It was the year David got his mates round to finally even up the fight with Goliath. For while 2015 saw the launch of some massive products from established manufacturers - from the iPhone 6S to the Samsung Gear S2 via a serious session on Star Wars Battlefront - this year has not just been about the big guys. Oh no: the last 12 months have seen crowdfunding become serious business too.
Now, thanks to the likes of Kickstarter and Indiegogo, resource-strapped creators can turn ideas into reality without selling their souls to the conglomerate devils.
The maturing of this decidedly modern funding process over the past year has seen a warier, savvier audience funding more well thought out and viable concepts. Including this lot - the crowdfunding campaigns that shaped 2015:
1. PEBBLE TIME
Well before the Apple Watch, the original Pebble became one of the first successful smartwatches and an early crowdfunding hit when it strapped itself to Kickstarter in 2012. With a hit product behind it and solid sales, some may have questioned whether the same level of good will would be shown to Pebble's next product, the Pebble Time, when it hit Kickstarter three years later.
Those folks needn't have worried. The Pebble Time reached its $500,000 target within a matter of minutes back in March - and didn't stop there. Eventually, it hit more than $20 million (£13.4m), making it the second biggest crowdfunded project. Ever.
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The Pebble Time also attained double the funding of the original Pebble, giving a solid 'nyah' to the doubters.
2. PRISON ARCHITECT
Crowdfunding and video games were supposed to go together like Donald Trump and questionable statements on immigration. As we folded our calendars over into 2015, however, gamers had been left burned by a number of terrible campaigns that promised much and delivered precious little. Godus, we're looking at you.
Enter Prison Architect, a poster child for the good that the crowdfunding model could bring to games. This modest, ingenious business management game delivered on all of its promises. Being a good egg isn't the most remarkable thing about it though.
British developer Introversion Software somehow managed to make a staggering $19 million (£12.7m) on Steam Early Access in October 2015 - largely by delivering a compelling prototype and being very careful with its promises. This megabucks backing made it the second biggest crowdfunded game ever, and the third biggest crowdfunding campaign of any sort overall.
3. OOMI
The 2015 crowdfunding scene was full of smarthome chancers. Lots of startup companies churned out pointlessly connected domestic appliances - you really don't need a Wi-Fi kettle - or networked gizmos that merely duplicated or confused the existing, superior options.
Oomi though was a little different. The standout smarthome success of 2015 hit Indiegogo in May and swiftly blasted through its $50,000 target to secure $1.7 million (£1.14m) in funding.
The premise was a complete smarthome system that mixed home security with temperature and home entertainment control - all with an impossibly easy NFC-driven set-up process and an intuitive touchscreen controller. Awards duly followed.
4. FLOW HIVE
Won't someone please think of the chil... bees. You may have heard this a lot in recent years, but our bumbling black and yellow friends are in serious trouble. For some reason - be it environmental or man-made - the numbers of the buzzy little honey-makers are dwindling, which has huge ramifications for our food crops.
Flow Hive didn't provide a solution to this large-scale problem, but it did provide a radical new advance in bee husbandry. Here is a hive system that literally provides honey on tap, meaning that beekeepers no longer have to open up and disassemble the homes of this fragile species in order to harvest the sweet stuff.
The Flow Hive project went on to become the highest-earning Indiegogo campaign ever back in April, earning $12,174,187 (£8.16m) - which was well beyond its modest $70,000 target.
5. GREEK BAILOUT FUND
Crowdfunding in 2015 wasn't just about tech. Some of the campaigns also managed to reflect the political and economic issues of the time.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in the ambitious Greek Bailout Fund campaign, which received a good deal of mainstream media attention back in July. 29-year-old Brit Thom Feeney decided to set up an Indiegogo campaign to pay off Greece's mammoth €1.6 billion debt.
"All this dithering over Greece is getting boring," reads the campaign blurb. "European ministers flexing their muscles and posturing over whether they can help the Greek people or not. Why don't we the people just sort it instead?"
Of course, the campaign couldn't make a dent on that ridiculous figure. But at €1,930,577 - the 60th biggest crowdfunding campaign ever - it was a glorious failure that drew extra attention to a major issue.
6. SHENMUE III
Fans of gaming nostalgia have much to thank crowdfunding for - it's not only brought Shenmue back, but offered a bit of resolution to the critically acclaimed series. Sure, Shenmue III wasn't the most successful crowdfunded game performer of the year - although $6,333,295 of backing tripled the target. But it's just as significant an achievement as the record-breaking Prison Architect.
The first Shenmue launched on the Sega Dreamcast in 1999, while Shenmue II hit the Dreamcast and the original Xbox in 2001. Both were critical smashes, but only the first game sold in anything like respectable numbers. This, along with sky-high development costs and the failure of the Dreamcast effectively put paid to legendary producer Yu Suzuki's ambitions of a four or five-game series.
It looked as if the tale of Ryo Hazuki and his quest to avenge his father would never be finished, until Kickstarter came in. In reaching its target (and then some) back in July, an all-time cult favourite will see its conclusion - or at the very least, another chapter. It's the feel-good crowdfunding story of the year.
