Tabletop games are responsible for a quarter of all the money made on Kickstarter in 2017 so far

Last year might have been the biggest year for tabletop gaming on Kickstarter yet, but a new report has suggested 2017 is already well on its way to breaking that impressive record again.

The total amount pledged to successful tabletop projects on the crowdfunding platform during 2016 came to a staggering $113 million, almost a third higher than 2015. In fact, last year was responsible for almost a third of the $360 million made by tabletop games throughout the whole of Kickstarter’s existence.

According to analyst firm ICO Partners, tabletop games have raked in $69.8 million in the first six months of 2017 alone – over $20 million more than the amount made during the same time last year, which was the best six months on record for the site until now.

That money was divided between 957 successful projects funded between January and the end of June. 581 campaigns were unsuccessful, meaning over 1,500 games have been launched on the site so far this year. This is actually close to the stat from past years, meaning the number of successful projects is simply going up without a significant number of extra campaigns failing.

If you’re in any doubt as to just how popular tabletop games are on Kickstarter, ICO claims that 24% of all the money made by successful campaigns in the first half of 2017 went to tabletop projects.

Helping out with this were multi-million blockbusters such as Rising Sun (pictured), Zombicide: Green Horde and Kingdom Death: Monster 1.5, which remains the most-funded tabletop game of all time on Kickstarter with almost $12.4 million raised.

It’s not just the big hitters, though – according to the data, the amount of money being raised has broken records across the board, regardless of whether games are making $10,000 or half a million dollars and beyond.

“Following the steady growth of funded projects, it is not surprising to see a record breaking half-year, and if current trends continue there is no way that 2017 is not going to be the best year ever for the [tabletop] subcategory too,” wrote ICO’s Thomas Bidaux.

With Zombicide and Rising Sun publisher CMON having recently launched a campaign for its Game of Thrones miniatures game and dozens of other projects in the works, it certainly doesn’t seem like massive tabletop Kickstarters are going away anytime soon.