I’ve had long conversations with friends in the industry about developers leaving big companies (Inafune, IGA, Kojima) to form their own studios. While everyone was super excited about the idea, I took a more reserved approach. You see, these people are all incredibly talented “developers” and a few may even be considered geniuses, but at the end of the day they aren’t business men.
Sometimes it takes working under certain conditions, having certain restrictions and deadlines to really cultivate something special. Mighty No. 9 was supposed to the the first big creator controlled game that showed developers don’t need big publishers. Then everything fell apart.
The Mighty No. 9 team displayed very little understanding of the community, timetables, and general lack of marketing understanding (like an anime fan on prom night, anyone?). Still, Mighty No. 9 is here and coming down with some middling reviews from the press and users. It is not at all the Mega Man style game fans wanted, especially more so as the game was pushed back over a year. I can only imagine the internal struggles that were going on during that time as Mighty No. 9 looks and feels more like a PlayStation 1 era game than anything else.
After raising $4 million dollars through Kickstarter, a relatively small amount for a full game, the team started screwing the pooch. Before even a demo of any sort was ready the team announced another Kickstarter for a Mega Man Legends clone. It seemed like the dreams of this new studio outpaced what they could actually do. While the Kickstarter was about to fail before being picked up by a Chinese company, things kept falling apart.
While the entire story behind Mighty No. 9 deserves its own Dateline style expose, what really broke the camels back is what creator Keiji Inafune had to say about the launch of the game during a recent livestream. He stated that:
“The reality is they put everything into making this game. They didn’t try to microtransaction it out, they didn’t try to DLC it out for extra money. They put it all in. So, for now, this is what you see and what you get, for the Mighty No. 9 world. But, again, we can hope that if things go well, there’ll be sequels. Because I’ll tell you what, I’m not getting my 2D side-scrolling fill. And at the end of the day, even if it’s not perfect, it’s better than nothing. At least, that’s my opinion.”
Now I understand what Inafune was trying to say, but it still feels like a direct stab to all those that backed the project. Saying “…it’s better than nothing” is like a slap to the face for those that helped fund your game. Now it should be clear that this is a translation from Japanese so the context may be different. Still, I would not be a happy camper is I had back this project.
Oh, and the Xbox 360 version of the game has been delayed…
Congrats on the launch, @MightyNo9!
It’s better than nothing. pic.twitter.com/WsXHWtAlaX
— Sonic the Hedgehog (@sonic_hedgehog) June 21, 2016
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