RPG remakes make four times the money that original games do on Kickstarter

Remakes of older roleplaying games are far more popular on Kickstarter than brand new games.

That’s one of the interesting points from a look at the second quarter of 2017 on the crowdfunding website published by Storybrewers.

According to the data, 89 RPGs were funded on Kickstarter during the three months, making nearly $2.8 million – a 38% jump on the beginning of 2017.

The most funded game was Torg Eternity, raising $355,922, while Cortex Prime had the most backers with 2,756 supporters.

Torg Eternity is based on the original 1990 RPG Torg, while Cortex Prime is an update to the Cortex system that first appeared in 1999’s Sovereign Stone System before being released as Cortex Plus, the framework behind several Smallville, Firefly and Marvel RPGs.

It seems that it’s increasingly common for remakes of older systems and games to outpace their fresh-faced competitors on Kickstarter, as the statistics for Q2 show that remakes made over quadruple the amount of dosh through crowdfunding than original titles and two-and-a-half times the average money pledged to any project, while attracting twice as much money from each backer – around $81 versus original games’ $41.

This is despite there being more than double the number of original projects, with 28 launched versus 13 remakes during the three months. The remakes made $79,555 on average – with almost double the number of backers – while new games settled for $19,213.

Unsurprisingly, Dungeons & Dragons remains the most popular system for Kickstarted RPGs, with 29 projects attracting $22,932 on average. 33 games used brand new systems, while eight were system-neutral. The next most popular established system was Savage Worlds, with six projects, ahead of Powered by the Apocalypse, with four, and Pathfinder’s two.