It was marketed to donors as “The Official Otakon… Game.” But now that Otakorp has terminated its agreement with Studio Nasu, that will be impossible to deliver.
Regardless of his troubles, founder Dave Lister hasn’t yet decided if he’s going to give supporters their money back or continue on the game’s development.
“I’m not sure yet, I only just found out and I’m still in a bit of shock,” he told me over Twitter. “We’re still talking amicably about options, though. They’re good people and my friends. I don’t want to jeopardize any solution by commenting too early. We all want this to work.”
Lister sounds perhaps overly optimistic that Otakon will continue to work with him. It’s hard to find a gray area in Otakorp forbidding Studio Nasu to use its intellectual property.
Probably, Lister intends to continue development of the game outlined in his Kickstarter, knowing full well that if he doesn’t, he’d be breaking the law and could get sued. However, it’s unlikely that Studio Nasu would have gotten any support for its Kickstarter without the prestige of the Otakon name behind it. Backers felt they were promised a game that tied into an anime convention they love.
“What’s ‘Crisis Heart Brawlers’ without the, well, ‘Clash at Otakon?’” said backer Tyler Waldman. “How many of the game’s assets would have been obtained if it were, as it would appear now, a generic beat ’em up with no con connection from the beginning?”
Waldman, who donated $15, believes Studio Nasu owes its backers an apology. Jessi Pascal, who donated $400 to the failed Kickstarter, also wants her money back.
“We were really rooting for it to happen, as a game for fans by fans just seemed too cool,” she said of her large donation. At the $400 level, Studio Nasu would make one of the characters in Pascal’s webcomic, Geeks Next Door, an “assist striker” in the game.
Pascal noted that the Otakorp withdrawal is only the latest in a host of problems that have plagued the Studio Nasu Kickstarter from the beginning. Multiple developers have left the project for a variety of reasons. The alleged lead animation producer on the project, Rusty Mills, the creator of Animaniacs, passed away from cancer. However, Pascal only heard indirectly about these issues as all communication with Studio Nasu soon stopped.
“I think it was all a combination of bad circumstances, biting off more than they could chew, and then sticking their heads in the sand to make the ‘problem’ go away,” she said. “As far as what would satisfy me? An apology and $400 back in my bank account. The whole thing has left me with such a bitter taste in my mouth that I don’t want to be part of the project any more.”
Jordan Polak, who donated $515 to the project, started getting frustrated with the project long before communication ceased. One of the reasons for Polak’s large donation was the ability to go to the Otakon ‘Release Party,’ for backers who paid $75 or more. However, he said Studio Nasu opened the party to everyone “at the last minute.”
“We ended up waiting over an hour to get in, the food was the food for the Otakon staff, nothing special for us,” he said. “We waited another hour for the creator to show up, also only two of the voice actors did show up. He rushed to set up the game that he said would be done in another 6 months for Otakon Vegas, and what we got was the demo form when he introduced the game a year prior. It had slightly better graphics, but no new enemies, attacks, movements or backgrounds. I got so angry I left that shit he called a party.”
Indeed, it sounds like there were warning signs long before Studio Nasu ceased contact with backers.
Backer Alex Jeffrey said the Studio Nasu website has been down since at least “October 2013,” in direct opposition to Lister’s assurance that the site was temporarily down due to heavy traffic. I highly doubt visitors have been throttling the site of a possibly dead project for months.
One positive thing to come out of the project is that the people who developed it probably were compensated for their work. Speaking confidentially to me, one character designer told me that he’d had a positive experience tinged only by getting paid later than promised, and that he was surprised to hear from me that the project had gone south.
Of course, if developers have already been paid for their work, that means the money Kickstarter backers gave to the project probably no longer exists for refunds.
