Kickstarter: $83.1 million pledged to games in 2012

Kickstarter has released a new round of statistics covering calendar 2012, showing gamers dipping deep to help fund their hobby.

According to the Best of 2012, 2,796 gaming Kickstarters were launched and of these 911 were successful. 1,378,143 backers pledged $83,144,565 to gaming projects.

It was the second most lucrative overall category after art, and attracted far more backers than closest rival film and video with 647,361.

Kickstarter revealed in September that gaming is by far one of the most lucrative categories for successful individual projects, but gaming fundraising campaigns are also highly divisive, with few mid-sized projects succeeding and a high failure rate across the board.

Kickstarter opened its doors to UK projects last year and has already seen several high profile projects including Peter Molyneux's Project Godus and a failed attempt to revive Dizzy.

Other notable highlights include Double Fine's February Kickstarter, which shattered records and started a craze; Obsidian's Project Eternity, which beat out Double Fine's efforts.

Hardware got a look in, too. Android based console Ouya was Kickstarted, as was VR headset Oculus Rift.

Overall, in 2012 over 2.2 million backers pledged $319.7 million to 18,109 successful Kickstarter projects.

Thanks, Kotaku.