Can someone tell me why exactly this KS failed so hard (compared to its potential)? I'm not interested in Dies Irae but even I know that it's (in)famous in the VN community, so why did it only get funded? Just what went wrong with the campaign?
They chose a terrible company to run the kickstarter. They fired it out into the world without any warning before anyone was ready, including the people running it.
Then they abandoned it for days on end.
Then they announced lousy stretch goals.
Then they just continued being pretty rubbish.
What they did:
3rd December.
The PR team posted their first tweet on the twitter account (which had been created in November) -
"Dies irae Steam is now on Twitter!")
They announced that they'd launched their prefundia.
On 4th (they reposted the previous days announcement, then did it again to fix a typo), 5th (thanks for following, here's how many people are), 6th (coming to kickstarter, show your support at the prefundia page), 9th (thanks for all your comments and questions), and 12th (update on the number of followers) December they tweeted about prefundia again.
On 14th December they posted "Slowly, but surely, we are on the path to KS campaign. Keep spreading the word, and prepare for the KS! #diesiraeKS"
15th December they launched the Kickstarter and linked to it.
They did this without giving any previous notice, and despite having said they were on the path to it "slowly, but surely" the previous day.
This tweet has been pinned since the campaign started.
16th December they tweeted the first day's progress (over 700 backers, over $60k pledged).
Then they fucked off for 4 days.
RIGHT AT THE START. That's a crucial time, and they could have gotten the campaign off to a flying start, but instead they were nowhere to be seen. It was completely baffling, and I genuinely don't know why they launched the project when they did if they weren't going to be around to handle it.
(... okay, so
maybe it was 3 days. They posted a kickstarter comment on the 19th. It was still a rubbish thing to do).
20th December they made their first Project Update, and linked to it with a tweet.
21st they tweeted the progress so far (1173 backers, stay tuned for more information)
22nd they retweeted two of the many character profiles the translators had started posting on twitter entirely off their own backs to try and keep people interested while the PR team had vanished. They also retweeted the translator's funding updates from the $75k and $100k marks that they hadn't bothered to tweet about themselves.
Also on the 22nd December they posted the
Project Update #2
They added some tiers which they made sound absolutely wonderful with their brilliant salesmanship (The first is the ”Gotta have it bundle 1." This reward tier is the $200 ”T-shirt + tapestry." tier without the rubber straps included.)
They posted about a kickstarter exclusive tapestry.
Then they linked to a review from one of the translators, and pasted in some of the character profiles the translators had been posting on twitter.
Then they vanished for a few more days.
On 25th December they tweeted that the Stretch Goals would be coming up this week.
On 26th December they posted
Project Update #3 announcing the Stretch Goals, and tweeted about it.
The stretch goals were all worse than they had been during the prefundia. And locked to higher tiers.
To be fair, part of this was apparently down to light, but it was still a very bad look.
The prefundia goals should have been agreed and (somewhat) finalised before they were posted there. Some wiggle room is expected but nothing to this extent.
(Putting in a ludicrously high goal for a 16page booklet was just ridiculous. The Vita one hurt because the vita fanbase are vocal. The one that made me go wtf was actually the artbook though - taking a stretch goal that should be $240k for 4 four books and turning it into a $300k stretch goal for one is terrible).
They also retweeted some more character profiles.
On the 27th they posted a couple of comments about the changing stretch goal values
1,
2.
They also posted
Project Update #4.
It had a promo video and an optional kickstarter exclusive add-on (a $70 lap blanket with Marie or Rusalka on it)
To be fair to them people liked the add-on, but it's not something that interested me at all so I wasn't impressed. Maybe if they'd given me one with some of the guys on I could have been swayed ¬_¬
Then they vanished for 8 days.
On 4th Jan they posted
Project Update #5
It announced that the stretch goals had been reworked. It switched around the required funding for the Vita and Silly16PageBooklet tiers.
And of course, doing this makes complete sense because
obviously the work put in to translating and printing a 16 page booklet and porting an entire game are comparable.
(Hey, I want the vita port too, but to say that exchange actually makes sense in any way is all kinds of weird).
It also talked about the 18+ patch, screen ratios for the regular game versus the adult content, and promised more add-ons would be announced the following day.
On 5th Jan they posted
Project Update #6.
It announced some more kickstarter-exclusive add-ons, two $40 tapestries and a $40 phone case.
Then they did nothing for a few more days.
On 9th Jan they made a stupid twitter post which requires some explaining.
It was basically a misunderstanding, mostly because of their poor English and the fact they don't actually know anything about the game.
Basically, throughout the campaign people latched on to one of the characters, Rusalka, who also became the subject of a lot of the add-ons. I want to say it became a running joke, but some people probably weren't joking, so that's not entirely accurate. Basically one of the ongoing things was talking about Rusalka and a Rusalka-Route.
So then the PR posted this.
and when asked to clarify they doubled down
Thing is, that content isn't new. That, along with the wording 'content that was not originally planned in the budget' made some people concerned that this meant that some other content was also cut or not in the budget though.
They followed that up with this.
Which... wasn't much better, frankly.
They did eventually admit to misunderstanding, but they didn't post it on twitter where they posted their original stupid comments.
My personal belief is they'd gone to light going "Hey, people keep talking about Rusalka stuff" and light went "Yeah, sure, that'll be in there" and they went "What? We can tell people something they're asking for is
actually happening? Quick! To the PR-mobile!". It doesn't explain their "this extra content that was not originally planned in the budget" bullshit, of course, because it's bullshit, but I imagine they thought it would make them look better. If they'd had some idea what they were talking about they might have managed it.
On 10th Jan they tweeted that there would be an AMA on Reddit with G-Yuusuke, one of the artists.
They also posted
Project Update #7, but this time they didn't link to it from twitter.
On 11th Jan they posted
Project Update #8 when the AMA started.
Some of the localization team were also involved.
I really need to read through it. I didn't get a chance to be there
for it because it was at 1AM and while that wouldn't normally bother me I had to be at work at 6:30AM today. It just wasn't doable).
Also on the 11th they've posted
Project Update #9 to say they'll add some additional expensive tiers to the kickstarter.
_
Now there wasn't something wrong with all of those updates. Some of them were okay, though I personally believe
all of them could have been handled better.
The real reason I've insisted on listing out them all out is because I feel there should have been far more of them. The whole project should have had more engagement from the PR team. I mean, it's what they were hired for.
They kept telling people to be patient, and thanking them for their queries, and thanking them for their feedback, but it was all just words (and unfortunately they weren't even particularly
good with words). They fluffed around with things that should have been finalised before they headed into the kickstarter itself, and it made them seem incompetent (but their incompetence might have helped with that).
The fact they kept vanishing for days on end just made it worse.
They launched it before they were ready, and they ran a shitty campaign.
_
And just to throw my lot in, I'm definitely on the "Muv-Luv was an excellent campaign" team. They were professional, engaged with their audience, kept us updated, and kept us interested. They hit all the right notes and convinced us to spend far more money than I'm sure a lot of us intended to
A competent team will do that.
... Meanwhile I'm still looking at my Dies Irae pledge trying to decide if I actually trust them to be capable of sending it out.