I don’t know how to explain it but opening the a3! en app now feels like someone left the door to mankai theatre unlocked so you walk in out of curiosity. The ticket sales window is shuttered shut. There’s a layer of dust over everything. The walls are patterned with faded rectangles where posters were once hung. The only light comes in the form of graying twilight through the cracks in the boarded-up windows. Whatever you came for, it’s not here, and probably hasn’t been for a long time. You shrug and walk out, closing the door behind you. Your name is Izumi Tachibana.
Wanted to share the parts about Sakuya travelling to his hometown, so major spoilers for chapters 11 to 41 (though I will mostly skip the other members’ individual chapters, which is why this spans so many chapters lol). Will also be including some CGs / screenshots. THE HARUGUMI FEELS!!!
Update: If you’ve read this before this update, I added another paragraph and screenshot at the bottom.
Hey, I just wanna say–because I saw a source I generally trust say this on twitter and it rubbed me the wrong way–that if you think that the English server closing is because you should have spent money or spent MORE money on the game, stop. That’s the devil talking.
The game was F2P-bordering-Freemium. The onus is on the company to find and hook players who are willing to spend money on it already. A3!’s English team failed to do that (plus we’re still in a deadly global pandemic where many people have lost their sources of income). There were already ways for F2P players to support the game financially via watching ads.
The A3! English team did a poor job advertising the game, didn’t interact with its fanbase often enough to cultivate a stronger sense of brand/game loyalty (see how the Ikemen Series accounts interact with fans on twitter. You’ll see a difference), and burnt out a fair portion of its player base quickly with back-to-back events and little time to recoup in between.
Do not blame yourself. These things are always failures on the corporation’s end. It’s never the consumer’s fault.
I love this game too, and know that a lot of love was put into it’s translation, but the marketing and advertising teams dropped the ball on this one. Please don’t blame yourself for a company’s failings.
