Kickstarter’s best of 2012: 2.2M backers, $319M raised, 18K projects funded

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.

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)