Money: Tracking Kick Starter

[Monte Carlo]

I'm new to Kick Starter but am becoming very interested in it as I'm a bit of a gambling man.

 

Check this out:

 

http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity#chart-exp-projection

 

Does anybody more mathematically / business-minded than me care to comment on the 5.4 - 10.3 MILLION DOLLAR PROJECTION for this project?

[Yst]

This projection looks flat out wrong. What we see in current numbers is a declining rate of increase. What it projects is an accelerating rate of increase. This isn't supported by the current trend at all.

 

What we will likely see is a trend akin to that of the Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter, in which the rate of increase continues to decline slightly until shortly before the KS funding period completes, at which point a last jump will occur.

 

It's always possible that publicity will drive a spike in donations at some point. But I'm disinclined to believe such a thing will happen. Most who are interested in donating money to a creative project by the folks involved here have already heard of the project, by now (and likely did in the first day).

[Kai]

Pretty much what Yst said, the projection system is kinda flawed. I'd take the average from the 2 or 3 last days, multiply with the remaining time and then add to what's already been collected. Which would put the project somewhere between 4M-4.8M, even that might be too high.

[Stun]

I wouldn't read too much into these "projections". They might end up being accurate, but they're just guesses - mathematical predictions derived from the rate of donations from the past few days. For example, since sunday, Project eternity has been getting ~$85,000 in donations per day. The graph in your link there is saying that if the trend stays at that rate, then by October 16th, Project eternity should end up with 5-10 million in total funds.

 

The only problem I have with these types of projections is that they're not....human. They don't take into account things that often influence spikes and dips in donation speed... like if Obsidian were to announce some mind-blowing stretch goal that causes the current fence sitters to suddenly decide to donate when they weren't impressed before to do so. Or the opposite: If one of the Obsidian devs says something about the game that totally turns everyone off and ends up halting the donation rate.

Edited September 20, 2012 by Stun

[teknoman2]

if you take the % from the graph, you can see that 110% of the goal was reached in the first day, and the rest 46% was added over the span of 5 days, with the last day having 2% at most. so you can expect to see a 1% increase per day at most (0.5% or less may be more accurate but lets be optimistic) from here, with a chance of no increase at all after a few more days, unless they add something that will make the graph jump for a day or 2 and bring a steady 1%- increase of funding for another 5 or 6 days before coming to a halt again

Edited September 20, 2012 by teknoman2

[kirottu]

I think 3 million is about where Project Eternity will end at.

[Stun]

I'm gonna predict 4 million. There's more hype and name recognition for this than there was for Wasteland 2, and that game did 3 million

[Freddo]

This projection looks flat out wrong. What we see in current numbers is a declining rate of increase. What it projects is an accelerating rate of increase. This isn't supported by the current trend at all.

 

What we will likely see is a trend akin to that of the Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter, in which the rate of increase continues to decline slightly until shortly before the KS funding period completes, at which point a last jump will occur.

Indeed, the projection graph should look more like a quadratic equation graph with a little bump at the end. They will probably reach $2,5 million, but I will be a bit surprised if they go above $3 million. And any higher than $3,5 is pretty much out of the question.

 

Someone should make a quadratic equation projection graph based on the information we now have. Maybe I do it myself later when I got time.

Edited September 20, 2012 by Freddo

[Sylvius the Mad]

Eyeballing the curve so far, I'd say we're heading for something around $3 million.

 

KickTraq assumes a big jump at the end because there's a sense of urgency there among the backers (or potential backers), and many projects do see such a boost. But many projects also need that boost in order to realise their funding goals, and others have genuinely appealing stretch goals (the Order of the Stick reprint Kickstarter is the best example I've yet seen of this). Given the nature of Prroject Eternity, I'm not sure such popular stretch goals will be possible by the time we approach $3 million.

 

So, if we get that boost at the end, we might approach $3.5 million, but I think something closer to $3 million is more likely. Really, the constituencies likely to support this already know about it - this isn't like that recent D&D documentary project that needed Paizo to direct traffic to them on their final day to reach their goal.

[Oerwinde]

The site flat out says its a trend, not a projection and to not take the number seriously. I'm estimating that it will bring in another 1.5 to 2 million.

 

Edit: nevermind, didn't click on the link.

Edited September 20, 2012 by Oerwinde

[cealicu_ca]

the projection is not "wrong", the assumptions are:

 

1) no growth rate (so you get 5M) (linear function)

2) the growth rate is rising (so you get 10M) (exponential function - WTF are they thinking?!?! )

 

Those two things are flat out wrong. The growth rate is negative (meaning that tomorrow there will be fewer $$ raised than today, although the total sum will rise). The resulting graph pretty much looks like a log function graph (logarithmic functions are the inverse of exponential functions). Growth rate should tend to drop to 0 (growth rate being negative) reaching 0 (so no more *new* people back the project) at the end of the funding period (being optimistic here...).

 

Considering those assumptions it's rather safe to say that PE will get backing somewhere around the 2.2M mark (1.9M - 2.5M) TOTAL (so only ~600k for the rest of the period) but hey, i can't account for any spikes.

 

Don't bash me, bash my math (i actually hated, o so hated math in uni ... Fourier , Taylor , Laplace ... goddamn! but this is high school math nonetheless so it's ok, i think i got it right , or not? )

Edited September 20, 2012 by cealicu_ca

[Wintersong]

10.3 MILLION DOLLAR PROJECTION for this project?

Drunken projection? No way we reach that. That said, I'll gladly eat my words if that happens. :D But no, around 3M most likely.

[Freddo]

Well, using the daily fundings data from this page (and skipping the last day since it's probably not from a full day) I just made a projection graph thingy with Graph and got that after 32 days it should reach $2,676 million. This obviously doesn't include various spikes caused by news, updates or in particular the big spike it will most likely receive the last day or two, so it's by no means a final number, but I dare to say it's the minimum number.

Edited September 20, 2012 by Freddo

[Karranthain]

I'm hoping for 5-6 million. It all depends on stretch goals - if something really enticing is announced, it could happen.