Are we gauging Kickstarter "success" by the wrong metric?

Rusque

Funding seems to be the big item on everyone's mind - and as far as the business side of things go it's true, if you don't have enough money the product simply can't be fulfilled. But funding is really a baseline for production, not interest. This is largely due to high dollar backer pledges. Again, from the business side, you'd be stupid not to take someone's money if they're willing to throw it at you. $10k for a video game? Yes, please.

I think number of backers is a more significant marker of likelihood of success. Not just because it usually coincides with more funding, but because it means there's more of a market and therefore more word of mouth. I also think that there's a sizable discrepancy between "commercially successful" kickstarter projects vs those that are limping along in some state of production.

Released:
Divinity Original Sin - 19,541 backers
Torment Tides of Numenera - 74,405 backers
Pillars of Eternity - 73,986 backers
Elite Dangerous - 25,681 backers

In Production:
Pathfinder Online - 8,732 backers
Camelot Unchained - 14,873 backers
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen - 3,157 backers (did not get funded)
Chronicles of Elyria - 10,752 backers
Crowfall - 16,936 backers
Shards Online - 1,683 backers


Now I know people are going to want to talk about apples v oranges regarding MMO vs SRPG, but that's not what this is about. This is purely about looking for a link between appeal / popularity and likelihood of success. Kind of like measuring the belief / confidence of the market for the product.

So looking at the released titles we might consider 20k backers to be a fair milestone to consider. Which means Crowfall stands a solid chance and even Camelot Unchained has some potential if they start showing everyone good stuff. But then you look at those at 10k and less. That's a small "core fanbase" no matter how you slice it. "But 15k backers isn't that many more people!" Well, it is 50% more, so it's half a games worth of interest.

I'd be willing to say, under 5k backers and you're looking at a product that's dead on arrival. Exceptions to this are like Guns of Icarus, which is a $5 game on Steam.

In short:
<5k backers = This game is in trouble
5k-10k backers = Might be a sleeper, but you better hope they have an amazing team. They have a lot to prove.
10k-15k backers = It's tied and in overtime, could go either way, watch development closely and if they start talking "minimum viable product" it's gonna be rough.
15k-20k backers = Development is hard, but they have a well thought out vision and the talent to make it happen, just need to put in the work.
20k+ backers = Has a strong core of support and will likely live up to their expectations.
50k+ backers = Not only will it satisfy the core group, it has commercial appeal. 

So what do you guys think? Getting funded seems to be as easy as "Here's a list of cool ideas and here's a team of people with some semblance of necessary skills." But the games that end up as good games that live up to what they proposed seem to have, at minimum, twice as many supporters - meaning more people believe in the idea and it's plausibility.

laxie

From my experience, project management is the main deciding factor.

I agree that the total amount raised doesn't say much. I've pledged projects that raised large amounts, but never delivered due to unforeseen challenges during production. Similarly, having a large following doesn't help at all if the product never makes it (or is designed poorly).

Leaving aside the cases where the game never gets released, retention pattern is probably much more important than the initial backer number. If you make a game that grows its playerbase by +20% each month, you are looking at a very successful future. The developer can keep in touch with their core community and scale the project comfortably. Many projects launch with a curve more along the lines of -50% each month. I think this happens if you fail to establish a solid foundation community for the project.

I personally would be more comfortable in a +20%/month game with 1000 users, than -50%/month game with 1.000.000 users. You will regularly meet the same people in the former and make friends. In the latter, you're likely to lose touch with the people you meet.

Another interesting metric you could look at is pledge distribution. I've noticed several crowd-funded games suffer from allowing too many big spenders. You then end up with people who pledge 20$, playing alongside people who pledge 30.000$. The developer then faces the dilemma to either create powerful rewards to encourage higher pledges, or offer a balanced experience and risk alienating the big spenders.

You could take the total $ raised, divided by the amount raised on the lowest full pledge (one that includes full game access). That would give you an idea whether the game is mainly funded by the big spenders or not. Here it makes sense to look at money and not player numbers. I believe the cheapest pledge is always the most popular, the second cheapest the second most popular, etc. What matters is whether you have a group of 100 people who are funding most of the game.

Shaigh

Grim dawn, 12k backers.
Darkest dungeon, 9.6k backers.
Xenonauts, 4.6k backers.
Undertale, 2.3k backers
Jotun, 2.3k backers
Hollow knight, 2.1k backers
Chivalry, 2.0k backers
Risk of rain, 1.6k backers
Kentucky route zero, 205 backers

Small scope, don't need that many backers; large scope, need lots of backers; mmorpg, need shitloads of backers.