NUMBERS!
We’re a week in and the following events have happened:
-the unlocked a new paid stretch goal
-the have more backers than Advent of Decay (which unlocked a free stretch goal)
-they had a live con appearance to generate buzz
-sent out a PATHETIC email begging for money to impress industry insiders at GAMA Expo (I’m sure the guys next to them at the Squishables booth will be blown away)
-they just had their best day of the Kickstarter on Monday (the average per new backer was $490, better day one’s $419 per backer. Though obviously that’s probably a mix of existing backers buying dice/upgrading out of guilt because of the email, it’s still their best average yet.)
-they followed their best yet with their worst ($291 average spend per new backer, lowest yet. Interesting trivia: They had 60 backers on Saturday but only 21 on Sunday, so you’d think “whoa! They did great on Saturday!” but Sunday was actually a stronger day for them with an average spend of $332 vs formerly lowest average Saturday’s $297)
Edit: took to long to write this someone upped their pledge (did I miss a whiny email?!) current pledge average per new backer for today is $294, still the worse day of the campaign and doesn’t seem to change any other averages down stream…
as it currently stands 826 of the 1934 backers want anything to do with the game itself. Of them 519 are Paladin levels. Still btw not enough that they needed to lift that limit, always bully companies, it always works!
It’s going to be interesting to see how the rest of the campaign goes. Obviously “Fully Funded in 5 Minutes!” isn’t much of a bragging point when you’re an established company with purposefully low funding goal and the backing of a cult. We don’t know how many units an in stock sale pushes on day one vs the rest of the campaign, what looks impressive on Kickstarter when numbers are public could just be business as usual for them. Like I don’t doubt this campaign breaks $1m because I don’t doubt the 4H do a $1m in sales per wave.
Like I don’t even think Kicktraq is prepared for this kind of a campaign which I’m almost certain was VERY front loaded. It says the “average backers per day” is 276, it says the average daily pledge is $400 (down $2 from yesterday), but daily numbers show that’s not true at all. Day 1 is WAAAY throwing off the curve and I don’t think six is enough data points to find a true mean. (If you think it’s enough, toss the outlier day 1 gives us an average of 53 backers pledging $366 daily)
I think that email may have blown their load a bit, how many “I have time I can wait…” backers rushed to the Horsemen’s side to dig deep moving the closing rush to day 6?
Looking at AoD and the Video game, AoD had the standard KS trajectory of big first days, some cooling, strong finish almost as strong as day 1 and 2. The video game was front loaded with almost half of the funding coming day one with over 1,000 backs and the final day matching day 2 with about 200. I suspect this campaign will follow a similar path, since, there is a limit to action figures, it’s not an unlimited growth field, and while sure, maybe they maintain this current rate and can reach 3.5k backers… I’m not sure what the 4H were trying to achieve with this one.
Like… are there indie TTRPG’s that get THOUSANDS of backers on Kickstarter?!
Admittedly the search engine is shit and I don’t feel looking for the diamonds in the rough in seas of “we need 200 people to give $1000 total to print our one shot”, I don’t get where the Horsemen are pulling $1.5m out of their assholes…
Again, maybe they regularly do $1.5m in sales per wave so this is business as usual, they clearly had the confidence they’d hit these goals because Add-on figures (the things that actually increase pledge rates) are locked behind half-million goals (AoD’s goals when these were NEW models was $15k apart), two figures are just out of reach until this out performs AoD financially with an All-In that cost half as much! So clearly they were expecting BIG numbers, because why else give Kickstarter 30% (as of writing KS is making $232k off this project)
I suspect in a week whether unlocked naturally or not the $1m figure becomes available to goose sales. I’m wondering right now if we see any “surprise” figures added because it feels like this was supposed to be “passive income”, the dice, the books, the standees, the GM screen, maybe even the minis would subcontracted out, the 4H just tended to a tiny 9 figure wave with some accessories and then warehouse crew boxes it up… and when they need a new stand alone adventure the warehouse crew writes those too apparently! DONE FOR YOU PASSIVE INCOME, BABY! If they want a “big number finish” dropping more toys is the way to go, but that’s more work and they have to share their cut with KS, so I’m willing to bet early unlocks and maybe the cheapest freebies (skull face plate you probably already have!) is all they do.
Not even sure if this stayed on topic or made sense, but after yesterday’s email and looking at the daily numbers I don’t think this is what the Horsemen wanted taking this project to Kickstarter.
