Cyberpunk Soundtracks 2.0 is a new Kickstarter collection of ‘retro-futuristic’ cyberpunk-inspired soundscapes for gaming and cyberpunk-related projects. The campaign has already received 55 backers, pledging a total of over $2400 USD. That’s 240% of the initial $1000 USD funding goal and an impressive average of $44 per backer.

These soundtracks are meant to provide ambient background soundscapes for tabletop gaming within the cyberpunk genre. Some cited games that might benefit from these tracks are Netrunner, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk 2020, Interface Zero, Cyberspace, and even some more general sci-fi games such as Heavy Gear, Warhammer 40k, and Battletech.

The soundtracks produced are also intended to be for non-exclusive commercial use: where most soundtracks have home-only usage restrictions, Cyberpunk Soundtracks 2.0 will not have those restrictions. Strangelette is opting for an unofficial copyright option akin to a Creative Commons 3.0 license: those who have access to the soundtracks may do anything they’d like with them, even commercial endeavors, as long as the creator is attributed in the credits. Exclusive tracks are available by work-order requests, according to the campaign page.

Rise of Prolific Small-Scale Campaigners

The project follows Strangelette’s first cyberpunk Kickstarter project, Cyberpunk Soundtracks “1.0,” which received $6,435 (643% of funding goal) in early March 2014. In-between 1.0 and 2.0, Strangelette also produced 3 additional soundscapes for other genres via successful Kickstarter funding.

Strangelette (AKA Kimberly Webb) has been a prolific small-scale campaigner in 2014 (meaning: lots of projects with small funding goals) as this is her 5th successfully funded Kickstarter campaign since March 2014. That’s 5 successful projects in about 8 months; someone has been busy! The projects are as follows:

• Cyberpunk Soundtracks ($6,435)
• Epic Fantasy Soundtracks ($11,564)
• 8-Bit Soundtracks ($4,130)
• Steampunk & Cthulhu Soundtracks ($8,249)
• Cyberpunk Soundtracks 2.0 ($2,396+)

Neat things about these projects? All have been soundtracks/soundscapes, built to enhance tabletop gaming experiences within specific genres and/or to provide audio libraries for genre projects. Also, each project has only asked for $1000 USD, a considerably modest amount compared to most other crowd-funding campaigns.

In total, Strangelette’s projects have asked for $5k in funding and have received just over $32k (so far) for these tabletop gaming genre soundtracks.

Why So Much Money?

Hidden away in the Games category of Kickstarter is the often ignored “Tabletop Games” tag. While this section of the platform usually escapes popular news coverage, it is home to one of the most passionate and dedicated backer-bases of Kickstarter. Tabletop gaming has been growing more and more as a niche thanks to an increasing number of excellent games and awareness thanks to Will Wheaton’s TableTop YouTube series as well as active forums on sites like BoardGameGeek.com and various tabletop gaming subreddits.

Tabletop gamers come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and affiliations – but typically tabletop gamers tend to be highly educated, tech savvy, and fairly wealthy according to studies (and broader studies like this). So, it makes sense that the average tabletop crowd-funding backer has a large enough expendable income to support these sorts of niche passion projects. You hardly need to look further than the tens of millions of dollars dedicated to tabletop Kickstarter campaigns in general, especially the immensely popular Dwarven Forge game tile projects.

Plus, money pledged to soundscape projects are typically rewarded with the soundscapes themselves – turning Kickstarter into a sort of loose digital sales platform. Not only do backers get the soundscapes they want, but often -as is the case of Strangelette’s Cyberpunk Soundscapes 2.0- backers also gain access to previous soundscape projects. If you pledge enough, you can build up your library of genre soundtracks. Once a collection of music tracks is produced, it costs the producer nothing extra to reward loyal backers with digital files of previous projects.

Is Kickstarter Inherently Cyberpunk?

While this is a fantastic project and a boon for you cyberpunk fans reading on ActiveWirehead, this also marks an interesting use of Kickstarter and some very tech-savvy business practices. It is tough to say, however, whether or not the soundscape market of Kickstarter will be as stable or sustainable as, say, the wallet market. Keep an eye out for future prolific small-scale campaign creators – they are figuring out the crowd funding economy quickly with low funding goals, highly-specified niches, and quick project delivery times. The DIY nature of Kickstarter is colored by an aura of the punk mentality.

As far as I’m concerned: the act of using the high-tech interconnected world of crowd funding to benefit the analog world of tabletop gaming is pretty damn cool – and is definitely a cyberpunk concept.