Its official, the Robotech Academy Kickstarter project has been canceled! With just a few days to go, the project unfortunately did not receive the necessary and desperate push from San Diego Comic-Con 2014 some were expecting. Thankfully HG knew when to call it quits. Ambitious from the beginning? Yes. The Kickstarter project was asking for half-a-million dollars. That's quite a bit of money. Was the KS just used as a tool to gauge the fans due to the lack of content? Or was it really just a project in its infancy without much content? Let's discuss some points.
Dear Supporters,
As of today, the Robotech Academy Kickstarter campaign will be suspended immediately.
First of all, we'd like to thank our supporters. We at Harmony Gold are extremely grateful for everything you have done during this campaign — not just your financial contributions, which were incredibly generous, but the time and effort you took to post on social media and let everyone know about the project. We are moved by your passion and your drive to make Robotech Academy a success. Although we did not reach our goal, the amount of money pledged by you, our supporters, added up to over $190,000, which is still a substantial sum for any project. Thanks to your efforts, more people have not only discovered Robotech Academy, but new fans are also taking a look at Robotech for the first time ever.
What's next? Throughout San Diego Comic-Con, many of you asked us what our “plan B” would be if the Kickstarter campaign did not reach its goal. We will continue to explore our options regarding Robotech Academy, so stay tuned in the coming months. In the meantime however, we plan on collecting our pre-production designs together and making them available on www.robotechacademy.com for everyone to browse. We've also been asked if some of the merchandise offered in this Kickstarter campaign could still be made available. We are currently working to bring these and other new Robotech products to market for Robotech's 30th Anniversary in 2015 and beyond. In order to stay informed when updates come, you can follow us on our social media sites:
You can like us on Facebook here:
www.facebook/robotech
Follow us on Twitter here:
www.twitter.com/robotechnews
And the official Robotech website:
www.robotech.com
We would also like to take a moment to thank the team at FortySeven Communications, who tirelessly worked to connect Robotech Academy to our backers.
Lastly, we want once more to thank you, our supporters. We really enjoyed hearing your feedback and ideas, and enjoyed showing you a glimpse of Carl Macek’s vision from Robotech Academy. We look forward to bringing you more Robotech in the months and years ahead.
— The Robotech Team
Many of us were expecting this from the beginning. We'll repeat it again, $500K for a pilot episode is A LOT OF MONEY. Especially when it comes to a Kickstarter project with nothing more than a few sketches and quickly slapped on voice actor videos talking about it. Maybe the goal should have been low to begin with? We can Monday-Morning-Quarterback all we want, but one thing is for sure. The project is canceled.
Although we did not reach our goal, the amount of money pledged by you, our supporters, added up to over $190,000, which is still a substantial sum for any project. Thanks to your efforts, more people have not only discovered Robotech Academy, but new fans are also taking a look at Robotech for the first time ever.
A neat way to gauge fans and gather some data? Kickstarter doesn't cost anything and as they say "any advertising is good advertising." Alright alright, that's about as tin foil as we're going to get here. The easiest thing to do is to be negative about the entire situation. Its bad enough that we have yet another failed Robotech project. So no need to add salt to the wound. However if you are a glutton for punishment, check out the Robotech Take Over Kickstarter which has already pledged $13K.
What's next? Throughout San Diego Comic-Con, many of you asked us what our “plan B” would be if the Kickstarter campaign did not reach its goal. We will continue to explore our options regarding Robotech Academy, so stay tuned in the coming months. In the meantime however, we plan on collecting our pre-production designs together and making them available on www.robotechacademy.com for everyone to browse. We've also been asked if some of the merchandise offered in this Kickstarter campaign could still be made available. We are currently working to bring these and other new Robotech products to market for Robotech's 30th Anniversary in 2015 and beyond. In order to stay informed when updates come. . .
At least now we a cute Robotech Academy website -- that should have existed from the start -- that collects all of the pre-production material and archives it together. Merchandise? From a project that doesn't exist yet? Sure why not!
Here we are again back to square one. Perhaps now that they got the KS out of the way Shadow Rising development can resume. Yes Robotech fans (monks), we will do what we do best. Wait.