KS Demo mistake? Released too early?

[ubergeneral]

So on the front page of Fakku Jacob talked about his panal at Connection in Connecticut. Aside from talking about Hentei he liked he talked about a few VN including KS. (Yay free promotion)

However when a fourm topic came up about it some interesting comment were made.

Topic
http://www.fakku.net/viewtopic.php?t=46827

3rd page is where it gets interesting.

I still think that Katawa Shoujo is even considered a "real" VN yet, CAUSE it's not even finished yet

we're all over-hyping this one series just it's Original, made by 4chan,and it's the "GOING TO BE" the first international VN project.

But people cannot see that It's not finished.

you know the proverb Don't count your chickens before they hatch?


this is what the people are doing right now. They're Hoping for something great, eventhough it's not done yet.

It's more worth discussing if they stopped Multi-translating it and actually released and Act 2 or something.

There's normally no book/novel publisher that focuses on localizing their unfinished story...

I Like Katawa Shoujo as much as the next person, but they should FOCUS on completion, not distribution first...

what irritates (personally) me more is, People starting to say that It's the best VN, even though it's not finished. hence the "Don't count your Chicken before they hatch" proverb

Usually After a VN is announced the release date should not be far, at least 2-4 months

example Kizuato by LEAF, they announced it around May 10 2009, and it was released at June 26 2009, that's not even a month yet. Even though it's already in progress, this short time between announcement and release is one of the more important factors of Vns success.

now let's look at Cross Days by OVERFLOW, it was announced at June 26 2009, but it was eventually released at March 19 2010. It took them 9 Months to get it done, and what reaction did they get? Some people forgot about it completely, some people got disappointed to see nothing has really changed, some people just raged quit.

I am particularly fine with 4Leaf Studios if they want to make the 1st act as a trial version, but now from the actual 1st act release till today, it took like 16 months with nothing more but Graphical, sound, technical cosmetics and translations to 4 languages (2 more pending). See the point?

I'm trying to make people see that They need to "lubricate" the fan base with REAL updates, not cosmetics and languages. People wants VNs for the story NOT THIS.


Tl;dr
Point is, THEY NEED TO DO A REAL UPDATE ASAP Or at least Announce their REAL progress.

not, "oh, look we actually translated Lilly's "My, My" into 4 different languages."


It may seem that I'm ranting, Raging, or whatever you think about me, but I'm one of the guys that really anticipated Katawa Shoujo for it's High Potential. But waiting for more than 16 months for this...

What do you think? Is this true? Was the demo released too early? I can say for sure that the reason why it's not out yet is because it's not done. The devs aren't with holding any info and making a VN is a long and involved process. Still it's the first time this has been said in this way... not to mention that Kaimax it was a well known veteran poster and moderation on fakku. At the very least perhaps a Dev should post defending KS since I do personally think that the comments are false.

What do you think? Right, wrong? This is bound to get interesting.

[EternalLurker]

we're all over-hyping this one series just it's Original, made by 4chan,and it's the "GOING TO BE" the first international VN project.

But people cannot see that It's not finished.

you know the proverb Don't count your chickens before they hatch?


this is what the people are doing right now. They're Hoping for something great, eventhough it's not done yet.

I've warned against that several times now to no avail. I'm slightly worried that people will hype it beyond all reasonable expectations and thus end up wrongly disappointed.

[Smoku]

Totally wrong. like.. totally.

They give hints of what they done already. Read the damn blog post actually and see that they mentioned completion of some paths and last time they mentioned deciding about Hisao's penis in a Lilly h-scene. Do some maths and guess in which act that is.

The chicken did hatch, it's act 1. it's great already. it's a VN in itself. We're PATIENTLY awaiting more chickens.

And this isn't a professional VN, they don't choose some damn day to release it. They won't receive money for it. Actually they're like, doing you a favor for actually doing this and totally for free and you DARE to rage?


Plus I doubt they care about some wiseguys from god knows where to judge their demo version. What is this? TYPE MOON? I don't think so.
The dude said "made by 4chan" which already marks him as if not an idiot, then at least someone who didn't do his homework

[Suriko]

While I agree with some of the remarks (mostly "dudes how can it be the best ever VN if it's not even out?"), he makes several errors with regards to other criticisms.

One is with regards to distributions. We're doing these because they require little work from us (it's done by translation groups made up of non-KS-devs, excepting the Italian translation), and so our resources are very barely used in order to do these. Also of note is that we're not releasing act 2 because, as we've stated before, Act 1 was a demo/trial version. We never had the intention of episodic releases, and our development method just isn't built around that.

Second is the release date. Of note is that the citations are all professional visual novel companies. It's ludicrous to compare a tightly managed and centralised compnay that can wield both managers and paychecks against its (often larger number of) developers, and a project made by random people on the internet from around the world that are doing it for free. That's not to say I don't understand some frustration at it seemingly taking so long, just that there's little we can do about it. If people end up forgetting about the game or raging themselves away... too bad? Not to sound callous, but it isn't as if we're intentionally slowing ourselves down, and even if someone doesn't end up playing the game after so long, we're hardly going to be moaning about how our game failed to meet its expected profit margin due to lack of sales.

Thirdly, we've addressed the problem of updates on the blog before. It's very hard to give solid development updates in a project like this, where progress is uneven and very hard to predict. We don't have many deadlines, we can't reliably tell people "get x done by y date", we can't have a manager give them a kick up the arse, etc. But that said, we do give progress updates when we can, even quite recently when taking the path completion posts into account.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we're not pros, and as much as we'd like to, we can't move some arbitary release date forward and tell the developers to work overtime to get it done.

If this reads like a defence... well, I suppose that's one reading. As I said, I actually do agree with them in some aspects, and for the others, I just think there's not much that can be done other than saying that this is the reality of loosely-organised free online project development.

Edit: And yeah, it's not made by 4chan.

[neumanproductions]

I don't think the demo was released to early it all. If anything it was released at an excellent time as to draw the most hype (that might be both good and bad). Just look at the forums and shimmie and what it has done. Heck, I probably wouldn't be as involved as I am if the whole title had been released at once. Grant it for those who drift away as the time goes on but we know progress is being made and that is good enough for me.

Smoku is right when it comes to how Act 1 stands. In and of itself Act 1 could stand strong as those paths give you a satisfying end for each of the girls so that you don't need to go further; I still want to go further though.

Those guys really don't seem to know half of what is going on with this project (reminds me of someone I delt with on youtube) when they mention 4chan. Also the notion releasing individual acts has long been trashed, besides I prefer the full release than by act as you're really starting to head down an individual's path already after act 1.

I might have higher hopes than some when it comes to the finished project but doesn't everyone have high hopes that have the potential to fall? The trick is to not let those hopes control your outlook. I will be happy for whatever form the finished product takes as it was made to the best of the ability of the devs who are doing this for free let's remember; despite what my hopes amount to.

Edit: Good to hear Suriko is here.

[G3n0c1de]

I think it's great that they made a demo. The fan following of the game would be non existent without it. I certainly wouldn't have joined these forums if the demo were never released. And with all of the things that came with Act 1, we have stuff that we can talk about on here. I don't think very many of us would be here if not for the demo. Of course, I can't speak for the countless players who have not joined these forums, but if out reactions are anything to go on, perhaps they received the demo positively, and now have something to look forward to in the future.

As for the hype, the game can't possible live up to everyone's expectations, but that's life. I don't think the devs would settle for anything less than a stellar completed version of the game. So most of us will play the game, and be satisfied.

And the updates, or lack thereof, I think the demo is the most effective way for the devs to show what they've accomplished. We can actually see what the game feels like, and give feedback to that. That's more than a blog update will ever achieve. And the devs could have just as easily not released the demo.

[ze spy]

Second is the release date. Of note is that the citations are all professional visual novel companies. It's ludicrous to compare a tightly managed and centralised compnay that can wield both managers and paychecks against its (often larger number of) developers, and a project made by random people on the internet from around the world that are doing it for free. That's not to say I don't understand some frustration at it seemingly taking so long, just that there's little we can do about it. If people end up forgetting about the game or raging themselves away... too bad? Not to sound callous, but it isn't as if we're intentionally slowing ourselves down, and even if someone doesn't end up playing the game after so long, we're hardly going to be moaning about how our game failed to meet its expected profit margin due to lack of sales.

Eh, like I've said before, I think there would be 1/3 the bitching if you provided atleast a "If we aren't done by then it will never be done date". I don't know, I think people are just scared it's going to end up like Duke Nukem or some people are terrified the devs will just drop the project. I realize you aren't getting paid, but unfortunately, some people don't give a shit about this and just want you to release it today. I don't know, that's what I think atleast.

[Suriko]

Eh, like I've said before, I think there would be 1/3 the bitching if you provided atleast a "If we aren't done by then it will never be done date".

31/12/2011 (dd/mm/yyyy).

[Aura]

Act 1 was released too early? Too early for what?

Fun fact: we almost released Act 1 over a year earlier than it actually was released, with a (in retrospect) shitty script, no art from any of the current staff artists and without the OP movie or any event CGs. We probably could've released a similarly shitty full game pretty fast after Act 1 too. So, you guys might've had to wait for 2 years now, or already 100%'d the full game and forgotten about it. We chose to do neither of those. We don't have a release schedule. We just go along with the flow and do what we can. As for Act 1 v2-4, all the improvements are work we did for the full game and just decided to stick in, and translation projects are done by people other than us. Complaining about translations of Act 1 is like complaining that Ryukishi is doing English translations of Umineko/Higurashi instead of working faster on new games.

If we wanted to play the PR/hype game correctly, we definitely released Act 1 too early. However, we don't and we can't. This guy seems to have confused us for a commercial eroge studio for some reason, judging from the way he compares KS to some commercial games and says things like "they need to lubricate the fan base". That's dumb. We are not professionals, and we can't/don't have to adhere to conventions that become necessary when it's important to get as many customers as possible. The realities of a free volunteer project with some random dudes over the internet are a little bit different than those of a well-oiled studio with employees who are being paid for their work and who need to make money to pay those employees.

He's right about not counting chickens before they hatch, to an extent. Fans might be overhyping KS. I don't mind that though. That's what fans do. Maybe someone builds themselves unrealistic expectations and genuinely becomes disappointed. Maybe the hype dies. Maybe some people have become tired of waiting and stop following the project. Apart from having less forum posts to read, it doesn't really make much of a difference. Don't get me wrong: it's super fun to have fans and people who are excited about KS, but basing our operations on trying to appease the fanbase is a completely ludicrous notion. What exactly do we have to gain for stuff like announcing progress weekly, or giving sneak peeks? What exactly would the fans get from that except more fuel for the hype machine?

We are playing with our cards close to chest because 1) we don't want to raise expectations that we can't meet and 2) we don't want people to make false conjectures. I think Jacob's single-line post is a brilliant response really. Act 1 might not be the full game, but it works as a story by itself, albeit with a somewhat weak plot. KS is interesting as a phenomenon as well. It's worth talking about.

[neumanproductions]

Eh, like I've said before, I think there would be 1/3 the bitching if you provided atleast a "If we aren't done by then it will never be done date".

31/12/2011 (dd/mm/yyyy).

And there destroys any of those 2012 jokes I made a while back.
"So has it been written, so shall it be."

[ze spy]

Eh, like I've said before, I think there would be 1/3 the bitching if you provided atleast a "If we aren't done by then it will never be done date".

31/12/2011 (dd/mm/yyyy).

And there destroys any of those 2012 jokes I made a while back.
"So has it been written, so shall it be."

Yet again I have destroyed the hopes and dreams of manchildren everywhere.

[Suriko]

They give hints of what they done already. Read the damn blog post actually and see that they mentioned completion of some paths and last time they mentioned deciding about Hisao's penis in a Lilly h-scene. Do some maths and guess in which act that is.

Not sure if it's ever been said (it may well not have done), but the CGs aren't being drawn in chronological order.

[ze spy]

They give hints of what they done already. Read the damn blog post actually and see that they mentioned completion of some paths and last time they mentioned deciding about Hisao's penis in a Lilly h-scene. Do some maths and guess in which act that is.

Not sure if it's ever been said (it may well not have done), but the CGs aren't being drawn in chronological order.

fffffffffFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

[delta]

probably should make a boycott group on steam and/or start an online petition, i hear that it works wonders

[ze spy]

Yeah, more purcha- oh wait