KickTraq

Hello and welcome back to the world of crowdfunded visual novels, and Novelly Funded! Many visual novels, like books, create brand new worlds, characters, and storylines for us to fall in love with. However, sometimes all you want is to spend more time with the same fictional universe via additional books, movies, or even TV shows. Fans of comics are everywhere but for the most part they don’t get to experience their favorite one in a different form of media. That is all changing as visual novel adaptations for popular series are finding huge success on Kickstarter! (Read More)

If you’re a fan of Kickstarter, IndieGogo, or other forms of crowdfunding then you’ve likely come across a handful of games describing themselves as “visual novels” or “dating sims”. Unfortunately, many gamers outside of Japan have never even heard of these genres before! It isn’t our fault – the genre has blossomed in Japan and failed to attract publisher attention until recently. Most big companies are frightened that western gamers aren’t ready for visual novels, although a few have proven otherwise in the past few years. (Read More)

The past six months have proven fruitful for crowdfunded games. In total, 186 different Indiegogo and Kickstarter video game projects earned $23,914,666 from the months of June through November. Those numbers are courtesy of 500,467 backers in the six-month period, who raised $13,173,182 beyond the combined goals of the projects to reach stretch goals that will bring games to additional platforms and grant players more content. (Read More)

Ok, it's the last six or so hours of the Megatokyo Visual Novel Project kickstarter, it ends tonight at 6:36pm EST, and it's been an *amazing* ride. Seriously. I had *no idea* you guys would get behind this project the way you did - it started with a... (Read More)

Funny, I do so much live drawing and stuff drawing live on my justin.tv channel that it didn't occur to me until today that maybe the most fun way to wrap up this Kickstarter would be to scribble my way to the end of it... kind of just have a live... (Read More)

Geeeze, we're closing in on 175k and just passed 4400 supporters!  Wow.  Well, i was doing this anyway, but here, have a new Megatokyo comic: [1365] "not fair" http://megatokyo.com/strip/1365 Now that that is done, I will do some set up here so... (Read More)

You know, if there is one thing that really amazes me about this kickstarter is how it is continued to grow even once we got past all of the major stretch goals and the game was essentially fully funded.  I mean... that's $100k above that $150k... (Read More)

Fred Gallagher, creator of Megatokyo, a pioneering English-language manga webcomic and book series, has raised nearly $260,000 on Kickstarter to develop a Megatokyo visual novel game. (Read More)

Back in 2000, the English webcomic Megatokyo came out on the internets, heavily inspired by Japanese Manga. Megatokyo tells the story of comic fan Piro and delusional gamer Largo, who fly to Japan, get stuck, don’t have the money to get back, and take up jobs to start a new life in a foreign land. (Read More)

I did two podcast interviews last week and they are now up and availible for viewing/listening.  The first was from the Kraftfunding podcast (which was live), but they now have a youtube video up of my segment:  http://youtu.be/xhFNhrPmGpU The next... (Read More)

I talked with Richard Eisenbeis from Kotaku.com the other day and talked at length with him about the Megatokyo Visual Novel Game project.  You can read the article here: http://kotaku.com/popular-webcomic-megatokyo-is-getting-its-own-game-712585783... (Read More)

Megatokyo, the story of two Americans trapped in a hilariously over-the-top portrayal of Japan, is one of the world's most popular webcomics. Now, through the power of Kickstarter, it is making the leap into the land of video games in the form of a visual novel. (Read More)

Sorry thinks have been a bit quiet over the past few days - between the holiday and some other stuff it was fun and exciting week :P Got a number of things in the works for next week, not leaving my desk today if i can help it.  Of course while all... (Read More)

I'm going to be doing a live Podcast interview on The Krautfunding Show around 4:20pm EST today: http://www.application-systems.co.uk/krautfunding/extra1.html I'll be answering viewer questions and stuff, so be sure to tune in!  There is the... (Read More)

(gah! for some reason this update didn't get posted the other day... and here we are closing in on the $200k mark too ^^;;  My apologies!  I think i was tired, i forgot to actually hit 'post') thank you so much for your support! Fred  (Read More)

New stretch goal added!  We'll work with a vocalist to sing as kimiko for two songs for two of the opening sequences for the game!  The details: $190,000: Add vocals to two of the opening songs for the game. When you choose a character to play, you... (Read More)

I finally was able to get through all the msgs with questions, and from that i went ahead and added to the FAQ at the bottom of the page.  I actually tried to answer most reward tier questions in that section of the site, but if there is anything... (Read More)

I pulled together some preliminary designs for the t-shirts, the Flash Drive of Awesome and an example of design intent for the 2014 Megatokyo Calendar for the Megatokyo Visual Novel Game Kickstarter. It's kind of hard to fathom that it's only been a... (Read More)

Holy... Woke up this morning to find that now Part 3 of the Megatokyo Visual Novel has been funded! That's the complete game people! Um... It's only been a week and we've blown through all the stretch goals. Ok, now... i have to figure out what next.... (Read More)

Fred Gallagher’s Megatokyo was a very popular webcomic and a very popular print title, so no surprise that the Megatokyo Visual Novel Game has already made a tad less than $150,000 on Kickstarter. MEGATOKYO was one of DC’s best selling graphic novels when it came out as part of the CMX line, you may recall. Not sure what a “visual novel game” is, but that’s why we venture boldly into new formats. (Read More)

Ok, it's official, I am an idiot.  >_<  Trying to make things clear, and i had a typo.  The line SHOULD have read: "We will know that you are adding items because we will see a you selected the $50 tier but pledged $75."  (Read More)

Remarkably enough, it seems that we're actually starting to edge in closer to hitting the Part 3 funding stretch goal :)  As i mentioned before, one thing we've added is the ability to add items to your reward tier.  I just want to make sure how... (Read More)

Megatokyo blasted into the manga/webcomics scene in 2000 and quickly became established as one of the first successful non-Japanese manga — so successful that it was translated and published in Japan. The story of two clueless American otaku who go to Tokyo on a whim and have a series of increasingly absurd encounters with the locals, the webcomic picked up a following during the manga boom and apparently never lost it: Creator Fred Gallagher’s Kickstarter to make a visual novel version of Megatokyo has raised more than $130,000 (at this writing, it is at an evil 666 percent of the original $20,000 goal) in less than a week. (Read More)

Yes, the answer to the question as to what the 125k goal would unlock is BOO!  Boo's life is... complicated.  Imagine having a temp job as a conscience for someone like Largo.  At least his job isn't boring. :P  I think playing as Boo will be... (Read More)

As i work on this game over the next six+ months the one thing you will be able to do is check in and actually watch me work on it - probably as often as you like.   I tend to work a lot online - both digitally and on my drawing board - by... (Read More)

Ok, i added a 125K stretch goal. I won't tell you what it's for, but it's something the game is missing :)  Just a little something extra i wanted to add on our way to maybe getting the 3rd part of the game funded.  Can you guess what it is?... (Read More)

If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you will see that i added a new section called Rewards where i went through and wrote out all the reward tiers clearly and clarified some things (like does this tier include a copy of Part 2 when it comes... (Read More)

I'm sure you guys are getting sick of the updates, but i'm assuming that that is what this update thing is for, to make note of updates and changes and stuff,  so... sorry about the update spam.  Don't blame me, it you people hitting this stretch... (Read More)

Ok, this morning Ed got funded (gotta get that Explosions and Gunfire sound FX pack)  I cannot believe we're actually approaching the 100,000 goal, and it's only day 4.  The scope of this thing has grown to its max that i considered and... its only... (Read More)

Oh man... Dom?  Really?  you REALLY want to get inside his head?  Well... now you'll be able to.  Oh man.  ^^;;; I keep waiting for things to slow down, but i'm not sure when that's gonna happen, it's been a crazy couple of days.  I'm busy... (Read More)

Wow, we cleared Mugi in almost no time.  ^^;;  She's gonna be smug about that, let me tell you.  ^^;; That said, i do thing we've had a bit more traffic recently - in fact, the main Megatokyo.com site has been a bit slow over the past few hours. ... (Read More)

Holy transl33tor PWN buttons... i can't believe that we are ALREADY getting close to funding the 2nd part of the game!  I'm... out of stretch goals. ^^;; I had to add more, So... um, i added more. Now, please note that just simply adding lots of... (Read More)

Updated reward tiers - since there are now so many more characters unlocked i can offer more artwork at the $200, $400 and $500 levels. This thing moved so quickly that a lot of the initial levels all sold out >_<  Also, for each unlocked... (Read More)

Ok, it's not quite 24 hrs later and Yuki's route has been unlocked.  That's was all the primary characters who i really wanted to be in the game from the outset, and they are in.  Thanks folks, that's awesome.  Hell of a lot of work, but it will... (Read More)

Aannd... ok, Ping is now there.  One more character, Yuki, and that's the awesome base for an awesome game.  The rest will be fun and gravy (just making it more awesome). Ok, i have to be AFK for a while this afternoon, there are a lot of messages... (Read More)

Well, i figured it'd keep going a bit while i was sleeping but... ok, so you guys have now made Erika AND Miho playable characters!  That's actually really exciting for a lot of reasons.  First of all, for Erika, her place in the Megatokyo universe... (Read More)

Five and a half hours later... and the first stretch goal has been reached.  Kimiko will now be a character you can actually play in the game - you will now be able to spend an entire game running around in Kimiko's headspace.  think about how... (Read More)

Artist Fred Gallagher began a Kickstarter fundraising campaign for a visual novel of his Megatokyo comic on Tuesday. The campaign will fund the first of a planned three-part visual novel series covering the original webcomic's first six volumes with new content added. The game will be playable from the perspective of Piro and Largo with full color artwork. (Read More)

And as jack read a book to me as i put him to bed ('Batter up Wombat") we hit our $20,000 goal for the core game.  I'm ... well, dayamn,  people!  I haven't even written a rant about this thing for the MT site, it's only been FOUR HOURS!! but...... (Read More)

Ok, uh... i put the Kickstarter live around 6:30pm or so and then Seraphim and I took Jack to soccer practice, and got back home around 8:20 or so... and the project was already *HALF FUNDED*.  As i sort of boggled over this, went down to the... (Read More)