On June 21st, 2016, after a long, tumultuous,
and disillusioning development, Mighty No. 9 landed onto consoles and computers
across North America. Its announcement three years earlier
sent out a shockwave, leading to the project becoming the most successful
video game on Kickstarter at the time. And how could it not? Here was Keiji "The Father of Mega Man" Inafune,
fresh off of a legendary career at Capcom, pitching what was essentially the second coming
of the Blue Bomber, the beloved character who had all but been abandoned
by Capcom since his exit. So, how could a project with this level of talent,
a budget over four times its original goal, and delivered fifteen months late, be so mismanaged and produce such a
mediocre product? Well, this is Past Mortem, where we break down
and explore the stories of video games, and in this episode, we cast our eye to the
Mighty No. 9 Kickstarter. Before now, we had wondered why many outlets had not done a big breakdown of the
Mighty No. 9 campaign. Now we understand. It is not possible to overstate how deep
and murky the facts are. So get equipped; it's about to get rocky. Let's start with a little backstory about the man
at the center of it all, Keiji Inafune. Keiji Inafune started at Capcom in 1987. Mostly known as the "father of Mega Man", he rose through the ranks on the successes of
Onimusha, Resident Evil, and Dead Rising. In the years before Mighty No. 9, he also became well known as a vocal critic of
Japan's sagging video game development scene. In 2010, after a promotion to the head of
Capcom's R&D, he left a few months later and started
two companies; Comcept, a company that develops ideas
for multimedia projects, and Intercept, a more traditional
game development company. On August 31st, 2013, at the Penny Arcade Expo
in Seattle, Washington, Keiji Inafune put it all on the line: The Mighty No. 9 Kickstarter. And people went bonkers! The project met its $900,000 goal in just two days, and would hold the record as the most successful
video game on Kickstarter, until Bloodstained and Shenmue 3 two years later. All totaled, Comcept raised over four million dollars,
including extra donations to their PayPal. They had the funding, they had the talent,
they had a passionate community behind them, Fangamer was handling merch, Inti Creates
was developing the game, 2 Player Productions was making a documentary,
it seemed like the surest thing imaginable! Even certain YouTube personalities seemed convinced
that the future was bright. Past Derek - Mega Man can hang up his helmet,
because we don't need him any more. Wow, that's embarrassing! Can't imagine
how embarrassed that guy feels right now! So what the hell happened?! Well, the short answer is, wildly unrealistic ambition and a profound misunderstanding of the importance
of communication. But of course, the devil's in the details. Let's break it down. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 but the signs
were there from the beginning. First off the $4 million raised actually boils down
to 40% less, something closer to $2.5 million after Kickstarter and Paypal fees. It's worth noting that Yacht Club Games,
the makers of Shovel Knight and advisors to Inafune on how to successfully
run a Kickstarter, raised only a fraction of that. And we must make note that it was the
enticing stretch goals that pushed the grand total to record-breaking heights, and a handful of these were made
on the promise of ports. When the campaign wrapped, Mighty No. 9 was set
to appear on no fewer than ten different platforms, including the PS4 and Xbox One, which hadn't
been released yet! But otherwise, things started off strong. Comcept promised at least three updates a month, and even held competitions for various design choices,
such as the appearance of Beck's sidekick, Call. However, issues with communication and messaging
would begin to show as early as December 2013, just three months in. in an effort to strengthen relations between
fans and developers, Comcept hired a community manager,
Dina Abou Karam. Abou Karam wound up being a controversial hire. Just for context, this was just as GamerGate
was about to get going into high gear, after Anita Sarkeesian's 2012 Kickstarter, but before
the 2014 campaign against Zoe Quinn. The backlash started because of a gender-swap fanart Abou Karam drew of the main character Beck
just before her hire. Abou Karam was one of the first supporters of
the Mighty No. 9 Kickstarter, largely because she was already friends
with people working on the game. Although she had never played a Mega Man game
before, she saw an opening for the position, and was hired as both the community manager
for the Mighty No. 9 project, and as a junior designer at Comcept. It's important to stress that she was qualified
for this position. Abou Karam was a trilingual Lebanese transplant, freshly graduated with a masters of fine arts
from Kyoto University. Besides her previous experience in games and
graphic design, she had an incredibly valuable skill for a Japanese company looking to produce
a game Kickstarted in the West; fluency in both English and Japanese. Some supporters were outraged, and became
convinced that she would change Mighty No. 9 to promote what they perceived as a radical
feminist agenda. While it was far-fetched to think that Inafune
would so quickly give the keys to his prized project to a
freshly-graduated new hire, at the end of the day, this was a Kickstarter that was
traded largely on nostalgia and community outreach. People were offended that an apparent outsider
had been given power over them. The blowback was so bad that Mark MacDonald
from 8-4, Ltd. the game's localization team, had to step in and explain that she was the
community manager, not a designer on the game. In fact, it's likely her design work was instead focused
on Comcept's smaller-scale mobile games. It's certainly telling that neither Inafune nor anyone
from Comcept proper stepped in to clear the air. According to Abou Karam, top brass at Comcept
were aware of the situation. It's possible they decided not to interfere because they
didn't fully understand the seriousness of the backlash, leaving Abou Karam instead to her own devices. Amid claims that Abou Karam was abusing her power
and locking threads critical of her, some backers were upset enough to reportedly cancel
their Kickstarter donations, though actual amounts lost are not verifiable. After some initial drama, the Kickstarter settled down
without much public incident. Comcept maintained their promise of three
monthly updates, but confusion ramped up again on the eve of the
one-year anniversary. July 2014, at LA's Anime Expo, Inafune not only
announced a Mighty No. 9 animated series, but that they were also opening a new round
of funding on PayPal in order to raise $100,000 to include English
voicework into the game. It was also an attempt to reach out to so-called
"slacker backers", and give people who missed the Kickstarter
a chance to pledge their support. At the same time, they launched another campaign
with Japanese crowdfunding site Makuake to fund Japanese voiceacting for the same amount,
effectively trying to raise $200,000 total. There was some grumbling, but overall this didn't seem
to burn much goodwill with the community. But the timing and messaging did create confusion about what exactly this additional round
of crowdfunding was for, including if it was for the anime itself. Concern spread through the community. The game proper was still at least a year away, and though Inafune had never shied away from
his ambition of a Mighty No. 9 media empire, it still seemed like a premature time to be
expanding the franchise. But still, most trusted Inafune. Yet the community wasn't too keen on funding
the project much further. By October, this push for voice acting raised
a scant $20,000, only 20% of their goal. After an apology from the Mighty team, Comcept announced that Inafune himself
had decided to divert $80,000 raised from people upgrading the rewards on Fangamer
to fund the voiceacting. However, they could only now afford one round
of voiceacting. The language was put to a vote;
Japanese versus English. A week later, winning by a narrow margin of 5%, it was announced that English would be the default
spoken language for Mighty No. 9. Just two weeks later on October 30th, a new
call for funding went out. A potential bonus DLC for backers with
a new character, Ray, an obvious nod to Zero from Mega Man X,
and boss stage. The price? $198,000, roughly the cost of one of
the last few stretch goals. This would technically be Comcept's third plea
for additional funds. It's a tough pill to swallow, coming from a project
whose then still record-breaking success was made on the promise of heaps of
additional content. Extra end stage and boss, intro stage and boss,
Call stage and boss, and now Zero stage and boss? If rang especially tone-deaf when the previous pleas
for extra funding fell well below the goal. From here, communication between the community
and Comcept would begin to crumble. Rewards like wallpapers for five bucks a pop
were released to entice people to support the DLC campaign, but updates on the actual progress were never
included in community posts. While it appears there was a PayPal progress bar,
we are no longer able to access it. This push was meant to run until the end of the year, however in mid-December, mentions of the
Ray DLC ceased. Also around this time, community updates were
migrated to the Mighty No. 9 website, with the exception of major updates and monthly
"in case you missed it" posts. While this undoubtedly eased the workload
of the developers by allowing them to focus on work instead of
content for the Kickstarter, it also had the side effect of allowing Comcept
to quietly shield some updates from the Mighty No. 9 community at large. Update the Kickstarter? Everyone gets an email. Update the website? Supporters would need to
visit on their own. For example, in April 2015, Dina Abou Karam quietly
stepped down as Mighty No. 9's community manager in an update that was never published on
the main Kickstarter Now hang on folks, because we're still just
getting started here. This'll bring us to April 28th, 2015. It would be a big day for the community, partially
because Mighty No. 9 announced its first delay. The original release date was set for Spring 2015,
but as the announcement notes, by the time of this post, spring was already
halfway over, so maybe backers would not be so, quote,
"surprise(d)" by the delay. The bigger news? They had officially partnered
with publisher Deep Silver, and established a new release date of
mid-September that year. And that's not all! This partnership promised to make the game
even more Mighty! Now not only would the game have English voiceacting,
but also Japanese and French, subtitles for days, and incredibly, now the Ray DLC would be included
with all copies of the game, except non-backer digital-only versions. And lastly, Deep Silver would ship physical copies
for PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox One, PS4, and Wii U! This would be a turning point for this campaign,
but not for the reasons people would think, because while some saw this as a net positive;
now the game would reach even more people, others were rightfully miffed. You see in the original Kickstarter, a physical copy
of the game was never in the cards. The most supporters could ask for was a NES-style box
with an art book and a digital download. In Fall 2014, Comcept announced that backers
could increase their pledges through Fangamer to receive the PC, Mac, or Linux version on a DVD
for an additional $26 or a decorative USB for $31, five dollars more for international backers. But who cares about an empty box and a download code
when there's a complete commercial package? With this announcement, backers naturally asked if they could instead opt for the copy Deep Silver
was going to ship to stores. The answer? The answer? No. ...and by the way, no refunds. That's right, if backers wanted the Deep Silver version,
they can go to Target and buy it like everyone else! Seriously. We reached out to Fangamer for clarification, and they stated that the Deep Silver announcement
was a surprise to them as well, though they had no reason to expect to be a part
of those negotiations. And again, Fangamer was not able to issue refunds to people who no longer wanted the DVD or USB
versions of the game, as all the money from the upgraded pledges
went directly to Comcept. This news definitely raises eyebrows when you
remember Comcept's claim that they diverted Fangamer upgrade money to fund
English voiceacting before the Deep Silver deal. Now we're sure there were legitimate logistical
business complications that muddied the water. Still, it's cold comfort for supporters whose patience
was quickly running thin. On July 2nd, Comcept previewed a trailer for their
Red Ash: The Indelible Legend Kickstarter that went live two days later on July 4th. Yes, Comcept launched another Kickstarter
before they had even delivered on their first one. Pardon the editorialization here, but this Kickstarter
was just terrible. Beyond its launch day of July 4th, a major holiday
in the US, the Red Ash Kickstarter was horribly timed, and again gives the appearance that Inafune
and his camp are truly tone-deaf. It was hot off the heels of three very successful
retro revival crowdfunding campaigns in the previous two months; I'm talking of course of Yooka-Laylee,
Bloodstained, and Shenmue 3; that had likely tapped out most of their retro fanbase. Beyond even that, it was also launched at
the same time as a separate Kickstarter for the anime version of Red Ash, called
Red Ash: Magi... ...ki-KAY-dah? Magi-ci... Ma... Magi-Cicada, okay, I'll go with that, Magicicada! By the way, that Kickstarter was run by Studio 4C,
not Comcept, but it was still posted under the Comcept account. Let's take a second and examine these two
campaign announcements side-by-side. Look at how the Magicicada pitch gets right to
the meat of the announcement, like, right away. It even explains there are two different Kickstarters
within the first thirty seconds. Now on the other hand, The Indelible Legacy pitch is... I don't know, it's an... it's an anime? Like... what is this? It certainly doesn't look like a video game! Now for reference, at this point it had become customary to at least showcase a prototype in the Kickstarter pitch to prove that you could
deliver on your product. We're already one minute in, but let's watch
in real time just how long it takes for this trailer to actually explain itself. Alright, uh, he's running away. Oh, watch out buddy. Don't... don't get hit by the anime monster. He's jumping over the anime monster. Uhh... boy that guy doesn't look like Mega Man. Oh, jump! He made the jump! Good on- oh, watch out! What a goofball! He made the jump,
but he almost fell down, but he did fall down. He can't believe the predicament he's in! Wow! Is it still goin'? Jesus Christ! Hey look, it's totally not Tiesel. "Kept ya waiting, didn't..." Yeah. I'm still waiting. Oh!! Whoa! There's Inafune! Okay, finally! Alright, what are we, three minutes into this video? Yeah, three minutes in, finally. Now besides the production issues, like recording with what sounds like the on-board
microphone and possibly reading off of cue cards, this video fails to address what exactly it's selling. "Game design". What about game design? What game? What is the game you're talking about? Action RPG! There it is, three, almost four minutes in! If you bother to read the description, you can see that this is a grand second attempt
at the Mega Man Legends franchise, though it's unclear what exactly this game is. Like, are we just Kickstarting a prologue to the game? Even now, through all our research, we're still
not exactly sure what this game is. Alright, beyond even all of that, some may
be wondering how was Comcept able to start a new game
in the first place? Well, that's because Comcept was technically
done with Mighty No. 9. How is that possible, you ask? That's because Comcept, a portmanteau of "concept"
and "computer", is just an ideas house. They make an idea, and then farm it out to
an actual game development studio. So for the record, Inti Creates and Deep Silver were
hard at work getting Mighty No. 9 ready for launch, and according to Inafune, Comcept was essentially
twiddling their thumbs with nothing else to do. This project was intended to keep Comcept
above ground, since their only other upcoming project, ReCore,
had only just been announced at this point. We're explaining this to you because Comcept themselves certainly didn't
make it clear to their supporters. Almost immediately, it became obvious that The Indelible Legend was not going to take hold
like Mighty No. 9. In an attempt to raise support, they made pushes
like releasing a playable demo. However, again in a moment of obliviousness, the demo
used Mighty No. 9 characters as placeholders, which irritated Mighty No. 9 supporters because a
proper demo of that game had not been released yet. After only a week, Inafune decided to secure money
with an outside source, because in his words, "if we fail at Kickstarter,
that's totally fine... We'll find something else." While it's admirable that Inafune was determined
to get Red Ash made, it again showcases a complete lack of regard
for what failed funding means in terms of audience interest and general goodwill
towards your image and products. While the Red Ash Kickstarter was going on, there were
rumblings of trouble in the Mighty No. 9 camp. Yes folks it's about to get even messier. On July 23rd, retailers were mysteriously changing
the release dates of Mighty No. 9 from September 15th to placeholder dates. Rumors of a delay started to spread, but no updates
were posted on main Mighty No. 9 channels. According to Kotaku, a mod on the forums said they were informed by the game's producer,
Nick Yu, that these rumors were bunk. Unfortunately, this is all fans had to go on at the time. Back in Red Ash land, on July 29th, Comcept announced
that they had funded The Indelible Legend, with a little help from Chinese console maker and
video game company Fuze Entertainment. This announcement had some backers running
for the door, and the Kickstarter ended unsuccessfully
on August 3rd. Despite this, at the time of producing this video,
the release date of Red Ash is set for July 2017. Incidentally, the anime was successfully funded,
and appears to now be in production. On August 5th, two days after the Red Ash Kickstarter
ended, Comcept confirmed the rumors: Mighty No. 9 was delayed again to an unknown date
in Q1, 2016. Two days later, Nick Yu released a Q&A claiming that the delay decision was reached by
all business partners involved; Concept, Inti Creates, Deep Silver, etc, but that the decision had not been reached
until a week ago. Obviously, this does not jive with the timeline of
when the date started disappearing on July 23rd. The delay was blamed on a bug in the multiplayer, according to Yu. Though they could have split the multiplayer
from the single-player campaign, this would have lowered the final price of
the retail version. According to Inafune in a separate interview, this was a decision made by Deep Silver, not Comcept
and Inti Creates, for pure marketing purposes. This not only contradicts what Yu had said earlier, it gives the appearance of Inafune trying to avoid blame
and throw Deep Silver under the bus. Weeks later, on August 27th, Comcept announced
that as a consolation for the delayed game, they would release the demo previewed earlier
at Gamescom to backers on September 15th, the original Deep Silver release date. Then on September 15th, there was a lone paragraph
added to an unrelated art contest update that stated the demo would be delayed because of,
quote, "issues... regarding the distribution method." This update was published on the Mighty No. 9 website,
not the Kickstarter, which is odd because the demo was only available
to Kickstarter supporters, not the general public. Concept wouldn't further clarify these statements
until a full three days later on the 18th, essentially explaining that they didn't have
a distribution platform ready to go before announcing the demo release date. The demo wasn't distributed until September 25th,
which coincidentally was the same day they officially announced February 9th as the
North American release date for Mighty No. 9. It's becoming more and more difficult not to
view these as calculated PR moves to keep the project in the best light possible. Around this time, updates to the Kickstarter
and the official website slowed to a trickle, that is until January 25th, when we got this kicker;
Mighty No. 9 delayed again. This time, the date is listed as Spring 2016. The delay was pinned once again on the multiplayer; a bug in the matchmaking and other systems
was derailing the experience, but since the team was working on an engine
that is no longer supported, they have to manually reprogram every single engine
for every single game, and oh, Go- [thows script away] I don't even care anymore! I'm done, I'm done! From January, it was radio silence from the
Mighty team, until May 2nd, when Inafune announced that
the game had gone gold, meaning the final version of the game had been
approved for a physical release! Praise be! Oh, but not the 3DS and Vita versions, but still, everything else was locked for a release date
of June 21st for North America! The end of the saga was in sight! There's no way that anything else can go wrong! Announcer - ...and make the bad guys cry
like an anime fan on prom night!l Well, goddammit. Uploaded one month before the game's release, the credit for this now-infamous trailer goes to
publisher Deep Silver. Goodwill with Kickstarter supporters had likely
long since already dried up, but for the general gaming public, who maybe did not
know the full extent of the project's mismanagement, the game became a laughing stock. But to be fair, even Takuya Aizu, CEO of Inti Creates,
was pissed. And we're still not quite finished yet, because the
actual launch itself was also pretty messy. The Xbox 360 version was delayed for
an additional few days, PSN codes didn't come when expected, backers promised a pair of download codes
received only one, and there were claims the Wii U version of the Ray DLC
crashed the system and glitched the game. One of our viewers claimed they pledged to receive
a decorative statue, and they were told they would no longer be receiving it. When reached for comment, Fangamer said those high-tier rewards were handled
by Comcept, not Fangamer. Reviews of the game were not terrible, but many still
found it well, beneath the level of quality expected. This story is still ongoing; as late as September 6th,
there was an update buried within another update revealing that the DRM-free Mac and Linux versions
were finally uploaded to Humble Bundle. Our sources at Fangamer claim they had been waiting
on that data from Concept, but physical rewards are now in production,
with fulfillment planned for early 2017. Also, as of producing this video, those Vita and 3DS
versions are still release date to be determined. We end on the event of the official Twitch livestream
on launch day. The stream was not archived, we were not able to find
a full copy ourselves, but articles transcribed the many regretful
and melancholy quotes from Inafune, translated by his longtime agent and partner Ben Judd. The big pull-away quote, and the only piece of footage
we could find, that Mighty No. 9 was, quote, "better than nothing",
was actually the opinion of Ben Judd, but widely misreported as straight from the mouth
of Inafune himself. Judd - Even if it's not perfect, it's better than nothing. Judd - At least, that's my opinion. He did place blame on himself, though. Quote, "I am kind of loath to say this, "because it's going to sound like an excuse and
I don't want to make any excuses. "I own all the problems that came with this game "and if you want to hurl insults at me, (that's)
totally (fine). "I'm the key creator, (and) I own that responsibility." And that's just it; at the end of the day,
it was Inafune driving that bus. Now it's common to see people online refer to
Mighty No. 9 as a scam or a shallow cash-grab. We certainly understand people's outrage,
especially those who pledged, but really, I just don't see it that way. Inafune is a creator, not a con artist. This is a classic story of biting off more than
you can chew, when one's own ambition gets the best of them. But after this breakdown, there's still one question. How could one of the most adulated video game
developers in history, someone who once managed over 900 people
at Capcom, take a project this promising and mismanage it
this spectacularly? Stay tuned for when we break down the story of
the mightiest number: Keiji Inafune. Until then, for Grace Kramer and Derek Alexander,
this is Past Mortem, signing off. Thanks for watching! If you want more video game documentaries
and reviews, I recommend you subscribe and check out some of
our other videos. On the left, we explain the fallout between
Hideo Kojima and Konami, and on the right, we plot the rise of Dark Souls,
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I consider myself a die hard megaman fan. I was excited when it was first announced like everyone else, but the games industry has kept me trained to remain skeptical and cynical to literally everything even my favorite things. So this is how the whole series of events went for me.
Whoa! Megaman spiritual successor! AWESOME!!!
They got it funded and then some hell yeah! Now We just have to wait.
Hmm some fringe feminist drama? What? Oh whatever.
Hmm okay gameplay footage... This doesn't seem like megaman gameplay to me. It's... bouncy or something I dunno I better wait for reviews...
Wait they need more money?
Okay they delayed the game launch. That's actually smart. That means we won't have a buggy launch.
Wait now you want to kickstart another game before you're done with this one? What? Yeah glad I didn't kickstart...
Well that was garbage. Glad I didn't fall for the hype.
The moral of the story folks, look for the canary in the coal mine.