million, The Wonderful 101: Remastered at $2.3 million, and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous at $2 million. Sea of Stars, the prequel to 2018’s hit platformer The Messenger, also made the list at $1.26 million.
The numbers are even more impressive when you look at tabletop games, which earned a staggering $233 million this year, up from $176.3 million in 2019. The most-funded projects there were Frosthaven at $12.9 million, the Wyrmwood Modular Gaming Table at $8.8 million, and Nemesis Lockdown at $6.9 million. This just goes to show how massive tabletop gaming is on the platform, with many new campaigns meeting their funding goal in a matter of hours.
While the global pandemic may have resulted in many game delays, it has also fueled interest in newer ones, including new takes on old classics like Eiyuden Chronicle. Studies have shown that games are keeping more people at home (and therefore slowing the spread of the virus), likely contributing to the massive success of some of this year’s most-funded projects. Tabletop gaming in particular has seen some explosive growth over the past five or so years, with many video games now releasing tabletop equivalents in an effort to jump into that market. It will be interesting to see if this growth continues to benefit Kickstarter projects after the pandemic is over.
Source: Polygon
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