Board Games Outpace Video Games on Kickstarter

Ever since video games proved themselves to be a permanent home installation beginning in the 1980s, board games—those quaint, analog diversions made out of paper and cardboard—have had to endure countless obituaries.

As it turns out, the reports of their death have been premature. While electronic games remain a multi-billion-dollar industry, there’s been a marked increase in interest for independently-produced tabletop games. Consulting firm ICO Partners recently released statistics for the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter demonstrating that board games were raising six times the amount of money as video game projects in the first half of 2016, with four times as many projects being fully funded. Video games raised $8.2 million, while tabletop games grabbed in excess of $50 million.

The data could account for the fact that players might have more faith in a crowdsourced board game than they do an independently-made video game, a hugely complex undertaking which often requires the resources of a large software company to navigate.

Kickstarter’s biggest hands-on game campaign to date remains Exploding Kittens, a card game in which players try to avoid flatulent felines. The game raised $8,782,571.

[h/t Polygon]