The top 10 biggest board games and TTRPGs on Kickstarter in 2022

Kickstarter’s revenue from tabletop projects was down $33 million in 2022. A 12.4% drop in tabletop revenue from 2021 was the first since 2014 and marks the end of more a decade of growth in this sector for the crowdfunding company. Jon Ritter-Roderick is the director of Kickstarter’s games department. He blames the global economic downturn.

“I think there are things that we cannot control,” Ritter-Roderick told Polygon in an interview last week. “There’s macroeconomic things happening in the world that we are not immune to, and that the entire tabletop industry is not immune to. Last year, the overall industry saw a decline in sales. This is outside of Kickstarter.”

While there are some examples that support those assertions, it is difficult to get hard data regarding the hobby game industry. What’s clear is that large organizations like Microsoft, Amazon, and even Polygon parent Vox Media are making cuts to their workforces, which will directly impact the spending power of workers in the future. The United States Federal Reserve is yet to declare that the economy has entered recession. Those determinations happen in retrospect, of course — only once a recession is in full swing or has already passed.

Kickstarter has crossed the $2Billion mark in total pledges to videogame projects (not including video games) since it was launched in 2009. But its longevity has also bred competition: Gamefound and Backerkit both pushed hard into the tabletop space in 2022, no doubt eating into Kickstarter’s revenue.

Ritter-Roderick said that internally at his company the calendar was filled with product launches and upgrades in 2022 — what he termed as substantial improvements to the Kickstarter platform. According to Kate Bernyk (senior director of communications), the pace at which this work was completed is due in large part to Everette Taylor, its CEO. But the overall pessimism among consumers in the United States appears to have substantially contributed to Kickstarter’s declines.

“Once the world starts talking about […] a recession, then all of a sudden, everyone kind of locks down a little bit,” Ritter-Roderick said. “Which makes sense. And I think that we just came off of 2020, 2021 — very profitable years for us — but also […]Many people are interested in this opportunity. [were] investing in themselves.”

The top 10 highest-earning projects on Kickstarter in 2022 included several of the biggest campaigns in that platform’s history. The list also includes many companies who have ran many campaigns throughout the years. Among them was CMON, which had two campaigns in the top 10 — its 50th and 53rd campaigns, respectively, since 2012. Steamforged Games was also included on this list. It brought in approximately $4 million. Elden Ring: The Board Game — Its 15th Campaign since 2016.

Many people are beginning to question whether crowdfunding can be a good way to help a business grow and support its employees. Crowdfunding’s boom-and-bust cycles can prove dangerous. Wyrmwood was the most notable failure in crowdfunding’s attempt to raise $3million for its standing modular desk. In January, Wyrmwood announced layoffs as a direct result of this failure.

Is crowdfunding the best way for companies to find the capital they require year after year?

“I think [that] different companies have different needs,” said Ritter-Roderick. “For a company to be sustainable you have to have things happening throughout the year, usually. You can’t just launch a massive campaign and raise $43 million from nothing. Great! Bravo! However, many companies need to remain viable long-term. Different companies have different requirements. And I think they need to do what’s best for them. […] Having a company that just goes from Kickstarter to Kickstarter is one model, and there’s nothing that stops them from doing it. But ultimately, every company just needs to do what’s best for them.”

Ritter-Roderick’s hope for 2023 comes from the fact that there are more successful tabletop campaigns on Kickstarter than ever, which could lead to a wider community of creators. In 2022 there were 4,042 successful tabletop campaign fundings, as opposed to 3,520 in 2021. This year’s success rate was 72%, compared to 76.3% the previous. With Zine Quest returning to the traditional February slot, this number should increase. Zine Quest is an important event that brings together the community of tabletop role-playing games.

An increase in campaigns means more people are competing for smaller pieces of the total pie. The average successful tabletop campaign on Kickstarter earned on average $58,000 in 2022 — nearly $20,000 less than in 2021.