I've been mulling this over for a while, and I'd like to see some discussion around it from you smart people~
A lot of visual novels are run with a Kickstarter or other crowdsourcing campaign nowadays and it makes sense in a lot of ways. My main question is if fellow devs think Kickstarter is a good idea, not necessarily just for the early money to pay staff, but also to get some more eyes and ears on your work.
The VN market is small but crowded, it's really hard to get your VN seen and played in my experience, unless you work on many VNs for a long time or hit on a good viral concept and just get really lucky.
Having a Kickstarter might give you a news item to pass on to game media & journalists, and might also get you some more traffic because of the limited-time rush, and people wanting backer rewards.
On the other hand, I haven't run my own KS before, and it also seems likely that if nobody sees it, nobody will back it, and just the site itself might not give you any extra eyes at all.
TL;DR: Is running a KS good for growing your VN's audience (and/or total players), or do you need an audience first to run a successful KS?
Is it possible to build an audience just with a good, well-run Kickstarter?
(PS, I have a poll on twitter if you can't be bothered typing out a reply
