Update: the results of this prediction experiment are in. See the bottom of this article for a summary.

We’re about to launch our first Kickstarter campaign, for the game above. Here’s the campaign page and video, both still under construction.

I asked five people on our team to predict how much it’ll raise. Their predictions ranged from $115k to $250k, spread pretty evenly over that range.

Predicting anything is hard, but these predictions feel extra hard because:

our campaign has one pledge level (for the game and one small Kickstarter exclusive)

it has no stretch goals, and no add-ons

it’s our first campaign

our team has marketing and Kickstarter experience most first-time creators don’t

most of us are close to the project, which can distort perceptions

I’m fascinated by how different our views of reality are. I’d love to see the predictions of people who aren’t so close to the project. It might be possible to learn something. We could see:

who made the best predictions

what they were thinking

what the bad predictors were thinking and how they biffed

if the average prediction is close (the wisdom of the crowds)

how the above observations might help make for better predictions

If this sounds interesting to you and you want to help:

Use this google form to predict how much our campaign will raise

I’ll post a summary of the predictions, and my thoughts about them, on or shortly after March 17, when our campaign launches.

I’ll also post again after the campaign, covering:

who made the best predictions

what they were thinking

what the bad predictors were thinking and how they biffed

whether the wisdom of the crowds prevailed

how all this might help make for better predictions

The campaign will launch on March 17, so you must make your prediction before then (it’ll be a 21-day campaign).

You can update your prediction as many times as you want before March 17. Feel free to discuss the predictions in the comments here. Discussion might improve them, or might cause groupthink.

The thinking behind my own prediction: $200k

I went down the list of most-funded tabletop game campaigns of all time, until I found the highest-funded game which shares the following characteristics with our game:

a light strategy game (BGG weight of 2 or less)

by a first-time creator

with no minis

not designed to be funny

That game is The Island of El Dorado, which raised $293k. Since it’s the most-funded campaign of its kind, our campaign will probably raise less. But how much less?

If you sorted all the Kickstarter campaigns of that kind by the amount they raised, you’d get a power law distribution that looks approximately like this:

The left-most blue bar would be The Island of El Dorado with its $292k, and the other bars would be the other campaigns.

My prediction, $200k, would put our campaign in the top 10% of this set of campaigns. Here’s why I predict that:

The page and the game look higher-quality to me than for most of the other campaigns I’ve seen in the set (but again, I’m REAL close to the project)

Though it’s our first Kickstarter campaign, we have more Kickstarter experience than most 1st-time creators: 5 previous campaigns between us. This allows us to construct our page better than most first-time creators, avoid common mistakes, use the right contractors, etc.

We have ecommerce marketing expertise many board game companies don’t because we sell most of our games direct online.

I just noticed all of our team’s predictions at the top of this post are in or near the top 10%. In percentile terms, our predictions are all similar! Optimism bias?

Another way to gain insight may be to compare the attractiveness of The Island of El Dorado campaign page with ours. It’s a great comparison because the games have related themes (different kinds of exploration). I’m way too close to our work to compare them though. Would love to know what you think.

If you want to be notified when our campaign launches, sign up here.

Update: Results!

The campaign has come and gone. Here’s a graph showing all the predictions along with the actual amount raised:

The blue bar is what the campaign actually raised

The red bars are Underdogger predictions

The orange bars are reader predictions

Observations and Reflections

The average prediction was about $125k, so the campaign raised about twice the aggregate prediction. I collected these predictions before Coronavirus shut down the economy, and indeed before we knew it would. Given that, I’m amazed the campaign raised so much.

The average Underdogger prediction was $172k, so Underdoggers were closer to the mark.

Reader predictions varied wildly: the lowest was $20k and the highest was $538k. Here’s a typical comment from someone with a low prediction:

“No minis, unusual theme, new creator with 0 backed games… Initial impression was $50K, dropped to $35K after I looked at the page, dropped to $25K after seeing it’s a new creator. And honestly, I think that’s still probably high. Honestly, I don’t know if you’ll hit your goal at all.”

Those who made the highest predictions tended to explain them by saying they went with their guts. In fact, only one of the four highest predictors said anything other than that. Here’s that person’s explanation:

“You are able to leverage an already successful game (80k copies!!) to help sell and attract attention to this one. Furthermore while it is this company’s 1st kickstarter, you (Nick) at least have experience with a large company that has had very successful kickstarters in the past [editor’s note: true]. The rest of your company likely has some experience too. Plus I think the art and presentation on your page is uncommonly good. So can you manage to sell a little over 10k copies through this kickstarter? I suspect the answer is yes—if anything part of me wants to bet even a bit higher. For example I would rather bet on about 15k copies for 600k dollars than on your wager of 200k.”

The person whose prediction was closest to the actual result: Hasan Hasmani, the owner of Underdog Games! His prediction was $250k, only $5k off! Because his prediction was closer than mine (mine was $200k), I had to buy him three painfully expensive chocolate bars (we bet on predictions to test our understanding). After chatting with him, I think the campaign’s success relative to prediction boils down to three things:

Travel isn’t just a theme, it’s a passion for many people, and there aren’t many games about it.

Art and presentation.

Underdog is experienced getting the word out online because unlike most game publishers, we sell 90% of our games direct to customers online.