Special Features is a regular column in which MCG team members discuss projects they’re working on, interesting MCG activities, or things that inspire their work. This column is written by Charles.
A couple of years ago, in October of 2013, I wrote on my personal blog about the process of fulfilling the first couple of rounds of the Numenera Kickstarter. What we’d accomplished at the time was pretty record-setting, not just in the number of rewards we’d fulfilled and backers we’d sent them too, but also in terms of the fulfillment systems we’d created, or blazed new trails for.
Of course, crowdfunding has come a long way in the past couple of years, and what was once eye-opening is now pretty routine for us. Barely a month goes by that we don’t fulfill a couple (or a few, or a dozen) Kickstarter rewards, usually to hundreds if not thousands of backers. Here are a few numbers for you:
- 5: The number of Kickstarter campaigns we’ve held to date.
- 14,375: The “turnstile” number of backers of all our campaigns—that is, the number of people who backed each campaign, added up. Of course, some people have backed more than one, so the number of unique backers is somewhat smaller. But then we’ve also fulfilled rewards to some of our licensee campaigns—notably Torment: Tides of Numenera and Numenera: Strand—and that’s another several thousand backers.
- 219: The number of deliverables (specific, distinct products or other items) funded by our five campaigns to date.
- 117: The number of deliverables that have gone out to backers so far. Some campaigns have delivered all or almost all of their rewards, but Into the Ninth World has barely gotten started. And the main No Thank You, Evil! rewards ship in February.
- 2: The number of rewards delivered late. (There were a few others that missed by a hair, but I’m not sweating them.) We’re not happy that that number is higher than zero, but it’s still a pretty solid track record!
- 500–3000: The number of backers getting a typical deliverable (some are much higher). That gives us:
- Over 400,000: The number of delivered backer rewards so far. Whew!
These days it seems like we’re delivering something almost every week, and in fact we’ve got one or two new items to announce before we head off for the holidays. (The first round of Postcards from Storia went out Saturday. And have you checked out the downloadable Numenera character sheet lately? We just made it form-fillable—an (albeit minor) reward of the Numenera: Into the Ninth World campaign.)
It’s always gratifying and fun to tell our backers about a new item for them, but there’s also a fair bit of work involved making the announcements and sending out Kickstarter updates. I admit I’m a bit psyched that we’re going to get a break with the holidays and a fairly slow January. I don’t want to put any words in Tammie’s mouth, but I suspect she’s also looking forward to the break. (She’s the one who does all the hard work of getting the rewards into backers’ hands, from sending out the notification emails to shipping the packages.)
