http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1744629938/mars-attacks-the-miniatures-game

Ok, it looks really cool.. but I dont get, 13 minutes and 50K (now over 300K, still 28 days to go))? I cant even find viral marketing or anything..

Its amazing, only 2000 backers, most went for buying the game and stuff backing 300$ !. Jeez, most backing was for 300$!!

(at least backs with pledges, why they dont show the overall backing %?)

Whats going on? What kind of sorcery they are using to get all that money so fast?

Is "Mars Attack" theme full of fanatic fans?

One thing that people selling online through a third party will do is buy their own stuff through that third party. So if I sell something on Steam I might have all my employees buy a copy of that item through Steam to get it to show up on the top sellers list or at least somewhere slightly higher when someone sorts by popularity. Similarly if I already had some funding or potential funding and wanted to kick start my kick starter I might have employees make my product look more impressive by contributing to my kick starter. In either case most of the money comes back to me and the share that the third party gets can be written off as marketing expenses. I don't know that's what happened here, but it's something to keep in mind when you see something with large volumes on open. It could be real or it could be a marketing ploy.

You might also note that they were the creators of Dreadball whose Kickstarter campaign also exhibited large numbers i.e. 728k of a 20k goal

edit: Of further interest - a list of the top ten funded board games - it would seem the numbers are not small for this genre.

I was looking at their site and saw a bunch of really successful kickstarters.

I think they are using kickstarter differently.

Instead of making a game, putting it on sale, and hope for success, they create a kickstart project, so ppl give then enought money both for making the game and buying it already. So its better because they dont have risk of expending money with no return. They will do just as much as ppl ask..

Or not..does it makes sense?

It's also worth noting that certain types of product attract people who will happily spend large sums of money to make them happen, for example board games and especially miniatures.

It doesn't hurt that the business side of e.g. manufaturing board games and miniatures is well-understood, so kickstarters for those kinds of projects often have a firm grasp on how much money they will need - and how much additional money they will need for various stretch goals - so the risk of failing to deliver the product is relatively low compared to other kickstarters.

In the case of board and miniature games, the combination of low cost to produce and a potential backer base with sizeable disposable income and a strong desire for new products means that kickstarters for them have a good chance to get funded quickly and greatly exceed their initial amount.

Mars Attack was a movie during the 90's I believe, I would say millions of people have heard of it. Kickstarter is as much about name recognition as it is about the project itself.. Look at the rise of the Kickstarter developer celebrity like Chris Roberts Star Citizen or Double Fine Tim Schafer.. etc. Also with Kickstarter it allows small underserved segments of the community ( be it gaming or other ) to endorse their own niche industry, in this case tactical movie branded board games..

Those $300 pledges is some kind of "New York Comic Con edition", I'm guessing they were very successful with their IRL advertising at that event.

1. Action figures are hot sellers.
2. People look for exciting board games.
3. They probably had good connections.
4. Going by the amount of money, they seemed to make people believe in them. If people believe in a project, they will tend to donate their money to it.

Very Impressive.

If you like to see a breakdown of its kickstarter stats check out Kicktraq here. Its trending to between $800k and $1.4million

At first glance gaining $170k on its first day looks a bit suspicious, particularly when you factor in its avg pledge vs backers ($38,000 vs 200).

However digging a little deeper reveals over 1300 backers in the first day and judging by the 600 backers in the $300 reward ($195k) I'd say its pretty clear that these guys have a very strong and loyal core following that are actively watching the company negating the need for heavy amount of promotion, at least for day 1 kickstarter. I think this is probably backed up by the fall in both backers and pledges for almost a week afterwards, at which point it raises again no doubt due to some form of marketing.

Overall it just goes to show how important it can be to have a fan base for your product/company and that maintaining their respect can provide huge benefits such as seen here. I also suspect its the type of market that really plays up to fans and fan support, not to mention that board games themselves have been under going a revival of late and have always been popular.

Of course it should also be noted that whilst it is a large amount of pledge money, the basic game itself is costing $75 so its not exactly a cheap product so it would be expected that the money raised would be high.

I'm not too surprised. Figurines are expensive physical objects that all require work. At the very least a painter has handled each one to add finishing touches so the quality control is rigid.

It's a completely different market from software. If you sold hand crafted furniture, each set would be worth thousands. If you had to make 200 sets of furniture, you'd have to hire 50 employees to get it done on time, based on expectations.