Kickstarter declares 2012 the Year of the Game, says 63% of projects that crossed $1 million are games

2012 isn’t even over yet, but Kickstarter has already declared it the Year of the Game. We’ve seen some crazy game submissions on the site, but the company has a good reason for its pronouncement: money.

The company has revealed that so far in 2012, seven of the 11 projects that have crossed $1 million are games, and an eighth is a comic about a game. More dollars have already been pledged this year for game projects than in any other category.

Here are the top five categories by dollars pledged from January 1 to August 31:

1. Games — $50 million.
2. Film — $42 million.
3. Design — $40 million.
4. Music — $25 million.
5. Technology — $16 million.

At first I thought this wasn’t anything new, but then I realized not only have I barely heard of Kickstarter prior to 2012, but I’ve heard of very few non-game submissions on the site. Consider this: Games has gone from the eighth most-funded category in Kickstarter history to the second most-funded.

The games category saw $48,190 pledged in 2009. That number increased 10-fold to $519,885 in 2010. The figure then septupled to $3,615,841 in 2011. The biggest jump came this year, and as I’ve already mentioned, it’s not even over yet: an almost 14-fold increase to $50,330,275.

You can probably see it better in this graph:

Last year, just 3.6 percent of all dollars pledged were to games. This year, the category is at 23 percent. Gamers are also Kickstarter’s most frequent backers: people who first back a Games project have backed 2.43 projects on average, compared to 1.78 projects for all other backers.

Kickstarter thinks the catalyst for this growth happened in February, when a video game project called Double Fine Adventure raised $1 million in its first 24 hours. The gaming world hasn’t looked at Kickstarter in the same way since; look at the number of game projects launching each month beginning in February:

Now that the relationship has been made, I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon. Kickstarter agrees: “Games give players the power to take control and decide what happens. Kickstarter gives backers the power to take control and decide what happens.”

Image credit: stock.xchng