It’s that time of year again, where Kanka celebrates its anniversary and becomes one year older! Continuing on our growing tradition of the yearly celebration, let’s have a look at what exciting things happened for Kanka this past year.
We covered the contents of this article and more during our latest livestream.
Highlights of the year that has passed
This year has been the most exciting year for Kanka so far. The biggest change was our first hire with Spitfire joining Jay on the development team in June. This has led to the way the company works to change quite a bit, since we are now responsible for paying someone and keeping them motivated to work for us. This in turn had us create and write down a lot of internal processes and rituals, so that they know what to expect, and lay the groundwork for future growth.
We go into a lot of detail in the livestream above, but to summarise:
- Growth was good for both Kanka and for us as human beings. Jay is enjoying having more of a mentor and product management role.
- Our biggest difficulty was dealing with abuse following us wanting to keep Kanka sustainable.
What we hope for our next anniversary
We want to keep working hard on Kanka’s documentation. Our yearly survey showed that a lot of people asked for features which already exist, so we have multiple areas to improve.
We want to add more value to boosted campaigns. A lot of survey responses told us the same story: they would support Kanka, but boosted campaigns don’t add enough value as is to their worldbuilding and campaign management. This involves investing resources into R&D for family trees and a whiteboard.
We want to spread out community votes, and in exchange make them focus on big features that take us several months to implement. Along with these bigger community votes, we aim to publish clearer roadmaps on what we are working on during that time.
Lastly, we once again want to keep improving Kanka, so that it can keep the title of best worldbuilding and campaign management tool! The survey results have reinvigorated our passion for Kanka, and we will make you proud for supporting us in the years to come!
Highlights from our yearly survey
This year we did our first yearly survey to better understand what we do well, and what we can improve. We were absolutely delighted to receive several hundred responses, way more than we had hoped for!
Our key takeaways from the feedback is that people who took the time to fill it out:
- Really love Kanka and want to see it succeed.
- Want us to continue improving Kanka.
- The biggest category in the “what can we improve” was asking for features that already exist, meaning we have to continue improving the documentation and clarity of existing features.
- People really, really, really want a Creatures/Monsters entity. We’ll be adding that to Kanka before the end of the year.
Statistics
And lastly, our statistics. We now also include last year’s stats here more easily compare the numbers. For the first time, two numbers are now lower, all related to the largest and biggest campaign.
| What | 2022 | 2021 |
|---|---|---|
| Accounts created | 170,000 | 98,000 |
| Active accounts | 22,000 | 10,800 |
| Average daily active users | 2,400 | 1,800 |
| Average daily visits | 3,400 | 2,500 |
| Biggest campaign | 283 | 286 |
| Largest campaign | 9,500 | 12,000 |
| Campaigns | 150,000 | 80,000 |
| Public campaigns | 3,400 | 2,100 |
Entity stats
| Entity type | Amount 2022 (thousands) | Amount 2021 (thousands) |
|---|---|---|
| Characters | 805 | 480 |
| Locations | 721 | 440 |
| Races | 301 | 170 |
| Tags | 212 | 144 |
| Items | 210 | 147 |
| Organisations | 164 | 105 |
| Abilities | 160 | 75 |
| Notes | 155 | 105 |
| Families | 95 | 63 |
| Events | 85 | 57 |
| Quests | 60 | 40 |
| Journals | 60 | 36 |
| Maps | 40 | 20 |
| Attribute Templates | 16 | 12 |
| Calendars | 13 | 8 |
| Timelines | 13 | 6 |
| Pinned relations | 95 | 45 |
| Pinned attributes | 455 | 200 |
| Posts | 222 | 100 |
Country stats
| Country | % 2022 | % 2021 |
|---|---|---|
| USA | 30% | 32% |
| Brazil | 20% | 13% |
| Germany | 6% | 6% |
| United Kingdom | 4.8% | 5.6% |
| Canada | 3.97% | 5.4% |
| France | 3.46% | 5.1% |
| Spain | 3.56% | 2.8% |
| Italy | 2.55% | 2.7% |
| Australia | 2.24% | 2.5% |
| Russia | 2.9% | |
| Poland | 1.8% |
Compared to last year, Brazil has solidified it’s second place, while Russia and Poland switched 10th and 11th spaces again.
| System | % 2022 | % 2021 |
|---|---|---|
| D&D | 38.2% | 26.32% |
| D&D 5e | 35.41% | 26.32% |
| Other | 14.36% | 39.91% |
| Pathfinder | 4.33% | 4.76% |
| Savage worlds | 1.66% | 1.58% |
| Chronicles of darkness | 1.25% | 1.21% |
| Pathfinder 2e | 1.12% | 0.77% |
| Dungeon world | 0.98% | 1.1% |
| Fate | 1.01% | 1.07% |
| GURPS | 0.82% | 1.05% |
| DSA | 0.82% | 0.92% |
What is surprising here is that D&D has increased it’s dominance in the industry. While all versions of D&D represented 52% of campaigns in Kanka a year ago, it now represents 73%. A few campaigns are also running the new One D&D playtest version, but not enough to appear in these stats. Other had the largest drop, while GURPS had the largest drop for a single system. From these stats, we can see that D&D’s domination on the hobby is strengthening, with most other systems being a rounding error. It will be interesting to see in a year’s time if One D&D grows to a substantial userbase.
Closing words & discount
To close off our anniversary, we are once again offering a huge discount on yearly subscriptions! Until October 31rd, when subscribing to any of our yearly subscriptions, use promo code KANKA5YEAR at checkout to get 20% off your first yearly subscription!
Glad to hear all is going well for this app, and thank you so much for making it, you have made my life as a DM much easier. I have recommended it to two friends who are now both active users and we all agree it is the best worldbuilding documentation tool out there. I wish you all success in the future!