Elden Ring board game reveals Kickstarter launch date, and the hype is off the charts

polygon.com:

Kickstarter has proved year after year the campaigns hosted on its platform can motivate consumers from all around the world. Board game publishers in particular have gotten better and better at fueling this particular hype machine. Today’s case in point is the campaign for Elden Ring: The Board Game, from Steamforged Games, which hasn’t even launched yet and is already closing in on big numbers.

The project was announced in September with little more than the title of the game and a render of a single miniature: Margit, the Fell Omen, one of Elden Ring’s very first boss monsters. With that, the British company has earned more than 19,000 followers on its Kickstarter campaign page. Today’s announcement of a launch date for the campaign — Nov. 22 — will likely push them over 20,000 in short order. For comparison, Steamforged’s highest earning campaign so far had just over 31,000 backers when it concluded.

One of the reasons that Steamforged has been able to activate so many thousands of backers is because of the deep connections with consumers from past projects. The company burst onto the scene in 2016 with a campaign for Dark Souls: The Board Game, which raised an astonishing $5.4 million. That sum placed it among the largest crowdfunding campaigns in platform history at that time. The company has since moved from strength to strength on Kickstarter, with a total of 14 successful campaigns raising more than $22 million.

Also notable is the fact that the majority of its projects have been for games based on video game licenses, among them Horizon Zero Dawn, Resident Evil, and Devil May Cry. But its products are far from perfect. Horizon Zero Dawn — The Board Game was published with several errors and omissions, leading