Success! One Billion Users Will Go Into Production (Late Backers Welcome)

At some point, I’ll have time to write more thoroughly about how the wonderful and supportive Bluesky community effectively willed One Billion Users over the funding threshold, but it’s quite amazing. We were around 50% of the funding threshold just a few days before the campaign was set to close (which generally means the campaign won’t reach its goal), but then a bunch of users on Bluesky really embraced the project, urging others to support it, and it quickly became a community celebration.

Around 2pm on Thursday, with just 10 hours to spare, we passed the $50k funding threshold and have since gone on to raise another $10k in support beyond that.

We had always set the bar exceptionally high for a card game, knowing that we didn’t want to go into production unless there really was significant demand for the game. Unlike many projects, we really do believe that Kickstarter is valuable not just as a crowdfunding tool, but as market research. It’s a tool to tell you whether or not there’s a big enough market to make the product you want, which is tremendously useful rather than discovering the market isn’t there after you’ve manufactured a product.

For a little while, it appeared that maybe our game might have been more of a “lessons learned” situation, but the final rush and the amazing, vocal support from so many on Bluesky was really heartening and inspiring (and a reminder of the good and fun side of social media that often feels lacking these days).

If you backed the campaign, we sent an update earlier today with details. If you didn’t back the campaign and are now regretting it, we’re testing out a new feature on Kickstarter that lets you make “late pledges” after the official campaign ends. We’ll keep that open for a little while longer to catch any procrastinators and stragglers, before shutting it down when it’s time to finalize our production order.

Don’t miss your chance to get in on the fun!