Exploding Kittens
Raised: $8,782,571 (87,825 percent of goal)
Great ideas can come in weird packages. When “Exploding Kittens” hit the market, we doubt that anyone thought it was going to be a take-off success. So when the game raised over eight million on Kickstarter, investors everywhere took notice. What was this game? It sounded violent and insane. Instead, it was a simple game that capitalized on a well-known web-cartoon and an excellent marketing campaign.
The game started out as a very boring idea. One of the founders, Shane Small, proposed a game where a joker was inserted into a deck of cards. Everyone took turns drawing cards until the joker came up. He called it “Bomb Squad,” and it was a bad game that no one wanted to play. Undeterred, Shane and his co-founder Elan worked on the under-developed rule set to give the game complexity and purpose. Then, they gave their product flair by bringing on an accomplished and well-known comic artist Matt Inman – creator of the very popular webcomic The Oatmeal. It was likely his influence that saw the game renamed to “Exploding Kittens.” He’s weird like that. The rename also posed a few logistical challenges: if the goal of the game was to hurt cats, they doubted it would find success. Coupled with Elan and Shane’s gaming experience (both had worked for companies like XBox and Microsoft by the time of the game’s launch), Matt’s zany imagination and illustration-style gave the game an artistic “soul” that spoke to the kickstarter audience. He also came up with the idea to provide high-paying contributors with more game instead of swag, which in turn created excitement around the rare versions. The game also came during a time when low-tech, or “old-school” games are experiencing a resurgence: shoppers in the U.S. and Canada spent $700 million on such games in 2013, a 20% year-over-year growth, and almost double the totals of 2008.
When asked why the team decided to release on Kickstarter as opposed to a more traditional method, the team replied that they felt it was the fastest way to get the game into the hands of the people. Avoiding traditional buyer/owner relationships also granted the team more autonomy over their project, and was excited about the opportunity to make improvements based on direct community feedback.
Categorised in: Success Stories