In a fascinating series of events, the popular mobile game Harry Potter: Wizards Unite accidentally raised over $500,000 for an indie game's Kickstarter campaign. The campaign, which had an original goal of $12,000, is currently sitting $533,938, and it's all thanks to some incredible unintentional marketing.
Thomas Bidaux, the CEO of a video game consulting company called ICO Partners, made the discovery and shared it on twitter. As he explains, the indie game Day of Dragons began a Kickstarter fundraising campaign on September 2, with a goal of $12,000. The first few days went fairly well compared to those of most campaigns, and the game raised roughly $1,300 by September 4.
It just so happens that on September 7th, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite released its event, titled Day of Dragons, the exact same name as the indie game. On the 7th alone, Day of Dragons' campaign raised over $13,000, surpassing its goal. This happened because Day of Dragons' Kickstarter campaign remained as the top search result for "day of dragons", giving the game's campaign exposure to thousands of Harry Potter players who had never heard of the indie dragon game before.
Fast forward just over a month later, and Day of Dragons' campaign has reached its original goal almost forty-five times now. Developer, Beawesome Games, took advantage of this publicity, setting various fundraising goals and awarding Kickstarter contributors with exclusive in-game content once the game is released. For example, after reaching the $50o,000 goal, Beawesome awarded contributors with a Feathered Micro Dragon.
Day of Dragons describes itself as an online creature survival sandbox PC game set in a large open world map with numerous biomes. You can grow your dragons as they increase in size and strength, as well as encounter other players on the map. The teaser trailer gives some insight as to what the game will actually look like, and it's actually fairly impressive. Although the open world looks a bit lifeless in the trailer, the dragon's actions and character model look great and the graphics are not bad at all. If Beawesome games can make a quality open world dragon game with the funding they received from Wizards Unite's accidental marketing, it would make for a pretty good story.