Frontwing asks your thoughts on an issue regarding Corona Blossom

[Darklord Rooke]

5 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

The problem with Corona Blossom isn't that it's weeaboo — it's that it doesn't have much plot, and what little it has is incomplete. Now, as far as the problem with Corona Blossom's sales, who can say for sure, but I imagine people could tell that the plot is thin from the promo materials, and the people who actually heard about it care about that (i.e., the NekoPara crowd didn't get hold of it).

Nailed it. I took a look at the Steam page and my immediate thought was 'moe fluff trash.' 

[Darklord Rooke]

TBH if I wanted an episodic VN for 10 bucks, my first inclination would be to skip over Corona Blossoms AND Supipara and get this instead:

 

 

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The main characteristic of a visual novel game is achieving immersion by giving the player the ability to influence the story through choices. Every decision, every action the player-reader takes can drastically change the course of the story. The smallest detail can turn out to have an important role to play. In One Day In London you will solve puzzles, perform magical rituals, and carry out special tasks. A sophisticated achievement system will hint at alternative storylines, and a user-friendly save system allows you to move freely within this wonderful story to explore all possible branches.  

The screenshots by themselves generate a wonderfully visceral atmosphere, I can feel it coming off the screen, and the description emphasises their primary hook - choice and consequence. 

[RikiSanic]

I think one problem Frontwing is going to run into is that the western market doesn't need to see every VN localized. The western fanbase generally reacts well to VNs that sold well/are well-regarded/have a good reputation in Japan. In that AMA Frontwing said that they have hopes to localize every VN of theirs. Honestly, that's a waste of time. They should be focusing on localizing their works that are actually good (or thought of as good by Japanese buyers). Western fans don't react to brands like Japanese fans do, and they won't buy every VN out of loyalty—especially if it has a negative reputation. Bringing over any and every VN will just saturate the market further, probably to the point where a company would even be competing with itself by releasing so many VNs. The western market isn't nearly big enough to support the number of releases that Japan does.

Corona Blossom doesn't look like a VN that needed to come over to the west before Japan. I think they should be content with their Indiegogo campaign doing as well as it did (they plan on doing more for the rest of the series), and hope that their sales will even out once all the volumes are released.

Also, having to buy a patch on a third party site like dlsite is a big deterrent. I'm glad I got a code from being a backer because I don't think I'd be willing to give out my payment information to a site I never use.

[yorikbad]

Has anyone noticed that Corona Blossom is a bad game? Short, generic and boring. People expect the level of the best Frontwing works but get this joke. First, it's Grisaia no Meikyuu without 18+ patch, then horrible rip-off Purino Party and now episodic kinetic novel. And they honestly suprised? Well, maybe someone could tell them that Steam is not a VN store and its crowd's not their real fandom.

[sanahtlig]

26 minutes ago, yorikbad said:

Has anyone noticed that Corona Blossom is a bad game? Short, generic and boring. People expect the level of the best Frontwing works but get this joke. First, it's Grisaia no Meikyuu without 18+ patch, then horrible rip-off Purino Party and now episodic kinetic novel. And they honestly suprised? Well, maybe someone could tell them that Steam is not a VN store and its crowd's not their real fandom.

It's worth mentioning that Winged Cloud has made a name for itself churning out mediocre low-priced VNs for the Steam audience.

[ChaosRaven]

2 hours ago, Rooke said:

The screenshots by themselves generate a wonderfully visceral atmosphere, I can feel it coming off the screen, and the description emphasises their primary hook - choice and consequence. 

Actually, that one looked so totally right up my alley that I bought it lol. Actually, I had no idea that it was even released. And judging by the low review count it unfortuntely didn't get a lot of attention so far.

[Mkilbride]

VNs are expensive to buy. I mean, you can go buy The Witcher 3: GoTY Edition for 40 bucks. Easily 150 hours of content there. Or you can pay 45$ for Clannad, and get about 50-60 hours...of reading. People in the West are accustomed to paying 8-12$ for a book. With pictures thrown in, maybe double. Voices don't matter to them, despite being expensive, I know.

 

As others have said, way to many crappy VNS on Steam. for 9-20$. I understand that due to low sales, VNs must be priced high, but it's going to take a long time for that to catch on in the West, let alone Steam.

[hahiru]

I don't really see how this is a problem of saturation. I mean the western vn market is new and fresh. 

[novurdim]

It'd be hilarious if CB got a surge of sales now just because quite a few people suddenly wanted to understand why it's not performing well and bought the game for that purpose. 

[trickzzter]

 

[sanahtlig]

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-We also didn't want the post to sound like begging for sales or guilt-tripping users; we greatly appreciate all our customers, and the point of our information-gathering is to figure out how to bring in new ones the right way!

Don't think I saw any comments to that effect.

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we certainly didn't expect 100+ post threads on Reddit and 4chan!

Oh, this was the point responding to 4chan's feedback.  Got it.

[Darklord Rooke]

5 hours ago, sanahtlig said:

Oh, this was the point responding to 4chan's feedback.  Got it.

Yep, real quality feedback on that board. Taking 4chan seriously is truly an excellent choice, they're not wasting their efforts there at all ...

[Darklord Rooke]

To make things even more hilarious, it looks like Frontwing is responding to a /v/ thread. Why they even bother is beyond me, gigantic waste of time.

http://boards.4chan.org/v/thread/349358869 

[Narcosis]

Jesus Christ, Frontwing.

[Mr Poltroon]

Their PR people are bloody well trying. I commend them for that.

...My condolences as well, for what they get themselves into.

[Narcosis]

1 minute ago, Tiagofvarela said:

Their PR people are bloody well trying. I commend them to that.

...My condolences as well, for what they get themselves into.

More like making themselves into a laughingstock. Are they even aware how modern interwebs work?

[john 'mr. customer' smith]

17 minutes ago, Narcosis said:

More like making themselves into a laughingstock. Are they even aware how modern interwebs work?

Clearly not, when they pay attention to 4chan

[Darklord Rooke]

Well, instead of /v/ they could have gone to /VNTS/ on /jp/ and waded through the shitty arguments about 'Demon King being the one true translation for Maou for reasons nobody can explain' to find the few nuggets on there. That was an extremely enlightening debate ...

[Darklord Rooke]

16 minutes ago, Zenophilious said:

There are literally thousands of other visual novels out there that do the exact same thing and plenty of them are free.

Yes, ‘free’ …

I feel that word deserves more inverted commas to get the tone across. Let me give it another go:

Yes, ‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘free’’’’’’’’’’’

[Narcosis]

7 minutes ago, Rooke said:

Yes, ‘free’ …

27 minutes ago, Zenophilious said:

Here's a good example of what they're getting in terms of "feedback":

That's the good ol' 4chan, we all know; bringing wandering souls back to reality, since 2003.

[sanahtlig]

50 minutes ago, Rooke said:

Well, instead of /v/ they could have gone to /VNTS/ on /jp/ and waded through the shitty arguments about 'Demon King being the one true translation for Maou for reasons nobody can explain' to find the few nuggets on there. That was an extremely enlightening debate ...

You display a suspicious familiarity with and understanding of the various 4chan subcultures that discuss visual novels.

I've reading the /v/ thread you linked.  Still waiting to find any actual constructing criticism after going through about 1/4 of it.

[Formlose Gestalt]

8 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

I've reading the /v/ thread you linked.  Still waiting to find any actual constructing criticism after going through about 1/4 of it.

You are pretty persistent; I stopped after the first handful of replies...

But I like that Frontwing takes such an open approach on this matter (Asking for feedback).

[Darklord Rooke]

19 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

I've reading the /v/ thread you linked.  Still waiting to find any actual constructing criticism after going through about 1/4 of it.

1 minute ago, Zenophilious said:

There really isn't any.  

Well, if you guys are digging through /v/ for quality feedback chances are you’re not using a big enough shovel.

Here try using this instead  

 

[Tyr]

1 hour ago, Zenophilious said:

Here's a good example of what they're getting in terms of "feedback":

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These characters look like carbon copies of the most generic anime girl templates ever. Who the fuck are the expecting to pay for this? There are literally thousands of other visual novels out there that do the exact same thing and plenty of them are free. I could literally read free anime visual novels nonstop for the rest of my life and probably never run out.

I'm saying this as a person who fucking loves anime, romance and fantasy shit, this looks like uninspired garbage and they should be ashamed for complaining that nobody wanted to buy this. Anime as a genre/style is completely oversaturated because 90% of it is just people copying what everyone else is doing.

I'm glad this shit game is failing, I hope their company goes under and we never have to see anything made by these idiots again.

 

That pretty much nails it though

[Gumak]

21 minutes ago, Tyrosyn said:

That pretty much nails it though

This. I haven't read It but it seems very generic. Cute girls, animal ears, fluff and stuff. Robots are the only thing that looks intriguing but I guess they don't play any significant role. Basically qt girlz doing qt things with s-f backdrop.

You know what doesn't sound generic? A story of WW2 soldier lost in fantasy world and trying to go back home. There are no VNs like that and it would definitely stand out and get attention. If only Frontwing had a title like that...