Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Retsupurae's Kickstarter Nonstarters: what you didn't hear

If you don't follow Retsupurae (at which point you might as well skip this entry entirely, so I'm not sure why I'm saying this), they've recently launched a new series poking fun at Kickstarter initiatives that ended up being both ill-fated and absolutely miserable. As of this writing they've uploaded four episodes: a groundbreaking, innovative, never-before-seen zombie shooter that dares push the boundaries of what we're familiar with by running at 4 FPS; an embarrassing Touhou wannabe that's outright inferior to things you can play on Newgrounds for free; an MMO version of Morrowind, if Morrowind was made by a single hormonal teenager with no grasp of computing; and a groundbreaking, innovative, never-before-seen (wait a second...) RPG made with RPG Maker.

However, the story of these wretched piles of vomit goes far beyond what was said in the videos, and what they missed may have been even worse than anything they showcased, so if your faith in humanity wasn't low enough before this, there should be nothing left of it at the end.

Right, so you know that clichéd RPG Maker... thing? This was the SECOND Kickstarter made for this game. As mentioned in the video, the goal was $2000. Now you might be thinking, "two grand for an RPG Maker game? Just how wasteful is this guy?" Well, you want to know what the goal for his first Kickstarter was?

$35000.

No, don't adjust your monitor, I didn't put an extra zero in there either. This guy had the balls to ask for THIRTY FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS. For an RPG MAKER GAME many people could do on their own time for nary a single nickel. Yeah, I know, it's clearly one of those scam attempts that occur sometimes on Kickstarter. Still, absolutely disgusting that he'd think anyone would fall for it. Because that's the thing: despite the internet being infested with total morons, even THEY noticed that this was not worth donating for.

As for the zombie shooter that also claims to incorporate RTS elements (presumably in the 56 FPS we couldn't see there), it also was put up on Kickstarter twice. That's right, they were THAT convinced that they were making the next big thing. The second attempt was even LESS successful than the first one, with only a measly $111 pledged. So with two attempts combined yielding only $300, which they didn't even get anyway because of the way Kickstarter works, they took to Steam Greenlight, which has an even worse reputation than Kickstarter for letting that kind of crap through, and... well, they got greenlit, what else do you think happened? So with that done, they recently started yet ANOTHER Kickstarter campaign, and after three days out of 60, it's going... well... see for yourselves. Really, no further comment required. Okay, fine, just this one. It's so funny how they have stretch goals that go all the way to $250k, too.

Now excuse me while I go bet all my belongings in Las Vegas. It's more likely I'll get something worthwhile back than by squandering it on Kickstarter.

13 comments:

  1. Did someone say Touhou~? Oh...
    Anyway...Why would I pay money for something that tries to be Touhou when I can actually PLAY Touhou for the very reasonable price of FREE?! Okay, I'd buy a Touhou game every year if I actually lived in Japan, but THAT'S NOT THE POINT (and ZUN doesn't particularly care that that happens. He feels that he makes enough off of it in Japan...That and he does it because he loves it)! And who needs to go to Newgrounds? Everyone knows Touhou has ten thousand fan games, many of them well-made, and most of them free...Even if less of those have English translations...

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    1. Comparing this tripe to Touhou would be way too much of a compliment. The entire point is that Sturgeon's Law hits Newgrounds HARD, and this is so bad most of the bullet hells you could play on there are still leaps and bounds ahead of this.

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    2. Especially because, again, you can very easily get all the Touhou games for free, and the Cave shooters are not expensive, from what I hear...The Newgrounds stuff is there if you're really that desperate for something different. A more accurate comparison is that I've played much better games that students design with that Scratch program than that "game" appears to be. STUDENTS!...

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  2. Now this is a series I could get behind. When they rip crappy LPers apart I can't help but start to feel terrible after a while, because while their videos are indeed pure crap, those people could very well just have wanted to try it out... and getting shunned on the internet must be a complete self-confidence destroyer.
    However, those guys are actually asking MONEY for complete garbage, thus completely deserve the insults.

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    1. What about people who deserve it like MageKnight404, Nostalgia Critic's LP and PewDiePie?

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    2. Well, MK404 was kinda creepy and even just watching them rip him to shreds was enough to give me shivers... but I still believe that such a public humiliation is going a little bit too far even in his case. Just a little bit though.
      Moving on, I had no idea the Nostalgia Critic ever made LPs, and to be fair, they didn't make the PewDiePie video, their fans did. But PDP's reaction to it started such a shitstorm in the comments that I try to stay away from it anyway. Seriously, worst way to react to a such a video EVER. Even just being straight off angry would have been better at this point. Jeebus Price.

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    3. Woops, the words I was looking for were "make me cringe", not "give me shivers". Sorry, brain was having a day off with my English apparently.

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    4. Actually, slowbeef and Diabeetus appeared in the video, and with MageKnight404, anyone who assumes a character who is at 14 at oldest is 16 deserves to be humiliation, also, this is the internet, not public.

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    5. Still, while I don't condone what he did, I don't condone public/internet humiliations either. After all, you don't know how many IRL friends of his knew about his online activities. That's my opinion. You can believe I'm too soft all you want, but as long as he doesn't try to molest a real underaged girl, I'm not going to be okay with these practices.

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    6. I think I'm going to have to pull off a ProtonJon here: "He didn't physically hurt anyone but it doesn't excuse what he did."

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    7. ProtonJon also said it would be pointless to do anything about it. He pulled himself under by himself. He didn't need others to pull the extra mile for him. He even reprimended people who tried to track down the guy who tricked him and send him hate mail. See what I mean ? Retsupurae is PROMOTING pointless hatred on the internet. That's what I dislike about the channel. Heck, the more you try to defend them, you strenghten my own beliefs and I'd be starting to feel guilty for having laughed at the Kickstarters Nonstarters yesterday night if it wasn't for the fact that accepting those abominations's existence would encourage people to make the gaming industry crappier than it already is.

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    8. Promoting pointless hatred? Retsupurae are against people trolling users such as BillyMC and ElectricalBeast. Still, I admire you for bringing up stuff I would never dare to.

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    9. Yeah, this is the main reason why they almost stopped doing Retsupuraes entirely.

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