Free League's Kickstarter

[Anders]

The Free League has pulled in $1,5M on their Blade Runner game and they still have 48 hours left. They have 13 784 backers. Their most profitable kickstarter was the One Ring 2nd edition ($1,7M and 16,596 backers). It's nice to see that a Swedish company is doing well. What does this say about the state of the industry? Is it a matter of getting popular franchises and a reputation for reliability? Is there something SJG and GB can learn from them?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Anders

The Free League has pulled in $1,5M on their Blade Runner game and they still have 48 hours left. They have 13 784 backers. Their most profitable kickstarter was the One Ring 2nd edition ($1,7M and 16,596 backers). It's nice to see that a Swedish company is doing well. What does this say about the state of the industry? Is it a matter of getting popular franchises and a reputation for reliability? Is there something SJG and GB can learn from them?

Both of these are properties with a lot of non-canon story potential (Blade Runner more than One Ring, but only slightly). And they're huge. Tolkien is, of course, Tolkien. Blade Runner (and Philip K Dick's 1968 story/novel that inspired it) benefits from two big-screen movies that transcend the usual suspects in terms of "niche audience."

Looking at Kicktraq, though I try not to (it's not terribly good for predictions), their first day was just outrageously good, which speaks to excellent product awareness. This looks like a mailing list and marketing win to me.

8,000 backers and over $100 per pledge on Day 1. That's not "runaway success" nor is it "networking effect." With 22 hours to go, they're seeing a very, very slight surge.

I'm not sure if "start with a three-day total of over 10,000 backers" is something of a lesson I can learn.

...but I'd sure like to.

[sir_pudding]

One thing that Free League has done is giving a very structured framework for campaigns. Their version of Twilight 2000 is bulity around hexcrawl rules. Blade Runner is built around a mystery-in-a-box format.