Mega Man Creator Announces Mighty No. 9

Reading Laura Kate Dale's review on the Jimquisition, and getting a good chuckle out of it.

Much like an anime fan on prom night, I would rather be at home playing Mega Man than here.

But to be completely honest, it doesn't look that bad at all, and I get the feeling that people are lashing out at the game because of how Inafune started a Kickstarter for Red Ash before MN9 was even out, that spoiling a lot of the goodwill people had for the project. People are angry with it for all sorts of reasons, and I find it curious how for example it's a problem that the 2.5D artstyle differs from the original 2D concept art, but Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night gets a pass in that regard, yet both games were fairly open in their Kickstarter campaigns that the concept art wasn't going to be representative of the finished product and that 2.5D was what they were going to be doing. The main difference I can tell is that Igarashi didn't try to start another Kickstarter.

So it's interesting to me to see this unfold, and I wonder how much of the criticism is justified, and how much of it is spite. Because judging by the sheer overreaction to that anime fan line, and that's coming from someone who is more than a bit of an anime fan, a lot of people really want to see this game fail.

wes wrote: »

Got the PC version, and the game is ok. As a backer I am not too disappointed, as they did actually get the game out there, which is far better than other kick starters.

What, like Darkest Dungeon, Undertale, FTL, Satellite Reign, Divinity: Original Sin, Grim Dawn, Hyper Light Drifter, Hard West, Armello, Stasis, Wasteland 2, Escapists, Pillars of Eternity, Sunless Sea, The Red Solstice, The Fall, Shadowrun Returns, Banner Saga, Tabletop Simulator, Hand of Fate, Shovel Knight, Elite: Dangerous, Convoy, Jotun, War for the Overworld, and absolutely loads more? There's this perception that funded kickstarter projects overwhelmingly fail, but it's actually the exception, most are successful and deliver on their goals.

Here's an interesting report from last year; 12% of Video Game Kickstarter Campaigns Fail to Deliver. That's lower than even I expected, considering some high profile disasters. This is especially interesting because of how "fail to deliver" is defined, as it doesn't just mean a game that is dead, but includes a disappointment with the end product as a failure in this definition.

Defining a ‘failure to deliver’ as backers either never expecting to get what they paid for or receiving a reward they felt was different to that which they were promised,

Yet why is it that so many people seem to think that most kickstarter projects fail? I think it's that unless there's some big news (Bloodstained and it's unbelievable five and a half million funding) or big drama (looking at you Red Ash), then people either don't know or have forgotten that a game was crowdfunded. I'm sure some people reading this comment will be a little surprised at some of the games I've mentioned above, wondering, was Undertale a kickstarter game? Yes, it was. A lot of people don't seem to know that Chivalry was an early kickstarter success. The thing is, these titles get known for being good games, not for being crowdfunded. Being a failure however, gets you known for being a kickstarter game. A shame, isn't it?

But really, Mighty No. 9 isn't notable for being released, being better than nothing isn't an achievement for a kickstarter game, it places it firmly in that 12% if people are disappointed with it.