Kickstarter games boss bullish despite ‘wobbly year’

The numbers may be down by more than 50 per cent, but Kickstarter games boss Luke Crane is positive about the performance of the crowd-funding platform.

The figures – released by Ico Partners – show that just $8.2m was generated on Kickstarter during the first half of 2016, a significant drop over the $20m made during the first six months of 2015.

This is largely due to a number of high-profile and successful games on the platform last year, including Yooka-Laylee, Shenmue 3 and Bloodstained.

I’m hopeful. I actually have been really pleased with the quality of games coming through and the number of projects that are being successfully funded,” Crane said.

I know Ico published those numbers that everyone freaked out about, but there are lots of great games funded on the platform. And we’re now at this point where lots of fantastic Kickstarter-funded games are being picked up by publishers.”

He continued: The numbers are kind of wobbly this year. But there is one bright thread through it all – the amount of money raised by projects with funding goals between $50,000 and $250,000 is up. That’s the small indie teams that haven’t got a huge support network, who are coming to Kickstarter looking to get their first game off the ground and to do it themselves without a publisher.”

You can read more about Kickstarter in this week’s MCV.