ChuSinGura 46+1 Kickstarter comes out of nowhere (with added Engrish and sketchyness)

[Nosebleed]

1 minute ago, WinterfuryZX said:

I think it's just an edited version of the original PC Release.

So do I, but they keep being misleading about it.

It's like thy don't want the money.

[Maxel]

And I think it's a ported Mobage version without any mobage in it. 

NextNinja is handling it, not inre. 

I hope they'll give us some informations soon, and will fix everything.

[Fred the Barber]

Whoa, that disqus page now has me back on the fence. The person there speaks English. Not Engrish! And they're apparently a translator! And, crucially, it's clearly the actual VN being released, not a mobage (which is good; a Kickstarter for a mobage really would've made no sense at all)

... I kind of want to leave a vague comment asking them to comment on the Engrish in the Prefundia text and images.

[kyrt]

I've decided to keep an eye on this but I'm not overly hopeful. It does seem the prefundia page has been edited quite a bit since I first saw it though so that might be a good step in a decent direction. I believe a post on the prefundia page nailed exactly the current situation with the game and what consumers expect and what we need to get to support it. Hopefully they learn quickly and work honestly to get the game to the western market in a way that fans (the backers) will be willing to support. That is of course assuming it is not already too late.

[Fred the Barber]

Incidentally, since price has been a hot topic lately, for those who didn't look into the Prefundia in too much detail:

• $30 for the full-cost Steam release, when it's done, but...
• $15 on Kickstarter will get you a Steam key

Pretty damn good price, actually. VNDB has it at "Very Long (> 50 hours)", though of course take that with a grain of salt, and between its ratings and the fact that that translator guy actually knows English...

I dunno, I think I can feel myself coming around on this one.

[VirginSmasher]

48 minutes ago, Fred the Barber said:

Incidentally, since price has been a hot topic lately, for those who didn't look into the Prefundia in too much detail:

• $30 for the full-cost Steam release, when it's done, but...
• $15 on Kickstarter will get you a Steam key

Pretty damn good price, actually. VNDB has it at "Very Long (> 50 hours)", though of course take that with a grain of salt, and between its ratings and the fact that that translator guy actually knows English...

I dunno, I think I can feel myself coming around on this one.

The question is can that translator properly TL over 50 hours of text in a 6 month period? I highly doubt it.

[Zenophilious]

Except then you realize that the person that translated the Prefundia page will most likely be translating the game as well, and that the other examples of utter incompetence haven't been explained, and the situation is still as crappy as it was before.  Actually being able to talk with someone that doesn't spew broken Engrish is nice, except, IMO, that hardly makes up for the way they've mishandled things up until this point.  Still not touching this Kickstarter with a 20-foot pole, and that'd be if they were talking about how they'd release an 18+ patch/version as well as the Steam version.  Without that happening they will never get a cent from me, no matter how much they try to sweeten the deal or cut the price.

At least they finally added the missing heroine back in.  It only took them about, I dunno, over a full month to realize it 

[Deep Blue]

will they succeed this time, who knows 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/57909428/chusingura46-1-a-visual-novel-with-moe-samurai-gir-0

[Satsuki]

$160k?

RIP

Also, can't they just say "Contains all items from **** pack" (like they did in the pictures) instead of listing every single thing out in the reward tier?

[Zenophilious]

Oh, wow, they knocked off a whole $50k from the funding goal!  That's only about $35K over what Libra was asking for!  Considering that they are completely infamous by now and have earned an incredible amount of scorn for their continuous incompetence, they're totally boned!  If Libra managed to get $183k with one of the better-run VN Kickstarters I've ever seen, excluding the MuvLuv Kickstarter for obvious reasons, I'll bet they have no chance in hell of getting even close to what they're asking for.

RIP in pieces, I won't miss you when you fail.  I doubt they'll be back for a third time; if they can't get funded with financial support from a third party, I doubt they'll get even more money for yet another failure.

[sanahtlig]

47 minutes ago, Deep Blue said:

will they succeed this time, who knows 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/57909428/chusingura46-1-a-visual-novel-with-moe-samurai-gir-0

Wait, they re-launched the Kickstarter without addressing the specific criticisms of the community on Prefundia?  Are they daft?

Quote

We would like to bring this acclaimed novel to the world! ChuSingura46+1 is a Historical dating-sim visual novel (or dating-sim for short) adapted from a sound novel that is based on the actual historical facts of the Ako incident.

This sentence (and others like it) are still there.

Quote

Why ChuShingura 46+1 is popular: stats

This section is still there and still useless.

The "Why ask for money from Kickstarter?" section still doesn't answer the question.

There's no demo nor any credentials listed to answer why backers should trust the ability of this group to faithfully translate a game of this size and scope.

I think all they did was clarify that this was a translation of a non-existent non-adult PC version.  They don't mention that the original was an adult title and therefore this will be CENSORED.  They mention nothing about the PS Vita version, which was a non-adult release by a different company.

Don't fund this.  This company STILL has no idea what they're doing.  They didn't satisfactorily address ANY of the three primary criticisms in my comment on Prefundia (project description/marketing problems, failure to demonstrate qualifications, censorship).

 

[VirginSmasher]

This kickstarter is fucked now. I doubt they'll listen to any criticisms at all either considering the KS page still sucks. I won't miss this Kickstarter when it inevitably fails.

[SilverLi]

So they are asking for 160k and the low teirs can only give them 45k in total. I see a small problem here. Even with the 55$ teir they only reach 100k because of the limited amount of maximum backers. And now we are 3000 backers if they all pick low teir pledges. Libra had 2285 backers. Average pledge amount on that KS was 80$.

They have to do one hell of a Kickstarter. That's for sure. But the Chusingura teirs are well made and with a good price. I give them that.

Edit: The 90$ teir is good in my opinion. And everythnig above is also good. But they have to clarify the whole mess.

[Deep Blue]

1 hour ago, sanahtlig said:

Wait, they re-launched the Kickstarter without addressing the specific criticisms of the community on Prefundia?  Are they daft?

This sentence (and others like it) are still there.

This section is still there and still useless.

The "Why ask for money from Kickstarter?" section still doesn't answer the question.

There's no demo nor any credentials listed to answer why backers should trust the ability of this group to faithfully translate a game of this size and scope.

I think all they did was clarify that this was a translation of a non-existent non-adult PC version.  They don't mention that the original was an adult title and therefore this will be CENSORED.  They mention nothing about the PS Vita version, which was a non-adult release by a different company.

Don't fund this.  This company STILL has no idea what they're doing.  They didn't satisfactorily address ANY of the three primary criticisms in my comment on Prefundia (project description/marketing problems, failure to demonstrate qualifications, censorship).

 

My comment was a bit sarcastic  

It seems they still dont know what they are doing and worst of all they don't listen to to criticisms, they did however to some degree address some of the issues of their previous campaign and their lower the goal by 50k... but most of them are still there :/
kickstarter imo is a gamble (leaving aside some very specific companies and projects) but this one in particular is riskier than your average one.

 

[Zenophilious]

36 minutes ago, VirginSmasher said:

This kickstarter is fucked now. I doubt they'll listen to any criticisms at all either considering the KS page still sucks. I won't miss this Kickstarter when it inevitably fails.

The arrogance is pretty breathtaking, honestly.  They barely changed their Kickstarter from its first iteration (aside from the rewards, which they made less terrible, I'll give them that), answered almost no questions aside from ones asking whether or not they were getting the mobage version and gave meaningless answers to the other questions, and did pretty much nothing to address any of the complaints people had with what they were doing.  Before this Kickstarter(s?) I thought Root Double's was bad, but these two blow it out of the water.

Oh, it apparently got Greenlit.  Not really surprised, all you have to do nowadays to get a VN greenlit is show nice-looking moeblob anime tits and you're good.  I already thought that they were collectively a shit "community" but this is a new low.

EDIT: lol  I forgot about this 5/7 comment from them on the Prefundia page:

Quote

We took the time to fully translate into Japanese and consider dozens of the comments from our kickstarter as well as on fuwanovel and reddit, and even 4chan to redesign the kickstarter from the ground up.

>from the ground up

If they actually listened to us and r/visualnovels they'd have given up already  lmao

[WinterfuryZX]

15 dollars won't make me poor. I don't think this will succeed either.

[VirginSmasher]

Just now, Zenophilious said:

The arrogance is pretty breathtaking, honestly.  They barely changed their Kickstarter from its first iteration (aside from the rewards, which they made less terrible, I'll give them that), answered almost no questions aside from ones asking whether or not they were getting the mobage version and gave meaningless answers to the other questions, and did pretty much nothing to address any of the complaints people had with what they were doing.  Before this Kickstarter(s?) I thought Root Double's was bad, but these two blow it out of the water.

Oh, it apparently got Greenlit.  Not really surprised, all you have to do nowadays to get a VN greenlit is show nice-looking moeblob anime tits and you're good.  I already thought that they were collectively a shit "community" but this is a new low.

Exactly. This kickstarter reminds me so much of the Root Double kickstarter except a lot worse this time around. With the Root Double Kickstarter, they listened to complaints as soon as they knew they were gonna fail, but I doubt this company will listen to anybody's complaints. They're not making a great case for themselves and I personally hope the company disappears and never licenses actual good VNs like ChuSinGura.

The Steam VN community keeps the Sakura series alive. Of course they're a shitty community.

[sanahtlig]

1 hour ago, Zenophilious said:

The arrogance is pretty breathtaking, honestly.  They barely changed their Kickstarter from its first iteration (aside from the rewards, which they made less terrible, I'll give them that), answered almost no questions aside from ones asking whether or not they were getting the mobage version and gave meaningless answers to the other questions, and did pretty much nothing to address any of the complaints people had with what they were doing.

The response to comments gave me hope that they were listening to criticisms.  Problems:

1. The guy responding to comments and writing the project description seems to have not played the game he's marketing.  Or any visual novels at all.  How can you effectively market a product when you know nothing about it, the type of product, or the audience you're marketing to?  Does he even have any experience in sales or marketing?  My guess is no.
2. My guess is that the guy was given a strict timeline to seek comments from the community, revise the project page, and re-launch it.  He was not given authority to readjust the timeline to address the major concerns that were raised.

Because of these problems, this Kickstarter will fail.

Quote

We took the time to fully translate into Japanese and consider dozens of the comments from our kickstarter as well as on fuwanovel and reddit, and even 4chan to redesign the kickstarter from the ground up.

It was not rewritten or redesigned.  It was simply tweaked, seemingly at the last minute, to respond to a few (but not all) of the concerns raised.  It really gives the impression that those in charge are not invested in the success of this project--like it's merely a pilot project that's been assigned to a few interns.

[Zenophilious]

9 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

The response to comments gave me hope that they were listening to criticism.  Problems:

1. The guy responding to comments and writing the project description seems to have not played the game he's marketing.  Or any visual novels at all.  How can you effectively market a product when you know nothing about it, the type of product, or the audience you're marketing to?  Does he even have any experience in sales or marketing?  My guess is no.
2. My guess is that the guy was given a strict timeline to seek comments from the community, revise the project page, and re-launch it.  He was not given authority to readjust the timeline to address the major concerns that were raised.

Because of these problems, this Kickstarter will fail.

Yeah, I kinda figured that out when they said that they didn't know the difference between a mobage (ewww) port of a VN was different from the original PC version.  How dense can you be?  You gotta F2P cancer-ify stuff before you put it on an app store.  Of course it's going to be completely different.  That's not even mentioning lines like "ChuSingura46+1 is a Historical dating-sim visual novel (or dating-sim for short) adapted from a sound novel that is based on the actual historical facts of the Ako incident."  Anyone that's ever played a dating sim knows what a dating sim is like, and why it's not like a VN, and vice versa.  Going off of what they said on the Prefundia page, that was in the original Japanese text that they translated, which is either absolutely riddled with errors, or that's what the people writing the Prefundia page originally said.  Not too hope instilling either way.  That's also assuming that the translator just isn't completely terrible and is lying about typos.

That utterly defeats the point of canceling their first Kickstarter and making a Prefundia page.  Making a Prefundia page and ignoring the major bits of feedback is just a waste of time for everyone involved, like I said earlier.  Makes me wonder if they actually thought about what the point of a Prefundia was, and either just didn't care or didn't get it.  Whoever is calling the shots with this project is a massive idiot.

17 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

It was not rewritten or redesigned.  It was simply tweaked, seemingly at the last minute, to respond to a few (but not all) of the concerns raised.  It really gives the impression that those in charge are not invested in the success of this project--like it's merely a pilot project that's been assigned to a few interns.

Which begs the question, "Why are they bothering with this at all if they seem unwilling to actually put in the effort to make sure it gets funded?"  This whole little debacle is absurd.  Is this some sort of dumb experiment inre is doing to test the waters for a real release, or something?  I hate to get all tin foil hat-y but this shit just doesn't make sense if you take it at face value.

[Maxel]

I wasted like 30 minutes yesterday listing some of the issues on their prefundia page. I don't think this project can be saved, and I don't know if I want it to be saved, not in their hands. The only good thing is the pricing. I don't know why they created prefundia page, it wasn't needed at all. They should just cancel previous KS and launch this one with changed goal to 160k, would be the same.

I'll just post what I really think and how I feel right now:

 

[Formlose Gestalt]

It's sad, once they started communicating on their Prefundia page, I thought that there was hope for this campaign, but the second kickstarter comes too early. As sanahtlig said they must be on a strict schedule. At least they addressed some of the issues, but I doubt that this Kickstarter will succeed in this form. And that saddens me a bit because I don't think that ChuSinGura 46+1 will ever get another chance for a translation.

[Maxel]

Well, they certainly don't want to get crushed by another amazing Frontwing/Akabei2 Kickstarter 

[Crayten]

What they dont understand is that the VN kickstarter are 90% funded by a very small hardcore audience of around 2500~ persons and not the Steam mass market. They catering the wrong audience with their Kickstarter and the small vn community wont fund anything with a shity reputation and/or bad marketing.

Oh and as usual no 18+ version no buy~

[BookwormOtaku]

I gave this a $1 backing just so I can see the updates to this now double train wreck firsthand . Popcorn, anyone?

 

On a less jokey note, what's the reading level for this game? I can say this whole thing has gotten me interested in trying out the game myself, provided it's not a difficult read.

[Kelebek1]

2 hours ago, BookwormOtaku said:

On a less jokey note, what's the reading level for this game? I can say this whole thing has gotten me interested in trying out the game myself, provided it's not a difficult read.

Didn't we establish it's the f2p mobile game, not the VN? So, it requires basically no reading level whatsoever.

 

The VN was fine though. Some parts of it can be difficult, specifically the parts about old-fashioned stuff, and there's quite a lot of "formal" talk. The letters Ooishi gets for instance were really hard to understand. There are interesting titbits included too if you're willing to wiki a bit, like how they integrated the characters into their real-life counterparts really well. Or I remember one part about how they used to draw maps so east was at the top, instead of north being at the top, because they see Japan as being east to west, not north to south, and that followed into their map-making. I thought that was really interesting. So some extra reading on wiki can be a nice follow-on. Other than some specific hard parts though, the average level is really normal, not difficult.