Crowdfunding European Game Campaigns – Evidence from 2017 Kickstarter Projects

Crowdfunding is widely recognized as an innovative financing form. It is highly popular with companies and individuals who seek financial support from local and global sources with Kickstarter.com being the most popular reward-based crowdfunding platform. In 2017, with 26 percent most of the crowdfunding money was obtained by projects from the game category (where ca. 45 percent of all campaigns were funded). The objective of this study is to determine factors influencing the success of European pro­jects from the game category on the reward-based crowdfunding platform Kickstarter.com in 2017. The findings show that setting a lower, rather than a higher, funding goal increases the probability to receive more funds. Sim­ilarly, fundraisers who communicate interactively with the crowd and keep their supporters updated, e.g. about the progress of their campaigns, new developed game features and rewards, face a higher probability to reach the pre-specified funding goal. The most important determinant is, how­ever, represented by (pre-)selling and offering products such as tabletop games, playing cards or video games as rewards. Such initiatives increase the chances for success by up to 18 percent. Our results are relevant for in­dividuals, founders, and innovative companies intending to initiate a game campaign on Kickstarter.com in Europe.