Kickstarter released its “best of” list for 2012, and the numbers are impressive: 2.24 million people funded at least one project and pledged a total of $319 million. That’s more than $600 per minute over the course of the year, with 18,109 projects successfully funded.
The crowdsourced funding platform remained true to its artistic roots. Despite many well-known gadget Kickstarter campaigns like the Ouya gaming console, which raised $8.6 million, the biggest categories included games at $83 million raised, followed by film and video, design, then music, with technology coming in fifth place with $29 million.
- Games: $83.1 million
- Film & video: $57.9 million
- Design: $50.1 million
- Music: $35 million
- Technology: $29 million
- Publishing: $15.3 million
- Food: $11.1 million
- Art: $10.5 million
- Comics: $9.2 million
- Theater: $7.1 million
- Fashion: $6.3 million
Almost 600,000 people backed two or more projects, with 50,047 backing 1o or more, and a very dedicated 452 people backing an incredible 100 or more projects: essentially one every three days.
The category with the most funded projects was music, with 5,067 projects funded, but games took in the most cash: $83 million. An astonishing 17 projects took in over $1 million each.
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Highlighted projects include:
- Double Fine Adventure (a game that collected $3.3 million)
- Balloon Mapping Kits (DIY mapping efforts that Google included in Maps)
- MaKey MaKey (an invention kit that received over half a million in pledges)
- Safecast X Kickstarter Geiger Counter (an open-source Geiger counter)
- The Edge and Back (6th graders who raised $5,100 to send a camera to space and bring it back)
- 3G Space Suit (a civilian’s space suit)
- Pizza Brain (the world’s first pizza museum)
- 1,000 Student Projects in Space (1,000 student experiments in ping-pong balls, sent to space)
- Baghdad Community Hackerspace (the name says it all)
- OpenROV (an open-source underwater robot)
18,109 projects funded? I think we can safely say that’s 18,109 chunks of awesome.
Image credit: Crowdsourcing
