Kickstarter's Double Million Dollar Crowdfunding Day: When Making the Game Is the Game

Crowdfunding has, so far, been most successful in raising funds for 'serious' products. The kind that adults sell to each other. Not anymore.

Kickstarter funded two projects at the million dollar level, an event in itself. But one of them was a video game still in design - and it surpassed its $400K target in less than 8 hours so they kept the spigots open till they surpassed the
$1 million level. Which took 22 hours. That's less than one day for those having trouble with the math...

There is a growing sense that the economy may finally be improving and that tech - with Facebook's IPO leading the band - is in the vanguard. Again.

No one wants to miss out. Gaming has been the most vibrant segment of the business during the long, slow crawl back from the financial crisis so it only makes sense that funding should flow its way. Might just be time to dust off those old ideas and see if anyone with spare cash is interested. You could be surprised. JL

Carl Franzen reports in TPM:

Kickstarter, the Manhattan-based crowd funding website launched in 2009 that’s since gone on to fund an iPod Nano Watch and the Occupy Wall Street Journal, among other strange projects, has made two projects into millionaires.

On Friday, the Kickstarter team announced that users had successfully funded two different projects to the tune of $1 million each within the same 24 hour period. Both projects set the record for the most dollars ever raised on the website. One of them also set the record for fastest funded project yet.
Kickstarter allows anyone to launch projects and solicit donations on its website, although it takes a 5 percent cut of all successfully funded projects.

The first project to hit the $1 million mark, at 2:08 pm ET, is a third-party iPhone docking station. But not just any iPhone docking station — the coveted Elevation Dock, which is made out of solid aluminum and provides for smooth, hassle free undocking with a single tug, whether the iPhone has a case on it or not.

The second project to become a millionaire — a new adventure game from Double Fine, the acclaimed videogame studio run by Tim Schafer — did so at 6:42 pm, just 22 hours after it was posted on the website. The project, which initially aimed to raise $400,000, was fully funded within 8 hours of going up on the website, but the mass donations just kept pouring in.

The game, “Double Fine Adventure,” which has yet to actually be titled, is slated to be an old school style point and click adventure game. Funders will also have the chance to see the game being made, thanks to a multi-part video documentary by professional documentary outfit 2 Player Productions.

Unsurprisingly, the creators of both projects were ecstatic. “Boom,” tweeted Casey Hopkins, the Oregon-based designer behind the Elevation Dock, upon reaching the $1 million sum, later telling Think Brilliant: “It’s a big milestone, I think crowd-funding is just in its infancy.”

Tim Schafter tweeted a Smiley emoticon and later posted a picture of the Double Fine team celebrating.

But the Kickstarter team itself may have done the most reveling in the good news. After all, they enjoyed several other additional milestones throughout the day, from watching New York City Council speaker Christine Quinn announce a new effort between the city government and Kickstarter to help fund community projects, to watching indie band Black Tambourine launch a Kickstarter project to reunite, to earning over $1 million in pledges for a single day, to the site being featured on Friday’s episode of the IFC comedy Portlandia. The team chronicled the days events in an inspiring blog post.

Here’s video of the Kickstarter team celebrating in their NYC offices as Double Fine Adventure hits the $1 million mark:

We’re celebrating with you! from Kickstarter on Vimeo.

Already, tech and business writers have been quick to point out the significance of the day and what it means for crowd funding initiatives going forward.

“Crowdfunding is coming into its own—fast,” wrote Kent Bernhard, Jr. at Portfolio.

“If Kickstarter merely funds things that would have gotten money in some other way, it’s a cool thing,” wrote Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic, “But, if Kickstarter funding allows the creation of fundamentally new and different kinds of stuff, then it is a creative engine of a much-higher caliber.”

But for now, the creators of the projects and the Kickstarter team are just focused on enjoying the historic moment.