{"id":1490,"date":"2024-01-25T22:38:19","date_gmt":"2024-01-25T22:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/?p=1490"},"modified":"2024-01-25T22:44:40","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T22:44:40","slug":"gamefound-turns-up-heat-on-kickstarter-after-scoring-2023s-biggest-tabletop-fundraise-half-of-the-years-top-10-most-funded-board-game-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/25\/gamefound-turns-up-heat-on-kickstarter-after-scoring-2023s-biggest-tabletop-fundraise-half-of-the-years-top-10-most-funded-board-game-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"Gamefound turns up heat on Kickstarter after scoring 2023&#8217;s biggest tabletop fundraise, half of the year&#8217;s top 10 most-funded board game projects"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Tabletop games-focused crowdfunding platform Gamefound has upped the pressure on industry heavyweight Kickstarter thanks to a stellar 2023 which saw it bag the biggest board game fundraise of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gamefound began life as a Kickstarter pledge manager in 2015, before Marcin \u015awierkot, the founder of board game publisher Awaken Realms, set his sights on beating the crowdfunding giant at its own game in the tabletop sector two years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u015awierkot hoped 2022 would see the company take in $67.5m, representing 25% of the tabletop revenue Kickstarter had recorded the previous year &#8211; a total it fell well short of at $28.3m, despite a big rise in revenue, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/tabletop-games\/23579623\/top-10-board-games-on-gamefound-2022-crowdfunding\">Polygon reported in February last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This year the firm has outdone \u015awierkot&#8217;s initial $50m prediction, pulling in $56m in total crowdfunding from projects despite Kickstarter&#8217;s continued dominance and the rise of fellow upstart fundraising platform BackerKit &#8211; another former Kickstarter pledge manager which exited its beta phase last summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-full is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Nemesis-Retaliation-pic-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1493\" width=\"400\" height=\"479\" srcset=\"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Nemesis-Retaliation-pic-2.jpg 794w, https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Nemesis-Retaliation-pic-2-250x300.jpg 250w, https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Nemesis-Retaliation-pic-2-768x920.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Gamefound scored a huge win in 2023 by bagging the biggest tabletop fundraising campaign of the year, with sci-fi survival horror game Nemesis&#8217; standalone expansion <a href=\"https:\/\/gamefound.com\/en\/projects\/awaken-realms\/nemesis-retaliation\">Nemesis: Retaliation raising more than $12.1m<\/a> &#8211; the third biggest board game crowdfunding campaign of all time behind <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/frosthaven\/frosthaven\">Frosthaven<\/a> ($12.9m) and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/poots\/kingdom-death-monster-15\">Kingdom Death Monster 1.5<\/a> ($12.3m).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While clearly an explosive success of a campaign, Gamefound also proved it had strength in depth by scoring five of the top 10 most-funded board games of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They included <a href=\"https:\/\/gamefound.com\/en\/projects\/go-on-board\/the-witcher-path-of-destiny\">The Witcher: Path of Destiny<\/a> ($6.4m), <a href=\"https:\/\/gamefound.com\/en\/projects\/awaken-realms\/stalker-the-boardgame\">S.T.A.L.K.E.R The Board Game<\/a> ($4.7m) and <a href=\"https:\/\/gamefound.com\/en\/projects\/chip-theory-games\/the-elder-scrolls\">The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal Of The Second Era<\/a> ($4.6m).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kickstarter scored big raises of its own with games including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/cgl\/battletech-mercenaries\">Battletech: Mercenaries<\/a> ($7.5m), but was kept from holding all of the remaining five slots of the top ten <a href=\"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/2023\/07\/18\/kickstarter-rival-backerkit-follows-4bn-gloomhaven-campaign-success-with-official-launch-from-beta\/\">by BackerKit&#8217;s Gloomhaven Grand Festival campaign<\/a> ($5.5m) &#8211; a powerful early success for the new platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gamefound revealed in its annual roundup that it also reached one million users and saw 167 new creators join the platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u015awierkot, the CEO of Gamefound, said in the roundup, &#8220;Those are some &#8216;sexy&#8217; numbers, but they don\u2019t tell the full story. I believe that Gamefound was able to bring a lot of value to both creators and backers and that added value always makes me most happy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Our team works really hard, and it is all worth it, seeing a creator making their dream project come true, or backers appreciating our newest feature.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He cited important features the company added last year as being central to its success, including making tax more streamlined, providing the option to pay in instalments, and quality of life improvements for creators such as a new analytics section and dashboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kickstarter has not released its own 2023 figures. The firm saw revenue from its tabletop projects fall by $33m in 2022, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/tabletop-games\/23552590\/kickstarter-top-10-largest-most-backed-board-games-campaigns-2022\">Polygon reported last January<\/a> &#8211; the first time in almost a decade it suffered an annual decline in the segment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-black-color has-text-color has-background wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/buttondown.com\/boardgamewire\" style=\"background-color:#f6bf00\">For more stories like this direct to your email inbox, click here to sign up for BoardGameWire&#8217;s free email newsletter. \n\nAnd if you&#8217;ve found our reporting interesting or useful, please consider a paid subscription to help support our journalism!<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tabletop games-focused crowdfunding platform Gamefound has upped the pressure on industry heavyweight Kickstarter thanks to a stellar 2023 which saw it bag the biggest board game fundraise of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[270,274,25,26,58,651,649,653,654,652],"class_list":["post-1490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-backerkit","tag-campaign","tag-crowdfunding","tag-gamefound","tag-kickstarter","tag-marcin-swierkot","tag-nemesis-retaliation","tag-stalker-the-board-game","tag-the-elder-scrolls-betrayal-of-the-second-era","tag-the-witcher-path-of-destiny"],"blocksy_meta":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1490"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1496,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1490\/revisions\/1496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}