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Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Dumping Mighty No. 9 for the Red Ashes

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Keiji Inafune isn't so great after all.

For years, Mega Man fans believed (and still do) that Capcom hates Mega Man and his "creator" Keiji Inafune, creating this image of Inafune as an untouchable amazing man. And... laughably, that's all crumbling. 

Keiji Inafune Comcept fans senpai Mighty No. 9 Kickstarter
Keiji Inafune on top of a tower, untouchable from his adoring fans.

Keiji Inafune is supposed to be dedicated with his totally-not-Mega-Man-expy Mighty No. 9 game, a jump-and-shoot platformer that is absolutely nothing like Mega Man and stands on its two hypothetical feet without needing any kind of nepotistic star power or impressions that it's a spiritual revival of another, totally unrelated game franchise to do well.

Well, with that introduction out of the way, the game has been delayed from coming out next month (September 2015) to the nebulous "Q1 2016". This is after rumours came about that the game would be delayed but one of the Comcept guys said that rumour had no substance to it. The only people with no substance in this matter appear to be Comcept's employees.

The official reason the game is being delayed is due to a variety of bugs that would break the experience if not tended to. These bugs are supposed to all be in the extended-scope  multiplayer section, and the single-player — that is supposed to be the core of the game that people actually invested in the Kickstarter for — is completed and bug-free.

Of course, before the game was completed, Comcept announced two new games, one on Kickstarter and one not: ReCore, which amazed us at Microsoft's E3 2015; and Red Ash: The Indelible Legend, which is on Kickstarter.  Or was. It failed to fund.

Red Ash The Indelible Legend Kickstarter funding unsuccessful failure Comcept
Whatever that little blue thing is is reacting to the unsuccessful funding.

Let me repeat: Before Comcept could get the successful release of Mighty No. 9 under its belt, it launched a new Kickstarter for what people are calling the spiritual replacement to Mega Man Legends 3. So all Comcept really has on their résumé is an unfinished game that is now delayed to an indefinite date for bugs. And with Red Ash, their Kickstarter really isn't making the game possible like the Kickstarter for Mighty No. 9 was supposed to do. It's only additional content, or something, which pissed off a lot of Kickstarter backers and had them actually reverse their funding.

Red Ash is really being funded by a Chinese company called Fuze Entertainment. Check out their website here?

Apparently Fuze is as deadline-challenged as Comcept is. They fit one another. Apparently they're also a console manufacturer with something called the Fuze Console. And apparently it's already out?

Fuze Console Entertainment Co. China videogame video game June release date
Anyone ever heard of it? It's "a real video game console for Chinese gamers."
If it's already out, you'd think their site would have details on it.

Anyway, this is another layer of strangeness and weirdness into the Comcept story. And it doesn't even end there. Comcept hired (and apparently let go of) a community manager  that was part of the feminist social justice warrior crowd who wanted to fundamentally transform the nature of Mighty No. 9. I don't know first-hand, but this caused some rifts within the community that strained the relations between Comcept and the adoring fans who just wanted to throw money at Inafune.

After all of the money has been thrown to Inafune, where are we left off? A start-up company with no games to its name riding off the name recognition of its employees when they were in a bigger established company. Then they left that company after trashing it for stifling their creative freedoms or whatever. And now that they get all the freedom they want, they squander it and betray the expectations of fans.

And don't try to claim that Comcept can afford to work on multiple games at a time. The Kickstarter page for Mighty No. 9 claims that Keiji Inafune is "the project lead" that has "the final call on all decisions". And you know what that means? When your game isn't on schedule and is on trouble, you don't abandon it by announcing two new projects. You stick with it until it's done, because that project needs you. That's why Masahiro Sakurai didn't start work on Super Smash Bros. 4 until after Kid Icarus: Uprising was completed.

This all leads me to conclude that Keiji Inafune really has no idea what he's doing, and he's all bluster. He can talk a great game about the problems of the videogame industry, but he's really just contributing to them. Sounds like a certain someone else KoopaTV just covered from the political world.


Ludwig never felt anything for Keiji Inafune and is impressed by Inafune's ability to deceive the entire gaming world that he is the man responsible for bringing a gaming icon into being. Ludwig wishes he could be as deceptive as Inafune. So let's try it: Read KoopaTV every day and you can be a part of the videogame industry's number one commentary website! And Follow Ludwig at NNID PrinceOfKoopas on Miiverse for the number one user! It'd be an honour for you to throw your money his way, so be sure to buy something at the KoopaTV merchandise store!


Maybe Capcom really does have something against Mega Man... we can see from E3 he really has no future.

We didn't get into Mighty No. 9's additional post-Kickstarter stretch goal funding since we discussed that in this article.
Who is more treasured by gamers: Inafune or Kojima? Ludwig holds neither sacred.
The day after this was published, Ludwig published an article showing Capcom's production schedule being competent. Maybe that's why Inafune was kicked out.
KoopaTV's 2016 article on Mighty No. 9, where the game is delayed past Q1 to June.
Perhaps if Comcept focused on Mighty No. 9, it wouldn't release to mediocre-at-best review scores.

2 comments :

  1. I didn't like the Mighty No. 9 show being announced before the game was out (you might remember that discussion) and the Red Ash Kickstarter gave me that same, "But can't we at least see Mighty No. 9 out first??" feeling. Of all the Kickstarters I've backed, none has made me feel so uncertain as this... ironic, since on the surface it looks like it should be more trustworthy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I may remember that discussion.

      Speaking of which, I totally forgot Lobodestroyo existed. Better ask Rawk about that.

      Delete

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