novurdim

It's not, there's not a single element of gambling involved. You can't just call any financial operation a gambling. Soon you'll say that any auctions should be shut down because you know better what people should spend their money on. Yes, just like on KS which doesn't change the charitable nature of the platform. They are getting a lot of stuff for their money, check up on the tiers.

Charity in the form of financial support of your favorite artists is the whole point of crowdfunding though. It's basically in the name. Kickstarter isn't a shop, at least wasn't supposed to be until companies like Sekai have turned it into a preorder platform, it's exactly a form of charity. You really like counting other people's money and criticize their priorities, aren't you.

True, but thanks to them we now know it's theoretically possible to end up in the pit even after raising almost 200k on your KS.

Well, it's not like I don't understand how you feel but kickstarter is a very... complicated topic. Localisation is always a risk even when succesfully kickstarted, I remember hearing here how Mikandi somehow ended up with serious losses over Libra even after raising like 180k or 190k for a single game. They did fail to deliver an adequate product but the situation still shows that it's not a risk-averse approach, Sol Press are likely still self-funding the release quite a bit. At the same time it's true that it may look like they are taking advantage of the fans to safely check out the market and then pull out if something goes wrong but at least it's not like people could back all three games from the get-go. Though I agree that it's still not exactly the same as only buying the first game in the series which has since been dropped. But making huge promises now and breaking them later if the first game bombs and it becomes literally impossible to release an even bigger sequel would end up as an incomparably bigger blow to their reputation. Complicated, I say. Let's just say that I'm with you in hoping that it works out for all parties involved in the end.

And that, my friend, is not even a guarantee anymore, you are basically proving our point with your own words. Noone can guarantee a huge trilogy (unless kickstarted) when the first entry can bomb so hard that it won't be feasible anymore. That just doesn't make any sense. Sol Press is doing exactly the same thing as Neko would right now so your discontent is a bit misguided.

I don't believe them going bankrupt would improve their standing with the VN community either. It's not a lack of transparency, they simply are not able to promise such a massive undertaking without a kickstarter, like pretty much anyone in this industry, most companies don't really look stable and the western market is a very unwelcoming place right now with all the random hateful regulations. A single ban of a major game on steam may be enough to cripple the whole business and KS provides at least a little bit of insurance. I hope. So I'm afraid that with a strict stance like yours noone would even attempt to localise massive projects like Irotoridori trilogy which would be the biggest shame. Right now the most important thing is not to threaten the publishers but for people to actually buy the first game to show that there's at least enough interest in the sequels for a further gamble. If the potential customers choose the "I won't buy it until you guarantee the full trilogy" option, I have a feeling that we will definitely never see the series completed.

I wonder if anyone even managed to back it in those three minutes after seeing the tweet first.

Nothing else matters right now, at least we'll definitely see the first game translated. That sure was something.

Boo. On another note, it got a lot closer mainly because someone suddenly snatched the 5000$ tier (maybe someone from Sol Press ). But the final spurt has happened way too late and we are looking at 11k with 3 hours to go. Still doubt they'll make it at this point but who knows, miracles sometimes happen.

Well, that's how it is, this is not a cheap business, if you want to cover a serious part of your expenses through a KS and not just raise awareness around the game a bit, then 85k is a very fair number for a VN-translation KS. Pretty sure even this number doesn't cover everything. Probably not even close. And it's a number that many predecessors have already achieved so you can't exactly call it unreal. And yes, Iroseka definitely had the potential to gather enough funds in other hands, it has a big enough buzz to be considered relatively well-known: a famous developer, an already localised Hoshimemo which is kind of popular, Astral Air also had an active fan translation that many people followed and they all definitely know about Iroseka etc. Iroseka is not that unknown of a title and we've had games with literally zero exposure in the west like Libra and NewRin gather 183k and 88k respectively, for a quick example. Or do you really think A Clockwork Ley-line or ChronoClock were more famous than Iroseka from the get-go? Maybe it's the tiers, maybe lack of advertising, maybe a bad time to launch, maybe the whole "trilogy through stretch goals" thing, maybe all of the above. But something definitely went very wrong. I was sure it would end up with 90-100k and then we'll worry about getting the sequels and stuff. Instead we got an unexpected flop. A first serious flop since, I don't know, the initial Sharin KS, and that one could be easily explained since they took every major misstep they could. Which they then fixed and gathered 188k during the second KS attempt. I'm almost shocked Iroseka fared so badly, hard to believe that only something like Kickstarter fatigue is to blame here, a lot of mistakes should have been made for something like Iroseka to gather only around 60k.

It... is? Maybe it's not showing in my "popular new releases" because I have already bought it since I don't believe the threshold for that is very high. Though now that I think about it, there was some talk about steam raising the sales number for that section, wasn't there?

It actually is.

This is honestly the first time when a VN-translation KS that I expected to fight for 100k failed to meet even the base goal. Hope it doesn't hurt the guys too bad. Ganbare, Sol Press!

Well, at least looks like Trinoline isn't in any danger. It was a bit worrying to see the weird new "awaiting release materials from developer" status. Though considering that Damekoi currently has the same project status, I believe it is probably just MG's new placeholder for when the game is ready but they don't want to release it yet because they have that "one major game in a month" philosophy.

Ah, right, I did finish Suguri's route. Short, sweet and simple romance, not much to say about it, to be honest. Low-stakes, low-tension, basically about a single predictable and rather silly minor twist (hence overaching storyline is almost non-existent), plenty of the overused cliches that mostly detract from the romantic part. If Suguri wasn't such a cute heroine, this could have turned into a real bore. But thanks to her the route in its simplicity ended up somewhat better than May's trainwreck. Though I am glad that I've read Natsume's route before it, I can easily imagine people dropping HGB if they read May and Suguri first. Hopefully I'll have another urge to read a VN sometime next week and overcome the true route. I do wonder how they intend to clean up such a messy plot.

Did we really have so many major kickstarter flops? I... don't think we did? I can't even remember any serious KS failures except ChuSinGura (which was horribly butchered to begin with and had released later anyway) and Sharin (which then had a successful second try). It's not that bad. I'd even say that if Iroseka ends up not gathering 85k, it's more like a single relatively unusual mishap.

Almost 40k may be too much for the final burst, even Sol managers almost seem apathetic and don't try much of anything to spread the word. Hopefully they'll try again if the worst comes to it...

Ya, bought it. I hope it will at least make it to the new & trending section...

Such a pity, darn. I at least hope that this won't hinder the release of Trinoline in the west, even if the game is not so great. And MG will finally stop with that endless pseudo fundraiser... thing.

Ah, sorry for the misunderstanding, I actually didn't mean you specifically, I have just recently had similar discussions all over the place.

I... really doubt that 20k for a game is considered that much for the market. And I'm 100% sure it's not a correct number at all, as I mentioned before companies usually crowdfund only part of the costs. But it's honestly better not to discuss the licensing fees much, we know literally nothing and most always assume them to be a lot lower than they actually are for some reason. These speculations are so baseless and harmful that even Sol Press themselves commented on this in the last update that "the past funds raised in our previous campaigns have not always been enough to cover what is needed". Some have even already accused Favorite of being cashgrabs just because the goal is higher this time. I feel like some people would be shocked if companies revealed real licensing costs they usually pay.

I highly doubt people (especially those who care about translation's quality as much) are that stupi uninformed. Different company, different translators, different everything. IroSeka is just a lot less known in West than HoshiMemo by itself + Sol Press has a lot less followers than Sekai, even their "very successful" (as it's often called) KS of Newrin has gathered only around 88k + it wasn't really marketed much but that's almost always the case with VN KS. I've also heard people complaining about the tiers/rewards and such. There are a lot of reasons why it is kind of naive to believe that IroSeka can easily gather more than 200k but if they can at least organize the shout-outs from Sekai, MG, Degica etc. during the last 5 or so days, base goal is still more than reachable. 45% in half the time isn't a fiasco for a KS yet.

That's what they often do though. Pull more money in the latter half. Especially when the base goal is in sight. So I'm still hopeful for the main goal to be reached during the final spurt but looks like it will fail horribly as a crowdfund for the trilogy either way. Not that anyone expected otherwise with those stretch goals.

Heh, it's funny but after May's route I consider the 3-rd problem a relative positive. I'd much rather have a lengthy epilogue for h-scenes like this than three obligatory fucks in a row during the end of the story that would kill any goddamn flow of the ending. I know you could just skip them but gah, those are irritating still. Also,