The problem though is doing just that repeatedly while not showing anything for it. Inafune in particular used the bitterness towards Capcom over the way they handled the shutdown of the MM franchise with M#9, but time has passed and when Red Ash was announced that bitterness had subsided quite a bit and M#9 was supposedly just around the corner. It didn’t help that between the, at the time, current impressions from the M#9 backers getting their hands on demos/the beta being so tepid, the issues surrounding M#9’s KS, and what RA’s KS was trying to sell (i.e. a demo), there just wasn’t anything for RA to gain traction on. Now if RA had been announced earlier, like before M#9’s development issues started setting in, then it probably would’ve been able to catch some of that wave of excitement of Inafune making a MM style game without Capcom’s constraint. Likewise, if Comcept had waited until the general market was actually playing M#9, then there would at least be an example of Comcept following through on at least some of their promises and gamers could actually look at the final product and judge for themselves on how well Comcept handled their previous KS, which in turn would’ve at least helped fill in some of the gaps on that really lackluster KS campaign.
It all really comes down to some really bad timing on RA’s part and the way that the KS was constructed to begin with. And that then brings us back to the original question of ‘just what the hell was Comcept thinking in sending out such a bare naked nostalgia cash grab KS?’.
The problem is doing it at all, but we’re already on that page. The very fact that you can use your clout as a designer to easily take peoples’ money, without showing that you’ve got the business side of things handled, or that you are close enough that you can make good on your intended release date, is the big issue that links all three of these together. There’s nothing really different about Inafune’s case.
It alarms me that no one thought this when Mighty No. 9 was announced. Mega Man has been dead for a long time - not something I really like to admit as I love the Mega Man games, but they’ve generally done poorly. MM9 and MM10 are huge exceptions, although MM10 as I understand didn’t do as well. Mega Man ZX and Mega Man Xover did poorly. There hasn’t been a Mega Man X game in over a decade. The general gaming populace does not want more Mega Man, and this has been true for a long time. The franchise of Mega Man survives by Frankensteining it back with the power of nostalgia every now and then, and Mighty No. 9 is no exception. A little pattern recognition goes a long way.
I’m kind of glad I’ve held off on funding promising titles on kickstarter at this point. Have there been any good games that started out as kickstarters that have been released?
That said, if you’re looking for “Big name developer from yesteryear coming back with a brand new game from that series you loved back in the 90s/early 00s!”, you’re going to find a rather disappointingly low batting average.
I backed Planetary Annihilation and have enjoyed it quite a lot. Between regular and Titans I have about 40 hours sunk in and every now and then I get the itch to just start a map, build thrusters on an asteroid and ram a robot army with a space rock just
because
I
can.
Or build a deathstar laser and blow up planets. That’s cool too.
Or build a giant drill that opens a hole to the core on the enemy’s planet and then drops a massive bomb into it, blowing the planet from the inside.
TL;DR: I like blowing up planets.
I also backed Shovel Knight and enjoyed that plenty too.
P.s. did you know that the plural of annihilaser is annihilases? I did not until I blew up enough planets to get it in my stats.