Studio Nasu, a game development company promoted by Otakon, has yet to make good on a Kickstarter that raised more than $33,000 back in 2012.
Now Dave Lister, founder of Studio Nasu, has broken an eight month silence to claim that the game is still being made and that the Kickstarter was not, as some backers are claiming, a scam.
Studio Nasu leveraged Otakon 2012 to promote Crisis Heart Brawlers, Clash At Otakon! The side-scrolling fighting game would include voice acting by Otakon guest anime dub actors, music by Eyeshine—a band that has performed at Otakon, and characters including “Ice Cold Water Guy,” a vendor-turned-legend at the Baltimore convention.
Studio Nasu set up a Kickstarter for the project with a goal of $20,000 but, due in part to Otakon’s promotion, fans raised more than $33,000.
The estimated delivery for backer rewards was April 2013, but fans say they still have not heard from Studio Nasu or Dave Lister since the project was successfully funded in September 2012, nor have they received any backer rewards. The project now appears on Kickscammed, a community blog for reporting unfulfilled projects.
Creators are legally obligated to fulfill the promises of their projects, according to Kickstarter. On the comments page, some backers are discussing taking legal action against Studio Nasu. This wouldn’t be the first time a Kickstarter has lead to a lawsuit. Earlier this year, the Attorney General of Washington state sued a Kickstarter for failing to make good on its promises to backers.
Lister had not updated his Twitter, personal or professional, since last October. But when I asked Lister about Crisis Heart Brawlers on Twitter, he responded immediately. It is his first time discussing the game that I can find online since October 2013.
@laureninspace absolutely! We’re still working hard. I plan on getting yelled at a lot at con. ^__^;;; — Davemon (@davemon) June 30, 2014
@laureninspace yes, I need to badly! Been trying to bring people on to help with social while we work. starting to really hate myself! >_< — Davemon (@davemon) June 30, 2014
The Studio Nasu and Crisis Heart Brawlers websites have been suspended, but Lister said that’s due to heavy traffic. Lister said there will be a new demo of the game at Otakon 2014.
Otakon made its promotion of the Studio Nasu game apparent, but hasn’t mentioned it since, not even responding to an Otakon forum thread asking why the game hasn’t happened yet. I contacted Otakon for comment, but have not yet received a reply.
Update 7/4/2014: Otakon has terminated its agreement with Studio Nasu.
“I feel like they traded on the goodwill of the Otakon brand to screw people out of their money,” wrote redditor aresef on a Reddit discussion of the game.
Studio Nasu may still be working on the project, but that’s probably news to backers. And after two years, fans are probably going to need more than his word to believe it.
12 Comments.
If there’s one giant lesson that should be learned from recent stuff on Kickstarter it’s COMMUNICATE. Part of the point of crowdfunding (which I wrote about when we were doing our Kickstarter) is that you’re building an audience who will be excited about your project and want to know about it’s progress and be with you every step of the way.
Creators absolutely should NOT start a crowdfunding campaign if they’re not willing and able to keep up that end of the bargain. I know, first hand, how big of a struggle it can be. Trust me, do I know, and I’m not saying I did the job perfectly either, in fact I’d say I whiffed the communication bit myself, even if I did have some extenuating circumstances. But these people aren’t necessarily angry because you haven’t delivered a game, they’re angry because they don’t know what you’re doing or what’s going on and they just want ANY kind of sign that they’ll be getting what they paid for.
All that being said, I do also think that fans/donors need to also have a reality check, so if there’s two giant lessons to be learned, it should be “things take time.” We’ve all grown up in a world that at first, didn’t advertise products until they were near completion. We didn’t hear about movies until the trailer was coming out, unless you were actively following trade magazines or something, and you’d need a huge tentpole blockbuster to really get that many reports coming out about shooting, etc. Now, we know about things almost the second the creator thinks about them, but we haven’t adjusted our expectations to the reality of how long it takes to do stuff. Especially when it comes to indie projects, where most of the time there’s just one or two people, and they’re not making a profit off of this project or getting paid so they also have to do other things to get their rent paid and not get the lights shut off in the mean time.
That’s not to say Kickstarter scams don’t exist and that people don’t overpromise and underdeliver. The popularity of crowdfunding has just made it even easier for people to bite off more than they can chew AND given them an insta-mob of angry donors to pay the price to when they can’t manage the issues. It’s definitely an issue. Not being a game dev, I don’t know how long a game like this takes to code and develop. Is two years really a long time for this, or is it reasonable considering all the parameters of indie game development?
That said, two years with no communication is not a way to win over people who are getting angry. Just post a twitter update once in a while. Leak a screenshot or two. Just keep the conversation going. It’s hard, but it has to be done. Like I said, don’t do the crowdfunding campaign if you can’t handle the social media, communication, and marketing aspects before, during, and after it. It’s a vital piece of the puzzle, just as much as actually delivering on the product you’re selling.
At best they’re just terrible communicators, but from the outside, unprofessionalism is hard to separate from genuinely scammy behavior, isn’t it?
Pretty much. Any buy in with a KS project is just a risk for the buyer to front only riding on their trust of the producer, nothing else. It isn’t unusual for KS projects to get delayed, especially when stretch goals bloat the process, but poor communication is a very bad policy to ignore regardless.
Frauds like this are the reason why we have started
crowdfrauds.com – a website
created
to help backers avoiding crowdfunding scammers. We would like to
describe
this case as well. If you have been scammed or you know anything
important
about this project – please let us know – contactcrowdfrauds.com. It may be very helpful for Rother backers. I believe that together we can fight with
fraudsters and draw people’s attention
to this problem. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
http://www.crowdfrauds.com
Does a Whois on the domain of the game’s website still show as owned by the person/people involved? I’m not sure what the website for the game is or I’d check myself.
[…] Was the Otakon videogame a Kickstarter scam? (Otaku Journalist) […]
Its a scam. Otakon just announced that they terminated their licensing agreement with those failures.
@disqus_NeWVmqaySj:disqus thanks for letting me know. I just found out myself. I’ll be following this story up for sure.
If they were a scam, why would Otakon have supported them in the first place?
Idiot, because Otakon didn’t know it was a scam at the time?
Think about it this way, *IF* it was a SCAM from the get-go, why bother actually GETTING Otakacorp to sign-off on the creation of the game. I guess they decided to drop their backing because of the lack of communication, and extremely long time since any kind of update. What Studio Nasu should have done was release Alpha releases to the backers, because if the software was buggy, that’s what backers are great for, telling you what’s wrong.. LOL Plus it makes them feel like they are contributing even more.
What would an Otakon videogame be about? Waiting in line? Running around the BCC? lol