Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Imagine taking out cute personifications of World War II war machines on dates during the “war to end all wars”. If your first thought landed on Panzermadels, which just recently released, you’re not far off the mark. However, in the case of Victory Belles you’re beset with over a hundred lovely ladies who just happen to be the spirit of their namesake naval battleship. Yeah, Kickstarter projects have been getting weird lately haven’t they?
However, while the tank dating sim was a full-blown visual novel Victory Belles is a sort of hybrid of turn-based strategy RPG mixed with a battleship dating sim. Yeah, it’s hard for me to wrap my own limited brain around too. The war is just about to heat up in the late Summer of 1939 when a new foe emerges and the Axis and Allies have to band together to take them on. Which means that you’ll have access to all seven listed nations’ naval power. Which means 120+ girls to woo and fight alongside.
Now, I have no real problems with being able to go out with cute personifications of war machines. After all, I did back that “other” game. What has me wary of backing Victory Belles is a number of reasons. First off, it’s a F2P iOS/Web game. That’s the first strike. Second is the asking price for what they’re promising. For only $30k they’re looking to get professional voice actress for all of the ships as well as a lot of art assets and finishing touches. The third, and final strike, is the lack of showing who the team is and their experience on top of no budget breakdown. Those, coupled with the weird reward tiers has me passing on this one.
Track the progress of the Victory Belles Kickstarter in our Campaign Calendar.
Ok, i got a real problem with this one. I talked with the creator a bit about it..
So it is a F2P and a date sim..so more or less like some sort of visual novel (at least for the date sim aspect..).
What i don’t like is the tier basically the more you pledge the more extra character you get.
Which means if you look at the tier that unless you pledge 600$! you miss 7 or so extra characters!
In this type of games though its strength is its pool of characters! It’s like cutting a part of your content to people!
I wanted to pledge since i pledge for every black chicken project but when i saw that by pledging 25$ (which is on the high end when it comes to entry tier on KS) i’d miss so much characters? I was disheartened. I’d rather not pledge.
At this point what sounds like an exclusivity is way too restrictive!
And you just hit the nail on the head when I brought up the rewards tiers at the end of the article. Even if I ignore the $25 price tag for just one belle and whatever else there was the fact that they price lock you out of so much exclusive content that was the final nail in the coffin for me. I probably would have backed if I knew more about the developers and if they did a better job at choosing what you get at each tier. Especially, as you pointed out, that you’ll have to shell out a lot to get all of the Kickstarter-only content.
I have no problem backing a F2P game as long as their rewards are reasonable and something that you could conceivably get down the line from just playing the game. Like the card games that I’ve written about. But, the belles are an integral part of the game. Hopefully feedback like yours is taken to heart and they decide to rework some stuff.
The tag price is on the higher end, true. That is another bad decision.
Well, at the time they told me they’re considering doing a 150$ tier for all the belles but probably without the goodies (plushies etc). Which is..better.
But i’d be fair for me the correct price is 60$. As for Muv-Luv full trilogy.
(seriously i had 4 private message with them lol. Talk about an angry feedback :P)
We’ve had a lot of conversations with Dawn about this, that’s for certain. 🙂
The oddest thing, to us, is that we actually set it up this way to reward the backers. They’re helping us to finish the game, and we wanted to give them something unique and cool. We confess, we’re a bit puzzled about the concern of the exclusivity- especially since the Belles in question aren’t necessarily the most modern ships, and many equivalents (or upgrades!) exist among the 121 base Belles.
What Dawn says is true, though- we’re taking a good, long look at such a Tier, possibly unlocked by hitting Stretch Goals. We want to strike a balance between what we’re hearing from folks such as yourselves, and our commitment to our backers.
Very interesting problem. 🙂
The issue and problem about that exclusivity is that the game is all about the belles! So making some exclusive even if it’s only a few is almost like cutting content.
I am sorry a bit because i was a bit angry at this marketing decision because like i said in our private message i felt quite disheartened! (really) I wanted to pledge like Serena, game looks cool, i pledge your 2 previous project..but the whole idea about missing some belles (forever) and have to put 600$ if i wanted them..ugh, it didn’t fell right.
Edit: I wasn’t the only Pain in the ass there was also Joshua 😛
No need to apologize, Dawn. Happy to hear your thoughts, and we don’t consider that a negative. Doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll be able to make a change regarding those exclusive Belles, but we’re looking pretty hard at how we might do it. For instance, we might have a Tier which unlocks those Belles for collection in the base game- but with very, very low chances to drop. You’d be able to get them, if you really worked at it, but otherwise you really wouldn’t see them. That way, the higher Tiers might better preserve what makes them unique and cool. Still thinking about the problem, though.
The idea of Kickstarter exclusivity has been a sensitive subject as far back as 2012. Content gating via reward tiers has been almost universally frowned upon from my experience. At least in the adventure gaming community. I see what you’re trying to do but it alienates those who cannot afford to pay for said content. If you do make these belles unlockable in the game then that would lessen the sting I’m sure.
Oh yeah, we’re hearing that from many fans. It does make sense to us, but we had a different perspective, clearly. 🙂
We’re also looking at a Timed Exclusivity- some period in which only the KS Backers have access, and then, afterwards, they are rare drops. Any thoughts on that solution, assuming our current Backers agree?
I don’t know about Serena opinion but for me the Timed Exclusivity is a bad option.
First it makes it sounds like you’re ready to bend the word Exclusivity and in kickstarter like i told you in private and Serena just said it’s something that universally is being frowned upon (i told them the word exclusivity was almost an insult in kickstarter so you know Serena 😛 i went a bit stronger than you ^^).
It send a bad signal. Those who disregard the word exclusivity badly on kickstarter (and for good reason) will not pledge and those who pledge we’ll be worried to see those exclusivity becoming future “steam dlc”.
Second, i think for once this idea really puts on undervalue the higher tier. My opinion would be a centered tier including all exclusive character with no goodies at all (not even wallpaper after all you’re making a huge concession) and to throw some extra goodies to higher tier. Like possible Dakimakura in the future, key holder, mug, future updates (future additional belles free of charge) etc.
Dawn does make some good points here. Exclusivity is a bad word all around when it comes to crowdfunding. It’s almost universally shunned for a reason. The moment you open up that Pandora’s box you’ll get those who feel offended for gating content and those who fear their precious goodies will be taken from them and given to the masses. I’m sure that there’s a good middle ground but it’s hard to judge how people will react to any change to these things.
In my experience, it’s usually a good idea to gauge interest in these sort of things before launching a Kickstarter campaign to see how they’ll react before the proverbial fecal matter hits the spinning blades. As I mentioned, timed exclusives are better than nothing but it’s far from the ideal situation.
We’ve actually reached out to every one of our Backers to see if they’d mind the change. So far, we’re getting positive responses. As long as that’s true, I expect that we’ll make the switch to a timed exclusive in the very near future, see if that allays some of the concerns.
Definitely has been very interesting, because as a rule, we prefer exclusives when we Kickstart!
It is indeed a slippery slope and I think that if you were to allow an in-game method to earn said exclusive belles then I’m sure it will be much better received. Even a timed method like you’re discussing is better than “Buy it now or never” thing.
What is it with weebs and lusting after inanimate objects?