The Video Game Kickstarter Report – Week of April 5

Torment: Tides of Numenera – $3.9 million. 7 hours left.
Shroud of the Avatar – $1.4 million. 2 days left.
Crayon Chronicles – $7k. Finished.
Net Gain: Corporate Espionage – $36k. Finished.
Telepath Tactics – $28k. 10 days left.
Shovel Knight – $105k. 8 days left.
Divinity: Original Sin – $328k ($400k goal). 20 days left.
Battle Worlds: Kronos – $160k. 22 days left.
Revive Retronauts – $43k. 16 days left.

Pretty light week for kickstarters. The Torment kickstarter looks like it’ll break the all-time record for a video game kickstarter (excluding hardware like the Ouya) but not a whole lot of new stuff this week.

However, one noteworthy kickstarter has shown up in the form of Camelot Unchained. An MMORPG by one of the designers of Dark Ages of Camelot, it has one of the biggest kickstarter goals to date ($2 million) but it’s already nearly halfway there ($825,000 raised with 26 days left to go). $2 million is miniscule by traditional MMORPG budgets but the creator did say that he’ll put in $2 million of his own money if the kickstarter successfully funds. Although realistically, even $4 million is really small of a budget for a MMORPG so hopefully they have some other sources of funding they can call upon. Not sure what exactly makes this one stand out from the MMORPG pack other than its background but it did say that it’ll have a heavy emphasis on crafting which is nice.

Pop quiz time! I noticed that Shovel Knight seems to have benefited greatly from its PAX showing, however I also saw some other indie games with kickstarters at PAX East that are still struggling. How useful do you think a public showing like PAX East is for a kickstarter and what do you think Shovel Knight did that made its PAX East booth so effective?