They started advertising their projects weeks before the kickstarter launch. They probably had hundreds of fans lined up wanting to buy it, before it even appeared on kickstarter, which explains the first-day figures.

They started advertising their projects weeks before the kickstarter launch. They probably had hundreds of fans lined up wanting to buy it, before it even appeared on kickstarter, which explains the first-day figures.

I'd +1 this post if it had a +1 button.

Probably just Walter White laundering his money by donations through Saul.

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?

As mentioned they already did a very successful Dreadball Kickstarter which, by most observations, contained quite a good bit of good bang for the bucks. Mantic also made themselves a good name before Kickstarter by slowly growing themselves to where they were.

Also note that this is a game that not only appeals to board game fans but also to miniature lovers (not common action figures despite what Shane C believes them to be). Good miniatures are always expensive and the quality of them looks pretty good (as usual for Mantic).
Add to that the fact that I cannot remember another company doing similar Mars-attack type of miniatures (there will be tons of smaller one-man companies around but that means invariably either a small range or worse quality, quite possibly both). Also, they seem to be coming in plastic which a lot of people find much easier to work with than metal.

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.

This is the best answer. I really get frustrated when people attribute success to vague stuff like "Action figures are hot sellers" and "certain types of product attract people who will happily spend large sums of money." I don't mean to sound argumentative, I just think that stuff is a way to avoid the question of "how do we emulate that success?" by attributing it to forces external to the successful party.

I asked a friend who purchased one of the limited early bird slots (no idea which one), and her reply was this:

And it also ties in to how well board games are doing these days over computer games. Board games don't crash, rarely require you to upgrade your kitchen table. If something breaks you can make a stand in piece, and if a mouthy pre-teen is spouting racial slurs at you you can reach over and smack him up side the head.

And it also ties in to how well board games are doing these days over computer games. Board games don't crash, rarely require you to upgrade your kitchen table. If something breaks you can make a stand in piece, and if a mouthy pre-teen is spouting racial slurs at you you can reach over and smack him up side the head.

Was any part of this paragraph serious?

And it also ties in to how well board games are doing these days over computer games. Board games don't crash, rarely require you to upgrade your kitchen table. If something breaks you can make a stand in piece, and if a mouthy pre-teen is spouting racial slurs at you you can reach over and smack him up side the head.

Was any part of this paragraph serious?

I don't know about you, but I've never had a board game crash or require me to upgrade my table. Unless you count moving to the floor as "upgrading my table." I've also used proxies for missing pieces a number of times. I'd say he's pretty serious.

And it also ties in to how well board games are doing these days over computer games. Board games don't crash, rarely require you to upgrade your kitchen table. If something breaks you can make a stand in piece, and if a mouthy pre-teen is spouting racial slurs at you you can reach over and smack him up side the head.

Was any part of this paragraph serious?

Mostly serious. But really, part of why board games are popular and sales are booming is because they're not video games. Want to play a multiplayer game? Call your friends over and have one of them bring a pizza. You make a night of it. You don't have to wait for a patch to download, if some mechanic makes no sense and doesn't work for you and your friends, then anyone with half a brain can rewrite it. If something breaks, you can usually find something to fix it in short order without having to wait for a developer to get around to solving your problem. They are real objects, and when the maker decides they no longer want to support the game then all your stuff doesn't suddenly vanish and become worthless because someone shut down the login server.

That paragraph appeared to smack of irony. I thought it was imperfect humor, with slapstick comedy, and an arbitrary reference to board-game success stemming from a lower quality experience of all similar software entertainment.

@ Luckless