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Nihimon wrote:

Here are several examples that only reached their funding goal near the end after getting a big spike.

CLANG

Defense Grid 2

Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption

Make Leisure Suit Larry come again!

Republique by Camouflaj + Logan

Shadowrun Online

Interesting list. Some observations:


  • The goals ranged from 200k-500k.
  • About half of them seem to be at the 70%+ mark by this time* in their Kickstarters; I remember Republique and Shadowrun, two which weren't, had a really huge marketing push in the last few days and were listed as Featured KS's during that period, which probably accounts for that surge, right there. (Probably no chance of KS re-Featuring PFO, right?)
  • They all hit their marks on the strength of more (in some cases, vastly more) backers than PFO has right now for the same amount of money (between 6,000, and 14,000), suggesting that each individual backer was actually kicking in considerably less money.
  • My recollection is a spotty on this, but at least a couple of those Kickstarters happened to have the good fortune to be Featured while there was a "runaway train" Kickstarter generating a lot of press. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if there was some "bleed-over" on account of holding the front page during a time when the whole site was getting bombarded with pageviews.

Still not really sure what this all means, but it definitely paints a fairly suggestive picture. It at very least seems to suggest that a more modest goal, with more modest backer levels, coupled with exogenous factors like "getting Featured at exactly the right time," were significant factors for these games meeting their goals.

*Since these are all 30-day KS's there's some question, perhaps, of what "at this point" really means in relation to them, and in a way that changes whether we're talking about 3 or 4 of them. but the point stands either way.


echilda wrote:
Funded projects always have a lot of people backing if there is time left I have noticed. I guess people don't want the risk of faliure.

That's part of it, I think. Though a bit irrational, since "failure" means there was no risk, and costs you nothing except your hopes and dreams. I think the another part is that "this cool idea is funded!" is itself publicity-generating, and brings in new pledges.

There might also be some segment of supporters that back in response to that enthusiasm, on the logic that if the project has a significantly larger pot of money than they were asking for already, they're more likely to be able to deliver on their promises than someone who just barely makes it to their own cost estimates for a project.


Nihimon wrote:


Looking around, it seems like $1,000,000 Kickstarters are more the exception than the rule :)

As I mentioned, yes they are. Heck, even the high-six-figure KS's are -while more common now- largely an exception. And Kickstarters that start out asking for $1 million plus are an exception within that exception. Most of the ones that get there were asking for far far less, and end up getting there because of publicity and bandwagon effects after they reach 100%.


Nihimon wrote:
yrogerg wrote:
... they tend to have this in common: they set a much lower, attainable goal, reach that goal very early on...

Looking at the Kicktraq Hotlist, Elite: Dangerous stands out because it just barely made it's funding in the last few days, and it's for over $1,000,000. With three days to go, they still hadn't made it, but then they got a big bump. Keep an eye on it for the next couple of days.

Hmm, yes, that definitely is an interesting one. It still seems more the exception than the rule, but I definitely appreciate more data points, especially in the form of learning about awesome game projects people are working on. I'm not going to say that £1 million isn't an unbelievably ambitious funding goal either, but it also looks like it was just a one day that outperformed the average that got them there. Which, I suppose, is somewhat reassuring.

Nihimon wrote:
yrogerg wrote:
This hardly means that the PFO project's success is inevitable...
I don't think there's anyone who really thinks that this Kickstarter will "inevitably" succeed. Although, certainly many of us are looking for positive data points to counter what we see as "doom & gloom" from those who appear to believe it will "inevitably" fail.

Maybe not, but I've definitely seen a few variations of "I'm confident this will succeed, because 90% of Kickstarters that reach at least 30% of et cetera." Which might be silver linings and false bravado, but is certainly lousy statistics.

The world we're in right now is one where there are 11 days left and 45% of goal still to fund. I don't really know what that landscape actually looks like with certainty, especially for high-dollar goals (which are themselves the overwhelming exception), but talking about some guy's $7k kickstarter that never got a single pledge isn't really informative, nor talking about the surge of late funding that took someone from 200% of goal to 250%.


Ryan Dancey wrote:
Kickstarter's own data says that projects which reach 30% of their goal have a 90% success rate. Large gaming Kickstarters have an exceptionally large rate of pledges near the end of their timelines. I expect ours will be no different, and I'm highly confident we'll be funded. For comparison, the Tech Demo earned 2/3rds of its pledges in its final 8 days, and 1/3rd in the final 24 hours.

Hi, longtime lurker here, but I really did feel the need to jump in at this point, because it seems like both of those statistics don't necessarily mean what you are suggesting.

First, the 30%/90% statistic sounds an awful lot like, for lack of a better term, a sports statistic. All it really means is that most of the Kickstarters that fail, fail hard, and it doesn't tell us anything about the world of Kickstarter projects like this one. And in fact, the other half of that statistic is that 11% of projects that fail, never receive a single pledge. Unlike Goblinworks, these are inevitably projects that aren't successfully able to promote their ideas. This hardly means that the PFO project's success is inevitable, though, it just means that it's not in the realm of projects that fail because of insufficient promotion or an extremely flawed project premise.

Then, there's the fact that most of the Tech Demo's pledges occurred in the last week of that Kickstarter. As you say, it earned 2/3rds of its pledges in the last 8 days. However, it reached full funding on Day 2, and those pledges all happened long after the project was fully-funded. In other words, what you're describing is a bandwagon effect where new pledges were drawn to a project that was already fully-funded and more or less guaranteed to hit its goal fully-funded.

And honestly, when discussing the other Kickstarters that have seen a massive swell of support, and reached that 1 million mark (such as the Order of the Stick Reprint, or Amanda Palmer's album and tour, or the Homestuck video game, just off the top of my head), they tend to have this in common: they set a much lower, attainable goal, reach that goal very early on, and continued to pour on support long afterwards as that success generates even more interest. I've seen little to suggest that many of these projects end up limping across that finish line in the last week.

Honestly, a vastly more useful statistic here would be how many big-dollar projects end up succeeding when they are at 55% funding with a week remaining. I don't know the answer, but it would be much more informative.