What happened to Supipara?

[Silvz]

This is a question I have for a long time, but nobody seems to remember the series, so I came to ask.

For those who don't know, Supipara is a Minori game which is being funded by the sales of eden* and prior chapters (being chapter 2 the most recent). MG created a tracker for the public to know how much they've already got, and recently the goal for chapter 2 was met, leading to its release.

Just by looking at this tracker, you know that they planned 5 chapters, but since Supipara 1 was released, which is a couple of years ago, the fundraising seem so minimal that I can't see other chapters coming through.

My questions are: is the tracker still being updated? or is it dead?  Is there a possibility of releasing other chapters through other means, such as Kickstarter or MG founding it? And the most important: how much do we, players, lose storywise by not having the later chapters? Is it worth to buy the first 2 with hopes of getting a good experience?

[littleshogun]

As for the tracker, yeah it's still updated even though it's slow one - so much that I rarely check the tracker. For the last update, I just checked the tracker and right now it was gathered 225,630 with the recent update was at January 5th. As for KS or Mangagamer founding it, no idea whether it will happen or not but I did think though that perhaps KS would help with the project, even though it's a controversial method to said it lightly.

I didn't knew much though in regard of how much the story loss by missing other three chapters, but it's pretty obvious that there's a lot would be miss from the bigger picture if we miss those. Of course in wake of that there's a lot of unsolved mystery, especially in regard of Alice which I'm absolutely sure gonna to be the main heroine. But I think it's still worth to buy though, if you just want to see Sakura and Hotaru because those two chapters were involved them.

That's all in regard of my answer for now.

[DarkZedge]

Isn't episode 2 coming soon? it's in testing for all I know

[bakauchuujin]

24 minutes ago, DarkZedge said:

Isn't episode 2 coming soon? it's in testing for all I know

It seems that the testing is done

[DarkZedge]

Just now, bakauchuujin said:

It seems that the testing is done

Yeah like I thought, never cared for the series at all but I keep track of MG's stuff and the others

[bakauchuujin]

Personally I am slightly interested in it, but I don't like things that are incomplete so I won't buy until the entire series is out, hopefully on hardcopy (probably not likely).

[ChaosRaven]

I think it's save to say that they axed the later chapters 3 - 5 which would have to be newly created. The original funding goal with 300,000 $ was already very unlikely to be reached, but then they raised it to 350,000 $ to really make sure that it will never be reached. And should really impossible things happen and the fund raiser still getting close to the goal, they'll certainly raise the funding goal again.

To be frank, I've little understanding for this whole fund raising farce anymore. They should just cancel it and say that it didn't work out in time - end of story.

[bakauchuujin]

56 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

I think it's save to say that they axed the later chapters 3 - 5 which would have to be newly created. The original funding goal with 300,000 $ was already very unlikely to be reached, but then they raised it to 350,000 $ to really make sure that it will never be reached. And should really impossible things happen and the fund raiser still getting close to the goal, they'll certainly raise the funding goal again.

To be frank, I've little understanding for this whole fund raising farce anymore. They should just cancel it and say that it didn't work out in time - end of story.

Seems like they for some reason really want to make this happend, also the release of chapter 2 will probably boost it a bit. If they make it so that what they get from trinoline also counts I don't think it is completely unrealistic.

[novurdim]

1 hour ago, bakauchuujin said:

Seems like they for some reason really want to make this happend, also the release of chapter 2 will probably boost it a bit. If they make it so that what they get from trinoline also counts I don't think it is completely unrealistic.

I like MG but the whole thing with Supipara has been pretty shady from the very beggining, we don't even know just how much from the sales is actually added to the fundraiser, as we've already tried to count here a year ago, the current status never really adds up. Not to mention that Eden is an extremely supersuccesful game by the MG standards that has sold more than 60k copies on steam alone by january 2017 (and unlike now, a year ago it wasn't sold for a dollar and had never been featured in humblebundle) and surprised even them. But the fundraiser is still that far from being completed. I can't imagine they expected Eden to sell even better so what was the point? And supipara ch. 1, eden from MG store plus physical Ef sales are supposed to be accounted for in that number too?

By now it's likely that they are either completely manipulating the number to take it to the goal when it's convenient for them or are just leaving it there to boost the sales of supipara ch.2 and Trinoline. Some people are much more likely to buy those day 1 for the full price if it's for some kind of goal. It's not kickstarter, noone controls mangagamer and their fundraiser.

Edited January 13, 2018 by novurdim

[Nandemonai]

1 hour ago, ChaosRaven said:

I think it's save to say that they axed the later chapters 3 - 5 which would have to be newly created. The original funding goal with 300,000 $ was already very unlikely to be reached, but then they raised it to 350,000 $ to really make sure that it will never be reached. And should really impossible things happen and the fund raiser still getting close to the goal, they'll certainly raise the funding goal again.

Why would they do that?  First of all, the goal was never $300K.  I checked the Wayback Machine, the goal for ch. 3-5 was always 'pending'.  When they announced the goal it was $150K each for the new chapters.  It never had an amount before tht.  Second, minori apparently really wanted to do more Supipara, but it bombed.  Why would they go to all this trouble to pretend to get ready to make more?

Why is it easier to believe they're deviously and dishonestly manipulating the facts, than to believe their plan failed?  And if they didn't want the plan to succeed, why would they count sales of Trinoline towards this goal?  (I looked for a cite for that, but couldn't find anything.  I believe it was announced at Anime Boston 2017.)

15 minutes ago, novurdim said:

I like MG but the whole thing with Supipara has been pretty shady from the very beggining, we don't even know just how much from the sales is actually added to the fundraiser...

We don't know exactly, but sure we do.  Their tracker page says this: "When the combined gross profit of eden* and Supipara reaches... "

16 minutes ago, novurdim said:

Not to mention that Eden is an extremely supersuccesful game by the MG standards that has sold more than 60k copies on steam alone by january 2017 (and unlike now, a year ago it wasn't sold for a dollar and had never been featured in humblebundle) and surprised even them. But the fundraiser is still that far from being completed.

Yeah, that's the difference between gross profit and gross revenue.  Even if SteamSpy is accurate, the game only costs $20 now.  And it went down to $2 for the Christmas sale in 2017.  Basically, you can't count on eden* to move that needle in any significant way anymore.  The game is old and cheap.  It seems like you were expecting profits from eden would continue indefinitely?  Games are hit driven.  They get most of their sales up front.  The profits were always going to dry up eventually.  After a quick initial burst, sales fall off.  The only real significant sales eden* will have seen since then will be the big Steam sales.

24 minutes ago, novurdim said:

I can't imagine they expected Eden to sell even better so what was the point?

You're ignoring the other game included in this fundraiser.  The point was that Supipara would come to fund itself after getting a kick start from sales of eden*.  Each new volume of Supipara would create a new spike of direct sales of the new volume, but would also (theoretically) ignite new interest in minori's other games.  Except that apparently Supipara volume 1 bombed in English too.

Or to look at it another way:  Supipara 1 and Eden* between them have a profit of $225K right now.  Suppose that number was a little higher, though.  It seems reasonable to suppose that Eden* made $185K or so, and Supipara 1 made about 40K.  Suppose instead that Eden* had made the $225K all by itself, and Supipara 1 hadn't bombed.  Then it might have pulled in $100-125K.  Then things would be very different.  It would be close to the goal for volume 3, maybe even at it already.  And the release of volumes 2 and 3 would bring in another $100K each, minimum, guaranteeing the release of volume 4.

In other words, the fundraiser was set up so Eden* would provide the initial push for sales of Supipara, and that if Supipara took off, it would fund itself.  That plan doesn't seem likely to work, so they appear to have changed it to include Trinoline's profits as well.

[novurdim]

2 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

Yeah, that's the difference between gross profit and gross revenue.  Even if SteamSpy is accurate, the game only costs $20 now.  And it went down to $2 for the Christmas sale in 2017. 

Thank you, my captain obvious friend, but that's exactly why I mentioned january 2017 when its lowest price was around 9-10$ at the several steam sales with the fundraiser at around 170k$ and not january 2018. If you count it now then it has already sold around 120-140k copies thanks to the 2$ pricing at this christmas sale and HB. On steam alone and Eden only. And, as I mentioned, eden from mg store, physical Ef and Supipara ch.1 are also included in the fundraiser. From your logic, their gross profit from the 60k steam copies for Eden at its prime and unknown supipara ch.1, eden (mg store edition) and Ef physical sales were around 170k$. If it's true then I doubt the sanity of a man who expected to fund the new supipara games when the MG's profits from one of the biggest runaway successes in the company's history was barely enough to fund a localization of an existing relatively short novel. 

2 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

It seems like you were expecting profits from eden would continue indefinitely?  Games are hit driven.  They get most of their sales up front.  The profits were always going to dry up eventually.  After a quick initial burst, sales fall off.  The only real significant sales eden* will have seen since then will be the big Steam sales.

I'm... not quite sure where did this come from.

2 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

We don't know exactly, but sure we do.  Their tracker page says this: "When the combined gross profit of eden* and Supipara reaches... "

I know this, as you can imagine. That's why I've said that they can do and write anything on their site with literally noone to control them, it's not an indication of anything.

2 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

You're ignoring the other game included in this fundraiser. 

I don't, I just find it hard to believe that they expected every game to sell at the very least 50k-100k copies. We even talk about MangaGamer, the guys who were the most pessimistic about the longevity of the mainstream VN boom in the west.

Either way, I'm pretty sure that by now it's nothing more than a primitive bait to boost the initial sales of the Supi2 and Trinoline. Even if Trinoline sells 80k-100k copies at the start, which seems to be required, noone is silly enough to spend the profits on a series that has bombed in both Japan and West.

Edited January 13, 2018 by novurdim

[ChaosRaven]

8 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

Why would they do that?  First of all, the goal was never $300K.  I checked the Wayback Machine, the goal for ch. 3-5 was always 'pending'.  When they announced the goal it was $150K each for the new chapters.  It never had an amount before tht.  Second, minori apparently really wanted to do more Supipara, but it bombed.  Why would they go to all this trouble to pretend to get ready to make more?

You're sure about that? I thought they changed the pending to 100,000 $ per chapter later on, but maybe that was just an assumption judging by the first two chapters. But considering the later chapters would need to be newly developed, I guess 150,000 $ for each of the later chapters makes more sense. Guess I take that claim back. 

8 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

Why is it easier to believe they're deviously and dishonestly manipulating the facts, than to believe their plan failed?  And if they didn't want the plan to succeed, why would they count sales of Trinoline towards this goal?  (I looked for a cite for that, but couldn't find anything.  I believe it was announced at Anime Boston 2017.)

I think it was at least very unrealistic from the start and most likely just to boost sales. It was a nice try at that time. maybe hoping for a Steam wonder, but now it's just annoying. They should have made a Kickstarter if they would have been really serious about it.

Edited January 14, 2018 by ChaosRaven

[Kawasumi]

im pretty sure eden* will never sell enough for this to become an actual goal, I have no idea why it havent been either kickstarted as someone suggested or was just taken silently into an alley and killed. 

 

In short:

[littleshogun]

Interesting assumption I see, and for not using KS now that I think of it maybe because minori couldn't make a good tier list for that lol. I even did wonder though why they didn't use that in the first place, and as of now it'll be very slow if they just counted on minori sales alone. But looking from their track record, I think they should be able to gather the necessary funds within 2.5 years from now on. After that, whether minori fulfill their promise or not it's up to them I guess - but the hype would be already died down for obvious reason though. In the end, a cliche 'Wait and see' should be what we should do in regard of this imo.

Edited January 14, 2018 by littleshogun

[Dreamysyu]

1 hour ago, littleshogun said:

I think they should be able to gather the necessary funds within 2.5 years from now on.

They will most likely just drop the fundraising by then. Why would they gather money for so long if they can use it for other and more promising projects?

[Silvz]

Maybe they never did a kickstarter because they knew it would fail? Or to boost eden*.

I didn't think the thread would start a discussion; sad to see how unlikely the game is to be released. I'd play it, but not for an unfinished story.