Predicting Kickstarter

As an independent game developer, finding ways to finance projects is a core concern of mine. Kickstarter has been a viable way for games to be funded for a few years now, but is certainly not a silver bullet solution. During my senior year at MSU, I took a course on data visualization and became fascinated by the potential for it to provide real world solutions. For my final project, I chose to data mine all the new kickstarter game projects that came out for a few months.Using this constantly updating database, I can then compare new projects with old ones to accurately predict if the new project will be successfully funded or not, and also how much funding it is likely to receive.

The point of all this is to see what the odds of a live kickstarter game really are. I’m also keeping track of the performance of my own program, to share how accurate the program is. The program shows all the new projects side by side, so viewers can how many new projects are likely to succeed vs how many are likely to fail. Viewers can then visit the pages of each kickstarter and form their own conclusions about why one project is likely to succeed and the other likely to fail. I believe this knowledge to be valuble to any independent game developer thinking of getting funding by using kickstarter or other crowdfunding sites.

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