A little background: Kickstarter is an American crowdfunding site with a game category where fans and backers can donate money and get rewards, a token gesture to symbolize their support and belief in the project.

5 most successful Kickstarter campaigns for games

Kingdom Death: Monster 1.5 (2017)

Kingdom Death: Monster 1.5 is actually the highest-funded Kickstarter game ever. The game got so much love from its fans that when the campaign ended on January 7, 2017, it already had a whopping $12,393,139 in its kitty. Yes, that’s right! Adam Poots, the creator of Kingdom Death, said after the Kickstarter success that it was not possible to create a game of that size without the community of supportive backers. With a bag full of crowdfunding amount, Poots created the blisteringly difficult game that had a continually emerging story, which according to him was “too expensive to produce and too vivid for distribution.” Kingdom Death is a strategy board game in which players take on the role of adventurers who fight against terrifying creatures to save their lives.

Exploding Kittens (2015)

Exploding Kittens is a strategy-based card game about kittens, explosions, laser beams and sometimes goats. The game got on Kickstarter for funding in 2015 and exceeded the pledged target of $10,000 in a matter of eight minutes. The total amount it raised from the Kickstarter campaign was $8,782,571. Exploding Kittens was designed by Elan Lee and Matthew Inman, and published by The Oatmeal. The support of 219,382 backers helped Exploding Kittens reach various stretch goals which in turn helped the creator introduce new cards and expansion packs for the family-friendly game, designed for up to five players. When the creators launched the Kickstarter campaign in 2015 they described it as “highly strategic kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette.”

The 7th Continent (2017)

The 7th Continent is an adventure board card game that has mechanics inspired by adventure books. The game was created by Serious Poulp for up to four players. The creators took it to Kickstarter so that they can offer players an expanded card set called ‘What Goes Up, Must Come Down”. The game was expensive to build and according to the creators, the only way to pull that off was Kickstarter fundraising. The 7 continent had a pledged goal of $40,000, but it way surpassed it by raising $7,072,757 when the Kickstarter campaign ended.

Shenmue III (2015)

Shenmue III, an action-adventure game, was the third game in the Shenmue series created by Ys Net and published by Deep Silver. The game was announced at Sony's E3 2015 presentation and it rocketed past Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night on Kickstarter with a total funding of $6,333,296. The creator Yu Suzuki wanted to bring the game back to life for which the fans had waited for over a decade. Suzuki pledged $2,000,000 but the support from 69,320 backers helped it collect over three times the set goal and reach various stretch goals to add extra quests, events, and an all-new gameplay feature to the game. The game was released in 2019 for Windows and Playstation 4.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon (2019)

Tainted Grail, an adventure and survival cooperative Board Game for up to four players, raised £4,940,030 on Kickstarter. The creator of the game, Awaken Realms, launched the crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter with a pledged goal of £40,000 to build this expensive board game. Tainted Grail comes with over a thousand cards and numerous pages to offer an amazing campaign-based experience. The game is a mix of adventure, survival and exploration mechanics. Awaken Realms had also previously raised funds using Kickstarter for 8 board games and of them, Nemesis and This War of Mine were very successful.

Kickstarter, without a doubt, has become a go-to crowdfunding site for many game app developers to breathe life in their products. Star Citizen is one great example as it raised over $2mn from Kickstarter initially and then went on to raising over $250 million from different sources (it’s own site, investors, events, etc) to launch one of the most highly anticipated games of this era. Yes, it’s true that some games fail to reach their set crowdfunding goal, but that’s mostly because of not getting their preparations right before rolling out a crowdfunding campaign. One is not building a community to support you or your creations beforehand. Having a fanbase before you kick off a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter helps get the much-needed momentum your game needs in the first days of your campaign. There are various other things that factor in running a successful Kickstarter campaign, and Logic Simplified can help you with all that makes a game or even a game idea a Kickstarter success.

Logic Simplified knows How to Create Kickstarter Game Success

For over eight years now, Logic Simplified has been helping game visionaries make their dreams come true. We understand that you may have an amazing game idea but not the appropriate financial backing to make your game what you originally imagined it would be or it deserves to be. Don’t worry! With our hands-on experience of running many crowdfunding campaigns, we can help your game too to get the funding it needs to shine on the game charts. For example, we help build MVPs for cash-strapped game ideas so that target users can interact with the game to get the real feel and want to back it on crowdfunding platforms, such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo and more. Building an MVP does not cost a hefty amount of money, so you can easily afford it. MVP also helps you build a community of fans to support your game by the time you take it to a crowdfunding platform for more polishing and loading it with more exciting features.

Having learnt from both successes and failures, we know what exactly works and what doesn’t in the game crowdfunding arena, such as how to create videos for game crowdfunding campaigns that are exciting enough for viewers to back your game financially. You can bank on our talent, experience and commitment to provide a gamut of innovative gaming solutions. To know more about what a successful crowdfunding strategy could be for your game, contact us by writing at enquiry@logicsimplified.com, and we promise to get back to you shortly to tell you everything about how you can live your game idea even if you don’t have a bag full of money the moment you start your game.

Disclaimer: The top five funded game companies in this article are solely based on my research on data from reputed sources and may vary with the exact ones. The reason being businesses usually don’t disclose the specific details of such arrangements and gaming is no different. Nonetheless, the names below deserve a mention for making the gaming industry a hot spot for investments.

Here are 7 game companies that received the highest funding in 2019

1. Gen.G ($46mn)

Gen.G, a California-based premier global esports organization established in 2017, raised $46M in an unknown venture series in 2019. The backers included Will Smith, Keisuke Honda’s Dreamers Fund, Dennis Wong, Michael Zeisser, David Rogier and various Silicon Valley Funds. Gen.G was also ranked sixth in the 2019 Forbes list of the world’s most valuable esports companies. With the funding amount, Gen.G which already has a dominating presence in the world’s leading esports markets (Asia and the US), the esports company will make its foothold even stronger in the global market for video games.  Some part of the funding was also diverted towards development of a youth esports academy and open headquarters in Los Angeles in July 2019. 

2. Mino Games ($30mn)

Founded in 2011 in Montréal, QC, Mino Games is a mobile games developer for iOS and Android. Mino Games got a $30mn backing in a corporate round funding in 2019 from Tilting Point, a mobile publishing and development partnership company. In the largest funding commitment so far, Tilting Point’s $30mn were dedicated to cover user acquisition costs for Mino’s Cat Game. The timing of the funding was also great as it was announced just after the Cat Game closed its soft launch period and released globally. The game developer has also launched titles including Mino Monsters and Mino Monsters 2.

Tilting Point CEO Kevin Segalla said in a press release, “We really fell in love with charm, the colourful aesthetic, and the ever-changing gameplay of Cat Game, so we are excited to turbo-charge its growth, and we are certainly looking forward to a long and successful relationship with Mino​ Games''. Some of the best angel investors, institutional investors, and gaming companies from across the world are now funding Mino Games, which has a strong user base of over 15 million people.

3. Bossa Studios

Bossa Studios, which is popular for zany titles like Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread, raised $30 mn in a Series B round of funding led by Netease. Atomico, London Venture Partners and Makers Fund have also previously funded the London-based game developer in Series A funding, helping it collect $10mn to cement the future success of the studio. The latest funding will boost the company's plans to expand the reach in China.

Bossa has already planned its first-ever Chinese release with Hogwash, a  multiplayer title that pits a farmhand against a group of mischievous pigs. Hogwash is currently the part of Apple’s cloud gaming service Apple Arcade and with its release, Bossa became one of the first game makers to launch a game on the platform. The game studio is now eyeing to tap the huge gaming market of China starting with Hogwash.

4. tinyBuild GAMES ($15 mn)

tinyBuild GAMES, a Washington-based independent video game developer and publisher, received $15 million in Series A funding. The company didn’t disclose the details of the investors, but the money raised was intended to be used for hiring more staff both at junior and senior level, build new franchises and innovate gameplay in new games. tinyBuild Games has so far built Hello Neighbor, Clustertruck, Punch Club, Party Hard, Pandemic Express, Graveyard Keeper and many more.

Prior to the $15 mn funding, tinyBuild also got the $3.75 mn backing of Makers Fund (whose portfolio includes Bossa, Typhoon, Superdata, and more) to support new projects and expand old ones like its stealth horror game Hello Neighbor. 

5. Redhill Games (11.4 mn)

Redhill Games, a free to play PC game studio headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, ran its first round of funding in 2019 and got the $11.4 m backing of Makers Fund, Play Venture and Kowloon Nights in 2019. The game developer was founded in 2018 by veterans of companies like Remedy Entertainment and Wargaming. The funding was directed towards hiring more staff and supporting the first big title of Redhill Games.  Matias Myllyrinne, the current CEO of Redhill Games and the former CEO of Remedy Entertainment and the former head of global development for Wargaming, said that their first big title will be a “new, fresh take on tactical shooters". The game which is expected to be revealed in 2020 will be free to play, with focus on co-op play and use a “games as a service” model.

6. Teatime Games ($9mn)

Teatime Games, an Iceland-based game studio, raised $9 million in Series A round backed by Index Ventures and Atomico (the investors behind Supercell/Bossa/Rovio). Teatime Games’ major focus till now is on reinventing social games for mobile by allowing players to interact with one another, face to face, while playing. The game studio has also built a mobile social gaming platform Teatime Live (for both Android and iOS), which uses Augmented Reality (AR) to launch games that put the social back in mobile gaming.

Teatime debuted the platform in 2019 with Hyperspeed, a fast and furious space racing game which allows players to race against each other and see the reactions of their opponents in real-time. The game features a built-in video chat, Snapchat-stye face filters and allows players to use their earned game faces on other games as well. 

Thor Fridriksson, co-founder and CEO of Teatime Games, said in a statement, “Everyone at Teatime is incredibly excited to launch a new way to play mobile games, and we hope to see other games studios building interactive experiences on the platform. Hyperspeed is one example of a game using Teatime Live that we’ve created, but we expect to work with other game studios on many different genres.”

The successful completion of a $9 million Series A funding round has provided significant support that the game studio needed to launch several other games on Teatime Live in the near future. 

7. Ys Net ($6mn)

Shenmue III, created by Ys Net and published by Deep Silver, is an adventure game that was released in 2019 for Windows and Playstation 4. Shenmue III is now the highest-funded video game on Kickstarter, having raised $6,333,296 which is over three times the set goal of $2,000,000. The video game raised $2 million in just a matter of seven hours and ended up at over $6 million. The belated open-world sequel Shenmue III  takes you on a journey deep into rural China where you take the role of Ryo Hazuki, a Japanese teenager who is hellbent on finding his father’s killer and avenge his brutal murder.

The famous Japanese game designer Yu Suzuki conceived the idea of Shenmue III, which had the backing of Japanese tech giant Sony and Shibuya Productions, but that was majorly intended for Shenmue III‘s production, publishing and marketing. The original Shenmue cost a startling $70m to make and it was not possible to build Shenmue III on a fraction of that budget, said Suzuki.

Kickstarter proved to be a great platform to collect funds and build a sequel that the fans had waited so long for. All the money collected from the campaign was purely used for game development.  Having reached the Stretch Goals of over $5 million on Kickstarter, Suzuki was able to add extra quests, events, and an all-new gameplay feature to bring a sequel true to its name. Kickstarter has become one of the best fund-raising platforms and you can see here the list of top 5 most funded Kickstarter games.

So, above was the list of top-funded game companies in 2019 which shows how much support game companies are getting from investors worldwide to scale up the entertainment industry. When it comes to the contribution of video games in the entertainment industry, movies and music don’t even generate half the revenue video games are earning. People not only love playing video games but watching as well which is why esports are so much on the rise. Funding is very much making it possible for game developers to create amazing games and earn big by entertaining people.

Are you looking out for an expert team of game designers and developers to build your game from the ground up? Logic Simplified, an India-based game studio, offers top-notch game development services to help build your game from scratch and market it fast for early users to create a buzz. Once you have good enough users, you can further expand your game by presenting it to investors and bring the money it will need to become bigger and bigger.

Write to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com and we promise to get back to you shortly to provide you with a tailor-made solution for your gaming needs.

People generally just have idea. They have nothing beyond that, and they do not know what it might cost. So, the first step is to put their idea on a piece of paper. This is where it all starts. So, the first step in the process is where we help clients put their idea on document. Our game app developers help them create their game stories, list all the aspects of the game play. This is the first step in giving shape to their ideas.

At this point we give our clients an indication about the effort, time and cost that this game idea might take. This is a reality check. Believe me that it is always higher than what the clients have thought of and many times, the clients have never thought that it might take this much. We help people who are ready to move ahead at this point. Generally people do not have the budget ready with them. This is where our Kickstarter funding program helps them.

Kickstarter is an excellent platform to test the waters for your idea. With a very minimal investment, you get a chance to float your idea, gather supporters and get your idea funded, without losing any stakes. We help our clients create and run a Kickstarter campaign for their idea.

We need to do some basic preparation for the Kickstarter. The idea is to show potential investors what our game is about. For this, we need to develop some parts of the game. This can be a demo, some drawings, some designs, some videos, some animations, part game story etc. We help our clients develop all this. Strategy is to develop just enough material and reusable material. If the projects gets funded, we should be able to use what we made for the campaign in our game.

1. Videos - are one of the most essential things of the campaign. People love to watch videos. Generally a campaign have one or two video. One video can be specific to game to show the game idea. This video can be an animated video showing the game screens, some animations. It can be presentation showing the assets that we have prepared. Having a background music or voiceover is definitely a plus. You need a second video as well. This is the video where you should talk about your game. We invite clients to talk about the game, we have different members of our team talk about the game in this video.
2. Show your might : Investors want to know how strong your team is. We present our team as client's team. We add bio of different team members in the campaign. We have our team members talk about the game in the video.
3. Story : In most cases, we already have the story of the game by now. We share excerpts of the story in the campaign to share just enough about what this game will offer, what new it will bring to the market.
4. Goals : We help client setup base and stretch goals for the campaign. You need to know what you want to ask for and for what. We help quantify that and define that.
5. Gifts : People will invest for some returns. So, they will need some gifts in returns. We help clients define the gifts and rewards for the investors. Our approach is to give gifts within the game application to minimize overheads. It increases your user base as well right at the time of launch. So, T-shirts are no good. But game currency is a Win-Win.
6. Support : Your kickstarter campaign needs a support as well. For this, we also develop web pages, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and help clients maintain activity during the campaign period, attract people to the campaign.

What we take : We just do this for a very basic cost. It is generally between 2% to 10% of the total campaign base goal. We offer full support of our company and team, present ourselves as your partner, while we do not ask for any stake in the game. All we work for is the relationship where our game designers want to bring your idea to life, beyond the campaign. Feel free to get in touch with us or email at enquiry@logicsimplified.com