Now there's an interesting kickstarter...

[Takao]

And there's the fact that he practically admitted somewhere along that link that the positive point from this KS project was to raise awareness.

That's looking at the positive of the Kickstarter failing. I don't think their goal was to set up a Kickstarter and have it failed spectacularly. I have no reason to believe this wasn't a legitimate effort. Obviously this time it didn't work out. That said, they can see a positive in the failure since the game will still be released and more people know about the game than if the Kickstarter never happened.

...Too late, since their kickstater is dead already?

John and Vic have been interviewed by a load of different websites, and podcasts these last couple of weeks... You make it sound like they haven't done anything. I posted up their pitch video, and an interview they did with Anime News Network. They were a little late getting into action, but they didn't leave it until the last moment before pushing it.

[Fabrizo]

They're looking into localizing old PS2 games with QA done through other territories that still support the system (from the Reddit AMA). Will be interesting to see if anything comes from that.

[SIN]

I did the $60, but I was willing to put my faith into it to see better games from this model in the future. This could've been great, but hopefully they keep their heads up and try a game that has a little more popularity, I just hope they can find a developer willing to take a risk and try this model again with some tweaks to make it better, and maybe better promotion.

[JiggiUp]

They really couldn't have handled this any worse than they did.

- Picked a mediocre, generic game absolutely nobody cares about, with the original having been critically panned in the US
- Kickstarter only going towards a LE--a lot of people just want the PSN release. If it was going towards the game itself it'd get a lot more support.
- Extremely unrealistic goal
- Working Designs was notorious for terrible translations and screwing with gameplay elements, and the fund was gonna pay for their game code "improvements"

I really hope this doesn't turn other publishers away from Kickstarter.

[JiggiUp]

It failed. Man, Vic Ireland is still as big of an idiot as ever. This was doomed from Day 1.

Supposedly the voiceless, "improvement"-less, DD-only release will be coming in September.

[Kovaelin]

I mostly agree with your previous points. I was never interested in the first CoH, and the preview they showed for their "improvements" was not very impressive. The only reason I was remotely interested in the project was because it's a PSP game.

I asked through KS if the game would still be coming if the funding goal wasn't reached, and as you said, PSN-only is what it will be.

500K for "improvements" is crazy (even coming from the Working Designs pedigree - they aren't bad at all, in my opinion)... they should be really pleased that they hit 90K. I was actually considering getting the 10K tier last night, just to boost the number on the site, but that would have been cruel rather than encouraging. If they had incentives where you could get the game at lower tiers, I believe they might have received quite a bit more support. If I were Vic, I'd totally take this as a learning experience and do a relaunch.

[Hrodulf]

- Kickstarter only going towards a LE--a lot of people just want the PSN release. If it was going towards the game itself it'd get a lot more support.
- Extremely unrealistic goal

Yeah, I think this was easily the biggest problem with the whole thing. All of those "additional" items were absolute junk (inflatable sword, really?) and the release of a pointlessly overdone LE somehow warranted $100k more than Shadowrun Returns. Plus, $60 for a PSP game, which has been considered dead outside of Japan for quite some time, and for a game that hardly anyone has any interest in.

[JiggiUp]

Let's hope that Vic didn't do more harm than good with this ill-advised attempt. If any other Japanese publishers take a look at this, it'll probably scare them off from letting any other localizers try Kickstarter ever again.

[Shizuka]

Let's hope that Vic didn't do more harm than good with this ill-advised attempt. If any other Japanese publishers take a look at this, it'll probably scare them off from letting any other localizers try Kickstarter ever again.

Honestly, I don't think Kickstarter and bringing JRPGs to the States would ever work together, ever.

[JiggiUp]

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

If there was a Kickstarter for a localization of, say, Ragnarok Odyssey/Valkyria 3/Tales of Xillia, and the fund was going towards the game itself, not just a LE, I could really see that getting at least half a million. The only problem would be getting the Japanese rights holders to agree to it, which is admittedly a large one.