Kickstarter Whales

[Piperken]

This was a guest post off patchworkpaladin, wherein the author analyzed million dollar ttrpg Kickstarters, focusing on the high-cost whale tiers, which generated an average of 23.25% of funding.

Figured it would be of interest in case any wanted to discuss, as they pulled data from the enworld site!

 

[aco175]

I copied this from the site.

Is this like taxes where the richest 10% pay like 80% of all the taxes? I mean I have never thought about buying one of the top tier plans for some of the things. But, I'm also not a whale in this sense.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Is this like taxes where the richest 10% pay like 80% of all the taxes? I mean I have never thought about buying one of the top tier plans for some of the things. But, I'm also not a whale in this sense.

In this case, it's the middle class equivalent who are paying most of the increased costs. The whale tier is fun to gawk at, but in the meantime, the non-whales are paying three figures for campaigns when they mostly paid two figures just a few years ago.

Glances nervously at my Shadowdark and Pirate Borg books

 

[DarkCrisis]

The most I’ve ever spent on a kickstarter was the recent Cyberpunk 2077 TCG. Almost $500.

 

[sevenbastard]

I rarley want all the swag add on. But for the right kickstarter I would whale it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I rarley want all the swag add on. But for the right kickstarter I would whale it.

I ended up coming back and adding to my Shadowdark Western Reaches pledge multiple times, until I was up at the hardcover slipcase level. Not cheap, but I'm confident it'll both be worth it and will be books I will genuinely use and for a long time.

 

[...m...]

...i'm a superbacker on more than one crowdfunding platform with a library to show for it, and i love my lush abstract-art cover treatments, but publishers who lock their special editions behind several-hundred-dollar-tiers packed with tchotchkies and redundant ephemera which i have no interest in using really turn me off from collecting their future projects...

...few things foul my opinion of a publisher more than transparently brazen exploitation of their best customers...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

...i'm a superbacker on more than one crowdfunding platform with a library to show for it, and i love my lush abstract-art cover treatments, but publishers who lock their special editions behind several-hundred-dollar-tiers packed with tchotchkies and redundant ephemera which i have no interest in using really turn me off from collecting their future projects...

...few things foul my opinion of a publisher more than transparently brazen exploitation of their best customers...

"You can have this $12 dungeonsynth cassette only if you spend $250 for a t-shirt, print, custom miniatures and an art book as well" is super-irritating, to be sure.

 

[Distracted DM]

This isn't surprising at all. I'm a whale! I don't love it but there it is

I worked for a video game company years ago that made freemium facebook games (casino ships etc)- same thing, the vast vast majority of their revenue came from a very small minority of users: whales.

 

[michal_ha]

There is huge difference between collecting loads of money and high amount of backers. You can collect a lot of money, but low quantity in sales won't trigger economy of scale during production and you are dead.

Backers > money any day